Supporters of Guatemalan candidate for the Nationwide Union of Hope get together and former First Woman (2008-2011), Sandra Torres, attend her closing marketing campaign rally at La Terminal market in Guatemala Metropolis on June 23, 2023. AFP
GUATEMALA CITY — Central America’s most populous nation, Guatemala is scarred by civil conflict, gang violence and poverty, its folks among the many streams of migrants headed for the USA.
The nation of greater than 17 million heads to the polls on Sunday in a bid to place its troubled previous behind it, although many citizens say they doubt a lot will change.
Troubled previous
As soon as a middle of the Mayan civilization, Guatemala was dominated by Spain from 1524 till its independence in 1821.
Spanish stays its official language, however there are additionally 24 native languages, all however two of Mayan origin. Indigenous folks make up some 42 % of the inhabitants.
In 1954, the leftist authorities of freely-elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was overthrown in a US-backed coup, resulting in a string of pro-American, right-wing regimes and the outbreak of civil conflict.
Preventing between authorities troops, left-wing rebels and right-wing vigilante teams ended with a peace accord in 1996.
Some 200,000 folks died or had been forcibly disappeared in additional than three a long time of battle, greater than 80 % of them ethnic Mayans, based on United Nations figures. About 1.5 million folks had been displaced or exiled.
Army dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who dominated from 1982 to 1983, died in 2018 whereas on trial for genocide dedicated in the course of the peak of the conflict. His daughter, Zury Rios, is now one of many main presidential candidates.
Impoverished current
Whereas Guatemala has the most important economic system of Central America’s seven nations, it additionally has a few of the worst poverty, malnutrition and little one mortality charges in Latin America, the World Financial institution says.
Financial progress got here in at 4 % in 2022 and is projected to drop to three.2 % in 2023. Textiles, espresso, sugar, silver and bananas are among the many nation’s foremost exports.
Almost 60 % of its inhabitants lives in poverty, most of them in rural and Indigenous areas.
One in two youngsters beneath 5 endure power malnutrition, based on UNICEF, and illiteracy is at practically 20 %, based on the 2018 census.
Remittances from Guatemalans overseas amounted to about 19 % of GDP in 2022, greater than exports.
Guatemala’s murder fee, among the many highest on the earth, was 17.3 per 100,000 in 2022, based on the UN — about 3 times the worldwide common.
Half of the killings had been attributed to gang violence associated to drug trafficking.
Crime and poverty push hundreds to undertake the damaging migrant journey every to the USA, passing by way of Mexico.
The international ministry estimates greater than 2.8 million Guatemalans reside in the USA, round half 1,000,000 legally.
Graft
President Alejandro Giammattei is ending a constitutionally-limited single time period marred by claims of widespread graft and the persecution of prosecutors and important journalists.
A number of former prosecutors of the Worldwide Fee in opposition to Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-backed entity closed by the federal government in 2019, have since been arrested or pressured into exile.
Earlier this month, the founding father of a newspaper important of the federal government was sentenced to 6 years in jail on costs of cash laundering, costs dismissed as fabricated by press freedom teams.
The newspaper based by Jose Ruben Zamora has been pressured to shut, and a number of other of its journalists have fled the nation.
Giammattei’s legal professional normal, Maria Consuelo Porras, is on a US record of “corrupt and undemocratic actors.”
‘Ring of Fireplace’
Bordering Mexico, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala is located within the “Pacific Ring of Fireplace” — an unlimited area the place round 85 % of the world’s seismic exercise is concentrated.
The Fuego volcano, 35 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of the capital, Guatemala Metropolis, erupted violently in 2018, spewing rivers of lava that devastated the village of San Miguel Los Lotes, killing 215 folks.
Three different volcanoes encompass its landmark Lake Atitlan, Guatemala’s most essential vacationer attraction, together with town of Antigua.
Final 12 months, the nation acquired about 1.8 million international guests, down from a report 2.5 million in 2019, earlier than the pandemic.
Guatemala has produced two Nobel laureates: Miguel Angel Asturias for the literature prize in 1967, and Rigoberta Menchu for the peace prize in 1992.
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