It’s the most successful pro-democracy movement of the 21st century. So why has nobody heard of it?
Amid a million stories of democratic backsliding everywhere from Hungary to India, from Israel to America itself, here’s this tiny poor country showing us the way regular people, indigenous people, can fight back against the enemies of democracy and win. It sounds like a movie. But it’s real.
And yet, the average American who follows the news probably heard about none of it. No one is putting little Guatemalan flags in their social media handles. Unless you were out specifically looking for Guatemala news, the story just passed you by.
Why? It’s a question that has stalked me for months, as Guatemala’s democratic movement beat back one authoritarian power grab after another. How could international public opinion sleepwalk through all this drama? Shouldn’t the world’s democrats be hungry for a feel-good story like this one?
Well, nobody much cares about Guatemala at the best of times. It may be the most populous nation in Central America, but with everything else going on in the world right now it’s just never going to grab people’s attention to the same extent as, say, Ukraine.
But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I have other theories. And they’re bleak.
Fatally for Guatemala’s democrats, Joe Biden supported them. Loudly. He mobilized America’s diplomatic weight behind them. He made it perfectly clear that if Bernardo Arévalo, the president-elect, didn’t get sworn in there would be major consequences. Guatemala’s business sector
got the message, and the organization that brings together the owners of its biggest companies fell in line behind Arévalo. They may not be thrilled to have the center left in power, but better that than U.S. sanctions.
Bizarrely, this probably meant that neither America’s loud online left nor its reactionary Republican right could get behind the Guatemalan democracy movement. The left could never back a movement supported by Guatemala’s business sector
because it was supported by Guatemala’s business sector. The right could never support a movement supported by Guatemala’s indigenous movement
because it was supported by Guatemala’s indigenous movement.
Neither could work up any warm feelings for a movement supported by Joe Biden because it was supported by Joe Biden.
The most daring, successful movement in the defense of democracy our hemisphere has seen in ages just pulled off the almost impossible feat of dislodging one of the world’s most entrenched and most corrupt regimes peacefully, through the ballot box… and everyone found a reason to sleep right through it.
It was sad, really, to see so much of international public opinion miss the boat on perhaps the most hopeful political story of the 2020s so far.
Whether we noticed or not, Guatemala just gave the world a masterclass on what it takes to defend democracy in the 21st century.
