Interview with Burden of Peace director

    Q: To some, “Burden of Peace” might seem like a record of futility because there is no real closure for the victims. What would you say to such people who interpret it that way?

    Joey Boink: I see the result of the genocide trial so far as representing two steps forward and one step backwards. To many survivors who gave testimony in court, it meant a lot to be able to tell their stories in front of a national judge. The trial allowed many Guatemalans to hear what happened to the Maya people in the Ixil area for the first time in their lives. Efraín Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years for committing genocide and crimes against humanity, but the constitutional court ruled that the prosecutor had made procedural errors and annulled the sentence. To many, that meant steps have been taken towards justice but that there is still a lot to fight for.

    It would be too cynical to call the story a record of futility knowing that survivors feel proud to have been able to share their long-hidden experiences, that Rios Montt was sentenced for his crimes in a national court, and that lawyers and prosecutors continue to make efforts after each victory and each loss. There is no real closure for the victims of the armed conflict, but the people of Guatemala have not given up their struggle for justice.

    Q: Why is the film titled the “burden” of peace?

    Joey Boink: When the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Bert Koenders, spoke at the film’s world premiere, he explained our title better than I could have done myself. He said: “The impact of civil conflict persists long after peace agreements have been signed. When violence has been the norm for so long, and there has been no law and order, the burden of peace is the long road to justice that begins where conflict ends.” I think the film illustrates this long road to justice.

    A second interpretation centers on Claudia’s personal struggle and sacrifice. Claudia’s surname, Paz y Paz, means “Peace and Peace.” It’s as though she was born with the heavy responsibility to fight for peace.

I'm looking forward to what appears to be a terrific film. Go check out the interview. I particularly appreciate Joey's closing comments.

Lawyers targeted in Guatemala

Louisa Reynolds provides some background on last week's apparent assassination of Guatemalan lawyer Francisco Palomo Tejada with 26 lawyers have been murdered in Guatemala in the past 3 years. Palomo was one of Efrain Rios Montt's lawyers for the recent genocide trial, but he has also been connected to a number of other high profile cases in recent years.

    Preliminary police reports state that Palomo’s murder was a hit, although the motives are still unclear. The fact that the murder occurred in the aftermath of a massive customs fraud scandal that has led to six consecutive weeks of nationwide demonstrations against the Pérez Molina administration has led to speculation that the killing could exacerbate the current climate of political instability.

    “This could have a deep impact on the middle-class protesters who have taken to the streets in recent weeks. People might see this as the beginning of a wave of selective repression and it could inhibit protest,” says Edgar Gutiérrez, director of the Institute for Addressing National Problems at the University of San Carlos.

    It is also unclear whether Palomo’s murder could have an impact on Ríos Montt’s retrial, which was scheduled for Jan. 5 but suspended after his defense team accused the presiding judge of bias. Although a new judge was appointed, no date has been set for the retrial.

    “Palomo specialized in technical procedures. What his [Ríos Montt’s] defense lawyers did was obstruct the case rather than defend him. It’s a very complicated case that’s moving at a snail’s pace. I’m not sure what impact it [Palomo’s murder] could have,” Gutiérrez said.

As of late last week, authorities were investigating three possible lines of investigation into Palomo's murder. The principal hypothesis is that we was killed because of a case that he was working on. However, the case is believed to be relatively low-profile. The murder comes during a brief uptick in the country's overall homicide rates as well as reasonable and questionable protests.


There's a good chance that authorities will find those responsible for the shooting death of Palomo. As I've said before, the MP's office has gotten pretty good at solving high-profile murders through the use of ballistics and video. Not perfect, but better.

Who benefits from the Patriotic Party's self-destruction?

For the last few weeks, Guatemalans have taken to the streets to protect gross corruption in their country, especially as demonstrated by the Otto Perez Molina administration. There's a strong sentiment that the protesters want him gone. However, that's not absolute. There's strong sentiment that they do not want Manuel Baldizon to be the next elected official to plunder the country's financial reserves, although I would imagine that the LIDER supporters are not on board with this. After that, there's some who are pushing for deeper reforms rather than a reshuffling of the deck chairs.


With an eye towards September's national elections, it's unclear what political party is going to be able to capitalize on the anti-corruption sentiment. The main opposition party, LIDER, has been holding hands with the Patriotic Party for the last few months. It's tough to see LIDER and Baldizon benefiting from the corruption scandals given that Baldizon himself, rightly or wrongly, seems to be associated with corruption. As the favorite, however, anything that hurt the PP should help LIDER to a certain.


To my surprise, UNE still exists as a political party. I thought that the fiasco surrounding Sandra Torres' run for the presidency in 2011 would doom the party. However, she now has to be one of the favorites to advance to a runoff later this year. While El Periodico had claimed her husband's administration's legacy to the people of Guatemala would be corruption, we haven't seen any hammers fall on the Colom's or their party since Alvaro left office. She remains popular because of various social programs that she oversaw as first lady. The PP's self-destruction definitely helped UNE, but I'm not sure that the party will be able to build on the anti-corruption sentiments.


One political grouping that hopes to build upon the rejection of Otto Perez Molina and the political establishment is the Frente Amplio Winaq-URNG. The Frente Amplio recently chose its presidential and vice-presidential candidates for September with Miguel Ángel Sandoval and Mario Gerardo Ellington Lambe. Sandoval is a familiar face. The political groupings on the left have failed to capitalize on citizen frustration with corruption and conflicts over mining and natural resource projects in the past. They were never able to build upon the pink tide sentiment of the last decade either. They have not benefited electorally from the calls for transitional justice.


They might be able to capitalize on the anti-corruption sentiment this year. A handful of analysts with whom I have spoken have voter for the URNG in the past as a protest vote. Perhaps more Guatemalans will do so this year. However, that probably means their binomial will capture between 5-10% of the total vote and 5-9 congressional seats. Minimal but better than previous showings.


The URNG (one of the Frente Amplio members) arguably has had one of the strongest political parties in the countries in terms of a clearly defined ideology political platform and regular departmental and national meetings. However, they don't have the resources to compete against the other political parties.

Prensa Libre

Guatemalans have come to expect food and other handouts at political rallies and for their vote. The URNG generally has not been able to afford such enticements. In the photo above, Baldizon's LIDER party raffled off bicycles and a motorcycle at one of their campaign events this weekend. They encouraged everyone to stay to the end of the rally as they were giving food away afterwards. Will greater numbers of Guatemalans reject this type of politics in 2015?


Perhaps the anti-corruption sentiment will help the Frente Amplio this year. 

Another day, another resignation in Guatemala

Another day, another resignation.

    The general secretary of the Presidency resigned Tuesday, leaving the President Otto Perez Molina without much support after a series of forced resignations and arrests of state officials caught up in a corruption scandal.

    Gustavo Martinez explained that his decision was linked to the allegations made against him in the media in recent weeks, which he said was unnecessarily eroding executive power.

    “Here, one should not cling to public positions,” said the state official, emphasizing that the case of Perez Molina was different since he was elected by the people.

    Various national media have been reporting properties and real estates that Martinez obtained in dubious circumstances during his mandate – allegations he always denied.

Unexplained wealth? Properties one should not be able to afford on a government salary?


I'm sorry. I thought that they were talking about President Otto Perez Molina. From what I contributed to Freedom House's report last year:

    Despite efforts to combat corruption, serious problems remain. Vice President Baldetti has been linked to several high-profile scandals and has purchased expensive homes with unexplained wealth. President Pérez has also been linked to unexplained wealth, including a luxury property in Zaragoza.

Perez Molina was one of the reasons why CICIG was created in the first place. We all know how this is going to end. 

How corrupt was Hernandez's campaign?

RAJ tries to get to the bottom of the claim that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez admitted that his party's last electoral campaign was funded by proceeds from a corruption scandal involving the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS) with "If" Makes All the Difference: Hernández on the Corruption Scandal.

    For JOH, protests against generalized "corruption" are fine, because he has nothing to do with it. But when the call is for him to step down-- well, that's quite another thing: you must be on the side of organized crime.

    Reuters reported the part of Hernández statements that speaks to the over-arching narrative being constructed about corruption and protest in Central America, in which Guatemala and Honduras are merged. But each country has its own issues, and what gets left out from original coverage is where we find the traces of real politics.

    It may be reassuring to suggest that the president of Honduras has admitted his party did something wrong, and has directed it be corrected. But that doesn't seem to actually be what has happened; holding himself above the fray, Juan Orlando Hernández minimized the depth of corruption, and managed to use the opportunity to continue to undermine political rivals within and outside his own party.

It doesn't sound as if Hernandez is taking responsibility for what people are saying he is taking responsibility for. And I was going to link to the article before I even noticed that RAJ linked to my post from Monday.

Nicaraguan Canal Plan Riles Landholders

John Otis has a good article on Nicaragua's building of a new canal to compete with that of Panama for the Wall Street Journal with Nicaraguan Canal Plan Riles Landholders: Sandinista push to build Chinese-led shipping route across country sparks concerns over property rights. Everybody is trying to use the 1980s land reforms to frame their preferred narrative.

    Still, for many here, the expropriation plan recalls one of the most contentious policies of the Sandinista revolution that toppled U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

    Mr. Ortega’s government back then ordered the confiscation of coffee groves, cattle ranches and other properties belonging to Somoza and his cronies. Under an agrarian reform, the government handed out more than 1.5 million acres to peasant farmers. But the Sandinistas also helped themselves to properties belonging to opposition leaders, people who had fled the country or simply those with choice farms.

    Michael Healy Lacayo recalled how the Sandinistas expropriated his family’s 600-acre sugar cane plantation in 1980 for having supplied a mill owned by Somoza. The family eventually recovered the farm, but Mr. Healy said such arbitrary decisions turned many against the Sandinistas.

    “We are worried because we remember the 1980s,” said Mr. Healy, now president of the Nicaraguan Farmers Union, the country’s largest agro-industry group. “It opens a lot of old wounds.”

One paragraph stood out more than the others:

    Octavio Ortega, who has been organizing anticanal protests around the country, said many landowners distrust the project because it has been shrouded in secrecy. He said it was cynical for the developers to base their offers on the assessed tax value, knowing that many property owners lowball this figure to reduce their tax burden.

This sounds so much like the 1952 Agrarian Reform Law in Guatemala. Arbenz and the Guatemalan government offered to compensate landowners for the assessed values of their land. They pretty much said that they were lying about the lands' real value and that they should be paid ten times more. The rest is history.


Nicaragua is all about family relationships. Octavio Ortega is probably not related to President Daniel but I'm not sure about which "Lacayo" to which Michael Healy Lacayo is connected.

That's right, 635 May homicides in tiny El Salvador

One year into President Salvador Sanchez Ceren's term, the country's security situation worsens. In May, 635 Salvadorans were murdered, an average of 20.5 per day.

    Most of the killings came during turf battles involving gang members mixed up in drug trafficking and extortion rackets, officials said Tuesday. Authorities described a deliberate attempt by criminal organizations to ramp up violence as a means of pressure.

    Justice Minister Benito Lara also blamed gang reaction to recent transfers of 2,600 jailed gang members, including a number of capos who were sent to a maximum-security prison and lost many benefits they had previously enjoyed in other lock-ups.

    National police director Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde said 60 percent of the victims were criminals killed by rival gangs or by colleagues in the same criminal group.

Unfortunately, June has started off even worse with 38 deaths on June 1. The year end rate is likely to be much worse than that estimated after the first four months of the year.


In other news, Gains in Education and Poverty Reduction Continue During Salvadoran President's First Year in Office and Salvadoran President Emphasizes Social Gains in 1st Year Speech. These are real improvements, if true, but hard to see how they are going to be sustainable amidst the current violence.


El Salvador has also signed onto a multilateral convention to fight tax evasion.


Fortunately, the economy looks to be growing again. Sanchez Ceren envisions growth to arrive at 2.5% in 2015 which is still rather poor even if it is better than it has been the last few years.


I'm going to be in El Salvador for two weeks in July. Shoot me an email if you are interested in meeting up.

Why is the US giving Central America any money at all?

Here's Dana Frank writing about Honduras in Al Jazeera America

    Since 2009, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has helped depose a democratically elected president in a military coup, ousted part of the country’s Supreme Court and facilitated the illegal appointment of Honduras’ sitting attorney general. He's jettisoned the Honduran constitution through militarized policing, helped abolish presidential term limits and he even pushed through Congress a law that says that the Honduran constitution doesn't apply in new, privately-run “model cities.”

    Yet the Barack Obama administration continues to champion Hernández as a key regional partner and wants to send even more money to shore up his regime. Just how heinous should Honduras have to be before the U.S. stops supporting it?

And now Mary Anastasia O'Grady writing about El Salvador in the Wall Street Journal

    This case exposes the deliberate destruction of the rule of law. In 2000 The Wall Street Journal/Heritage Index of Economic Freedom ranked El Salvador the ninth freest economy in the world. It now sits at 62. Last week the U.N.’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean said that in 2014 El Salvador received a piddling 3% of all foreign direct investment to Central America.

    Nevertheless, Washington hasn’t stopped flooding Salvador with foreign aid. As part of Vice President Joe Biden’s $1 billion Central America aid initiative, the State Department has requested $119 million for development assistance for El Salvador for fiscal year 2016. This doesn’t include spending on security. The new MCC infusion raised its commitments to El Salvador in the last seven years to more than $700 million.

    This is only a spit in the U.S. government-budget ocean of almost $4 trillion. But it’s a lot of money for revolutionaries in a small country who have the goal of using the state’s monopoly power to dismantle democracy.

    Ms. McCue did not answer either of my requests for comment since January. Mr. Craner, who is no longer on the MCC board, told me in an email in January that he stands by his defense of El Salvador’s rule of law but that he did not know about the high-profile CEL-Enel case. He said he would “research” it. Last week he told me in an email that he now thinks the MCC should rethink its support.

    That’s cold comfort for the victims of the FMLN repression that the U.S. is underwriting.

Christine Wade and I tried to publish an op-ed on our Central American partners in July 2014 but it didn't get anywhere. Now's as good a time as any to publish it here.


Unaccompanied Minors Crisis Makes for Strange Bedfellows


On Friday President Barack Obama met with three people who would probably not have been invited to the White House under many other conditions. A retired general, a businessman, and former guerrilla commander, presidents of the three Central American countries at the heart of the border crisis, met with the US president to discuss the recent surge of unaccompanied minors and families on the US southern border. The divergent backgrounds of the four men demonstrate the difficulties that lie ahead for our countries as we seek long-term solutions to our shared challenges.


Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina is a retired general who has been linked to human rights violations during the Guatemalan civil war. A witness implicated him in crimes against humanity and genocide during last year's Efraín Rios Montt trial in Guatemala. Perez has advocated for drug decriminalization in some form, which has put him at odds with the White House. Perez, on the other hand, has been critical of the US government for not providing Guatemala with sufficient resources to fight the drug war and organized crime due to congressional restrictions on military assistance to the country in place since the Cold War.


Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who skipped previous high-level meetings to attend the World Cup in Brazil, also attended the White House meeting. Honduras is considered one of the US' most awkward allies. Hernandez has probably been the most outspoken president with regards to the US' contribution to the border crisis, emphasizing the critical role that the US appetite for drugs has played in Central America's crisis. While true, that argument distracts from Honduran and regional elites’ failures to root out corruption, strengthen democracy, and invest in their people.


The 2009 coup carried out by the right-wing in Honduras, including the current president, greatly opened the country to drug trafficking and organized crime. Though violence was increasing in the years prior to the coup, it is the failure on the part of current Honduran political and economic actors that have made Honduras the deadliest country on Earth.


Finally, President of El Salvador and former FMLN guerrilla  Salvador Sanchez Cerén will be attending - the most remarkable of visits. Sanchez Cerén and the FMLN fought against US-backed governments for over a decade in the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a political party following the country’s 1992 peace accords. The Salvadoran government is frustrated with the never-ending conditions emerging from Washington for the country to continue receiving economic and security assistance.


While the US and Salvadoran governments might have more reservations about engaging with each other than the other two countries, President Obama has bet his Central American policy on El Salvador in recent years - a second Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact, the Partnership for Growth Program, and a presidential visit. The US might not want to engage with the FMLN and the FMLN and Salvador Sanchez Cerén might prefer to work with other leftist governments in the region, but strong historic, people-to-people, and economic ties compel the two to work together.


The US government is allegedly discussing a proposal to provide refugee status to young people from Honduras and then, perhaps, to young people from the other countries. While all three countries suffer from high rates of criminal violence, Honduras' murder rate is approximately double its neighbors. While it might make sense to start with Honduras, President Perez has already stated that that the three Presidents perceive the problem (and solution) to be the same for all three countries, suggesting a coordinated strategy among the three presidents.


Still, there was some indication that presidents would push for consideration of individual issues. Guatemalan President Perez has stated that he intends to broach the subject of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Guatemalans living in the US once again, a status extended to eligible Hondurans following Hurricane Mitch and more than 200,000 Salvadorans following two 2001 earthquakes.


President Obama's decision to meet with these three leaders is a recognition of the shared interests / challenges that exist regardless of the ideological backgrounds of the region's leaders and governments. In fact, these divergent perspectives may be key to crafting a solution to the crisis.


While there is a pressing need to resolve the immediate humanitarian crisis, there must also be discussion of long-term solutions to deal with the causes of violence in Central America. That means that the region’s leaders must address not only poverty and inequality, but corruption and impunity as well. It also means that President Obama needs to take a long, hard look at the failed “War on Drugs” and the havoc that it has wreaked throughout the region. With a crisis as complex as the backgrounds of those tasked with solving it, don’t expect easy solutions to be forthcoming.

Postulator of Oscar Romero's beatification cause under investigation for embezzlement

The postulator of Archbishop Oscar Romero's beatification and canonization cause, Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, is now under investigation by Italian officials for embezzlement.

    In 2011, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia reportedly bought a 14th century castle with the intention of reselling it for a profit, according to catholicphilly.com, which adds that diocesan funds may have been used.

    Paglia, who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family, said in a statement he remains "at the disposition of the investigating authorities and I have full confidence in the justice system."

    Investigators are looking into the sale of the castle and allegations of possible conspiracy and fraud.

There doesn't appear to be any impropriety connected with Romero's cause but Salvadorans can't catch a break. Fortunately (?), the news didn't break prior to last weekend's ceremony in San Salvador.


Tim and John have posted posted some thoughts on Romero's beatification in recent days while Super Martyrio has the Romero Beatification Compendium available on his website. Michael Busch also shares some thoughts with Remembering Romero.