An antiquated system that refuses to change
2018 Febrero Guatemala
Before the end of 2017, Guatemala’s general public hadn’t yet clearly identified the roles of many of the actors in their country’s profound crisis,...

From the offensive against CICIG to Pandora’s Box
2017 Diciembre Guatemala
In her book Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (Duke University Press, 014), Kirsten Weld, Harvard University historian of modern...

Democracy in the streets
2017 Octubre Guatemala
The crowd is brandishing placards against Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales. In one showing his photograph they’ve added a red button to his nose...

It would seem that “the party’s over”
2017 Junio Guatemala
Over the past year, the US power moves in Guatemala and the rest of what is called Central America’s Northern Triangle have been ongoing. Specifically...

The words of an indigenous authority: “This is how we apply Maya justice”
2017 Mayo Guatemala
Last August I travelled to Tunijá, a village in Guatemala’s western highlands, some 190 km from the capital city and ten minutes by bus from the urban...

The ghost of Maya justice is haunting the country
2017 Abril Guatemala
The ghost of Maya justice is haunting Guatemala. Self-righteous talk show guests, guardian angels of positive law, omnipresent pens in opinion pages,...

A book bathed in tears
2016 Agosto Guatemala
I first learned about Ixcan: Masacres y sobrevivencia (Ixcan: Massacres and survival) by Ricardo Falla in 1989. It was hidden in the catacombs...

What the CICIG papers have revealed
2016 Julio Guatemala
Thanks both to the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an agency promoted by the United Nations and the Guatemalan government...

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...

The many preludes to the 2015 mobilizations
2015 Octubre Guatemala
some say the August 27, 2015, mobilization was the largest mass demonstration in modern Guatemalan history and the one withthe greatest consensus. Are...

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,...

A historic demonstration
2015 Mayo Guatemala
One thing that particularly stood out in the massive demonstration in Guatemala City on Saturday, April 25, was its torrent of creativity. It was...

Notes on the Alliance for Prosperity Plan for the Northern Triangle
2015 Mayo Guatemala
In October 2013, an increase in the numbers of children and adolescents migrating was an early sign of the “humanitarian crisis” that exploded in mid-2014....

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...

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...

Was it genocide or wasn’t it?
2013 Mayo Guatemala
Was genocide committed in Guatemala or not? There’s the possibility of an ideological trap in equating Guatemalan genocide with Nazi genocide and concluding...

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...

Totonicapán: The story of the first massacre since the peace
2012 Noviembre Guatemala
On Wednesday October 3, I was in Quetzaltenango giving a workshop on Mayan leadership to young indigenous people when we were alerted by people there...

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....

Chronicle of a love story
2011 Julio Guatemala
On the morning of May 15, 1984, young Carlos Cuevas Molina was riding his motorbike through Guatemala City’s historic center when he was intercepted...

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...

A Government Strong with the Weak and Weak with the Strong
2010 Octubre Guatemala
Since 2008, when the National Unity of Hope (UNE) government took office with Álvaro Colom at the helm, we’ve witnessed both the structural roots that...

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...

Deportation from the USA: An “Illegal” Guatemalan’s Tale
2008 Junio Guatemala
Guatemala is witnessing a speeded- up deportation of its migrants living in the United States. A recent study by the Office of Human Rights Ombudsman...

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...

An Uncertain and Violent Electoral Process
2007 Agosto Guatemala
These are the sixth elections since Guatemala’s current Constitution was promulgated and the democracy-building process officially launched in 1985,...

Rigoberta Menchú: A Shooting Star in the Electoral Sky?
2007 Julio Guatemala
What has happened to Rigoberta Menchú’s candidacy for President of Guatemala? Didn’t several polls show her as the most widely recognized person in...

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...

Crime and Corruption in the Guatemalan Police
2007 Marzo Guatemala
The February 19 murder in Guatemala of three Salvadoran representatives to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN)—Eduardo D’Aubuisson, William Pichinte...

Ten Years of Peace: Three Appraisals
2007 Febrero Guatemala
Gustavo Porras, a sociologist sat on the commission that accompanied the peace accords between 1997 and 1999. We begin with this measured structural...

To Be Young and Poor: Turf, Violence, Fear, Silence
2006 Septiembre Guatemala
Ester is a Kakchiquel from one of the villages in Chimaltenango closest to the capital. She has eight children, most of them now teenagers. Two are...

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...

Institutions under Siege
2006 Marzo Guatemala
The political institutions underpinning the democratic system established in Guatemala two decades ago, when the military regime ended, are under siege....

The Visible and Invisible Aspects of Feminicide
2005 Diciembre Guatemala
Although the debate over terminology is ongoing and concepts are still being defined, “feminicide” is the word most commonly used in Guatemala to give...

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...

The United States Finds the Groundwork Laid
2005 Junio Guatemala
World trends on security, trade and other strategic issues, particularly those emanating from the United States to Central America—a crucial area of...

Democracy? Rule of Law?
2005 Abril Guatemala
The new year in Guatemala began in an atmosphere marked by contact and confrontation among the country’s various social groups and between some of these...

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 Myrna Mack Case: Continuing Impunity
2003 Junio Guatemala
The verdict issued on May 7 by the Fourth Appeals Court acquitting the three high-ranking military officers involved in the 1990 assassination of anthropologist...

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...

The Myrna Mack Case: An Historic Verdict
2002 Noviembre Guatemala
Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang was assassinated on September 11, 1990. She had just left her office at the Association for the Advance of Social Sciences...

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,...

With the War Long Over in Ixcán, The Peace of the Accords Is Still to Come
2002 Junio Guatemala
How well are the Peace Accords being fulfilled in Guatemala? Not well at all. In his inaugural address, President Alfonso Portillo promised that the...

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...

Militarization in Ixcán: Thin Red Lines
2002 Marzo Guatemala
The trauma of the war and the militarization are still palpable in many areas of indigenous and rural Guatemala. One such area is Ixcán, which was incorporated...

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....

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...

Guatemala’s Women During the Long War: “Treated Worse than Animals”
1999 Julio Guatemala
Close to two hundred thousand dead and disappeared, one million displaced, over four hundred villages destroyed, two hundred thousand children orphaned...

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,...

The Circle Closes Around the Gerardi Case
1998 Septiembre Guatemala
The relationship between Guatemala's top military brass and the murdered auxiliary bishop of the Archdioceses of Guatemala, Juan José Gerardi Conedera,...

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...

Some Voices of the 55,000 Victims
1998 Mayo Guatemala
Exactly three years ago, on April 25, 1995, we publicly presented the REMHI Project; an interdiocesan pastoral work whose objective was to open consoling...

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 Built on a Time Bomb
1997 Mayo Guatemala
These first months of 1997, in which three generations of Guatemalans are living together without armed conflict for the first time, have not, as we...

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 Clinton Report and The Arzú Plan
1996 Agosto Guatemala
Fifteen months ago the President of the United States ordered a high level investigation of US intelligence agency activities in Guatemala, especially...

The Hidden Faces of the New Government
1996 Julio Guatemala
Analyses of the significance and scope of the socioeconomic and agrarian accord signed May 6 between the government and the URNG began surfacing throughout...

Next Thorny Accord: The Armed Forces
1996 Junio Guatemala
The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) and representatives of the Guatemalan government signed the Accord about Socioeconomic Aspects and...

With Peace in Sight, Challenges Abound
1996 Mayo Guatemala
March was a month of notable advances toward peace and disturbing shifts towards barbarity. On the one hand, important steps were taken in the negotiations...

Already Post-War, But Still no Peace
1996 Abril Guatemala
After a two month recess, the peace negotiations between the government and the URNG resumed in February. President Alvaro Arzú named former guerrilla...

President Arzu: A New Stage Begins
1996 Febrero Guatemala
Like the fisherman in "The Old Man and the Sea," the National Advancement Party (PAN) made an admirable "catch" with a small "bait" in the two recent...

The Election Scene
1995 Diciembre Guatemala
The eve of the November 12 general elections was darkened by the shadow of a recent massacre, severe criticisms in the third report from the United Nations...

Massacre at Chisec: History Repeats Itself
1995 Noviembre Guatemala
On October 5 the history of bloodletting was repeated for 255 refugee families who had returned to Guatemala from Mexico. They lived on a cooperative...

The Bishops Speak of True Peace
1995 Octubre Guatemala
A controversial pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishops' Conference identifying the historical causes of the country's social confrontations began...

Peace Process Stalled Till After Elections
1995 Septiembre Guatemala
The peace negotiations bogged down in July, due to contradictory interests at play in the agenda point currently under discussion, disagreements within...

The Many Wars Of the Centaur
1995 Agosto Guatemala
June has been a month of confrontations. The army won an important battle with the Public Ministry and the legal system by opposing the exhumation of...

Is the URNG Moving To the Center?
1995 Julio Guatemala
A new front has opened against the Guatemalan army and its attacks will be hard to dodge this time, since they come from within the military ranks. ...

Four Unknowns Before the Elections
1995 Junio Guatemala
Almost nine months after initiating negotiations on the rights and identity of indigenous peoples, the Guatemalan government and the URNG finally signed...

The Bámaca Case: An Uncommon Scandal
1995 Mayo Guatemala
After three hunger strikes in two years, numerous trips through the corridors of power in Washington and Guatemala, the exhumation of three cadavers,...

The Military Wall that Won't Fall
1995 Abril Guatemala
Guatemala's political and socioeconomic scene is still confusing. Although there are no official presidential candidates yet, the possible candidacy...

The Peace Process is Dead! Long live the Electoral Process!
1995 Febrero Guatemala
Guatemala rang in the new year with the inauguration of retired general Efraín Ríos Montt, infamous for his genocidal policies while head of state in...

Three Stubborn Women Confront Impunity
1995 Enero Guatemala
The United Nations Mission in Nicaragua (MINIGUA) finally began working in the country on November 21, eight months after the UN agreed to "immediately"...

Where is the Guerrilla's Tomb?
1994 Diciembre Guatemala
By the end of October, Guatemalans were already waiting for the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala, MINUGUA, which had announced its arrival for mid...

Coffee Prices Up in the "Country of the Few"
1994 Noviembre Guatemala
September was marked by the long awaited arrival of a preliminary delegation of the United Nations Mission for Guatemala (MINUGUA). It received the...

How Goes the War Process?
1994 Octubre Guatemala
Retired General Efrain Ríos Montt, responsible for thousands of deaths during the 1980s, dominated the recent congressional elections and assured his...

Common Graves: Unearthing the Truth
1994 Septiembre Guatemala
During July, the question on many Guatemalans' lips was, "Where's the United Nations?" The UN human rights verification commission has yet to show any...

The "Changing" Country and the Real One
1994 Agosto Guatemala
The way the international news media has it, many things appear to be changing, and at an accelerated pace, in Guatemala. After days of negotiation...

Who Sets the Tempo in the Dance of Peace?
1994 Julio Guatemala
The international community has decided that 1994 is the year in which the "Central American Chapter'" closes with a peace accord in Guatemala. The...

The Rich Don't Want to Pay Taxes
1994 Junio Guatemala
A tense calm prevailed in the country following the Holy Week violence last month, and particularly the assassination of the Constitutional Court president....

The State of Law in a State of Coma
1994 Mayo Guatemala
After six years of negotiations and almost a year of total stagnation, the Guatemalan government and the National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) signed a...

Who's in Charge Here?
1994 Abril Guatemala
The shifts made in the military hierarchy in February affected the peace process and will have consequences for the country's future. They also make...

A Powder Keg
1994 Febrero Guatemala
In Guatemala, the new year began overshadowed by the process and the results of the January 30 Popular Consultation, an extravaganza in politicking that...

A November Full of Pitfalls
1994 Enero Guatemala
November was not one of President Ramiro León de Carpio's better months. The campaign he initiated in August to purge corrupt congressional members...

De León in his Labyrinth
1993 Diciembre Guatemala
September's rumor of the month was that President Ramiro De León Carpio was going to resign. In October, the rumor was of an imminent coup. Finally,...

Purging the Congress: A Pandora's Box
1993 Noviembre Guatemala
By the end of September, the government of President Ramiro de León Carpio was still facing a crisis of ungovernability. The purging process he had...

Ramiro de León: the Military's Dream?
1993 Octubre Guatemala
After almost three months of Ramiro De León Carpio's new government, a joke is making the rounds in Guatemala: Since becoming President, Ramiro has...

After the Honeymoon, What Then?
1993 Agosto Guatemala
Following two tumultuous weeks of coups and counter coups that seemed like a throwback to the 1980s, Guatemala's history took a 180 degree turn on June...

The Coup All Knew Was Coming
1993 Julio Guatemala
On Tuesday, May 25, Guatemalans woke up to unexpected marimba music transmitted by a national chain of radio stations. They immediately knew what had...

"Massacres in the Jungle"--Never Again?
1993 Junio Guatemala
"A guerrilla at age 60!" was the incredulous response of Jesuit priest Ricardo Falla when the Guatemalan Defense Minister accused him of being an ideologue...

Guatemala's Revolving Door
1993 Mayo Guatemala
After the euphoria in January over the triumphal return of 2,400 refugees, February and March were very tense months for those who supported them, as...

Rigoberta for President?
1993 Enero Guatemala
The Serrano Elías government had moved mountains to prevent the coveted Nobel Peace Prize from being awarded to an indigenous Guatemalan woman named...

Rigoberta Menchú in Nicaragua
1992 Diciembre Guatemala
On October 16, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, heir of the Maya-Quiché people of Guatemala, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized...

Everything the Same?
1992 Noviembre Guatemala
Nothing seems to change in Guatemala. After initially trying to strengthen civilian power, President Jorge Serrano seems to have completely abandoned...

Wearing Down and Tearing Down
1992 Septiembre Guatemala
The phrase that describes Guatemala these days is "wearing down." In 18 months of "governing," the Jorge Serrano administration has been unable to achieve...

A New Kind of Development—Or a New Face on the Old?
1992 Junio Guatemala
With the international United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) just around the bend, it seems appropriate to take a close...

After El Salvador, is Guatemala Next?
1992 Marzo Guatemala
After only a year in power, Guatemala's second civilian government, inherited from the weakened Vinicio Cerezo presidency, has become so debilitated...

Challenges to the Military Model
1990 Mayo Guatemala
Three visions of the development of society are competing in Guatemala, as we examined in envío’s 1989 Central America issue: the “state stability”...

Negotiations Held Hostage
1989 Mayo Guatemala
Three models in vontentionThree development models are contending for leadership of Guatemala's sociopolitical and economic process. 1....

Economic Crisis: A Ticking Time Bomb
1987 Marzo Guatemala
The key element in Guatemala in 1986 was the consolidation of Vinicio Cerezo’s new civilian government brought about by a shifting of the social forces,...

The Coup In Guatemala: First Impressions
1983 Septiembre Guatemala
On August 8, the commanders of Guatemala’s twenty-two military garrisons relieved of his duties the President of the Republic and Commander-in-Chief...