current president
A comprehensive article, by Annie Bird, about the intersection between “development” projects funded by the World Bank, and repression carried out by U.S.-supported regimes - and directly by U.S. military involvement - in Guatemala and Honduras.
“Genocidist, Genocidist, Genocidist, …” chanted some 2000 people in the Teatro Nacional in Guatemala City, on the evening of April 18, drowning out a pre-film speech by the Minister of Culture and Sports. The people had come to watch the world premiere of the documentary film “Gold Fever” at the fourth annual film festival Memoria, Verdad, Justicia.
Listen to today's 27-minute CBC radio debate (on "The Current" programme) concerning Canadian support for the establishment of privatized "charter cities" in northern Honduras, along the Caribbean coast. The debate includes Grahame Russell and Karen Spring of Rights Action.
No sooner was the blatantly colonial charter city project in Honduras declared unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court last year than it found itself back on the agenda. The gist of the project is the creation of free-market enclaves on Honduran territory that are unaccountable to national laws and are instead governed by foreign corporate interests.
At 4am on December 12, 2012, the Honduran congress removed four out of the five judges that comprise the Constitutional Court of the Honduran Supreme Court. Honduran legal experts call this a technical coup, a violation by the National Congress of the constitutional order, explaining that the Congress has no legal capacity to summarily dismiss judges.
General Otto Perez Molina - Comandante Tito, as he was known in the early eighties, directing operations in the butchering fields of the [Maya] Ixil communities 3 hours north of here - is the founder of the Patriotic Party, and his sneering face on billboards, huge and small, the PP symbol of the fighting Iron Fist, their pumpkin-orange flags and banners, and frenetic pounding music are ubiquitous throughout the country, and especially in the Maya highlands, the very land where the genocide occurred.
On September 11, 2011 the general elections in Guatemala, which determine mayors, congress members and the president, played out as most recent elections have, with normal violence, denouncements of widespread fraud, and destruction of ballots; the culmination of a political campaign in which at least 35 were killed. Two presidential candidates go to the run off on in November, the expected winner Otto Perez Molina, Implicated in war crimes of the past (including genocide), of the Partido Patriota [PP] against Manuel Baldizon of the Libertad Democratic Renovada [LIDER].
On September 11, 2011 the general elections in Guatemala, which determine mayors, congress members and the president, played out as most recent elections have, with normal violence, denouncements of widespread fraud, and destruction of ballots; the culmination of a political campaign in which at least 35 were killed.
