Violence Haunts Guatemala's Election
Saturday, Nov. 03, 2007 By MICA ROSENBERG/GUATEMALA CITY
Guatemalan presidential candidate, Partido Patriota
Otto Perez Molina, greets supporters as he arrives
to a rally. Eitan Abramovich / AFP / Getty
Guatemala goes to the polls on Sunday, haunted by a violent and contested past and anxious over an increasingly violent present. The legacy of the country's 36-year-civil war is never far from contemporary politics, and the frontrunner in the presidential runoff — retired General Perez Molina, whose right-wing Patriotic Party has a very slight lead over left-leaning businessman Alvaro Colom in some opinion polls — has been the subject of allegations in a new book on the 1998 assassination of Guatemalan human rights crusader Bishop Juan Gerardi. Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in the parish house of his Guatemala City church the day after he published an exhaustive report of human rights violations by the Guatemalan army during the civil war. Although three military officers were convicted of the murder and jailed in 2001, Guatemalan-American writer Francisco Goldman claims a key witness identified Molina as one of several high-ranking army men who gathered near the church on the night of the murder. But Molina dismisses the claim as "pure lies," saying he was not even in the country when Gerardi was killed.
However, Molina's slight edge in some polls — Colom actually has his own small lead in other surveys — is based on voters' concerns over present-day violence. Crime has soared in the country of 13 million since the signing of the 1996 peace agreements between leftist guerillas and the government — close to 6,000 people were murdered last year alone. Most of the killings are blamed on violent youth gangs known as maras, or on turf battles between powerful drug cartels. And that violence has seeped into the election, with over 50 candidates and party activists killed since campaigning began last year.
More:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1680443,00.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Just found a site which may be excellent for those of us who want to read more about Guatemala. I haven't even opened one link yet, so I can't tell you if these are great aids, or not. It looks like a really BIG help for anyone wanting to know more about Guatemalan history since 1977:
Guerrillas in
Guatemala
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/guatemala-rev.htm