One Hundred and Six Days of Resistance: Indigenous Peoples and the Defense of Guatemalan Democracy | Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, PhD

This presentation will analyze some of the sociopolitical reasons that drove Guatemalan indigenous communities to lead a historic process of resistance that lasted 106 days and allowed the president-elect to assume the presidency on January 14, 2023. This historical defense of democracy needs to be analyzed beyond a defense of the corrupt settler state and, instead, as a strategy that sought to stop the advance of a corrupt totalitarian state. By centering on how resistance was based on the values and spirit of their own ancestral cultures, the talk will explore how Indigenous communities positioned themselves as national political actors who ended up safeguarding a weak democracy that, even in its agony, allowed them to defend their individual and collective rights.