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Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruno of Guatemala exhorted his fellow Christians on April 4 to englighten their country, long marked by political violence and now tormented by criminal organizations and gang violence. Guatemala is “tormented by violence, injustice, and hatred” said the Catholic prelate. “I call upon you that, during these difficult moments that we are going through, Jesus – who died and rose again – should become better recognized, beloved, and heeded,” said the cardinal during his Easter Sunday address.
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One of the poorest countries in Central America, Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. Poverty and hunger are worst among the indigenous population of rural Guatemala, where flooding and droughts pose a constant threat to food security. Learn more.
Fighting to survive
As a result, the Ramos’ children are weak and underfed. Their baby daughter and one of her sisters have begun showing signs of acute malnutrition, a situation Maria Luisa says she can do little to help.
“I know my daughter is sick and needs to go to the hospital, but I cannot leave the rest of the children behind,” she said.
For the last three months, this family of nine has gotten by on food assistance from WFP which provides them with emergency rations of maize, beans, vegetable oil and corn soy blend that cover half of their nutritional needs.
A call for help
However, Guatemala’s rising need has put enormous strain on WFP’s food stocks in the country, which have fallen to their lowest level in years. No food distributions have taken place since the end of January 2010. The situation in the extended ‘dry corridor’ is getting worse.
In order to survive until the September harvest, the Ramos family and thousands of others like them are in dire need of additional assistance.
The World Food Programme is appealing to the international community for a contribution of US$14 million for life-saving operations to provide food assistance to 47,000 families for a six month period.
Benedict XVI discussed the problems of poverty and emigration facing Guatemala upon receiving in audience the country’s president, Álvaro Colom Caballeros.
A communique issued after the meeting reported that “during the cordial discussions attention turned to the good relations that exist between Church and state, and to the specific contribution the Church makes to the country’s development.”
“There followed an exchange of opinions on the international situation, with particular reference to the challenges of poverty, organised crime and emigration,” the noted added. “The discussions also served to underline the importance of promoting human life from the moment of conception, and of the role played by education.”
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GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA–(Marketwire – Jan. 21, 2010) – Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz led an agricultural trade mission to Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and the United States to create new market opportunities for Canadian farmers.
“Step by step this Government is working to expand and create new trade opportunities for Canadian farmers and processors,” said Minister Ritz. “Trade is a key priority of Canada’s Economic Action Plan and that’s why Canada is working to level the playing field and give industry the opportunity to be stable and profitable.”
In Mexico, Minister Ritz announced a $5 million investment to boost the Mexican appetite and raise consumer awareness of Canada’s safe and top quality food. The Canada Brand initiative, part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, will drive promotional activities in Mexico for a wide range of Canadian products, including canola. Canadian agriculture exports to Mexico totaled $1.6 billion in 2008.
“Mexican families are looking for top quality and healthy agricultural products such as Canadian canola oil when they go to the grocery store,” said Minister Ritz. “This initiative will further connect the Canadian maple leaf and our commitment to quality to our Canadian agricultural products.”
Minister Ritz also met with Secretary of Agriculture Francisco Mayorga and Secretary of Economy, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos and stressed the need for an expedited scientific process that will reopen the Mexican market to Canadian over-thirty-months (OTM) beef.
Minister Ritz took the opportunity to stop in Colombia to reiterate the Government of Canada’s dedication to implement the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The Minister met personally with Colombian Minister of Agriculture Andres Fernandez, Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism Luis Guillermo Plata, and Colombian Agriculture Institute General Manager Luis Fernando Caicedo. The FTA will provide preferential access to the Colombian market for Canadian agriculture and non-agriculture products and is an important market for Canadian wheat and pulses. In 2008, Colombia imported $123 million in Canadian wheat, durum and barley sales and $72 million of pulse and specialty crops.
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GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have discovered a huge Mayan sculptured head in Guatemala that suggests a little-known site in the jungle-covered Peten region may once have been a significant city.
The stucco sculpture, which is 10 feet wide and 11.5 feet tall, was buried for centuries at the Chilonche ruins, close to the border with Belize.
The recent discovery of the head, which dates from the early Classic period between 300 to 600 AD, means the site is much older than previously thought. The Maya often constructed new buildings using older ones as foundations.
“It could be an imaginary being, something from the underworld, perhaps linked to a Mayan deity,” Polytechnic University of Valencia professor Gaspar Munoz, part of the team of archeologists that found the head, told Reuters.
Unlike Guatemala’s famous Mayan cities of Tikal and El Mirador, little excavation has been carried out at Chilonche.
Looters, looking for artifacts to sell on the black market, had dug a small tunnel passing the buried sculpture, which is similar to others decorating a solar observatory at another site, Uaxactun.
Guatemala’s Peten region is home to dozens of Mayan ruins, but the largely jungle-covered area is plagued by looters, poachers and smugglers taking cocaine to Mexico.
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NEW YORK – Alfonso Portillo, the fugitive former president of Guatemala, was charged in the United States on Monday with using foreign banks to launder millions of dollars plundered from charity and government coffers.
Portillo, 58, is accused of “converting the office of the Guatemalan presidency into his personal ATM,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of New York said in a statement.
The disgraced politician already was facing embezzlement charges in his own country. Authorities there on Monday declared him a fugitive after dozens of soldiers and police officers raided five of his properties but didn’t find him.
“He’s being sought because he allegedly embezzled funds from the state and from an aid fund sent by Taiwan for an educational project,” said Judge Belgica Deras.
Portillo’s lawyer, Telesforo Guerra, said his client won’t turn himself in.
“He won’t face a judge and will run away from justice because this is a political process, not a judicial one,” Guerra said.
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Controversy over anti-union violence in Colombia has colleges banning Coca-Cola
It’s early monday morning, but Ray Rogers has the full attention of some 70 students in a Rutgers University classroom. For nearly half an hour, the 61-year-old labor activist rails against Coca-Cola Co. (KO ), taking the beverage giant to task for allegedly turning a blind eye as eight employees of Coke bottlers in Colombia were killed and scores more were threatened or jailed on trumped-up terrorism charges over the past decade.
International investigation finds Guatemalan lawyer ordered own killing to frame president.
A Guatemalan lawyer who accused the country’s president of his murder in a video made before his death actually contracted the hitmen to kill him, U.N. investigators announced Tuesday.
Attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg contacted cousins of his first wife to help him find a hitman to deal with an extortionist — when he really was orchestrating his own slaying amid severe personal problems, according to a special international group commissioned by the government.
“We have to conclude that it was Rodrigo Rosenberg himself who asked for help from … intimate friends and said to them: ‘I have an extortionist who is threatening me and I want to kill him,’” said Carlos Castresana, head of the probe into the May 10 killing. “They received his request and looked for someone capable.”
Castresana said evidence shows Rosenberg bought two cellular phones: one to communicate with his killers and another to deliver threatening messages to his own personal phone.
Distress over personal problems and Rosenberg’s suspicion that the government was behind the murder of two close friends appear to have motivated the Harvard-educated corporate lawyer, the investigation suggested.
“Why the video?” Castresana said. “We don’t have all the answers. But we have a theory.”
In the video, Rosenberg is seen looking into the camera and saying, “If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom.”
The 47-year-old attorney, who served as assistant dean at a private university, claimed Colom’s government was linked to a corruption scandal at a government bank and said any attack on him would be an attempt to cover that up. Colom has denied any involvement in the killing.
Rosenberg’s accusations were distributed to reporters on DVDs at his May 11 funeral and immediately set an already polarized country into a frenzy of protests, allegations of corruption and calls for Colom’s resignation.
Castresana said the commission’s theory is that Rosenberg was motivated by a sense of guilt and frustration over what he believed was the government’s involvement and failure to properly investigate the killing of his client and girlfriend, Marjorie Musa, along with her father, Khalil Musa.
Rosenberg had advised Khalil Musa to accept a seat on the board of directors of the private- and government-sponsored Rural Development Bank. In his video, Rosenberg said if he were slain, it would be to silence him for discovering the killings were linked to money laundering at the bank.
Castresana said that blaming Colom apparently was a way of shaking up the powers that be and “opening up a Pandora’s box that would result on change in the country.”
Rosenberg also appeared to be depressed about the recent death of this mother and losing custody of his children, the investigation said.
His posthumous accusations of corruption became a rallying cry for members of Guatemala’s dominant elite, many of whom are angry over Colom’s attempts to eliminate tax loopholes for corporations and criticize his inability to reduce high rates of violent crime.
Colom is overwhelmingly backed by Guatemala’s mostly Mayan Indian poor for his efforts to tax the rich and build schools and clinics for disadvantaged communities.
Colom has suggested that criminal or political interests were behind the video and expressed relief on Tuesday.
“The day has arrived that I have waited for in silence and patience, where this crime finally been clarified,” Colom told reporters.
The commission’s investigation has led to 11 arrests with three of those people working with investigators as protected witnesses.
The commission said it was able to identify suspects in the killing using security camera footage from where Rosenberg was shot on his bicycle and by tracing cell phone calls.
The cousins implicated in the investigation, Francisco and Estuardo Valdes Paiz, are considered fugitives from justice. Investigators allege they contacted the head of security at their pharmaceutical company to help them find someone to carry out the killing for $40,000.
“The information that (witnesses) have given us coincides down to the millimeter with our investigations,” he said.
In a spectacular launch of the 2010 World Harmony Run, runners in Guatemala carried the World Harmony Torch to the Pacaya Volcano for the 2010 torch lighting ceremony. The torch was lit from the molten lava at the volcano. The run began at 3 pm from San Francisco de Sales, near Guatemala City.
During the global start for the 2010 World Harmony Run, Purnahuti Wagner of Guatemala lights the torch from a river of molten lava near the peak of the Pacaya Volcano in Guatemala, along with runners from 25 countries. Founded by world harmony leader Sri Chinmoy, the run will travel this year to 100 countries on six continents over 56,000 km.
 The Runners celebrate the opening of the 2010 Run atop the Pacaya Volcano after Guatemalan runner Purnahuti Wagner lit the torch from the molten lava. Runners include representatives of Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Mongolia, India, Russia and many other European nations.
Homagni Baptista, Australia, carries the World Harmony Run torch after it was lit at the Pacaya Volcano in Guatemala.
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Over 250 people showed up to a conference that was held by Vice President Espada. The VP is working together with the Ministry of Environment, headed by Minister Ferrate and his technical team to present a comprehensive action plan to see what can be done about the bloom that has hit Lake Atitlan.
The UDV Auditorium could not hold all the people who wanted to participate in this important event. Over 250 people showed up, the expected attendance was 50 people. Students, friends of Lake Atitlan- “Todos por el Lago”, University Mariano Galvez, University San Carlos, research experts from University del Valle, representatives of the Chemical Engineers Association, and other related professionals and the media.
20 entities and companies presented their proposals for water treatment plants. There was not enough time to hear the proposals of many more companies and entities that have proposals. They will be heard by Minister of the Environment Ferrate later.
The resources needed to address the problem are around $ 32 million dollars, probably much more. But this is the first estimation of the costs. Fortunately the Embassy of Spain has announced this week that the Spanish Government will donate $ 29.5 million dollars for water related issues in Guatemala. Half of the amount will be destined to address specifically Lake Atitlan. The Mayors of the villages surrounding the lake have assumed the responsibility to provide 50% of the required funds from their respective budgets. The search to find more resources is ongoing. McDonalds is one of the local companies who have already made a commitment to raise money for the rescue of the lake.
Source : Guatemala Times
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