GUATEMALA: Town that Suffered Military Terror Fights Reopening of Base

[Judi Lynn]

Source: IPS News

GUATEMALA: Town that Suffered Military Terror Fights Reopening of Base
By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 20 (IPS) - People in the town of Ixcán in northwestern Guatemala could relive the pain of the country's 36-year civil war if the army reopens a military base in the area, where more than 100 massacres of indigenous villagers were committed during the armed conflict. Army spokesman Byron Gutiérrez said the army's plans for a base there are aimed at fighting the high levels of crime in that part of the northwestern province of Quiché and at protecting the Franja Transversal del Norte, or FTN highway, which is to run through an area of vast sugar cane and African palm plantations and abundant minerals and water resources.

The multi-lane FTN, which will start to be built at the end of this month, will stretch 330 km across north-central Guatemala, from Mexico to the west through Huehuetenango and Quiché in the northwest and Alta Verapaz and Izabal in the northeast, to Honduras and the Caribbean Sea to the east.

The highway is part of the Plan-Puebla-Panama, a mega-project that is to create a "development corridor" running from Puebla, Mexico to Panama, opening up southern Mexico and Central America to private foreign investment to attract industry and agribusiness and expand natural resource extraction. The project has the support of multilateral lenders like the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

According to the army announcement, the 1,000-plus members of the Sixth Infantry Brigade will be deployed on Oct. 29 to the installations of the old Military Zone Number 22, in Ixcán, where a health centre and a branch of the public University of San Carlos de Guatemala currently function.


Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48928

[BolivarianHero]

1. WTF?

Is this why Guatemala elected a progressive leader a few years ago? To prevent this sort of tyranny from destroying their country yet again?

[a la izquierda]

2. Thanks for this...

I'm going to talk about it in my lecture tomorrow. My students are getting lots of bloody details about the Guatemalan civil war...this is definitely disturbing.

[Overseas]

3. K&R. //nt

[roody]

4. If it is like Colombia, that ag land was stolen from

the people they killed and expelled.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It's so familiar by now, isn't it? Hard to believe anyone would back these criminals. n/t

[The abyss]

5. Thanks for posting this info. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

7. Hi, Abyss. Good to hear from you. Thank YOU. n/t