What is going on in Guatemala?

From The Pan-American Post

Yesterday, a Guatemalan appeals court recused itself from deciding whether the country’s 1986 amnesty law could prevent the prosecution of General Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. As Prensa Librereports, this makes it the third court to declare itself unfit to take up an October Constitutional Court order to assess the admissibility of the amnesty law to the Rios Montt case. In other Guatemalan judicial news, the country’s Constitutional Court is set to hear final arguments today over whether Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz should be allowed to serve out a four-year term, or whether it expires in May. The court has previously said it favors the latter, and called for a committee to convene and nominate her replacement, so the likelihood of a reversal is slim.

See also Court hearing on Guatemala’s attorney general draws hundreds. Maybe it's not fair but Can't they find a judge who doesn't think Rios Montt is guilty?
Ricardo Barrientos has a post on U.S.-Guatemala Relations: What Is Going On?

Guatemala recently completed its rotation on the UN Security Council, and the preliminary results of the elections in El Salvador and Costa Rica show that the region will continue under the influence of leftwing or left-leaning governments.  After Mr. Brownfield’s public statements, tension has eased and the angry rhetoric calmed down, but the chapter has not ended.  

I don't think that Ricardo and I see things these same way. Governments on the right rule in Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama while the left will likely continue to govern in El Salvador (institutionalized left?) and Nicaragua (personalist left?). I'm not sure that I am ready to characterize the next Costa Rican government.

The bottom line is that Guatemala received an emphatic message: it must keep aligned with what the U.S. wants.  The problem for decisionmakers in the region is that it is not always clear what the U.S. wants.

I'm not ready to lay out the entire argument but I am falling into the camp that believes that the current Guatemalan government, as well as much of the country's political and economic elites, is not an ally of the US. The US wants Guatemala to have a strong democracy that protects the rights of workers, journalists, and civil society. The US wants the Guatemalan government to support CICIG, the attorney general, and the rule of law. The US wants the government to develop a broader tax base and to invest more in its people. The US wants Guatemala to make an effort to interdict drugs from flowing through the country into Mexico and that, if they do interdict some, that they turn it over to authorities.

I might be the only one in the camp that doesn't see the Guatemalan government as an ally but it has got to start somewhere.