Guatemala Solidarity Network

With Otto Pérez Molina inaugurated as the new President of Guatemala, The Guatemala Times published a thoughtful appraisal of the Presidency of Álvaro Colom. Not without faults, Colom had to navigate monumental hazards such as the worldwide economic crisis, several major natural disasters, the infamous Rosenberg case, and the realisation of the spread of narco-power. Not without criticism, the piece is sympathetic to Colom while scathing of the Guatemalan press and elites.

You can read it here.

"Independent from the Occupy Movement in North-America and Europe, a movement of slum dwellers in Guatemala is occupying the street in front of Congress. They are protesting against the living conditions in the slums and a disfunctional housing policy. To change their situation they not only occupied Congress but made a bill and eventually started a hunger strike."

New article from Frauke Decoodt can be found here.

The story of Jesus Tecu Osorio and the massacres of the Chixoy Dam project have been followed and told here on GSN previously.

Al Jazeera carries an opinion piece by Lauren Carasik and Grahame Russell on the continuing wait for justice for the victims of the Chixoy Dam massacres in March 1982.

“Among the 32 communities along the river slated for forced resettlement, the village of Rio Negro opposed the plan most vigorously, a principled resistance for which they paid an unconscionable price. Impatient with unsuccessful efforts to threaten and intimidate the villagers into involuntary departure, the regime settled on a brutally effective relocation strategy - emptying the community through the systematic massacre of its inhabitants.”

The Dam was primarily funded by the World Bank.

“Despite the history of human rights abuses and poorly administered forcible displacements associated with its various hydroelectric projects, the World Bank has argued that its Articles of Agreement, which predated various human rights instruments, does not require consideration of human rights in its funding decisions.”

You can read this strong piece here.

“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.”

But skinny, small children are so normal here that it took Noj months to understand there was a serious problem. In fact, few Guatemalans find it odd that 4- and 7-year-olds will often look the same age.

Almost half of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition; in rural Mayan areas it’s worse. And this slow hunger means that physical growth is being stunted as bodies are deprived of vital proteins. Malnutrition also has an invisible effect on the mind in the form of diminished brain development.

Malnourished children like María, who suffer physical and cerebral starvation in their early years, will never recover. Willem van Milink Paz, a representative for the World Food Program in Guatemala, calls chronic malnutrition a “life sentence” that condemns generation after generation.

The dimensions of the problem are already immense, and they continue to grow. According to UNICEF, Guatemala has the fourth-highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world, lagging behind just a few arid countries, including Afghanistan.

Looking around Guatemala’s lush landscape – dominated by plantations of bananas, sugar cane, coffee, and corn – this seems impossible. But historic inequality means that half this land is owned by only 2 percent of Guatemala’s 14 million people. Wealth is similarly concentrated, making Guatemala one of the least-equal societies in the world. And with the region’s lowest tax rate of 11 percent, change is unlikely soon. The result is that the majority of Guatemalans live in miserable poverty, struggling to access land, jobs, education, health care, and now food.

In the last few years, climate change has brought a series of natural disasters and erratic rainfalls that destroyed small plots of land many subsistence farmers depend on to feed their families. No longer able to grow crops, more Guatemalans have to buy food.

Religious and cultural beliefs have made family planning unpopular, so rural couples often try to feed six or seven children on incomes that can barely feed two.

Rising food prices globally and locally have made life even harder for many Guatemalans. “We are talking about a 60 or 70 percent rise in food prices since January last year. That’s basic food. … Corn is at the highest [price] in history right now”, said Van Milink Paz.

“Last year we could buy six corn tortillas for 12 cents; now we get three or four,” said Noj. Even beans are out of her reach now, and luxuries like eggs and meat are unthinkable.

It’s hard to imagine her daughter María making it to school. But if she does, she will likely find that up to eight in 10 of her classmates will be malnourished too. Their stunted brains will struggle to keep up in class, and many will fall years behind in school.

They will be sick often with diarrhea and respiratory disorders that will make them lose even more weight. Some may die.

Those who live will grow up to be weak adults with a reduced physical and mental capacity. Ultimately, they will start the cycle again: malnourished parents producing malnourished babies.

Inevitably, this cycle is stunting Guatemala’s development. Billy Estrada, undersecretary of food security for the Guatemalan government, admits, “We can’t even guess how much this is costing [the state] because it’s just so big.”

The costs of repeated school years, emergency health care and food handouts can be estimated, but the earnings lost because Guatemalans have been malnourished en masse are immeasurable.

“When these malnourished children are men, … maybe they will work the land, but they won’t be able to fully develop. … It will be hard for them to come up with ideas to start their own business and so on,” Estrada said.

Despite the obvious and urgent need for the government to tackle this problem, lack of political will and fiscal constraints have held back progress. The latest aid programs run by outgoing President Álvaro Colom were widely accused of being vote-buying schemes for their lack of transparency.

Estrada insists that the real problem has been a lack of consistency in programs. Turning them into a long-term strategy protected from politics is essential. But with a new government coming in January likely to overhaul all existing programs, underdeveloped children with underdeveloped brains look set to be Guatemala’s destiny.

“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.”

You can read the article here.

“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.

Regarding Otto Pérez Molina, much has been written here – less so for Manuel Baldizón. However, two articles provide some interesting background to them both. Regarding Pérez Molina, as article in PlazaPública entitled “Por sus actos lo conocerás” (‘By his actions you will know him’). It is a long piece by Enrique Naveda, which thanks to a rush translation by the Guatemala Times, is available in English. The piece also references the film mentioned here previously making the point that this film had apparently been lost. Naveda provides a good outline to the political and military machinations that Pérez Molina has had to navigate down through the years.

Manuel Baldizón, on the other hand, wields considerable power and influence in El Petén, the hugely important Department in the north where oil, gas and drugs are the mainstay of the economy. The dominant extractive company being the British/French concern Perenco. A report by InsightCrime.org, was the background to an article published on PlazaPública and the Executive Summary has been translated into English on the Foro Huelga de Dolores. It makes for interesting reading about the capture by certain interests of the public purse and opens up questions about that same purse in the future. Also interesting is that it seems the report link on InsightCrime.org no longer works.

More here from Al Jazeera.