Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise
The son of a trailblazing president will face a powerful political establishment in a runoff election.
The son of Guatemala’s first democratically-elected president, almost 70 years after that experiment was crushed by a coup, takes up the banner of democratic change as his country again slips toward autocracy. He goes from polling at 0.7% to somehow making the runoff for president. No, it’s not the opening to a Gabriel García Márquez novel; it’s what happened in Guatemala on Sunday. Bernardo Arévalo, the candidate of the fledgling center-left Semilla party and son of ex-president Juan José Arevalo (1945-51), came out of nowhere to finish second in a crowded first-round vote for...
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