Our alumnus Mariano Rayo (class of 1990) studied economic policy at the WiSo Faculty. He then returned to his home country of Guatemala, where he worked as a research assistant in the Economic Research and Consulting Department of the Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales (ASIES). At the beginning of the presidency of Álvaro Arzú, Mariano Rayo was Secretary General at ministerial level of the National Council for Economic Planning from 1996 to 1997. In this capacity, he was part of the government delegation that participated in the peace talks with the guerrilla organisation Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) in May 1996, negotiating, among other things, the agreement on socio-economic change and the agricultural situation in Guatemala, which eventually led to the signing of the final peace agreement and thus to the formal end to Guatemala’s 36-year civil war.
From May 1997 until the end of the Arzú government in January 2000, he was head of the government cabinet and then a member of the Unionist Party in the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala for 12 years until 2012. In September 2015, following a corruption scandal in the presidency of Otto Pérez, he was briefly appointed Minister of Public Health and Social Welfare in the cabinet of interim President Alejandro Maldonado, a position he held until January 2016. He currently continues his academic work in economic and political research as special projects coordinator for ASIES and works as an independent consultant at national and international level and is a member of various supervisory boards of private companies. He also hosts a three-hour radio show every morning.
In the alumni interview we talked about the need to balance the demands of the guerrillas with the people’s desire for economic prosperity, the influence of German unity on the success of the peace negotiations and the impact of the social market economy on progress in Guatemala.
