Regulation change means US gun sales to Guatemala have doubled in last three years, increasing instability

A sharp rise in the sale of semiautomatic firearms to Guatelama over the last three years has made the Central American country the leading destination for US guns in Latin America as it struggles with renewed political instability in the buildup to a critical presidential election run-off.

According to a new report in Bloomberg, Guatemala’s new status as the largest importer of US semiautomatic weapons has coincided with a surge in violence in the country: its murder rate began increasing again in 2019 after a sustained, years-long decline and waves of migrants are pushing north into Mexico and the US.

That the rise in the murder rate began in 2019 may not be coincidental: that was the same year the US began allowing the importation of semiautomatic weapons into Guatemala.

The situation has created a serious contradiction: while the US State Department and officials like Vice President Kamala Harris have worked to curb immigration from Guatemala brought about in part by violence in the country, the US Commerce Department has said that the country’s relative lawlessness presents a “unique opportunity” for gun manufacturers.

The increased volatility comes as the country is in a battle for the future of its democracy. In June, a Guatemalan court sentenced prominent journalist José Rubén Zamora to six years in prison for money laundering in what activists decried as an assault on press freedom and human rights in the country.

Mr Zamora, the founder of the influential investigative newspaper El Periódico, had last year published reporting on government corruption prior to his arrest. Following his incarceration, El Periódico moved to an exclusively online format and then shut down completely.

His sentence was handed down just days before Guatemalans headed to the polls to vote for their next president in an election marred by the disqualification of multiple leading candidates by the country’s courts.

Perhaps as a result, an atypically high number of Guatemalans marked their presidential ballots blank — possibly as a means of registering a protest against the country’s elite class.

The result of the election was interpreted as a protest as well: an unheralded centre-left candidate, Bernardo Arévalo, advanced to the run-off against right-wing opponent Sandra Torres.

Mr Arévalo, a 64-year-old who served in the national government in the 1990s, has one of the most recognisable names in Guatemalan politics: his father, Juan José Arévalo, was the country’s first-ever democratically elected president in 1945. His predecessor in office, Jacobo Árbenz, was the victim of a US-backed coup that dramatically changed the trajectory of the country’s modern history.

Mr Arévalo, who has staked his campaign on an anti-corruption message, is the polling leader at this stage in the run-off against Ms Torres, though observers have expressed concerns about interference from the Guatemalan political establishment led by outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei.

If Mr Arévalo defies the long odds he faced earlier this year and wins the August 20 election, his task of curbing violence may be made all the more difficult by the increasing number of US-manufactured firearms present.