Author Archives

• Fighting Corruption – Virginia Laparra awarded the Sir Henry Brooke award

  By kevodell on February 24, 2025 • ( 0 )

  In a significant acknowledgment of her relentless fight against corruption under perilous conditions, Virginia Laparra Rivas, a former prosecutor in Guatemala, was honoured with the prestigious Sir Henry Brooke Award for 2025. The ceremony, organized by the Alliance for Lawyers… Read More ›

• Migrants Describe Journey As Military Deportation Flights Continue

  By kevodell on February 19, 2025 • ( 0 )

  Jeff Abbott writes in the El Paso Times of the trauma of the military deportation flights as Guatemalan nationals are forcibly removed from the United States. It was a somber — and for some degrading — return to their politically… Read More ›

• Claudia Paz y Paz: “What Consuelo Porras seeks in Guatemala is impunity in all cases”

  By kevodell on January 22, 2025 • ( 0 )

  Yuliana Ramazzini writes in El Faro on the continuing corruption of the Guatemala judicial system through an interview with former Attorney General, Claudia Paz y Paz, internationally known for bringing to trial the first charges of genocide in Guatemalan history,… Read More ›

• Guatemala: A 2025 Snapshot

  By kevodell on January 22, 2025 • ( 0 )

  Emilie Sweigart provides a snapshot for 2025 on Guatemala in Americas Quarterly. Elected on an anti-corruption platform, President Bernardo Arévalo and his center-left Semilla Party (which holds only 23 of the 160 seats in Guatemala’s unicameral Congress) have faced strong… Read More ›

• Guatemala’s New Anti-Monopoly Law: Bark or Bite?

  By kevodell on January 22, 2025 • ( 0 )

  In December, two-thirds of Congress approved an anti-monopoly law proposed by legislators aligned with President Bernardo Arévalo, marking a significant improvement of their negotiating power in the legislature while sparking debate over whether the new rules will in fact curb… Read More ›

• Central America’s Last Comandante

  By kevodell on January 22, 2025 • ( 0 )

  Writing in Jacobin, Emilie Teresa Smith and Margarita Kenefic, both former militants in the Guatemala’s Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) during the Guatemalan internal armed conflict, talk of César Montes, ‘Central America’s Last Comandante’, who led rebel forces, including the Guerrilla… Read More ›

• Defense Strategy and Guatemalan AG’s Decisions Reduce Odds of Genocide Conviction

  By kevodell on December 20, 2024 • ( 0 )

  In the genocide trial against retired military commander Benedicto Lucas García, initially expected to end three weeks ago, the defense has attempted to recuse the court to delay sentencing. Last-minute tension is affecting proceedings: A judge is now on medical… Read More ›

• Guatemalan AG Wants to Send Jose Rubén Zamora Back to Prison

  By kevodell on December 20, 2024 • ( 0 )

  After spending more than two years in prison in a corrupt judicial process, Guatemala’s most prominent newspaperman was released on house arrest pending retrial. But a Guatemalan court, at the request of AG Consuelo Porras, wants to send Zamora back… Read More ›

• GHRC – El Quetzal 

  By kevodell on December 13, 2024 • ( 0 )

  The Winter 2024 edition of El Quetzal, from The Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC), has recently been published. It features an interview with Juan Francisco Sandoval, who was the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI) from 2015… Read More ›

• Ixil Genocide Trial Against Benedicto Lucas García Nears End

  By kevodell on November 18, 2024 • ( 0 )

  Eleven years after the genocide trial of ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, that of General Benedicto Lucas García, a former chief of the General Staff, began this April. In over 85 hearings, witnesses, victims, and experts have testified about the scorched-earth… Read More ›