A popular comedian known for performing in blackface was named the winner of Guatemala’s presidential elections on Sunday. Jimmy Morales won around 70 percent of the vote, with 94 percent of polling stations tallied in a run-off election against former Guatemalan first lady Sandra Torres.
“With this vote you made me president,” Morales said in a televised speech after results were announced. “I have received a mandate, and the mandate of the people of Guatemala is to fight against the corruption that has consumed us.”
While Morales did win a majority of votes, he didn’t win a clear mandate. Only half of eligible voters cast ballots — a message that they’ve lost confidence in the political processes of the country.
Morales attempted to capitalize on his “outsider” status in a political scene strewn scandal. He campaigned on the slogan “not corrupt, not a thief” — a reference to the multi-million dollar public sector scandal that forced President Perez Molina and his former vice president Roxana Baldetti to resign amid public outcry last month. The two are currently in jail awaiting trial for charges of corruption, illicit association, and bribery.
The former comedian also has ties to another longstanding issue in Guatemalan history — the massacre of indigenous Mayans in the mid-1980s. President Efrain Rios Montt is still mired in judicial proceedings over his role in the genocide of more than 1,700 indigenous Mayan Guatemalans. Morales is backed by some of the business and military power-brokers who have been implicated in the killings, connections his predecessor shared.
The New York Times reported: “He ran a campaign that was thin on specifics, backed by a political party founded by rightist military officers associated with Guatemala’s long, brutal civil war. As Mr. Morales climbed in the polls, promising change, many in the business elite threw their support behind him, including the powerful confederation known as Cacif and the owner of Guatemala’s broadcast television monopoly.”
Some human rights advocates believe the wealthy Guatemalans who make up Cacif supported the military in cracking down on indigenous Mayans.
Kelsey Alford-Jones of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA told ThinkProgress earlier this year, “The economic elite aided the Guatemalan military in their operations on a number of occasions.”
In his TV shows, as a comedian, he always makes fun of indigenous people, our customs or the way we speak.
Some members of the Mayan community are personally troubled by Morales — not because of his allies, but because of his comedy.
Morales is most famous for donning blackface and a large afro to play a hapless character named “Black Dragonfruit.”
“For me, especially, he is racist,” Andrea Ixchíu a Mayan human rights activist said. “In his TV shows, as a comedian, he always makes fun of indigenous people, our customs or the way we speak. So I personally don’t like him.”
Morales has defended the blackface portrayal — which continues to appear on beauty products and shampoo bottles — by claiming that he adores the country’s indigenous communities.