The script will be familiar to Brazilians: a country with a struggling economy, a deeply ingrained culture of corruption, and a public perception of worsening public security heads to the polls. Among campaign promises of “draining the swamp,” fighting violence, and even planning to bring back the death penalty, a hard-line right-wing candidate gets elected. With a couple of alterations, this scene could have been Brazil in 2018, but this was how Alejandro Giammattei became president of Guatemala, Central America’s most populous country.
The 63-year-old doctor and former head of the Guatemalan prison system ascended to the highest office in the country helped by a conjunction of factors. Constitutional courts had barred ex-Attorney General Thelma Aldana and Zury Ríos—daughter of late dictator Efraín Ríos Montt—from running, and a wave of political apathy swept Guatemala. His biggest opponent, former First Lady Sandra Torres, was also troubled with legal challenges to her candidacy, eventually being arrested after the election for campaign financing violations.
In the June 2019 ballots, the abstention rate...
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