People-power and the ‘Guatemalan Spring’
The group connected on social networks and were so incensed by the brazen corruption that they promoted a get-together with the hashtag #renunciaya, hoping a few hundred like-minded people might turn up to demand the resignations of the corrupt officials. About 30,000 people gathered in the historic main square on April 25. Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens from every social class, age, and political persuasion have gathered every Saturday since calling for political heads to roll.
President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala Resigns Amid Scandal
At the center of the events that led to Mr. Pérez Molina’s downfall is a persistent citizens movement that brought together vastly different groups for the first time. Guatemala City’s middle class, long reluctant to speak out after a brutal civil war demonstrated the costs of opposition, joined forces with peasant and indigenous groups. The political turmoil comes three days before a general election scheduled for Sunday. Mr. Pérez Molina was not eligible for re-election, but many of the demonstrators who have filled the central square in Guatemala City, the capital, have been unsatisfied with the choices before them.
As the country prepares for presidential elections this Sunday, September 6, Mersky is not optimistic about the upcoming president, but is hopeful about long-term change in the country. “The parties who are strongest have the same belief in using the State as a source of wealth, so I think the outcome will be very complicated, no matter what it is, and certainly whoever is elected will not have a lot of legitimacy,” says Mersky. Deep institutional reform is needed in Guatemala, she insists, and that includes measures involving the judiciary, political party financing, and electoral reform among others. “I am hopeful that some important reforms will come out of this and that there will be a sense among prosecutors and judges that the society is willing and happy to reward honest officials who defend their rights,” Mersky says.
Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala Is Jailed Hours After Resigning Presidency
The decision to jail Mr. Pérez Molina highlighted the seismic change sweeping through Guatemala after the corruption accusations in April, and offered a dramatic validation of a growing street demonstration movement demanding his ouster and prosecution. For much of Guatemala’s violent history, marked by dictatorship and military repression, such a scene would have been unimaginable: a president forced to resign, then sit in open court to hear charges leveled against him and ultimately spend the night in a prison he once might have overseen as a top general. All that in the course of a single day.
Guatemala’s Crisis is Not Over
Electoral victory by any of these candidates would leave Guatemala with weak leadership at a time that most government institutions desperately need revitalization. Corruption is too deep-rooted for CICIG and its few allies in government to face down alone, and these candidates won’t use the presidency to carry out the needed purge. The organized criminal groups that traffic drugs and persons through the country and permeate governing institutions stand to grow only stronger, and the misery that plagues a population deprived of education, health care and jobs will continue unabated. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s billion-dollar aid package for Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, already in trouble in Washington, may have nowhere good to go.
Young Hands in Mexico Feed Growing U.S. Demand for Heroin
As heroin addiction soars in the United States, a boom is underway south of the border, reflecting the two nations’ troubled symbiosis. Officials from both countries say that Mexican opium production increased by an estimated 50 percent in 2014 alone, the result of a voracious American appetite, impoverished farmers in Mexico and entrepreneurial drug cartels that straddle the border.
How an Indigenous Group Is Battling Construction of the Nicaragua Canal
Citing the government’s failure to obtain free, informed, and prior consent to use Rama-Kriol lands as part of the canal construction before passing the concession law, Acosta filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in June 2014. The following December, she asked the IACHR for precautionary measures, which would prevent work from proceeding on the canal until the Rama had been properly consulted. The IACHR is a part of the Organization of American States and hears complaints about human rights abuses from around the Americas. In March, Acosta, McCray, and five other canal opponents traveled to Washington, DC, for the IACHR hearing. McCray represented the six indigenous groups whose territory is affected by the canal route; the others spoke about canal-related environmental impacts, police repression of protesters, and other human-rights violations.
Deportees from Dominican Republic land on Haiti border
Dominican officials said they would not begin deportations before August and the officials insisted in July that they had not deported anyone in connection with the new immigration crackdown. In teeming border towns, dozens of people interviewed by USA TODAY tell a different story. They say they were rousted from homes and off streets with only the possessions they could carry and swiftly dumped on the border. They also claim that immigration officials target people who are darker skinned and often tell people they are too black to be Dominican. Haiti’s foreign minister Lener Renauld confirmed deportees arrived in border towns as early as June.
Colombians face perils trying to remove landmines
Decades of conflict between the government and leftist rebels in Colombia have turned much of the countryside into a minefield. About 11,000 people have either been killed or injured by the explosive devices since 1990. Locating and deactivating the explosives comes with unique complications. The mines are often made from coffee cans or PVC pipes, with syringes as detonators. When metal detectors do not work, the deminers need to dig underneath manually the entire area.
Bolivia’s Evo Morales Rips Officials Accused of Corruption
Bolivian President Evo Morales chided government officials implicated in a major corruption scandal involving a Bolivian-based foundation known as the Indigenous Fund. “Brothers and sisters of the indigenous campesino movement and of the Unity Pact, we have an obligation to be more transparent,” President Morales said Monday.