Gloria Álvarez

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.

Early life Gloria Ivette Álvarez Cross was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Her mother Stella Yvette Cross Letona is of Hungarian origin and her Cuban father, José Manuel Álvarez Torriente, is a marketer.

Career She serves as Director of Communications and Professor at the Universidad de la Libertad of the Centro Ricardo Salinas Pliego.

Media presenting 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. Her discourses against populism were particularly noted, since Álvarez argues that populism has caused political instability in many Latin-American countries.

Writing 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 write 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.

In 2017 Álvarez wrote a book called ¿Cómo 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?"). 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.

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.

Publications

Books

El Engaño Populista (2016, co-authored with Axel Kaiser) Cómo Hablar Con Un Progre (2017) Cómo Hablar Con Un Conservador (2019) Cómo Defender La Libertad y No Suicidarte En El Intento (2025)

Other contributions

Prologue for Vida y Mentira de Ernesto Ché Guevara by Fernando Díaz Villanueva Prologue for Rebelión de los Mansos by Rogelio López Prologue for Capitalismo: Un Antídoto Contra la Pobreza by Antonella Marty Contributor to El Manual Liberal

Awards and recognition

Forbes – 100 Most Powerful Women in Central America (2023) Friedrich Hayek Lifetime Achievement Award – Austrian Economics Center, Austria (2018) Premio a la Liberdade – Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2016) Woman of the Year – Look Magazine Guatemala (2015)