It is an unprecedented time in a nation’s political history. A
neophyte politician — a man famous for lowbrow TV antics who has never held
political office — is vying to become president. He feeds on simmering
discontent about the corruption of the political establishment and mainstream
politicians. Backed by extreme right-wing elements, he makes vague promises and
trumpets his lack of political experience as a reason to vote for him. His
competition is a former first lady married to a left-leaning ex-president. She
is an altogether polarizing figure considered by a large portion of the
electorate to be deeply corrupt.
Surprising all the pundits, he rides a wave of populist anger to victory.
Sound familiar? Yes, but it is also the story of Guatemala’s 2015 presidential
election. The politician is a man named Jimmy Morales, a clownish talk-show
comedian who ran on the ticket of an extreme right-wing political party called
the National Convergence Front. His oft-repeated campaign slogan was “Neither
corrupt nor a thief.”
Support for Mr. Morales, like that for Donald Trump, was based in part on
voters’ frustration with a political establishment they hold responsible for a
blatantly unfair status quo. But unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Morales won a landslide
victory against his opponent, Sandra Torres, getting nearly 70 percent of the
runoff vote.
At first glance, the uncanny parallels between President Morales’s and President
Trump’s victories may seem mere coincidence. In many ways, the two nations could
not be more distinct. Guatemala has long been one of the Western Hemisphere’s
most unequal societies, and for generations the American dream has lured
hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans seeking to escape poverty and insecurity.
And yet in the United States, the promise of a better future that animates the
American dream — not only for poor migrants but also for American working-class
families — has been in retreat for decades. Since the 1970s, the gap between
rich and poor has widened inexorably. And now, the aspirations of right-wing
United States lawmakers may portend even deeper and more disturbing convergences
between Central American nightmares and the fading American dream.
Guatemala’s spectacular levels of inequality have been long in the making. For
100 years, a tiny oligarchic elite has fought ferociously to keep hold of the
reins of power and monopolize the nation’s export economy. Through both military
oppression and manipulation of a weak democratic system, it has continually beat
back efforts at reform from below. As a result, today Guatemala has the
12th-highest level of income inequality in the world, with some studies
indicating that 5 percent of Guatemalans own or control 85 percent of the
national wealth. This elite has also labored to keep the Guatemalan state weak
and incapable of interfering in its business interests. In this, it has been
incredibly successful. Guatemala has one of the lowest income tax rates in the
hemisphere, and some of the weakest financial, environmental and workplace
oversight laws.
The consequences of the elite’s success have been dire for the rest of the
country, offering a cautionary tale for those who believe that gutting public
institutions could ever make for a more equitable society. Lack of funding for
public education ensures that Guatemala remains one of the most illiterate
countries in the Americas, and failing health care and social security systems
undercut what scant social safety nets exist for the poor. Meanwhile, a sliver
of a middle class clings to its precarious perch between the superwealthy
superminority and a sea of abject poverty. More than 50 percent of Guatemalans
live beneath the poverty line, and social mobility is virtually nonexistent,
which is one reason so many poor Guatemalans risk the dangerous journey to the
United States.
However, the social and economic conditions in the United States that made the
American dream possible have long been eroding. Working-class wages have
remained stagnant for 30 years while more and more wealth is controlled by the
top 1 percent, putting income inequality in the United States at its highest
levels since the 1920s. Institutions that make social mobility possible, like
affordable higher education, and those that protect lower-income families, like
welfare programs, have undergone drastic cutbacks over the past 30 years,
forcing poor families to shoulder more debt and lower their horizons. Even as
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, deepening tax breaks for the rich
have ensured that they can pay a smaller percentage of their wealth into public
coffers than do members of the increasingly beleaguered middle class.
And now, by accelerating the destruction of national institutions and fortifying
the elite, right-wing politicians in the United States appear hellbent on
restructuring American society to match ever more closely the Guatemalan
blueprint. As President Trump blusters about his “big beautiful wall” to keep
out poor migrants, Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to neuter
financial-oversight laws on banking, gut environmental protection standards,
eliminate the Department of Education and roll back health care affordability.
They call for further easing of the tax burden on the rich and major corporate
tax cuts to make the United States more competitive in the global race to the
bottom.
The United States is still a beacon for Central Americans desperate for a better
life. Last July, I spoke with a 20-year-old Guatemalan man named Wilmer who was
traveling through Mexico and looking to cross into the United States. “For poor
people like me, my country is like a cage with no way out,” Wilmer said as he
waited with dozens of other Central Americans to hop a northbound freight train.
“And we all know that this journey is dangerous. We might fail, we might even
die. But at least there’s some hope at the end of it.”
For now, the American dream is alive and kicking. How terrifying, though, to
imagine a future in which the hope that the United States has come to represent
for poor Central Americans is extinguished, not because of some “big beautiful
wall” but because entrenched inequality has made it a monstrous doppelgänger of
their own societies.
