******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
The political crisis in Guatemala just went from critical to full meltdown.
On Friday the attorney general, accompanied by the head of a
UN-sponsored commission against corruption in Guatemala, announced that
former vice-president Roxana Baldetti had been arrested and was being
held pending trial on corruption charges. Baldetti had resigned in May
following the discovery of a fraud network in customs known as "La Linea."
But the Attorney General also announced that it was asking for pre-trial
proceedings against President Otto Molina Perez to strip him of immunity
from prosecution. The evidence showed, she said, that he was the head of
"La Línea."
On Friday afternoon, the leaders of the main business associations
demanded Pérez Molina resign; on Saturday, three cabinet members and
three vice-ministers resigned and thousands of people gathered in
Guatemala City to demand the president's resignation.
On Sunday the Archbishop of Guatemala joined in the popular outcry
saying the majority of Catholics --the country's largest religious
group-- wanted the president gone.
Various student, peasant, and worker organizations have announced
protests for the coming days demanding Otto Perez's resignation.
The president hasn't been seen since shortly after the attorney
general's announcement. In response to a habeas corpus petition filed on
the president's behalf, a judge went at mid-day Sunday to his residence.
People there told her that Perez Molina was not there and that they
could give her no information on his whereabouts.
Even before the latest revelations, a motion to strip Perez of immunity
had received a majority of the votes in Congress the previous week, but
not the two-thirds majority necessary for approval.
Guatemala is scheduled to have presidential elections in two weeks in
which Perez Molina was trying to get himself re-elected. A coalition of
some 70 groups headed by the powerful Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC),
an organization of indigenous peasants, has announced a three-day
strike starting Tuesday demanding cancellation of the "illegitimate,
illegal and fraudulent" elections.
The deepening crisis is bound to have an impact in neighboring Honduras,
where for 14 weeks there have been weekly "Marchas de las Antorchas"
(March with Torches) by people calling themselves "indignados" (meaning
those who are outraged, which is also how participants in occupy-type
movements in Mexico, Spain and other countries referred to themsleves).
The Honduran indignados are demanding the resignation of the president
in the wake of the looting of the country's social-security funds and
the creation of a UN-sponsored International Commission Against
Corruption in Honduras like the one operating in Guatemala. If anything,
the Honduras government is even weaker than the one in Guatemala, since
it is the bastard child of the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya carried
out with the cooperation and back-handed support of the Obama
administration which officially claimed to oppose it.
In both countries powerful criminal gangs fed by superprofits from the
drug trade have penetrated all spheres of society including the
government and the police. It is a situation similar to that in some
parts of Mexico, like the state of Guerrero, where 43 students from a
teachers college were kidnapped by the Iguala police who were said to be
acting on behalf of local crime bosses, including the mayor from the
leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) and his wife.
In El Salvador the political situation is different and the government
seems to be more stable, but an escalating war against two
U.S.-originated mafias, the Mara Salvatrucha and Calle 18, are sinking
the country into a bloodbath unseen since the civil war in the 1980s. In
the week that started last Sunday, August 16, at least 246 people were
killed, an average of 35 a day. The number of homicides has been
steadily growing for a year, since a truce with the cartels established
under the previous government fell apart.
To get an idea of the magnitude of the bloodbath, remember that El
Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, with a land area
and population comparable to that of metro Atlanta, where I live.
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
