Gloria Álvarez

On March 11, 2019, Álvarez announced that she would run for president in the 2019 Guatemalan general election. However, the National Election Council rejected her application because she was 34 years old and the minimum required age for a candidate for President of Guatemala is 40. She ran on an orthodox libertarian platform, and noted that all the women who had previously been successful in Guatemalan politics had been socialists. Álvarez argued that populist and socialist policies have historically been a cause of democratic breakdowns in Latin America. Her proposals included reductions in government spending such as decreasing the size of the civil service and the repeal of socially conservative laws like the ban on adoption by same-sex couples, but she also proposed significant funding for military and police forces. She suggested that other policy options included the legalization of marijuana, abortion, euthanasia, and prostitution.

In 2017 Álvarez wrote a book called Como hablar con un progre (How to talk to a progressive), and in 2018 she wrote a sequel called Cómo hablar con un conservador? (How to talk to a conservative). Both books are directed at libertarians, and aim to teach them how to persuade people of different political ideologies.

Álvarez was a member of the civic organization Movimiento Cívico Nacional, but left the organization in 2017 in response to allegations that the organization's director had received improper payments. She described her departure as necessary to maintain her political principles. In November 2021, the case that led to the resignation of Gloria Álvarez from the Movimiento Cívico Nacional was resolved, proving the innocence of the former director by the Courts.

Álvarez coauthored her first book, called El Engaño Populista (The Populist Deception), with Axel Kaiser in 2016. The authors argue that several types of deception have been central to the project by left-wing politicians and groups to promote populism, including the Spanish political party Podemos and the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. They use the term populism to describe multiple leftist ideologies, including socialism. They claim that populist thinking is motivated by a contempt for individual freedom, a fixation on self-identifying with victimhood, an opposition to neoliberalism, and the use of both democratic rhetoric and egalitarian rhetoric to increase the power of the state. The book has been lambasted by Alfredo Joignant in Televisión Nacional de Chile as "not withstanding a pregraduate academic jury".

Álvarez first presented a radio broadcast in 2005 when she was 19 years old, and went on to become a professional radio presenter for Los 40. She received significantly increased media attention in 2014, after a speech that she gave at the Ibero-American Youth Parliament. Her discourses against populism were particularly noted, since Álvarez argues that populism has caused political instability in many Latin-American countries.

Gloria Álvarez Cross (born March 9, 1985) is a Guatemalan radio and television presenter, author, and libertarian political commentator. She is the host of the Viernes de Gloria radio program in Guatemala. Álvarez is also the program director of the National Civic Movement of Guatemala, an organization that advocates for political participation in the national politics of Guatemala. She has also published books on political topics for a popular audience.