 Welcome to What The Up is Going on in Latin America, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, 4.30 p.m. Pacific on CodePink YouTube. Within days of back-to-back hurricanes, Eta and Ayota hitting Guatemala, legislatures in Guatemala cut $25 million from health care and education. 10,000 people protested in Guatemala City. Three days ago, some setting fire to a legislative building. Vice President Castillo has called for the resignation of himself and President Gia Manetti. Joining us today to talk more about the situation in Guatemala is Annie Bird. She has 20 years of human rights experience in Guatemala, including serving as former co-director of rights action and director of Guatemala Human Rights Commission. So welcome, Annie, and let's open today's program with a brief background of the historical events leading up to the current protests in Guatemala. Let's go back to the internal conflict in the country and what that, and the landscape that that has created for today. You know, the military, a lot of the people that were in the military during the genocide went on to become Congresspeople, politicians, or part of organized crime structures that backed political parties to legislate in their interests. And so that has led to this full-scale assault on the state, essentially, of just really widespread corruption and privatization of basically all of the essential services, you know, and then the energy sector, the health sector back early on 15 years ago. And then just a dismantling of social services and, you know, the health care system in the rural areas has been just basically almost non-existent for a long time. And so there's been an almost uninterrupted series of presidencies and domination of Congress by these, essentially the legacy of the genocide and attempts to generate alternative political parties have been met with violent selective assassinations and then just there's always been widespread abuse of corruption, you know, and essentially they've maintained these structures of terror within rural communities, particularly there were paramilitaries that were set up during the genocide that continue to operate today as very violent organized crime networks that continue to keep essentially territorial control in communities and, you know, make it hard for people to feel that they have the freedom to vote in a more open way or for people that they believe in or for, and then of course the sort of constant violence against expressions of alternative or kinds of politics. And so right now the Congress is just very much dominated by what they call the pact for impunity who are, you know, this sort of group of politicians that come out of this legacy from the genocide who they're that legislate and operate or oriented around basically two things. One is maintaining impunity for their criminal activities, which include the everything from the war crimes to their association with organized crime networks today and then corruption in the state, which is the other of these groups corruption and essentially stealing state resources for their own benefit and to feed their political machines with construction contracts and whatnot. And so the people of Guatemala have been, you know, have just gotten to a point with this where they just really, you know, can't they can't stand it anymore. There's been for, for beginning really when Otto Perez Molina was run out of had was forced to resign as president and was was that was the result of a series of very big protests that sort of were tipping point, you know, but they managed to retain the same networks we managed to retain control through the last president Jimmy Morales and then Alejandro Giamatia now. And so there's a call now for the among the protests essentially what the protesters are calling for is that the president resign and then all the Congress to resign. And let me just interrupt this is right on the heels of two hurricanes, two back to back hurricanes, and right after that, the Congress defunded significantly $25 million of education and health care. So they, right after the hurricanes, they dismantled public services. Well, public services, there wasn't much in the way of public services to begin with. There was some response and building up of that in response to COVID. And then they just came in and defunded it all. It's actually the one of the biggest budgets the Congress has ever had. They also defunded the human the government human rights office. And so that was the tipping point, you know, that that defunded health care in the middle of COVID-19 and two back to back hurricanes. I mean, it's just it's unthinkable, but it's par for the course, you know, with with with the political machines that have been running Guatemala since, since the peace processor, since, you know, since the forever. I mean, you know, since the CIA overthrew the reformist government in 1954. You know, yeah. For our listeners, the our Ben's government is is is who she's referring to. So we've seen in the news, 10,000 plus people gathering, protesting in Guatemala City, burning or partially not doesn't seem to have been too much damage. The legislative buildings. What can you describe to us? What is happening there now? I think you mentioned to me last night that 31 of 31 of the protesters arrested are were arraigned last night. And so what I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So basically, what happened is that there was a very large protest. There have been a series of very large protests in Guatemala at different times, you know, for for a long time. And and and, you know, one of those being when when Otto Perez Molina was forced to resign as president. And that have always been that have always been peaceful. And honestly, everyone was. You know, it's clear that there's just a lot of anger at Congress, but there are questions about how these this fire actually started. There there was not there was sort of a strange series of events around that. But you know, that's that's something to to maybe go back to when there's more information out there. But what they did is hours later, round up people who were many blocks away from from Congress and who had there was no evidence to support that they had anything to do with with burning the Congress. There were three people from the Archbishop's Human Rights Office who were arrested and they, you know, like I said, five, six blocks away from Congress, while the police reports claimed that they were they were caught in flagrante, you know, like in the middle of the act of supposedly throwing stones. Now, to to say that that someone who works with the high of the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights was throwing stones at the Congress is is ridiculous and anyone who's been in these protests and and worked with these organizations knows how how how ridiculous that is. But they just as a church progressive or conservative in Guatemala or the Archdiocese in Guatemala is it that the the the well, the church is a mixed bag and and tends to lean progress a little bit more conservative, but the but the Office of Human Rights for the Archdiocese has been able to maintain a fair amount of dependence and is considered an ally of the student movement and of the human rights and this part of the human rights movement in Guatemala. But, you know, but but they're very much, you know, professional human rights workers who were out. I don't know whether they were there in a professional capacity or or as part of the protest. But it's it, you know, they there was it's ridiculous to think that they had been part of the action against Congress, you know, the what they were being charged with. And the charges were dismissed because there was no evidence, you know, after they had been held for for two days in in jail during covid. So there's some there's one charge still pending just because of the nature of the charge, which has to do with Australian cultural patrimony. It needs a little more review is kind of what we're understanding. Um, it was hard to observe these these it was hard to follow these trials because or these hearings because they were tended to happen in the middle of the night. For some reason. Um, so this was Monday night. Yeah, that was Monday night. When most of them were released. That's well, it's encouraging for me to hear you speak of of the Catholic Church's activity or at least the Archdiocese in Guatemala City, because, you know, for me and my Latin American activism really started under liberation theology when there were a lot of Marxist priests in Central America. And then that all changed. So I'm I'm pleased to hear there is still some progressive, you know, energy. Yeah, I mean, this is the this this particular this office was created by Bishop Herardi, who was killed by the military in right in 96 and 98 right after the signing of the peace accords when he had done a preliminary truth commission as part of the Catholic Church's social outreach mission. And then right after it was released, he was killed by members of the military. And, you know, that it's was part of a very big conspiracy that went all the way up to the highest levels of government and even implicated the president at the time, who was never charged. And that there was information that came out that many people felt like he should have been the object of the investigation also. Um, but so it comes from that history and has been able to maintain a really trusted staff of people. Well, that is that's encouraging. It's very encouraging to me personally. And I think for the for the people in Guatemala as well, and for you and your work, you know, in your opening comments, we were, you know, you were talking about, um, you know, the history of, you know, post, you know, post the internal, uh, conflict and the peace process and basically how the country's assets have and the economy as a whole has been dismantled and increasingly more and more privatized. We are looking at, uh, a new president in the United States, Joe Biden presumably will be inaugurated in January when he was vice president. He introduced to the northern triangle, including Honduras, Salvador, El Salvador and Guatemala, his alliance for prosperity. What does that have to do if anything with what we're seeing today with these protests against what essentially is austerity in Guadalupe and in Guatemala? Financially starving healthcare and education. So the problem is that, um, the people who control business in Honduras, I mean in Guatemala and Honduras are really tied into this closely tied to this corrupt and part of this corrupt Congress. The backers of this Cassif, the Congress of Industry, the, uh, in a business, the big business association there is, uh, has been part of, you know, illegal financing scandals with, you know, the, what they call the pact of the corrupt in the Congress. And because business as usual is corruption and it's, you know, there's, uh, the way that the contracts happen with the state to do things like build, uh, energy generation projects and sell it to the state at, uh, elevated prices or, you know, sell it to actually private distributors, but somewhat regulated by the state and, uh, or to operate mines, you know, all of that, there's, there's just corruption throughout the process. Um, and, and the judiciary in the, and the, there's no investigation and, you know, no investigation, the damages that happen to the communities in the process or of the land that's stolen from indigenous communities to undertake those projects. They just can take people's land and, and then put out a rest warrants against the villages that have lived there for literally hundreds of net thousands of years, uh, and saying that they are land innovators. And so that's been happening on a large scale. There are hundreds of people with rest warrants in jail just for living on the land that their ancestors have lived on since immemorable times, but someone comes in and falsifies or does transactions that are illegal in the registry office. This is so similar to the Garifuna communities on the, right. It's exactly right. The, the similarities between Honduras and Guatemala are really very, very similar situations. And so the problem is with the, what the Alliance for Prosperity aims to do is sort of solve Central America's problems by pouring in a lot of money, which is essentially pouring gasoline on the fire. So by financing corporations, which are generating poverty, which are stealing resources, literally stealing resources from, you know, that the people who are poor and, and who, who don't have networks of corruption in the, in the justice system at their, at their disposal, or even the ability to hire a lawyer, you know, because the whole system has become so corrupt. And this relates back to the protests because one of the demands, the main demand is the people, the people want the whole Congress to resign. They just want the Congress to resign. And the Congress is poised right now to elect a new, a new Supreme Court. And like I had mentioned earlier, there's been this standoff between the constitutional court, which is above the Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court members elect the constitutional court, essentially. And there's been a relatively good constitutional court, which has been really important for communities like some of the communities, you know, that have had their land stolen, like I was mentioning by these big business interests, have been able to get good rulings from the constitutional court, you know, saying, look, this, this, this mining license is illegal. And this mining company has to stop operations. The problem is that they don't, they just simply ignore, they've just simply been ignoring the constitutional court rulings. And so, but, you know, obviously, big business and, and Congress, the corruption networks in Congress and want to get rid of the constitutional court that's in place, there are motions with to try to impeach the president of the Constitutional Court. And there's been this closely watched process of electing candidates for the Supreme Court. And then the Congress would elect the new Supreme Court in the coming weeks. The problem is that all there aren't good candidates that have been elected. It's been closely watched, but there it's not been a good process. And then, and so, you know, and then right now, out of that pool of candidates, they're preparing to, to elect a new Supreme Court. So there's also a lot of fear that that one, that the one sort of really powerful space in, in the government that all of this work since the peace process has had a really strong focus on trying to, to, to, to, to create the space of, of clean justice essentially is going to be dismantled in short order. And so that's something else that's at stake with these protests right now. And this is the problem with Biden's, you know, Alliance for Prosperity is that it will not bring the way it's structured now. The kinds of projects it's funding are precisely, you know, the, the, the, the, the most of it would be implemented through this new development finance corporation that used to be open to the overseas government. And the kinds of projects that they've announced and that they've, they've inherited from OPIC and that they've announced that they plan to fund are precisely the projects that are taking land that they don't, you know, that are, that are taking water rights through illegal, you know, corrupt processes and then making alliances with big business, international investors building on and benefiting from the, the corruption that is, has destroyed, you know, the nation's economy. And so right now, if it continues as it is, the Alliance for Prosperity would only pour gasoline on, on the fire essentially. So for our audience, what you're describing, what the money is used for and what essentially what this land grabbing is doing is the land is being taken by major corporations, transnational corporations. And it's the land is taken for access to whatever minerals perhaps lie underneath the land, water running through the land, or perhaps if the land is in a location that is highly desirable for development, for instance. Or strategic for drug trafficking. Or for drug trafficking. Yeah. Yeah. All funded through Alliance for Progress. Yeah, Alliance for Prosperity, which is a play on the old Alliance for Progress. Yes. Yeah. And, and then large palm oil plantations are one of the other sort of big sources of land grabbing and violence around land grabbing. And that also tend to have a lot of drug trafficking activity going on in the plantations that continue to affect the communities that, that continue to live where they'd always lived, but without any way of making a living other than getting a few days of labor a week on these plantations with the same companies that stole their land and have installed very violent sort of labor contracting structures to control the communities that just result in the most trocious kinds of abuse and violence and an ongoing like in the communities. It's, you know, as I listen to you describe all of this, it's to me, I'm hearing it's basically the modern version of the westward expansion in the United States. Absolutely. I've been working with my daughter in her AP history class and we were reading through the assignment of Western expansion, like that is what this is. This is what is happening in Central America right now. Yeah. It's just the modern version, but in, but in concept and theory, it's the exact same program. Absolutely. By the exact same people of society. Yeah. Yeah. Robert Barron's modern day Robert Barron's, but not, but in the end it is benefiting US corporations. It's not, it's not just the Central Americans that they make partnerships with and who maintain these corruption networks, but it's the new core mining, new core steel company that partnered in the, with M co mining in Honduras. It's the, you know, unical, not unical, unilever with the palm oil from the, I mean, it's, which isn't the US corporation actually to be fair, but the transnational corporations that are, that are, that end up with the lion's share of the benefit just like happened during Western expansion, you know, so. So it's, gosh, I could just talk to you all day and we're just diving into so many concepts and issues here. So with, with regards to the protesting specifically in Guatemala, the vice president has, is it, am I correctly understanding this? A vice president has called for the president to resign and that he would resign as well, or is this just, is this just playing to the public wanting a new Congress and a new paradigm for their government? That's sort of the, the, you know, debate right now. People don't really know much about who he is. He comes from the same political party that picked up on the shoestrings of Otto Perez Molina, the genocide general who became president in the 1980s, you know, in the, well, no, actually, he resigned in 2000. He was the genocide general in the 80s. Yeah, he was not president. He was the genocide general in the 80s who, who was very much part of this military business alliance and became president and was forced to resign from massive corruption that was uncovered. You know, while we're talking about him just briefly, I remember, I think it was February of 2014, I was in Guatemala, and we spent an afternoon with some human rights attorneys, and they showed us this map of all the indigenous communities that were exterminated in the 1980s. And then they showed us a map of where the current day mining, either mines or mining concessions are, and then they overlaid the two maps. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It is not a coincidence. There was, in the 1960s, when the World Bank was starting beginning, you know, when the, when the era of international development, financing was really, of modern international development, it was really taking off in the 1950s, 60s, the actually the European Union financed, no, German international cooperation financed a survey of all of the potential sites for hydroelectric dams in the whole country. You know, they did this big survey, you know, came up with this massive study showing exactly where the most viable dams would be. And then the same thing happened, the UN financed survey, a mining survey that was similar with the military governments in the 60s. And then coincidentally, those areas are exactly where the indigenous communities were exterminated and military officers ended up taking over land rights illegally, you know. There are stories in the area where, where Otto Perez Molina was commander of the local military base of, because a lot of people, a lot of people in the, in the villages are, you know, don't never learn to read and write, often they'll sign with their thumb print documents. And so there are stories of, of taking writing up land sales documents, and then taking the body of the dead person and putting his thumb print on the land sales. And, and in some of those cases have been overturned, those, and there was just a big win a few months ago of a very large area of land in the Echiel area, which is where Perez Molina had been president that has, that was returned to the people. But the problem is that's, that's not the exception. That's the rule. And the constitutional court has seen a few of these cases and it invoking the ire and, and, you know, the attacks against it that are trying to bring it down now. But it's, it's the general rule throughout the country. And so these investments that the World Bank is funding that the, you know, Inter-American Development Bank is funding, and that undoubtedly, you know, the, the, the alliance for prosperity money would go towards much, many, much, much of most of a large part of that would be built on, on stolen land that was stolen through genocide, you know, in the 80s, but some of it dating from before that. But it's the ongoing legacy of genocide. So, Annie, I know you, I know you have an obligation shortly and time wise. So let me, let me just have you comment on, on a couple things specific to the, and I would love to have you come back and do a whole comparative conversation on land grabbing and, and resource grabbing and how that compares with the development of the United States over the last, over its last 300 years, it would be a fantastic follow-up conversation for us to have. But, you know, when we first started talking, I had asked whether or not the, the current Guatemalan government had inquired or had, had requested assistance from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and you told me, and I find this fascinating but not actually shocking that they actually, the government actually requested a statement from the OAS, specifically Luis Almagro. And so what sort of, what did he say in general, and what does that mean going forward for the protesters? So, right now the president is trying to find a way out of this crisis, and he's trying to call on different sectors of what, of the opposition essentially to dialogue, which nobody wants to dialogue with him, they want him to leave office. They don't feel that right now there's any space for, for dialogue with, with this president. And so Luis Almagro that he called, so President Jimete called on the OAS to facilitate a dialogue. So that's, that's, and he, and they've offered to do that, which is, I mean, we have to monitor this, we don't know how it's going to develop, we hope that, that the OAS would not intervene in supporting some kind of fake dialogue process that lifts up sectors that aren't really representative. And I can't remember now, I know that there was some, a fair amount of concern about a statement that Almagro had initially made, but I'm sorry, I can't remember what that was right now. And I'd have to look that up. But, but I think the sort of larger concern is that the, that, that the OAS respect the political process that's happening in Guatemala now, and be very careful in how it responds to this, to, to, to, to, to the crisis. Isn't it amazing as we watch, you know, from the southern cone from Bolivia to Chile to now to possibly Ecuador in February to Guatemala right now and today this whole societal pushback on privatization, globalization, neoliberalism. I mean, it's, it's just been fascinating and very inspiring on us on a level to just watch this coming up from the south. It's very, it's very, very powerful. I mean, you know, I think there's a lot of concern what's going to happen now after the hurricanes with COVID, what kind of shock doctrine space is going to be taken advantage of. And, you know, Guatemala ever since the peace process, it's been this continual process of taking of state resources in Guatemala because it was weak after the war and people were so decimated that the level of just extreme violence by the state and the level of control that those violent groups maintained, you know, throughout the peace process, you know, left it so that after the peace process that there was no ability to, to stop this just assault and robbery of the state of the electrical company of the, you know, telephone company of all the state assets. And now what they've moved on to is just taking, you know, like they've taken lands before, but now they're really taking control of them and making, you know, and forcing people off of it in a really accelerated way. So, yeah. This is also a root cause of migration to the United States, which people need to understand as well pushing people off their land. So, okay, I know you've got a got another commitment. I'm so very thankful for your time today. It's really been great. It's been great to see you again and to have this conversation. And I really, let's plan another conversation, a comparative conversation with historical US and what's happening. Of course, starting to see all this happening again in the US as well. So, yeah, so thank you so much, Annie. I really appreciate your time today. And great talking to you. And thanks for inviting me. Okay, we'll do it again. Great. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Bye.