This blog is
contributed to by people who have other lives, and inevitably
sometimes the demands mean we miss posting a few things we would have
liked to. This happened in May, so I thought I would just post up a
brief summary of a few things I would have liked to have posted then.
Hope you find them useful!

• The Academy
  of Mayan Languages
  has set up a television
  station
  to transmit programmes in Mayan languages, TV
  Maya.
  It will be a small start – only three transmissions of half an
  hour per week – but it is hoped to expand this soon.
• Jennifer
  Harbury has lost
  her final appeal
  for compensation from the US authorities for their part in the death
  of her husband, Efrain Bamaca. She made a claim under the Federal
  Tort Claims Act,
  (FTCA) which permits the US government to be sued for actions of
  people acting on its behalf. Jennifer Harbury tells the story in her
  book “Searching
  for Everardo”
  of how she met and married the guerrilla reader Comandante Everardo,
  and then her search for the truth about his fate after he
  disappeared. She eventually discovered that Bamaca was killed by a
  paid CIA asset after being captured in battle. The judgement claims
  the FTCA does not apply to actions outside the US. The state of
  Guatemala recognised its responsibility
  in the death of Bamaca back in 2006.
• An attempt to
  reintroduce the death penalty in Guatemala has failed for the time
  being. As we reported
  back in February a bill was introduced to reintroduce it as a
  response to the crime rate. In mid-March Alvaro Colom vetoed
  the law arguing that it was unconstitutional. As the Constitutional
  Governance Committee failed to determine what to do next the law
  then failed at the beginning of May. Congress will need to introduce
  a new bill if it wishes to try again to reintroduce the penalty
  again.
• A hunger
  strike
  was held in Guatemala City by four women claiming their babies had
  been stolen for adoption. They lost
  their children in 2006 in various different ways, including being
  drugged or threatened. They gave up the strike after eight days but
  suggested they may reinitiate it if the authorities do not do
  anything about locating their children. A new adoption law
  introduced at the end of 2007 tightened up adoption procedures. In
  the face of the hunger strike all adoptions were suspended
  for a period of one month so that pending adoptions, some of which
  were initiated before the new law, can be reviewed.
• Victor Rivera,
  a former adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, was murdered
  just two days after he was dismissed from his post. The president
  had remarked that he had become “too powerful”. He was a
  controversial figure having allegedly been a CIA asset in El
  Salvador. He was a Venezuelan by birth but had taken up Guatemalan
  citizenship, and had worked in Guatemela for many years. He was
  involved in negotiating the release of kidnap victims and had been
  investigating the killing of three Salvadoran politicians and their
  driver. There was criticism that he had not been provided with
  protection after he was dismissed despite the work he had done and
  the knowledge he had about high profile cases.
• Guatemala is
  considering a freedom
  of information act
  to allow members of the public to access details of how public money
  is spent. This has been lingering in Congress since 2000.

Categories: Culture