How exactly are you a good partner, Otto?

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said that his country will not accept the "imposition" of CICIG as a condition of US funding for the Alliance for Prosperity. In a sense, that is not surprising. The Guatemalan military has always been a proud institution that does not like to take orders, let alone suggestions, from anyone. As is well known, the US asked the Guatemalan military and government to respect human rights in their battle against rebels during the 1970s as a condition for continuing US funding. They said no thanks. The Guatemalan military said that they didn't need any counterinsurgency training from the US because we had just lost the Korean and Vietnamese wars. What did they have to learn from US? The next time that they sent their soldiers to the School of the Americas, it would be as instructors, not students.

At the end of the war, the US and international community conditioned postwar assistance on numerous conditions, including that they raise taxes as a percentage of GDP from the lowest in the region. Crickets, anyone?

Otto Perez and his administration and much of the country's economic elite are people that the US has to work with for a variety of reasons. However, they should not be described as partners in any accurate way.

Here is what I wrote in June prior to VP Biden's meeting with Otto Perez.

You've dragged your feet on cooperating with the joint UN-Guatemala venture International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), forced out two commissioners, and have made it clear that you will not support extending its mandate even though it is widely believed to have contributed to strengthening the rule of in Guatemala.

You and other members of the political and economic elite have forced Claudia Paz y Paz from the attorney general position, sanctioned Yasmin Barrios, and weakened the rule of law with the shenanigans surrounding the overturn of the Rios Montt conviction.

You put our ambassador on a hit list during the trial or, at best, did nothing to challenge those who did.

You are pursuing drug reforms which we are against.

You've failed to improve workers rights and have forced the USTR to take you to task under CAFTA-DR

We're not perfect but how again have you been a good partner that we should go out of our way to help?

Yes, we know you are not Honduras but that's not good enough.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed.