Charlie Neibergall/AP

Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jan. 11, 2024.

Nikki Haley has made Steph Herold feel excited about a presidential candidate “for the first time in a long time.”

The former South Carolina governor speaks to Ms. Herold’s concerns about fiscal responsibility and military preparedness. She brings years of political experience to the job. Perhaps most important, she “doesn’t dis or talk badly about people.”  

A retired graphic designer and lifelong Republican voter, Ms. Herold comes from a long line of Iowa conservatives: Her father, Bob Van Vooren, was Ronald Reagan’s state campaign chair. Over the past two decades, she voted for George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. And in 2016 and 2020, she voted for Donald Trump. 

“That’s not something I like to tell people,” she says, laughing nervously from her home in a West Des Moines suburb, where she’s babysitting her granddaughter. A Haley sign sticks out of her snowy front yard. “I was never a Trump supporter; he just happened to be our candidate. For the life of me, I’m not even sure how he made it through.” 

Iowa GOP caucus victories used to be built on voters like Ms. Herold. That all changed, however, in 2016, when “we saw one of the biggest realignments in American political history,” says New Hampshire GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett. With his unconventional populist campaign, Mr. Trump upended years of Republican orthodoxy and expedited a great scrambling of the two parties’ electorates, bringing a flood tide of white, working-class voters – a onetime staple of the Democratic Party – into the Republican fold.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Steph Herold, pictured here at a Jan. 9 event for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in Waukee, Iowa, volunteers for the campaign by passing out caucus cards for the presidential hopeful.

These voters have given Mr. Trump a powerful base of support in Iowa. Just days before Monday’s vote, a new Suffolk poll finds Ms. Haley has moved into second place, but is still running more than 30 points behind the former president. Notably, Mr. Trump’s strongest support comes from Iowans with a high school diploma or less, whereas Ms. Haley performs best among those with advanced degrees, like Ms. Herold.

This divide along education lines gives Mr. Trump a distinct advantage, since there are more voters without college degrees than with. (It also helps explain why the race is much closer in New Hampshire, which has a higher percentage of college-educated voters.) 

But while the GOP will likely never go back to being the party it once was, it also won’t be the “party of Trump” forever. And every four years, parties redefine themselves, in one way or another. Mr. Trump’s dominance among working-class voters, which surveys suggest may now be extending to some voters of color, could shape the party’s identity in an even more populist mold this cycle. Or higher-educated, previously reluctant Trump voters – tired of the drama, or frustrated by new abortion restrictions, or worried about winning in the November general election – could start to nudge things in a different direction. 

“Parties ebb and flow, and I think that’s good. You have to change with the times,” says Ms. Herold. “I look at myself: From 19-year-old me, goodness gracious, I’ve changed – and that’s good.” 

Willie Glosser’s shift

During the final days of the campaign here in Iowa, hundreds of voters have been tracking snow into pubs and event halls to see Ms. Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is competing with her for second place in the polls. Many say they’re specifically looking for a Republican who isn’t Mr. Trump.

But their numbers pale in comparison with the thousands of Trump supporters lining up in freezing temperatures for hours ahead of his rallies.

Courtesy of Willie Glosser

Willie Glosser stands in his home in Indianola, Iowa, snowed in by a storm, Jan. 12, 2024.

“I don’t think there’s anything that could happen to keep Trump from being the Republicans’ nominee,” says Willie Glosser, a subcontractor who lives in Indianola, a city south of Des Moines, and is married with 10 children. Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley seem like strong candidates, he allows, “but neither of them are Trump.” 

Before 2016, Mr. Glosser, who never attended college, didn’t really pay close attention to politics. He voted in most presidential elections, mostly for Republicans, “but not all the time.” He watched with only mild interest as Mr. Trump launched his first run for president. Soon, however, he found himself all in.  

Mr. Glosser had always wondered about government corruption and had concerns about what was happening at the U.S.-Mexico border. All of that “got illuminated” when Mr. Trump came on the scene. Mr. Glosser started attending Trump rallies and watching debates for the first time. He even hosted candidate forums for school board and sheriff at his house. 

“Trump not only says he fights for the little guy – I believe we saw it,” says Mr. Glosser, who voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections and plans to attend his first caucus on Monday. “He had the ability to make us feel important to him.” 

In 1992, when Democrat Bill Clinton ousted Republican George H.W. Bush from the White House, 55% of voters whose education ended with high school identified as Democrats, while the GOP was home to more college graduates. Three decades later, those numbers have reversed. Fifty-one percent of the Democratic electorate nationwide in 2022 held either a college or postgraduate degree, compared with just 37% of Republicans. 

Alyssa Pointer/Reuters

People listen as Donald Trump Jr. campaigns for his father, former President Donald Trump, at the Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, ahead of the state’s caucus vote, Jan. 11, 2024.

“I think [Mr. Trump] has awakened a new portion of people out there who have never been a part of the process and felt neglected,” says Ms. Herold, who’s wearing a sweatshirt from her alma mater, Iowa State (“Go Cyclones!” she says). “They have felt like, ‘Nobody cares about us,’ and for some reason they think Trump does.”

Balancing act for Haley

Ms. Haley’s candidacy is staked on the hope that strong support from college graduates, along with some Trump-weary voters from the party’s working-class base, will make for a winning combination. But it’s a difficult balancing act.

At an event Thursday in Ankeny, a suburb north of Des Moines where the median household income is over $100,000 and 98% of residents have a college degree, Ms. Haley delivered the same careful stump speech that she’s laid out across the Hawkeye State (though mostly in Des Moines and its suburbs). 

“I think President Trump was the right president at the right time to break the things that we needed,” said Ms. Haley, to roughly 200 voters in an event space strung with bistro lights. “I agree with a lot of his policies, but rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him.”

Some in the room of well-dressed Iowans (men in button-down shirts and sweaters with elbow patches, women carrying Louis Vuitton bags) nodded in agreement. More than half the people in the room raised their hand when asked if they were seeing Ms. Haley for the first time.

Critics have accused Ms. Haley, as well as Mr. DeSantis, of being unwilling to attack Mr. Trump forcefully enough. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who exited the GOP presidential field this week, said flatly that any candidate too afraid to call Mr. Trump “unfit” to be president was “unfit themselves.” He was also caught on a hot mic predicting that Ms. Haley will “get smoked.” 

But to Mr. Bartlett, the New Hampshire strategist, the former United Nations ambassador needs a broad strategy to have any hope of capturing a majority in today’s GOP.

“In order to [win],” he says, “Nikki Haley is going to need everyone.”

For a moment, for the first time since Oct. 7, Palestinians glued to TVs or mobile phones watching live updates of the Israel-Hamas war were not witnessing missile strikes or evacuees fleeing fighting.

Instead, tens of thousands of people across the West Bank – in living rooms, in cafes, and regularly checking their phones at work – were watching the proceedings in a wood-paneled courtroom in The Hague filled with gowned judges and lawyers considering a case brought by South Africa against Israel.

“Even if the final ruling doesn’t go in our favor, we really need this case right now because it can result in a cease-fire [soon],” says Nael Abu Dheim, a 51-year-old mechanical engineer, at a Ramallah rally thanking South Africa for filing allegations of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

South Africa’s complaint, arguing that Israel’s ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip and failure to protect civilians constitutes genocide, is being watched closely by Palestinians.

The controversial case, which wrapped up its initial two-day public hearings Friday, could prompt judges to order a cease-fire in Gaza.

Many Palestinians in the West Bank see that as a rare glimmer of hope for relief from humanitarian suffering amid a bleak war and, apart from the war, the most violent year in the occupied territories in two decades.

But such hope is blunted by skepticism, born of what they see as decades of failures by the international community to enforce United Nations resolutions on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli government has dismissed the Hague case as an “absurd blood libel” and a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court.”

Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather near the International Court of Justice as judges hear a South African request to order Israel to stop its military actions in Gaza, in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 12, 2024.

The case, filed Dec. 29 by South Africa, alleges that Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in its war with Hamas in Gaza, restricting food and water supplies to the besieged enclave and killing thousands of Palestinian civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the case Tuesday, calling the charge of genocide “meritless.” Last week, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby described South Africa’s submission as “counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact.”

Israel, a signatory to the genocide convention, is engaging with the court to contest the case. Retired Justice Aharon Barak, former president of Israel’s Supreme Court, is serving as a judge on the ICJ panel.

Israel alleges the ICJ case is serving as “cover” for Hamas’ imprisonment of Israeli civilian hostages and barrages of missile fire targeting Israel.

No matter the final ruling, Palestinians hope the 84-page submission will convince the court to issue a “provisional measure” this month ordering Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza so as to facilitate fact-finding missions and preserve evidence in the case – a court-ordered cease-fire.

Political leverage

Israel’s defense team warned Friday that such “provisional measures would stop Israel defending its citizens; more citizens could be attacked, raped, and tortured.”

At Friday’s session, Omri Sender, a member of Israel’s legal team, said Israel is working with a senior U.N. coordinator to “map the needs of future returns of Palestinians to northern Gaza,” which “shows that Israel remains bound by its international and legal obligations, especially as a party to the genocide convention.”

The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, sees the ICJ case as offering potential leverage. Officials say any provisional decision could help pressure the Israeli government to wind down its operations in Gaza and fast-track a political resolution by which the PA would return to the coastal enclave, currently ruled by rival Hamas.

“The aim is tactical, a provisional ruling within two weeks that would result in an immediate cease-fire,” says Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights watchdog Al Haq. It would be much more difficult, he acknowledges, to prove Israeli intent to commit genocide.

Patrick Post/AP

Protesters waving Israeli and Dutch flags hold photos of the hostages abducted during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, at a demonstration outside the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 11, 2024.

Palestinian legal advocates view South Africa’s involvement as key. Had the submission come from the Palestinians, or from an Arab state, “it would have been a case, once again, of Palestine versus Israel, rather than what it really is, which is a question about [whether] genocide occurred and if the world will stop it,” says veteran lawyer Diana Buttu.

But there is a feeling of incredulity among Palestinians that it took an African nation some 4,000 miles away to pursue international law on their behalf.

“South Africa has shown more courage than Arab and Muslim leaders by taking up the claim on behalf of Palestinians,” says Bilal Abu Samra, a Ramallah merchant.

As a sign of appreciation, dozens of Palestinians braved cold and wet winter weather Wednesday and Thursday, gathering at a statue of Nelson Mandela in Ramallah, waving Palestinian flags and holding up signs quoting the anti-apartheid icon.

Experience fuels doubts

But their hopes were muted by experience. Several demonstrators pointed out that Washington has vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, and that Israel has ignored U.N. rulings in the past.

They cited a 2004 World Court advisory opinion declaring Israel’s separation wall, cutting off the West Bank from Israel, to be illegal; the wall is still there. Last month the Security Council called for safe, unhindered, and scaled-up distribution of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which has not occurred.

Najwan Jadallah, a 45-year-old assistant professor at Palestine Technical University, echoes many Palestinians’ doubts that any court ruling in their favor would ever be implemented or would change things on the ground.

“Even if the court orders a cease-fire, will Israel commit to it?” he wonders. “For decades, we have been under occupation and watching our own people killed. International law has not been enforced before; we don’t believe it will be enforced now.”

“I don’t believe anyone can stop Israel,” adds Mr. Abu Samra, the merchant. “I am not hopeful that this case will be more than symbolic.”

On Friday the ICJ adjourned for deliberations, with a decision expected this month on whether to issue an interim cease-fire order or not.

Billy Simpson can’t imagine Berkeley without People’s Park. The iconic park in this California college town was where he played growing up. As he got older, he made some of his best friends there. When he worked in food delivery, he would bring canceled orders to unhoused residents who found rest there.

“That park is like, it’s freedom. It is what Berkeley used to be,” says Mr. Simpson. “It’s just love.”

People’s Park inspired Krista McAtee to attend the University of California, Berkeley three blocks away. The fifth-year student gets emotional recalling her first visit as a 13-year-old on a campus tour with her family. She returned home to Southern California, decorated a jean jacket with “power to the people,” and set her sights on the school. 

“This idea of community, this idea of taking care of one another,” says Ms. McAtee, “are values that I learned from being at People’s Park.” 

Shipping containers line the park perimeter now, blocking public access. A decadeslong power struggle over the best use of People’s Park came to a head last week, when UC Berkeley, which owns the park, cleared it of unhoused residents and erected the container wall. The move secures the site for a long-planned university housing development that has been held up by protests, vandalism, and legal challenges.

“This is not a forever installation,” says Kyle Gibson, a UC Berkeley spokesperson. “This is going to be here through construction, and when we are done, we are going to open up a beautiful building and a beautiful new public park space that will be for the enjoyment of everyone.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Berkeley resident Billy Simpson walks down Telegraph Avenue in the city, Jan. 9, 2024. Mr. Simpson is frustrated with plans by the University of California, Berkeley to build housing at the nearby People’s Park, which has been a community hub for over 50 years.

That vision faces opposition and doubters. But tension has always been part of the park’s origin story.

Everyone welcome  

People’s Park emerged in 1969, two years after the university bought it for dorm space and then left it vacant. A local paper suggested people should meet there, and they did. It became a community gathering place; people put in gardens, a pond, and a playground. But the school tore it all out a month later, leading to protests that culminated with then-Gov. Ronald Reagan sending in the National Guard. 

Throughout the years, the university made sporadic attempts to regain control of the park, but it remained open to the community. People’s Park became a refuge – for protesters, philosophers, artists, students, residents housed and unhoused. It was a place where anyone who needed it could go for help. 

“There’s a very big lack of community spaces in the modern age. And that’s what People’s Park used to be,” says UC Berkeley student Esther Choi. “Now it’s gone.”

That demise has weighed on advocates for the housing development, too, which include Berkeley’s mayor, City Council, and state lawmakers. The plan took five years to develop, with input from local organizations, neighbors, students, and officials. “The park represents many things to many people,” says Mr. Gibson, who points out that plans “reflect that history in the new design.”

Today the 2.8-acre park is on the National Register of Historic Places, surrounded by historic homes and churches noted for their architecture.

Plans for the new development include 1,100 student housing units and more than 100 supportive housing units, while preserving 60% of the open space. They also commemorate the park’s history and offer unhoused residents transitional housing, a community-led drop-in center, and a dedicated social worker. Construction is on hold while the state Supreme Court considers whether it violates environmental regulations.  

Everyone agrees there’s a critical need for housing. University enrollment is up 26% compared with 10 years ago, and rising costs have added to the squeeze. The People’s Park project is part of a broader school initiative to double student housing with 9,000 new beds across 14 sites throughout the city.  

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Construction crews have erected a wall of shipping containers around People's Park in Berkeley, California. The University of California, Berkeley, which owns the park, secured it in preparation for a housing development that has been delayed by protests and legal challenges.

Safety is an issue, too. The park has long provided rest for people with nowhere to go. But during the pandemic, overnight restrictions were lifted, enabling homeless encampments. Crime and drug use increased, although opponents say it’s a challenge the university created through neglect; in the last few years, it closed the park’s public restrooms and removed trash cans, trees, and gardens.

“Who are they kidding?” asks Harvey Smith, president of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, referring to Berkeley administrators. “This is an institution that has run three national nuclear laboratories. Who’s going to believe that they actually can’t maintain in beautiful condition the 2.8-acre park? It’s crazy talk.”

Damp hope 

Rain drizzled down on Telegraph Avenue earlier this week, adding a chill to the tone of defiance – or resignation, depending on who’s asked - that blankets the park. The avenue runs a block off the park, right up to campus, where many of the shops and restaurants lining the street are entwined with Berkeley counterculture. 

Annapurna is one of those iconic shops. Al Geyer opened his store around the time that People’s Park was established, but he, too, feels squeezed out. 

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Al Geyer stands by a historical marker for his shop, Annapurna, in Berkeley, California, Jan. 9, 2024. His store has been open for over 50 years – nearly as long as People’s Park a block away, which is being repurposed for housing.

He sees the new park development as part of the university’s larger effort to “defunkify” Berkeley amid demographic sea changes. The pandemic gutted retail activity, he notes, providing Berkeley administrators a tipping point. “We lost all the stores, and they’ve done nothing,” he says. “They’re happy to have this as a base moment, where you clean the counter off and you start from scratch.”

Mr. Geyer recalls the park’s early days when he supported it with window displays. Protesters protected his property. “They would stand in front and say, ‘Do not harm Annapurna, because we’re open to the working man, to multiculturalism,’” says Mr. Geyer. Even if parkgoers didn’t buy from him, they were welcome to browse his store or rest out front. 

For now, that spirit of acceptance and mutual support is what park defenders are holding on to. 

“If it does get taken from us, people will still gather,” says Jen, a local resident who did not give her last name, citing privacy concerns. She works with the park’s mutual aid group. “They can’t build the wall between us because we’ve already created these connections.”

Editor's note: A sentence in this article has been updated to clarify that a source named Jen did not wish to have her last name published.

It feels deficient to call Nikki Giovanni a poet laureate after viewing her documentary “Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.” She is much more than her words, which span across the space of Blackness and the endless time it seems to take to secure our civil rights. And yet, the documentary is about not just transmission, but translation – specifically, the uniqueness of how Giovanni views life and the world around her.

The documentary, which is now streaming on Max, is simultaneously victorious and vulnerable. It offers slivers of Giovanni’s life, focusing on matriarchy, sisterhood, and sexuality. Her poetry is a stargate into the activism of the period, a timeline from past to present and beyond.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Cincinnati, Giovanni rose to fame as one of the pioneers in the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which drew heavily from both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. BAM is a fitting nickname for the “big bang” that would birth the careers of icons such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Gil Scott-Heron.

What brings those slivers together is Giovanni’s unique analysis – with an incisiveness that cuts beyond the bone and to one’s soul. The imagery of her reading “I Married My Mother,” a poem about abuse, trauma, and emotional release, on the radio station WHYY is stunning. The call letters contain an urgent intonation, an inquiry of a higher power:

I know crying
Is a skill
I automatically wipe
My eyes even though I know
Crying
Is a skill

The conversation on the radio delves into her childhood and her abusive father – and how it makes her analysis of Black men tenuous. That dialogue leads into an excerpt of a 1971 conversation between Giovanni and another luminary, Baldwin, which ran as a two-part episode on the television series “Soul!” Ellis Haizlip, who produced and hosted the show, introduced this particular discussion in a way that felt like a metaphor to space, and finding light in the darkness:

“One of the miracles of this universe that we deal with is the way it can use something as cold and gray and as impersonal as an electron. These electrons that fill your television screen to bring you an experience as warm and as rich and as human as the program you’re about to see.”

“I need love,” Giovanni exhorted, because begging was beneath her. Another portion of that interview with Baldwin went viral in 2022. It touched on the intimate relationship between Black men and Black women, and two of the greatest minds of their generation allowed us to see the depths of their joy and sadness.

That love manifests itself in various ways, such as the care and concern from Giovanni’s partner, Virginia, both professionally and personally. When Giovanni and her son, Thomas, restore their relationship, it allows the elder to get closer to her granddaughter, Kai, and her grasp on motherhood is divine – “I am the rain, she is the blossom.”

Matriarchy is also bittersweet, exemplified in the passing of her 94-year-old aunt, Agnes, which thrusts her into the position of being the oldest woman in her family. Like the bouts with breast cancer and seizures that Giovanni speaks openly about, it is clearly jarring and a reminder of mortality. 

Giovanni’s presence and versatility also command love. For as much as she is defined for her activism, she also gained crossover appeal through writing children’s books in the 1980s and later became a professor at Virginia Tech. Her words and presence are a salve for generations. We are reminded of this phenomenon repeatedly, whether she is recognized as one of the heroes of Harlem at the Apollo Theater, or among Black youth at Afropunk. The commentary across timelines is similar: how Giovanni’s poetry gave them the strength to go on.

In places, Giovanni’s journey feels like my own. When an image of the NASA logo appeared on the screen, it reminded me of my scholarly past at my historically Black university, Florida A&M. I smiled when a FAMU graduate spoke about how the poem “Nikki-Rosa” inspired her. 

Such testimonials are a reminder of the importance of the BAM vanguard. Though she is not named, Giovanni’s compatriot, Sonia Sanchez, appears multiple times in the documentary. Her words first struck me in 2007 on the introduction of a hip-hop record, “Everything Man”:

Listen, listen a man always punctual with his, mouth
Listen to his, revolution of syllables
Scooping lightning from his pores
Keeping time, with his hurricane beat
Asking us to pick ourselves up and become thunder

Sanchez’s powerful prologue inspired me to look into her other works. She was such an influence on me that as a young reporter, I once interrupted a program at another historically Black school – Paine College – to take a selfie with her. When Giovanni spoke about her defection – and later return – to Fisk University in her native Tennessee, the value and sanctity of radical Black spaces was reemphasized.

Speaking of space, with respect to the late Gene Roddenberry, the creator of “Star Trek,” Black folks always knew that space wasn’t the final frontier. Nichelle Nichols knew from the original series, as did Levar Burton in “The Next Generation.” So does Giovanni. “The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans,” read the opening words of the doc. Giovanni takes this metaphor to the next level, saying that if humankind wants to take an intergalactic journey, it should lead with Black women, who are familiar with traversing the unknown and thriving against all odds.

Overall, Giovanni is celestial in this documentary, and we see a poet finally at peace. This serenity is noticeable in her engagement with young people, whether she is blurting out irreverent one-liners in church or sitting with students at Virginia Tech.

“It’s not that we use our talent to tell people what to do. It’s that we use our vulnerability to share the love in our hearts,” she says. “Don’t you think? I really do.”

AP

Bernardo Arévalo takes office as president in Guatemala on Jan. 14.

Across Latin America, voters have tossed out one government after another in pursuit of honest governance and economic stability. Now it is Guatemala’s turn. Yet the transfer of power in Central America’s most populous nation may be qualitatively different from those that have come before it elsewhere in the region.

The inauguration of Bernardo Arévalo on Sunday is less a triumph of personal charisma than a manifestation of a deepening democratic mindset among Guatemalans. Arising gradually in local cantons since the end of a civil war 30 years ago, it reflects a fusing of civic virtues and Indigenous Mayan values.

“The democracy experienced in the cantons is more participatory, more meaningful than simply voting in elections,” wrote Matthew Krystal, an anthropologist at North Central College in Illinois who has spent three decades studying Guatemalan society, in the Prensa Libre newspaper. “Meetings can last for hours. Everyone has the right to speak and many participate. Their decisions carry the legitimacy that comes from an intensive process of listening, debating, thinking.”

According to Dr. Krystal, one Mayan spiritual leader described the approach to seeking consensus as, “They don’t fight, they love each other.”

Since winning nearly 60% of the vote in an August runoff, Mr. Arévalo has faced repeated attempts by the attorney general and others to annul his victory. That none of those efforts succeeded is due largely to a long-underestimated force. Indigenous Guatemalans – particularly Mayan women – have upheld democracy through sustained peaceful protests. Their quiet defiance dovetails with the incoming president’s own sense of leadership.

“Governance is to be ensured not through the capacity of the state to enforce obedience,” he said in a 2017 interview with the Development and Peace Foundation, “but through the will of the people to pledge their allegiance to institutions that represent them and which they thus consider legitimate. ... This involves ‘weaving’ back trust into the social fabric in every sphere of life. Dialogue – active engagement through listening and understanding – has an important role to play in achieving this effect.”

Guatemala’s Constitution allows for only one four-year term. Mr. Arévalo acknowledges that does not give him much time to break the strong bonds of corruption that have weakened the country’s democratic institutions and driven dozens of judges and journalists into exile. But he argues that most of the work of revitalizing governance belongs to the people rather than to their elected officials.

Mayans, Professor Krystal wrote, believe that “what we do well returns good to us.” In his modesty, Mr. Arévalo has signaled that following the wisdom of the people may be the key to leading societies like Guatemala out of patterns of corruption and lawlessness.