Guatemala Solidarity Network

“According to Roman Catholic tradition, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared for the fourth and last time to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on December 12th, 1531, on the Tepeyac Hill in modern day Mexico City. Guatemalan faithful flock to Guatemala City's Guadalupe Sanctuary every year on the aforementioned date to venerate the Virgin of Guadalupe. As part of the tradition, children are dressed in indigenous outfits to represent Juan Diego who belonged to the Chichimeca ethnic group.”

This photo reportage from James Rodríguez, MiMundo, with his usual great photographs can be seen here.

Two recent items from NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala) highlight the genocide cases and also the recent attacks against the Attorney General – the latter being part of a campaign against human rights defenders in general through the judicial system.

Regarding the genocide cases, ‘Lawyers representing the retired Generals Héctor Mario López Fuentes and Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores have adopted strategies which could delay or prevent further advances in the cases.’

As regards the attacks on the Attorney General, ‘Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, whose father was minister of the interior under Efrain Rios Montt, has made no attempt to mask the politicized nature of his legal complaint: "Of course it's politically motivated. It's against the Attorney General, for the love of god, I'm aiming at her"’.

The children of Guatemala are starving By Natasha Pizzey-Siegert

Half of Guatemala’s children are malnourished. Years of poverty, violence and underdevelopment are taking a toll on Guatemala’s most vulnerable citizens.

Children in Guatemala are starving. But like their parents, one might not notice. There are few bones jutting out, few oversize heads and bellies. But a slow, deep hunger has been building in Guatemala for decades. And now it’s destroying a generation.

In the drab-sounding hamlet of Lote 14 (Lot 14), 100 kilometers south of the capital in the department of Escuintla, 2-year-old María sits still on her mother’s lap, her twig-like arms dangling limply. Weighing a third less than she should, María looks frighteningly small. Staring at the mud floor of their empty kitchen, her mother, Paulina Noj, explains the daily struggle to feed María and her other seven children.

Her husband is lucky – despite rampant unemployment, he has a job, but he only earns $40 a week. Before, that was just enough for them to buy the basics – corn and beans. But rising food prices have doubled the cost of corn over the past year and they can no longer get enough to feed all 10 in the family.

“Everything is so expensive now that sometimes we just can’t buy corn,” Noj said. “There isn’t always enough to feed the kids.”

Clearly hungry herself, Noj can’t produce breast milk to feed her little girl, and has helplessly watched her get “very skinny.”

“Millions of documents from the Guatemalan national police archive, shedding light on torture, forced disappearances and murders committed during the1960-1996 counterinsurgency war in this country, are now available on-line thanks to a collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin.”

An article by Danilo Valladares, originally on Inter Press Service, was posted on the Global Issues website and talks about a new initiative which is making available, on-line, documents found in the police archives in Guatemala. The story of the archives is described: “In July 2005, the Procuraduría de los Derechos Humanos - the office of Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman — found the abandoned documents by accident in an abandoned munitions depot on the north side of Guatemala City. The messy bundles of records were stacked floor to ceiling in dozens of rooms infested by rats, bats and cockroaches, and many of the files were in an advanced state of decay.

The administrative police records, which date from 1882 to 1997, document the repressive role played by the police during the 36-year armed conflict between leftist insurgents and government forces, which left a death toll of 250,000.”

GSN has featured the archives and the excellent film, La Isla, made about the archives by Uli Stelzner.

The article goes on to say that “The archive includes arrest warrants, surveillance reports, identification documents, interrogation records, snapshots of detainees and informants, and of unidentified bodies, fingerprint files, transcripts of radio communications, ledgers full of photographs and names, as well as more mundane documents like traffic tickets, drivers’ licence applications, invoices for new uniforms and personnel files.

So far, 13 million documents have been cleaned, classified and digitised.”

“In Guatemala City, a place called "The Mine" can deliver both a means of survival and a grisly death. Every day, dozens of residents salvage a living by scouring the massive dump for scrap metal. Facing the threat of mudslides, collapses, and disease, they can potentially earn twice the daily minimum wage. Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd documented their efforts.”

You can see the extraordinary (and extraordinarily heartbreaking) photos courtesy of Boston.com, here.

“The villagers had no idea that their land had been nationalised in‭ ‬1984‭ ‬– a fact that was concealed from them for‭ ‬28‭ ‬years.‭ ‬They are perplexed,‭ ‬shocked,‭ ‬and angry. In the‭ ‬1980s the area was scorched with genocide and state repression and the majority of Ixiles were forced to flee their land.”

So writes Frauke Decoodt in her article “!!!This land is ours!!! - A tale of land theft through violence and laws”

You can read more here.

On July 7th 2010, gunmen entered the home of Diodora Hernández (above) and shot her in the eye. Diodora worked with a group of women active in defending community water resources from Canadian mining company Goldcorp.

Goldcorp has been in an ongoing conflict with Mayan communities in Western Guatemala since it began to develop its Marlin gold mine in San Marcos province 6 years ago and we have featured the community struggle previously.

A new photomontage from James Rodríguez is presented on his MiMundo site under the title ‘As Firm as a Tree: Portraits of Diodora’.

One year after her miraculous recuperation, Diodora’s anti-mining stance and activism remains as steadfast as ever.

World Food Day was the 16th October and, to ‘celebrate’, Danilo Valladares wrote an article for Inter Press Service, found on Global Issues. The article was titled, ‘Guatemala: Little Headway against Rampant Malnutrition’. “

The Guatemalan population of 14 million has the highest rate of chronic malnutrition among children in Latin America, at 49.3 percent of under-fives, and one of the highest in the world, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)”. This is serious as Guatemala certainly produces enough wealth to stop this happening.

It’s in the usual pockets.

On a ‘you could do better’ note – the UK Ambassador to Guatemala has a blog and she inadvertently named the 16th October as World Blogging Day (August 31st), admittedly on an entry to do with the hunger, and gave a link to a two year old article from the Economist, suggesting it was a year old.

Must do better – the hungry deserve nothing less.

Two pieces on Democracy Now were broadcast recently regarding Guatemala. The first one features Jennifer Harbury and discusses, among other things, the first round of the Presidential elections and the role of Otto Pérez Molina in the disappearance of her husband, Efraín Bámaca. The second piece features Pamela Yates and Fredy Peccerelli and there is a discussion regarding Pamela’s film, ‘Granito: How to Nail a Dictator’, which features both prominently. There is also a discussion on the Fredy’s work with FAFG.

Both pieces are well worth watching.

The results of the Guatemala Presidential elections, which took place on Sunday, 11th September, left two candidates to run-off on the 6th November. According to PlazaPública, Otto Pérez Molina gained 36.08% and Manuel Baldizón was second with 23.3%. Presidential elections in Guatemala, as well as Department and Mayoral elections, are seldom about the political parties involved. The parties tend to be used as personal vehicles for contenders in order to achieve their ambitions and, as such, tend not to have a long life span. As such, they have little or no relevance though this may change. It will be interesting to see if Sandra Torres decides to run, or is allowed to stand, in the next elections in 2016 on the UNE ticket. UNE, as well as Pérez Molina’s PP, did well in the Mayoral elections, much down to Torres for UNE.

So come the 6th November, Guatemalans should they vote, will have a choice between a former military and a business man – each with their own murky backgrounds and each who wield considerable power and influence among those who rule Guatemala. I mentioned, ‘should they vote’ on purpose. Guatemalans tend to turn out more for the 1st round of these elections rather than the run-offs. Elections tend to be local affairs and the capital is so far away and can have very little affect on peoples’ day to day lives. For the 1st round, the local Department and Mayoral candidates are very generous in ensuring that transport is laid on for their supporters come election day. For the 2nd round, people have to make their own way and considering the costs involved, many decide to stay at home. The more local the election, the more interest is taken.

‘Päivän otsikko: Guatemala’ (Headline Today: Guatemala) is a documentary from Finnish television from 1983 presenting events taking place in 1982 in Guatemala through the eyes of a US reporter and photographer.The reporter and journalist happen to be Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon. The former is well known for his work in Indonesia and Guatemala, and the latter is well known for her book ‘Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny’, recently published in Spanish in Guatemala. Anyone familiar with the book can recognise some of the settings that she is photographing in the film.

‘They interview Western relief workers, officers of the army that supports the right-wing government, as well as ordinary Guatemalans. Gradually we begin to see how much of the war remains untold and to what extent Americans are kept in the dark about their country’s military involvement: a representative of the U.S. State Department, for instance, denies the role of the U.S. as supporter of the Guatemalan Government.’

‘The film also presents an interesting and surprising take on a reporter’s work in a war zone. It shows how hard it is to find the truth in a torn country.’

The film is 58 minutes long but only 48 minutes is posted here (it looks like part 5 is missing). However, it is still full of startling images and interviews. It is extraordinary to think of the access that these two were given and the openness of the military, not least current Presidential favourite, Otto Pérez Molina. This is probably more down to an arrogance that pervades Guatemalan power rather than anything else.

“The massive evictions of 800 families from 14 communities in Guatemala's Polochic Valley, removing peasant agriculture in order to install the Chabil Utzaj sugar plantation, began on March 15, 2011. When we heard, we were surprised. Not because we have any illusions about the benevolence of the Guatemalan government or the oligarchy it serves, but because we didn't expect the government to risk the public reaction that a major atrocity in the Polochic's symbolic municipality of Panzós would provoke. Here in Guatemala, the Colom administration poses as a populist movement that takes the side of the poor, but Colom and his now ex-wife Sandra Torres are enmbroiled in major electoral tension as Torres battles her disqualification from the electoral contest for President. Because Colom and Torres are banking on their ability to mobilize the working classes to protest on their behalf in order to win the elections and maintain power, we didn't anticipate that the government would be willing to shatter the illusion of their so-called “Times of Solidarity” so bluntly.”

With the backdrop of the upcoming Presidential elections, here is an article by Tristan Call and Katy Savage, courtesy of Upside Down World,  providing an all too familiar description of the background and events that are blighting the lives of evicted communities in the Polochic valley, in Alta Verapaz. There is also a brief description of the massacres in nearby Panzós, one of the more notorious during the internal conflict, to give a sense of historical forces at play.

An interesting blog entry came along on the Central American Politics blog page regarding the upcoming Presidential elections and stories about Otto Pérez Molina, the front runner. The elections are due to be held on that most of iconic dates for the Americas, both North and South – September 11th.

There was an interview with Alan Nairn where Pérez Molina takes the role of a ‘matter of fact’ functionary of the State and promoter of Israeli ordnance in front of the camera – no doubt ordnance used in the genocide. The short video is titled Otto Pérez Molina – a biography.

We also know that a letter has been sent recently to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that Pérez Molina was directly involved in the systematic use of torture and acts of genocide during the long civil war in Guatemala. Specifically, he was on the ground and in command in the Ixil triangle in 1982 during the village by village massacre campaign as part of that genocide.

Lest we forget, Francisco Goldman’s interview on Democracy Now effectively implicating Pérez Molina in the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998, two days after the Bishop published ‘Guatemala: Nunca Más’, the report which placed the blame for the vast majority of the violations of the internal conflict on the government and the army. You can see the interview here and a transcript here.

“Guatemala is a land of tremendous contrasts; a place of incredible beauty, wonderful people and heart-stopping terror. Our final evening on a recent Skylight Pictures visit to this “land of eternal spring” starts simply enough, but by the end of it we experience a little of Guatemala’s extremes.”

So begins a recent blog article by Peter Kinoy on IJCentral. Peter was involved in the making of the film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, which we have featured here before.

“As we packed our bags for an early morning flight I thought about these wonderful people, full of life and courage and how they remain optimistic about a possible Guatemala where the beauty and culture would shine and flourish, and I wondered if there would ever be a time when the hideously unchecked terror and violence would become only a memory.”