Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo has selected Gabriel Garcia Luna on May 5 as the new Attorney General (AG) and head of the Public Ministry. He replaces Consuelo Porras, who under presidents Biden and Trump was on the USG list of corrupt actors ineligible for a visa. Garcia Luna has a strong professional reputation, and Arevalo has clear he will respect the new AG’s independence. Garcia Luna inherits an AG office that for eight years under Porras has consistently dropped or stalled prosecutions of grand corruption, and which instead has prosecuted, or pushed into exile, persons who had investigated corruption or who had opposed her failed attempt to invalidate the 2023 elections. The AG politicized justice like no other AG had done in 41 years of democratic rule. The prospect of change, of an independent and non-partisan prosecutorial service, unnerves Guatemalans who relied upon grand corruption and a compliant Public Ministry as political and economic tools. It is also bad news for narcotics traffickers and human smugglers who prefer to operate in a corrupt environment. For over 15 years, Guatemalan institutions – the executive branch, judiciary, and the attorney general – have cooperated with US law enforcement investigations and extraditions. Garcia Luna is most likely to continue and to improve this cooperation. Garcia Luna’s appointment should encourage the Trump administration, since a more independent and credible Guatemalan judicial system will not only do better in prosecuting organized crime, traffickers, and gangs, but will also enable the long-term economic growth and political stability that in turn reduces the push for Guatemalans to emigrate to the US. With Guatemala’s attorney general and the police lined up against organized crime, the US has a major opportunity. The big questions about the AG’s office, as Garcia Luna prepares to take over, are the extent to which grand corruption and organized crime have grown and infiltrated institutions, the extent to which the AG's office enabled this, what measures to take to address these distortions, restore justice, and to ensure that they cannot be repeated, and how to respond to efforts by status quo politicians and operators to block change. Specific major challenges facing Garcia Luna: 1) The network of prosecutors who advised and implemented Porras’ decisions to drop cases or imprison opponents. They will try to burrow in; their victims will seek justice; 2) How to answer Guatemalans’ demands for better citizen security and actions against extortion and gang activity; 3) What to do about existing prosecutions of reporters, indigenous leaders, and former corruption prosecutors and judges, and of those forced into exile. Victims seek release; there will be calls to investigate spurious prosecutions; 4) The status of AG units, including the wiretap unit and counternarcotics and organized crime units, that US law enforcement relies upon and which the US previously supported; 5) Opposition by the “pact of the corrupt;” while now on its back foot, this group views Garcia Luna’s appointment as an existential threat, and will use its influence in the courts to stymie him; 6) Opposition by some politicians and wealthy families, including those who financed lobbyists in the US, who at the best are skeptical about Garcia Luna’s appointment and its implications for their ambitions, and who are susceptible to fear and resentment. Underlying this is a lack of consensus on what judicial independence and accountability really mean for persons with power. Garcia Luna has the opportunity to define them as Attorney General. #Guatemala #FiscalGeneral #ConsueloPorras #GarciaLuna #Arevalo #USEmbassyGuatemala