The 1918 Spanish Influenza and COVID-19 pandemics revealed and deepened social inequalities. They also highlighted fissures in social cohesion and, where trust in governance is poor, generated resistance and antipathy. Yet, those outbreaks’ revelatory function also calls attention to the human capacity for social solidarity and the significance of local-level advocacy to meet basic needs, such as for more equitable health care access. Indigenous knowledge and practices offer an insightful lens through which to understand and assess pandemic recovery policies. Marginalized communities possess invaluable knowledge and experience for any pandemic recovery. Rather than viewing these local contributions as new phenomena, a central goal of this paper is to reveal neglected historical continuities in lay knowledge; to confront disempowering silences by creating space for the voices indigenous people; and to inject local knowledge and practices in historical analysis of pandemics. As revelatory as a comparative historical analysis of the 1918 Spanish influenza and COVID-19 pandemics may be, the findings are of little use without a deep knowledge of contemporary politics in Guatemala. Among other responses during COVID-19, the Guatemala government restricted mobility and travel in the country, secured the Sputnik vaccine from Russia, and leaned heavily on the health care and public health infrastructure without investing much in them. The election and January 2024 inauguration of President Bernardo Arévalo (2024-) speaks to a Guatemalan populace demanding accountability and particularly consequences for corruption. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated the intensity of such demands by exposing the government’s shortcomings at a time when there was little to distract people from them.