Months ago, Bernardo Arévalo was the discreet leader of a small party’s caucus of seven congressional representatives, practically unknown outside Guatemala's capital. On August 20, when he notched a 21-point victory in the presidential race, he appeared before thousands of supporters who flocked to the streets to celebrate what appeared to be a loop in history. The last and only Arévalo to don the presidential sash was his father, Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, in March 1945, on the heels of a coup and subsequent free election that marked the definitive end of the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico (1931-1944).
These are days when state-sponsored election lawfare again threatens to derail the democratic electoral process. In July and August, leaders of Arévalo’s party, Semilla, formed two teams: one legal and the other political. The latter worked to win the presidential run-off against veteran politician Sandra Torres, while the former fended off the Guatemalan Attorney General's efforts to suspend the party following Arévalo’s shocking June 25 primary victory.
El Faro accompanied Arévalo in the final days before August 20 as he toured western Guatemala, where Torres’ UNE party has historically dominated. He visited Santa Cruz del Quiché, Huehuetenango, and towns as remote as Tejutla, almost 300 kilometers northwest of the capital, in the border department of San Marcos.
Arévalo has tried to both tap into and downplay the legacy of his father, fondly remembered by many elderly Guatemalans and their parents, whether urbanite or campesino. “I am not my father,” he has insisted since June 25, but the historical meaning of the president-elect’s promises to usher in a “new democratic springtime” is lost on no-one.
On Friday, October 20, the anniversary of the revolution of ’44, Arévalo delivered a speech before a packed street outside the seat of the Judicial Branch on “this moment of unity and consensus against tyranny.” He then hugged and raised an arm alongside Juan Jacobo Árbenz Vilanova, son of the other president of that first springtime, toppled in 1954 in a CIA-sponsored coup d’état.
During the last weekend of campaigning before the second round of elections, Arévalo toured western Guatemala. On August 11, after his rally at a town square full of supporters in Santa Cruz del Quiché, dozens of people waited to shake his hand as he stepped off the stage before leaving for Huehuetenango.
A good part of Bernardo Arévalo's campaign team is composed of young people, some of whom are recent graduates. Despite the political tension that has surrounded the Guatemalan presidential elections, the candidate was frequently seen chatting and joking with members of his team. Some joined as volunteers in the first round before the campaign command expanded for the second round.
Bernardo Arévalo caresses his wife, Dr. Lucrecia Peinado, before a press conference with local media in Huehuetenango. Peinado, 62, is a physician who specializes in healthcare management. The two married in 2011 and have four children together. Arévalo also has two daughters from a previous marriage.
On the afternoon of August 12, Bernardo Arévalo held a rally attended by some 400 people in a municipal gymnasium in Tejutla, San Marcos. Many attendees praised the fact that Arévalo had arrived there by car, not by helicopter, as candidates visiting the country’s more rural and mountainous areas have historically done.
Part of Semilla's campaign focused on defending the rights of Guatemala’s “four peoples”—Maya, Xinka, Garifuna, and Ladino—and emphasized the need to combat racism and exclusion. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s controversial decision to prohibit the People’s Liberation Movement (MLP) candidate Thelma Cabrera from running led much of the organized Indigenous vote to throw their support behind Arévalo.
On the weekend prior to the runoff, Santa Cruz del Quiché was the first stop on Arévalo's tour of western Guatemala. Despite the strong show of support for Semilla there, Sandra Torres won the department with 54.7 percent of the vote.
Stopping for lunch on the outskirts of Tejutla, the Semilla candidate posed for campaign photographer Daniel Hernández in front of a mural of superheroes. Hernández is known for his famous photograph “Memory of an Angel,” featured on the cover of the 1998 report “Guatemala: Never Again,” published by the Archbishop of Guatemala’s Human Rights Office. The report documents the crimes committed during the country’s 36-year-long civil war.
Bernardo Arévalo talks with his campaign manager, political scientist Justo Pérez, after a private conversation with Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini at the offices of the Huehuetenango Diocese on Friday, August 11. In late July, Ramazzini publicly called for forming a nationwide citizen's front for democracy to fight the efforts of different political parties and the Attorney General’s Office to invalidate the results of the first round of elections.
On Friday, August 18, an hour before the legally imposed suspension of political campaigning began, the Semilla party broadcast its final message from Arévalo and his running mate, university professor Karin Herrera, on TikTok and other social media. Before appearing on camera, Bernardo Arévalo played with the resident cat at the capital’s Cultural Mosaic Center. Semilla’s presidential campaign team named the cat Semichi —Semilla combined with michi, or kitty—, a staple of Arévalo’s social media.
Arévalo poses with members of his communications team and some of Semilla’s elected legislators on August 18. Prior to July 25, only five people were responsible for the candidate’s communications strategy. His advance to the runoff spurred a drastic increase in staff and attracted new donors.
When he voted in the first-round elections, Arévalo strolled into the polling station with barely any press around him. At the time, he was in eighth place in the polls. Two months later, on Sunday, August 20, his security team cleared space to let him get out of his vehicle, and Arévalo had to navigate his way through a scrum of journalists to cast his vote.
Arévalo addressed the media after voting in the La Patria Evangelical School, in Zone 2 of the capital, where he and his family have lived for years. His opponent, Sandra Torres, silently cast her ballot and departed, refusing to say throughout the day whether she would recognize the results of the election if she lost. Two months later, she has yet to concede.
By 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 20, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal had proclaimed Bernardo Arévalo the “virtual winner.” Around him, in a private room in the Las Américas Hotel in Guatemala City, his campaign team shouted, “Yes, we could! We did it!”
Eight decades after his father, Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, decisively won Guatemala’s first democratic elections in 1944, Bernardo Arévalo stepped out onto a terrace at the Hotel Las Américas on Sunday night, August 20, to address hundreds gathered before him with bugles, signs, and Guatemalan flags, celebrating the prospect of political change.
*Translated by Jessica Kirstein
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