Guatemala

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, in December 2022, I traveled to Guatemala as part of a congressional delegation led by Senator Tim Kaine. Four months earlier, to the shock and dismay of powerful rightwing forces in Guatemala's Congress and business community, Bernardo Arevalo, an anti- corruption activist, had been overwhelmingly elected President in an election widely recognized as free and fair.

Guatemala is one of Central America's most corrupt countries, so it was not surprising that his election triggered a frantic attempt by his opponents, led in part by then-Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who had been sanctioned by the United States, to invalidate the election on fabricated grounds of fraud and prevent Arevalo's inauguration. The purpose of our trip was to demonstrate our strong support for the choice of the Guatemalan people, in particular Guatemala's historically marginalized indigenous population, and for the integrity of the democratic process.

To the country's credit, Arevalo was inaugurated on January 15, 2024, and for the first time in decades, Guatemala has a President who is not beholden to the corrupt forces that have exploited political power for their own enrichment and used Guatemala's armed forces and police to harass, threaten, arbitrarily arrest, and even murder their opponents.

But having failed to prevent Arevalo from taking office, those forces have carried out a relentless campaign, aided by counterparts and lobbyists in Washington with close ties to the Trump administration, to sabotage his efforts to reform the justice system and end the culture of corruption, violence, and impunity that has plagued Guatemala for generations. Career U.S. foreign service officers who stood up for the rule of law and democracy in Guatemala, were summarily replaced by U.S. Embassy appointees who reportedly urged members of Guatemala's Congress to support a rightwing candidate tainted by corruption for a seat on the constitutional court, or risk losing their U.S. visas.

Unlike President Trump and officials in his administration, I do not believe it is our role--using threats, inducements, or other means--to try to influence the outcome of election of foreign candidates for office, whether Presidents, legislators, or judges. We oppose such interference in our own sovereignty, and it is hypocritical and unwise to engage in such conduct ourselves.

I mention this because President Arevalo has another year and a half in his 4-year term. If political and economic forces in Guatemala, backed by nefarious associates of the Trump administration, continue to try to deny the will of the Guatemalan people and thwart Arevalo's anti-corruption mandate by using their influence to undermine the institutions of democracy for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, they will pay a price when the balance of power shifts in Washington. People here know the history of U.S. political and economic intervention in Guatemala dating back to 1954, and they have long memories when it comes to corruption and the manipulation of judicial and law enforcement institutions in that country.

The appropriate role of the United States in Guatemala, as in the rest of Latin America, is to support the people there by improving their lives through free and fair elections, equitable economic opportunities, and access to justice that conforms to international protections of due process. Too often, U.S. policy in Guatemala has strayed from those goals, motivated instead by greed and corrupt interests in our own country, and promoting the militarization of internal security. That is a recipe for a return to authoritarianism, ethnic and social division, and armed conflict. Guatemalans who choose that path should be forewarned that it will ultimately be their own, and the country's, undoing.

No President, even in the best of circumstances, can transform a country like Guatemala in 4 years, but President Arevalo deserves our strong support. At a time when the trend in Latin America is to elect leaders who equate law and order with subverting judicial independence, militarizing the police, and running roughshod over due process of law, President Arevalo has restored integrity to the office and defended the institutions of democracy. In the long run, that has the best chance of producing the transparency, accountability, stability, and prosperity the Guatemalan people need.

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