Carlos Pineda may be running again. The businessman from Zacapa led all Guatemalan presidential polls in 2023. The courts conspired to take him off the ballot. The establishment has been after him for over three years, but he is still in the race and his resilience is catching attention.
Pineda, 54, was born in Zacapa and grew up between the east and the port of Santo Tomás de Castilla. His father, Carlos René Pineda Rossell, served in the military and in the presidential guard under President Carlos Arana Osorio. His father built Transportes Pineda Rossell, which hauled bananas for United Fruit, then Chiquita and Del Monte. It started with one truck in 1973. The family business empire grew into palm, cattle, gas stations, port work, and routes into Mexico.
Pineda wears a hard hat while supervising one of his many Guatemalan factories.
Pineda was focused on business, mostly staying out of political affairs, until he became a nationally-renowned figure in 2020. Hurricanes Eta and Iota flooded Izabal and Alta Verapaz. Pineda used his helicopter to pull families off roofs and save dozens of lives. The videos of his selfless heroism spread. A rich man stepping up where the government had failed effectively demonstrated Pineda as a leader who could defeat the entrenched corruption that has plagued Guatemala.
In 2023, Citizen Prosperity made Pineda its presidential candidate. By April he was rising in the polls. By May he was first, or close to first. He paid for his own campaign. He fiercely attacked the political class. He dominated on TikTok. Pineda had no ties to President Giammattei’s inner circle or to the usual business elites. That scared people in the entrenched establishment who schemed to thwart Pineda’s meteoric rise.
Citizen Prosperity ultimately proved to be a flawed vehicle for Pineda’s populist ambitions. The Vamos bloc around unpopular incumbent President Giammattei had wormed their way into the party. Other major players in the party had poor reputations. Pineda had already left Cambio, a political party tied to the Baldizóns, a family with countless skeletons in their closet. Critics seized upon those links to attack Pineda.
Cambio took Pineda to court, claiming that Citizen Prosperity’s late-2022 assembly broke the rules. In May 2023, an administrative court suspended Pineda and the party’s full slate. He appealed to the Constitutional Court. The party dropped its own appeal and left him alone. Pineda’s appeal was rejected. He was booted from the ballot just a month before election day. Pineda told the AP the Court had ended the country’s democracy. He says the real drug traffickers are in power and that the attacks were meant to cut his support. The voters never got to decide.
Pineda’s visa situation made it worse. While he was being removed from the ballot, a letter emerged claiming that the United States would not grant Pineda a visa because it had “reasonable grounds to believe” he had been involved in drug trafficking. The Mexican paper Excélsior published the letter. It was later revealed that the letter had a Gemini watermark and was an obvious AI forgery, but the damage had already been done.
Carlos Pineda’s new party SERVIR hopes to remedy his past problems with political entities.
The controversies that might have ended the career of a leader with less resolve only emboldened Pineda to double down. The political party, SERVIR, was founded in November 2023. By late 2025 the electoral office listed Pineda as secretary general. A 2026 poll puts him second out of potential presidential contenders, at about 23 percent. He hosts a podcast, Guatemala Tiene Solución, where he talks about prices, crime, and U.S. politics. The same social media that made him in 2023 continues to be the lifeblood of his movement. Like President Trump, Pineda is a difficult man to break.
The comparisons are obvious. Both men are rich outsiders. Both men transcend the typical party process. Both speak in the plain language of the people. Both men said their independent wealth means they can never be bought. Both emerged into the public eye in unforgettable iconic scenes: Trump on an escalator, Pineda in a helicopter over floodwater. Both amassed huge followings online instead of through party machines. Both claim the political class is corrupt and they are the antidote to that corruption.
Like President Trump, Pineda has learned who his allies are and who the traitors were—and adjusted accordingly. He has built SERVIR with family and close allies specifically not to depend on outside operators. La Hora reported that relatives fill key posts, including his wife and his son Charlie. Pineda has said he wanted a small circle “to avoid betrayals.” The buck stops with Pineda. That makes another 2023-style ambush harder. It also makes SERVIR essentially a family business, and that has worked well up to this point.
A copy of the official law enforcement letter exonerating Pineda of all wrongdoing.
Additionally Pineda has gained an important feather in his cap against allegations he is a drug criminal. The National Civil Police, under the Ministry of the Interior, has officially certified that he has no criminal record. Pineda has stated emphatically that he has never used drugs and Guatemala has no case against him. The police certificate demonstrates Pineda’s truthfulness, and there is hope he can get his visa reinstated before next year’s election.
MAGA-aligned networks have heard his story and found striking similarities to how the deep state treated President Trump when he challenged the political establishment. There have been murmurs in Washington D.C. that Republican Congressmen are joining the fight to get Pineda’s visa restored, a move that would likely immediately make him the frontrunner in the presidential race should he choose to run.
The 2027 field will be crowded. Pineda is the only likely candidate who has demonstrated consistent support in the polls, commanded a large online audience, built the independent wealth needed to flout the establishment and shown tremendous resilience that resonates with the people. In a crowded field, an unbreakable candidate like Pineda could emerge as the leader who firmly aligns Guatemala with the Donroe Doctrine and unseats globalist-aligned liberal incumbent Bernardo Arévalo.
