Guatemala protests: Thousands call for President Otto Pérez Molina to resign
Source: CNN
Guatemala City (CNN)There were college students and teachers. There were also union workers and peasants. They came from across Guatemala with one message: "Enough is enough."
These protesters filled Guatemala City's Constitution Square -- a historic landmark that, according to Guatemalan authorities, holds 10,000 people -- throughout the day Thursday and into the night demanding the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina. More people demonstrated in adjacent streets, unable to get to the main square.
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The embattled President, a 64-year-old former military commander, is accused of being the leader of a customs fraud scheme, an allegation that he denies.
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"Guatemala is such a beautiful country. It's just delightful, but these corrupt politicians have left our nation with nothing, like a skeleton. "
Ana Ruth Monroy, a nutrition major at San Carlos University, said she wanted to protest because she has seen how corruption has taken resources away from social programs that help those in need.
"It's infuriating to see how they steal. Our children die every day. Fifty percent of our children are malnourished, and authorities aren't doing anything about it," Monroy said.
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"We need those corrupt politicians to leave. They're thieves. They've taken away from our children and teenagers' food and school desks. We're teaching in classrooms that look like chicken coops," Bekker said.
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Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/27/americas/guatemala-protests/index.html
One hates to correct CNN (again) but it's not thousands, Guatemala's press says 100s of 1000s. I'm down here. It's 100s of 1000s if not more. People are out in all the streets in all the cities, not just the area that holds 10,000 in front of Constitution Square in the capital. You can't even drive around right now. Protesters shut down the highway entrances to major cities. Even in my small little town an hour away, they're are tons of people.
The indigenous population isn't holding back either because this president is a cold-hearted killer who slaughtered many indigenous people during the US-funded civil war. He's part of an elite Army group, the Kaibiles, that has no soul and mass-murdered 250,000 peasants, smashing babies heads against walls in front of their mothers. One requirement of their grueling training is to bond with a puppy during weeks of training and then kill it and eat it before graduation.
His political rivals are out there too trying to endear themselves and take his place but the main guy they back, Baldizon, backed by much of the business community, is a known thief too so who knows how this will go.
I posted another thread, with a DemocracyNow segment in the Latin America forum.
= new reply since forum marked as read
This photo in the article linked by the one in your post shows a pair of eyes which immediately reminded me of what you have mentioned:
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They look dead, already, don't they?
Small wonder we learn the Mexican drug gangs have been hiring these monsters to help them with their innumerable mutilations and beheadings.
upon the poor, mostly indigenous Maya, of Guatemala. Why would he have needed a phony name during that time?
From a quick google check:
The Pursuit of Justice in Guatemala
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 373
Posted - March 23, 2012
[font size=1]
Brigadier General José Efraín Ríos Montt, flanked by General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad
and Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez, at their first post-coup press conference on March 23,
1982, National Palace, Guatemala City. ©Jean-Marie Simon
[/font]
Washington, DC, March 23, 2012 -- Today marks the 30th anniversary of the coup that propelled General Efraín Ríos Montt to power and launched the most violent period of the 36-year internal armed conflict in Guatemala. The National Security Archive and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) mark the coup anniversary with the publication today of NACLA Report on the Americas, “Central America: Legacies of War,” containing feature article by National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle on “Justice in Guatemala.”
The entire NACLA Report on the Americas is available, here.
. . .
To what extent these improvements are sustainable remains an open question. It is not even clear whether or not Paz y Paz will keep her job. Two thousand and eleven was an election year, and as the public prosecutor and her allies labored to advance the rule of law, Pérez Molina and his right-wing Patriotic Party campaigned across the country on his plans to solve the security crisis with an “iron fist” (mano dura). On November 6, Pérez Molina won a strong victory over his rival, politician and businessman Manuel Balidzón, and on January 14 he was sworn in as Guatemala’s newest president. His election has dismayed human rights advocates who hold him responsible for the same genocidal crimes committed in the Quiché that will be debated in the coming Ríos Montt trial.
The public biography of Pérez Molina is silent on the matter.6 The little that is known about his past reflects the career of a talented and ambitious military man. He was an operations officer who came of age in the 1970s and rose from unit commander to Director of Operations (D-3), chief of the Kaibil training center and head of the Presidential General Staff. He was a product of the U.S. School of the Americas and left a trail of high marks and glowing evaluations. In the early 1990s, a power struggle inside the army landed him as head of the Intelligence Directorate, where he made his first real impression on the wider public when then president Jorge Serrano attempted an autogolpe, or internal coup, in 1993. Pérez Molina’s successful opposition to Serrano’s power grab made him stand out as a moderate among extremists, pitting him against the cabal of powerful intelligence officers known as the Cofradía (Brotherhood) that backed Serrano.
The United States took notice, and reports from U.S. defense attachés posted in Guatemala in the mid-1990s bubbled with enthusiasm and praise: one of the “Best and the Brightest,” said one cable, “intelligent, hard-working, dedicated and principled . . . unflappable under pressure, has strong command presence and possesses great self-confidence.” U.S. officials also noticed his role in the counterinsurgency, calling him one of a group of military progressives “with blood stains on their hands.”7 He was a “reformer,” not a hard-liner, a strategist, not a tactician, who believed in stabilization and pacification, what Guatemala scholar Jennifer Schirmer has called the “enlightened repression” of brutal military violence combined with population control, civic action, and development: the “Beans and Bullets” strategy of the Ríos Montt regime.8
There is no public information about where Pérez Molina served during the scorched-earth campaigns. He claims he arrived in Nebaj after the massacres in late 1982 with the goal of protecting devastated villagers, though he has refused to confirm the exact dates of his deployment.9 But the army’s own records of Operación Sofía, a violent counterinsurgency sweep through the Ixil triangle in July and August 1982, contain evidence of his presence on the field of battle. A report written on July 22 describes then major Pérez Molina and another officer, Major Arango Barrios—both listed as “paracaidistas,” the special airborne troops that led Sofía—attached to a patrol in a confrontation with “the enemy” near the settlements of Salquil and Xeipum. According to the document, the patrol killed four civilians in the clash, and “captured” 18 old people and 12 children. In a second Operación Sofía document, Pérez Molina appear/s as his alias, Major Tito, being transported by helicopter with another Paracaidista officer on July 27 between villages inside the killing zone.10
More:
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB373/
This is really creepy to learn for people who never knew he had to use an alias in his OWN country for some reason, even as he filled a very high position in the military, and was a commander of the dreaded Kaibiles. I never knew until a few minutes ago.
