I'm reading "bizarre" headlines about the President Alvaro Colom. Something about the murder of a prominent businessman.

The Anglo media seems to be rejoicing at the unrest and framing the protests as a populist uprising.

My googles however, show his supporters as being poor

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-15T221327Z_01_GTM12_RTRIDSP_2_GUATEMALA-CRIME_articleimage.jpg

A supporter of Guatemala's president Alvaro Colom takes part in a counter demonstration in front of the National Palace in Guatemala City May 15, 2009. Daily protests against Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom have been met with counter protests showing support. Guatemala's President and business elite are embroiled in a scandal involving money laundering, embezzling government funds and ordering assassinations, following the murder of a prominent lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg. Copies of a video and written statement made by Rosenberg arrived at the offices of several media houses in the capital on Monday, one day after the lawyer was shot dead by armed men who followed him in two cars as he exercised on his mountain bike in an upmarket suburb of the city

http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-17T212451Z_01_GTM02_RTRIDSP_2_GUATEMALA-CRIME_articleimage.jpg

Supporters of Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom march to the Central Plaza in Guatemala City May 17, 2009. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital city on Sunday in two rival marches, one supporting and one denouncing President Alvaro Colom who was accused this week of murder, money laundering and supporting narco-traffickers. REUTERS/Daniel LeClair (GUATEMALA CONFLICT CRIME LAW POLITICS)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/pictures/GTM12.htm [/quote]


and the "populist" "protestors", well, seem neither poor nor very indigenous.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-18T011429Z_01_CD01_RTRIDSP_2_GUATEMALA-CRIME_articleimage.jpg

People sing the national anthem during a protest against Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom in Guatemala City May 17, 2009. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital city on Sunday in two rival marches, one supporting and one denouncing President Alvaro Colom who was accused this week of murder, money laundering and supporting narco-traffickers. [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
... in the 2003 presidential elections he came second in the first round on 9 November, and then lost to Óscar Berger in the second round on 28 December, with the best showing of a left-wing candidate in almost 50 years.

(snip)

He was one of the two candidates to reach the second stage of the 2007 presidential election on 9 September 2007 along with Partido Patriota candidate Otto Pérez Molina. At 10:00 p.m. local time on election night, Colom was declared the newly elected president by over five percentage points, 52.7% to 47.3%, with over 96% of polling places counted, [1] becoming Guatemala's first left-leaning president in 53 years.

Colom has said that he wants to reduce crime by tackling poverty[2] in Guatemala.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvaro_Colom [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Guatemala’s Indigenous Countryside Drives Election Victory Over Atrocity-Linked General

In an upset victory, Alvaro Colom, who ran on an anti-poverty platform, beat the hard-line retired General Otto Perez Molina with close to 53 percent of the vote. We get reaction from Guatemalan American writer Francisco Goldman. His new book “The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?” implicates the defeated Perez Molina in the 1998 murder of beloved Guatemalan human rights activist Bishop Juan Gerardi.

...

Right. Well, you know, I don’t think we’re going to see from Colom nearly as—I don’t think the political space is there for him to conduct the kind of land reform the Arbenz government did, you know, leading up to the 1954 coup. But Colom, that’s where his support is. He used to run FONAPAZ, which was an institute that was responsible for helping Indians and rural people to gain possession of land, even in, you know, the oppressive Guatemala of the recent past. That’s why he had—one of the reasons he had so much support in the highlands.

And I think he’s very sincere in his desire to do everything he can to get more land into the hands of Guatemala’s—you know, Guatemala has probably one of the most unequal land distribution rates in the hemisphere. It easily does. And I think that he’s going to hopefully push the envelope as far as he can in that respect. And he certainly owes the Mayan population in Guatemala everything. They gave him his presidency. So I would expect that he’s going to feel a great obligation to give as much back as he can. And this is one way to do it

...

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/6/guatemalas_indigenous_countryside_drives_election_victory
[/quote]

http://www.commonpassion.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74emid=80

Something stinks about the brouhaha today. Stinks like a very bad set-up. The people truly seem to love him: http://www.commonpassion.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74emid=80


Does anyone know anything? I have friends down there so I'm curious...

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Lawyer's video from beyond grave accuses Guatemalan president of ordering hitPresident Álvaro Colom denies orchestrating shooting of Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC_ODpxMA10
This video was released to the Guatemalan press on May 11, after Rodrigo Rosenberg was murdered on May 10. Part 2 coming soon.

A lawyer's murder has rocked Guatemala after the distribution of a video testament he recorded shortly before his death accused the country's president of orchestrating the crime.

The 18-minute film has caused a sensation in what was once of central America's most violent and unstable countries, and has prompted calls for President Álvaro Colom to step aside.

"Unfortunately if you are watching this message it means that I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, have been assassinated by President Álvaro Colom," said the lawyer, looking directly to camera and seated behind a desk.

In the video, Rosenberg, 47, said his life was in danger over a corruption scam involving Colom, the president's wife and senior government officials. The lawyer was gunned down by unidentified men in two vehicles while cycling in a middle-class neighbourhood near his home in the capital, Guatemala City, last Sunday.

Colom vehemently rejected the allegations in a televised address yesterday. He requested an outside investigation by the UN and asked the US ambassador in Guatemala to bring in the FBI.

The Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre said the affair was the greatest political crisis since the country's transition to democracy. "Never before has a democratically elected president been accused of murder," it said.

The video, distributed to local media at Rosenberg's funeral on Monday, has been repeatedly broadcast on TV and uploaded on YouTube. It attracted so many online viewers some sites temporarily collapsed. More than 5,300 people joined a Facebook group called Guatemalans for the dismissal of Álvaro Colom. Opposition leaders have urged the president to stand aside during the investigation.

In the recording Rosenberg, appearing calm and wearing a suit and tie, said a former client, businessman Khalil Musa, angered the government by refusing to collaborate in alleged deals involving a development bank and "non-existent" social programmes headed by Sandra de Colom, the president's wife. In March the businessman and his daughter, Marjorie Musa, were shot dead.

In addition to the first lady, Rosenberg named Gustavo Alejos, the president's private secretary, and Gregorio Valdez, a businessman with links to the government, as accomplices in the alleged conspiracy which involved drug trafficking, money laundering and front companies.

Guatemala remains scarred by a savage civil war that ended in 1996, leaving 200,000 dead and state institutions fragile. Drug gangs and rogue security forces contribute to one of the region's highest murder rates – 43 per 100,000 people a year. Journalists, human rights activists and labour leaders have been targeted. The vast majority of homicides are unsolved.

Colom was elected in November 2007 offering a break from rightwing pro-military leaders. The mild-mannered former engineer represented a centre-left party and promised to fight poverty and corruption.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/13/guatemalan-lawyer-claims-president-behind-murder [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]

(snip)

Colom, the first leftist elected to lead Guatemala in more than 50 years, has insisted that he will not step down. He was elected over a retired army general, Otto Perez Molina, after promising a better life for the country's poor and indigenous residents.

"I have a clean heart and this government is not a thug or murderer," he said this week. "I am not a murderer."

Colom said "Machiavellian minds" were behind a scheme to undermine him, but he did not name them.

Rosenberg made the video with the help of journalist Mario David Garcia, who distributed copies at Rosenberg's funeral Monday. It was posted on YouTube and Internet pages of Guatemalan news organizations and drew so many viewers that it caused some sites to crash.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-guatemala-video15-2009may15,0,6798581.story [/quote]

Interesting. Right wing operatives are out in full force on the net today demonizing Colom and sanctifying Rodriguez who was the lawyer for one of the most powerful families in Guatemala (Gutierrez). Looks like the natives and the Left aren't buying the right-wing BS. The FBI has been dispatched to Guatemala to 'investigate'.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]#### On one hand, you can find a brief profile of Alvaro Colom at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7081312.stm If this is accurate some important points to consider are: 1. He is a Latin American leftist president, which is a very suggestive fact for CIA to act. 2. Some of his "errors" are:

"there are huge historical obstacles to raising taxes. Guatemala has one of the lowest tax takes in the world. The country's rich businessmen and landowners argue they shouldn't hand over money to a corrupt state" Yeah, for those people represent the cleanest morals and the best of social consciousness...

"he has been ordained a Mayan priest, and drew much of his electoral support from the rural areas where poverty amongst indigenous groups is deep-rooted"

"he will regularly consult a group of spiritual leaders, known as the Mayan Elders National Council" An scandal under the perspective of Latin American status quo, isn't it?

On the other hand, CIA has been involved in the rise to power of every right wing dictatorship in Latin America, and the fall of every leftist regime. It has been involved in not less than crimes. Two examples: President Allende in Chile (...and the rise to power of Pinochet); and Jaime Roldos in Ecuador (read the famous "Confessions of an economic hitman" written by a retired guy related to CIA).

In addition, Otto Pérez Molina, Colom's direct political opponent is now claiming "democracy" and "law", "just" to ask Colom to resign.

These are reasons also for me to be rather skeptical.



#### His main political rival is General Otto Perez Molina, a driving force in the military that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of unarmed indigenous peasants during the 1980s.

Right now the people on the streets are the country's elites, and they feel seriously threatened by a President who sympathizes with the Mayan majority.

They weren't in the streets protesting when Bishop Juan Gerardi was bludgeoned to death days after he delivered a groundbreaking human rights report showing how the military was responsible for unfathomable atrocities during the war (yes, with plenty of US backing at times). First they tried to pin the crime on a milkman, then on some weird supposed conspiracy of antiquities dealers. Years later, a few top military intelligence guys were convicted, but only after witnesses had been killed, judges shot at, and dozens of people forced to seek asylum. The military, the elite, and organized crime in Guatemala are capable of anything.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8kgju/i_was_murdered_by_president_alvaro_colom/ [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Guatemala Silences a Dissident TV Station
AP
Published: Sunday, May 22, 1988

The Government of President Vinicio Cerezo has shut down a television station that criticized it during a news report.

Mario David Garcia, director of the newscast for the station, Channel 3, is one of five civilians and six military officers charged in a May 11 coup attempt. He was a presidential candidate of the Authentic National Center in the 1985 elections won by Mr. Cerezo.

Mr. Cerezo, a Christian Democrat, is the first civilian President since 1970.

Two weeks before the May 11 coup attempt, Mr. Garcia read on the air a statement that said the political process ''has been betrayed by a corrupt clique'' of Communists, military leaders and Christian Democrats. In a speech Thursday, Mr. Cerezo denied the charge.

Max Kestler Farnes, president of Channel 3, read a letter over the air Thursday from the Government's National Radio and Television Department that said the station had broadcast ''material considered dangerous for state security'' and would be closed ''until further notice.''

(snip)

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/world/guatemala-silences-a-dissident-tv-station.html [/quote]

Colom is sympathetic to the Mayan desire for autonomy. Garcia? Not so much.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
In the last few weeks, we have read various newspaper articles that reject and attack Maya demands for restructuring the State and for an ethnic reordering to allow the recognition of regional autonomy. We are referring to assertions, among others, found in articles by Mr. Sandoval, Lionel Toriello, Marta Altolaguirre, Mario David Garcia, Eduardo Evertsz, etc.

From the book [link:books.google.com/books?id=OkYGzA4tNBUC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=%22Mario+David+Garcia%22+-colom&source=bl&ots=PvFwzMCEKx&sig=ATJPLk9oLB5fF3RZDbY221EHYk4&hl=en&ei=UygTSvb_FY_MjAe5v62xBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA47,M1|Indigenous movements and their critics] [/quote]


This guy, Mario David Garcia, who made the video, was the head of the "United Anti-Communist Party". His special kind of press consists of keeping the population in panic. Here's one example

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
In the wake of this attack, on March 13, the Guatemalan newspaper "Prensa Libre" published an
extremely inflammatory article by Mario David Garcia. The headline of the article was: "Children are
frequently purchased to mutilate them." The article falsely accused "developed countries" of stealing
human organs from Latin America. It falsely claimed that "in order to obtain human grafts, the worst
extremes have been used: assassination, kidnapping, and mutilation." It falsely accused "Europeans,
Americans and Canadians" of posing as "tourists" in order to conceal their alleged involvement in
"activities that range from the purchase of children to kidnapping" in order to procure organs for
transplant. The article, which offered no substantiation for any of its wild claims, was accompanied
by an illustration showing the alleged prices for which various organs were supposedly selling on the
international market.

The "Prensa Libre" article was posted in the town square of the village of San Cristobal Verapaz,
where, on March 29, another U.S. tourist, June Weinstock, was savagely beaten by a mob who
wrongly accused her of abducting a Guatemalan child for the purpose of organ trafficking. A mob
surrounded the building in San Cristobal Verapaz where Ms. Weinstock was being protected by local
authorities, broke in, and dragged her out after a five-hour siege.
Ms. Weinstock was pelted with rocks and beaten with pieces of firewood. She suffered multiple
broken bones, internal injuries, and severe head injuries that have caused serious, long-term damage.
An American citizen living in San Cristobal who had acted as a translator for Ms. Weinstock,
Michael Lewis, was also beaten, although not as severely. As of late November 1994, Ms. Weinstock
remained severely disabled in a long-term care facility. Although it appeared that she was aware of
what was going on around her, she was not able to speak, walk, or do anything for herself, although
she was breathing on her own and had been for some time. She was receiving speech therapy,
physical therapy, occupational therapy, and required complete, 24-hour nursing supervision.
On April 13, Janice Vogel, an American woman who was adopting a Guatemalan child, was accosted
by a mob in Guatemala City who accused her of stealing the child for organ trafficking. Fortunately,
she was not harmed.
In addition to assaults on U.S. citizens, the Guatemalan media have reported numerous attempted
lynchings by angry mobs who feared that "strangers" were stealing their children for organ
trafficking. A Swiss volcanologist, a Salvadoran family visiting relatives, foreign assistance workers,
backpackers, and Guatemalan citizens all reportedly suffered such attacks.
The attacks in Guatemala were the subject of a special feature on the U.S. television newsmagazine
program "20/20" on June 3, 1994. It contains graphic footage of the attacks on the four Americans
and should be viewed by any who doubt the destructive power of the child organ trafficking rumor.

http://pascalfroissart.online.fr/3-cache/1994-leventhal.pdf
[/quote]

I smell a rat. A huge fat rat.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom Leaves Cuba
He considered successful his visit to Cuba and the official talks he held with his counterpart Raul Castro

by Jesús Risquet Bueno

May 12, 2009

Guatemala President, Alvaro Colom, concluded on Wednesday his official visit to Cuba when he was said goodbye in the international airport Jose Martí by the Cuban Prsident Raul Castro.

http://www.trabajadores.cu/news/guatemalan-president-alvaro-colom-leaves-cuba/image_preview

Cuban ministers of International Affairs and Public Health, Felipe Perez Roque and Jose Ramon Balaguer also went to give a goodbye to the Guatemalan dignitary and his companions.

Gratitude because of solidarity towards his people was a common denominating in this visit of Colom, who from his arrival reiterated that feeling here.

Besides the words he showed gratitude by means of a symbolic fact: giving the maximum decoration of hiss country, the Order of Quetzal in degree of Great Necklace, granted by own decision to the Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro.

Before putting the distinction into Raul Castro’s hands, Colom argued that it was to show a token of respect, affection and the great gratefulness because of all the solidarity.

The Guatemalan President didn’t scrimp praises for the benefits offered to his compatriots, mainly to the humblest, the million consultations and tens of thousands of surgical operations by Cuban physicians in Guatemala. Cuba is an admirable Island for its achievements and development in all fields, despite US restrictions and hostility, he said.

Alvaro Colom inaugurated a park dedicated to his country as a symbol of brotherhood between both peoples.

http://www.trabajadores.cu/news/guatemalan-president-alvaro-colom-leaves-cuba [/quote]


Ok. I think I got the picture. Colom is another dangerous Leftist who needs to be demonized, discredited and discarded.

From [link:guatemala-times.com/news/guatemala/1114-guatemala-demonstrations-and-postulation-law-of-magistrates.html|this article]:

"For Guatemala and its democratic institutions this investigation and the clarification of this case is of extreme importance. If the case can not be solved, the trust of Guatemalan's in their justice system and the government will probably collapse."

Have they tortured people? Have they invaded and occupied two countries? Have they incarcerated hundreds of foreign citizens without allowing any access to attorneys or to the courts? No, I didn't think so. Guatemalans may be worried about the integrity of their justice system; such concerns pale in comparison to US war crimes.

Governments, be they left or right, must respect the human rights of their citizens and all global citizens. This case, however, smells very CIA-ish. We may not have a smoking gun yet but we have both motive and opportunity ... and the bloody fingerprints look very much like those we've seen far too many times before.

BTW, just fyi, a post I made in this thread a few hours ago disappeared. Weird, eh? No problem though. The post included a [link:www.guatemala-times.com/|link to read more news of Guatemala].

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]President, Murderer, or Both?
by Constantino Diaz-Duran

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a writer living in Manhattan. He has written for the New York Post, the Washington Blade, El Diario NY and the Orange County Register.



The Guatemalan president’s alleged role in a recent murder there shows how Mexico’s drug violence is infecting other parts of Latin America—and threatening to destabilize the entire region.

I left Guatemala under duress eight years ago. My work as a journalist had earned me threats, and I believed it was no longer safe for me to live in that country. In the years since, I have grown distant, to the point that I now feel more American than Guatemalan. But every now and then, you come across a story so powerful that you cannot help but be moved. That is the case with the death of Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer who has shocked his country from the grave, prompting a civic uprising that may bring down an increasingly unpopular president.

Rosenberg, a 47-year-old father of four, was gunned down on Sunday while he rode a bike near his home in Guatemala City. The following day, at the funeral, his family released a video recorded by the victim just days before his death. In it, he accuses Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of planning and ordering the murder. “If you are listening to this message,” said Rosenberg, “it’s because I was murdered by President Alvaro Colom, with the help of (the president’s private secretary) Gustavo Alejos and (alleged drug dealer) Gregorio Valdez.”


(([i]If you go to the link, you'll see the video. In the still image, Rosenberg has has hands held out in a Christ-like gesture. [i]))


The Cambridge- and Harvard-educated lawyer was, by all accounts, an honorable citizen. He spent 21 years in private practice and as a professor at Rafael Landivar Law School in Guatemala City. In his posthumous video, he explains that the government elite put a hit on him because he knew too much about the murder of a client, Khalil Musa, who was killed in April. Musa was a prominent businessman who had been tapped by the Colom administration to join the board of a bank owned in part by the government. According to Rosenberg, Musa discovered a deep web of corruption within the bank, and, wishing to keep his hands clean, asked the president to accept his resignation. Colom and his advisers allegedly feared that Musa would blow the whistle, and decided to off him.

(snip)

From an American perspective, it is important to understand that the corruption of which Colom and company are accused is not your run-of-the-mill kickbacks from government projects. Corruption in Guatemala must be understood within the context of the growing power of organized crime in Mexico. Guatemala represents the southern border of the Mexican drug lords’ fiefdom. Kingpin Joaquin Guzmán has been known to use Guatemala as his hideout, and it has been widely reported that the cartels have recruited former officers of the Guatemalan army for their private bands of mercenaries. Indeed, Colom has been accused of having links to the drug mafia since at least 2003, when his failed presidential campaign came under scrutiny for donations he received from alleged drug dealers.

American journalist Francisco Goldman, author of several books about Guatemala, says he believes that the current crisis “gives a real opportunity to the Obama administration to strike a big blow against impunity and to open a door into investigating the reach of the narcos in Guatemala.” Ian Vasquez, Director of the Center for Global Liberty at the Cato Institute agrees, saying that “we can certainly consider Guatemala a casualty of Washington’s war on drugs. Mexican drug-trafficking activity has spilled over into Guatemala with all of the negative consequences—increased corruption, increased violence, and the undermining of civil society and liberal democracy. So that’s something that Washington should be worried about if, indeed, it cares about promoting those values.”[/b]

Since his election, President Obama has made it a point to rekindle our country’s relations with Latin America. The administration has not yet commented on the crisis, but the president would be wise to lend his support to those who are trying to keep their country from falling deeper into the hands of organized crime. Political instability in Guatemala could easily spread to the rest of Central America. This would allow not only drug lords, but also the likes of Hugo Chavez, whose hatred of America is no secret, to greatly expand their sphere of influence.

The movement that Rodrigo Rosenberg’s message has sparked in Guatemala has the power to dramatically change the future of a country marred by decades of violence. I grew up there in the middle of a 36-year civil war. I left in 2001 because I’d had it with the country’s lack of freedom, and the utter absence of a rule of law. America is my home now, and I have no desire to return to Guatemala. But I hope that Rosenberg’s death is not in vain. I admire his bravery, and understand his frustration when he said: “The last thing I wanted was to deliver this message, knowing that if you’re watching it, it’s because I’m dead, because this won’t make my children any better. But I hope Guatemala will be better. I hope my death helps get the country started down a new path. Guatemalans, time has come.”

(snip)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/president-murderer-or-both [/quote]


Twice today, I was around indigenous Guatemalens. Once in a grocery store, once in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch. I wondered why they looked so glum. Now I know.

Thanks for the link and I'm looking into the posting problem, hoping it was just a glitch.

and the subsequent information is awesome also!


:bugle:

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Guatemalans Protest For, Against Embattled President

http://www.laht.com/Guatemala/Colom_People.jpg

GUATEMALA CITY – Thousands of Guatemalans took to the streets of this capital over the weekend for protests for and against President Alvaro Colom, who is accused of masterminding the murders of a leading businessman and a prominent attorney, charges he vehemently denies.

More than 40,000 people, according to organizers, traveled to the capital from across Guatemala and gathered in Constitution Plaza to show their support for Colom.

“We are here to defend democracy and the rule of law,” Juan Alfaro, secretary-general of the ruling social-democratic UNE party, said at Sunday’s rally.

The hundreds of buses that carried the president’s supporters to Guatemala City bore signs saying “Colom, We Are with You” and “With Colom Until Death.”

The peasants who made up the majority of the crowd reacted indignantly to claims that they had been bribed to make the trip to the capital.

“I came with my family from Totonicapan to support Colom. Nobody paid me or offered anything in exchange. What the rich (opposition) say about them paying us are pure lies. What they want is to get rid of the president of the poor,” Sebastian Axuj, an Indian carrying a large portrait of the president, told Efe.

A short distance from the pro-Colom event, around 40,000 people – again, according to organizers – protested in the Plaza Italia to demand that the president step down.

Most of these protesters were middle- and upper-class people from urban areas, and they were led by business and opposition leaders.

(snip)

“I haven’t killed anyone. I’m not a drug trafficker and I’ve never made shady deals against the opposition. The truth about Rosenberg’s murder will be revealed; the truth about the preparation of the video and the hatching of this plot also will be discovered,” Colom told Efe last week in an interview.

(snip)

The probe into the killings of the Musas and Rosenberg is being conducted by the Attorney General’s Office and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala with assistance from the FBI.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=335093&CategoryId=23558 [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Beleaguered Guatemala Leader Says He Won’t Resign


GUATEMALA CITY – President Alvaro Colom, accused of murder by a prominent attorney in a posthumously aired video, told Efe in an exclusive interview that only over his “dead body” will his political opponents remove him from the presidency before the end of his term.

“The accusations against me are part of a plan that was hatched,” said the president, who rejected the allegations made against him, first lady Sandra Torres and his private secretary, Gustavo Alejos.

(snip)

The content of the video, he said, “is not any evidence against me,” but merely a recording “planned with some obscure purpose that sooner or later will be revealed.”

“I’ve met with groups in society and explained to them the ins and outs of this situation and they’ve understood the interests in the middle of all this. We’re going to fight together to ensure democracy and the rule of law prevail,” the president said.

Colom said he had never met Rosenberg but has been told he “was a good person, honorable.”

“I don’t know what motives led them to tape the video, but it’s clear that everything is part of a well concocted plan,” the president said.

(snip)

“We’re going to follow the trail back to the source of that video. I’m sure we’re going to arrive at the truth and (ensure) justice (is done),” said the president, who added that he is “the first person interested in clearing up” the matter.

(snip)

The chain of events starting with the recording of the video and followed by the subsequent murder of Rosenberg, the speed with which hundreds of copies of the tape were distributed and the immediate reactions by Colom’s political opponents “are evidence that everything was planned,” Colom said.

Rosenberg said on the tape that Musa, recently appointed by Colom to the board of the public-private Rural Development Bank, or Banrural, was slain for refusing to cover up “illegal, multi-million-dollar transactions being carried out day after day” at that financial institution.

Those transactions, Rosenberg said, “range from money laundering to the diversion of public funds to nonexistent programs run by first lady Sandra de Colom, as well as the financing of shell companies used by drug traffickers.”

“Involving the country’s second-largest and (second) most important bank in this case was not by chance. That’s also part of the plot and the objectives of those doing this,” Colom said in his conversation with Efe.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=334792&CategoryId=23558 [/quote]

such a wonderful place and culture.

I want to watch, again, our complicity as it unfolds. I simply do not trust our current neoliberal administration.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Guatemalan president gets U.S. support as murder scandal rolls on


www.chinaview.cn 2009-05-19 10:13:55 Print

MEXICO CITY, May 18 (Xinhua) -- A senior U.S. official visited Guatemala on Monday to show support for President Alvaro Colom, who has been facing public protest due to alleged involvement in a lawyer's murder, news reports said.

Colom restated his innocence of all charges at a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State for Latin America David Robinson, a Guatemala government spokesman told reporters Monday.

Colom has already received support from the Organization of American States following the accusation, made by the slain lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg in a posthumous video, that the president had ordered the murder.

In Guatemala, however, the scandal has been growing and exposed divisions between the urban rich and the rural and working class voters who voted for Colom.

Guatemala's legislature on Monday received a petition signed by over 35,000 citizens seeking to lift the president's immunity, the first step in a possible prosecution.

Roberto Alejos, head of Guatemala's legislature, promised that he would call the party leaders in the parliament to make the petition known to them "the same day" and that it would then go onto a plenary session of the legislature.

According to the constitution, it is the Supreme Court that can demand stripping a president of immunity once sufficient evidence is brought in, Alejos told media, adding that this will then go to the legislature for a so-called "political judgment."

The major evidence implicating Colon is a video in which Rosenberg, who was gunned down on May 10 while riding his bike, claimed he would soon be murdered because he helped clients who had refused to cooperate in the government corruption and money-laundering scheme at development bank Banrural.

Colom has ordered the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN panel set up in 2007 to clean up corruption, to investigate the matter.

On Sunday, the center of Guatemala City was blockaded by rival demonstrations with middle- and upper-class protestors dressed in white demanding Colom leave and working class and rural Guatemalans demonstrating to support the president.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/19/content_11399573.htm [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Le journaliste Mario David Garcia, proche de l'opposition de droite, qui a enregistré la vidéo, a été impliqué dans une tentative de coup d'Etat des années 1980. Luis Mendizabal, qui l'a diffusée, a fait carrière dans les officines de renseignement.

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2009/05/18/guatemala-le-president-mis-en-cause-dans-un-meurtre_1194625_3222.html[/quote]
Translation:

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Journalist Mario David Garcia, who has close ties to the right-wing opposition and recorded the video, was involved in an attempted coup of 1980. Luis Mendizabal, who distributed the video, had a career in the intelligence agencies. [/quote]

The guy was killed Sunday. Before he was even buried on Monday, there was an organized effort that got 5000 protest sites demanding President Colom's resignation up on Facebook. Just a wild guess that the poor people of Guatemala, with an average monthly income of $200 weren't behind that "grassroots" effort.


Luis Mendizabal: An article in the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa, on August 29, 2004, described Luis Mendizabal as a Guatemalan liaison to El Salvador's ARENA party and to the ARENA leaders accused of running death squads and of the assassination of Archbishop Romero. From a series published in ten installments, on ARENA's leader Robert D'Aubuisson, in elPerriodico, July 4, 2000, Mendizabal was desribed as one of the founders of the Oficinata and as a security advisor to President Arzu.

From the book [link:books.google.com/books?id=LEER47iNv3gC&pg=PA380&lpg=PA380&dq=%22Luis+Mendizabal%22+ARENA&source=bl&ots=1KyOplCJJP&sig=BPlDGF4q6-Qrkjb7aZWO2Hg-7Co&hl=en&ei=YlAUSuq7BJqZjAe0j6zjCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA381,M1|The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman]


El Salvador's ARENA party is [link:www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_ElSalvador.html|as right wing as you get], founded by a NeoNazi and requiring blood oaths.

[hr]

I can see why they didn't like President Colom

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Vast right-wing conspiracy?

Colom, the nation's first leftist president in 50 years, says the scandal is a right-wing political conspiracy designed to bring down his government.

His administration has challenged the traditional power brokers, including former military officials. Earlier this year, he agreed to open a police archive that details information on left-leaning dissidents abducted and killed during the country's civil war.

Guatemala's past has been marred by a series of military coups. When the war ended, politically motivated murder did not. Eleven years ago, for example, Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi was bludgeoned to death after delivering a damning report on abuses committed by the state during the war.

(snip)

The poor and mostly indigenous rural population forms the base of Colom's political support – and many have come out in protest to support him. "He is the only president that has given us anything, and they don't like that," said local resident Julieta Espinoza at a rally last week. "These are all lies against him."

(snip)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0520/p90s04-woam.html [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Guatemalan president gets backing from Central American leaders at SICA meeting

By Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff | trogers@ticotimes.net

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Beleaguered Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom thanked his Central American counterparts Wednesday for their “solidarity” and “objectivity” amid impassioned calls for his ouster in Guatemala.

Protests have rocked Guatemala for more than a week following a video tape released by family members of slain lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who alleged in a previously recorded statement, “ If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassi nated by President Alvaro Colom.”

Rosenberg, who was shot and killed May 10 while riding his bike in Guatemala City, said in his video message that the president and his aides were plotting to kill him because of information he had about a client, who was similarly murdered last month. Colom denies any involvement in the lawyer's killing and blames the scandal on a conspiracy against his government, the country's first left-leaning administration in 50 years.

“There are all types of interests involved in this – political, economic and banking interests,” Colom told The Nica Times Wednesday in Managua, following the presidential summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA).

Asked to expand on who or what specifically was conspiring against his government, Colom said that would be for the investigation to clarify.

At the behest of the Colom administration, the United Nations-affiliated International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) is heading the murder investigation to assure “independent” and “prompt” results.

SICA, for its part, released a five-point declaration to support Colom's government, condemn the violence in Guatemala and reaffirm Central American solidarity.

“Threats to the democratic process in any of the member countries of SICA constitute a common threat to our shared democratic values,” reads the resolution, signed by the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama, as well as representatives of the governments of Costa Rica, Belize and the Dominican Republic.

This was the second time in three months that SICA has had to issue a declaration in support of Colom's government. On March 25, SICA issued a statement expressing “all its support (for) and solidarity with President Alvaro Colom against a destabilizing campaign promoted by groups of organized crime and other sectors that are against the democratic advances in Guatemala and the politics of social justice and strengthening of the institutional democracy.”

Colom's government this week also received the backing of the Organization of American States (OAS), which will be meeting for its annual meeting June 1 in Honduras.

http://www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/2009_05/0521091.htm [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
6 suspects in lawyer's death

http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20090521/Sergio-Reuters.jpg

Human Rights Prosecutor Sergio Morales says the document claims six people killed Rodrigo Rosenberg and names three of them. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

GUATEMALA CITY - A TOP prosecutor says he has received a document naming three suspects in the killing of a lawyer who had accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of ordering his murder.

Human Rights Prosecutor Sergio Morales says the document claims six people killed Rodrigo Rosenberg and names three of them.

Mr Morales declined to give any information about the suspects or the person who sent him the document to avoid compromising the investigation. But he said the information appeared credible.

Mr Morales said he sent the document to a UN panel and an FBI agent investigating the killing at Mr Colom's request.

President Colom has denied any involvement in Rodrigo's death.

Mr Morales spoke to The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Wednesday. -- AP

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_379721.html [/quote]

Prepare to hurl.............. Brought to you by the Wall Street Journal cause it's not a real revolution if it doesn't start on Wall Street.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
MAY 18, 2009
Finally, a Real Revolution[h3] A civil-society movement emerges in Central America[/h2]
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY


Much has been made about the claim issued in November by the U.S. Joint Forces Command that Mexico, along with Pakistan, is at risk of becoming a failed state.

Yet in a ranking of the Western Hemisphere's most at-risk countries, where criminal networks threaten to overwhelm the authority of the state, Mexico might not even make the top 10. Central America and parts of South America are in far worse shape.

Take Guatemala. With a murder rate of 47 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2008, it has become one of the most dangerous and lawless countries in the region. This was highlighted by the May 10 murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who alleged in a videotape released after his death that state corruption extends all the way to the president's office.

Is there anything that can be done to reverse this slide into full-blown chaos? A group of civic activists thinks there is, and you may be surprised to hear their project doesn't involve asking for foreign aid. Rather, a key component of the ProReforma project would seem to be aimed at keeping U.S. "advisers" at the State Department and like-minded international do-gooders at bay.

ProReforma is a made-in-Guatemala solution to what it calls the country's "chronic crisis." The project seeks to amend the constitution so that individual rights trump "interests," be they general or special. Says ProReforma President Manuel Ayau: "A system based on equal rights for every individual will bring about a state of affairs where people can pursue their own happiness in a peaceful environment."

Making individual rights sacrosanct would be an attack on the status quo, which regularly sacrifices equality before the law to please noisy or wealthy interests. In doing so, it has plunged the country into a bottomless pit of poverty and violence. Chief among the rights ProReforma seeks to restore are property and contractual rights. It is worth noting that while these are supposedly values of the rich, grass-roots groups such as the 15,000-church Evangelical Alliance are giving Proreforma strong support.

(snip)

ProReforma needed 5,000 petition signatures for its proposal to be introduced into Congress for debate; it has collected more than 73,000. Now the ideological left has begun a campaign of its own, marked by vituperative and personal attacks against ProReforma's promoters. The proposal might be defeated, but the good news is that ProReforma's civic education project has already succeeded. Today, more Guatemalans are aware of their inalienable rights. The question is how they can wrest those rights from the collectivist left.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260191911428369.html?mod=googlenews_wsj [/quote]


And oh joy, ProReforma is one of those groups involved in the "grassroots" effort on Facebook to topple Colom. Their number one goal? "ProReforma - libertad economia mercado libre". "ProReforma - Free Market Economics". Gotcha.........

Guatemala’s president says right-wing attack wants to strip him of power
News Segments Thu, 05/21/2009 - 12:57

[link:www.fsrn.org/audio/guatemala%E2%80%99s-president-says-ring-wing-attack-wants-strip-him-power/4762|Length: 5:14 minutes (4.79 MB)]
Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

We now go to Guatemala – a country where the president has been accused of being directly involved in the killing of a lawyer and two prominent businessmen. The claims started when a video emerged one day after Rodrigo Rosenberg, an attorney, was found murdered. The chilling tape featured Rosenburg saying that he was assassinated by the president and an associate. But there may be more to the story: President Alvaro Colom has stood up to powerful military officials and tried to prosecute them in connection to the nation’s nearly four decade-long civil war. He’s also gone after influential drug cartels. President Colom says the accusations against him are part of a sophisticated right-wing scheme to keep the elite in power. Ricardo Martinez reports from Guatemala City.

INTERVIEW-Guatemala president sees plot behind murder claims
Fri May 15, 2009 5:45pm EDT

By Sarah Grainger

GUATEMALA CITY, May 15 (Reuters) - Guatemala's president said on Friday powerful enemies are behind a scandal about claims he ordered the murder of a prominent lawyer, as his government cracked down on military abuses and drug gangs.

President Alvaro Colom has tried to prosecute former military officials linked to massacres during the country's 1960-1996 civil war and at the same time is clamping down on drug cartels operating in the country with dozens of arrests.

"Opening the all the military files from the war was almost impossible but I did it," Colom told Reuters in an interview.

"There is a war we are fighting against different drug traffickers. We have made a lot of changes and some are causing anger," he said.

Colom was plunged into crisis this week when a videotape surfaced accusing him of ordering a murder, misusing government funds and turning a blind eye to drug money transactions at the local development bank Banrural.

Lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who represented a well-known businessman also killed this year, was gunned down in Guatemala City on Sunday. The next day a pre-recorded statement was delivered to Guatemalan media in which Rosenberg warned he might be killed and accused Colom of ordering the hit.

"It's a conspiracy and we still haven't found out who's at the heart of it, but we are looking," Colom said.

The video and written statement from Rosenberg also accused Colom's wife and his private secretary of crimes.

ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS

Hundreds of people have taken to streets in the past three days, protesting Rosenberg's death and demanding Colom's resignation, but the president has refused to step down.

After a 1954 U.S.-backed military coup successive governments were overthrown by the army until the first democratic election in 1985.

Colom said such military overthrows were impossible in today's world.

"The only way there will be a coup d'etat is by killing me," he said.

Colom, a center-leftist who took office in 2008, has made a priority to try to criminally charge former officials accused of ordering massacres during the 36-year civil war that killed close to a quarter of a million people.

Colom opened military archives to aid lawyers in a case against a former Guatemalan dictator for genocide and the government is collecting statements from war victims for use in future criminal cases against army and police officials accused of abuses during the war.

Colom's uncle, also a prominent politician who ran for president, was murdered by the army in 1979.

Mexican drug cartels are an increasing presence in Guatemala, using the country as a passageway for South American cocaine headed north to the United States.

Escalating street crime led to more than 6,000 murders last year, making the small country of just 13 million inhabitants one of the most violent in Latin America.

A United Nations-backed commission set up in Guatemala to tackle high-level corruption has begun investigating Rosenberg's allegations, after doubts were cast on the independence of Guatemala's Attorney General's office.

The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala said a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent is in the country to offer assistance to the commission. (Editing by Jackie Frank)

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN15283780

Friend of attorney slain in Guatemala feels threatened, seeks protection

Guatemala City, May 23, 2009 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Luis Mendizabal, a former military adviser and friend of a slain Guatemalan attorney who in a posthumously released video accused President Alvaro Colom of plotting to kill him, has asked authorities for protection, saying that his life is also in danger.

Mendizabal was the one who distributed the video left recorded by prominent attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who was killed on May 10 in an upscale sector on the south side of the Guatemalan capital while riding his bike.

In the video made three days before his death, Rosenberg implicated in his possible murder the president, first lady Sandra Torres, presidential aide Gustavo Alejos, businessman Gregorio Valdez, and top executives of the public-private Banco de Desarrollo Agricola, the country's second largest.

Rosenberg said on the video that his life was at risk because he had evidence of the involvement of the president and his associates in the April 14 slayings of businessman Khalil Musa and his daughter, Marjorie.

Musa, recently appointed by Colom to the board of the Banrural development bank, was killed for refusing to cover up "illegal, multi-million-dollar transactions being carried out day after day" at the financial institution, Rosenberg said.

In a statement published Saturday in the local press, human rights ombudsman Sergio Morales said that Mendizabal has asked him for protection because he fears for his life.

Morales said that he met Friday with Mendizabal, a former military and presidential aide, who brought him "his version of the facts surrounding the death of Mr. Rosenberg," but gave no precise information on who killed the attorney, he said.

The ombudsman said that during their meeting Mendizabal asked him for protection because he fears an attempt will be made on his life.

According to Morales, Mendizabal also made a statement to the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, which is headed by Spaniard Carlos Castresana and is investigating Rosenberg's slaying with assistance from the FBI.

Mendizabal, the ombudsman said, feels threatened, but mentioned no specific threat.

Castresana on Friday requested "seriousness and discretion" of all "sources and institutions" wishing to help with the investigation into the attorney's murder.

"We ask them to be serious, to be responsible, and to be discreet," Castresana told reporters.

On Wednesday Morales told the press that an attorney sent a document to his office informing him about the existence of a witness to the crime who identified by name three of the six people who carried out the murder.

The suspected gunmen identified in the document were the brothers Carlos and Gerson Nimatuj together with Julio Galicia, all three having a long criminal record.

The Rosenberg crime has sparked one of the worst political and governmental crises in Guatemala's recent history.

President Colom has rejected on several occasions all accusations against him and maintains that he is not a murderer.

Nonetheless, the president's statements have not been sufficient to still the outcries and demonstrations by the slain attorney's friends and relatives, who demand justice.

They have been joined by opposition political parties and powerful corporations that demand an end to the violence and even the temporary resignation of the president while investigations into the case are in progress.

Meanwhile Colom's constituency of the poor and underprivileged continues to support the president. EFE oro/cd

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/05/23/4194020.htm

This is the kind of shit Colom put an end to and the reason big interests want him OUT. Colom started his term in Jan 2008, becoming Guatemala's first left-leaning president in 53 years. The last one was Jacobo Arbenz who was forced from office in 1954 after the CIA arranged a force that overthrew him. More about Jacobo in next post...



Violent Evictions at El Estor, Guatemala

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q20YxkM-CGI


From http://www.rightsaction.org/video/elest

On January 8th and 9th 2007, hundreds of police and soldiers in Guatemala forcibly evicted the inhabitants of several communities who were living on lands that a Guatemalan military government had granted to Canadian mining company INCO in 1965. Local indigenous people claim the land to be theirs, and resent the exploitation of a foreign corporation. Canada's Skye Resources now lays claim to the land, and paid workers a nominal sum to destroy people's homes. With the force of the army and police, company workers took chainsaws and torches to people's homes, while women and children stood by. Skye Resources claims that they maintained "a peaceful atmosphere during this action."

So many parallels to current world events, so little time....

[hr]

Guatemala 1953-1954
While the world watched

excerpted from the book Killing Hope
by William Blum

*****
To whom does a poor banana republic turn when a CIA army is advancing upon its territory and CIA planes are overhead bombing the country?

The leaders of Guatemala tried everyone-the United Nations, the Organization of American States, other countries individually, the world press, even the United States itself, in the desperate hope that it was all a big misunderstanding, that in the end, reason would prevail.

Nothing helped. Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had decided that the legally-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz was "communist", therefore must go and go it did, in June 1954.

In the midst of the American preparation to overthrow the government, the Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Guillermo Toriello, lamented that the United States was categorizing "as 'communism' every manifestation of nationalism or economic independence any desire for social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest in progressive liberal reforms."

*****

The Guatemalan president (Arbenz) , who took office in March 1951 after being elected by a wide margin, had no special contact or spiritual/ideological ties with the Soviet Union or the rest of the Communist bloc. Although American policymakers and the American press, explicitly and implicitly, often labeled Arbenz a communist, there were those in Washington who knew better, at least during their more dispassionate moments. Under Arbenz's administration Guatemala had voted at the United Nations so closely with the United States on issues of "Soviet imperialism" that a State Department group occupied with planning Arbenz's overthrow concluded that propaganda concerning Guatemala's UN record "would not be particularly helpful in our case". And a State Department analysis paper reported that the Guatemalan president had support "not only from Communist-led labor and the radical fringe of professional and intellectual groups, but also among many anti-Communist nationalists in urban areas".

*****

The centerpiece of Arbenz's program was land reform. The need for it was clearly expressed in the all-too-familiar underdeveloped-country statistics: In a nation overwhelmingly rural, 2.2 percent of the landowners owned 70 percent of the arable land; the annual per capita income of agricultural workers was $87. Before the revolution of 1944, which overthrew the Ubico dictatorship, "farm laborers had been roped together by the Army for delivery to the low-land farms where they were kept in debt slavery by the landowners."

The expropriation of large tracts of uncultivated acreage which was distributed to approximately 100,000 landless peasants, the improvement in union rights for the workers, and other social reforms, were the reasons Arbenz had won the support of Communists and other leftists, which was no more than to be expected. When Arbenz was criticized for accepting Communist support, he challenged his critics to prove their good faith by backing his reforms themselves. They failed to do so, thus revealing where the basis of their criticism lay.

*****

The first plan to topple Arbenz was a CIA operation approved by President Truman in 1952, but at the eleventh hour, Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded Truman to abort it. However, soon after Eisenhower became president in January 1953, the plan was resurrected. Both administrations were pressured by executives of United Fruit Company -- much of the vast and uncultivated land in Guatemala had been expropriated by the Arbenz government as part of the land reform program. The company wanted nearly $16 million for the and, the government was offering $525,000, United Fruit's own declared valuation for tax purposes.

United Fruit functioned in Guatemala as a state within a state. It owned the country's telephone and telegraph facilities, administered its only important Atlantic harbor, and monopolized its banana exports. A subsidiary of the company owned nearly every mile of railroad track in the country. The fruit company's influence amongst Washington's power elite was equally impressive. On a business and/or personal level, it had close ties to the Dulles brothers, various State Department officials, congressmen, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and others. Anne Whitman, the wife of the company's public relations director, was President Eisenhower's personal secretary. Under-secretary of State (and formerly Director of the CIA) Walter Bedell Smith was seeking an executive position with United Fruit at the same time he was helping to plan the coup. He was later named to the company's board of directors.

Under Arbenz, Guatemala constructed an Atlantic port and a highway to compete with United Fruit's holdings, and built a hydro-electric plant to offer cheaper energy than the US controlled electricity monopoly. Arbenz's strategy was to limit the power of foreign companies through direct competition rather than through nationalization, a policy not feasible of course when it came to a fixed quantity like land. In his inaugural address, Arbenz stated that:
"Foreign capital will always be welcome as long as it adjusts to local conditions, remains always subordinate to Guatemalan laws, cooperates with the economic development of the country, and strictly abstains from intervening in the nation's social and political life."

This hardly described United Fruit's role in Guatemala. Amongst much else, the company had persistently endeavored to frustrate Arbenz's reform programs, discredit him and his government, and induce his downfall.

Arbenz was, accordingly, wary of multinationals and could not be said to welcome them into his country with open arms. This attitude, his expropriation of United Fruit's land, and his "tolerance of communists" were more than enough to make him a marked man in Washington. The United States saw these policies as being inter-related: that is, it was communist influence-not any economic or social exigency of Guatemalan life-which was responsible for the government's treatment of American firms.

In March 1953, the CIA approached disgruntled right-wing officers in the Guatemala army and arranged to send them arms. United Fruit donated $64,000 in cash. The following month, uprisings broke out in several towns but were quickly put down by loyal troops. The rebels were put on trial and revealed the fruit company's role in the plot, but not the ClA's.

The Eisenhower administration resolved to do the job right the next time around. With cynical glee, almost an entire year was spent in painstaking, step-by-step preparation for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Of the major CIA undertakings, few have been as well documented as has the coup in Guatemala. With the release of many formerly classified government papers, the following story has emerged:

Headquarters for the operation were established in Opa Locka, Florida, on the out skirts of Miami. The Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza lent/leased his country out as a site for an airstrip and for hundreds of men-Guatemalan exiles and US and Central American mercenaries-to receive training in the use of weapons and radio broadcasting, as well as in the fine arts of sabotage and demolition. Thirty airplanes were assigned for use in the "Liberation", stationed in Nicaragua, Honduras and the Canal Zone, to be flown by American pilots. The Canal Zone was set aside as a weapons depot from which arms were gradually distributed to the rebels who were to assemble in Honduras under the command of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas before crossing into Guatemala. Soviet-marked weapons were also gathered for the purpose of planting them inside Guatemala before the invasion to reinforce US charges of Russian intervention. And, as important as arms, it turned out, hidden radio transmitters were placed in and around the perimeter of Guatemala, including one in the US Embassy.

An attempt was made to blow up the trains carrying the Czech weapons from portside to Guatemala City; however, a torrential downpour rendered the detonators useless, where upon the CIA paramilitary squad opened fire on one train, killing a Guatemalan soldier and wounding three others; but the convoy of trains made it safely to its destination.

After the Czech ship had arrived in Guatemala, Eisenhower ordered the stopping of "suspicious foreign-flag vessels on the high seas off Guatemala to examine cargo". The State Department's legal adviser wrote a brief which concluded in no uncertain terms that "Such action would constitute a violation of international law." No matter. At least two foreign vessels were stopped and searched, one French and one Dutch. It was because of such actions by the British that the United States had fought the War of 181.

The Guatemalan military came in for special attention. The US ostentatiously signed mutual security treaties with Honduras and Nicaragua, both countries hostile to Arbenz, and dispatched large shipments of arms to them in the hope that this would signal a clear enough threat to the Guatemalan military to persuade it to withdraw its support of Arbenz. Additionally, the US Navy dispatched two submarines from Key West, saying only that they were going "south". Several days later, the Air Force, amid considerable fanfare, sent three B-36 bombers on a "courtesy call" to Nicaragua.

The CIA also made a close study of the records of members of the Guatemalan officer corps and offered bribes to some of them. One of the Agency's clandestine radio stations broadcast appeals aimed at military men, as well as others, to join the liberation movement. The station reported that Arbenz was secretly planning to disband or disarm the armed forces and replace it with a people's militia. CIA planes dropped leaflets over Guatemala carrying the same message. ((TWITTER, TWITTER))

Eventually, at Ambassador Peurifoy's urging, a group of high-ranking officers called on Arbenz to ask that he dismiss all communists who held posts in his administration. The president assured them that the communists did not represent a danger, that they did not run the government, and that it would be undemocratic to dismiss them. At a second meeting, the officers also demanded that Arbenz reject the creation of the "people's militia'.

Arbenz himself was offered a bribe by the CIA, whether to abdicate his office or something less is not clear. A large sum of money was deposited in a Swiss bank for him, but he, or a subordinate, rejected the offer.

On the economic front, contingency plans were made for such things as cutting off Guatemalan credit abroad, disrupting its oil supplies, and causing a run on its foreign reserves. But it was on the propaganda front that American ingenuity shone at its brightest. Inasmuch as the Guatemalan government was being overthrown because it was communist, the fact of its communism would have to be impressed upon the rest of Latin America.

Accordingly, the US Information Agency (USIA) began to place unattributed articles in foreign newspapers labeling particular Guatemalan officials as communist and referring to various actions by the Guatemalan government as "communist-inspired". In the few weeks prior to Arbenz's fall alone, more than 200 articles about Guatemala were written and published in scores of Latin American newspapers.
Employing a method which was to become a standard CIA/USIA feature all over Latin America and elsewhere, as we shall see, articles placed in one country were picked up by newspapers in other countries, either as a result of CIA payment or unwittingly because the story was of interest. Besides the obvious advantage of multiplying the potential audience, the tactic gave the appearance that independent world opinion was taking a certain stand and further obscured the American connection.


http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/guatemala/arbenz.gif
The ragtag rebel army funded by the CIA.

The USIA also distributed more than 100,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled "Chronology of Communism in Guatemala" throughout the hemisphere, as well as 27,000 copies of anti-communist cartoons and posters. The American propaganda agency, more over, produced three films on Guatemala, with predictable content, and newsreels favorable to the United States for showing free in cinemas.


http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/dalmat/my%20blog/fuck_yeah.jpg

Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, a prelate possessed of anti-communism, a man who feared social change more than he feared God, was visited by the CIA. Would his Reverence arrange CIA contact with Archbishop Mariano Rossell Arellano of Guatemala? The Cardinal would be delighted. Thus it came to pass that on 9 April 1954, a pastoral letter was read in Guatemalan Catholic churches calling to the attention of the congregations the presence in the country of a devil called communism and demanding that the people "rise as a single man against this enemy of God and country", or at least not rally in Arbenz's defense. To appreciate the value of this, one must remember that Guatemala's peasant class was not only highly religious, but that very few of them were able to read, and so could receive the Lord's Word only in this manner. For those who could read, many thousands of pamphlets carrying the Archbishop's message were air-dropped around the country.
In May, the CIA covertly sponsored a "Congress Against Soviet Intervention in Latin America" in Mexico City. The same month, Somoza called in the diplomatic corps in Nicaragua and told them, his voice shaking with anger, that his police had discovered a secret Soviet shipment of arms (which had been planted by the CIA) near the Pacific Coast, and suggested that the communists wanted to convert Nicaragua into "a new Korean situation. A few weeks later, an unmarked plane parachuted arms with Soviet markings onto Guatemala's coast.

On such fare did the people of Latin America dine for decades. By such tactics were they educated about "communism".


http://www.yammeringmagpie.com/catalog/images/red-menace.jpg

In late January 1954 the operation appeared to have suffered a serious setback when photostat copies of Liberation documents found their way into Arbenz's hands. A few days later, Guatemala's newspapers published copies of correspondence signed by Castillo Armas, Somoza and others under banner headlines. The documents revealed the existence of some of the staging, training and invasion plans, involving, amongst others, the "Government of the North".

The State Department labeled the accusations of a US role "ridiculous and untrue" and said it would not comment further because it did not wish to give them a dignity they did not deserve.


http://www.therightperspective.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bill-clinton_finger-300x241.jpg

Said a Department spokesperson: "It is the policy of the United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. http://theislampath.com/smf/Smileys/default/rofl.gif This policy has repeatedly been reaffirmed under the present administration."

Time magazine gave no credence whatsoever to the possibility of American involvement in such a plot, concluding that the whole expose had been "masterminded in Moscow.

The New York Times was not so openly cynical, but its story gave no indication that there might be any truth to the matter. "Latin American observers in New York," reported the newspaper, "said the 'plot' charges savored of communist influence." This article was followed immediately on the page by one headed "Red Labor Chiefs Meet. Guatemalan Confederation Opens Its Congress".

And the CIA continued with its preparations as if nothing had happened.
The offensive began in earnest on 18 June with planes dropping leaflets over Guatemala demanding that Arbenz resign immediately or else various sites would be bombed. CIA radio stations broadcast similar messages. That afternoon, the planes returned to machine-gun houses near military barracks, drop fragmentation bombs and strafe the National Palace.

Over the following week, the air attacks continued daily-strafing or bombing ports, fuel tanks, ammunition dumps, military barracks, the international airport, a school, and several cities; nine persons, including a three-year-old girl, were reported wounded; an unknown number of houses were set afire by incendiary explosives. During one night-time raid, a tape recording of a bomb attack was played over loudspeakers set up on the roof of the US Embassy to heighten the anxiety of the capital's residents. When Arbenz went on the air to try and calm the public's fear, the CIA radio team jammed the broadcast.

Meanwhile, the Agency's army had crossed into Guatemala from Honduras and captured a few towns,


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Rebel troops advance on Guatemala City

but its progress in the face of resistance by the Guatemalan army was unspectacular. On the broadcasts of the CIA's "Voice of Liberation" the picture was different: The rebels were everywhere and advancing; they were of large numbers and picking volunteers as they marched; war and upheaval in all corners; fearsome battles and more defeats for the Guatemalan army. Some of these broadcasts were transmitted over regular public and even military channels, serving to convince some of Arbenz's officers that reports were genuine. In the same way, the CIA was able to answer real military messages with fake responses. All manner of disinformation was spread and rumors fomented; dummy parachute drops were made in scattered areas to heighten the belief that a major invasion was taking place.

United Fruit Company's publicity office circulated photographs to journalists of mutilated bodies about to be buried in a mass grave as an example of the atrocities committed by the Arbenz regime. The photos received extensive coverage. Thomas McCann of the company's publicity office later revealed that he had no idea what the photos represented: "They could just as easily have been the victims of either side-or of an earthquake. The point is, they were widely accepted for what they were purported to be-victims of communism.

In a similar vein, Washington officials reported on political arrests and censorship in Guatemala without reference to the fact that the government was under siege (let alone who was behind the siege), that suspected plotters and saboteurs were the bulk of those being arrested, or that, overall, the Arbenz administration had a fine record on civil liberties. The performance of the American press in this regard was little better.

The primary purpose of the bombing and the many forms of disinformation was to make it appear that military defenses were crumbling, that resistance was futile, thus provoking confusion and division in the Guatemalan armed forces and causing some elements to turn against Arbenz. The psychological warfare conducted over the radio was directed by Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame, and David Atlee Phillips, a newcomer to the CIA. When Phillips was first approached about the assignment, he asked his superior, Tracy Barnes, in all innocence, "But Arbenz became President in a free election. What right do we have to help someone topple his government and throw him out of office?"

'For a moment," wrote Phillips later, "I detected in his face a flicker of concern, a doubt, the reactions of a sensitive man." But Barnes quickly recovered and repeated the party line about the Soviets establishing "an easily expandable beachhead" in Central America.

Phillips never looked back. When he retired from the CIA in the mid-1970s, he found the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers, an organization formed to counteract the flood of unfavorable publicity sweeping over the Agency at the time.

American journalists reporting on the events in Guatemala continued to exhibit neither an investigative inclination nor a healthy conspiracy mentality. But what was obscure to the press was patently obvious to large numbers of Latin Americans. Heated protests against the United States broke out during this week in June in at least eleven countries and was echoed by the governments of Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile which condemned American "intervention and "aggression".

Life magazine noted these protests by observing that "world communism was efficiently using the Guatemalan show to strike a blow at the U.S." It scoffed at the idea that Washington was behind the revolt. Newsweek reported that Washington "officials interpreted" the outcry "as an indication of the depth of Red penetration into the Americas". A State Department memo at the time, however, privately acknowledged that much of the protest emanated from non-communist and even pro-American moderates.

On 21 and 22 June, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Toriello made impassioned appeals to the United Nations for help in resolving the crisis. American UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge tried to block the Security Council from discussing a resolution to send an instigating team to Guatemala, characterizing Toriello's appeals as communist maneuvering. But under heavy pressure from UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, the Council convened. Before the vote, while Lodge worked on the smaller nations represented on the Council, Eisenhower and Dulles came down hard on France and Great Britain, both of whom favored the resolution. Said the President of the United States to his Secretary of State: "The British expect us to give them a free ride and side with them on Cyprus. And yet they won't even support us on Guatemala! Let's give them a lesson.

As matters turned out, the resolution was defeated by five votes to four, with Britain and France abstaining, although their abstentions were not crucial inasmuch as seven votes were required for passage. Hammarskjold was so upset with the American machinations, which he believed undercut the strength of the United Nations, that he confided that he might be forced "to reconsider my present position in the United Nations".

During this same period, the CIA put into practice a plan to create an "incident'. Agency planes were dispatched to drop several harmless bombs on Honduran territory. The Honduran government then complained to the UN and the Organization of American States, claiming that the country had been attacked by Guatemalan planes.

Arbenz finally received an ultimatum from certain army officers: Resign or they would come to an agreement with the invaders. The CIA and Ambassador Peurifoy had been offering payments to officers to defect, and one army commander reportedly accepted $60,000 to surrender his troops. With his back to the wall, Arbenz made an attempt to arm civilian supporters to fight for the government, but army officers blocked the disbursement of weapons. The Guatemalan president knew that the end was near.


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Arbenz strip searched on his was to exile after 1954 coup


*****

Castillo Armas celebrated the liberation of Guatemala in various ways. In July alone, thousands were arrested on suspicion of communist activity. Many were tortured or killed. In August a law was passed and a committee set up which could declare anyone a communist. with no right of appeal. Those so declared could be arbitrarily arrested for up to six months, could not own a radio or hold public office. Within four months the committee had registered 72,000 names. A committee official said it was aiming for 200,000.


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Armas with US President Eisenhower after the coup

Further implementation of the agrarian reform law was stopped and all expropriations of land already carried out were declared invalid. United Fruit Company not only received all its land back, but the government banned the banana workers' unions as well.


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Moreover, seven employees of the company who had been active labor organizers were found mysteriously murdered in Guatemala City.

The new regime also disenfranchised three-quarters of Guatemala's voters by barring illiterates from the electoral rolls and outlawed all political parties, labor confederations, and peasant organizations. To this was added the closing down of opposition newspapers (which Arbenz had not done) and the burning of "subversive" books, including Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Dostoyevsky novels, and the works of Guatemala's Nobel Prize winning author Miguel Angel Asturias, a biting critic of United Fruit.

Meanwhile, John Foster Dulles, who was accused by Toriello of seeking to establish a "banana curtain" in Central America, was concerned that some "communists" might escape retribution. In cables he exchanged with Ambassador Peurifoy, Dulles insisted that the government arrest those Guatemalans who had taken refuge in foreign embassies and that "criminal charges" be brought against them to prevent them leaving the country, charges such as "having been overt Moscow agents". The Secretary of State argued that communists should be automatically denied the right of asylum because they were connected with an international conspiracy. The only way they should be allowed to leave, he asserted, was if they agreed to be sent to the Soviet Union. But Castillo Armas refused to accede to Dulles's wishes on this particular issue, influenced perhaps by the fact that he, as well as some of his colleagues, had been granted political asylum in an embassy at one time or another.

One of those who sought asylum in the Argentine Embassy was a 25-year-old Argentine doctor named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Guevara, who had been living in Guatemala since sometime in 1953, had tried to spark armed resistance to the invading forces, but without any success. Guevara's experience in Guatemala had a profound effect upon his political consciousness. His first wife, Hilda Gadea, whom he met there, later wrote:
"Up to that point, he used to say, he was merely a sniper, criticizing from a theoretical point of view the political panorama of our America. From here on he was convinced that the struggle against the oligarchic system and the main enemy, Yankee imperialism, must be an armed one, supported by the people."

In the wake of the coup, the United States confiscated a huge amount of documents from the Guatemalan government, undoubtedly in the hope of finally uncovering the hand of the International Communist Conspiracy behind Arbenz. If this is what was indeed discovered, it has not been made public.

On 30 June, while the dust was still settling, Dulles summed up the situation in Guatemala in a speech which was a monument to coldwar-speak:
]"(The events in Guatemala) expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter-American system ... having gained control of what they call the mass organizations, (the communists) moved on to take over the official press and radio of the Guatemalan Government They dominated the social security organization and ran the agrarian reform program ... dictated to the Congress and to the President ... Arbenz ... was openly manipulated by the leaders of communism ... The Guatemalan regime enjoyed the full support of Soviet Russia ... (the) situation is being cured by the Gualemalans themselves."[/b]

When it came to rewriting history, however, Dulles's speech had nothing on these lines from a CIA memo written in August 1954 and only for internal consumption no less: "When the communists were forced by outside pressure to attempt to take over Guatemala completely, they forced Arbenz to resign (deleted). They then proceeded to establish a Communist Junta under Col. Carlos Diaz."

And in October, John Peurifoy sat before a congressional committee and told them:
[ul]"My role in Guatemala prior to the revolution was strictly that of a diplomatic observer ... The revolution that overthrew the Arbenz government was engineered and instigated by those people in Guatemala who rebelled against the policies and ruthless oppression of the Communist-controlled government."

Later, Dwight Eisenhower was to write about Guatemala in his memoirs. The former president chose not to offer the slightest hint that the United States had anything to do with the planning or instigation of the coup, and indicated that his administration had only the most tangential of connections to its execution. (When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs were published in the West, the publisher saw fit to employ a noted Kremlinologist to annotate the work, pointing out errors of omission and commission.)


Thus it was that the educated, urbane men of the State Department, the CIA and the United Fruit Company, the pipe-smoking, comfortable men of Princeton, Harvard and Wall Street, decided that the illiterate peasants of Guatemala did not deserve the land which had been given to them, that the workers did not need their unions, that hunger and torture was a small price to pay for being rid of the scourge of communism.


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The terror carried out by Castillo Armas was only the beginning. It was ... to get much worse in time. It has continued with hardly a pause for 40 years.
In 1955, the New York Times reported from the United Nations that "The United States has begun a drive to scuttle a section of the proposed Covenant of Human Rights which poses a threat to its business interests abroad." The offending section dealt with the right of peoples to self-determination and to permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources. Said the newspaper: "It declares in effect that any country has the right to nationalize its resources ..."


http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Guatemala_KH.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxgeCrB1ic