Guatemala: New Attorney General brings hope

There is good news from Guatemala: With the inauguration of the new Attorney General, Gabriel Estuardo García Luna, in May, there is now hope for change in the judicial system, writes Knut Henkel for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. García Luna’s predecessor, Consuelo Porras, as a representative of the so-called “Pact of the Corrupt,” “had co-opted institutions and criminalized innocent people for years,” analyze Rina Montti and Ingrid Hausinger de Kafie for the Heinrich Böll Foundation. García Luna’s nomination is also, and above all, a success for the broad civil society movements. These movements are active not only within the country itself but also abroad—many judicial employees, journalists, and environmental activists who were persecuted by the Attorney General’s Office for political reasons remain in exile.