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:

Great, an open and shut case. But hang on, not so fast. Reading the Guatemalan press, for instance in El Periodico, you can read comments from readers which offer another perspective. One reader of El Periodico posted the following comment on the paper's website:

For the Guatemalan authorities to have arrested and implicated such high ranking police officials in this crime so rapidly makes this case stand out. It seems to suggest that 'miracles' can be achieved if the external pressure is sufficiently strong. And given the fact that the victims in this case just happened to be members of El Salvador's governing party, there is certainly significant pressure. El Diario de Hoy in El Salvador leads the charge:

Why the need for external involvement? There's also the possibility of getting the FBI involved- not to everyone's liking. Theories explaining the crime abound- but most suspect the illicit trade in narcotics.


Background

Who was the father of assassinated Eduardo D'Aubuisson? According to a report by Amnesty International into death squads in El Salvador in 1996:

It's worth checking out the bio of Guatemala's top police chief Erwin Sperisen published on Policia Nacional Civil's website whose heading this investigation. According to the website, it's a pretty meteoric rise for Sperisen (just four years experience in local government prior to landing the top police job).

Update (25-02-07)

Quotes from Siglo XXI:

Update (26-02-07)

In a dramatic twist to this news story it's emerged that the four policemen arrested for murders of the Salvadoran politicians have been murdered themselves in the prison where they were being detained. This from AP via the Guardian:


Prensa Libre reported on the possible reasons for this. According a member of the Marasalvatrucha from the prison in Cuilapa:

According to a lawyer for the policemen:


But it won't be long until the conspiracy theories start surfacing- the Prensa Libre article ends- pointing out that now the policemen are dead the whole legal case that threatened to unearth shady goings on in the Guatemalan police is brought to a halt.

Joanna Wetherborn in Albedrio in association with Inforpress has just reported (09-02-07) on the refusal by a local community in Alta Verapaz to allow British oil extraction firm Petrolatina (previously called Taghmen) to drill on land corresponding to it.


According to Petrolatina's own website: "Following the completion of all necessary central Government approvals and consents to start work on Licence A7-2005 generally, the Municipality of Coban refused consent for access to the Tortugas area of the licence. The Company has therefore declared force majeure and all operations have been suspended on the licence, with the exception of those related to Atzam-2." (from press release 10-01-2007)

Petrolatina is determined to overturn this obstacle and rather ominously is talking in terms of 'when' rather than 'if' on its website: "Following the lifting of the force majeure at a future date following the resolution of the existing issues, the Company will complete the work over of two wells on the Tortugas salt dome and shoot 437 kilometres of 2D seismic."

This is a massive topic and will surely be an expanding post of the coming days. It's that topic of globalisation- that phenomenon that means someone in London can write about Guatemala and be read by people in Singapore, etc. When reports surfaced in January of a sharp rise in the price of maize in Guatemala, some were connecting this to the increase in ethanol production in the US.

El Siglo XXI wrote on (11-01-2007):


Inforpress also picked up on the story about, "the rising grain prices resulting from America's growing appetite for ethanol as an alternative to fossil fuel. Of course, this was a massive story across the border in Mexico where, exacerbated by a lack of a competitive domestic market in maize products, prices in corn rose steeply. The price of tortillas rose by nearly a third in three weeks".
But how has this price rise happened in Guatemala? And how do things bode for the future? Well, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Food Outlook:
















The recent trend is for the price of maize to rise. And what does the FAO put this down to?

The FAO continues:


This story of the rising price of Guatemala's most important foodstuff, kept coming back to oil. Oil before food, surely not?

The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) summarised the situation as follows: "The price of white maize is increasing due to the international price increase of yellow maize caused by the increased demand for the grain for ethanol production in the U.S.A.  It is expected that this increase will be for a limited time, and that prices for February and March national harvests will be lower." They conclude that generally the food security situation in the short term remains stable.

But what's the context here? According to a recent report on the maize problem in Guatemala, Propuesta para la Reactivación de la Cadena Agroalimentaria del Maíz Blanco y Amarillo by Mario Roberto Fuentes López, Jacob van Etten, José Luis Vivero Pol and Álvaro Ortega Aparicio, the situation is critical. Maize production in Guatemala is increasing but demand has steadily outstripped demand in the last decade and a half- a gap which has been bridged increasingly by importing maize from abroad (particularly from the US). 

For some this policy of importation threatens Guatemala's ability to produce the food it requires so that none go hungry and go back to being self-sufficient as it was in the 1970s. Less reliance on imports would take the pressure off to devalue and cushion Guatemalans (remember we're talking about a vital foodstuff) from the vagaries of the global markets subject to speculation.

It's also impossible to ignore the fact that a huge amount of Guatemalans produce maize for their own consumption. So while maize production only comes in as 1% of Guatemala's GDP, economists tempted to belittle maize's economic importance should also consider the social significance of the statistic that two thirds of the agricultural land in Guatemala is used for maize production. As Susana Gauster of CONGECOOP, puts it we should be:


Gauster makes the point that this trend to use more and more maize in the production of ethanol is putting pressure on food prices in countries like Guatemala. But what has this got to do with chickens? Well, this brings us to the supporters of maize importation in Guatemala. Who are they? Amongst others they are pork and particularly chicken producers who depend on a ready supply of yellow maize (they can't use white maize as it lacks the necessary carotenoides). For these producers it's more convenient to import yellow maize- it's a stable supply so why bother in investing in boosting a comparitively riskier domestic supply?

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it would donate 18,000 metric tons of yellow corn to the Guatemalan Government in September 2006, this dumping undoubtedly favoured the chicken producers of Guatemala. According to Susana Gauster:


Politically it's easy to see why a unified enormously powerful chicken producer has more influence over the Guatemalan Government than the unorganised small and numerous maize sector. This lack of sectoral organisation for maize producers is in no small way down to the bitter civil war fought in many of the high maize producing areas of Guatemala.

This is of course an incredibly complex situation- way beyond this short post. But the challenge for Guatemala is to start investing in its many domestic producers of maize. With CAFTA-DR gradually lowering the barrier to imports over the next nine years- this investment imperative will only become more and more vital.

1,000 US marines are coming to Guatemala to carry out humanitarian work in San Marcos. The announcement received a bit of coverage in the press back in November when Congress approved the move, but little now with the programmed deployment starting in February [there's now been an article in Prensa Libre 13-02-2007]. The US Ambassador James Derham described the reason for the initiative in a statement as:

The Frente Nacional de Lucha called the arrival of US troops in Guatemala a threat to peace. They quoted Sandino Asturias, Centro de Estudios de Guatemala (CEG) who disputed how 'humanitarian' the intentions are:


Whatever the truth it's not hard to be cynical when this same programme of 'Nuevos Horizontes' is repeated all across the region each year since 1995: Dominican Republic, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, etc. Given the timing- just in the run up to the elections, let's hope there's not a repeat of interference the US demonstrated in Nicaragua (according to the OAS) last year.

Background

Nuevos Horizontes/ New Horizons is an engineer humanitarian civic assistance exercise designed to give training to U.S. military units in civilian construction or medical care services. Participating U.S. troops build basic infrastructure (roads, bridges, schools, wells, etc.) and provide medical, dental and veterinary services. Information from a 'Civilian's guide to U.S. defence and security assistance to Latin America'.

From Guatemala to Colombia: The Regional Integration of Gold and Bullets is an article in ZNET by Sandra Cuffe that analyzes the role of militarization as a part of the control of territory, natural resources and people, and raises doubts about the so-called war on drug trafficking in mining districts.  A comparison is drawn between Plan Colombia and the current situation in the gold mining region of San Marcos, Guatemala.

More on US interference in the Nicaraguan election from Quest for Peace.

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