Gloria Álvarez

Álvarez first presented a radio broadcast in 2005 when she was 19 years old, and went on to become a professional radio presenter for Los 40.[1] She received significantly increased media attention in 2014, after a speech that she gave at the Ibero-American Youth Parliament.[2] Her discourses against populism were particularly noted, since Álvarez argues that populism has caused political instability in many Latin-American countries.[3]

Álvarez coauthored her first book, called El Engaño Populista (The Populist Deception), with Axel Kaiser in 2016.[4] The authors argue that several types of deception have been central to the project by left-wing politicians and groups to promote populism, including the Spanish political party Podemos and the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa.[5] They use the term populism to describe multiple leftist ideologies, including socialism.[5] They claim that populist thinking is motivated by a contempt for individual freedom, a fixation on self-identifying with victimhood, an opposition to neoliberalism, and the use of both democratic rhetoric and egalitarian rhetoric to increase the power of the state.[5] The book has been lambasted by Alfredo Joignant in Televisión Nacional de Chile as "not withstanding a pregraduate academic jury".[6]

In 2017 Álvarez wrote a book called ¿Cómo hablar con un progre? ("How to talk to a progressive?"), and in 2018 she wrote a sequel called ¿Cómo hablar con un conservador?[7][8] ("How to talk to a conservative?").[1] Both books are directed at libertarians, and aim to teach them how to persuade people of different political ideologies.[1]

Álvarez was a member of the civic organization Movimiento Cívico Nacional, but left the organization in 2017 in response to allegations that the organization's director had received improper payments.[9] She described her departure as necessary to maintain her political principles.[10][11] In November 2021, the case that led to the resignation of Gloria Álvarez from the Movimiento Cívico Nacional was resolved, proving the innocence of the former director by the Courts. [12]

On March 11, 2019, Álvarez announced that she would run for president in the 2019 Guatemalan general election.[13] However, the National Election Council rejected her application because she was 34 years old and the minimum required age for a candidate for President of Guatemala is 40.[14] She ran on an orthodox libertarian platform, and noted that all the women who had previously been successful in Guatemalan politics had been socialists.[13] Álvarez argued that populist and socialist policies have historically been a cause of democratic breakdowns in Latin America.[13] Her proposals included reductions in government spending such as decreasing the size of the civil service and the repeal of socially conservative laws like the ban on adoption by same-sex couples, but she also proposed significant funding for military and police forces.[13] She suggested that other policy options included the legalization of marijuana, abortion, euthanasia, and prostitution.[13]

During an interview in which Álvarez was asked about the Guatemalan genocide, she replied: "I wouldn't categorize what happened in Guatemala as a genocide (…), actually there's an industry of victimization that benefits from recreate the conflict and because of that we never forgive".[15]