The first hundred days of the comedian President
2016 Abril Guatemala
The first quarter of this year demonstrated that Guatemala’s seeming political erosion is a reality. The new Congress The party that won...

The face and the cross of Guatemala’s “spring”
2015 Noviembre Guatemala
A lot of people followed with admiration what the Guatemalan people achieved in six months of civic protest in the streets. While most continue admiring...

Some pointers to understanding the “Guatemalan Spring”
2015 Septiembre Guatemala
Many analysts have interpreted Guatemala’s political crisis in recent months as the end of the project established in 1954 with the overthrow of President...

An extraordinary situation: Thousands against corruption
2015 Junio Guatemala
Max Weber, one of the founders of sociology, said that by virtue of magical powers, prophecies, heroism, luminous perception or capacity to attract,...

Youth in territories marked by violence
2015 Mayo Centroamérica
Organized crime—particularly the illegal drug business, one of whose main branches is trafficking—covers many other crimes: arms smuggling, trafficking...

The traditional elites in a struggle with the emerging elites
2015 Abril Guatemala
What has been happening in Guatemala these past few months could be called an assault on all branches of government. The traditional and emerging powers...

Mining is one of savage capitalism’s prime features
2013 Noviembre Centroamérica
We learned from our seminar on mining, held on September 17-19 in San Salvador, that the fight between populations willing to resist to keep our region...

The Ríos Montt trial was a historic milestone
2013 Julio Guatemala
On May 10, a lower court sentenced retired General José Efraín Ríos Montt to 50 years in prison for the deaths—categorized as genocide—of 1,771 Ixil...

Pope Francis: “A poor Church for the poor”
2013 Abril Internacional
Three days after being elected bishop of Rome and successor to St. Peter, the 76-year-old Francis—who even two weeks later hadn’t yet referred to himself...

The Right’s militarism and lack of solidarity
2013 Marzo Guatemala
In nearly two centuries of independence, the Guatemalan Right has never accepted a proposal for any structural change that doesn’t favor it. This is...

Military on trial and constitutional reforms
2012 Septiembre Guatemala
Three retired Guatemalan generals have stood trial in 2012: Efraín Ríos Montt, Héctor Mario López Fuentes and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez. Ríos...

The legacy of a brilliant generation of bishops
2012 Julio Guatemala
Rodolfo Quezada Toruño, archbishop emeritus of Guatemala and cardinal of the Catholic Church, died on June 4 at 80 years old. With him a brilliant generation...

Decriminalizing drugs: Pandora’s Box or the path to peace?
2012 Abril Guatemala
It was inevitable that the proposal of Guatemala’s new President, retired General Otto Pérez Molina, to discuss the possible decriminalization and even...

What the new President did and didn’t say
2012 Enero Guatemala
On January 14, a full two-and-a-half hours late, 61-year-old retired Army General Otto Pérez Molina celebrated his investiture as the first military-career...

Forty years later, another military President
2011 Diciembre Guatemala
On November 6, the same day as Nicaragua’s elections, but without the fraud or violence, Guatemala held its second round of voting for President. Retired...

Going into the second round touching bottom
2011 Octubre Guatemala
The polls got the September 11 election results wrong. Not only did retired General Otto Pérez Molina not win on the first round, as had seemed likely...

A null vote is a lucid vote in these elections
2011 Agosto Guatemala
In José Saramago’s novel An Essay on Blindness, the only person who doesn’t go bolind is a woman lucidly able to decipher Saramago’s parable on humanity....

Guatemala’s electoral dilemma
2011 Junio Guatemala
A Cid-Gallup national poll conducted between May 11 and 15 and paid for, they say, by the government shows Otto Pérez Molina, loser in the 2007 elections,...

War on Drugs in an Election Year?
2011 Enero Guatemala
It’s election year in Guatemala. In September one of the candidates—at least one of whom will be a woman if the Constitutionality Court allows her...

Will the Fight against Impunity Continue? Will We End Up a Failed State?
2010 Julio Guatemala
When Carlos Castresana, the commissioner who headed up the UN International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) for two and a half years,...

Media, Candidates, Cases, Expectations…
2010 Abril Guatemala
When the scandal caused by murdered Rodrigo Rosenberg’s accusations against President Colom, his wife and his private secretary exploded in Guatemala...

What Does the Rosenberg Case Show Us?
2010 Enero Guatemala
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN organization entrusted by the Guatemalan Congress with investigating serious...

The Failed Conspiracy And the Chávez Factor
2009 Septiembre Guatemala
Three months ago in these pages we tried to find the thread leading us out of the labyrinth in which Guatemala had lost itself with the murder of lawyer...

The Rosenberg Case: A Guatemalan Labyrinth
2009 Junio Guatemala
Guatemala’s situation has become even more complex than it was before May 10th, when Rodrigo Rosenberg was murdered, and the next day, when the mass...

Narco-Business: A “New War”
2009 Marzo Guatemala
When setting out to analyze Álvaro Colom’s first year in government, one must keep the global crisis in mind. It’s already playing a role that the government...

Child Adoption: Another Form of Violence
2008 Noviembre Guatemala
The growth of violence in Guatemala increasingly horrifies people. On October 18 the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference released a statement that expresses...

Can Álvaro Colom Become a Social Democratic President?
2008 Marzo Guatemala
President Álvaro Colom Caballeros started his inauguration speech on January 14, 2008, with an audacious phrase that tied his government to a serious...

The Reasons, Passions and Values Behind a Vote
2007 Noviembre Guatemala
Guatemala’s 2007 election campaign is finally over. It ended with a second-round victory on November 4 by Álvaro Colom Caballeros, who identifies as...

Surviving the Elections
2007 Octubre Guatemala
The title of this article is deliberately provocative. It suggests that elections in Guatemala are like one of the socio-natural disasters that periodically...

Organized Crime is Embedded In the Public Institutions
2007 Junio Guatemala
On September 9, Guatemalans will elect a new President, legislativerepresentatives and mayors. The latest poll conducted by Vox Latina for the daily...

Rigoberta Menchú Bursts onto the Electoral Stage
2007 Marzo Guatemala
A strong jolt has rocked Guatemala’s electoral stage in the lead-up to the presidential, congressional and local elections, to be held on one of the...

Could “Evo” Happen in Guatemala?
2006 Agosto Guatemala
In Bolivia, for the first time in Latin America’s history, an indigenous citizen, Evo Morales, and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party won an...

The Impenetrable Wall Built by the Rich
2006 Junio Guatemala
When the International Monetary Fund’s executive director Rodrigo Rato visited Guatemala, he openly declared that the country won’t be able to function...

R=T x V and R=T / C Formulas for Sisyphus
2005 Noviembre Centroamérica
...

Elite vs. Grassroots Perspectives
2005 Octubre Guatemala
Nearly ten years after the Peace Accords were signed, and already halfway through the third government since then, the view of Guatemala from the peaks...

“The State Doesn’t Have to Be Painted Mayan, But...”
2005 Agosto Guatemala
Whenever I return to Guatemala after a few weeks away, I’m invaded by an increasing sense of discouragement—a feeling many share. Things don’t seem...

From John Paul II to Benedict XVI: Memories, Analyses, Fears and Hopes
2005 Mayo Internacional
Four days after John Paul II’s death, with the streets of Rome and St. Peter’s Square still teeming with people, I found myself in a meeting of Jesuits,...

The Berger Government in Danger of Being Pulled Apart
2005 Febrero Guatemala
In 18th-century France, those who plotted to assassinate the king would be brutally tortured until they revealed the scope of the conspiracy. Then they...

Devoured by Short-Term Thinking
2004 Octubre Guatemala
After nine months in office, President Oscar Berger and his team have dealt with few of Guatemala’s structural problems, the kinds that must be addressed...

Berger’s First Six Months: Just Putting Out Flames?
2004 Agosto Guatemala
The honeymoon for President Oscar Berger’s government ended much sooner than anyone expected, cut short by two factors. The first was the huge jump...

Some Positive Steps But Many Pending Issues
2004 Abril Guatemala
wo and a half months into Oscar Berger’s term in office, the Guatemalan population is still waiting to find out whether his government merits the optimism...

The New Government Sparks Optimism and Expectations
2004 Enero Guatemala
The official results of the second round of Guatemala’s presidential elections on December 28 were ready the very next day. Oscar Berger had beaten...

Presidential Elections up in the Air: First Round Results
2003 Diciembre Guatemala
On November 9, 2003, over 80% of Guatemala’s voters gave a resounding “No!” to General Efraín Ríos Montt. Whether because of memories of the bloody...

2003 Elections: More Violence than Proposals
2003 Octubre Guatemala
Guatemala’s election campaigns are among the longest in the world. Discounting the fact that politicians are permanently campaigning in practice,...

Will Anyone Register the General?
2003 Agosto Guatemala
Guatemala’s November 8 presidential, legislative and municipal elections, which will continue into December if a second round is required, are of utmost...

The Information Age: Understanding our World
2003 Mayo Internacional
Manual Castells, a Catalan sociologist and Professor of Sociology and City and Regional Planning at both the University of California, Berkeley, and...

Protesting for Life: A Bold, Persistent Teachers’ Strike
2003 Abril Guatemala
A teachers’ strike in Guatemala lasting nearly eight weeks, from January 20 to March 11, marked the beginning of 2003, Alfonso Portillo’s last year in...

Word Games and Election Games
2003 Enero Guatemala
President Alfonso Portillo completed his third year in office on January 14. That day, he appeared before Congress to sum up his third and final report...

The Religious Question and the Myth of the Army
2002 Diciembre Guatemala
On July 20, 1954, Archbishop Rosell believed he could still proudly say to those who had overthrown Jacobo Arbenz and put an end to the 1944 revolution...

Reflections on the Canonization of Central America’s First Saint
2002 Septiembre Guatemala
Pope John Paul II’s third visit to Guatemala was the antithesis of his first, in 1983, at least on one very polemical issue. The death penalty,...

The Guatemalan Left: In a Delicate State
2002 Julio Guatemala
Is there still a reason to write about the Left in any country after the Communist parties in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe failed so spectacularly,...

The Armed Wing of the "Hidden Powers" in Action
2002 Abril Guatemala
On March 20, at 6:30 in the evening, several armed men ransacked the offices of the Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences (AVANCSO), a social...

Portillo Lives on Appearances While Covering up Reality
2002 Enero Guatemala
Alfonso Portillo’s presidential term is already more than half over. In the newspapers, reports of corruption come one after another with dizzying speed....

Pain and questions in the Guatemalan Press
2001 Octubre Guatemala
The catastrophic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have had strong repercussions in Guatemala—in the media, in people’s conversations...

The Sales Tax Goes Up and Legitimacy Goes Down
2001 Agosto Guatemala
Amidst a bitter debate between President Portillo and CACIF, the leading business umbrella organization, the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG)...

Gerardi Case: Justice for a Just Man
2001 Junio Guatemala
Justice for a just man was the motto at the commemoration of the third anniversary of the murder of 75-year-old Bishop Juan Gerardi, held on April 26-28....

Arduous Efforts for Institutionality
2001 Abril Guatemala
March was chock full of events that revealed the depth and seriousness of the crises of Guatemala’s political institutions and most important economic...

No Coup, Just Irresponsible Government
2001 Marzo Guatemala
At the end of February, just as in October last year, rumors swirled of an imminent coup d’état. Some held that the army would rise up in a traditional...

Boozegate: A Revealing Ethical-Political Earthquake
2000 Octubre Guatemala
Guatemala’s government has been shown up for what it is once again, this time by the tax issue. Neither the executive nor the legislative branch has...

Fiscal Pact a Major Achievement, Tax Reform Next in Line
2000 Agosto Guatemala
Appearances are deceiving. On Tuesday July 17, the front pages of the country’s two leading newspapers announced that, with only six months passed since...

Who Fishes Best in Troubled Waters?
2000 Junio Guatemala
The first two and a half months of President Alfonso Portillo’s new government were characterized by remarkable inefficiency and punctuated by his own...

The First Hundred Days: A Foreseeable Explosion
2000 Mayo Guatemala
The first great crisis in Alfonso Portillo’s presidency ended with the deaths of five people, including a press photographer. At the time these lamentable...

Portillo’s First 75 Days: Lots of Noise, Few Results
2000 Abril Guatemala
Alfonso Portillo’s government has thus far been marked by few significant events other than that Justice Guillermo Ruiz Polanco of Madrid’s National...

The New Portillo Government: Demagoguery or Revolution?
2000 Enero Guatemala
Alfonso Portillo, Guatemala’s new President, took office on January 14, 2000, four hours late. It was an inauspicious beginning, but was not his fault....

On the Anniversary of Mitch: The Region’s Revealing Disaster
1999 Noviembre Centroamérica
During this October and November, I traveled through several of the regions of Central America that had been battered last year by Hurricane Mitch. A...

Seeking New Ground In the General’s Shadow
1999 Septiembre Guatemala
The consequences would be unpredictable should Alfonso Portillo, the candidate of Ríos Montt's Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), win the November 7...

Why Was the Referendum Defeated?
1999 Julio Guatemala
On Sunday, May 16, 1999, the Guatemalan population voted to approve or reject the constitutional reforms drafted as a way of implementing some of the...

A Year after Gerardi: Memory and Disillusion
1999 Mayo Guatemala
"100,000 acclaim him" was the headline in Prensa Libre, Guatemala's leading newspaper, on Monday April 26, describing the huge crowd that gathered...

"Memory of Silence:" A Stunning Indictment
1999 Abril Guatemala
The Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) presented its unexpectedly frank report on February 25 in Guatemala's National Theater. It was a fitting...

A Cry Rises Over Raging Waters
1999 Enero Guatemala
Guatemala did not suffer the worst of the terrible disaster that struck Central America at the end of 1998 with Hurricane Mitch—the disaster, ironically,...

A Political Crime That's Threatening The Peace Process
1998 Agosto Guatemala
The Public Ministry's first suspect in the killing of Bishop Juan Gerardi the night of April 26 led down a blind alley, as many had feared from the beginning....

The Killing Stone, Bedrock of Peace?
1998 Mayo Guatemala
When we awoke on Monday, April 27, to phones ringing with the terrible news of Bishop Juan Gerardi's assassination, we knew that what we had intermittently...

A Year Without War: "Low Intensity Peace"?
1998 Marzo Guatemala
After the first year of peace in 1997, the Guatemalan stage is filled with too many people unreservedly praising what has been harvested so far and too...

The Left: A Past with no Present But with a Future?
1997 Noviembre Guatemala
The magazine called Debate, and subtitled "Toward Consensus," put out by the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), headed by Frank La Rué,...

Poverty: Protagonist Of the Post War
1997 Agosto Guatemala
Guatemala's drop in the United Nations Human Development Index was the country's most significant news in June. According to that report, which is published...

War Embedded in the Culture
1997 Julio Guatemala
Guatemala's political climate has changed drastically in the last five months, according to the media. The moderate approval given the government for...

Peace Accords: Return of the Quetzal
1997 Febrero Guatemala
Well-known Guatemalan Jesuit anthropologist Ricardo Falla recently wrote in the international press: "According to legend, when Alvarado fought hand...

Signing Peace and Building It
1996 Octubre Guatemala
Last February, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Eduardo Stein announced that the peace accords between the government and the URNG would very likely be signed...

The New Society We Yearn For
1996 Agosto Centroamérica
The Berlin wall has fallen, the soviet union has split and we are witnessing the defeat of socialist based utopias that had begun to be built in 1917....

Unemployment and Violence: A Dramatic Cycle
1996 Enero El Salvador
El Salvador reveals an alarming level of extreme poverty. The country ranks 115 out of 174 nations studied in the United Nations Development Program...

Does this Economic Model have a Future?
1995 Diciembre El Salvador
Bad omens were in the Salvadoran air throughout October. Rising inflation, restricted credit and a drop in growth have submerged the government in a...

ARENA Remains United
1995 Noviembre El Salvador
Three days before September's independence celebrations began, the Salvadoran capital became the conflictive scene of a violent confrontation between...

Toward Democracy Or Authoritarianism?
1995 Octubre El Salvador
After the short vacations afforded by the August celebration honoring El Salvador's patron saint, the long heralded modernization of the state has finally...

Labor Unrest and Organized Crime
1995 Septiembre El Salvador
In its political transition from war to peace, El Salvador is swinging between authoritarianism and democracy. Labor problems and demands by workers...

The San Andrés Pact: Authoritarian or Democratizing?
1995 Agosto El Salvador
Armando Calderón Sol is entering his second year in government with a declining popularity rating. After his first 100 days, his government averaged...

Pact of the Nation Or Pact of the Ruins?
1995 Julio El Salvador
The second ARENA administration, under the baton of Armando Calderón Sol, is now a year old. That year ended with a heated debate over the government...

Glory and the Shame Of the Peace Accords
1995 Junio El Salvador
The presence of the United Nations verification mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) ended April 30. With its withdrawal, human rights follow up, legal advice...

Shots Fired Against The Peace Accords
1995 Mayo El Salvador
The month of March closed on a pathetic note in El Salvador. Wounded and disabled war veterans from both the armed forces and the FMLN were beaten in...

Peace Accords Victim of ARENA Contradictions
1995 Abril El Salvador
Land transfers and credits for former combatants in rural areas, new housing settlements for the demobilized and civilian reinsertion programs for former...

Central America's Challenge: Produce And Participate
1995 Febrero Centroamérica
Asymmetric globalization, the new world economic system that is capping the long exploitation of the South, imprinted itself on many facets of Central...

Archbishop Rivera y Damas: Wit the Light of Bishop Romero
1995 Enero El Salvador
On November 26, 71 year old Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas died unexpectedly in San Salvador. A massive heart attack early that Saturday morning left...

Peace is Built of Many Pieces
1994 Diciembre El Salvador
In April 1993, police in El Salvador nabbed the highest level arms dealers ever in the country. But even though they had been caught in the act, a judge...

Rubén Zamora on the Political Crisis
1994 Noviembre El Salvador
The Christian Democratic Party's special convention, held in mid September to restructure its provisional political commission, ended ignominiously,...

Calderón Sol's First 100 Days
1994 Octubre El Salvador
It is not easy to discover where the new Salvadoran government is putting its emphasis, based on its first 100 days. There is a notable difference in...

All Roads Lead to Impunity
1994 Septiembre El Salvador
Several recent political events have forced the country to turn once again to the issues of security, impunity and the administration of justice. The...

Security, Impunity, Justice
1994 Agosto El Salvador
Two big problems have plagued the first 30 days of Armando Calderón Sol's presidency. One is the insecurity caused by the organized crime, embedded...

Central America's Alternative: Integration from Below
1994 Febrero Centroamérica
The whole world speaks of "globalization" to characterize the process that has been underway in this final decade of the 20th century and in the wake...

The Hour of Civil Society
1993 Agosto Centroamérica
The 12 days between former President Serrano's self directed coup and the election of President Ramiro de León Carpio will go down in Guatemalan history...