Sometimes the Good Guys Win: Five Lessons from Guatemala’s 2023 Election

This story holds lessons for supporters of democracy in Guatemala and other countries where democratic forces seek to unseat kleptocratic regimes. These lessons are also relevant for the international community, including the United States, as diplomats and foreign policymakers assess how to isolate and pressure corrupt and autocratic actors, thereby slowing and potentially even reversing the world's democratic recession.

1. Take advantage of political opportunities created by regime errors and weaknesses.

Even managed elections can deliver unexpected results that offer opportunities for systemic pro-democracy change. The role of chance in attempted regime change is often underrated.

Authoritarian regimes can make mistakes that crystallize public opinion, creating opportunities that democratic forces can exploit. Incumbent President Alejandro Giammattei and his supporters made at least four big errors:

1. They failed to unite behind a single candidate in the elections.
2. Their self-dealing removal of three rival presidential candidates created an opportunity for Semilla.
3. Their campaign to discredit Semilla after the first round likely boosted support for the movement.
4. And, crucially, Giammattei alienated ancestral Indigenous authorities.

Ideological scare tactics also failed to move voters. Despite attempts to portray the Semilla Movement as "communist," most Guatemalans in 2023 did not look at the election through a right-left lens. Instead, they assessed candidates through the corrupt-honest lens, the ineffective-effective lens and the status quo versus non-status quo lens.

Nor did the Giammattei and his supporters succeed in exploiting ideological divisions abroad. Arévalo's moderate background and statements, his clear victory and the record of recent Guatemalan corruption undermined their efforts to elicit conservative support in the United States.

Winning an election against an authoritarian regime is only the first of several battles whose outcome can go either way, however. The attempted coup against the electoral process in Guatemala was a mishmash of lies, illogical thinking and juridical sleight of hand. Yet it was poised to win until a combination of internal Guatemalan protest, international pressure including dramatic U.S. sanctions and a few favorable decisions by Guatemalan courts ultimately defeated the coup. This outcome was neither inevitable nor irreversible.

2. Be ready to exploit these opportunities with agility and calculated risk-taking.

The United States understood the nature and scope of Guatemalan authoritarianism and corruption before and after the elections. It also recognized the real danger of a coup against the electoral process. Policymakers took appropriate calculated risks to reach out to major players with clear messages, including diplomacy in the Organization of American States (OAS), close coordination with the European Union (EU), and high-level visits to the country and statements from administration officials and members of Congress from both parties. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala also worked closely with major players in Guatemala.

The U.S. used its convening power to facilitate a meeting in late October between Indigenous and private sector leaders. Twelve organizations, including the major ancestral authorities and five business groups, issued a joint statement promising to work together to defend democracy in a remarkable display of unity.

The State Department used visa cancellations extremely effectively. The Treasury Department also designated Miguel Martínez, one of Giammattei's closest associates, under the Magnitsky Act, though the United States limited itself by not making earlier and wider use of these financial sanctions. EU sanctions amplified U.S. sanctions.

3. Build broad international and ideological coalitions.

The OAS and the European Union (EU) contributed significantly to the successful outcome. By affirming the elections' legitimacy, they helped stymy attempts to annul the results while demonstrating that Guatemalan democracy was not just a U.S. issue. Statements by other governments and an array of international leaders added to the ideological breadth of international support. Thirty-one former presidents from Latin America and Spain - notably including Álvaro Uribe from Colombia, a conservative icon - urged the government to respect the electoral results. Not one foreign country supported Giammattei.

4. Maintain support for democratic actors even - or especially - when democratic spaces are closing.

International support has helped strengthen Guatemalan civil society over the years. Modest support for journalists and other civil society actors paid off in 2023 when they countered misinformation about the electoral process. The critical time to support civil society and the media is before a democratic opportunity presents itself, not afterwards.

Guatemala's military refused to support efforts to overturn the elections. The police refused to use lethal force to clear demonstrators, accurately assessing such efforts would turn bloody and counterproductive. Both institutions' decisions indicate U.S. cooperation over past years with the military and the police has been productive.

External and internal pressures are like a hammer and an anvil: they reinforce each other. International statements and sanctions have impact only in proportion to the existence of domestic forces willing to challenge an authoritarian government, including through legal protests, such as the indigenous-led protests that took place in Guatemala during October and November.

5. Prepare to address long-term challenges.

State capture by corrupt authoritarians reflects deep systemic challenges. While Guatemala has resolved the issue of "who is president" for now, it is still struggling to replace a kleptocratic political system with a democratic one. The country is not the same as it was a year ago, but how and where it has changed is still coming into focus. The effort to build a build a democratic regime with checks and balances and an independent judiciary continues.

Helping democracy emerge from a kleptocratic regime is similar in many ways to negotiating a peace accord. The parties need to document abuses, establishing where the money went. They need to provide justice for victims, holding some perpetrators accountable, including through non-judicial "naming and shaming." The process also needs to include repentance, restitution and guarantees of non-repetition.

Delving deeper, Guatemala has failed to define a basic social contract that will provide citizens with sufficient income, security and hope for the future. There is little to deter Guatemalan families from migrating to the United States. The "trickle down" economic model has had some successes but has left many Guatemalans scavenging for scraps.

The Challenges Ahead

There is much the United States, in coordination with the EU and other donors, can do to help the new Guatemalan government promote democracy, transparency, justice and growth. President Arévalo faces enormous challenges in this asymmetric struggle with authoritarian kleptocrats.

First, the Arévalo government continues to face an existential threat from those loyal to pact of the corrupt, principally in the Attorney General's office and the courts. The United States and the European Union should continue sanctioning corrupt individuals to prevent their efforts to restore kleptocratic rule, while supporting efforts to select independent prosecutors and judges. And they should support Guatemalan government proposals for off-ramps, such as self-exile, to remove corrupt prosecutors and judges from office. The U.S. government should also ramp up Department of Justice anti-corruption investigations in the region.

Second, Guatemala's international partners need to help the government fulfil high public expectations for good jobs, higher wages and better public services, especially health care and education. Security could easily emerge as a hot-button issue, as it has in Ecuador. Criminal groups in Guatemala are among the most sophisticated and powerful in Central America, ranging from street gangs to drug and arms traffickers to migrant smugglers to money launderers.

Meeting public expectations requires better state institutions, which have long been underfunded. Guatemala has one of the lowest tax to GDP ratios in the Western Hemisphere.

Third, the government needs to strengthen dialogue and citizen participation. It must strengthen Indigenous participation, bringing ancestral authorities into dialogue with the state and the private sector. It must engage citizens in government initiatives to reduce corruption and ensure judicial independence; it was citizen protests, especially the Indigenous, that kept the kleptocrats from overturning Arevalo's election, and Arevalo may well have to rely upon citizen protests to counter the kleptocrats' control of the Attorney General's office and the judiciary. And the government must seek support for rule of law reform among economic elites who oppose corruption but remain suspicious of Semilla and of a more effective government.

Finally, the Arévalo government must counter continuing attacks on its legitimacy. Semilla needs to build its own narrative with government actions that could include an impartial international review of the alleged electoral fraud, and a truth commission to detail the impact of corruption on public services and infrastructure. Such truth-telling would reinforce current efforts in the Guatemalan Congress to pass a competition law to regulate monopolistic practices, an infrastructure law to establish transparent mechanisms for procurement, and reforms to ensure civic oversight of the judicial selection process.

Coda: Peurifoy's Ghost

In 1971, when I was a 16-year-old student in Peru, I debated U.S. policy toward Latin America with a local university student who hammered me on the United States' support for the coup that overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, ending Guatemala's first attempt at democratic rule. A U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, John Peurifoy, helped orchestrate that coup, convincing many Latin Americans that the United States rejected democratic reforms and that violent revolution was their only alternative.

During my four-decade career, I have served the United States in multiple conflict and post-conflict countries that suffered from the legacy of that coup, including as ambassador to Guatemala from 2008 to 2011. But I also participated in actions demonstrating that the United States had learned lessons from the 1954 coup. Clearly the U.S. government has been energetic and effective in its support for democracy in Guatemala.

On January 15, 2024, I sat near President Bernardo Arévalo - the son of President Juan Jose Arévalo, Arbenz's colleague and predecessor - as the Guatemalan military pledged loyalty to their country's democratically elected president. Ambassador Peurifoy's ghost has vanished, I thought. Guatemala can move forward, and the United States can remain on the right side of history.

Stephen G. McFarland is a retired United States foreign service officer. He served twice in Guatemala, including as ambassador from 2008-11, and earlier in El Salvador during the armed conflict. His 12 overseas posts were in South and Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan, focusing on countries in conflict and post-conflict situations. These are his personal views.