Mario Duarte, Guatemala’s secretary of strategic intelligence, credited “policies of failure” pushed by Democrats in the State Department with driving migration from Central and South America to the U.S., offering his response to Beto O’Rourke’s analysis of the phenomenon in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
“As an official of the Guatemalan government, to be honest, there are many factors that have actually affected and caused the migration of our citizens to other countries, especially to the United States,” Duarte said. “Climate change, I would say, is somehow up there on the list, but in my view, personally, one of the major reasons we have this issue is because of the failed policies that Democrats have tried to impose on Guatemala and other Latin American countries.”
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Duarte continued, “What am I talking about? To give you an example, we have had, in the past, State Department officials identifying themselves as Democrats. “On the day that President Trump was elected, those officials ultimately pushed for specific judges to be appointed to our highest courts in Guatemala — the Constitutional Court.”
Duarte went on, “And what happens when these magistrates or judges were appointed? They started with all these social justice warriors. [They] took away a lot of the rights of companies to be able to run their businesses in a fair way, and they even affected U.S. companies.”
Left-wing jurisprudence applied by judges and magistrates installed into Guatemalan courts under State Department pressure spreads unemployment and poverty, assessed Duarte.
“[One company]…. lost hundreds of millions of dollars because these socialist magistrates on the Constitutional Court that were put there — forced there — by Democrats in the State Department here in Guatemala,” Duarte stated. “Now you have all these companies closing down here, and all these people that are unemployed, they have to go somewhere to survive.”
Migrant caravans sent to the U.S. are “political weapons” used by leftists — both in the U.S. and abroad — to undermine American sovereignty, Duarte explained.
“That’s not an organic caravan,” said Duarte of migrant caravans originating in Central America. “That’s not simply happening because we are out of jobs. Those were actually provoked caravans. It is the weaponizing of those who live in our country. They have been used as political weapons [against] the border of the United States.”
Migrant caravans were organized “by several United States NGOs,” Duarte noted, “some of them in California and some of them in Chicago.” Left-wing U.S.-based NGOs “work with local NGOs in Guatemala and El Salvador to facilitate the movement of all these people to the United States.”
“The root cause of migration,” said Duarte, is “the lack of opportunities for people to work in our country,” adding, “Climate change is being used as an excuse for poor planning all over the globe” by those subscribing to “communist ideology.”
Duarte remarked, “It goes back to the policies of failure that people have tried to impose on Guatemala. I’m talking about … Democrats in the U.S. government, certain European countries, and even the UN. So we have socialist-oriented magistrates in the Constitutional Court forcing big companies [and] big businesses to shut down and lay off a lot of people, people with big families. These people have to eat and they have to survive, so they will look for an opportunity somewhere else.”
“These are the same magistrates, so you know, who are right now ruling against President Morales, and are trying to block him from signing this migration cooperation agreement with President Trump,” Duarte stated. “The same people that have shut down all these companies are also trying to block these agreements.”
Left-wing policies billed as “international development” stultify Guatemala’s economic development, said Duarte. Guatemalans want work, not welfare, he added.
“What we need in Guatemala is not foreign aid,” Duarte arraigned. “What we need is investment. We need companies to come in here, but we also need our judicial system to be left alone, because we are a capitalist country, in the end.”
Duarte continued, “We fought communism. We pushed it back. It didn’t grow roots in our society, but it was not routed out, unfortunately. Their policies of failure did not grow roots in our country. In the end, people want to work. They want an opportunity. They want to prosper on their own. They don’t want a handout. We don’t want Guatemala to turn into Venezuela or Nicaragua. We don’t want our people to end up eating their pets because they don’t have anything else, and that’s what some people are trying to force on us.”
Left-wing policies and associated political corruption damage Guatemala’s ability to attract investment and development.
“Investment is going to be secured and effective in our country only when rule of law is actually protected and implemented and not subverted by socialist ideas,” noted Duarte. “There has been corruption in our country for a long time. There is a difference between helping us combat corruption, and forcing us to adopt a socialist corrupt ideology in our system.
Heads of state must prioritize their citizens’ interests, concluded Duarte. “On the campaign trail, [Donald Trump] said he was going to put America first, and that’s what he’s doing. He’s putting the interests of the American citizen and the country first.”
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