2023-10-06 06:59:52
Protester groups keep sections of strategic roads closed.Image: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images
Waving blue and white flags, people demand the resignation of Consuelo Porras, Rafael Curruchiche and Fredy Orellana.
Protesters blocked this Thursday (10/05/2023), for the fourth consecutive day, around thirty routes in Guatemala to demand that an alleged electoral persecution that seeks to prevent the elected president, Bernardo Arévalo de León, from assuming power cease.
The protesting groups, mostly indigenous people, keep closed – with vehicles and tree branches – stretches of strategic roads such as those that lead to the borders of El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. In some places there are hundreds of people and in others they exceed a thousand.
After returning from Washington, where he denounced “a coup d’état in slow motion,” Arévalo met this Thursday with activists from civil organizations.
“This is an opportunity to highlight that call to maintain national unity around a peaceful protest of rejection of attempts to violate the electoral and constitutional process,” he said at a press conference.
Until now, the protests were mainly in the west of the country, but this Thursday indigenous residents of Quiché (north) and Escuintla (south) joined. The closed sections of roads increased from 20 to 33 on this day, according to the state General Directorate of Road Protection and Safety (PROVIAL).
Waving blue and white national flags, protesters chant and carry signs calling for the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras; of the head of the Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche, and Judge Fredy Orellana, whom they accuse of an offensive against the elected president.
The blockades began on October 2 against recent raids on the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in which electoral records were confiscated, and to demand that the actions against Arévalo and his party cease. Seed Movement.
This Thursday, the Constitutional Court – the highest judicial instance – accepted an appeal from the business leadership and empowered the authorities to dissolve the blockades if “necessary” for attacking free mobility, prioritizing deterrence and the use of force as “last resource”.
The indigenous leader Luis Pacheco, one of the activists of the protest movement, assured that “the strikes will continue” indefinitely.
In Guatemala City, police cordoned off the perimeter of La Aurora International Airport, amid rumors that protest groups intended to take over the facilities, according to Aeronáutica Civil.
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