The URNG must stop being the classic barely-supported left party and become a horizontal political tool for all organized and unorganized sectors of Guatemala who dream of structural changes. The agendas and ancestral knowledge of the indigenous peoples should be incorporated into its speeches and practices. In Guatemala, indigenous peoples, like all other excluded people, live without a State and without rights. The URNG should raise and undertake the urgent task of rebuilding Guatemala.
Source: albedrío.org
The Latin American left is experiencing one of its most fruitful and promising times in history in the region. As never before, 10 countries in Abya Yala – the American continent – are governed by left-leaning political groups with unprecedented positive results on the economy, society and politics. Of these 10 governments, five are headed by former guerrillas (mostly defeated by the military) from the end of the last century.
Uruguay is currently governed by José Mujica (a luxury of a President?), a former Tupamaru guerilla who was jailed for 14 years for subversion. Brazil is led by Dilma Rousseff, a former guerrilla from the Command of National Liberation (Colina) who was imprisoned for three years. In Nicaragua the former commander of the Sandinista Front for Liberation, Daniel Ortega, is completing his second consecutive term. Cuba, a cultured country with the highest levels of social equality in the region is governed by Raul Castro, a former member of the July 26 Movement and the Rebel Army. El Salvador, geographically the smallest country on the continent but one of the worst in terms of poverty, has been governed by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front for the past four years, now headed by former guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez.
Even in Honduras, which historically has been devoid of a leftist presence, the Free Party is now the second most powerful political party in the country. Even noble Costa Rica has 9 representatives from the left.
What about Guatemala?
The left in Guatemala had its political spring between 1944 and 1954, under Arévalo and later the Árbenz administration. The latter was ousted by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government. In the 60s, the same man convinced army officers and civilians to organize into four guerilla groups to defend the aims of the Revolution that was cut short.
In 1982, in order to unify efforts, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) was formed. In 1996, the URNG signed the Peace Accords with the State-Army (after Dantesque massacres by the State), and in 1998 it was legally recognized as a political organization.
In the 1998 elections, the Guatemalan left (as the coalition ‘Encuentro por Guatemala’) won 12 seats in National Congress, though they would never reach as many in subsequent elections.
As with other political organizations, the Guatemalan left underwent periods of internal fragmentation from which new political groups with reduced public support emerged, such as Alternative New Nation (ANN), Movement New Republic (MNR) and WINAQ.
In the last elections (2011), the left coalition under Rigoberta Menchú’s candidacy received just over 3% of votes and won 3 seats in Congress.
How can this decline be explained?
URNG national leadership is wary of leftist social movements. “We cannot expand the social base of the party because we would stain the virtue of the doctrine,” is the response of some national leaders when asked why the URNG is not transformed into a political tool of the social movements.
Meanwhile, mass social movements such as the Committee for Peasant Development (CODECA) are systematically working on organizational and training matters to strengthen and enlarge the URNG as a political tool for the liberation of Guatemala. However, various ‘permanent’ leaders of the URNG, in light of CODECA’s efforts to democratize the party internally, have chosen to discredit the movement. It appears that URNG leadership has been bureaucratized and has failed to de-Westernize and much less decolonize. Its absence in the interior in noticeable.
The current leaders do not always respect the decisions of the assemblies. In the Third National Congress of the URNG (2012), delegations from the country’s interior were categorical in demanding the internal democratization of the party. They demanded that the URNG be strengthened. They requested that the leadership do not take unwise decisions, particularly in election matters involving other political parties. They called for more training and organization. They asked that it make alliances with social movements and organizations. However, currently, the national leadership is in coalition with political organizations and social movements are still considered suspicious.
These attitudes indicate that many of the ‘professional’ or ‘career’ leftists are still trapped in Western orthodoxy and uphold representative democracy as the only valid type, disregarding participatory or community democracy. They still believe in taking power from the top down. They do not believe in building local power from the bottom up. They do not believe in the masses and assemblies as a political subject. The saddest thing is that the indigenous communities are heard but never listened to (though their proposals are workable and measurable), because to Western orthodoxy, indigenous people and peasants are not whole political subjects.
What is the outlook for the left in Guatemala?
In the Latin America of today, where left-leaning governments generate unconcealed changes to overcome inequality and dependence, and in Guatemala, where a neoliberal system has caused despair and pain for the majority, the Guatemalan left has a historic opportunity to do what they could not by force of arms.
The URNG must stop being the classic barely-supported left party and become a horizontal political tool for all organized and unorganized sectors of Guatemala who dream of structural changes. The agendas and ancestral knowledge of the indigenous peoples should be incorporated into its speeches and practices. In Guatemala, indigenous peoples, like all other excluded people, live without a State and without rights. The URNG should raise and undertake the urgent task of rebuilding Guatemala.
The Guatemalan left have the advantage that they are not as fragmented as in other countries. WINAQ, ANN and URNG need to understand that unity is the way to progress and that organization and creating awareness in the communities are urgent, permanent tasks.
Due to URNG’s historical status and organizational foundation in the Guatemalan left, the URNG is left with the inevitable task of transforming themselves into a political tool for the country’s excluded masses. URNG’s leaders and activists must urgently join with the organized and concrete nuclei in CODECA in order to consolidate growing public awareness.
As the winds of change blowing from the south reach the Guatemala border, aware excluded sectors are finding encouragement to push for change. However, they are not yet ready to climb onto the political ladder, whether on the right or the left.
De-Westernization and decolonization are urgent tasks for the flagging guardians of the Guatemalan left. Otherwise, the emerging social movements will take their own path with their own political mechanism and URNG will end up in the epitaph of the traditional left, like many others in history.