When GSN met with Juan Tiney, of the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinating Committee (CONIC), last year, he made the point that "food security is the root of popular resistance. With empty stomachs Guatemalans can't stand up for their rights".

In terms of per capita income, Guatemala is a comparatively rich country and the persistence and level of chronic hunger is absurd. But could a Guatemalan government seeking to undermine resistance today, allow such an absurdity to continue?

Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, in his report on his recent trip to Guatemala (26th January- 4th February 2006) noted the following about Guatemala's current ability to provide food security to Guatemalans:

* Chronic child malnutrition is more than twice as high in Guatemala than in most countries of Latin America and among the highest in the world (only higher in Yemen and Bangladesh).
* Today, half of Guatemalan children under the age of five are stunted, far more indigenous (70 per cent) than non-indigenous (36 per cent).
* Acute malnutrition is concentrated in the poorest regions, particularly the northeast, although in the wake of recent crises, including the collapse in world coffee prices and localized droughts in 2001, acute malnutrition levels have increased in the east, south coast and the west, and there has even been the reappearance of kwashiorkor.
* More than 15,000 Guatemalan children under the age of five die every year.

Given that Guatemala produces more than enough food for its citizens, theoretically at least, Ziegler's explanation for this widespread hunger and malnutrition is that this situation "is more related to inequities in the distribution of resources and people’s access to food".

These inequities which Ziegler summarises and which are widely known: highly concentrated land ownership, widespread poverty, job insecurity, the list is long. While it is true that the historical legacy of civil war and foreign intervention make any solution to the problem far from straight forward, the Government's approach to dissenting voices on land ownership, poverty, job insecurity, etc. leaves a lot to be desired.

The Berger Government's has continued to brand those who speak out about issues contributing to food insecurity as dissenters, law breakers or, more seriously, as terrorists. Ziegler refers to this tendency as the "criminalisation of social protest". As an example he cites the recent conflicts over land where workers have been evicted from their homes on fincas around Guatemala:

"While the non-payment of salaries to workers is classed as a minor misdemeanour, social protest and land occupation is considered a crime and the full force of the law is brought down on peasants and indigenous populations. There remains a tendency to privilege the interests of the economic elite over those of the majority of people, as seen in the policy of forced evictions which put a higher priority on defending private property than on defending the right to life and the right to food."

To put it crudely, the political calculation that political leaders have made over the last decades has continued to equate one Guatemalan's right to profit with another's right to life.

Now that is really absurd.