The United States government has slapped sanctions on 10 Guatemalan officials, including several accused of undermining democracy and targeting journalists, as the country contends with an ongoing electoral crisis.

The sanctions come as part of a report issued on Wednesday, which names individuals accused of anti-democratic activity and corruption in Central America.

Those identified in the report have become ineligible to enter the US, and any visa they have from the country is revoked.

“This list identifies individuals who have knowingly engaged in acts that undermine democratic processes or institutions, in significant corruption, or in obstruction of investigations into such acts of corruption in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador,” reads a press release from the US Department of State.

The State Department’s report includes 13 officials and public figures from Nicaragua, 10 from Honduras and six from El Salvador, as well as the 10 from Guatemala.

They include Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceran, two successive presidents of El Salvador who served in office from 2009 to 2014 and from 2014 to 2019, respectively.

The report amplifies existing concerns over Guatemala’s fragile democracy, which has faced scrutiny in recent weeks as the country prepares for the second round of voting in its presidential election.

Last week, Guatemala’s top prosecutor successfully pushed to suspend a progressive political party that had defied expectations in the first round of voting on June 25, securing one of two spots in the August run-off.

The party, known as Movimiento Semilla or Seed Movement, had campaigned against what it characterised as a corrupt elite working to roll back democracy.

Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has since intervened with an injunction against the Seed Movement’s suspension.

But the order to cease campaigning drew scrutiny and protest over the potential for election interference. Some human rights observers speculate the Seed Movement and its candidate, Bernardo Arevalo, are perceived as threats to Guatemala’s political establishment.

On Wednesday, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a statement alleging that “actors unsatisfied” with June’s election results had abused legal pathways to introduce a “high degree of uncertainty in the electoral process”.

Those efforts, it said, “put at risk the country’s democratic stability”.

The public prosecutor’s office, however, has since defended its actions, denying that it is interfering in the electoral process.