Fake News in the Guatemala Invasion Compared to Now

Sylvia Brindis Snow and Shane Snow take a deep, deep dive into the U.S. use of fake news to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. It includes photos and audio. That story is not a new one (though the details make me shake my head no matter how many times I've heard them) but they take it a step further and view it as a precursor to the Russian meddling in U.S. presidential elections. There are interesting parallels.

Comparing Hillary Clinton to Arbenz feels like a stretch at times, but it's intriguing. The basic idea is to concoct an entirely false picture from abroad and broadcast it as broadly as possible, radio then and social media now. The CIA created a new reality that the Communists were taken over and that a rebel force was on the march. This was all recorded outside Guatemala by actors. Nothing about it was real. Similarly, we got (and still get) crazy stories about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. 

On the Guatemala side, we see David Atlee Phillips pleased as punch after Arbenz was overthrown, playing bridge and feeling smug. One can easily imagine a parallel in Russian hackers. And in both cases, they are leaving terrible wreckage. The authors conclude by showing how the offending governments cover up their tracks, lying even more. Unable to find any evidence of Communist affiliation in Arbenz's house, the CIA puts in bags of dirt labeled with Communist countries, as if he had collected dirt in his Communist ardor. Stupid, and unconvincing, but convincing enough for those didn't think too much about it, much like now.

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Completely Broken Immigration System

I watched WOLA's webinar on immigration: "Stranded Between Borders: Draconian Responses to a Regional Migration Crisis." Adam Isacson moderated, with the following guests:

Gretchen Kuhner, Institution for Women in Migration (Mexico),

Marco Romero, CODHES and Professor at the National University of Colombia

Ursula Roldán, Institute for Research and Projection on Global and Territorial Dynamics of the Rafael Landívar University (Guatemala)

It was particularly worthwhile because it didn't in fact focus on Trump per se, but rather the responses and realities in the Latin American countries.

The overall message is that the immigration system is utterly, terribly, broken. The Trump administration is not only anti-immigrant, but it reneges on agreements. AMLO bows down to Trump just to avoid being attacked, and his own anti-immigrant policies are fine with his base in Mexico. Colombia has nothing but short-term, emergency responses when it needs much more. Immigrants live precariously at borders with no solution in sigtht. Covid-19 hovers over all of this, because vulnerable migrants find themselves infected and bureaucracies have ground to a halt.

Tied to that, there is so little hope for meaningful change. No current president is willing to build a long-term humane system, and is generally doing the opposite. Even if Joe Biden wins the presidency, it will take a long time to undo the damage that the Trump administration inflicted on immigration policy and immigrants.

The only positive note was that remittances to Guatemala were up in July. I can't even imagine how that is possible, but it is.

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Giammattei Says US Is Not An Ally

The Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center hosted a talk by Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei about Covid-19. He has taken strict measures, which in turn have generated criticism for their authoritarian nature, their impact on the economy, and even the sense that as a retired doctor he somehow feels he alone can save the country.

He started by saying that the strictness was necessary due to the lack of hospital space, sending people who tested positive straight to the hospital so they wouldn't infect the rest of their families. He mentioned that reopening would involve protocols and the ability to close areas (even departments) as needed, rather than the entire country.

Then Jason Marczak asked him rather diplomatically about the "role of the United States" and he was clearly pissed. Jason had made some mention of the US being an ally and Giammattei corrected him, saying Guatemala was an ally of the U.S. but the reverse was not true because Guatemala was not being treated that way. The Trump administration is deporting infected Guatemalans, which is a major source of the country's cases. He understands that the U.S. wants to deport, he said, but not why they're deporting infected people. We've complied with all the protocols like the CDC recommends, he added, but they haven't.

And who can argue? I should point out as well that the Trump administration used the CDC to block all asylum seekers, infected or not. Now all those being deported are stigmatized in Guatemala as well. Not exactly the work of an ally.

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Declaring Hezbollah a Terrorist Threat in Latin America

Three Latin American countries in particular want something from the United States.

--The Colombian government wants recognition that its fighting coca cultivation sufficiently, which the Trump administration has questioned.

--The Honduran government wants recognition for its acceptance of migrants seeking asylum in the United States and continued opposition to combating corruption (correct, opposition to combating it).

--The Guatemalan government wants the same as Honduras.

Given how unpredictable Trump is, there is no way to know exactly how to secure these things. Directly and publicly doing something Trump likes, especially if it gets on to Fox News when he's watching it, is one potential way.

Labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization fits this model. Mike Pompeo applauded these three countries for doing so. I doubt they are thinking a whole lot about Hezbollah, as their problems are much bigger and complex than that, but this is an entirely cost-free way of pushing into Trump's good graces. Colombia just adopted the entire U.S. list. Juan Orlando Hernández made his announcement directly after a meeting on immigration with the acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

Especially with Central America, the administration is essentially pummeling them into submission.

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Microfinance and Guatemalan Emigration

Research shows that the most poor are less likely to migrate to those who are poor but have access to some resources. As Benjamin Helms and David Leblang note:

For countries with low levels of per capita income, we observe little migration due to a liquidity constraint: at this end of the income distribution, individuals do not have sufficient resources to cover even minor costs associated with moving abroad. Increasing income helps to decrease this constraint, and consequently we observe increased levels of emigration as incomes rise.

This excellent Washington Post story shows how U.S.-backed microfinance loans in Guatemala spur people to emigrate.

What enables those payments is a vast system of credit that includes financial institutions set up and supported by the United States and the World Bank, part of the global boom in microfinance over the past two decades. The U.S. government and the World Bank have each extended tens of millions of dollars in funding and loan guarantees, money that helped create what is now Guatemala’s biggest microfinance organization, Fundación Génesis Empresarial, and backed one of its largest banks, Banrural. 

But in Nebaj and communities like it around the country, those financial institutions now serve Guatemalans eager to migrate.

In short, these loans give people in a very poor country access to the necessary resources for emigration. They wouldn't have access otherwise. It would be one thing if they managed to reach and stay in the United States, but often they don't. They end up back in Guatemala and in deep debt, from which they cannot recover.

I am teaching a graduate seminar on U.S.-Latin American relations this semester, and we were just talking about the difficulty of explaining the jump of Central American migrants in 2014. You have to separate constants (i.e. poverty and violence) from variables. This is something that did change.

We also talk about unintended consequences, which are a constant in U.S. policy. Decision-makers routinely fail to see long-term ramifications, some of which should be obvious while others are harder to foresee. In this particular case, microfinance--which does work for some people--just becomes just another hustle.

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Trump and CICIG

The former commissioner of CICIG (which is now officially defunct) Iván Velásquez has a message that has been dismal reality for a while. The Trump administration was central to CICIG's demise, as evidenced by the timing.

After the CICIG announced that it was investigating Morales and members of his family for campaign finance violations, he and others began to threaten the commission and launched a campaign to erode the U.S. bipartisanship support. They spent millions on Washington lobbyists and dispatched a steady stream of state officials to make the case that the CICIG was a leftist operation. When the Trump administration announced it was moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Guatemala was the first government to follow suit — all in an effort to get closer to the U.S. government and continue its push to discredit the agency. 

The efforts paid off. Last year, when Morales barred me from returning to the country in violation of the agreement with the United Nations, the tepid response from the Trump administration amounted to a stamp of approval. That’s when Morales refused to extend the mandate.

The administration has done considerable damage to the region, and one could argue that Guatemala is among the worst hit. Take the combination of supporting corruption while attacking the country's migrants and pressuring Guatemala to accept Hondurans and Salvadorans who want asylum in the U.S.

U.S. Rep. Norma Torres co-signed a letter calling on the UN to make sure all of CICIG's employees, plus people who work in Guatemalan courts, receive protection. Trump and Morales combined to make them targets for angry elites.

In a 2017 LAPOP report, Liz Zechmeister and Dinorah Azpuru showed how Guatemalans overwhelmingly trust CICIG. A 2019 poll showed 72% approval. Guatemalans have protested against its closure, but the military and the criminal oligarchy that controls the state have stood firm.

The result, as you can easily guess, will be more emigration. Corruption, violence, and permanent economic inequality leaves no other options for thousands.

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What US Aid Does in Guatemala

Great story by Sandra Cuffe at The Intercept on U.S. military aid to Guatemala. Ostensibly it's just about jeeps, but that reveals a deeper problem. And not really new. The U.S. pours money into small, less developed countries, and ends up making things worse, in no small part because the aid ends up helping authoritarian forces.

Roughly two hours after the jeeps were first spotted outside the offices of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala — CICIG, by its Spanish acronym — Morales stood inside the National Palace flanked by military and police officials and announced that he would not renew CICIG’s mandate, sparking legal challenges, protests, and an ongoing political crisis. The deployment of the jeeps deepened concerns among many Guatemalans about Morales  — all the more so when the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala revealed that the vehicles had been donated by the United States for use in border regions, not the capital. Morales and his backers have been courting the support of the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers against CICIG, and there are signs that the U.S. government’s longstanding support for the commission is weakening.

Jeeps alone are not the point. It's more about what green lights the U.S. government, meaning the Trump administration, is giving. These days the message is that you can use our aid to fight against democracy. We don't mind. In fact, we do not particularly like fighting corruption anymore.

Jimmy Morales is a sycophant to Trump and so this and other incidences will go unremarked by the administration. Guatemalan democracy--already in tatters--will suffer as a result.

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Trump Lies About Immigration Caravan

Donald Trump lied about the so-called immigration "caravan," saying there are "unknown Middle Easters" in there. Where did this lie come from? Daniel Dale, a reporter for the Toronto Star and a must-follow on Twitter for his coverage of Trump rallies, has the answer. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said that in some unspecified time period, his government had arrested close to 100 possible terrorists, including some from ISIS, and they had all been deported. That may or may not be true. Right wing media combined it with the caravan, then Fox News reported it as fact. Then Trump watched Fox News and tweeted it as fact. That's where we are in 2018.

I first blogged about the paranoid rants about Iran's presence in Latin America a full 10 years ago. They are no more true now than they were then. Fear fosters belief in falsehoods. The specific claim varies: you get some Iran, some Hezbollah, some ISIS. You used to get some Al Qaeda but that's out of fashion. The story is eternal: there are bad Muslim foreigners out there trying to hurt you, and I will protect you. Especially in the case of Latin America, there is rarely anything more than a few anecdotes strung together to back up the claims.

What do counterterrorism officials in the U.S. government think?

“We do not see any evidence that ISIS or other Sunni terrorist groups are trying to infiltrate the southern U.S. border,” said an American counterterrorism official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about confidential government threat assessments.

The only people who repeat these claims are those that want to use fear for their personal/political benefit or those who don't understand they are being lied to. Fear is pervading all of this. Fear of foreigners. Fear of non-whites. Fear of different languages. Fear of terrorism. Fear of Muslims. Fear. Fear. Fear.

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The Corruption Cycle in Latin America

Christine Wade has an article in World Politics Review about corruption in El Salvador.

Some question whether pursuing crimes of the past is a good use of scarce resources, given current levels of corruption and crime in El Salvador. But the legacy of impunity directly influences contemporary attitudes about crime and corruption. The failure to punish past crimes has led high-ranking public officials, like Funes, Saca and Flores, to believe they are above the law. Criminals, elected and otherwise, commit crimes knowing that they will likely never be prosecuted, much less convicted.

This is all happening at the exact same time that the Trump administration is intentionally weakening CICIG in Guatemala in return for Jimmy Morales' support for the Jerusalem embassy, which for Morales was a planned quid pro quo. In other words, national institutions in Central America are horrifically weak, and Donald Trump stands ready to make sure that no international body can help out either.

The bigger question she poses is about the build up of corruption. If you don't prosecute the old ones, no one will feel accountable. It is now almost a cliché: Latin American candidate campaigns on an anti-corruption platform, then later is found to be corrupt. Help from the United Nations (i.e. like CICIG) is no cure-all, but I can't think of any other way of kick starting the process. If we undermine that, then we're stuck.

And, incidentally, if the U.S. undermines efforts to deal with corruption, then the U.S. is directly contributing to the continued erosion of the rule of law, which in turn is contributing to emigration. But that's a whole other story.

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Trump and Jimmy Morales Have a Convo

Donald Trump met with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, the TV celebrity turned corrupt executive-in-chief. Here is the entire White House statement (h/t Mike Allison). Guatemala's pressing problems right now are corruption and violence.

President Donald J. Trump met today with President James “Jimmy” Morales of Guatemala. President Trump thanked President Morales for supporting the United States and Israel, and for his announced decision to move the Guatemalan embassy to Jerusalem.  The two leaders discussed the situation in Venezuela and agreed to work together to restore democracy to the country.  President Trump also underscored the importance of stopping illegal immigration to the United States from Guatemala and addressing Guatemala’s underlying challenges to security and prosperity.

The upshot: I am not interested in you or your country. We have no plans of developing a strategy to reduce undocumented immigration, so you fix it. Follow our lead on Israel and I'll let you take a picture with me.

To be fair, the meeting is being seen by at least some in Guatemala in a better light and in a larger context, where at least through Rex Tillerson the message is that just moving your embassy doesn't get you off the hook with regard to corruption.

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What Guatemalans Think of CICIG

Liz Zechmeister and Dinorah Azpuru published a brief report on Guatemalan public opinion, based on LAPOP data. The upshot:

In summary, recent survey data show that Guatemalans experience high levels of corruption victimization, have fairly cynical views of the proportion of politicians who are corrupt, hold the CICIG in very high regard, have moderate levels of trust in the Constitutional Court, and fairly high levels of trust in the MP. In such a climate, attempts by President Morales to defy the CICIG, the Constitutional Court, and/or the MP may risk running afoul of the court of public opinion. 

This is on the verge of being a hypothesis. If the public gains trust in state institutions intended to fight corruption, that can have an impact (in what exact manner, I don't know) on political efforts to undermine those institutions. At this point we'll just have to read the news to watch how that public trust translates into pressure on the president.

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Elliott Abrams and Human Rights in Latin America

Mike Allison writes about how Elliott Abrams is mad that The New York Times is claiming Ronald Reagan (and by extension him) was indifferent to human rights in El Salvador in its obituary of Ambassador Deane Hinton. As Abrams writes:

And Ronald Reagan was a great president under whom there were remarkable advances for human rights in Latin American and around the world. Let’s leave it at that.

Mike puts that in the context of Efraín Ríos Montt, who Reagan believed was a committed democrat, going on trial for genocide in Guatemala.

Let's just get something out of the way. The notion that there were any advances, much less remarkable ones, for human rights in Latin America--or anywhere, really--under Reagan requires ignoring Mt. Everest-sized mountains of contrary evidence. And it should be noted that Abrams himself served in the State Department under Reagan in a human rights capacity, and his idea of promoting human rights was to attack human rights organizations. Those groups, meanwhile, could only respond that Abrams was so vicious that sometimes his attacks helped their cause. More recently, he was a vocal supporter of the coup in Honduras.

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Podcast Episode 16: Public Opinion in Latin America

In Episode 16 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast I talked to Dinorah Azpuru, Associate Professor of Political Science at Wichita State University, about public opinion in Latin America. Among other things, the conversation focuses on attitudes toward democracy, attitudes in Guatemala (she is originally from there and has done a lot of research on it) and perceptions of U.S. influence in Latin America.

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Recreating CICIG Outside Guatemala

Mike Allison writes about the role of CICIG (the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala).

CICIG's existence and continuation is jointly agreed upon by the Government of Guatemala and the United Nations. Almost all of CICIG's operations, maybe all of them, are paid for by the international community. In that sense, there's no real sovereignty issue. However, I can understand some frustration that people have with the UN and US pressuring Otto Perez Molina to extend its mandate after Perez Molina made it clear that he no longer wanted CICIG in the country.

A question I've been pondering is what conditions make a government likely to accept CICIG? It requires a president to request it and a legislature to approve it. As I understand it, Oscar Berger pushed for CICIG because of all the criticism about violence in Guatemala (though he too later questioned it). But are there structural conditions that we could potentially see in other countries that would be optimal for a CICIG copy? For example, when would we see a president push so hard, as Berger did?

It's not simple because it requires voluntary delegation of sovereignty. Even ratification in Guatemala was very much in question until three Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) were murdered, which Berger used to emphasize the need for the legislature to approve CICIG.

CICIG has worked, which makes it scary, which makes it less likely elected officials will want to create one of their own. At what point does a combination of internal and external pressures make it happen?

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Otto Pérez Molina and Scooby Doo

"It would've been fine if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!" is basically the message Otto Pérez Molina is sending about the role of the U.S. government in his downfall. It is remarkable and so rare for the U.S. to be "blamed" for helping to do precisely the right thing in Central America. CICIG has been entirely positive for Guatemalan democracy, and the Obama administration actively supported it. This is the sort of blame you can believe in.

This is also why you see governments in El Salvador and Honduras saying they don't need a CICIG. When the Mystery Machine shows up, it's all over.

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Guatemala Aftermath

At Latin America Goes Global, Orlando Pérez has a rundown of the Guatemala situation. He concludes with this:

It is hard to see how the victory of any of these candidates will improve the political situation in the country. However, it is also difficult to believe that, given the events of the last few months, Guatemalans will be willing to accept politics—or corruption—as usual. Whoever wins the presidency will begin their term of office with a very short leash, and under intense scrutiny from civil society and the international community. 

The opportunity for reform will depend on transforming the popular mobilizations that brought down a president into a sustained effort that engages a broad segment of Guatemalan society. In these conditions, the new president’s honeymoon will be short. In a year or so, Guatemalans will either be reaping the rewards of their mobilization by furthering a process of positive change or they might be back in Constitution Plaza seeking the ouster of another president.

I've already expressed my pessimism, but he brings up another challenge. People may unite to bring down an unpopular and corrupt president, but they may well disagree on everything else. Transformational change, structural change, will face serious opposition, including from the military, even if there is consensus about corruption. Can popular mobilization overcome elite intransigence?

Meanwhile, the fight for the second slot in the runoff election is down to just a few thousand votes. Will the loser accept the outcome?

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Otto Pérez Molina Resigns

Well, that was fast. The Guatemalan legislature voted to remove Otto Pérez Molina's immunity and very soon thereafter the attorney general issued a warrant for his arrest, which in turn prompted his resignation. It's very nice to see political institutions functioning as they should to promote horizontal accountability (and no small measure of vertical accountability as well, given the extensive protests).

This is all good. As I wrote yesterday, I am not so sure about what it will mean in the long term for Guatemala. But it's a step in the right direction. I think it should also spark more discussion about the potentially very positive role of international institutions working with domestic political actors. Kudos to the United Nations.

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No Guatemalan Spring?

Warning: cynical post ahead.

The news that the Guatemalan legislature voted to remove President Otto Pérez Molina's immunity from prosecution is huge. The move puts even more pressure on him to resign in the short term, though if he chooses not to this could be a protracted process.

What's been brewing in my mind is hesitation to use the word "spring," which is popping up. Back in June I wrote this about the possibility of a "Central American Spring":

It's hard to see rapid transformation in any Central American country. I'd say the best case scenario is that presidents gradually come to understand that corruption will be prosecuted, that the international community continue to play a constructive role, and that Central American elected officials slowly demonstrate why citizens should trust them. 

If Otto Pérez Molina actually resigns or is otherwise democratically removed before his term is over, it'll be historic. But I am not sure it'll mean long-term change, which is a lot harder and requires chipping away at an oligarchy that will not give up easily.

I think this still holds. Here are a few reasons why:

Resignation doesn't mean the end of corruption. In Brazil, President Fernando Collor de Mello faced impeachment for corruption and resigned in 1992. Now he's a senator and another president is under fire and facing protests for corruption. Granted, Guatemala has CICIG, but this is not an overnight process.

The oligarchy remains. Even if OPM is forced out, it's hard to see radical transformation. The current VP, Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre, is no radical--he helped overturn the Efraín Ríos Montt conviction. How does a change in president help the poor and/or indigenous? Other Central American countries have seen presidents in jail and there was no transformation.

Political structures don't change. Unlike Middle Eastern cases, the problem in Guatemala is not elections, which have been held with alternation of power (and with Alvaro Colom at least some measure of ideological shift as well). It's that elections don't change the undemocratic status quo much.

Even if we call it a "spring," that's not necessarily the same as democratization. Just look at Egypt, where the military did not stay out of power long. Would Guatemalan military leaders accept rapid, democratic change?

Believe me, I want to be wrong. If OPM were to resign because of real legislative and popular pressure, I want it to represent a major step toward liberal democracy (that is, not simply the bare mechanics of procedural democracy). I fear that although it would be historic, it would also raise expectations unreasonably high.

Colin Snider did a nice job of summing up my sense of the "spring" label on Twitter.

I think this is true. And incidentally, the original "gate" resulted in Richard Nixon resigning but U.S. presidents became ever more secretive.

End of cynical post.

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Guatemala Hires Otto Reich

So it seems the Guatemalan government is hiring Otto Reich to help change its image.

Otto Reich Assocs., under a subcontract with Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart, is working to "improve the perception, reputation and the understanding of the reality of Guatemala," according to the contract. 

Reich will help devise a strategy to "move forward on the change of narrative from Guatemala to Washington, allowing representatives of both North American political parties that are willing to abandon the reference of the Guatemala of the 1970s and 1980s," according to the pact, which is referring to the era when the country was rocked by civil war and rampant abuses of human rights. 

Reich also will advance military cooperation between Guatemala and the US.

There are multiple layers of irony here. Reich was a part of Ronald Reagan's Central America policy, which helped produce the problems we see today, and now he's being hired to make everyone forget that fact. He was also part of a 1980s policy of strong military engagement, and he's being hired to resurrect that, at least to some degree.

It makes sense, though, for Otto Pérez Molina to hire someone who has experience putting Central America on the policy map. That the outcome was disastrous for Guatemalans is not mentioned, though OPM assuredly considered it necessary in the war against Marxist subversion.

CEPR also links to the disclosure document. Somehow the Cold War just never fully goes away.

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Genocide in Guatemala

The Guatemalan legislature approved a non-binding resolution denying that genocide took place there. And, somehow, this was supposed to contribute to reconciliation.

It seems to be a way of saying that even if over 200,000 people were killed by the government, it does not rise to the level of "genocide." Given that many people, including a bishop, were murdered in the post-civil war era simply for talking about accountability, this sort of argument shouldn't come as a surprise.

As for the fact, the Guatemala truth commission lays everything out in horrific detail. Put simply, there were times when the Guatemalan government wanted to raze the countryside in order to kill all real or imagine "subversives," which meant 83% of victims were Mayan. The army was proficient at this in a way that sometimes defies description. That is something not up for debate.

According to the United Nations, genocide is defined as follows:

The convention defines genocide as any act committed with the idea of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This includes such acts as:

Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to physically destroy the group (the whole group or even part of the group)
Forcefully transferring children of the group to another group

The criteria sound like Guatemala.

So why is all this happening? Because there are trials going on, and the debate about the resolution centered on questions of "revenge" and unfairness. If a trial is about some Indian deaths, that's one thing. If it's about genocide, that takes it up a notch. The resolution is not a law so cannot affect the judiciary directly, but it sends a message and seeks to change the context.

Supporters of the resolution openly said that the way to achieve reconciliation was to forget the past. "Forgetting" is the language of perpertrators and has played out in similar fashion across Latin America. There was this big conflict, mistakes were made on both sides, so let's not dredge up the past anymore and just move forward without revenge. In practice, of course, that would mean denying victims any justice at all.

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