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.