Prospects for change in Guatemala

LOUISVILLE — Two years ago, the 226^th General Assembly approved an overture supporting the people of Guatemala and urging the U.S. administration to continue engaging Guatemalan political leaders to give voice to Guatemala’s 18 million people and to reform “the corrupt systems that impact every aspect of daily life in Guatemala.”

Image

Thursday’s webinar, “Guatemala: Prospects for Change,” was a step along that journey. Speakers offered up their observations on the challenges Guatemalans — especially indigenous Guatemalans — face in their own country and in places like the United States, which has severely restricted immigration in recent months and stepped up detention.

Doug Michael of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina’s Guatemala Partnership was in Guatemala right after the 2023 election. “We were asked to bring back an understanding of the plight of our partners,” he said at the outset of Thursday’s webinar. He urged those gathered online to “think about what you will learn and how you might take that back to members of your community” and to “take notes about what our government needs to understand to bring justice and peace to a country we all care about and love so deeply.”

Veronica Serrano of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission hosted the ensuing panel discussion, which included:

• Carmela Curup Chajon, an attorney with Bufete para Pueblas Indígenas, the Indigenous Law Firm.
• Benito Juárez, who’s now retired but has advised five Houston mayors on immigration and helped found the Guatemala Peace and Development Network.
• Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez, a former Guatemalan judge named in 2023 the Global Jurist of the Year by Northwestern Law.
• Gustavo Adolfo Rivas of the American Friends Service Committee’s Association for Returned and Deported Guatemalans.

About half of Guatemala’s population is indigenous, Chajon said, and 24 indigenous languages are spoken. Nearly two-thirds of the cultivatable lands are in the hands of 2% of Guatemala’s population. One-fifth of those lands belongs to indigenous people, with 6% owned by indigenous women.

“A weak state does not have the ability to impose taxes or control use of the land,” she said, and indigenous people continue to face systemic racism.

Guatemalan courts need additional interpreters, she said, and the judicial system in general lacks an “understanding of traditional folk ways and justice systems that are part of indigenous cultures.”

“All of this generates conflict in the country’s agricultural zones,” she said, and indigenous people “end up with the short end of the stick.” At least 350 indigenous women are facing arrest warrants because they’re resisting their land being appropriated, she said.

“Indigenous people are struggling for their own survival, for development of their own forms of government,” she said. “To be able to enter into dialogue with the authorities, we need to have judicial pluralism.”

Juárez noted some of the current painful data, including more than 600,000 deportations in 2025, violent detentions, children facing arrest at school, last month’s killing of two in Minneapolis by federal agents, and the deaths of more than 30 people in detention, including two Guatemalans.

The administration is punishing sanctuary cities, he noted, and is withholding funding and attacking nonprofits providing support to immigrants.

Estimates range between 500,000 and 1.4 million undocumented Guatemalans living in the United States. Some have temporary visas, Juárez noted, and work in such places as farm operations and meat processing facilities.

The administration has placed additional enforcement officers along the U.S.-Mexico border, “which affects Guatemalan migrants, who have to wait in border communities,” he said.

Gálvez, who resigned his position in 2022, called it “an honor” to appear on a panel that included Chajon, “a lawyer well known for her defense of human rights.”

“There have been a lot of threats against defenders of human rights,” he said. “They have suffered grave threats and consequences.”

Elites “have reconfigured the justice system” over the past eight years, he said. “The whole justice system has been gradually transformed to identify as criminals all those involved in human rights.”

President Bernardo Arévalo has been in office only two years, and already he faces 22 legal claims against the legitimacy of his government, according to Gálvez, who urged those on the call to follow Guatemala’s “second-level elections” to the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court and for the attorney general. “It’s important to follow whether they will be able to follow the path of change in the country,” he said.

Speaking from the perspective of the Association for Returned and Deported Guatemalans, Rivas said the country is now burdened by a lack of people providing manual labor, “which means a loss of cultivation of crops.”

“If agriculture were allowed to develop without interference from the government, it would increase,” he said. Now Guatemala depends on “the importation of grains and basic necessities.”

“Those [migrants] being returned by the United States,” he said, “are allowing us to increase the production of our own food.”

Asked what actions people in the U.S. can take to support Guatemalans facing detention or deportation, Juárez said the “first thing is to speak up” and “don’t provide any more funding for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”

It’s also important for people in the U.S. “to provide direct solidarity” with immigrants who are, for example, afraid to send their children to school.

“In the U.S., you can bring pressure to bear to ensure there are consequences,” Gálvez said. “Those of us who go back to Guatemala need adequate protections different from what exist today.”

“We have advocated for support for these small- and medium-sized [Guatemalan agricultural] producers,” Rivas said. “We have to find ways to allow persons exiled to return, legally and safely, and to heal the institutions wounded by corruption.”

Juárez proposed six possible action steps, including telling Congress to stop deportations, staying informed, speaking up and speaking out, volunteering time and talents, raising your voice, and making a financial gift.

Presbyterians can urge their elected officials to protect immigrants and refugees by going here.