Kamala Harris travels to Guatemala to curb irregular migration and promote the fight against corruption

US Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Guatemala for her first trip abroad since taking over as number two in the Biden administration. This Sunday he will arrive in the Central American country with the main objective of curbing irregular migration and creating the economic conditions that prevent thousands of people each year from trying to reach the US in search of the “American dream” fleeing from endemic misery and violence.. To do this, he will hold a meeting next Monday with the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, with whom he will try to establish a strategy that addresses the causes of irregular migration, among which, in the opinion of the Joe Biden government, is the corruption, which leaves basic health, education and justice services without resources, among others. Thus, Harris has announced that he wants to have “very frank and honest conversations” in Guatemala about the fight against corruption, crime and violence, “particularly against the most vulnerable populations in that country.”

For his part, the Director of Hemispheric Affairs in the White House Security Council, Juan González, has announced in Voice of America that the vice president plans to sign three specific agreements with the Government of Guatemala. The first seeks to “strengthen cooperation at the borders”, the second consists of “an initiative against corruption” and the third aims to “promote economic opportunities.”

Harris will arrive in Guatemala one day after several social organizations have called for this Saturday a “Great demonstration against corruption” to protest against “illegal acts” carried out by officials of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches. One of the main purposes of this march is to show support for the head of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI) Juan Francisco Sandoval, who leads all investigations against corruption in Guatemala that affects different political parties.. However, he does not have the approval of the country's President, Alejandro Giammattei, who in a recent interview with Reuters accused Sandoval of “having an ideology” that, in his opinion, causes selective and politicized justice.

“Check the tweet and you will find that what you are expressing is in accordance with an ideology and the problem is when you are in charge of ensuring justice and you consider that justice must be done from an ideological point of view. There could be a serious conflict of interest there because it would mean that whoever sounds like an ideology different from mine I'll persecute,” he stressed.

These statements by the president contrast with the explicit support that the US Secretary of State himself, Antony Blinken, has given to the work of the Prosecutor's Office led by Sandoval. This same Friday, he had a telephone conversation with the Foreign Minister, Pedro Brolo, to whom he conveyed that “independent anti-corruption institutions such as the FECI are essential to improve the transparency of the Government and the rule of law”. In this sense, Blinken expressed his “deep concern about any effort to eliminate the FECI”, thus referring to the fact that the Constitutional Court has admitted for processing an initiative presented by the lawyer Otto Gómez to declare the agreement unconstitutional by which FECI was created. In recent days, the US Ambassador in Guatemala highlighted the work of the FECI, while the Canadian Ambassador met with Sandoval to express her support in the fight against corruption.

Repression

However, Giammattei turns a deaf ear to this support and went so far as to tell Reuters that “I am not aware that there is support” for Sandoval: “the truth is, I have so much to do, I keep myself so busy and I have enough problems to be worrying about what a prosecutor does”. Likewise, on May 19, the former analyst of the extinct International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), Aníbal Argüello, was arrested and imprisoned, accused of illicit association, conspiracy and document forgery for trying to create the Guatemalan Environmental Party together with the former head of the Superintendence of Tax Administration, Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa, who was also deprived of liberty.

Argüello was one of the CICIG investigators, a UN body created in Guatemala to support the Prosecutor's Office in the fight against corruption, which allowed the imprisonment in 2015 of the former president and former vice president of Guatemala Otto Pérez Molina and Roxana Baldetii , respectively. Precisely, he is imprisoned in the Mariscal Zavala prison, the same one in which Pérez Molina has been deprived of liberty in a preventive manner for almost six years.. At the First Statement Hearing, in which the prosecutor accused him of belonging to a “criminal structure,” Argüello said he was the victim of “selective and disproportionate criminal prosecution by the Prosecutor's Office, which is being used by organized crime to take revenge for my work in the fight against corruption”.

In this turbulent context, Kamala Harris arrives in Guatemala, where she also plans to meet with representatives of civil society, who will also convey to the US Vice President their concern about the lack of vaccines against the coronavirus in Guatemala. Giammattei announced this week that the US will donate 500,000 vaccines to the Central American country, as Harris herself confirmed by phone, who will arrive in Guatemala with this great asset in hand.

Hazel Contreras, Regional Coordinator of Alianza Américas, a network of Latin American migrant organizations in the US, is in Guatemala on the occasion of the visit of Kamala Harris to convey a series of proposals to the US vice president in a document. Contreras points out to EL MUNDO that in order to put an end to the flow of thousands of irregular migrants from Guatemala “we cannot expect a solution directly from the US”, but rather a “proper functioning of the institutions in Guatemala, which has to do with the issue of corruption and how it has co-opted the State”.

In addition, Contreras points out that Harris's visit occurs at a time when there have been “strange, doubtful and totally arbitrary arrests” in the Central American country, creating a discourse that “generates fear because one cannot imagine being in the opposition or trying to be a dissident voice in Guatemala”. “There is a perfect assembly of powers that are trying to discredit, generate terror and destabilize and only see that cross-border migration is the only solution,” he denounces.

“THE AMERICAN DREAM DOES NOT EXIST”

For her part, the Associate Director of Programs of Alianza Americas, Helena Olea, remarks that “the American dream does not exist for Americans or for migrants,” because despite the fact that living conditions in the US are “better ” that in Guatemala, “they have deteriorated for the working class”, to the point that whoever works full time “is living below the poverty line”.

Regarding Harris's visit, he specified that she “cannot come to Guatemala to scold, but rather has to convince, persuade and use a sensible foreign policy in which she identifies with which institutions she can work and where to put the incentive”. Olea indicates that what the US vice president is “absolutely clear” is the “fight against corruption”, given her past as California attorney general. However, Olea believes that the US “has understood that it has to change its policy towards Mexico and Central America because well-being in this corridor is essential for peace and tranquility in the US.”

After his visit to Guatemala, Harris will travel to Mexico on Monday to meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, considers that the main issue will be to seek agreements to “accelerate the growth of investment and social welfare in southern Mexico and in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador so that migration is optional and not forced by poverty and insecurity”. For the time being, the Vice President has skipped her visit to El Salvador and Honduras, where relations with the US have deteriorated. In the case of El Salvador, following the decisions of the Congress to dismiss the attorney general and the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice in order to appoint people close to Nayib Bukele, while in Honduras, the brother of the president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was sentenced in the US to life imprisonment.