One take on how to do microcredit for women in Guatemala from Namaste Direct based in California. There are many organisations running microcredit intiatives in Guatemala, amongst others Rights Action and the Instituto para la Superación de la Miseria Urbana (ISMUGUA) were two I learnt about. For more information on microfinance, check out the UN's work in this area.

Episode 7 of documentary series 'Entremosle a Guate' entitled 'La justicia con rostro de mujer' has just been posted on the internet. This focuses on the work of two women working in the Guatemalan criminal justice system. Glenda Monroy works in the Fiscalia de la Mujer and Carmela Curup, the first indigenous woman to qualify as a lawyer. Cast against a background of rising violence against women, the programme manages to illuminate the issue with the courageous example of these two women.

Violence against women continues to get sporadic publicity in the Guatemalan press some less, some more insightful. There's also a clip of the BBC documentary 'Killer's Paradise'  showing Norma Cruz, a Guatemalan activist for women's rights posted on the internet recently. Last month Amnesty International produced another report on the issue reiterating the fact that the violence is continuing to rise.

       

Written by Alan Mendelsohn and Nadine Pequeneza, aired on Canadian television's series Turning Points of History in 2001- "A Coup: Made In America" (Barna-Alper) is a documentary made about the CIA's involvement in the downfall of Jacobo Arbenz's government in Guatemala in 1954. You can now watch it on Google Video as it has just been posted in the last couple of days by Quintus (read this article on the documentary from Quintus's blog Hunahpu Ixbalanque in Spanish).

Quintus makes the point that the significance of 1954 is still not widely enough understood in Guatemala in its true historical context. If you take a book like 'Breve Historia Contemporánea de Guatemala' by Jorge Luján Muñoz, part of the academic establishment in Guatemala you can see Quintus's point. Luján Muñoz only refers to the CIA involvement in a footnote in his chapter on the downfall of Arbenz. And finishes the piece implying that the Arbenz government failed due to internal factors:


Interesting to see Stephen Schlesinger interviewed in the documentary. Schlesinger co-wrote with Stephen Kinzer one of the widely considered classics on the CIA intervention in Guatemala in 1954 - Bitter Fruit - The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. You can see Stephen Kinzer talking about Guatemala in 1954 and his latest book "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." on Democracy Now! (May 2006).


Those words from Vice President Richard Nixon to Carlos Castillo Armas, then President of Guatemala, are still striking for their duplicity and hypocrisy. What happened in Guatemala over 50 years ago, still resonates with students of U.S. foreign policy in the interceding years. This example of the U.S. government deposing a democratically elected government for straight-forward economic self-interest finds echoes in many, many other parts of the world since -right up to the present day. The big difference with the US role in Guatemala in 1954 is that the 'American coup' is a matter of public record and can no longer be spun in any other way.

Yes, it's official: the US does not always promote democracy and liberty beyond its borders.