Courageous Stand by The Guatemala Times

The Guatemala Times released Our take on the Colom Presidency yesterday. There’s a lot of good stuff. President Colom has gotten bad press his entire term in office. Some of it is obviously deserved. However, much of it seems to be politically motivated and it's only gotten worse over the last few weeks. I use the term courageous to describe The Guatemala Times' position because what they say is dangerous and I am sure that they know it.

Guatemala’s mainstream media is owned by the status quo and defends the status quo. President Colom was always seen as a threat to the powers of Guatemala – a socialist, in the minds of the Guatemalan right - wingers that is considered the same as communist, guerilla, terrorist, anti- establishment, a menace to their power structure. He is not one of “them”, he must be the enemy.

Anyone who has the illusion that in Guatemala the President elect is the real power is a fool. The power behind the power is and always has been the Guatemalan elite, much the same as in the US, where President Obama has not been able to do anything of what he promised, because it is not convenient for the big money. It is a “moneycracy” not a democracy. Money rules, not the people.

Now the Guatemalan media smells blood and they must endear themselves to the newly elected government of Otto Perez. They are getting bolder and bolder, more offensive and disrespectful as the Presidency of Colom is coming to its end.

There seems to be several factors at play in the media’s coverage of Colom. One line seeks to connect him to the guerrillas and tends to argue that this is what happens when you elect a leftist of someone closely aligned with the guerrillas to the presidency. I get the impression that they don’t just want to take down Colom, but they want to undermine social democracy and the political left in Guatemala. This can be seen by both the media’s coverage of Colom as well as the legal actions brought against former guerrillas and peace activists for crimes committed during the civil war. While the guerrillas did some nasty things, what they did pales in comparison to what the Guatemalan armed forces and government did.

Yesterday’s story about a lawsuit brought against Colom for failing to extend CICIG’s mandate looks like it might be designed to discredit him as well. In 2010, it was thought that the Congress did not need to vote to extend CICIG’s mandate. Putting my conspiracy hat on, it is possible that the media, the elite, and members of the incoming administration do not want CICIG’s mandate extended and this is a way for them to get out of the country’s relationship with CICIG while blaming Colom. I’m not sure of this one, but stranger things have happened. We already know that the lawsuits against Claudia Paz y Paz was politically motivated and likely designed to get her to stop civil war investigations. It’s not that far-fetched to believe that this lawsuit is politically motivated as well.

Finally, the media’s brutal coverage of Colom’s last few weeks already has the effect of causing the people to look towards Otto Perez Molina as the country’s savior. I haven’t read one piece that questions statistics on the country’s murder rate. What explains why two years of reduced murders have led to a rising sense of insecurity amongst Guatemalans? Are the authorities not counting correctly? If murders are not the best way to measure criminal violence, how can we produce statistics that better reflect the situation in which Guatemala finds itself? Has there been any of that? No. They just report the decline and then repeat how Colom has done nothing to improve the security situation in the country.

    

You should definitely read the whole piece.  

El Salvador and Guatemala Links

Some interesting reads from the last few weeks. None of them are particularly optimistic about the situations in Guatemala or El Salvador.

The International Crisis Group has Learning to Walk without a Crutch: The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. Here's the press release. I’m still not optimistic about CICIG. 

I thought that the commission should have pressed for a stronger commitment from the Colom administration and the presidential contenders before extending the commission’s mandate for another two years. It’s possible that they got private reassurances, but it’s more than likely that the commission had its mandate extended so that if some unsavory character somehow won the 2011 election, the commission would already be in place.

Two articles at Upside Down World take on the irresponsible approach to environmental challenges in Guatemala and El Salvador. Emma Volonté (Translation by Alex Cachinero-Gorman) has a critical piece entitled Guatemala: Oil Companies and the Subservience of the Government and Angel Maria Ibarra Turcios, an environmentalist and President of Unidad Ecológica Salvadoreña, has The March Toward Unsustainability in El Salvador Gains Speed. 

Mary Bellman describes the danger involved in union activism in Workers paying the ultimate price in Guatemala. Union organizing has always been dangerous in Guatemala and there's no sign that things are getting better.

Edgardo Ayala describes the perilous situation of independent journalists in El Salvador in Radio Station under Threat in Mining Region. Several journalists have received deaths threats or have been killed because of their coverage of local politics and anti-mining activism.

Threats against the Media in Guatemala

Christopher Toothaker of the Associated Press has a story out today on NGO: Press freedoms threatened in Latin America. In it, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that "a rise in censorship can be seen throughout Latin America, caused by government repression, judicial interference, and intimidation from criminal groups."

The CPJ's 2011 report found that violence against journalists in Mexico and Central America is linked to drug gangs and that the violence is "striking fear into reporters and self-censorship within the media."

Last week, the CPJ reported on a series of threats against Oscar de León, a television journalist with the Guatevisión TV network. The CPJ is calling on Guatemalan authorities to investigate the source of the threats and to take steps to protect De León.

Mr. De León and his family have received multiple death threats via text messaging and landlines. On January 28, his van was also van peppered with bullets while his brother was driving it . These threats started after he received a folder documenting alleged police corruption in a southwestern municipality of Quetzaltenango. After receiving the material, he did published any of it, but instead approached the mayor. The mayor then brought the issue up for all the town to see when he met with the town's Municipal Council. At that point, the threats began.

De León said he believes the shooting and threats are related to his investigation into allegations of corruption against the city's transit police chief, Manuel Adolfo Blanco. Quetzaltenango-based daily El Quetzalteco quoted Blanco denying accusations of corruption. Blanco's contract with the transit police, which expired on January 31, was not renewed, local news media reported.

According to the CPJ, seventeen journalists have been killed in Guatemala since 1992 .

McCain and Palin Still Lost

Earlier in the week, there was a story that Tom Loertscher (R-Iona) of Washington didn't know where Guatemala was located on a map. Turns out the writer had the story wrong and Loertscher was speaking about his hairdresser. She didn't know Guatemala's location until meeting her future husband who was from there.

We'll look for more evidence next time. Like now. Here are some recent gaffes from Senator McCain, 1/2-term Palin, and the American public. Sometimes you just feel bad for the Senator.



To be fair, I can't correctly identify all 200 or so countries in the world. And when I do mix up countries and leaders in class, I correct myself.

On the other hand, I don't recall too many video clips where McCain or Palin actually seemed to know what they were talking about in terms of foreign policy. Must be the media's fault.