Trust has never been a luxury of nations; it has been their foundational stone. No people that has prospered has done so without a framework of clear, fulfilled, and respected rules. From Rome to Poland, as we saw in the previous column, societies that managed to prosper understood that arbitrariness is the greatest enemy of wealth and social peace. Today I want to speak about the modern heroes of trust, those who before the Second World War demonstrated, through extraordinary actions, that the greatness of a country does not depend on strongmen or improvised decrees, but on the credibility of its institutions.
George Washington (1789–1797) could have been king if he had wanted to. He had the army, the people, and the prestige of having liberated the colonies. But he preferred to be a citizen. After two terms, he retired to Mount Vernon and demonstrated that the republic stood above the man. That foundational gesture planted the certainty that power alternates and is limited. What a contrast with Nayib Bukele, who extends his mandate indefinitely as though the nation belonged to him. Washington understood that trust is born from institutions, not from the figure of the strongman.
Grover Cleveland (1885–1889 and 1893–1897) has been, alongside Donald Trump, the only U.S. president with two nonconsecutive terms. But his legacy was even greater: he transformed the veto into an instrument of national trust. He used it as a political force to protect the nation from the interests of specific groups, and he remains the president with the most vetoes per term in all of U.S. history. With that discipline, he defended public finances and prevented the State from becoming the spoils of clienteles. In Guatemala, the contrast is bitter: Decree 7-2025 breaks with the principle of annual budgeting, carries over resources as though they were automatic expansions, and allows spending without controls in the Development Councils. Will Bernardo Arévalo dare to veto it, or will he prefer to let clientelism disguise itself as development?
Robert Peel (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1834–1835 and 1841–1846) has been remembered as the most effective minister of Queen Victoria’s long reign. He founded London’s modern police force and reformed commercial laws that opened the British economy to the world, under the conviction that the State must guarantee order and certainty, not privileges or discretion. Those reforms consolidated the reputation of the United Kingdom as a trustworthy country for generations. In Guatemala, by contrast, we continue to bet on discretion. Decree 7-2025 grants resources to the CODEDE without serious auditing and establishes a “positive silence” provision equivalent to granting automatic licenses, even when requirements are not met. Will all this uncontrolled spending translate into more jobs, productive investment, and greater purchasing power for ordinary citizens… or only into more clientelism?
Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884) never governed, but his pen founded a nation. His book Bases and Starting Points for the Political Organization of the Argentine Republic inspired the Constitution of 1853, conceived to attract immigrants and capital. Alberdi understood that countries do not compete with speeches, but with institutional credibility. The Constitution guaranteed property rights, respect for contracts, and a system of checks and balances that turned Argentina into one of the most prosperous countries in the world at the end of the nineteenth century. In Guatemala, by contrast, we are the country with the lowest foreign direct investment in all of Latin America: barely 1.6% of GDP. How can we be surprised if what we export is not trust, but arbitrariness, annulled contracts, and clientelist laws?
Haakon VII of Norway (1905–1957) faced the Nazi invasion in 1940. When Hitler demanded that he legitimize a puppet government, he fled with the royal family through the mountains of Norway rather than surrender. He was later welcomed in England, from where he preserved the legitimacy of the Norwegian State for five years. He returned after the war as a symbol of resistance and national unity. His firmness demonstrated that even in extreme adversity, institutional trust is more powerful than the invader’s force. In Guatemala, our institutions seem to take the opposite path: yielding to the power of the moment, approving decrees without analysis, distributing resources without controls, and weakening principles instead of defending them.
History shows us a constant truth: the peoples that prospered limited arbitrariness and built trustworthy institutions. Guatemala, meanwhile, has insisted on clientelism and improvisation. In nine months of legislative sessions, only seven decrees have undergone technical analysis, while the rest have been approved as though laws were political favors. What message are we sending to the world when we do not even care about the way we legislate? What investor would risk capital in a country that turns law into a tailored suit for the powerful?
Think about your children and grandchildren. What future do you want to leave them? To migrate, survive with an informal job that barely pays for tortillas and beans… or to live in a country with opportunities, dignified jobs, and good salaries, where life is not centered on how to eat tomorrow, but on how to invest in a beach house or open the next branch of a business?
Washington, Cleveland, Peel, Alberdi, and Haakon taught us that trust is the secret of prosperity. They privileged the republic over the strongman, discipline over populism, certainty over privilege, credibility over arbitrariness, and legitimacy over force. Guatemala does not need to invent anything new: it only needs to recover confidence that the law applies equally to everyone, that contracts are respected, and that public resources are managed responsibly. The secret is written in history. The decision is ours.
