Guatemalans are voting to elect a new president, hoping that the country’s next leader will provide relief from rising prices and get a handle on crime and corruption. The two candidates offe…
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN and SONIA PÉREZ D.
Central America’s most populous country and the region’s largest economy continues to struggle with widespread poverty and violence that have driven hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans to migrate to the U.S. in recent years. The 42-year-old tractor-trailer driver said he hoped Guatemala’s powerful would respect the will of the voters. He wants someone to tackle corruption and improve education and the economy. Without those things, Guatemalans will continue to migrate to the U.S. like two of his co-workers recently had.
The 25-year-old student lives in Villa Nueva, a gritty hillside suburb above the capital. Thieves and gangs that extort businesses and kill those who don’t pay roam its cratered streets. González said she has had the possessions she carried stolen multiple times, making her nervous to venture out alone.
Earlier in the day, residents of Santo Domingo Xenacoj lined up to vote at the local primary school in the mountains about an hour west of the capital. The Volcano of Fire puffed in the distance as men in jackets and women in traditional embroidered blouses wrapped in shawls against the chill came out to vote.
Clara Top, a 43-year-old seamstress in town, said she voted for Torres, because she has promised to give poor families monthly bags of food staples. “She helps the most needy,” Top said. Torres, in her closing campaign event Friday in Guatemala City’s sprawling central market, suggested she would not accept a result that didn’t go her way. “We’re going to defend vote by vote because today democracy is at risk because they want to steal the elections,” she said.
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