Author Archives

• 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 ›

• Ixil Dignity

  By kevodell on October 28, 2024 • ( 0 )

  Víctor Peña presented this photo essay in Spanish in March 2019, in El Faro. It is now translated in the lead-up to the verdict in the trial of retired Guatemalan General Benedicto Lucas García on the charge of genocide against… Read More ›

• International organizations demand due process guarantees at key hearing for Jose Rubén Zamora’s release

  By kevodell on October 28, 2024 • ( 0 )

  The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) was a signatory, among many others, of a Joint Statement demanding due process at the review of journalist Jose Rubén Zamora’s detention. 19 international civil society organisations demand due process at the review… Read More ›

• The Forgotten Midwives of Chiquimula

  By kevodell on October 28, 2024 • ( 0 )

  Víctor Peña presents a photo-reportage, in El Faro, on the malnutrition crisis affecting Guatemala and, more particularly, the department of Chiquimula. Brenda and her three children walk through the mountains to the community kitchen. Chon climbs a hill carrying a… Read More ›

• Judicial Elections Enter Decisive Phase

  By kevodell on October 8, 2024 • ( 0 )

  “The Commissions have not excluded from the process aspiring magistrates, judges, lawyers, prosecutors and magistrates who have participated in acts of corruption and who have been involved in the corruption of the judiciary.” The Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA (GHRC) recently… Read More ›

• The Voices Of Those Who Live Among Mountains

  By kevodell on September 30, 2024 • ( 0 )

  Resistance Of The Communities Of Guatemala Against Dispossession “We are Ral Ch’och, that is to say: we were born, we live and we are on our lands. We cannot go anywhere else other than our own.” Pascual Miranda, Río Cristalino… Read More ›