Karin Herrera

Karin Larissa Herrera Aguilar (born 25 July 1967) is a Guatemalan biologist, professor, sociologist, and politician who has served as the 18th vice president of Guatemala since 2024. A member of the political party Semilla, she was elected vice president alongside President Bernardo Arévalo, having won the second round of the 2023 presidential election.

Early life and career Herrera was born on 25 July 1967 in Guatemala City into a conservative middle-class family. She is the only daughter of Adalberto Herrera and Gladis Aguilar. Her father was a lawyer from Huehuetenango who served in 1976 as the titular judge of the Departmental Court of First Instance of Petén, while her mother is a housewife from Jutiapa. Herrera has remarked that her mother was conservative and anti-communist but would later change her ideological positions after reading the book Massacres of the Jungle by Ricardo Falla-Sánchez. She has a master's degree in environmental studies from the University of the Valley and a doctorate in political science and sociology from the Pontifical University of Salamanca in Spain. She has received several international awards for her work in favor of the environment.

Lecturer and advisor After graduation, Herrera began to work as a professor at the University of San Carlos and also as the university's director for the Chemical and Biological Research program.

Political career Herrera sympathized with the positions held by the Movimiento Semilla party. At the end of 2022, Deputy Román Castellanos invited her to participate in the internal process of electing the candidate for the vice presidency of Semilla. She was selected and elected by the party and was officially proclaimed in January 2023 as a candidate for the vice presidency and running mate of presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo to participate in the 2023 general elections. She would instead be sworn in minutes after midnight on January 15, 2024, after protests demanding the government transfer power.

Political position Herrera has stated that her political ideology is based on Christian humanism.

Personal life In 2001, she married biologist Gustavo Gómez Álvarez. The couple divorced in 2021. They have two children.

Apart from Spanish, Herrera is fluent in English.