There's a saying, which applies to a variety of people, that goes, 'When the United States has the flu, Guatemala sneezes.' This premise has been demonstrated over the course of history: when something changes in the US, it affects the political reality in Guatemala.
The consensus in Washington for more than ten years, above all with commitments by the U.S. Congress, has been to support democratic processes in the region in order to address its own interests. Therefore, cooperation has focused on the issues of migration, drug smuggling, and human trafficking. This has included backing anti-corruption efforts and cases against people who violate human rights as well as the strengthening of organized civil society. However, in the latest administration this consensus has wavered, causing the weakening of the justice system.
Since 2015, the work of the CICIG has been so effective that it was able to bring hundreds of white-collar professionals -- including politicians, businessmen and two presidents -- to court. This created a backlash of hiring important lobbies to discredit the work of the CICIG and construct a narrative tailor-made to fit the fears of Trump and some Republican Senators and members of Congress, the majority of whom are Protestant and very conservative, who fell for a story that was adjusted to their biases.
First, Guatemala transferred the embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Christmas Day in 2017. The move was initially seen as a foolish political act and suffered notable critiques in the interior of Guatemala and in Europe. But it earned the favor of Nikki Haley, the then US ambassador to the UN, who took the task of transferring the Embassy in Israel as a personal priority for which the entire planet had left her alone. She rewarded the Guatemalan mission and that of Honduras (the United States continues protecting President Juan Orlando Hernández despite his administration's use of political repression and evidence of fraud) with loyalty in return after both countries declared their intention to move their embassies. And the only political ambition -- both internal and external -- of the government of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales has been to expel the CICIG after it accused him and his family, as well as his next of kin, of corruption.
Then the lobby involved Bill Browder (a millionaire whose friend -- Sergei Magnitsky, of the Global Magnitsky Act -- was assassinated by Putin and whose death caused Browder to dedicate himself to anti-Russian activism) in the Bitkov case.
Browder was presented with a case of a Russian family that was convicted for passport falsification (in an investigation which the CICIG entered after the process had already begun). He then became convinced -- without evidence -- that Putin was using the CICIG to harm them after they had fled from Russia to escape justice in their home country. This ensured that Browder became one of the strongest anti-CICIG voices.
Meanwhile, the lobby influenced the Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady, linked for many years to the most conservative sectors of the country and famous for her biased writing in favor of Álvaro Uribe (opponent of the CICIG commissioner Iván Velásquez for prosecuting Uribe's brother in Colombia). She dedicated several columns to attacking the CICIG as well as reproducing on social media the opinions of the frenzied opponents of the anti-corruption fight.
This secured a hearing in the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the US Helsinki Commission) regarding the CICIG issue. This commission does not have control over the budget, so the session only served to make noise about the alleged ties to Russia. This session was held to attack the CICIG, and no one besides Browder's people and the Bitkovs' lawyers were permitted to testify.
Another great ally of the lobby has been Marco Rubio, the Senator of Cuban origin, who, from his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked that $6 million be withheld from the CICIG over the alleged ties to Putin being investigated.
In a subsequent public hearing, it was determined that there had not been one hint of a relationship between the CICIG and Russia. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, Interim Undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere at the US State Department, said that they did not find any evidence of the ties indicated by Browder. Given this, Rubio had no choice but to restore the withheld funds.
Thus the attitude in Washington regarding 'the CICIG issue' was contaminated, above all, among the most extreme conservatives. The Guatemalan ambassador Manuel Espina, who enjoys high level contacts in the Protestant world, has been a key player in this story. Espina invited many influential people to meetings and prayer breakfasts where he strengthened the networks that he used to gain support.
Another argument used by the lobbying alliance between the government and business sector is the critique against the UN's 'globalist agenda,' furthering an argument that the CICIG 'selectively' pursues people in the business sector as part of the Machiavellian plan of the global left. Taking into account that the current administration in the United States has been characterized by rejecting the UN and, because the CICIG is backed by the UN, the US would have all the more reason to demonize it.
This persistent work over the past few years finally came together in the fears of certain circles in the State Department despite career diplomats maintaining the clear necessity of supporting the CICIG. However, the officials with greatest weight consider that, according to geopolitical arrangements, it is more convenient to maintain a good relationship with Morales (as with Hernández in Honduras), since its most important priority is migration, above all during the reelection campaign. Maintaining good relations principally implies cutting political support (or simply not supplying it) for the CICIG.
Since the migration issue is a top priority, the lobby also promoted the idea that the way of alleviating this phenomenon is an alliance between the Government and the private sector to boost the economy and therefore generate more jobs, and that the issues of security (the CICIG) would be unnecessary. This narrative does not take into consideration that the courts, the prosecutors, and the police will be seen as weakened by the departure of the CICIG on September 3rd, since the commission had set a benchmark of incorruptibility that now is being undone by the hands of those accused of corruption.
To complicate the diplomatic relations even more, and as part of the same strategy, Guatemala signed an agreement with the United States this past July 26 to turn itself into a Safe Third Country, which entails receiving people who are seeking asylum in the US while their legal future is decided. The conditions of the country are not appropriate for an agreement of this nature, which forecasts a greater social crisis due to the retention of migrants in Guatemalan territory when they cannot even solve domestic issues.
The attempt to sign this agreement, like many other illegal foreign policies of Jimmy Morales, has been temporarily halted by the Constitutional Court, arguing that the Congress ought to ratify any international agreement. But the idea of appealing to the US was intensified as the electoral process moves to the second round on August 11th. These efforts were motivated to a large extent by the quest for impunity, since the president and many of his allies lose immunity next January 14th and, with or without the CICIG, ought to be brought to justice.
