- Secuestro de Héctor Reyes el 5 de septiembre de 2003,
- Muertes extrajudiciales en desalojo violento de la finca el 31 de agosto de 2004,
- Secuestro, tortura y asesinato de Eufemia López Morán 25 de abril de 2004,
- Agresión e Intento de Secuestro de René Eustaquio Reyes el 2 de abril de 2004,
- Intento de asesinato en contra del grupo campesino el 21 de noviembre de 2004,
- Lesiones graves producidas por arma de fuego a varios campesinos del grupo.

A frightening and true story, Secrets of the CIA draws on highly personal stories of numerous ex-CIA agents.

Phil Roettinger: I went through World War II as an officer in the Marine Corps, came back, and one night the doorbell rang and I want [to the door] and here was this nattily dressed man in a nice suit and a snap-brim hat. And he said, "May I come in?" And I said, "Well, I think you had better identify yourself. Who are you?" "Well," he said, "I know who you are and you've been recommended very highly to our organization." I said, "What's your organization?" [He said,] "Well, I'm not at liberty to tell you what the organization is." And I said, "This is crazy! But I told him, "Come on in," [because] he was a little guy and I thought I could handle him pretty well. And he said, "You have been accepted in our organization, and we want you to go to Central America." And I said, "What? Central America? Come on!" So that's how it happened. I was to join this group that went to Central America and I found out that I was supposed to be in charge of overthrowing a government in Central America. "It doesn't sound right," and I said, "What's the government?" "Well," [he said,] we don't want to go into it too deeply here, yet." "Well," I said, "I think you'd better forget the whole thing." "Oh, no no no no no! It's very important," and so finally he did let out that we were going to overthrow the government of Guatemala.

Well now, I had been to Guatemala before several years before that because I was a member of the U.S. Olympic team and we were requested to go down and help organize the Games, the Central American/Caribbean Games.

Voiceover: Doves are released: living symbols of the peace and friendship among the twenty-two nations represented.

Phil Roettinger: So I knew people down there. I knew this gentleman by the name of Arbenz, and the CIA was going to have me overthrow these friends of mine. Well, they explained to me that this is extremely important to the security of the United States. (When they pull that, you know there's something wrong because the United States is so secure that nobody is ever going to do anything to it.) Anyway, so I said, "Well, okay, I'll do it." And we organized a group of dissident Guatemalans, armed them and trained them minimally, and sent them off up to overthrow the government [Operation El Diablo].

Voiceover: Fighting ends in Guatemala. These rebel troops backed by air power have compelled the ousting of Guatemala's pro-communist regime and have won a ceasefire from government forces. That red rule in Guatemala is over is grimly symbolized by the determination of the insurgents themselves and by this effigy of ex-president Arbenz who fled the country. The sign reads: "Go back to Russia."

Richard Nixon: You know there were some people during the Arbenz regime that said there was a question as to whether it was truly a communist regime and as to whether it was controlled by Moscow. Do we have here the proof that there was no question whatsoever?

1954 Guatemala Coup Spokesman: There was no doubt at all that Russia controlled all the communists here in Guatemala, sir.

Richard Nixon: In other words, the Arbenz regime was not a Guatemala government; it was a foreign government controlled by foreigners.

Phil Roettinger: What happened was that they went up there and caused great bloodshed and great damage, which have never been corrected even to this day. That started the whole thing in Guatemala and is why we're having all this trouble today.

The only thing that can be done, of course, is to work with our Congress because everything that happens in Latin America or any place else in the world begins in our Congress.

Now look: Are you in favor of killing somebody that you don't know? Are you in favor of torturing somebody? Are you in favor of locking people up in dungeons and things? Are you really in favor of that because I don't think that you are? And I think that I can get that across to you pretty well if I get a chance to talk to you like that.

Ralph McGehee: I feel that because of the problems that I went through, the realizations that I came to, the efforts that I've taken to counter--if I may call it this--this monster, that I am contributing so much now that I could not have contributed had I not joined the agency.

Verne Lyon: There's no way I can make amends, but certainly helping in this effort to expose the abuses of our intelligence services, perhaps, in some small way will help pay that debt.

Narrator: In an organization that celebrates loyalty and security, the public confessions of these former agents have been hard to swallow, but as revelations of the Agency's failures and deceit pile up, the courage to speak out has spread from one agent to another.

Phil Roettinger: I promise that I will do as much as I can for peace in Latin America. Thank you very much.

"Según el último monitoreo efectuado el 3 de abril del 2008, por la Secretaría de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (Sesan), seis mil 147 comunidades en todo el país presentan algún grado de riesgo y registran casos de niños con desnutrición. De éstas, 332 están en muy alto riesgo, de las cuales 93 se encuentran en el departamento de Totonicapán.

De los 22 departamentos del país, 20 registran algún tipo de desnutrición. Alta Verapaz y San Marcos son los que tienen mayor número de comunidades en niveles variados de riesgo, 972 y 967, respectivamente, pero es Totonicapán el que tiene más comunidades en muy alto riesgo, y Momostenango es el municipio más afectado, con un total de 31, seguido de San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, con 28."

"Mixco tiene dentro de sus tradiciones la fabricacion del Chocolate. Para la elaboración de la bebida del chocolate, primero se corta la pocha que contiene las semillas de cacao, se extraen y se secan al sol, regadas éstas sobre un lienzo o sobre un pedazo de lámina de zinc.

Seguidamente, se tuestan en un comal de barro y cuando están bien doraditas se dejan enfriar, para luego triturarlas en una piedra de moler o metate. Finalmente se prepara el chocolate en un jarro o en una olla de barro."

"El traje regional encierra un lenguaje artístico construido con formas y colores. También es un símbolo del poder y la identidad de las comunidades indígenas en Guatemala. Acciones como las de Violeta Gutiérrez e Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj contribuyen a que el traje indígena sobreviva y se revalorice."

"This dissertation is about the agrarian problem in Guatemala: the adverse conditions facing indigenous Mam people and their struggles to resist inequality and oppression. It is a comparative study of two peasant organizations: La Coordinadora Nacional Ind´igena y Campesina (CONIC), whose work encompasses various departments of the country and La Coordinadora Marquense Madre Tierra, Nan Tx'Otx', whose work is concentrated in the Department of San Marcos, where most of the country's largest coffee plantations are located."

"Who were the first people in North America? From where did they come? How did they arrive? The prehistory of the Americas has been widely studied. Over 70 years a consensus became so established that dissenters felt uneasy challenging it. Yet in 2001, genetics, anthropology and a few shards of flint combined to overturn the accepted facts and to push back one of the greatest technological changes that the Americas have ever seen by over five millennia."

"Since 1993 [Louise] Calder has had a new career: key-making. A friend who was leaving Bluefields sold her the machine - which until last year was the only one on Nicaragua's entire Atlantic coast - for $500. "It's very easy to do - I could show you in 10 minutes," she says. "And because I've been the only one doing it, I've become famous. At some point everyone needs a key cut."

From a shed in her garden - a riot of hibiscus, coconut, spinach, oregano and banana - she makes 30 keys daily, charging 80p for a house key, but double if it is for a car on the grounds that the owner is likely to be better off. "I couldn't afford to live back in the UK, but that's OK. I'm happy here, it's a very nice town."

Beneath the jungle-clad temples of Mexico's Yucatan, a startling discovery has been made: the largest network of flooded caves and underground rivers in the world. The intrepid cave divers exploring this surreal landscape have made remarkable discoveries: bizarre new animals, as well as the skeletons of the ancient Maya and the offerings they made to the spirits. This was their underworld, and its secrets are finally being revealed.

""El genocidio en Guatemala se anticipa, se anuncia; es la situación en que se ubican centenares de habitantes de los municipios de Ixcán El Quiché, Uspantán El Quiché y Cobán Alta Verapaz que están seriamente amenazados por la posible construcción de una mega hidroeléctrica que generaría aproximadamente 181 MB para el Sistema de Interconección Eléctrica para los Países de América Central -SIEPAC."

El gobierno del presidente Álvaro Colom podrá contar con cerca de US$1 mil millones, para proyectos de desarrollo, reveló ayer Luis Alberto Moreno, presidente del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID).

"Tenemos que definir todavía con el Gobierno el monto a desembolsar, pero estimaría que será en el orden de US$1 mil millones, para el cuatrienio del presidente Colom", afirmó Moreno.

Los fondos se utilizarían para programas de microfinanzas, enfocados en pequeñas y medianas empresas, desarrollo energético, entre otros, según el plan gubernamental.

También se impulsará el Sistema de Interconexión Eléctrica para América Central (Siepac), principalmente entre México y Guatemala."

Enthusiasts in southern Norway faced a mountain hike and bitter snow storms to be part of the annual Geilo Ice Festival. Artists from all over the world attend the festival where musicians play instruments made of ice. Located on a mountain top artists as well as audiences braved the harsh winter winds to experience this unique musical event.

The Guatemala Friendship School Foundation is a non-profit organization working to provide a quality education for those who otherwise couldn't afford to learn.Construction began in 1998 and since 2001 we have been operating a school called Instituto K'amawanik' in the highland village of Momostenango.

The school gives all students the opportunity to learn regardless of age, income, religion, or gender. We have educated over 100 students and our numbers are growing each month. The Guatemala Friendship School Foundation is dedicated to the support and continued growth of Instituto K'amawanik'.

"International Rivers and the Environmental Defender Law Center worked to engage the US law firm Holland and Knight to represent the communities at the negotiations table. We continue to monitor the negotiations process and to support communities in all possible ways so that they can one day obtain the reparations they deserve."

"The final programme focussed on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis briefly explained how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one's potential."

"Les mando aca los links de videos-reportajes realizados por periodistas comunitarios durante la consulta sobre mineria de San Sebastian en el Huehuetenango en la cual algunos miembros de CAIG participaron comoobservadores. De manera general seguimos preocupados de la manera como el (nuevo)legislativo y el gobierno de Alvaro Colom van a dar seguimiento legal a estas consultas realizadas al nivel municipal."

"The Marlin mine in Guatemala continued to demonstrate strong sequential improvement in its second year, with production increasing to 58,700 ounces of gold at total cash costs of $176 per ounce. Ore production from underground mining continued to ramp up, averaging over 1,100 tonnes per day. Construction of an additional leach tank designed to enhance silver recoveries is expected to come on line by the end of the fourth quarter."

In an upset victory, Alvaro Colom, who ran on an anti-poverty platform, beat the hard-line retired General Otto Perez Molina with close to 53 percent of the vote. We get reaction from Guatemalan American writer Francisco Goldman. His new book "The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?" implicates the defeated Perez Molina in the 1998 murder of beloved Guatemalan human rights activist Bishop Juan Gerardi.

PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense.

Documental realizado en 1986 por productores holandeses. Trata sobre el conflicto armado en el altiplano guatemalteco.

This is the moment I've been anticipating for a long, long time...because for three years I've shared my faraway journeys in writing/photographs--from Africa, Asia, and Latin America---but now I can really invite you into the heart of the experience.

My first documentary filmed in Central America explores the innovative technologies, peasant livelihoods and personal stories we've encountered. So, as I now send this off to North American television stations, and prepare for my first trip to Bolivia and Peru, I am proud to show you {Develop}'s first 25-minute film " Mayan Territory" which is available online at http://develop.blip.tv  but f or the best viewing results, download the file onto your desktop. 

We've tried with so many platforms and with different sizes to best share it with everyone, so I hope it works!

Bety Reyes Toledo, daughter of the disappeared Hector Reyes, declares in the documentary: "If a rich person would have been kidnapped, a poor person would already be in jail. But, since it was a rich person who kidnapped my father, nothing has been clarified. Three years have passed in our struggle for justice, and nothing is clear. That is why we want justice to be applied equally... It is as if justice does not apply to us poor."

Despite having suffered a number of harassments and even been shot upon with gunfire, family members of Hector Reyes and the formidable group of peasants who accompany their struggle continue their peaceful resistance in search for justice. A community member reaffirms: "We have received threats, persecutions and intimidations by the private security. But we do not care. We will not take one step backwards until justice is made."

"In September 2003, Héctor Reyes, a union leader and administrator on the Nueva Linda farm, went missing in mysterious circumstances near the port of Champerico, Retalhuleu, South West Guatemala. The farm owner and the head of the farm's security were subsequently identified by the police as the main suspects. The following month some 200 campesinos from the Nueva Linda farm and the surrounding area occupied the farm to protest against the lack of investigations into the suspected abduction. Eight months later, on 31 August 2004, they were forcibly evicted. A number of police and campesinos were killed, including three minors. Thirty months after the abduction of Héctor Reyes, his fate and the circumstances in which he went missing are still unknown."

"The first line of police was unarmed. As they advanced, three policemen were shot and killed in disputed circumstances; another policeman later died of his wounds. Eight campesinos, including three minors, were also killed. Campesinos as well as journalists covering the event were beaten and threatened by police agents. Several journalists also had their video cameras seized after allegedly filming extrajudicial executions and beatings by police. All the homes, including contents, were burned by the police."

"In 1972 Perkins went to see the then dictator of Panama, General Omar Torrijos. Torrijos was a nationalist who was eager to wrest control of the Panama Canal from the US. Perkins went in to read him the riot act and came out with what sounded like an agreement. Some years later, Torrijos started talking to the Japanese about building a larger, sea-level canal for Panama that would have undermined American influence and corporate interests in the area.

One night in 1981 Torrijos died when his Twin Otter aircraft crashed under mysterious circumstances. Perkins is convinced he was killed by US interests who placed a bomb on the plane. Had he lived, Perkins writes in his book, Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, "He would have served as a role model for a generation of leaders in the Americas, Africa and Asia - something the CIA, the NSA [National Security Agency] and the EHMs [economic hit men] could not allow."

"I try to argue in the epilogue that in many ways the Cold War wasn't cold at all; it was a third world war if you were in Guatemala or Cambodia or Angola. In fact, I call it the "Third World's war," because all that had happened was that violence was relocated to places that people in the dominant powers during the Cold War seldom saw. So violence didn't stop during the Cold War, and there is no reason to assume that it has stopped since the Cold War."

"Empires are not just about the acquisition of natural resources. They are as much about the export of values, the export of their own civilization. That's a powerful motivation for the transformation of international orders through history.

I, rather boringly, take the view that empires are what historians should study because most of what we call history consists of the doings of empires. The nation-state is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it has achieved much less historically than empires. And yet, we don't understand empires terribly well, least of all in this country, which has a very strange attitude towards empire—a desire to regard them in moral terms, as either all good or all bad; whereas, empires are both, they are capable of being both good and bad.

I think the aspirations of American power have, by and large, been relatively good—aspirations, not always results—but there are other imperial powers that are much less interested in exporting the idea of individual liberty, and China stands out as one of those."

"In the 1970's, nickel giant, Inco mined the site near the town of El Estor. The company left a ghost town behind in 1981 as the civil war in Guatemala raged. Now the price of nickel is at a twenty year high and a Canadian company is back.

Skye Resources, based in Vancouver, bought the land from Inco and is ramping up to start production. If you talk to the company, the community is solidly behind them and if you talk to the mayor, you'll hear the same thing."