Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala, recently told supporters: "plant truth and justice and you will reap reconciliation, as Bishop Gerardi used to say".

Award-winning novelist Francisco Goldman is nominated for the T R Fyvel Book Award which honours freedom of expression through literature as part of the Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards 2008. His book The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? is an account of the battle to bring a bishop's murderers to justice.

Also nominated for the Bindmans Law and Campaigning is Lydia cacho, an activist and veteran investigative journalist, committed to exposing the plight of abused and exploited woman and children in Mexico. The award is given to lawyers or campaigners who have fought repression, or have struggled to change political climates and perceptions.

The eighth annual Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards will be presented on Monday 21 April, 2008 at Christchurch Spitalfields, London. The ceremony will be hosted by Anna Ford, with keynote speech by Alan Johnston

More information about the nominees:

- Francisco Goldman: While the Gerardi murder was big news in the United States, it was not so for the rest of the world. A human rights activist, the bishop had dared to challenge a military-dominated regime that was the most bloodthirsty in Latin America. He was bludgeoned to death as a direct result of a report he had published. Francisco Goldman is an award-winning American-Guatemalan writer whose compelling investigation, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? exposes the corruption that permeated the Guatemalan authorities through to the President during the late 1990s.

- Lydia Cacho: Despite the personal danger it entailed, Lydia Cacho has received widespread recognition and praise for her commitment to exposing the exploitation and abuse of women and children in Mexico.

A couple of reviews in the UK have been published in national newspapers today. Andrew Anthony in The Guardian and Matthew Campbell in The Sunday Times look at Francisco Goldman's book The Art of Political Murder about the killing of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi. The Sunday Times publishes an exclusive extract from the book on their website.

Toby Green has reviewed it in The Independent on Friday. The Guardian Review published this on Francisco Goldman (2nd Feb). The book has been discussed widely in the US and its good to see it being discussed in the UK media. Although it goes without saying that bloggers like Inner Diablog have been ahead of the mainstream journalists, encouraging this debate in the UK. Gillian has covered the book in a number of posts on this blog.

One of the aspects of this publication is the involvement of outsiders in writing about the internal workings of the Guatemalan criminal justice system in one of the most high profile cases that pitted many power blocks against one another: the Catholic church, the military, organised crime, and the political establishments past (Government of Alvaro Arzu) and of the moment at the time (Alfonso Portillo).

Francisco Goldman as US writer of Guatemalan origin steps into the debate following Maite Rico (Spanish) and Bertrand de la Grange (French) book "Quien mato al obispo?". In it, they point to the complicity of parts of the Catholic church, the human rights community and organised crime in the murder of Juan Gerardi. They maintain that the military men Byron Lima Estrada and Byron Lima Oliva (sentenced to 30 years prison) are innocent of the murder.

Rico and De la Grange's account was supported by many outsiders, including famously Mario Vargas Llosa in El Pais. When Goldman suggests in his book that Rico and De la Grange received money from Arzu to write their book, they responded angrily and in sarcastic tone in El Periodico. According to Inforpress Centroamericana is wasn't the only time Rico and De la Grange had been accused of receiving Government money for a book. Suspicions were raised that the Mexican Government had participated in the publication of their book (Marcos: La Genial Impostura) critical of subcommandante Marcos. It's a very tangled web to be sure. Whatever the truth, anyone following this tragic episode in any depth, beginning with the events of 26th April 1998, gets the nagging sense that the whole story and all its ins and outs, will ultimately remain elusive. At the very least, Goldman's work has reignited a hope that the contrary will one day be true.

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Background

The Open Society Institute hosted a discussion and reception with Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? (Grove Press).

Not everyday you see an English international footballer taking an interest in Guatemalan social issues. Good on Shaun Wright Phillips for supporting the work of Education for the Children, a UK charity set up in 2003.

In the Guardian the other day there was a report by Rory Carroll interviewing six people who went to live in Nicaragua at the time when the Sandinistas took power in 1979. The portraits of the six people give a flavour of how Nicaragua and our perspective has changed over the years. It's a report that gives a glimpse of what it is to live out ideals on a very human level.


I thought it was an appropriate moment to append this report with a clip from a documentary produced by CNN in 1998 as part of their series on the Cold War- Episode 18: Backyard. It's a glimpse of sorts of that past lived out in Central America not so long ago. The episode included a recapping of the 1954 coup in Guatemala.

When the King of Spain told Hugo Chavez to "shut up" at the Ibero-American summit in Chile, it kind of felt like a symbolic moment, and then it was finished off with a regal flourish as the King walked out while Daniel Ortega was in full flow. A storm in a tea cup or just a scene from just any other school playground?

Personally, watching the video from the standpoint of a reader of body language - it's fascinating. Politicians always attempt to claim the higher ground for themselves and that's exactly what was on view when current Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero railed against Chavez's charge of fascist against former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

More seriously and more worrying here is how poorly the issues are covered. To the BBC for example, it almost seemed incidental that the basis to Chavez' name calling was Spain's support for the coup in Venezuela in 2002. In one article on the exchange the BBC fails to mention the substance of Spanish support of a coup in Venezuela, in another it prefers simply to collect Chavez's verbals (again without any reference to issues or context like this from the New York Times) and in a third it refers to a 'brief' coup. As if coups can be brief. Let's not get into semantics, but it was the illegitimate government of Pedro Carmona in 2002 that was brief, not the coup. Coups either take place or they don't. What's also interesting is the ignoring of issues in the wider region. For example, a Spanish King turning his back and walking out on Daniel Ortega doesn't attract any attention, even though as far as schoolboy behaviour goes, it's as childish to runaway with your hands on your ears as it is to say shut up.

Finally today, the BBC's Martin Murphy ran an article that reflected on the incident from the weekend, only without any reflection. It contained the curious sentence:

Enrico Tortolano has written in the Tribune about the case of Pedro Zamora, the case of the murdered Guatemalan trade unionist (link to Tribune).

For more information on progress in the investigation of the Zamora case - see the International Trade Federation website.

Another trade unionist, Marco Tulio Ramirez Portela, was murdered recently (23-09-07). You can read an excellent article by Kimberley Kern on this case and what you can do to voice your concerns here.

The BBC is reporting the following:




More updated info in Wikipedia.

Here's a video of the flooding caused in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala after the passing of Hurricane Felix.

These discussions are from another age- a time when the mainstream media discussed issues in Central America. These appearances of Noam Chomsky from the film documentary Manufacturing Consent seem even truer today- where all too often, television hosts call time and dismiss any discussion of the real issues of concern to Central Americans today.

Speaking for the UK it's probably true for Guatemala that of the national daily newspapers Guatemala has only made it on to the pages via the wire services like Associated Press or Reuters- albeit with a handful of exceptions. How often has Guatemala been mentioned in the UK media without mention of a natural disaster, violence, drugs or archeology? We should be demanding a more rounded coverage and debate of the world we're part of.

It was great to see (and hear) the Simon Bolivar Orchestra (Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar) at the Proms a few days ago. Much has been written about El Sistema in Venezuela as a long running social project broadening access to classical music training and building one of the best youth orchestras in the world.

You can hear more about the Simon Bolivar Orchestra broadcast by the BBC during the interval here. Unfortunately not available on the iPlayer.


It's great to hear about a new initiative by World Vision in Guatemala to create the orquesta sinfónica rural.

There are more photos here on the BBC Mundo website along with a short audio report in Spanish.

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Background

Observer article - "Simon Rattle describes him as 'the most astonishingly gifted conductor he has ever met'. And yet 26-year-old Gustavo Dudamel grew up in poverty in Venezuela. Ed Vulliamy tells the story of El Sistema - a remarkable youth project which uses Beethoven and Brahms to save the children of the barrios"
Review of the Proms Concert - Independent
BBC Mundo feature on the Simon Bolivar Orchestra with video, photos and loads of articles and interviews

Amnesty International UK has just published a 32 page report documenting a recent wave of human rights abuses:

# Read a copy of the report Persecution and Resistance: The Experience of Human Rights Defenders in Honduras and Guatemala
# Take action to protect human rights defenders at risk in Honduras
# Listen to an audio report from human right defender Dina Meza

This article appeared in The Guardian (23-07-07) about the case of the murder of Guatemalan trade unionist Pedro Zamora.

Just catching up on articles on Guatemala in the UK press. This article was published at the beginning of the month (02-07-07) in The Guardian. It is a really interesting and moving look at the experience of adoption in the UK of a child of Guatemalan origin - "When Kate Hadley adopted her Guatemalan daughter, they both enjoyed becoming part of a new, mixed-race family - but there were unexpected hazards":

Amnesty International have just released the following press release about the CICIG which was CICIACS in a previous encarnation;

Organizaciones internacionales felicitamos resolución favorable de la Corte de Constitucionalidad de Guatemala e instamos a la pronta ratificación de iniciativa para combatir la impunidad.

Organizaciones no gubernamentales de Estados Unidos, Europa y Canadá acogemos con esperanza la opinión consultiva favorable a la iniciativa para el establecimiento de la Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG) pronunciado el día de ayer por la Corte de Constitucionalidad de Guatemala.
 
“La decisión de ayer abre una valiosa oportunidad para que el país, con el respaldo de la comunidad internacional, retome el camino hacia la democracia, la vigencia del Estado de Derecho, y la protección de los derechos humanos”, dijeron las organizaciones firmantes.
 
Tanto dentro, como fuera de Guatemala, la existencia y el impacto de los cuerpos ilegales y aparatos clandestinos de seguridad son hechos evidentes. En los últimos años, estos grupos han extendido su presencia atacando e intimidando a operadores de justicia, líderes políticos, y defensores de derechos humanos, entre otros. Las actividades de estos grupos han logrado socavar el sistema judicial y perpetuar un clima de inseguridad, generando terreno fértil para la mayor generalización de la corrupción, la violencia y el crimen organizado.

El principal reto para la democracia en Guatemala continúa siendo la consolidación del Estado de Derecho, el cual no podrá fortalecerse mientras persistan deficiencias en el Sistema de Administración de Justicia y se permita a los cuerpos ilegales y aparatos clandestinos de seguridad actuar impunemente.

La CICIG ofrece un mecanismo concreto, puntual e inmediato para fortalecer las instituciones estatales y asistir al Gobierno de Guatemala en su toma de control de un fenómeno que ha impactado a todos los sectores de la sociedad. Romper con la cultura de impunidad y prevenir ataques contra defensores de los derechos humanos y representantes de la sociedad civil son tareas que ya no pueden esperar más.

El futuro de la CICIG queda ahora en manos del Congreso de la República, que puede dar un importante e histórico paso, al aprobar el acuerdo. “La situación actual ha puesto en evidencia que el rescate de la institucionalidad, el efectivo combate de la impunidad, y la consolidación del Estado de Derecho son tareas urgentes e indispensables para la construcción de la democracia en Guatemala y para el efectivo respeto del derecho a la vida”, expresaron las organizaciones.

Esperamos que el Congreso actúe prontamente en pos de los más urgentes intereses nacionales, y decida a favor de la oportunidad que brinda la CICIG para afrontar con firmeza el legado de violencia e impunidad de los cuerpos ilegales y aparatos clandestinos de seguridad.

Organizaciones firmantes:

Oficina en Washington para Asuntos Latinoamericanos (WOLA)
Plataforma Holandesa
Diakonia – Suecia
Human Rights First
Iniciativa de Copenhague para Centroamérica y México (CIFCA)
Earth Rights International
Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA)
Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC)
Foro de ONG Internacionales (FONGI – coalición de 32 organizaciones de Estados Unidos, Europa y Canadá)
Franciscan Mission Service
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
Our Savior's Lutheran Church
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC)

Human trafficking continues to be an issue in Guatemala, the most frequent manifestation of which being the enticing of young girls into enforced prostitution…

On Friday, 20th of April 2007 Casa Alianza Guatemala in coordination with the National Police, Migration and Public Prosecution Offices raided a brothel disguised as a massage parlour suspected of housing minors for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation in Guatemala City. Two 17-year-old girls were rescued from the premises as a result of this joint raid operation and both were immediately referred to a judge who entrusted them to Casa Alianza for shelter and protection.

The parlour was licensed to operate as a bar and to offer massages but it was evident from the outset that it functioned as a full-scale brothel. The two-storey premises housed roughly thirty girls at any one time and boasted three bedrooms on the upper floor were paid sexual activity apparently took place. The property lacked basic sanitation, there was no running water and bed sheets were stained with blood.  

Those in charge were taken by surprise and several arrests were carried out, including a few individuals who were performing what they claimed to be “traditional Mayan rituals” on the roof of the building and who tried to flee the scene by jumping to adjacent houses.  

Twenty-five girls were found on site during this raid, including three foreign nationals, namely a Nicaraguan, Mexican and a Honduran girl, who faced immediate deportation, as they were not in possession of valid Guatemalan work permits. The case of the Mexican girl was particularly shocking as she was married to a Guatemalan national and had a nine months-old daughter with this man who married her only in order to obtain Mexican citizenship, according to the girl.

She stated she had been trafficked from Mexico at the age of fifteen at which stage she started working at a brothel in Guatemala City were she met her now husband, the son of the brothel’s owner. Despite being the real victim here, she was deported back to Mexico and guardianship of the baby was granted to her husband, who by all means knew about his wife’s prostitution and benefited from her earnings making it a typical case of pandering.     

The Migration and Prosecution Officers failed to properly execute their duties in this raid – by not ensuring that each girl had a legitimate id card proving that they were adults. Several girls appeared to be minors and in possession of fake identity cards but the agents, instead of extending the presumption of being underage privileges to these particularly young-looking girls and ensuring the validity of the documents presented, decided to take the girl’s id documents at face value in a clear violation of Guatemalan youth protection laws.
 In Guatemala, adult prostitution is not illegal therefore just moments after the agents left the premises, the music was put back on and business resumed as usual.

On Tuesday 24th of April 2007, In another joint raid operation, a seventeen years-old Guatemalan girl was rescued from a different brothel belonging to the same human trafficking network. She came from a small village and was lured into the Capital city and forced into prostitution in order to pay for debts she supposedly contracted vis-à-vis her traffickers.

Casa Alianza together with other leading Guatemalan NGO’s is constantly lobbying legislators for important changes to the Penal Code. Under the current Penal Code, those guilty of pimping and pandering offences get away with their crimes by simply paying an insignificant fine, which is low even for Guatemalan standards.

In the three years the Guatemalan Congress has failed to pass any legislation that benefit and protect Guatemalan youth. One example of which is the Adoption Act, which has not yet been approved, despite more than 10 years of continued civil society denouncing irregular adoptions presenting characteristics of human trafficking.

Casa Alianza is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of children’s rights in the region.

For more information on the work of Casa Alianza please visit www.casa-alianza.org.uk

We just received the following press release about the new English translation of Oswaldo Salazar's book "Por el lado Oscuro". Salazar was recently in London to take part in launches of the book that included an event in Canning House and then the Instituto Cervantes. Having read the book - it is certainly a compelling read. And pre-revolutionary Guatemala is certainly an interesting time to look at.

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Guatemala has a new master of narrative in the form of Oswaldo Salazar, whose compelling first novel From the Darkness is one of the few works of Central American literature to explore the region's criminal history.

In From the Darkness - the English translation of the prize-winning Por el lado oscuro - Salazar explores the bitterly unhappy circumstances that can make a woman kill, and the unforgiving quality of male justice.

From the Darkness is a captivating story of a murder and the ensuing investigation that became known as "The Gourd Poisoning" in a traditional society unprepared for a crime that lay outside its powers of reasoning. It begins in the spring of 1939 when a man dies in agony at the San Juan de Dios de Amatitlán Hospital outside Guatemala City. His wife and children are accused of poisoning him, shattering the calm of a land kept in fearful order by the cold and tempestuous dictator General Jorge Ubico (1931-44).

Salazar's work touches a raw Latin nerve, giving the reader a unique insight into lost Central American worlds: that of the Guatemalan peasant woman - ignored, abused and constantly judged by her unforgiving male superiors; that of the small, rural Latin American town, where a handful of strongmen oversee all life; and that of the era of military caudillos, dictators whose quest for order and progress shapes all official culture.

The winner of the prestigious 2003 Mario Monteforte Toledo Prize, Por el lado oscuro was translated by Gavin O'Toole and will be published by Aflame Books in March 2007.

The Mexican writer Carlos Montemayor said of this book: "Por el lado oscuro has a magnificent narrative quality, exposition and style as well as a forceful central character, delivering the unexpected features of a species of crime novel within a work of historical reconstruction."

Oswaldo Salazar was born in Guatemala City in 1959 and has had a distinguished academic career. He took his first degree in philosophy and literature at Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala then studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Boston College in the United States. He currently teaches at Guatemala's Francisco Marroquín University.

Aflame Books is a small, independent UK publisher committed to publishing in English translation works from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

World Politics Watch have just published a two-part series on Gang Culture and Violence in Guatemala: Part One and Part Two. It makes for pretty chilling reading.

The series was written by Billy Briggs, the 2005 recipient of Amnesty International's Nations and Regions Award for his reporting on human rights issues.  His report is accompanied by photos by Angela Catlin.

Billy says on website about Guatemala:

You can see his other articles on Guatemala on his website where he's written for The Sunday Herald, The Guardian and The Big Issue.

To begin this post here's George Bush getting some practice in at being contrite- this could have served him well before his Latin American trip. The Mayan cleansing to be carried out in Iximche has ran and ran, as have the crosses held aloft by students in Guatemala City. Bush as sinner or 'el Diablo', has captured the public's imagination.

On the day that George Bush will touch down in Guatemala- the agenda for that one hour meeting and dinner with Oscar Berger is doubtless rather full- though no surprises if it turns out to be empty on contrition. Foreign Minister, Gert Rosenthal, hinted they might be discussing ethanol production- but if this interview in Siglo XXI is anything to go by- sounds like policy on the fly:


Here's a better idea from the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (Nisgua) just in case both are prepared to bear their soul a little: they could make a joint declaration to advance the legal cases against General Efrain Rios Montt and members of his military high command. They can't say there's a shortage of information on this one.

Nisgua points out:


But hey, the onus doesn't rest solely with Berger to make a move here. What are the odds of a contrite Bush making a Clinton-style apology for US involvement in these crimes? It's worth reminding ourselves today of what Clinton said in 1999:

This report from Robert Parry at the time- tracks the journey that led up to that moment the last time a sitting US President visited Guatemala. The Clinton administration had declassified scores of the secret U.S. documents in the late 1990s- the Peace Accords had not long been signed and the Historical Clarification Commission had just reported. It feels a world away now.
Background

Apologizing of course is not with out controversy, William Blum pointed out that: "the word "sorry" did not cross the president's [Clinton's] lips, nor did the word "apologize", nor the word "compensation". For other views on the significance of this moment see:


Then there's this on Bush's track record on apologizing from Robert Parry's report on that V-E Day speech on May 7 2005:

Finally, for family precedents, Dubya's dad is quoted as saying the following in 1988 as Vice President:

Just when you thought you were beginning to get the most basic grasp of life in Guatemala - something happens to prove you know nothing. I have to admit to never hearing about the danger of a massive sinkhole appearing in Guatemala City. Photos on the net leave your jaw dropping. You can see the location in Flash Earth - or if you have Google Earth installed you can see it here. Below you can see how close the sinkhole is to the centre of Guatemala City:


Fingers are starting to be pointed in various directions. In the coming days hopefully we'll start to get convincing explanations for why this has happened; and what risk there is of this happening elsewhere. Two people have already been killed, let's hope there won't be more.

This from Associated Press via The Guardian:

Cerigua reported that the Human Rights Ombudsmen would be looking into complaints from the local community about how seriously the Guatemalan municipality took their repeated reports (see this in La Hora from June 2006) of tremors long before the sinkhole appeared:

Update 25-02-07

The total of deaths is now confirmed as three [more from AP via the Guardian]. There are more details in the Guatemalan press, including reports from Prensa Libre that illegal drains may have been an aggravating factor, and that tremors and loud noises continue to be felt and heard. This from Siglo XXI:
   
Here is a brief clip of the sinkhole thanks to Polish television news (TVP). And another longer one here from AgnostikTV. And another even longer clip from Sirmorles. Here's a Guatemalan television report via krls666.

The recent case of the open assassination of three prominent Salvadoran politicians and their driver in Guatemala provides a dramatic snapshot. It's shone a light on the criminal justice system in Guatemala; and the state of relations between El Salvador and Guatemala.

Eduardo D'Abuisson, William Pichinte and Ramon Gonzalez were leading members of El Salvador's ruling party, ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance). They represented El Salvador at the Central American Parliament, which is based in Guatemala City.

It's mind blowing that those planning to assassinate three prominent politicians should do it in a vehicle fitted with equipment that allows it to be tracked by GPS. But why? Stupidity or fearless impunity?

Associated Press reported:

Reuters reported: