Caribbean & Central America - February 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Last month Guatemala’s President Otto Pérez Molina delivered his penultimate state-of-the-nation address in which he flagged up progress vis-à-vis security – one of the three areas identified as priorities when his right-wing Partido Patriota (PP) administration assumed office in January 2012. Pérez Molina also claimed improvements in the other two areas – the economy and food security - although his claims regarding all three have been subject to question.

In his 14 January address to the nation, Pérez Molina put the national homicide rate at 31 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014, below the 34 per 100,000 registered in both 2013 and 2012; and the 39 per 100,000 registered in 2011, the year before he took office. Pérez Molina attributed this progress in part to his ‘mano dura’ (repressive) response to crime, which has involved the use of the military for public security duties– a strategy also employed by his predecessor, Alvaro Colom (2008-2012). This is in line with a 2000 law permitting recourse to the military “when the normal capabilities of the police are overwhelmed”, which President Pérez Molina has invoked to establish two joint military-police task forces to fight organised crime in border areas: one created in 2013 and based in San Marcos, operating along the border with Mexico, the other set up in April 2014 in Zacapa, to operate along the border with Honduras. President Pérez Molina’s balance sheet also claimed progress on another key security objective – boosting the national police (PNC) - with 4,881 new PNC officials graduating in 2014, bringing the total size of the PNC to over 35,000 by February 2015, up from 22,000 when he took office.

Since his state-of-the-nation address, however, the homicide figures for January 2015 appear to have bucked the downwards trend. On 3 February the local press reported PNC figures, which put homicides for January at 488, four more than in the same month in 2013, an increase President Pérez Molina blamed on intra-gang rivalry.

The President also claimed progress as regards to boosting the economy and improving competitiveness. He cited preliminary figures which suggest that GDP grew by 4% in 2014 – well above the 1.1% average for Latin America (on figures from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean [Eclac]) and up from 3.7% in 2013 and 3% in 2012. Noting that foreign direct investment (FDI) totaled US$1.37bn in 2014, up 6.1% on 2013, the President also boasted that exports in the first 10 months of 2014 reached US$9bn, up 7.8% on the same period in 2013. In his speech, Pérez Molina also mentioned the latest (September 2014) World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report, in which Guatemala’s ranking improved from 86 (out of 144 countries) in 2013 to 78 in 2014. However, he was forced to admit deficiencies as regards another economy-related objective – boosting tax revenues. Pérez Molina said that the tax take reached Q$48.97bn (US$6.4bn) in 2014. While this is up 5.7% on 2013, it is still just 10.8% of GDP - less than the 12% minimum target established in the 1996 peace accords that ended Guatemala’s 36-year civil war (1960-1990) and one of the lowest in Central America. This again illustrates the failure of the fiscal reform that Pérez Molina pushed through the national congress in 2012, which, he notes in his annual report, remains paralysed, with 65 constitutional appeals filed against it.

Landmark conviction

While the delayed efforts to bring Guatemala’s former dictator, Efrain Ríos Montt (1982-1983), to justice [RC-15-01]continue to attract human rights concerns, last month civil society groups claimed a victory after a local court sentenced Pedro García Arredondo, a former chief of Guatemala’s national police, to 40 years in prison for ordering an attack by State security forces on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on 31 January 1980. The attack left 37 people dead, including Vicente Menchú, the father of Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous leader, Rigoberta Menchú. The court also sentenced García Arredondo to another 50 years in prison for the murders of two students. García Arredondo previously received a 70-year prison sentence in 2012 for the 1981 disappearance of Edgar Sáenz Calito, an engineering student.

• Progress in food security?

In his state-of-the-nation address, President Otto Pérez Molina also claimed progress with regard to tackling food insecurity which, upon taking office, he pledged to reduce by 10% over his four-year term via government programmes like ‘Plan Hambre Cero’ (PHC). Pérez Molina said that between 2012 and 2013 - the latest figures he gave - chronic malnutrition dropped by 1.7% in 166 targeted municipalities (out of a total of 333). However, the most recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), published in December 2014 showed that Guatemala still registered the second worst rate of undernourishment in Central America (14.3% of the population between 2012 and 2014, just slightly less than the 14.7% registered between 2009 and 2011).