Over the past decade in Guatemala, criminalization has increasingly served as a strategy to stifle public participation in civic life. In most cases, Guatemalan authorities have collaborated with both business and military interests to criminalize those who seek justice and fight against impunity.

Unending criminalization of Indigenous land defenders

Early criminalization efforts primarily focused on Indigenous communities who were organizing to protect their lands and territories from extractivist projects. Some examples include the 2013 arrests of dozens of organizers in Santa Rosa and Jalapa, after the government used a state of siege to quell community protests against the Escobal Mine. Likewise, many community leaders in Huehuetenango faced years of criminalization and unjust detention for their resistance to the forced imposition of hydroelectric projects. State and business interests used criminalization as a way to punish organizers for their resistance, creating an environment of fear and silence, and exhausting organizations. 

Q’anjob’al community leaders and environmental defenders, Rigoberto Juárez and Domingo Baltazar, were criminalized in 2015, as retribution for their opposition to imposed hydroelectric projects. Photo credit: Jeff Abbott

The criminalization of land defenders continues to this day and has expanded exponentially: BTS partner Highland Committee of Small Farmers (CCDA) has spoken out about more than 1,000 active arrest warrants against its members. Other Indigenous and campesino organizations face similar rates of criminalizations for resisting dispossession from their territories and the forced imposition of monoculture crops, mines, and dams.

CCDA poster denounces 1056 arrest warrants against members, in a context of forced impoverishment, displacement and criminalization of Indigenous communities.

Criminalization affects justice operators, former CICIG officials, reporters

Unfortunately, the trend of criminalization has only spread, affecting ever-widening swathes of society. Current attorney general Consuelo Porras, who was appointed by former president Jimmy Morales, has achieved a second term under outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei. Both presidents have themselves faced a series of credible corruption investigations. Porras has upended the Public Prosecutor’s office (MP), punishing the very prosecutors who worked hand-in-hand with the CICIG to fight corruption. In a twisted move, Porras has filled the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI)—the office that brought the most high-level corruption cases—with her cronies. She collaborates with shady prosecutors and a coopted judicial branch to threaten and punish the prosecutors, judges, reporters, community leaders, and land defenders who have dared to speak out against corruption and impunity. More than 50 lawyers, judges, and journalists have been exiled or jailed, while there are thousands of arrest warrants out against land defenders. The constant spectre of criminalization has closed spaces for democratic expression.

Most recently, Porras and her ally, FECI head Rafael Curruchiche, have brought the same judicial machinery to bear in the electoral process, putting the peaceful transition of power and Guatemala’s democracy at risk. Following Bernardo Arévalo’s surprise second-place finish in the first round of presidential elections, Curruchiche brought charges against his Movimiento Semilla party and its founders, purportedly because of anomalies in the party’s creation. As the Movimiento Semilla was confirmed as a contender in the second round of elections by the country’s electoral authority, Curruchiche illegally announced that the party would be dissolved. The MP has also used criminalization to intimidate those working to ensure election integrity, requesting poll workers’ names. Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General, Luis Almagro, has denounced the legal persecution, intimidation, and harassment of Movimiento Semilla, meant to “disregard the will of the people.” FECI even used its spurious investigations as an excuse to break open sealed ballot boxes, violating electoral law in a move that breaks the democratic order. While the MP has continually criminalized and persecuted Movimiento Semilla, there has been no investigation into two credible assassination plots against president elect Arévalo.

With criminalization representing an ever-growing threat to Guatemalans who fight for justice and against impunity, as well as to Guatemalan democracy overall, we share four emblematic cases of criminalization:

Virginia Laparra

Virginia Laparra, photo credit: Johan Ordonez/AFP

Virginia Laparra, a former FECI prosecutor who led high-level anti-corruption cases in Quetzaltenango, has spent more than a year and a half in prison. An Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, Laparra spent five of the last 19 months in solitary confinement, in conditions “bordering on torture” and was repeatedly denied much-needed medical care. In late 2022, Laparra received a four-year prison sentence for trumped-up charges, including “abuse of authority.” The allegations stemmed from a complaint she made against a judge who leaked confidential information from a sealed corruption case. The judge, Lesther Castellanos, together with the extremist right-wing, military-aligned Foundation against Terrorism (FCT, often called the Terror Foundation) brought charges against her in reprisal. Since then, the judge has brought additional charges against her; however, because her sentence is under five years, Laparra should be allowed to pay a fine to commute what is left of her prison term. Nonetheless, courts have used widespread national and international outcry about her case, including from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the New York City Bar, along with their other spurious charges against her to keep her in prison.

José Rubén Zamora

José Rubén Zamora, photo credit: AFP

On June 14, 2023, famed founder and editor-in-chief of El Periodico, José Rubén Zamora, was sentenced to six years in prison in retaliation for the paper’s reporting on corruption and abuses of power. FECI threw together a money-laundering case against Zamora in just three days, following his reporting on alleged Russian bribery of Giammattei. Again, the FCT joined the suit as a co-plaintiff. Zamora was held in pre-trial detention for nearly a year, also under torture-like conditions in solitary confinement. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced attacks on his right to counsel: the court excluded key evidence, and Zamora had to change lawyers repeatedly, as many of his lawyers were themselves intimidated and criminalized, and some of his legal team never had access to his case file. The ongoing criminalization of Zamora and El Periodico also led to the paper’s eventual closure. Despite getting a six-year sentence against Zamora, the MP nonetheless threatened to appeal the case in order to achieve the 40-year sentence they initially sought. National and international organizations, journalists, and human rights experts call Zamora’s criminalization a “reprisal for the exercise of freedom of expression.”

Orlando López

Orlando López, uncredited photo

In March, Orlando Salvador López, former head of the MP’s Human Rights Office, was indicted for “abuse of authority” for allegedly practicing law privately while still working in the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office, a charge he has denied. López led the prosecution of Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity committed against the Maya Ixil people. López’s role in prosecuting Ríos Montt and other high-ranking former military accused of forced disappearances, sexual violence, and crimes against humanity, including in the Military Zone 21 and Molina Theissen cases, has long made López a target of pro-impunity interests. Ricardo Méndez Ruíz, founder of the FCT, whose father was a commander at Military Zone 21, and Raúl Falla, the FCT’s lawyer, waited at the courthouse to intimidate and threaten López following his arrest, calling for López’s “civil death” and “eight years of pretrial detention.” After López received bail, the MP and the FCT unsuccessfully sought to have him continually held in pretrial detention. Reporters were denied entry to a September 19 hearing, just one example in a pattern of obfuscation in criminalization cases. 

Claudia González

Claudia González, photo credit: Johan Ordonez/AFP

Most recently, the MP arrested Claudia González Orellana for so-called abuse of power, based on González’s 2017 investigation into Blanca Stalling, a Supreme Court justice accused of influence trafficking. The charges against González are inherently unfounded, given that González never worked as a public official. González is a former CICIG official, as well as the lawyer for Virginia Laparra, exiled ex-FECI prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, and several other prosecutors affected by the MP’s selective prosecution. González’s arrest has been labeled a “double criminalization,” since her imprisonment affects her, as well as all of her criminalized clients. The judge who indicted González, Jimi Bremer, works for Stalling and has repeatedly violated González’s rights, including by delaying the first hearing after her arrest and labeling the case “under reserve,” which prevents anyone from accompanying the trial, including Embassy officials. Tragically, González’s mother passed away while she was being held in pretrial detention.

Selective Prosecutions Threaten Lives, Organizing, Democracy

The ongoing criminalization of lawyers, judges, reporters, and land defenders has destroyed the lives and health of many brave individuals, while exhausting local organizations and threatening Guatemalan democracy at the macro level.

It is imperative that the international community remains attentive to these cases of criminalization and denounces each of them publicly.