the guatemalan elections

I read about the elections every day when I was in Guatemala this summer. Under Guatemalan law a president is limited to one 4 year term so that means a new president every four years. This year there were 14 or so candidates running and on September 9th it was no surprise that no one candidate garnered over 50% of the vote. To avoid having elected presidents who receive less than a majority of the vote, many countries have run-off elections between the top 2 candidates. In Guatemala, this matches the center-left Alvaro Colom who is running for his third straight time against former general Otto Perez Molina.

In Guatemala where 56% of the country lives in poverty and a large percentage of population is illiterate - the primary way of voting is putting an X through a political party's emblem. When I first arrived in Guatemala I thought that opposing factions had crossed out advertisements for competing political parties but only later did I learn that this tactic was trying to get people to vote for a particular party. This means that graphic design is a major component of elections in Guatemala. Here are the two emblems for UNE and Partido Patriota, the parties of the two remaining candidates in the election.


Are these images loaded with symbolism? You bet they are. UNE loosely translated into English is the National Hope Party. Partido Patriota is the Patriotic Party and their slogan is Mano Dura or the Strong Hand. Is it something to have a clinched white fist be a symbol of a dominant political party in a country where half of the population is indigenous Mayan? I would think so.

This has been a particularly bloody campaign in Guatemala. The 40+ year civil war there ended in the early 1990s. Running for a political position can be a very dangerous proposition. More than 50 candidates, activists, and their relatives were killed in the run-up to this election. Here's a Washington Post article on the violence in the months before the election and here's election reports from the Washington Post and the BBC. I'll be keeping track of the run-off election and will keep you all posted. If I were one to make political predictions, I am almost certain that Otto Perez Molina will win the election in November.