The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Financial Crimes during the Guatemalan Internal Armed Conflict

Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies | Vol. 12, No. 9, September 2021 | pp. 73–81

DOI: 10.46882/2021/GJPCS/120901

Article Type: Original Research Paper

Title: The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Financial Crimes during the Guatemalan Internal Armed Conflict

Authors: Maria Camila Gomez¹, Ziad H. Al-Rifai²

Authors’ Affiliations: ¹Department of Political Science, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia; ²Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Abstract:
Transitional justice initiatives heavily prioritize documenting state human rights abuses, while routinely ignoring corporate complicity in financial crimes and illegal land confiscations during civil conflicts. This paper evaluates the structural limitations of post-conflict Guatemala’s reconciliation models concerning the prosecution of commercial agrarian networks that actively financed paramilitary violence. Utilizing comprehensive legal archival datasets, agrarian tax records, and human rights databases from 1996 to 2020, we measure the long-term socioeconomic impacts of omitting corporate accountability from early peace agreements. The quantitative analysis reveals that industrial agro-businesses that profited from rural land confiscations avoided financial restitution, leaving structural economic imbalances uncorrected. Our statistical models demonstrate that regions with high historical corporate land capture report a 40% increase in localized social protests and agrarian labor disputes. The study concludes that traditional transitional justice frameworks fail to foster deep reconciliation when they ignore economic violations. We argue that modern democratic stability requires integrating binding corporate accountability frameworks directly into transitional justice mechanisms.

Keywords: Political Economy; Transitional Justice; Corporate Complicity; Guatemala Conflict; Land Capture; Structural Inequality

Manuscript Timeline: Received: June 10, 2020; Revised: August 20, 2020; Accepted: October 15, 2020; Published: September 12, 2021

Citation: Gomez, M. C., & Al-Rifai, Z. H. (2021). The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Financial Crimes during the Guatemalan Internal Armed Conflict. Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, 12(9), 73–81. DOI: 10.46882/2021/GJPCS/120901

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