A Besieged University Movement Joins the National Strike in Guatemala

[Judi Lynn]

Monday, October 9, 2023
Roman Gressier
Leer en español

Just past nine on Friday night, some fifty people form a circle, shifting their weight from one heel to another and clapping to the rhythm of a group of drummers with dreadlocks. A skinny young man dressed in black and white stripes climbs onto an eight-foot unicycle. His friend tosses him three bowling pins and he starts juggling, even sticking a foot in the air. He jumps down to the applause of the crowd, picks up a lit torch, kneels down and holds it out like a lance. Another man, his chest poking out of a leather vest, approaches in dance and spits a mouthful of gasoline that lights into a tongue of flames. This is a protest, a blockade, and a party.

Below an overpass near La Reformita Market in Zone 12 of southwestern Guatemala City, a dozen university students have gathered under the yellow street lamps and intermittent rain for a national strike organized five days ago by Guatemala’s main Indigenous movements. The demonstrations have brought national commerce to its knees and even further isolated Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the antagonist of a political battle that could define the future of Guatemala.

University groups, unions, neighborhood families with small children, and a pair of homeless people share food and drinks. For just a few hours, this place has become an oasis in an increasingly turbulent political environment enveloping the country. The stubborn efforts by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) to avoid the electoral victory of Bernardo Arévalo last August and to boycott the transfer of power in January have unleashed the mobilization of an influential coalition of Indigenous authorities joined by thousands of people. Today there are nearly one hundred blockades along thoroughfares like this one. The demonstrators are demanding the resignation of Porras, two prosecutors close to her, and the judge who at her request issued illegal orders against the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and its magistrates. The streets are also denouncing the business lobby CACIF and President Alejandro Giammattei, seen as the puppet masters of Porras’ political maneuvering.

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Protestors in front of the Public Prosecutor's Office denounce judicial interference with the electoral process in July 2023. Photo Víctor Peña

“We’ll be here until our bodies give out or until they resign,” says Janssy Velásquez, an architecture student at USAC, the storied state University of San Carlos. “They should at least respect the elections.” She is 23 years old and has come to this blockade with her mother and two sisters, one who is 17 and the other, holding a large Guatemalan flag in her hand, who just turned 10 two days ago. They hang timidly around the periphery of the crowd and Janssy is the spokesperson for her family. “We voted for Arévalo because he was the only decent option in these disastrous elections. Let’s hope he does what he has promised. That’s why we’re here, so that there can be a bit of change. We’re not very political, but we agree that we have to support [the strike]. We don’t want to live in another Venezuela.”

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202310/centroamerica/27100/a-besieged-university-movement-joins-the-national-strike-in-guatemala