Jimmy Morales, the New Face of Guatemala’s Military Old Guard

Jimmy Morales, the New Face of Guatemala’s Military Old Guard
Posted 4 December 2015 18:55 GMT


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Guatemala's President-elect Jimmy Morales, despite political inexperience, has close ties to Guatemala's military dictatorship
(Jeff Abbott)
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It is almost a bad joke: Jimmy Morales, a former TV comedian who regularly performed in blackface and was famous for having once played a campesino who almost became president, has actually become…Guatemala's president.

The October 25 run-off election wasn’t even close, as Morales, running under the banner of the tiny National Convergence Front (FCN) party, captured nearly 70 percent of the vote.

Morales had campaigned as an outsider candidate, the antithesis of a career politician. His campaign slogan, “not corrupt or a thief,” looked to ease voters’ minds following the revelation of a massive corruption scandal within the administration of ex-general Otto Pérez Molina. But unbeknownst to many Guatemalans, their new president’s backers represent the same forces that carried out some of the worst crimes of the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict.

In fact, the FCN was founded by the same military interests that cast shadows over Pérez Molina’s cabinet. Retired Generals Jose Luis Quilo Ayuso and Luis Felipe Miranda Trejo, from the Association of Military Veterans of Guatemala (AVEMILGUA), founded the party in 2004 to rebuild the prestige and respect for the military that they felt had been tarnished since the signing of the peace accords in 1996, and to represent the nationalistic interests of the Guatemalan military.

More:
https://globalvoices.org/2015/12/04/jimmy-morales-the-new-face-of-guatemalas-military-old-guard/