Guatemala Chooses a New President

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Guatemala Chooses a New President
By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ – 2 hours ago

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A former general vowing a crackdown on rampant crime holds a slim edge in polls over a businessman who promises to end desperate poverty by creating jobs, as Guatemalans chooses their next president Sunday.

More than 30,000 police and soldiers are on alert after weeks of campaigning marred by violence. Another 20,000 national and international observers will also fan out across the nation.

Security has been a top issue among voters in Central America's most violent country, with more than 5,000 homicides per year.

Otto Perez Molina, 56, a retired general and former military intelligence director with the right-wing Patriotic Party, has promised to institute the death penalty, hire more police and send soldiers into the streets to fight crime.

He has been accused of overseeing massacres during Guatemala's 1960-96 civil war, which he denies. But the allegations haven't appeared to have to hurt his campaign.



Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iHeDxSLAOe0XW_6MOmCgWGO0sFCgD8SMKOTG0

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Otto Perez Molina

[Judi Lynn]

1. Violence Haunts Guatemala's Election

Violence Haunts Guatemala's Election
Saturday, Nov. 03, 2007 By MICA ROSENBERG/GUATEMALA CITY



Guatemalan presidential candidate, Partido Patriota
Otto Perez Molina, greets supporters as he arrives
to a rally. Eitan Abramovich / AFP / Getty

Guatemala goes to the polls on Sunday, haunted by a violent and contested past and anxious over an increasingly violent present. The legacy of the country's 36-year-civil war is never far from contemporary politics, and the frontrunner in the presidential runoff — retired General Perez Molina, whose right-wing Patriotic Party has a very slight lead over left-leaning businessman Alvaro Colom in some opinion polls — has been the subject of allegations in a new book on the 1998 assassination of Guatemalan human rights crusader Bishop Juan Gerardi. Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in the parish house of his Guatemala City church the day after he published an exhaustive report of human rights violations by the Guatemalan army during the civil war. Although three military officers were convicted of the murder and jailed in 2001, Guatemalan-American writer Francisco Goldman claims a key witness identified Molina as one of several high-ranking army men who gathered near the church on the night of the murder. But Molina dismisses the claim as "pure lies," saying he was not even in the country when Gerardi was killed.

However, Molina's slight edge in some polls — Colom actually has his own small lead in other surveys — is based on voters' concerns over present-day violence. Crime has soared in the country of 13 million since the signing of the 1996 peace agreements between leftist guerillas and the government — close to 6,000 people were murdered last year alone. Most of the killings are blamed on violent youth gangs known as maras, or on turf battles between powerful drug cartels. And that violence has seeped into the election, with over 50 candidates and party activists killed since campaigning began last year.

More:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1680443,00.html

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Just found a site which may be excellent for those of us who want to read more about Guatemala. I haven't even opened one link yet, so I can't tell you if these are great aids, or not. It looks like a really BIG help for anyone wanting to know more about Guatemalan history since 1977:

Guerrillas in
Guatemala
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/guatemala-rev.htm

[Judi Lynn]

2. Crime-ridden Guatemala divided in presidential vote

Crime-ridden Guatemala divided in presidential vote
By Frank Jack
Reuters
GUATEMALA CITY


Eleven years after the end of Guatemala's civil war, Sunday's presidential election has split the country between left and right over how to fight a surge in violent crime.

Right-wing retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who vows to cut Guatemala's high murder rate by putting more troops on the streets and using capital punishment, faces left-leaning businessman Alvaro Colom in a tight runoff.

Opinion polls are divided over who will win but several surveys recently gave a small lead to Perez Molina, whose Patriot Party's logo is a clenched fist that symbolizes his tough stance on crime.

The army ruled the Central American country for decades until the mid 1980s and committed hundreds of massacres in 36 years of civil war before the government and leftist rebels made peace in 1996.
(snip)

The soft-spoken Colom won the first round of voting in September by 4.7 percentage points but his campaign has flagged since a top advisor quit the race after receiving dozens of anonymous death threats.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3817408



Alvaro Colom

[Judi Lynn]

3. How the army killed the bishop

How the army killed the bishop
STEPHEN HENIGHAN

November 3, 2007

~snip~
The Peace Accords established a United Nations commission of inquiry into the more than 200,000 civilian deaths during the last two decades of the war. Fearful that the UN would exonerate military officers who had committed war crimes, the Catholic Church trained interviewers to work in 15 of Guatemala's 23 languages. On April 24, 1998, in the cathedral in Guatemala City, Bishop Juan Gerardi presented the four-volume report Guatemala: Never Again, in which the church found the military responsible for 80 per cent of civilian deaths and the guerrillas for less than 5 per cent.

(The church's zeal encouraged the UN investigators: Their report, delivered two years later, ran to 10 volumes, found the military responsible for 93 per cent of deaths and the guerrillas for 3 per cent, and charged the Guatemalan Army with genocide against the Mayan indigenous people who make up more than half of the country's population.)

Two days after presenting his report, Bishop Gerardi was murdered. The killing took place at night, as the bishop was getting out of his car in the garage of the parish house he shared with a housekeeper and a younger priest. The bishop's face was smashed in with a chunk of concrete and there were puncture marks on the back of his neck. A shirtless man was seen bolting from the garage during the minutes following the assassination. The offices of the Presidential General Staff, the most lethal division of the Guatemalan military, were across the street from the parish house. The park between the two buildings was notorious for the number of street people who slept there, many of them disguised spies and informers. On the night of the murder, an unidentified man gave drugged food to the street people to ensure that they slept through the killing.

More:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071103.BKBISH03/TPStory/Entertainment

[Judi Lynn]

4. Does anyone recall Clinton exposed former US connections to Guatemalan death squads?

March 11, 1999

Clinton Apologizes for U.S. Support of Guatemalan Rightists

By JOHN M. BRODER

GUATEMALA -- President Clinton apologized Wednesday for United States support for right-wing governments in Guatemala that killed tens of thousands of rebels and Mayan Indians in a 36-year civil war and promised American support for national reconciliation.
At a forum with Guatemalan leaders, Clinton said, "For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake."

He made the statement in his opening statement to an informal gathering of leaders from many sectors of Guatemalan society, including prominent Indians, women, Government officials and representatives of a truth commission that issued a report last month on the war. The said the United States gave money and training to Guatemalan forces that committed acts of genocide against Mayans and other extreme human rights abuses in the conflict, which began in 1960.

The involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the campaign of terror against Mayan and leftist insurgents had long been an open secret. But the report of the Historical Clarification Commission confirmed the C.I.A. participation in a war that killed more than 200,000 people.

The report said American training of Guatemalan military officers in counterinsurgency played a significant role in the torture, kidnapping and execution of thousands of civilians.

American officials had previously endorsed the findings of the panel. But no President had directly confronted the United States role in the atrocities.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/031199clinton-guatemala.html

[Joanne98]

5. OH BUMMER!