Guatemala is rapidly sinking back into authoritarianism. Despite expressing a rhetorical commitment to fighting corruption, the Guatemalan state ultimately remains more interested and invested in defending entrenched traditions of elite impunity in the country.
In 2015, there was a hope in Guatemala when protests led to the resignation of former President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti over a corruption scandal. The criminal investigations and charges against Molina and Baldetti were among hundreds of other government corruption cases brought forward by the United Nations–backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known as CICIG. However, in 2019, the government dismantled the commission.
One of the last remaining official pillars of Guatemala’s effort to root out corruption Jordán Rodas Andrade leaves his post, following the ouster or departure of a series of other anti-graft campaigners who had shaken the Central American nation’s governing class.
Rodas has decided to lift the lid on the state of Guatemala under its last two presidents, Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) and the incumbent Alejandro Giammattei. He said that Guatemala is under an authoritarian regime and have a masquerade of democracy. His accusations come after police on July 27 arrested journalist and the president of the newspaper El Periodico Jose Ruben Zamora and raided the offices of the newspaper he founded after it accused key political figures of corruption.
Jordán Rodas Andrade was a relatively little-known law professor from a university in Guatemala’s sixth-largest city when he was elected as human rights prosecutor by Congress five years ago to protect Guatemalans’ constitutional rights. He surprised many by allying himself with an anti-corruption effort that targeted many of the nation’s most powerful figures.
A month before, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) added Guatemala to a list of countries committing serious human rights violations that includes Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Earlier this year, the United States designed Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras as corrupt actors.
In Guatemala, el Periódico has published dozens of investigations of corruption involving President Giammattei and numerous members of his cabinet, including Attorney General Consuelo Porras and Rafael Curruchiche. Curruchiche last year was appointed as a head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI) after the previous anti-corruption prosecutor, Juan Francisco Sandoval, was abruptly fired and forced to flee the country. Curruchiche is overseeing the criminal investigation into Zamora.
According to Sandoval, Porras also tried to block investigations into political mafias seeking to stack Guatemala’s courts by instructing prosecutors to avoid investigating certain individuals such as Néster Vásquez, a current Constitutional Court magistrate linked to the court mafias.
Police have also detained assistant prosecutor Samari Gómez, who was a member of FECI under the leadership of Sandoval, in connection with the probe against Zamora.
Journalist Gerson Ortiz, the news editor at el Periódico, who’s worked at the paper for 11 years, said this edition has received threats over its investigations into criminal activity and corruption across multiple administrations.
His activity led to a conflict with other officials. His repeated court efforts to block government actions irked then-President Jimmy Morales that he dubbed Rodas “Amparito” — “little injunction.” One of those temporarily blocked Morales’ attempt to expel the leader of the United Nations anti-corruption mission in Guatemala, whose investigations were touching some of Morales’ relatives.
In 2019, Morales finally forced out the U.N.-backed anti-corruption mission that had worked with local prosecutors to root out graft and had led to the imprisonment of several senior officials, including former President Otto Perez Molina.Under current President Alejandro Giammattei, several Guatemalan prosecutors who worked with that mission and judges who handled those cases have been forced out.
Juan Francisco Sandoval, who led the Attorney General’s anti-corruption office was fired in July 2021 and fled to the United States. He said his office had started investigating Giammattei. Authorities later announced they had an order to arrest him. In response, the U.S. government suspended cooperation with the Attorney General’s Office.
According to Rodas, Giammattei is obsessed with power and has succeeded in co-opting other branches of government and concentrating it “as if he were an emperor. Giammattei has denied allegations of corruption and bristled at U.S. pressure to choose a different attorney general.
Congress has chosen Alejandro Córdova Herrera as Rodas’ successor. He has been linked to Sergio López Villatoro, “known as the ‘King of Tennis,’ for illegally negotiating the formation of the Courts of the Guatemalan Justice System. Córdova Herrera served as magistrate of the Fourth Court of Appeals of the Family branch.
Some deputies from the opposition bloc in the Guatemalan legislative apparatus denounce that the selection process and the approval of the commission to elect Córdova Herrera was carried out in an anomalous manner.
A former Supreme Court justice, he had been flagged by the Attorney General’s anti-corruption office for meeting with a businessman who has since been arrested for alleged corruption and influence peddling involving selection of judges. Córdova was not investigated. He has the support of the president and the ruling party’s lawmakers.
Rodas’ departure comes three months after Giammattei reappointed Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has been a key figure in prosecuting or firing anti-corruption crusaders. The U.S. government canceled her visa and put her on a list of allegedly corrupt actors in the region.
Jorge Santos, coordinator of the Guatemala Human Rights Defenders Protection Unit, a nongovernment organization, claims that Rodas had expanded the ombudsman’s reach, establishing offices to investigate disappearances, especially of people at the hands of security forces, and to defend freedom of expression and human rights activists.
Rodas’ independence gained him political prominence, as well as a long list of enemies. Opponents in Congress made several failed attempts to start a process that could have removed him from office. And lawmakers held his office’s funding hostage for months making it impossible to pay his staff’s salaries.
Rodolfo Neutze, a lawmaker from the conservative Commitment, Renewal and Order party, said Rodas had failed to strengthen the institution and divided Guatemalan society. According to him, the ombudsman office is at the service of the leftists or the criminals or anti-family ideas.
