Russian interference?, Please! 🙄
Let me tell you a Guatemalan story of a far more covert and conniving form of state interference by non other than the United States.
It's not a secret that Central American nations have been poor and thoroughly corrupt for decades and that we contribute with a small but significant part of the illegal immigration of so called "Dreamers" at the South US border. It all starts in 2012 or so when a sudden spike of these immigrants flooded the border with a twist: many of them were minors.
Backtracking a little, you see, former Central American communist guerrillas morphed into what you now know as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs throughout the region as peace accords were signed following 30 years of guerrilla civil war. We became democracies since political armed conflict stopped some 15-20 years ago. Entire generations of communist-indoctrinated, zero-educated, class-hate-indoctrinated pawns by ideological war suddenly had to turn in their weapons in amnesty; abandoned by the intellectual left that went on to participate in our democratic life. These soldiers were never to be confronted with the consequences or the societal shunning of any of the atrocious acts they perpetrated, they were left to fend for themselves with no help from their former communist leaders in their reintegration in society; with skewed morals and ruled by only one value, violence, many of them fled.
Many did so to welfare states in the US and were embraced by a struggling minority of Central American latino community that saw in their violent means through "protection" a way to advance socioeconomically and prevail against more established and dominant latino bases like the Mexicans . They grew in influence and power to the point of becoming transnational crime cartels headquartered in the US, while maintaining, supporting and strenghtening their rooted organizations in Central America.
Now, a key element of their delinquent MO is to use minors as pawns that get away with murder without consequence due to minor crime laws, both here and in the US. This brings us to the start of the story: About 8 years ago, already under Obama, the major "maras" started coyoting illegal minors by the thousands because the sicariato business and other crimes like their flagship, extortion, was booming in the US. This posed a huge national security problem for the US, and was a determining factor of the sudden flooding by minors earlier described.
Obama sent Biden in 2014 on a tour of "Triángulo Norte" of Central American nations: Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where the original maras are from, mostly from SV and HN, and they came up with an "aid" plan called "Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle".
Since 2014, the Obama-era US Embassy embarked on their traditional regime change in Guatemala: They took CICIG under their wing, an 8-year old, so far utterly useless, corrupt, scandalous and ineffective UN diplomatic mission for supposedly helping our Attorney General with criminology training, and set out to implant what many political analysts describe as a judicial dictatorship in this country: First, they (rightly) jailed the current president and vice president while in office for corruption along hundreds of their high-ranking government officials.
Soon however, it became bluntly apparent that there was an crude ideological bias against right-of-center corrupt politicians, and a clear favor of radical left, well know for their corruption, political operators. Hence, they (US embassy-->CICIG--> Attorney General) embarked on selective criminal prosecution, most believe, in an ideological vendetta for the lost civil war. The previous ambassador was bluntly, and publicly, open in his agenda. He's on-record perpetrating the worst kinds diplomatic aberrations and saying the most crude sovereignty-violating public statements.
With CICIG and our Attorney General under United States command, he started ilegitimally, by-proxy-placing, all kinds of unelected political operators in ALL the high places of our government: in Corte de Constitucionalidad, the highest court of the land, 3 out of 5 magistrates were proposed and appointed by proxy by the embassy, the chief of our Human Rights commission, lots of Ministries (Secretaries) chiefs, our fiscal agency SAT (your IRS), they jailed dozens of corrupt congressmen when convenient or blackmailed many of the rest under threat of prosecution to advance US-prescribed legislation and leftist public policies. CICIG introduced changes to our Constitution even, in clear violation of the Constitution of course; all under a crude overreach of CICIG's diplomatic mandate: which is mearly to act as a technical criminology and investigation techniques body for the transfer of said abilities to our institutions. CICIG was so effective for modern regime change and subvert imperialism, they even cloned it in Honduras (theirs is MACCIH) with evident results.
Long story short: Since the last 2.5 years, crimes perpetrated daily against property by emboldened radical left guerrillas now acting as ONG's funded by Nordic countries and aided by a George Soros / Carlos Slim coopted mainstream media have the economy paralyzed; mining and energy firms have fled, hundreds of industrial agricultural farms are violently invaded on a montly basis, owners held for ransom, all under the blind eye of the Public Ministry. Thousands of families are unemployed by the siege of our rural industries with the resulting state revenues drop and, if it wasn't for Dreamers' family remittances from the US, we'd be Venezuela.
The government is also paralyzed for fear of prosecution under the scrutiny of any execution of the budget whatsoever. Our current president is indicted as well as his son, much likely with criminal merit but not based on that alone. The high courts have arbitrarily and unlawfully struck down dozens of Congress resolutions and laws aimed and curving this judicial dictatorship, they have also struck down a good number of Executive branch acts like the one by the President denouncing CICIG's chief as persona non grata per the diplomatic Viena Convension.
Elections are in 2 years in Guatemala and they are clearly grooming the leftist outgoing Atorney General for office: amid no political opposition, and merely by the threat of real or fabricated criminal prosecution by any so daring right-of-center non-radical-left wing candidate.
Charming, isn't it? Meanwhile, the US tantrums over Russia ads on Facebook.