CIVICUS discusses the criminalisation of human rights defenders and journalists in Guatemala with Mario Polanco, director of the Mutual Support Group (GAM). Founded in 1984 by relatives of victims of enforced disappearances during internal armed conflict, GAM is one of Guatemala’s oldest human rights organisations.

For eight years, Attorney General Consuelo Porras used the Public Prosecutor’s Office as a tool to persecute activists, journalists, justice system officials and social leaders who exposed or investigated corruption. The most emblematic case is that of journalist José Rubén Zamora, founder of the El Periódico newspaper, who was arrested in July 2022, sentenced in June 2023 to six years in prison and remained behind bars until February 2026. Porras’s term in office ended in May, raising cautious hopes for change.

What does the case of José Rubén Zamora reveal about the Guatemalan judicial system?

José Rubén is a well-known and respected journalist. He comes from a family of journalists with a democratic tradition, some of whom were victims of repression during the period of state terrorism. His grandfather was vice-president of Guatemala.

In 1990, José Rubén founded the daily newspaper Siglo 21. Groups linked to corruption, the military and oligarchic factions attacked him until they wrested control of it from him. It ended up in the hands of Roxana Baldetti, Guatemala’s vice-president from 2012 to 2015, who is now in prison for corruption. In 1996, José Rubén founded El Periódico, which gained great credibility and became the leading voice for independent corruption investigations.

What ultimately led to his arrest were investigations into acts of corruption by President Alejandro Giammattei, in power between 2020 and 2024. José Rubén was arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned in a makeshift tin-roofed structure at the back of a military barracks. The heat in his cell was unbearable and, as a form of torture, at night his captors would release bedbugs, fleas, ticks and other mites into his cell, which ravaged his skin. He was held there for around a thousand days until he was transferred to house arrest. He was then imprisoned again and, recently, released once more.

The cases against him were brought by the Foundation Against Terrorism, a far-right non-governmental organisation founded in 2013. The European Union and multiple states have imposed sanctions on it because of its campaigns of harassment and judicial persecution against human rights defenders, journalists and judges.

The case illustrates how the system works. Organisations such as this, linked to what we in Guatemala call the ‘pact of the corrupt’, file complaints with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which, under Porras’s leadership, would process them immediately. Corrupt judges then come into play, acting in coordination with these prosecutors, and issue arrest warrants. We know the names of those judges. There are also honest judges in the judiciary, but not many, as the majority were threatened into leaving the country. There are still Guatemalan judges in exile.

Who are part of the ‘pact of the corrupt’ and how does it work?

The ‘pact of the corrupt’ is a coalition of interests comprising businesspeople, drug traffickers, military personnel and corrupt politicians. At various times, it has been linked to a specific presidency, notably those of Otto Pérez Molina, president between 2012 and 2015, who resigned and was arrested for corruption, and the two who followed him, Jimmy Morales and Alejandro Giammattei, but at its core, it’s a network that transcends any individual government.

The Foundation Against Terrorism is one of the network’s tentacles. Its founder and president, Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, used to live modestly and is now a millionaire. It receives illegal funding from numerous companies and engages in extortion, telling businesspeople and former military personnel that it knows something is being plotted against them and demanding money from them under threat of arrest.

During the administrations of Pérez Molina, Morales and Giammattei, this cabal sought to control all oversight institutions, comprising the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Courts of Appeal, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman and the Comptroller General’s Office. The only body that didn’t fall into their hands was the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, thanks to the integrity of its then president, Blanca Alfaro, who stood her ground despite legal proceedings brought against her and attempts to arrest her. This is what enabled the 2023 election to take place and allowed the current president, Bernardo Arévalo, unconnected to the corrupt cabal, to take office.

Who else has been persecuted apart from journalists?

Persecution extends to human rights activists, lawyers, legal practitioners, peasant leaders and social leaders. Its aim is to instil fear so no one dares question anything.

To give you an idea, Edmond Mulet, a Guatemalan diplomat and former United Nations official who stood as a presidential candidate in 2023, simply called for guarantees of fair elections and was put on trial for giving that statement. At the time, I chose to keep a low profile. I stopped appearing on talk shows and expressing my views publicly. I thought, if they brought a case against Mulet for that, what guarantee do I have that they won’t bring 10 cases against me?

Well, in fact, there are 10 open cases against me. One is for conspiracy, because they claim that GAM is an organised crime group. Another is for obstruction of justice, which is absurd because I’m not a judge, but what they’re insinuating is that I fabricated the thousands of documents we hold as evidence of human rights violations. The other charges include dereliction of duty, violation of the Constitution and various other offences, all in retaliation for our organisation’s work.

Gustavo Meoño, former director of the National Police Historical Archive, which contains documentary evidence of human rights violations committed during the internal armed conflict, lives in Rosario, Argentina. Some of the crimes he is accused of were committed when he was around five years old. He never wanted to apply for asylum because he thought he might be able to return to Guatemala, but when President Javier Milei took office in Argentina, he accelerated the process, fearing he might be extradited. He has now succeeded. He is safe, but he is 77 years old and has 76 arrest warrants against him.

Has international pressure had any effect?

International pressure has been more effective on the political front than on the legal one. Over 40 states, led by the USA, the UK and the European Union’s 27 member states, imposed sanctions on Porras. They froze her assets and banned her from entering their territories. This left her completely discredited on the international stage. Rafael Curruchiche, one of the most aggressive prosecutors on her team, also appears on several countries’ sanctions lists.

We thought that, in the face of so much pressure, they would eventually resign from their posts and leave the country, even if Nicaragua or Panama were the only places that would receive them. But Porras didn’t leave. She held on until the very last minute of her eight-year term and is now arranging her retirement.

Why has this criminalisation continued under the Arévalo government?

The current government is very fearful. President Arévalo doesn’t want to make decisions because he fears that, once his term ends, they will look for an excuse to issue an arrest warrant against him. He could have reshuffled the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but he didn’t dare. He waited for Porras to finish her term, two and a half years after he took office. It suited him to have her there so he could blame her for everything. Arévalo is not part of the corrupt cabal, but neither has he dared to stand up to it.

The government has lost a great deal of credibility. Arévalo’s popularity is already below 30 per cent and continues to fall. Now he’s entering the final stretch of his term. A president’s last year is an election year and everything revolves around who will succeed him, so in practice, presidents have only three years to actually govern. That’s why Arévalo has barely six months left of any real influence.

What might change with the new attorney general?

The first thing the new attorney general, Gabriel García Luna, did was to dismiss several corrupt prosecutors. But he’s been in office for less than two months, so it’s too early to give an assessment.

What we do hope is that the fabricated cases against so many people will be closed. As it’s unlikely that the complainants will withdraw their accusations, the new attorney general will have to dismiss the cases himself.

What will not be so easy to achieve is the return of exiles. When Arévalo travelled to the USA, where most Guatemalan exiles live, he refused to meet with them. And when he did meet them, he didn’t allow photographs, because he didn’t want to be seen with them. Such caution does nothing to bring about change.

The great risk is that, following this missed opportunity, we will go back to governments like those we had before. Arévalo’s party, Semilla, has split. Most of the deputies elected alongside him broke away and formed a new party, Raíces. And they were the first to push for a sky-high increase in deputies’ salaries. They took a liking to power too quickly.

The corrupt pact still controls Congress, the Courts of Appeal, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Constitutional Court, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman and the Comptroller General’s Office. If a president sympathetic to their interests comes to power, all that would remain for them to do is to neutralise the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. It’s unlikely that they’ll remove García Luna, because he’s protected by the same law that protected Porras, and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal must serve its term until 2031. These are the two pillars that still stand. But the risk is real.

How has civil society managed to keep functioning, and what support does it need?

With great difficulty. Firstly, there are no resources. International cooperation is no longer focused on Latin America. Yet there are constant threats and the silencing they produce. Fear works.

To regain ground, civil society needs resources. It needs cases to be closed and for those in exile to be able to return. And it needs a government that doesn’t treat it as a political burden but as a legitimate partner. That, for the moment, does not exist.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.