Meekness takes over in Guatemala

The inauguration of a new president marks a turn toward honesty through civility and listening.

The Monitor's View

Across Latin America, voters have tossed out one government after another in pursuit of honest governance and economic stability. Now it is Guatemala’s turn. Yet the transfer of power in Central America’s most populous nation may be qualitatively different from those that have come before it elsewhere in the region.

The inauguration of Bernardo Arévalo on Sunday is less a triumph of personal charisma than a manifestation of a deepening democratic mindset among Guatemalans. Arising gradually in local cantons since the end of a civil war 30 years ago, it reflects a fusing of civic virtues and Indigenous Mayan values.

“The democracy experienced in the cantons is more participatory, more meaningful than simply voting in elections,” wrote Matthew Krystal, an anthropologist at North Central College in Illinois who has spent three decades studying Guatemalan society, in the Prensa Libre newspaper. “Meetings can last for hours. Everyone has the right to speak and many participate. Their decisions carry the legitimacy that comes from an intensive process of listening, debating, thinking.”

According to Dr. Krystal, one Mayan spiritual leader described the approach to seeking consensus as, “They don’t fight, they love each other.”

Since winning nearly 60% of the vote in an August runoff, Mr. Arévalo has faced repeated attempts by the attorney general and others to annul his victory. That none of those efforts succeeded is due largely to a long-underestimated force. Indigenous Guatemalans – particularly Mayan women – have upheld democracy through sustained peaceful protests. Their quiet defiance dovetails with the incoming president’s own sense of leadership.

“Governance is to be ensured not through the capacity of the state to enforce obedience,” he said in a 2017 interview with the Development and Peace Foundation, “but through the will of the people to pledge their allegiance to institutions that represent them and which they thus consider legitimate. ... This involves ‘weaving’ back trust into the social fabric in every sphere of life. Dialogue – active engagement through listening and understanding – has an important role to play in achieving this effect.”

Guatemala’s Constitution allows for only one four-year term. Mr. Arévalo acknowledges that does not give him much time to break the strong bonds of corruption that have weakened the country’s democratic institutions and driven dozens of judges and journalists into exile. But he argues that most of the work of revitalizing governance belongs to the people rather than to their elected officials.

Mayans, Professor Krystal wrote, believe that “what we do well returns good to us.” In his modesty, Mr. Arévalo has signaled that following the wisdom of the people may be the key to leading societies like Guatemala out of patterns of corruption and lawlessness.