Kamala Harris travels to Guatemala to speak about illegal migration and corruption

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Illegal migration and corruption, two interrelated scourges, are the main reasons for the visit to Guatemala this Sunday and Monday of the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, in a tour that will also take her to Mexico.

It does not seem a coincidence that only three days before Harris’s visit, the US government has this Thursday decided to place the fight against corruption, both in the US and globally, as one of its national security priorities.

Corruption in Guatemala is one reason why every year, more than 300,000 of its citizens decide to migrate to the United States illegally in search of better living conditions to escape poverty and violence in the absence of the State.

“Migration will not stop if they do not put a stop to corruption”, explains the Guatemalan lawyer and former diplomat Luis Alberto Padilla. Therefore, in the lawyer’s opinion, Harris’ visit to Guatemala “is essential for the region” because it “demonstrates the great concern that the United States has” with respect to “the migration problem”.

AGAINST THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

The US vice president and her entourage will land Sunday afternoon in Guatemala, a country where the anti-corruption fight has been in a tailspin since 2018, following the departure of the attorney general and head of the Public Ministry at the time Thelma Aldana.

The former prosecutor, after leaving office, was forced to seek political asylum in the United States due to persecution because of her anti-corruption fight, and just a few weeks ago, she held a meeting with Harris to address the situation in the Central American country.

According to experts, the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, has more and more power. There are clear intentions to completely overthrow the anti-corruption fight and persecute those who sought justice in the past.

Giammattei’s party, the political group Vamos, dominates Guatemala’s Congress with a majority. According to political analysts, its influence also reaches the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, and the Supreme Court of Justice, with magistrates aligned with its interests.

Thus, Harris’ visit will take place in the midst of several attempts to overturn the anti-corruption fight in Guatemala, with actions that include the arrest in May of two former officials who took former President Otto Perez Molina (2012-2015) to prison for bribery, or with legal resources that try to dismantle the anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Ministry, in force since 2007.

“Ms. Harris is very well informed,” says Padilla, founder and president of the Institute of International Relations and Research for Peace (Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales e Investigaciones para la Paz).

“What one would expect is that the Americans, having this good information, would at least stop the obvious objective that the dictatorship of corruption has set,” says the lawyer, who also hopes that the destruction of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Prosecutor’s Office will be avoided.

THE SHADOW OF BIDEN

U.S. President Joe Biden is also familiar with the situation in Guatemala, as he visited the country on a couple of occasions in 2015 just before the fall of the government of Otto Perez Molina for corruption.

Biden and the United States supported the fight against corruption through the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an entity created in conjunction with the UN to dismantle parallel structures in the State.

The entity indicted more than 250 people for corruption from 2015 to 2019, including ministers, deputies, officials, vice presidents, and presidents, in addition to the country’s business elite. However, the foreign entity was expelled from the country in 2019 by the decision of then-President Jimmy Morales, cornered by several accusations against him.

That is why Harris now arrives in Guatemala without a transnational tool in the fight against corruption such as CICIG, and it is one of the reasons why the United States is contemplating the creation of a regional body with the same objectives.

However, while the U.S. Vice President seeks solutions to illegal migration, every day thousands of Guatemalans decide to cross Mexico in search of the American dream and move away from a country where 59% of its 16.3 million inhabitants live below the poverty line.

“People go to the United States because they are better paid, because, although they are poorly paid there, it is seven dollars an hour, which is incomparable to the minimum wage in Guatemala,” concludes Padilla, the country’s former ambassador to the UN.