When the marathon 16-hour day ended in the early hours of January 15 in which Bernardo Arévalo was finally sworn in as president of Guatemala, the then president of Congress, Samuel Pérez, took out a small package from his suit pocket and handed him to his party partner. Amid cries of euphoria of “Yes we could” from his bench colleagues, after a session that was bogged down for several hours due to obstructions by opposition deputies, the congressman from the Semilla Movement gave him a mirror intervened by an artist with the image of the new president in one side and that of his father, former president Juan José Arévalo, on the other.
Bernardo Arévalo had confessed to Samuel Pérez on some occasion that his greatest wish is to be able to continue looking in the mirror without being ashamed when his presidency ends, and he wanted to give his friend a gift so that he does not forget his purpose. That moment when he put the presidential sash on him, it felt like “being completely suffocated and breathing again,” the deputy recalled days later in an interview with EL PAÍS. After an attack of several months from the judicial and legislative powers to try to avoid the investiture at all costs, that night something materialized that, just a few months before, had not even appeared in the best of dreams of those two political leaders who founded Semilla , a party that was founded on the feeling of tiredness of many Guatemalans against corruption. “It was like saying, 'We finally did it.' And finally we managed to do this because what really happened that night in Congress was not improvised at all,” Pérez insists. “We had a single objective which was to win because, if someone else won, there was no transition process, there was no change of power. So we had to risk it all.”
To arrive at the definition of that “iconic night” in which he ended up being elected president of Congress, Pérez says that a perfectly timed choreography was launched by the 23 deputies of Semilla, the third force in the chamber, to treat to obtain support for the board of directors and overcome obstructions from opponents. In their search for allies, they collected data on the relationships they had with the other 137 congressmen, and focused on those they believed could reach some type of consensus. According to what he says, his party made use of “governance and legislative agenda agreements,” while the opposition party—led by the conservative Valor party, one of those that have dominated traditional Guatemalan politics in recent years—“was negotiating.” with corruption money, with threats and extortion,” he denounces.
They finally achieved it, but this Guatemalan-style victory of David against Goliath was short-lived. Four days later, Pérez was forced to give up the presidency following an order from the Constitutional Court (CC) to repeat the election of the Congressional board of directors, a decision he made when accepting a provisional appeal presented by the opposition to the new Government. due to a court case that disqualified Semilla representatives from those positions. Then, the deputy offered a Press conference surrounded by allies in which he announced that he was stepping aside to “protect the governance of the country.” “We are not going to enter into a rigged battle. The CC will not agree with us, even if we are, because its objective is to attack popular sovereignty,” he denounced then.
![Samuel Pérez announces in a press conference on January 18 the decision to give up the presidency of Congress surrounded by his allies.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/twk-pqvExqHdF3r19hC_-JfWLBo=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/62FCBECNXPKB4NX5VHZ55CWSKU.jpg)
In a new vote held the day after, deputy Nery Ramos, of the Blue party, was elected as the new president, a candidate who had the support of Semilla. “We have managed to strengthen governability in Congress, which also greatly strengthens the stability and advancement of a legislative agenda that will give results to the Guatemalan people, and that is regardless of whether we were the ones leading or not,” he told him this Friday. Pérez to EL PAÍS.
For him, putting the well-being of the country ahead of personal or party interests is a sign of the end of a regime and the beginning of a new stage. “Before, if there had been a fight with the Constitutional Court, there would have been threats, there would have been money under the table. At this moment there is not that. There are political agreements, there is discussion, there is openness, people entered the box and are watching the plenary sessions again. I believe that it is the moment of transition between a regime that is ending and a new one that we are beginning to build, but that process takes time,” he says.
The face of a new generation
At 31 years old and having just begun his second term in Congress, Pérez speaks with the poise of a veteran, but with fresher ways that appeal to a new generation of Guatemalans tired of the tricks of old politics and who did not settle for “let them all leave”, but rather they decided to enter the game to change it. Emerging in the heat of the anti-corruption protests of 2015, Semilla was fed by many urban young people like him who came out of university politics. The party came to Congress for the first time in the 2019 elections, in which it won seven seats, including those of Pérez and Arévalo.
When the 1996 peace agreements were signed in Guatemala, which ended a 36-year war and left more than 200,000 dead, Samuel Pérez was only 4 years old. And although he grew up in a wealthy sector of the capital, this graduate in Economics from the Rafael Landívar University did not take long to understand the inequalities of his country, especially when he became a professor. “It is very difficult to have to explain every year that you have to teach classes to a new generation that poverty indicators have increased, that unemployment has increased, that the lack of opportunities and migration are increasing and that ultimately it is not a coincidence or It is not an irreversible trend, but rather they are political decisions,” he maintains. “Knowing that, my decision was to try to influence changing that trend in social indicators.”
Since he was elected deputy, Pérez became a kind of influencer within Semilla and it was not unusual to see him give his opinion in relaxed talks with youtubers, going viral in Tiktok videos for putting on a leather jacket or in videos in which harshly accused the Cacif (the powerful business committee) to maintain a system of privileges that “brings Guatemala down.”
After Arévalo's unexpected victory in the first round in June last year, younger deputies like him were instrumental in bringing the then candidate closer to the new generations through the networks, where they promoted the figure of “Uncle Bernie,” as they called him They also intensified a tour of the different departments of the country to obtain support in the areas furthest from the capital.
In some of those places like Petén, they remember seeing Pérez arrive with Arévalo or fellow deputy Román Castellanos a few years ago to publicize the new ways of doing politics in the markets and squares. Although, as Semilla sources acknowledge, when they arrived only with ideas and empty hands, they were not always well received. For Pérez, traveling to the departments helped him “break barriers” and learn about the diversity of his country, in addition to understanding that “there are different solutions for different problems.”
And if it is about finding solutions, on this occasion it is he who looks in the mirror of President Arévalo, for whom he says he feels a lot of admiration: “He is my party colleague and my friend for years and he has one characteristic, which is ability to listen and be able to change your position based on rational arguments,” he points out. “Perhaps that is something very basic that should be expected of a presidency, but I believe that in reality it is something that is underestimated and is not easy to find in political leadership.”
And about himself: can we expect a new, more conciliatory version in this new legislature compared to the last one in which he stood out, for example, for speaking openly against the privileges of the Cacif? “We deliberately decided with our bloc in the last legislature to assume an opposition role. Right now we overthrow a regime together with the people of Guatemala. So we are in the construction stage, and that implies making broad consensus in social sectors, with different legislative blocks represented here,” responds the deputy. “But that does not mean that we stop paying attention to structural problems. Personally, I continue to believe, and it is also a position of the party, that inequalities must be combated and, sometimes, this comes because market structures are excessively concentrated. And there we have to have a conversation about it.”
It is no secret to anyone that Semilla's commitment to changing the old ways of doing politics is not going to be easy or quick. Pérez is aware of this and, in order not to disappoint his voters, he believes that it will be essential to do pedagogy and communicate decisions well. “This new legislature has the challenge of beginning to find consensus through dialogue and political positions, which is what works in any consolidated or more or less established democracy, but that does not exist here,” he says. “So, perhaps there will be times when it will not be so easy to reach agreements, and that can be seen as a lack of capacity for political maneuver, lack of effectiveness, but in reality perhaps it is simply that there is no political agreement and you cannot win everything. I think that the ability to do pedagogy will allow us to ground expectations.”
![Samuel Pérez president of Congress during an interview in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on January 16, 2024.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/QPniT4eEwJzKwxyjqfsZ76gwsbk=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/7ZFNMTGXEBHBXN4KDUYH4PCLBU.jpg)
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