U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio seeks cooperation on migration in Guatemala this Wednesday, where President Bernardo Arévalo hopes for support from the new U.S. administration to remain firm in power. On his first trip to Latin America as U.S. chief diplomat, Rubio meets Wednesday with Arévalo, with whom he dined Tuesday in Guatemala City’s historic center.
Former senator Rubio, a Cuban-American and fierce opponent of Latin American leftists, has sought in his new role to strengthen U.S. relations with conservatives in the region. An exception is Guatemala, where the social democratic president is not ideologically aligned but has worked to avoid friction with Donald Trump’s new government.
Arévalo, a sociologist and former diplomat born in exile after a Washington-backed coup in 1954, is the son of a former president and achieved a surprising victory in 2023 with the banner of fighting corruption in one of the region’s poorest countries. That promise immediately put him at odds with Guatemala’s entrenched conservative elite, who tried to prevent him from taking office.
Right-wing parties alleged electoral fraud, without providing evidence, and found support in Washington from Trump supporters. But Arévalo had the backing of Joe Biden’s government.
Extraordinary Ally
Since Trump’s return to the White House, Arévalo has avoided friction over the mass deportation policy of migrants. Guatemala quickly accepted military flights with deported citizens, shackled and transported in a military plane, unlike Colombia, whose leftist leader advocated for better treatment but backed down after Trump threatened retaliation.
Arévalo’s government “in two weeks has turned out to be an extraordinary ally particularly in helping us deal with migration issues,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America. Guatemala also satisfies the Trump administration as it is the most populous country that still recognizes Taiwan, the democratically governed island that China claims as part of its territory.
Rubio, visiting Costa Rica on Tuesday, where ties with Taiwan were broken to recognize China in 2007, promised to support Latin American nations in their fight against Chinese influence. On Sunday in the Panamanian capital, where he began his tour, Rubio warned the government that Chinese influence around the strategic Panama Canal must be reduced.
Deportation, Not Aid
Guatemala is one of the largest sources of migration to the United States after decades of poverty, violence, and political instability. According to the Guatemalan foreign ministry, about 3.2 million Guatemalans live in the United States. Hundreds of thousands irregularly.
The United States, under previous administrations, tried to address the root causes of migration through on-the-ground support. The Secretary of State’s trip has been overshadowed by measures taken in Washington by Trump, including the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), of which Rubio is now acting head.
USAID, whose officials worldwide are being sent home by Trump, executed about $178 million in projects in Guatemala in 2023. Another source of migration is El Salvador, whose popular President Nayib Bukele has eagerly courted the Trump administration. Meeting with Rubio on Monday, Bukele offered to accept prisoners from the United States, migrants or American criminals, an outsourcing of the prison system without recent precedent in a democratic country.
Bukele has managed to reduce crime through mass arrests without judicial warrants, criticized by human rights groups because it has included innocents. At the end of Wednesday, Rubio will travel to the Dominican Republic, whose president, Luis Abinader, defends a Trump-style hard line in chronically unstable and impoverished Haiti, including starting wall construction and increasing deportations.
