CRIMINALIZATION AND JUDICIAL TERRORISM AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN GUATEMALA
The recent arrests of two Maya leaders is emblematic of increasing repression and criminalization of Indigenous peoples by the Guatemalan state.
- July 11, 2025
President Bernardo Arévalo and Vice President Karin Herrera meeting with Luis Pacheco on December 7, 2023. Pacheco and another Maya leader, Héctor Chaclán, have been arrested and accused of terrorism connected to their participation in the 106-day National Strike in 2023 and 2024. (NISGUA)
The April arrest of Maya leaders Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán has sparked national and international outrage and concern that the Pact of Corrupt is escalating its criminalization of Indigenous Peoples. The Pact of Corrupt is the name given to an alliance between business, oligarch, military, and right-wing entities that has often used the Guatemalan state to carry out their own interests. Following the 2015 resignation of Otto Pérez Molina for corruption uncovered by the UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), the Pact of Corrupt escalated its efforts to curb back anti-corruption efforts and engaged in lawfare to persecute dissenting voices. Pacheco and Chaclán are being accused by the Public Ministry (MP) “of criminal association, instigation to commit a crime, terrorism, obstructing prosecution, and obstructing justice.” If convicted under the terrorism charge, they can spend up to 30 years in prison.
These alleged crimes are based on their role as leaders and participants of the 106-day National Strike between October 2023 and January 2024 that secured a peaceful transition of power after the Pact of Corrupt threatened to prevent then president elect Bernardo Arévalo from taking office. Feliciana Herrera, a Maya Ixil ancestral authority from Nebaj, tells me with regards to the 106-day National Strike, “In this case, the indigenous authorities came out to express their discontent, against corruption, against impunity, and against this attack on the law that we believe is constitutional, a fundamental right that we as a population have.” The efforts by the Pact of Corrupt, particularly from María Consuelo Porras, Guatemala’s Attorney General, sparked serious concerns of a coup attempt in Guatemala and a further regression towards authoritarianism. During that time, Pacheco was the President and Chaclán the Treasurer of the 48 Cantones of Totonicapán, one of the largest Maya K’iche’ ancestral authorities in Guatemala. Pacheco is the current Vice Minister of Sustainable Development, Mines and Energy.
The justice system in Guatemala has been increasingly used to engage in lawfare against Indigenous communities, journalists, and human rights activists, among others.
One of the demands of the 2023 National Strike was calling for the resignation of Consuelo Porras, who has been implicated and signaled of corruption by the international community. In 2022, the U.S. State Department claimed that Consuelo Porras had “repeatedly obstructed and undermined anticorruption investigations in Guatemala to protect her political allies and gain undue political favor” and firing lawyers who investigate corruption. The justice system in Guatemala has been increasingly used to engage in lawfare against Indigenous communities, journalists, and human rights activists, among others. Pacheco and Chaclán’s arrest signal another wave of repression against Indigenous peoples and ancestral authorities, as this precedent now makes anyone who was involved in the 2023 National Strike susceptible to arrest. According to Human Rights Watch, “The case is currently under judicial seal, a maneuver often misused by prosecutors in Guatemala to avoid public scrutiny over politically motivated prosecutions.”
The International Community Condemns the Arrests
Ancestral authorities marched in resistance against a possible coup attempt ahead of President Bernardo Arévalo’s inauguration in 2024. (Carlos Choc, Maya Q’eqchi’)
In an open letter from April 25, 39 ancestral authorities and communities denounced Pacheco and Chaclan’s arrest. There they condemned and “strongly reject the criminalization and judicial terrorism” and “the arbitrary use of [the] law against Indigenous peoples, their authorities who, together with them, fought to defend democracy and demanded the preservation of the precarious rule of law” in Guatemala. In addition, they stated that the arrests by the Public Ministry represented a “new coup attempt.” Since then, there have been multiple actions and protests to call for the release of Pacheco and Chaclán who remain under pre-trial detention. On April 29, various ancestral authorities from across the country, President Arévalo, Vice President Karin Herrera, and the majority of the government’s ministers, held a press conference to demand the resignation of Consuelo Porras and the release of Pacheco and Chaclán.
The international community has denounced Pacheco and Chaclán’s arrest. In May, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) visited the country and met with ancestral authorities to evaluate the human rights situation, who expressed their concern regarding the use of military intelligence to persecute and surveil leaders, similarly like the war. For Herrera, Pacheco and Chaclán’s arrest is a form of lawfare by the MP, not just against political figures, but against Indigenous communities who engage in protest. She tells me that the intentions of the MP’s political persecution are to create an environment of intimidation and fear as a way to scare and repress people and prevent them from raising their voices.
In talking to a Maya leader living in the United States who states they are an Indigenous authority in exile, Pacheco and Chaclán’s arrest “is an attack on Indigenous peoples with the aim of instilling fear, of wanting to justify themselves in power.” In addition, he claims that the arrest was not just based on the 2023 National Strike. “106 days…is not the only struggle we have fought, we have fought many struggles in the past, [we have organized and have had] participation in the fall of Otto Pérez Molina, in the constitutional reform,” and in land struggles, he noted. With regards to the terrorism charge, he states that these are false accusations that only “makes clear…the hatred, the desperation they have to stop our struggles… what they are doing is terrorism, because what they are doing is terrorizing Indigenous communities by imprisoning all those who oppose them, that is the message… terror not from us, but their terrorism towards us.” Reflecting on lawfare in Guatemala, the Maya leader in exile states that laws are used to terrorize and attack Indigenous communities, describing the use of laws as a continuation of the violence from the war.
Widening Regional Criminalization
Pacheco and Chaclán’s arrest are part of a larger regional wave of mass incarceration and global criminalization and detention of activists, and Indigenous and oppressed peoples. Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception, which suspends certain constitutional rights and has led to massive arrests, characterized by arbitrary detentions, human rights abuses, and the negation of due process. Particularly concerning is the detention of people in the megaprison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which holds up to 40,000 prisoners. The country has seen an increase of political prisoners such as Ruth López, an anti-corruption lawyer arrested in May and vocal critic of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. For his part, Bukele has dismissed accusations of human rights violations by using the scapegoat of the gang threat and has stated, “I don’t care if you call me a dictator. Better that than seeing Salvadorans killed on the streets.”
In the United States, the increased militarization and persecution of any dissidents of Trump’s policies has led to state-sponsored detention and arrest.
In the United States, the increased militarization and persecution of any dissidents of Trump’s policies has led to state-sponsored detention and arrest. The March detention of legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil due to his pro-Palestine advocacy at Columbia University, created alarm and signaled that the Trump administration was escalating its repressive efforts against activists. The use of ICE to detain and deport with impunity, whose agents often wear face coverings to conceal their identities and have detained U.S. citizens, has violated due process and civil liberties. The administration responded to protesters in Los Angeles in June by sending the National Guard and Marines to violently suppress them and is evident of the rising authoritarianism and fascism across the region.
With regards to Guatemala’s current state of affairs, Feliciana Herrera claims that the Public Ministry, Attorney General, and various judges criminalize human rights defenders and Indigenous peoples. It has been over two months since Pacheco and Chaclán were arrested, and the case is symbolic of the justice system in Guatemala, which works in favor of the Pact of Corrupt. “We are in a country that lives off corruption, that protects corruption, and that maintains impunity in many cases,” Herrera says. Yet, what is clear in talking to Herrera is that despite this criminalization and institutional challenges, they will continue to struggle undeterred and seek Pacheco’s and Chaclán’s freedom.
Giovanni Batz is Assistant Professor in the department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is author of the book The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala (University of California Press, 2024).
