Francisco Goldman, author of "The Art of Political Murder, who killed the bishop?" discusses his book with Amy Goldman of Democracy Now! The book alleges that presidential candidate Otto Perez Molina was involved in the murder of Bishop Gerardi   more »

DOSES, a Guatemalan NGO concerned with journalism, has published some analysis of election coverage in all media. The September edition of Sala de Redacción, DOSES’s magazine, carries the result of a study it carried out and a poll of eighteen journalists it interviewed.

Its study was critical of the coverage of the election, finding it to be superficial and covering a largely limited range of issues: electoral violence, candidates’ activities and electoral logistics such as financing. Fundamental issues which might allow voters to make an informed choice were not really covered and how each party’s offering might match up to the demands of sectors of the population were not addressed. Women, young people and the indigenous, for example, seemed to be only shown as passive voters; what their opinions and aspirations for a new government might be were never explored. Equally, other controversial issues such as free trade, mining and other “mega-projects” such as dams and highways did not get discussed.

The poll of journalists indicated that editorial policy often led to small parties, the left and social organisations not being covered, though this was dressed up as “covering the poll leaders”.  Non-television media generally seemed to make more efforts to be inclusive though. In this respect a comment by one journalist polled that “Todos los medios son empresas y todo se mueve por intereses” is interesting when we consider that all four TV channels in Guatemala are private and are owned by the Mexican Ángel González. Anecdotally one hears that at the start of an election season the leaders of the main, and best financed, parties troop off to Miami to discuss access to television coverage with Sr G. A discussion, produced in 2001, of the state of Guatemalan media can be found here.

While pointing out that there was not as much overt bias as in 2003 and that there are some encouraging signs, nevertheless the analysts at DOSES conclude that “there is a long way to go to get equitable and inclusive coverage”.

“Ten years after the signing of the Peace Accords, the search for victims claimed by the Internal Armed Conflict continues throughout the country. Many of those massacred and disappeared were simply piled and dumped in clandestine graves.”

The always excellent James Rodríguez has a new photo-essay entitled, 'Visit to the Forensic Anthropological Foundation of Guatemala'. It has just been posted on Upside Down World.

I came across this video on Authors@Google which is a talk by Philip Zimbardo about the Lucifer Effect. It's an interesting discussion of the systems that bring about institution sponsored repression and violence. It's certainly wrestles with issues that you can't help but relate to recent Guatemalan history. Here's the blurb:

This excellent weekly report can't be found on the web- we publish it here with kind permission from CDHG on this blog.

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INFORME SEMANAL SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS
Comision de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala
No. 34/07 Report 19 - 25 October

=======================================
Fuentes directas CDHG, Prensa Libre, Siglo Veintiuno, El Periódico, Guatemala Hoy
=======================================
CDHG
2 Av. 4-66, apto. C-4, zona 1.
Tel/Fax: (502) 22203576 /22534285
E-mail: cdhg@intelnett.com
=======================================

These are the headlines- for the full report click on 'more':

- Conmemoran 63 años de la gesta revolucionaria del 44
- Ex comisionados y ex patrulleros amenazan a familiares de victimas del conflicto armado
- Organización de víctimas presentó demanda contra militar
- Despiden a 32 trabajadores de municipalidad de Huehuetenango
- Bush solicita a Congreso de EEUU US $550 millones para combatir narcotráfico en la región
   more »

The following is an excerpt from a mention of Guatemala City in House of Commons:

Philip Hollobone (Kettering, Conservative) | Hansard source

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what steps he is taking to help tackle the problem of violence against street children in Guatemala.

Written by Kimberly Kern

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“On September 23rd Marco Tulio Portela Ramirez, a union organizer, was brutally gunned down outside his home as he prepared to go to work at the Bandegua banana plantation, a subsidiary of Del Monte Fresh Produce.”

Do you eat Del Monte bananas? Do you notice where your bananas come from? Are you willing to take a moment of your time to help the workers whose labor sends over a million tons of bananas to the Unites States each year?

The production of bananas in Guatemala takes place in large monoculture plantations where labor conditions are very poor. Workers receive low wages which often don’t cover the basic needs of their families and endure long 12-hour work days and exposure to dangerous chemicals. Yet employees lack the freedom to organize independent trade unions and negotiate agreements with their employers in order to improve these working conditions. Those who have tried to organize have come under attack from both transnational banana companies and independent banana producers. Illegal firings, plantation closures, temporary contracts, civil law suits, trumped up criminal charges, and violence targeting union leaders have all become commonplace. So far in 2007, four unionists have been assassinated in Guatemala and no charges have been made against the guilty parties.

According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the Guatemalan Constitution recognizes workers' freedom of association and states that all workers retain the right to form and join trade unions. Workers have the right to organize and bargain collectively under the condition that 25% of the total workers are in agreement and possess the right to strike provided that 50% support the strike.

The Constitution also provides for a judicial system to rule specifically on violations of the Labor Code. Unfortunately, the labor courts in Guatemala are overrun with backlogged cases that can drag on for years. Even when they issue rulings, the courts have insufficient power to ensure that their decisions are respected. Consequently, employers tend to dismiss the Labor Code and are rarely held accountable for illegal firings, negligent work conditions and violence against union organizers.

Del Monte, the third largest producer of bananas, is owned and controlled by the Chilean-based IAT Group (their capital is held in the United Arab Emirates) and maintains its headquarters in Miami, Florida. As of 2005, Del Monte controlled about 15% of the world banana trade. Along with the other major banana producers like Chiquita and Dole, they yield a great deal of power in Latin America and can sell bananas to the northern markets at an extremely cut-rate price. According to a French research institute CIRAD, “only 12% of the final retail price stays in the producing countries. An even smaller proportion goes to small farmers (5-7%) or to plantation workers (1-3%)”. The rest is profit in the pockets of the CEO’s and investors.

Bandegua, the Guatemalan subsidiary of Del Monte, is one of many companies with a long history of targeting trade unionists. In 1999, Bandegua dismissed 900 workers who were involved in the Banana Workers Union of Izabal (SITRABI), the oldest and one of the most powerful unions in Guatemala. On October 13th of that year, a heavily armed attack was led against the union organizers who were planning a massive protest in response to the dismissals. Consequently, seven members of SITRABI fled to the US to defend their lives and pursued a case against Bandegua. As a response, the US government placed Guatemala's trade benefits on probation until Guatemalan courts convicted the criminals. Unfortunately, due to the sustained violence in Guatemala, the seven organizers continue to live in the US.

On March 7th, 2000, The International Union of Food and Agriculture Workers (UIF) signed an agreement with Del Monte Fresh Produce, which set up local negotiations between Bandegua and SITRABI and committed the company to respecting minimum labor standards. The new agreement ensured that all 900 workers who were illegally fired be allowed to return to their jobs and explicitly stated that all workers had the right to join SITRABI.

Although all parties signed the agreement, acts of violence and intimidation continue. In November of 2006, Cesar Humberto Guerra, the Labor and Conflicts Secretary of SITRABI, was followed by three armed men while driving through the Chicasaw banana plantations in a vehicle owned by SITRABI. The men fired their guns in the air and threw a stone at the windshield of the car.

In July, 2007, military officers forcibly entered a SITRABI union meeting demanding to know the identity of the union’s leaders, the size of its membership and the nature of its occupation. In response, SITRABI filed complaints with the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Defense in Guatemala, who promised there would be an “internal investigation.” According to a statement by the Solidarity Center, “Military officers had been disciplined by the Ministry of Defense in response to SITRABI complaints about the unlawful entry.”

Five days later, on the morning of September 23, Marco Tulio Portela Ramirez was brutally gunned down in front of his house by armed masked men carrying high caliber weapons as he prepared to go to work at the Bandegua banana plantation. Marco was the Secretary of Culture and Sport at SITRABI and his brother Noé Ramirez is the General Secretary. According to STITCH, a nationwide group of women organizing for social justice, SITRABI strongly believes that this killing is directly related to their fight to end the intimidation and harassment of the union.

In his statement on September 30th, Noé Ramirez declared, “At the wake and burial of my brother’s mortal remains, I saw how hundreds of workers who were there with us cried at the loss of a fellow unionist, but also how we all committed ourselves to continue forward with our struggle, refusing to be silenced, because we are not alone: we are supported by allies all over the world….I would like to ask you all to keep pressuring the government and the rest of the Guatemalan authorities so that they will immediately investigate and solve Marco Tulio’s murder, and punish both the material and intellectual perpetrators of this crime and their accomplices.”

In response to this assassination, Solidarity Center Executive Director Ellie Larson said, “The systematic attacks on SITRABI constitute backsliding on worker rights enforcement in Guatemala. No worker should lose his life for exercising a fundamental right to participate in a union. Together we must break down the wall of impunity and rebuild respect for worker and human rights.”

Please take a moment of your time to contact the Guatemalan Ambassador in the United States and urge the Guatemalan government to investigate this case and bring those responsible to justice. You can mail this sample letter from STITCH or write one of your own to ambassador@guatemala-embassy.org.

Ambassador Jose Guillermo Castillo,
2220 R Street, NW
Washington , DC 20008
Tel:(202) 745 4952
Fax:(202) 745 1908
ambassador@guatemala-embassy.org

Dear Ambassador Guillermo Castillo,

I am writing to ask your government to take strong and decisive action to stop the violence against unionists in Guatemala. The recent assassination of SITRABI Executive Committee Member, Marco Tulio Portela Ramirez on Sunday, September 23 is a stark reminder of the incredible danger workers face when trying to exercise their right to organize for better wages and more humane conditions in their work places.  I urge your government to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the murderers of Mr. Ramirez and other trade unionist in Guatemala, including Mr. Pedro Zamora of the port workers union.

As you may recall, the SITRABI union leadership was violently intimidated in 1999 and forced to leave their country. Their case became an important test case on impunity for the U.S. government.

The government of Guatemala must also publicly condemn the violence against Guatemalan trade unions.

In addition, it is vital that the Guatemalan government take responsibility for the safety of the remaining leaders of SITRABI and ensure that they are protected from all violence and intimidation. The Guatemalan government must protect those that organize for basic their human rights. I will be monitoring the news as well as following updates from labor rights organizations to ensure that this case is taken seriously and that labor unions are protected throughout Guatemala.

Sincerely,

Your name

==========================
Kimberly Kern (Austin, TX) lives in Guatemala and works with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). She can be reached at kimika [at] riseup.net

This excellent weekly report can't be found on the web- we publish it here with kind permission from CDHG on this blog.

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INFORME SEMANAL SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS
Comision de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala
No. 34/07 Report 12 - 18 October

=======================================
Fuentes directas CDHG, Prensa Libre, Siglo Veintiuno, El Periódico, Guatemala Hoy
=======================================
CDHG
2 Av. 4-66, apto. C-4, zona 1.
Tel/Fax: (502) 22203576 /22534285
E-mail: cdhg@intelnett.com
=======================================

These are the headlines- for the full report click on 'more':

- Conmemoran 63 años de la gesta revolucionaria del 44
- Ex comisionados y ex patrulleros amenazan a familiares de victimas del conflicto armado
- Organización de víctimas presentó demanda contra militar
- Despiden a 32 trabajadores de municipalidad de Huehuetenango
- Bush solicita a Congreso de EEUU US $550 millones para combatir narcotráfico en la región
   more »

This is taken from here.

Meg Munn (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Foreign & Commonwealth Office) Link to this | Hansard source

The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) mentioned the importance of our contacts in dealing with such matters—not just international bodies, but our bilateral relationships. Let me give him a specific example. In September, I visited Mexico and while I was there, I discussed the major human rights issues that it faces with a range of contacts, specifically civil society and Mexican non-governmental organisations. We discussed the need to modernise the judicial system in order to end impunity and to tackle corruption. I heard also about the excellent work on justice reform that we have been able to carry out with the Mexican authorities through the Foreign Office's global opportunities fund. Such support is being given to a range of countries around the world.

Guatemala's election is taking place against the background of a corroded state, riven society, disconnected elite and paralysed people.

This excellent article, by Ivan Briscoe in openDemocracy through NACLA News, talks about a crisis in Guatemala in the lead up to the 2nd round of the elections.

He talks of the mystery of 'a democracy with 51% poverty, wracked by the worst inequality in the continent, afflicted by crime and judicial decay, [that] feels compelled to cure its wounds by scratching them harder and harder'.

In setting the scene, he explains that 'Guatemala has death-squads, polo matches, mega-churches and four television channels, all belonging to one foreigner. Only Russia has a higher murder-rate for women, only China exports more children for adoption to the United States'.

From the civil war through to narco-trafficking by way of the oligarchs, he suggests that 'as the world forgets central America, a tragedy is forming, born out of cold-war beachheads and powdering northern noses'.

Just discovered these lectures from UC Berkeley on nonviolence. It's a great background for the work that international accompaniers carry out in Guatemala. It's great to see a university finally starting to put its lectures online and turn them into a resource for everyone. It'd be great to see UK universities start to do this.

It includes an interview with Byron Lima Estrada who was later convicted of the assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi.

This excellent weekly report can't be found on the web- we publish it here with kind permission from CDHG on this blog.

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INFORME SEMANAL SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS
Comision de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala
No. 34/07

=======================================
Fuentes directas CDHG, Prensa Libre, Siglo Veintiuno, El Periódico, Guatemala Hoy
=======================================
CDHG
2 Av. 4-66, apto. C-4, zona 1.
Tel/Fax: (502) 22203576 /22534285
E-mail: cdhg@intelnett.com
=======================================

These are the headlines- for the full report click on 'more':

- Por construcción de carretera Interamericana, pobladores de Chupol, Chichicastenango, son objetos de discriminación y abuso de poder
- FAMDEGUA señaló obstáculos y robo de evidencias en procesos de exhumación
- Protestan frente al Congreso para pedir proyectos habitacionales
- Organizaciones exigen a candidatos que respeten resultados de consultas
- Huehuetenango: fuerza pública rescata a alcalde y a miembros del concejo retenidos en Colotenango
   more »

We just received this news from Guatemala:

In today's Guardian, there is this article by Jo Tuckman, writen from Ch'inajapek.

 

Night was closing in on the K'ekchi indigenous community in northern Guatemala's jungle-covered hills when Elvira Cuz gave birth to the first twin.

"Everything seemed normal," recalled her husband, Domingo Tot, who delivered the baby, as he had done with the couple's other children. He realised something was wrong, he said, when the second baby didn't emerge and his wife became obviously unwell.

 

But Mr Tot knew there was no point carrying his wife for six hours to the nearest road. Even if she survived that journey there would be no vehicle to take her to the closest hospital - one of three in the vast Petén province. So the 35-year-old farmer accepted the inevitable and watched his wife fade away by the shaky light of a homemade kerosene lamp. The child died in her womb.

 

The vast majority of deaths in childbirth are avoidable, which is why only four women die for every 100,000 live births in Sweden, and 13 in the UK. Women in many major Latin American cities are only slightly more at risk, and the national averages pale in comparison with many African and Asian countries, where the maternal mortality rates often top 1,000.

 

But the bigger picture masks the reality faced by indigenous Latin Americans. This is evident in Guatemala, where the Mayan Indian population (about half the total) is beset by extreme poverty, geographical isolation and acute and deep-rooted discrimination. "Guatemala is one of the countries in Latin America with the biggest challenges and the biggest shortfalls," said Javier Domínguez, the UN Population Fund's regional head of maternal health.

UNFPA is co-sponsoring a major international conference on maternal mortality beginning in London on October 18, in part to remind the world that it signed up to the Millennium Development Goal of reducing death in childbirth by 75% by 2015. In Guatemala nobody has any illusions that this can be achieved, despite a major campaign to address the problem in indigenous communities supported by the UN.

 

The strategy pivots around training traditional midwives - known as comadronas - who are responsible for most indigenous prenatal care and births. The idea is to teach them to identify potential complications early and convince them that these cases should be sent to hospital. But the midwives can face disdain, even hostility, from the medical establishment, which tends to dismiss their experience as at best inadequate and at worst actively dangerous.

 

At a training session in a Petén hospital, K'ekchi comadronas stood silently while they were harangued with a back-to-basics talk about foetal positions. "Lots of comadronas don't want to come to the hospital because they don't want to get told off," said midwife Rosario Botzoc. "Patients are even less willing to go, even when we say they should."

 

Not that timely hospital treatment comes with guarantees. Most deaths in childbirth in Guatemala are the result of haemorrhages, but only two hospitals in the Petén region have blood banks. Another problem is how few Guatemalan doctors are willing to work in the backwaters. Most doctors in the Petén are Cubans on a mission to help out, but they will not be there forever.

We just received this statement from Amnesty International's Central America team:

From Rights Action, through Upside Down World, comes this article. The trial of 7 Mam-Maya indigenous farmers, whose communities neighbor the Goldcorp Inc. open pit gold mine in San Marcos, Guatemala, and who have charges laid against them due to Goldcorp Inc., begins today.   more »

This excellent weekly report can't be found on the web- we publish it here with kind permission from CDHG on this blog.

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INFORME SEMANAL SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS
Comision de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala
No. 34/07

=======================================
Fuentes directas CDHG, Prensa Libre, Siglo Veintiuno, El Periódico, Guatemala Hoy
=======================================
CDHG
2 Av. 4-66, apto. C-4, zona 1.
Tel/Fax: (502) 22203576 /22534285
E-mail: cdhg@intelnett.com
=======================================

These are the headlines- for the full report click on 'more':

- Aumentó frecuencia de ataques contra defensores de derechos humanos en 2007
- FAFG localizó 21 osamentas en cementerio clandestino, en Alta Verapaz
- En el Día Nacional del Niño, organizaciones conmemoran y demanda acciones a favor de la niñez
- Nuevas carreteras del PPP causarán contaminación y deforestación
- Human Rights Watch exigió al Congreso que rechace iniciativa de ley sobre la familia
   more »