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

[Judi Lynn]

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/

[forest444]

1. New look; same garbage.

This is becoming the new normal in Latin America.

[Judi Lynn]

3. They are definitely trying, aren't they? Hope the people are stronger this time. n/t

[MisterP]

2. Latin American armies are very different from what one might expect--they're economic

entities, running the phone lines, dockside cranes, railways, plantations--all the accouterments of Progress; they even planned for a machine paradise, each village combining plantation, garrison, and religious congregation with the colonel-hacendado playing pastor; an "Army party" is almost an afterthought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixil_Community
note the Ingsoc-style logo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coalition_Party_%28El_Salvador%29

[Judi Lynn]

4. They are a lot more pervasive throughout a lot of areas, aren't they?

Never had heard that they made life so hellish that Ixil people in Guatemala stopped wearing their traditional clothing since they learned through experience they would be killed a lot more quickly by these dragons.

Unbelieable presence created when the wealthy found they could actually turn poor people murderously against others, get them to torture, dismember, terrorize, and murder them as long as they kept everyone in such insufferable misery some would do anything for money and security, even if it meant depriving others of their lives.