Latin America

Judi Lynn

(160,545 posts) Sat Jun 13, 2015, 06:41 PM Jun 2015

Guatemalans Are Taking Their Democracy Back

Guatemalans Are Taking Their Democracy Back
Saturday, 13 June 2015 00:00
By Sandra Cuffe, Truthout | Report

Guatemalans are clamoring for change, pouring into the capital city's central plaza on a weekly basis. From massive national mobilizations down to local consultations, defending territories from extractive industries, people all over Guatemala are taking action to take their country back from transnational corporations and the political, business and military elite.

The historic protests at the national level stem from a groundswell of outrage and indignation over revelations of widespread corruption within the highest levels of government. Guatemala prosecutors and the UN International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala cracked down on two major corruption rings within the National Tax Office and the Guatemalan Social Security Institute in April and May. The heads of both institutions have been arrested, along with the president of the country's central bank and dozens of others inside and outside the government.

The revelations ignited a diverse, decentralized movement, and the Guatemalan government has been scrambling to put out the flames. A series of resignations of high-level officials is widely viewed as an attempt by President Otto Pérez Molina to appease protesters, while hanging onto power. The vice president; the secretary of strategic intelligence; the cabinet ministers of the interior, energy and mines, and the environment and natural resources; and other officials have all stepped down from their posts. The mobilizations continue to grow, however, and the people's movement's demands are increasingly shifting from the call for Pérez Molina's resignation to a much more radical transformation of the state.

An estimated 60,000 Guatemalans from all walks of life took to the streets in the capital on March 16, and thousands more participated in marches and rallies in the interior. The following day, 65 miles south of Guatemala City, the mostly Indigenous Xinka population of San Juan Tecuaco voted on whether it would permit mining activities in its territory. The local referendum was the result of local grassroots action by communities that organized together to call for the initiative.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31240-guatemalans-are-taking-their-democracy-back

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Guatemalans Are Taking Their Democracy Back (Original Post) Judi Lynn Jun 2015 OP

Latin America's leftist democracy revolution is a wondrously beautiful phenomenon. Peace Patriot Jun 2015 #1

Peace Patriot

(24,010 posts)

1. Latin America's leftist democracy revolution is a wondrously beautiful phenomenon.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Tue Jun 16, 2015, 11:49 AM

Jun 2015

Peaceful democracy revolutions are, of course, wondrously beautiful wherever they occur, but they are especially so in Latin America--at least to this north American, after having spent a LIFETIME watching them be crushed by my own government, with the appalling details often emerging only decades afterwards. The CIA's overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Arbenz, on behalf of the U.S. United Fruit Company (Chiquita), in the early 1950s, and the later (Reagan era) U.S. complicity in the slaughter of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers in Guatemala, is one of the more awful cases in point. Here's a CIA document dump that lays out its assassination (of leftists) program for Guatemala: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

To see people triumph over these horrors is wondrous and beautiful. It has been happening all over South America over the last decade and a half--in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, then Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador--but was stalled out in Central America, which has been so downtrodden as the "circle the wagons" region for our U.S. Corporate/Military rulers, who, among other things, were directly involved in the rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras in 2009. To see the people of Central America awaken and stand up for their democratic rights, after such a horror-filled history of U.S. interference, is extraordinarily inspiring. I did not think I would see it in my lifetime. I feared that Nicaragua's leftist democracy revolution would be crushed when Jeb* is Diebolded into the White House, using the fascist base established in Honduras in 2009 (with Hillary's assistance), and that would be that for many decades. Though this threat remains very real, I think I may have underestimated the power of the leftist democracy fire, once it gets lit.

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*(I read somewhere recently that Jeb* is leaving his last name off of posters and bumper stickers. I hope my asterisk catches on. Not that that will make any difference to ES&S/Diebold. But I like small rebellions. They can lead to big ones.)

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