Alvaro Colom signed an oil deal with Hugo Chavez while trying not to alienate the United States.
WikiLeaks XXXII: Guatemalan President Colom Walks a Tightrope Between U.S. and Venezuela
read more
Guatemala
WikiLeaks XVIX: Guatemalan Concerns Get Short Shrift in Cables About Illegal Border Crossings Into Mexico
Documents reporting how easy it is to illegally cross the Mexican/Guatemalan border reveal Mexican security conflicts but fail to address Guatemalan concerns.
Not-So-Magical Realism
Writing about it didn’t, alas, prevent it from happening.
In the late 1940s, Gore Vidal lived in Guatemala, where he shared a house with the writer Anaïs Nin, lived on the cheap, and wrote Dark Green, Bright Red. Published in 1950, this undeservedly obscure novel describes how the operatives of the World Banana Company work behind the scenes in an unnamed Central American country to help a smooth-talking dictator depose a president committed to land reform and free elections.
Guatemalan Woman’s Asylum Case a Major Test for Ashcroft’s Position on Women’s Rights
Immigration and human rights groups are hoping that a legal brief they have submitted to Attorney General John Ashcroft will persuade him to uphold a proposed Clinton administration policy that women who have suffered severe domestic abuse in their homeland may be granted political asylum in the United States.
Guatemala and the Forgotten Anniversary
Democracy has been much in the news of late. At the G-8 Summit in Georgia, one of the main items on the agenda was the democratization of the Middle East, and the recent commemoration of the D-Day anniversary and the passing of President Reagan both generated discussion concerning the defense and spread of democracy.
The Resurgence of Violence in Guatemala
Guatemala today finds itself in the midst of a deep social, economic, and political crisis after the failure to meet the expectations raised by the 1996 signature of the Peace Accord. The peace process, once heralded by the United Nations as a “success story” because it ended 36 years of internal armed conflict, is at the point of stagnation. On July 12, 2001, the UN Under-Secretary General Iqbal Riza, upon completing his visit to the country, called for a dialogue among all social and political forces to save and reactivate the peace process.