The year 2023 is, without a doubt, decisive for Guatemala. And, as many wonder what lies ahead for the country, looking to its past is also imperative. The general presidential elections are due to be held on June 25, and polls show a high level of pessimism among Guatemalans. This context for this is severe human rights violations, the curtailed state of press freedom, violent deaths because of organized crime, excessive use of force by the military and private security agents, and the exclusion of three candidates from the electoral race. More critically, none of the presidential candidates has included the implementation of the Agreement for a Firm and Lasting Peace signed between the State and the guerrillas represented by the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit in 1996, nor the transitional justice process that has been underway in the country for more than a decade. In order to move into the future, the country must first resolve its past. Between 1990 and 1996, Guatemala was immersed in an internal armed conflict that brought gruesome human rights violations to thousands of victims, primarily peasants, members of Indigenous communities, and women. In the context of the Cold War disputes, the Mayan peoples became internal enemies of the State, being internally displaced in a framework of violence and disproportionate use of state force. This led to multiple cases of arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances, and excessive use of violence against women, most of them happening during the dictatorships of General Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt. Subsequently, a critical transitional justice process was established in 1996 to investigate the abuses committed during that time, provide reparations to the victims, and prosecute those responsible for such atrocities. Nevertheless, in the last five years, on three different occasions, new legislation has been discussed. These initiatives seek to prohibit the prosecution of members of the army, state security forces, and members of the insurgent groups, in addition to releasing people who were convicted or are facing criminal proceedings for any act committed during the armed conflict. If approved, this legislation would represent a drastic setback for survivors, victims, and their relatives. The press and human rights advocates have called it an “amnesty law.” The case of Guatemala is one of many illustrating the complexity of transitional justice in Latin America, a pioneer continent in the application of such approaches aimed at responding to the legacies of massive human rights violations through the establishment of truth commissions, the granting of reparations to the victims, and in many cases judicial proceedings against the perpetrators. According to the United Nations, transitional justice covers the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past conflict, repression, violations, and abuses to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation through four fundamental pillars: truth, justice, reparation and measures of non-recurrence, with a primary focus on recognizing the dignity and fulfilling the rights of the victims. The first countries to implement transitional justice models in the region were Argentina in 1984 and Chile in 1990, two nations that suffered the impact of military dictatorships. Afterwards, Peru began a transition period by mitigating a systematic campaign of abuses under an emergency law enacted a few years later. Colombia was the latest country to sign an ambitious General Agreement for the Termination of the Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace in 2016, ending the continent’s oldest internal armed conflict. Thus, transitional justice is fundamental to advancing peacebuilding, as it points the way toward a democratic society in which citizens are treated with dignity. Initiatives that seek to approve amnesty laws promote impunity, deny the rights of those who have suffered the consequences of the conflict, seriously undermine efforts to advance peacebuilding and the recognition of the truth, and ignore the complexity of the armed conflict and the abuses committed against local communities. Guatemala has made substantial progress, such as establishing the National Reparations Program created in 2003 to compensate the victims. Regarding truth-seeking initiatives, the report of the Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH) set up to clarify the facts and circumstances surrounding the armed confrontations, in its 1999 report “Guatemala: Memory of Silence,” has given an account of the atrocities perpetrated during the decades of war that left more than 200.000 people affected.