[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 203 (Monday, December 11, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5892-S5893]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Guatemala

  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, it was bullets not ballots. Bullets 
were the way that policies were set when I visited Guatemala in the 
spring of 1980: a soldier with a gun on every corner of Guatemala City, 
the army going village to village killing indigenous young men, rebels 
attacking government officials, and rightwing death squads 
assassinating professors and students.
  I had the unfortunate experience of coming around a street corner 
just after a death squad had assassinated a professor at San Carlos 
University and left his body lying in the street.
  Well, four decades ago--that is a long time ago--and, fortunately, 
Guatemala has come a long way since I visited as a young man. Now, the 
battles over the country's future are being fought not with bullets but 
with ballots.
  But maintaining the integrity of balloting, the peaceful transfer of 
power, which are the hallmarks, the foundations of representative 
democracy, is not inevitable. And in Guatemala, the system is being 
stressed. In Guatemala, the system is being tested.
  The ballot box is beautiful because it creates the opportunity for 
citizens to call on their leaders to change direction, actually, to 
select leaders who are calling for a change in direction.
  If the government isn't serving the people, the people can change the 
government. And every now and then, one of these elections is 
particularly exciting, and Guatemala's recent Presidential election has 
certainly been exciting.
  The current Guatemalan Government is mostly a government by and for 
the powerful, rather than by and for the people, and the powerful 
blocked several candidates that they didn't want as the next President 
from even running in the election.
  But one person they didn't stop was Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla 
or ``Seed Movement'' Party. This gray-haired academic and anti-
corruption advocate was running far back in the pack, virtually 
unnoticed, some eighth place just a couple weeks before the election, a 
campaign staff of only five people, so certainly not a serious 
contender--not a serious contender until he was a serious contender, 
and that happened because of two factors: The first was young people on 
social media. Nearly two-thirds of Guatemala's 17 million citizens are 
under the age of 30, and young people on TikTok flocked to the honesty 
of the man often referred to as ``Uncle Bernie'' and his campaign 
against corruption.
  Soon Semilla's seedlings were spreading across social media. And one 
of the Semilla's leading advocates on social media was a young woman 
whom our delegation met this last weekend named Marcela Blanco. Ms. 
Blanco is a 23-year-old influencer who was arrested in November by the 
government for a tweet, arrested for her campaign activities, held for 
11 days, and then released under house arrest and allowed to come to a 
meeting at the Embassy, which was fortunate because we were able to 
meet her.
  She was a threat to the government because she was effective in 
spreading a message, a message of support for a man running for 
President who was running against the corruption of the existing 
government, her support for a democratic movement of development that 
was inclusive, meaning that it would support healthcare and housing and 
education, clean water, not just for the cities but also for the rural 
indigenous villages.
  Well, when that first round of Presidential balloting was held on 
June 25, Mr. Arevalo came in second, which in the Guatemalan system is 
very important because first and second place have a runoff, assuming 
nobody got a majority in the first round. So that runoff was on August 
20.

[[Page S5893]]

  In the August election, that first and the second round, Mr. Arevalo 
didn't just barely win, he won by more than 60 percent of the vote, 
defeating the establishment candidate, Sandra Torres.
  So a 20-percent victory is a pretty powerful message being sent from 
the people about whom they want to guide them in the future. And then 
what happened was the existing government went to work to try to 
invalidate the election, coming up with a series of spurious claims, 
and that triggered the indigenous communities to shut down roadways--so 
a protest--and it forced business leaders to call on the government to 
recognize the results.
  So people, young people, indigenous people, Guatemalan people won a 
victory.
  But they only won a victory if they can keep it. And Mr. Arevalo was 
here in Washington, DC, to talk about his upcoming service that would 
start on January 14 of next year, and he noted that he was still under 
intense attack--both him and his Vice President--and he wasn't sure if 
he would ever make it to be installed as President.
  So a couple of us asked him whether it would be helpful to show that 
the United States was standing for the ballot box, standing for the 
peaceful transfer of power to come down before the election. And so a 
group of us went down this last weekend, led by Senator Tim Kaine, who 
is the chair of the Subcommittee on Latin America for the Foreign 
Relations Committee. And we were accompanied by Senator Butler, who is 
in the chair right now--and I gather this was her first congressional 
delegation--and by Senator Dick Durbin and myself and then two members 
of the House who are themselves of Guatemalan descent, which was 
enormously powerful.
  So we advocated there in Guatemala to maintain the recognition of 
this election, which had a huge amount of oversight, which was 
certainly conducted with integrity, and to ensure that there was a 
peaceful transfer of power on January 14.
  But in the morning, on Saturday morning, as we were meeting with 
members of the President's Cabinet and they were telling us everything 
is just fine, one member of the Cabinet who was not there, which was 
the attorney general, was preparing to release a statement that 
afternoon. And that statement she released declared that the election 
of President-elect Arevalo and Vice-President-elect Herrera and the 
party's--that is the Semilla party's--parliamentarians was null and 
void.
  Wow. So the attack on democracy by the existing government was still 
in full force this weekend. We responded by holding a press conference 
to stress the integrity of the election, underscore the need for 
democratic continuity, recognizing that the message carried by the 
President had been supported by an overwhelming majority of the 
country. And other organizations and other countries condemned the 
decision too. The Organization of American States called it an 
attempted coup d'etat that constitutes the worst form of democratic 
breakdown and the consolidation of a political fraud against the will 
of the people. And the Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared that the 
results are validated, formalized, and unchangeable. And Mr. 
Giammattei, the current President, called for the passage of power to 
Mr. Arevalo in January.
  We have to admit that decades ago, it was not unusual for the United 
States to undermine democracy in a number of countries in the world--a 
couple of examples: In 1953, the United States helped engineer a coup 
against a democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad 
Mosaddegh, to install the Shah to power. Some 20 years later, Henry 
Kissinger in the Nixon administration supported and helped a coup 
d'etats by the military against the democratic-elected President of 
Chile, Allende; and what followed were the worst kinds of repressive 
regimes with unforeseen consequences, including the Islamic Revolution 
in Iran and terrible oppression in Chile.
  So I was pleased to be part of a team from this Chamber in Latin 
America working to support and defend democracy, defend the ballot box, 
defend the will of free peoples. That is the stand we should always be 
taking when their election is held with integrity.
  And right now, it is important that the United States and the 
international community continue to stand arm in arm with the people of 
Guatemala, arm in arm with President-elect Arevalo, arm and arm with 
Vice-President-elect Herrera and their campaign for democracy, their 
campaign for the rule of law.
  Madam President, 44 years ago when I arrived in Guatemala, it was 
governed by bullets; and 4 days ago, I arrived in a country governed by 
ballots. But their democracy is at risk. We must continue to do all we 
can to support the will of the Guatemalan people, the Guatemaltecos, 
and the will of democratic people around the world. Let's ensure that 
the form of government that triumphs is that of representative 
democracy, channeling a government of, by, and for the people, not the 
powerful.