Violence plagues Guatemala decade after war's end
Source: Reuters
By Mica Rosenberg PALENCIA, Guatemala, Dec 27 (Reuters) - The Guatemalan police put housewife Maria Lopez under protective custody last year after she informed on young street gang members who gunned down her sister in broad daylight. But a round-the-clock police guard did not stop the killers returning to shoot Lopez dead in the town of Palencia last month as she slept in bed next to her 10-year-old daughter. Ten years after the end of a civil war that killed about a quarter of a million people, Guatemala is still racked with violence, and struggling to overcome corruption, drug smuggling and poverty. Criticized by a presidential hopeful as close to becoming a "failed state," Guatemala has yet to meet most of the sweeping development goals promised in peace accords between the government and leftist guerrillas signed on Dec. 29, 1996. Instead of the political killings and massacres by soldiers that characterized the 1960-1996 war, it is criminal violence that is now rampant in Guatemala. Lopez's case is one of over 5,000 killings this year in the Central American country with a murder rate seven times higher than that of the United States. In 95 percent of the crimes, no one is ever detained by authorities. In September, a family of five from Palencia, a dusty town east of the capital, was found dead under a bridge. The three children had their throats slit. Police say the case was also gang related but is unsolved. "This is a daily occurrence," said Sandra Lopez, 24, Maria's older daughter. "They find bodies thrown everywhere." "FAILED STATE" "Guatemala is on the road to becoming a failed state," said Gen. Otto Perez Molina who signed the 1996 peace deals for the army. He is running for president in next year's election as candidate for the Patriotic Party whose campaign platform is "mano dura" or a "strong hand" against crime. Human rights activists say impunity for atrocities committed during the war by troops commanded by still-powerful figures like Perez Molina has weakened the Guatemalan justice system and failed to put an end to extra-judicial killings. At the height of the war, Perez Molina directed soldiers in a northern highland area where a U.N.-backed truth commission held the army responsible for over 300 massacres of mostly Mayan Indian civilians. "Otto Perez Molina should be in front of a judge but instead he is a congressman and running for president," said human rights investigator Gustavo Meono. Some 250,000 people died in the decades of fighting. The truth commission found over 85 percent of war crimes were committed by the security forces, most during the early 1980s rule of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. Nobel peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu charged Rios Montt with genocide in Spanish courts but the aging former leader has avoided capture. While the peace accords called for a complete overhaul and downsizing of the Guatemalan security forces, some say the reform was never completed with corruption rife in police and army ranks. Guatemala is a major trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States and some soldiers and police have been involved in drug smuggling. The head of Guatemala's anti-drug agency unit was arrested in the United States in 2005 for drug trafficking. The economy is expected to grow after Guatemala's recent integration into the Central American Free Trade Agreement but most indigenous people still have little access to health care and education. President Oscar Berger comes from the sugar-growing elite and has focused on backing pro-business reforms. Guatemala has the highest rate of malnourished children in the Western Hemisphere and ranks sixth in the world for chronic malnutrition, according to UNICEF. "Now there is less fear," said Ana Seto, 40, an Ixil-speaking Mayan woman with no front teeth who sells handicrafts to tourists in the Quiche department. But, she said, "We are just as poor as we ever were."
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