By: Staff Writer
January 8, 2021
In a panel with writer and journalist Álvaro Vargas Llosa and the director and president of Fundación Libertad (Argentina), Gerardo Bongiovanni; Dionisio Gutiérrez detailed the situation in Guatemala and discussed the challenges for Latin America in 2021.
Fundación Libertad y Desarrollo
Regarding the political situation in Guatemala, as a result of the protests that took place in the city on November 21 and 28, the businessman stated: “Guatemala suffers the consequences of the absence of solid institutions that allow us to build a democracy that could launch Guatemala into sustained economic growth. Our geographical position in the Northern Triangle has transformed it into the perfect bridge for drug trafficking and transnational crime and it has generated something we call ‘the capture of the State’. This has produced outrageous levels of criminalized policy”.
Dr. Gutiérrez also stated: “Only because in the Northern Triangle, we have had such a mediocre and weak left; We are not yet countries that have fallen into a dictatorship like Venezuela’s. We also lack the natural resources that these characters are interested in. We are a forgotten region, even by our own people”. On the challenges for Latin America in 2021: “I see reasons for a prudent and intelligent optimism but conditioned to the fact that the academic and economic elites and the leaders of civil society who believe in the liberal values of the West, do things better than that we have made them. I think it is important to alert and denounce what is being experienced in Latin America. What is happening in Chile with the Constituent Assembly, in a country that had an economic model, as well as a democracy that was a benchmark. If that is happening in Chile, with perhaps the only exceptions of Uruguay and Costa Rica, then, the rest of our countries are on the tightrope and on the edge of the precipice”.
On November 21 and 28 protestors in Guatemala gathered in the thousands to protest the government. They were protesting contentious budget presented by President Alejandro Giammattei, a budget which was ultimately annulled.
Protestors wanted Giammattei and other congressional representatives to resign in anger against the proposed budget.
What was in the budget you ask? Well, the Guatemalan Congress approved a $12.8bn budget in the middle of the night that raised stipends for representatives’ meals while cutting funding for human rights agencies, healthcare, education, and the judiciary.