Dear all,
We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM).
In the 2026 Western Hemisphere of the Donroe Doctrine, one thing is certain: the relationship between organized crime and politics is no longer tolerable. This is especially true for countries that want to remain on the U.S. Government's good side. Never has that been clearer, and Guatemala just got a taste of it. During previous electoral processes, the filter was the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, which sometimes contributed to a highly politicized selection process. The filter is now becoming a matter of self-regulation.
While the cancellation of Roberto Arzú’s would-be candidacy has been described by some outlets as the result of differences between him and the party, it cannot be understood without the broader context of his relationship with the world of organized crime. It is no surprise, therefore, that CABAL (his former political party) finally ditched him after a long series of organized-crime-related controversies. But most revealing is the fact that they did it the same week that mysterious operatives captured recognized drug traffickers in the country and just six weeks after his involvement in the plot to murder Rodrigo Arenas was denounced. There are no coincidences in politics.
Arzú became toxic to his own party—one that is not exempt from controversy itself—to the point where carrying his candidacy became too much of a liability, even though he was one of the highest-polling prospective candidates. After all, no amount of popularity is worth the risk of losing your candidate to an arrest—or even extradition—just months before an election.
Let this be a message to all parties that the days of narco-politics are coming to an end. The Trump Administration has made that clear. And to all those candidates out there who answer to criminal interests, get the hint:
Do not run.
In this issue, you will find:
A Lesson for Narco-Politicians: Don't Run for President
Brazil to the Ballot Box: Will Bolsonaro Jr. Turn It Around?
As always, please feel free to share GCaM with your friends and colleagues. We all, at the GCaM team, wish you a good weekend, and we thank you for your support, now more than ever.
If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, you may click here to subscribe.
|
||||||||
A Lesson for Narco-Politicians: Don't Run for President
781 words | 6 minutes reading time
Guatemala’s 2027 campaign has not officially begun, yet one of its most visible presidential projects has already collapsed. That should matter far beyond Roberto Arzú.
In perspective. On September 29, the CABAL party announced that Arzú was leaving the party, effectively ending the political alliance through which he had been preparing another presidential run. The official statement described the separation as a mutual agreement. Reporting from La Hora, however, depicts a relationship that had been deteriorating for weeks amid disputes involving campaign funds, control over candidacies, and commitments allegedly made outside the party leadership. Sources claimed that some positions had even been promised to multiple people. These may have been the immediate causes of the rupture, but they also illustrate a much larger problem that every Guatemalan party should consider before 2027.
A presidential candidate brings much more into a party than votes. He brings his entire history with him. And the CABAL party ditching Arzú—whose trajectory was already well known and documented when they took him in—just six weeks after his involvement in the plot to murder Rodrigo Arenas was revealed, is no coincidence.
Just two days later, CABAL announced that Mayor Miguel Augusto Jordán Canales, from Los Amates, Izabal—a well-known and documented hotspot for cocaine smuggling towards the U.S.—was also expelled from the party.
This becomes especially revealing, given the context of the mysterious operatives to capture Haroldo Waldemar Lorenzana Terraza, a renowned drug dealer from Zacapa, as well as the visit of five U.S. federal attorneys to “advance the policy of eliminating cartels and transnational criminal organizations, securing borders, and protecting American citizens from transnational threats,” as stated by the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala. All in the same week. Timing, in politics, is never uncalculated.
Between the lines. Arzú was never an ordinary political recruit. His trajectory already included two presidential attempts, a long history of business and financial controversies, disputes involving unpaid political consulting bills, contradictory public claims, and financing with questionable figures associated with organized crime. La Hora, for example, has documented his relationship with the “Los Caradura,” a criminal structure under narcotrafficking investigations, and the infamous narcomoney launderer Rodrigo Lainfiesta.
The point is not to relitigate every accusation surrounding Arzú. The political lesson is simpler: why would a party willingly inherit that amount of risk?
A candidate can bring name recognition, supporters, and territorial organization while simultaneously exposing the institution carrying him to reputational damage, internal conflict, and legal uncertainty.
Eventually, those liabilities can become pricier than whatever electoral advantage initially justified accepting them. The CABAL party appears to have reached that common-sense calculation before it was too late.
Why it matters. The point goes way beyond merely ethics. Candidate selection is institutional risk management. Arzú already demonstrated this problem in 2023, when the TSE reversed his registration over an anticipatory campaigning dispute, and he ultimately remained outside the election. The CABAL party now finds itself searching for another presidential prospect less than two months before its scheduled November 28 assembly. For another party considering Arzú—or any similarly controversial candidate—the stakes could be considerably higher once the electoral calendar begins.
It is detrimental to any campaign to invest months in organization, money and political capital around a candidate only to discover shortly before an election that he cannot run. International investigations can also generate consequences completely beyond a party’s control.
In Guatemala’s current geopolitical environment, candidates with meaningful exposure to organized crime must also consider Washington a risk that has proven to no longer be theoretical.
Washington is explicit about treating narcotrafficking and the political structures protecting it as a hemispheric security issue. A Guatemalan party contemplating a candidate surrounded by serious criminal exposure has to evaluate risks extending far beyond Guatemala’s electoral authorities.
The lesson. Refusing to entrust a political institution to somebody whose trajectory makes him a liability should be ordinary common sense. Guatemala’s parties still have time to decide what kind of candidates they will offer voters in 2027. They should examine personal histories before nominations rather than explain them afterward. Investigating where campaign money comes from before accepting and examining whom candidates associate with before those relationships become scandals should be a standard practice. They should ask whether the person seeking the presidency possesses the ethical standards expected from someone entrusted with the state.
Above all, they should understand that a political party cannot safely function as a vehicle through which people associated with organized crime seek political power.
The consequences extend beyond one candidate. A radioactive presidential nominee can contaminate congressional candidates, municipal organizations, donors, and activists who had nothing to do with his previous behavior.
If that nominee subsequently becomes legally unavailable, the entire institution pays for a gamble made at the top.
In conclusion. The CABAL party has learned that lesson months before the campaign formally begins. It can still reorganize, but other parties may not get that luxury if they do not learn from this case. The temptation will remain because questionable candidates often arrive with precisely what weak political institutions desperately need: money, recognition, networks and an existing electoral base. But organized crime understands political power as protection, and Guatemala has paid too high a price for allowing the boundary between the two to disappear.
The first lesson of 2027 has therefore arrived early. Parties should choose candidates whose records strengthen their institutions rather than threaten them, and narco-politicians are the biggest threat possible.
Those carrying serious criminal relationships or exposure should understand that an election is neither a shield from justice nor an insurance policy against consequences.
For Guatemala’s narco-politicians contemplating the next election, there is still time to make one responsible decision: don’t run.
|
||||||||
Two days before Brazilians vote, an election that appeared to be slipping away from Flávio Bolsonaro has become one of the closest presidential contests in the country’s recent history.
In perspective. The first round takes place tomorrow, Sunday, October 4. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva remains ahead in most first-round polls and neither candidate appears remotely close to the 50% required to avoid an October 25 runoff. But the first round is increasingly looking like the preliminary bout. The election that matters is Lula versus Bolsonaro three weeks later—and that race has changed dramatically. When GCaM examined the race on August 22, prediction markets were brutal for Bolsonaro.
Polymarket gave Lula approximately a 64% probability of winning the presidency and Flávio only 33%.
It was consistent with what conventional polling appeared to be saying: Bolsonaro could consolidate his father’s political movement, but defeating Lula was another matter entirely. Six weeks later, the market has reversed.
As of Friday afternoon, Polymarket gives Bolsonaro roughly a 56.5% probability of becoming Brazil’s next president, against 44% for Lula. That represents a swing of more than 23 percentage points for Bolsonaro from where the market stood when we last examined it.
How it works. Prediction markets are not polls, much less crystal balls. They measure what traders believe will happen rather than what voters tell pollsters they intend to do. But that distinction is precisely why we watch them. Markets absorb polling, campaign developments, political information, and expectations about what happens next, including how voters eliminated in the first round may redistribute themselves in the runoff. And right now, traders see a fundamentally different election.
Part of Bolsonaro’s recovery is simply consolidation. Brazil’s election spent much of the year fragmented among several alternatives to Lula.
As the campaign approached its conclusion, the electorate increasingly returned to the two political camps that have dominated Brazilian politics since 2018.
Datafolha has found Bolsonaro strengthening among evangelical voters and the middle class, while voters who had experimented with third-party candidates have increasingly returned to either Lula or the Bolsonaro camp. That matters enormously in a runoff.
Between the lines. Datafolha’s September 21 survey found Bolsonaro leading Lula 39% to 33% among voters who identify with neither lulismo nor bolsonarismo. More importantly, voters supporting smaller candidates leaned disproportionately toward Bolsonaro in a second round: among Augusto Cury’s supporters, 44% preferred Bolsonaro against 32% for Lula; among Ronaldo Caiado’s, the split was 42% to 27%. In other words, Lula may enter Sunday with more votes, while Bolsonaro could enter October 25 with more room to grow.
The economy has also complicated Lula’s reelection argument. Brazil can point to low unemployment, falling inequality and moderating inflation, yet those macroeconomic achievements have not translated neatly into how households perceive their circumstances.
Nearly half of Brazilians recently said the economy had worsened over the previous year, with food prices, debt and high borrowing costs continuing to weigh heavily on household sentiment.
That creates the classic incumbent’s problem: voters experience prices at the supermarket more directly than they experience improvements in national statistics.
The polls. Traditional polling confirms the tightening, although not the Bolsonaro advantage suggested by Polymarket. The latest AtlasIntel/Bloomberg survey, conducted September 23–28 among more than 5,000 voters, has Lula ahead in the first round 45.3% to 42.2%. But its hypothetical runoff produces an extraordinary result: 47.7% Bolsonaro, 47.6% Lula. The difference is one tenth of one percentage point, with a one-point margin of error. Datafolha is somewhat better for Lula.
Its newest survey gives the president 45% of valid first-round votes against Bolsonaro’s 40%, and a hypothetical runoff of 48% to 45%. Yet that too qualifies as a statistical tie, and 17% of respondents say they could still change their vote.
Look beyond those two pollsters and the uncertainty becomes even clearer. Recent runoff surveys have produced 46–45 for Bolsonaro in Real Time Big Data, 49–43.5 for Bolsonaro in Futura, 47–45 in Palver, 42–42 in Quaest, and narrow Lula advantages elsewhere.
This isn’t one rogue poll creating an illusion of competitiveness. Different methodologies are producing different leaders because the electorate itself is extraordinarily close.
Why it matters. Lula remains extraordinarily strong among lower-income voters and dominates the Northeast. Datafolha currently gives him a 56–26 advantage there. Bolsonaro, however, dominates the South, leads substantially among evangelicals and performs better among middle- and higher-income Brazilians.
Datafolha’s newest state polling has Bolsonaro ahead in Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District and numerically ahead in São Paulo, while Lula leads Minas Gerais.
São Paulo alone contains roughly one-fifth of Brazil’s electorate; Minas has historically been one of the country’s crucial presidential bellwethers.
That leaves Sunday with an importance extending beyond simply determining who reaches the second round.
Watch the margins. If Lula finishes several points ahead, he enters the runoff having demonstrated that his coalition remains the largest in Brazil. If Bolsonaro closes the first-round gap to only two or three points—or performs above the polling average—the Polymarket reversal will suddenly look considerably less speculative. The smaller candidates will matter as well. Bolsonaro does not need all of their voters.
He needs enough of the anti-Lula electorate currently parked elsewhere to consolidate behind him while preventing Lula from expanding beyond his existing coalition. Six weeks ago, the arithmetic looked unfavorable, but today, it is entirely plausible.
Something fundamental has nevertheless changed since August. Bolsonaro has recovered roughly 24 points in the market we have been following, erased most of Lula’s advantage in conventional runoff polling, and entered election weekend with a credible path to the presidency.
On Sunday, Brazil votes. Three weeks later, barring an extraordinary first-round result, it will almost certainly have to do it again. And unlike six weeks ago, nobody can confidently say which man enters that second election with the upper hand.
|
||||||||
