'Life Is Worth Nothing in Guatemala' or is it?

Lianne Milton has a photo essay at Newsweek that has a good number of photos on everyday violence and life in Guatemala. However, the title of the piece - 'Life Is Worth Nothing in Guatemala' is offensive unless, that is, you mean the exact opposite. According to the writer, it is apparently common to say En Guatemala, la vida no vale nada. I can't say that I had ever heard the phrase.

However, it sure doesn't reflect the reality of the Guatemalan people. I can't help but compare Milton's photos and commentary with those of James Rodriguez whose latest essay is on exhuming and reburying victims of the armed conflict in Alta Verapaz. People have worked so hard to find the disappeared and to provide them with a proper burial. It just seems the opposite of life is worth nothing. (I know that's not who she was talking about.) I don't know, maybe I am thinking too much into this.

Violence 
Guatemala's murder rate peaked in 2009 at 46 per 100,000 before decreasing in 2010 (41), 2011 (39), and 2012 (34). According to a recent study, Guatemala City even dropped out of the ranking of The 50 Most Deadly Cities in the World. Unfortunately, Guatemala looks poised to finish 2013 at around 35 per 100,000.

Impunity
Milton also cites a Human Rights Watch report that says that 98 percent of crimes in the country go unpunished. While we don't know the denominator (how many crimes are actually committed), the Public Prosecutor's Office and the CICIG say that impunity has improved quite significantly over the last six years. Impunity now stands at 70 percent or so.

Corruption
I'm still waiting for the hatchet to come down on Alvaro Colom. El Periodico had said that his legacy to Guatemala was corruption. I argued instead that he was leaving the country in better shape than he had found it and that his administration was less corrupt than those of Portillo and Berger. Transparency International just released the results of its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and Guatemala doesn't look to good. On a 0 - 100 scale, with 100 close to no corruption, Guatemala scored 29 which is down from the 33 of 2012.

I know - let's give the president another award.

Teaching shoe-making in El Salvador

Whitney Eulich has an interesting story on Sam Hawkins and his wife's efforts to help give former convicts a new start in El Salvador. Sam and his wife traveled to El Salvador in 1986. Upon arrival, they established a non-profit organization, Love Link, that tended to the needs of malnourished babies. 

Twenty years later Sam traveled to the Apanteos prison in Santa Ana. It was during this prison visit that Sam connected with gang members. It was this encounter that led him to open a shoe factory that would help provide former prisoners with a trade and an opportunity to escape gang life. They chose this business because "because it was practical.:

"With these skills, [the workers] are going somewhere," Hawkins says. "Everyone is proud of our work. We have zero defects." One of the largest shoe companies in Central America, ADOC, purchases and sells some of their products now, he notes.

It's a great story but also demonstrates the limits of prisoner rehabilitation in El Salvador. Sam can employ a few dozen workers at one time. He hopes that with time and adequate resources that he can employ nearly two hundred workers. That would be an impressive operation and much better than the bakery operations that employ gang members. But it is a far cry from the tens of thousands, really hundreds of thousands, of quality jobs that El Salvador needs.

The government doesn't have the money to employ that many people and the private sector does not appear that interested in investing in the country. Increasing the attractiveness of El Salvador as a destination for foreign direct investment is a goal of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compacts I and II, the Partnership for Growth, and other projects but the country does not yet possess the socioeconomic conditions to attract that much foreign investment.

India and Guatemala increase economic ties

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. I spent the past few days with my in-laws outside Boston. In academia, we generally are lucky to get a tenure-track job. It's even more unusual to find a job within driving distance of one's family. Actually, I don't know how true that is but it is my impression. Fortunately, for my wife and I, we are within driving distance of her family outside Boston and my family in New York and New Jersey. It was great watching out kids play with their cousins.

Now that I am back I should be back to regular blogging this week.

One of the stories that I found interesting while I was gone was this story on the relationship between Guatemala and India. India hopes to use Guatemala as a springboard to the rest of Central America. In 2012, Guatemala imported nearly $250 million from India. At the same time, it only exported $17 million.

India exports vehicles, pharmaceutical equipment, wires and machinery to Guatemala. It is now looking into investments in various hydroelectric projects. Guatemala, on the other hand, exports cardamon, timber, sugar, paper, cardboard, and scrap metal. things.

There's also the illegal side of their relationship. It appears that Indian migrants are using Guatemala more frequently as a transit point towards entering the US illegally (here, here).

You can also read a 2012 background on the relationship between the two countries from the Government of India's Ministry of External Affairs including a little history on the Indian community in Guatemala.

The Indian community in Guatemala is small and consist of about 30 families and 70 individuals in all, working in the Indian Call Centers like ‘24/7 Customer-Guatemala’ and ‘Genpeck’, in cardamom export trade, in auto parts business, or in cottage industries. Most of them came to Guatemala during the last two decades. Also a Guatemala-India Chamber of Commerce and industry was set up in 2004. There is an India association called Asociasion de Amigos de la India ‘Bharat Bandhu’. 

Besides there are about 450-500 people of India origin who came to this region as indentured laborers during the 19th and early 20 centuries and settled in the coastal Guatemala on Atlantic and a small township of Livingstone. They live in villages, own land, and are involved in fishing, agriculture and tourism sectors. They are mostly 4th-5th generation Indians, and by now well integrated into the local community.