Humorous memes, irreverence and satire against two former Guatemalan presidents

Abstract

In April 2015, Guatemalans were informed by the Attorney General’s Office and the United Nations-Backed Anti-impunity Commission (Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala –CICIG) that vice president Roxana Baldetti was the leader of a customs fraud network known as La Línea. Baldetti was arrested and, months later, the former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina was also arrested for his implication in the case. Before the arrests, Guatemalans took to the streets to voice their rejection to the corrupt government and to ask for the resignation of both mandataries. Concurrently, numerous humorous memes circulated in social media condemning the behavior of these government leaders. This essay analyzes selected memes that circulated during that period of time and focuses on their satirical, humorous, irreverent and critical function. The analysis is based on M.M Bakhtin’s theory on the carnival and applies it to the Guatemalan context, showing that political memes functioned as a means to counteract fear and to symbolically oppose government corruption.