I feel the need to add a footnote here. I no longer live in Guatemala so I can't continue Guatemala Gulps. Its just not the same writing about a place from the other side of the globe.
I was so overwhelmed in the months before I left that I couldn't find a topic small enough to write on for this blog. I followed a major corruption/murder case involving the assassination in Guatemala of 3 Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament, followed by the arrest of four members of the National Civil Police for their murder, followed by the assassination of those same four police while being held in custody.... but it was too big. It was, and still is, a book. I hope I write it, but I hope I can write it with hope.
Guatemala is especially in my mind because today it is the second and final vote in the Presidential election. The trouble is, I'm no longer sure it makes much difference who is elected President. The river of corruption seems to run so deep and so wide that these democratic institutions have started to look to me like bobbing paper boats. I hope this is just a passing bout of cynicism and that I'll soon regain my faith in the ability of Guatemala's own people to make themselves a better future. Because they are amazingly resilient people and I don't want to forget that, with the distance that comes from reading news analysis rather than the reality of daily contact.
My experience of writing about Guatemala, where I lived for more than two years, was that the better I got to know the place the harder it was to write about it. Things that seemed clearcut at first, became tangled. The versions of history I read were crumpled around the edges in conversation. People who were cautious at first, started to tell me their real stories and views. Anything I wrote started to look like a photo-kit portrait of a good friend or loved one.
It wasn't my choice to live in Guatemala, but it was an arranged marriage that grew into love.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Travails with my ants
This is not exactly a commentary or snippet of Guatemalan life. But it is about Guatemalan ants, so I guess that qualifies.
Last night in my kitchen I was surprised to see a sunflower seed propelling itself across the floor. When I bent down to look I could see it was being pushed by three tiny ants. They were struggling, but kept it moving in a more-or-less a northwesterly direction, while I watched.
Then a fourth ant arrived. Instead of shouldering the burden it ran around to each of the three ants that were carrying the seed, dodging in an out as they marched. Then it circled around the whole operation. ‘Oh’, I thought, ‘here’s the overseer ant.’
Oddly enough, seconds after the arrival of the overseer ant, the seed started moving forward in a different way. Instead of moving forward with the seed straight, it began to rotate forward. The three worker ants were now walking anti-clockwise, rotating the seed and moving it forward at the same time. It seemed to me it was progressing faster, and still in the same direction with this new circular motion, although I did wonder if all that circling could be so efficient.
Then the whole thing stopped rotating and sped up even more. I couldn’t locate the overseer ant for a moment, then I realized it had taken a share of the load. The four of them, pushing together, quickly disappeared under the kitchen bench.
‘And the moral of the story is?’
‘Ummm…There’s more than one way for a bunch of ants to move a sunflower seed?’
Last night in my kitchen I was surprised to see a sunflower seed propelling itself across the floor. When I bent down to look I could see it was being pushed by three tiny ants. They were struggling, but kept it moving in a more-or-less a northwesterly direction, while I watched.
Then a fourth ant arrived. Instead of shouldering the burden it ran around to each of the three ants that were carrying the seed, dodging in an out as they marched. Then it circled around the whole operation. ‘Oh’, I thought, ‘here’s the overseer ant.’
Oddly enough, seconds after the arrival of the overseer ant, the seed started moving forward in a different way. Instead of moving forward with the seed straight, it began to rotate forward. The three worker ants were now walking anti-clockwise, rotating the seed and moving it forward at the same time. It seemed to me it was progressing faster, and still in the same direction with this new circular motion, although I did wonder if all that circling could be so efficient.
Then the whole thing stopped rotating and sped up even more. I couldn’t locate the overseer ant for a moment, then I realized it had taken a share of the load. The four of them, pushing together, quickly disappeared under the kitchen bench.
‘And the moral of the story is?’
‘Ummm…There’s more than one way for a bunch of ants to move a sunflower seed?’
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The cycle continues
Since coming back to Guatemala after a month away I've been struck by the way the same things seem to keep happening...
Another bank went bust - the Banco Comercio - due to the intervention of the national banking regulator. Like Bancafe last year, this was again because of high-risk offshore investments, and again the investors will be unlikely ever to see their money again.
El Periodico managed to create a big scandal out of nothing when it made veiled accusations that the UN Development Program was involved in corrupt government contracting. In fact they produced no evidence of this, other than the fact that UNDP does indeed manage some large internationally funded projects, and that the funds for these are of course channelled through the organization. As someone commented, it was as if the journalist re-used the copy from last year's scandal involving the International Organization for Migration, and changed the names. Its a pity they put so much energy into beating up non-existent issues when there is so much actual corruption in every area of public life. But it is easier to target foreign organizations. Apart from anything else, they don't make death threats when they get bad press.
The Constitutional Court suspended the operation of a new tax clause intended to fund old-age pensions for people without other retirement funds. The government has said they are looking into how they can now find the funds to start the scheme.
This is the year of Guatemalas' Presidential and Congressional elections, so in reality very little is going to get done between now and November. Already senior public administrators have been resigning en masse so that they can run for election. They are being replaced with caretakers until the end of the year, who will then be replaced by appointees of the new government from January 2008. As with some other Latin Amercian countries, it appears there's no such thing as a professional civil service. All is politics, so each time there's a new President there's virtually a clean sweep, losing organizational history and requiring the reinvention of the wheel every four years (or really 3 + 1).
If the last election year in 2003 is anything to go by, there is also likely to be an increase in street protests and general violence, culminating in the week prior to the November elections. Many private schools will schedule a week's closure at that time (government system schools will already be on vacation), both for reasons of security and logisitics - ie you can't get the buses through when the streets are blocked.
At this stage few Presidential candidates have emerged, but a couple have been on the stage for some time. One of them is Otto Perez Molino, a conservative of the Patriotic Party (Partido Patriota). He is running on a a platform of 'urge mano dura', ie push for the hard-handed approach to criminal violence. It is easy to see his appeal, as personal security is the major issue for middle class and wealthy Guatemalans, as well as for many poor Guatemalans trying to live and make a living in areas run by organized criminal gangs - the 'maras' or 'pandillas'. Plausible estimates put the number of private security personnel at 100,000 compared with 20,000 police in Guatemala, in a population of 12 million. It is natural that this is important to people. After all, what is the use of civil liberties and other human rights if there is a real daily threat to your right to life? But the problem is that the hard handed approach doesn't seem to have worked anywhere in the world (with the possible exception of NYNY under Guiliani?). First of all it takes huge amounts of resources - a large well-trained and 'clean' police force, an efficient and non-corrupt system of criminal justice, and a very capacious and secure prison system, as well as human rights protections for those who suffer abuse of process (though some may think this is an optional extra). I'm afraid it is pretty clear Guatemala is lacking in all of these fundamentals. Besides, cracking down on organized crime is only going to work if it goes right to the top and as long as it doesn't do that, and as long as there are hoardes of unemployed, poor young men with nothing better to do than join the gangs, the source of the problem is not going to go away.
So what would my Presidential campaign be? "OK folks, its time to pay some taxes! And what will we do with them? We'll educate all your kids - provide universal access to primary, secondary, technical and university education - support your old folks, build hospitals and community health centres all around the country, train and resource your police force, create an extensive, efficient and incorruptible judiciary, wrest control of the prison system from the criminal gangs, cut back on military spending, regulate fireams, introduce a proper system of land ownership and land use regulation in the regions (and a spot of redistribution while we're at it), enforce minimum standards for employment conditions and wages, establish mechanisms to appeal against race, gender and other discriminatioon... ummm anything else?'
I'm starting to sound familiar to myself....
Would anyone vote for me I wonder? Evo Morales perhaps? No, wait, he's in Bolivia...
Mariposa Pesada
Another bank went bust - the Banco Comercio - due to the intervention of the national banking regulator. Like Bancafe last year, this was again because of high-risk offshore investments, and again the investors will be unlikely ever to see their money again.
El Periodico managed to create a big scandal out of nothing when it made veiled accusations that the UN Development Program was involved in corrupt government contracting. In fact they produced no evidence of this, other than the fact that UNDP does indeed manage some large internationally funded projects, and that the funds for these are of course channelled through the organization. As someone commented, it was as if the journalist re-used the copy from last year's scandal involving the International Organization for Migration, and changed the names. Its a pity they put so much energy into beating up non-existent issues when there is so much actual corruption in every area of public life. But it is easier to target foreign organizations. Apart from anything else, they don't make death threats when they get bad press.
The Constitutional Court suspended the operation of a new tax clause intended to fund old-age pensions for people without other retirement funds. The government has said they are looking into how they can now find the funds to start the scheme.
This is the year of Guatemalas' Presidential and Congressional elections, so in reality very little is going to get done between now and November. Already senior public administrators have been resigning en masse so that they can run for election. They are being replaced with caretakers until the end of the year, who will then be replaced by appointees of the new government from January 2008. As with some other Latin Amercian countries, it appears there's no such thing as a professional civil service. All is politics, so each time there's a new President there's virtually a clean sweep, losing organizational history and requiring the reinvention of the wheel every four years (or really 3 + 1).
If the last election year in 2003 is anything to go by, there is also likely to be an increase in street protests and general violence, culminating in the week prior to the November elections. Many private schools will schedule a week's closure at that time (government system schools will already be on vacation), both for reasons of security and logisitics - ie you can't get the buses through when the streets are blocked.
At this stage few Presidential candidates have emerged, but a couple have been on the stage for some time. One of them is Otto Perez Molino, a conservative of the Patriotic Party (Partido Patriota). He is running on a a platform of 'urge mano dura', ie push for the hard-handed approach to criminal violence. It is easy to see his appeal, as personal security is the major issue for middle class and wealthy Guatemalans, as well as for many poor Guatemalans trying to live and make a living in areas run by organized criminal gangs - the 'maras' or 'pandillas'. Plausible estimates put the number of private security personnel at 100,000 compared with 20,000 police in Guatemala, in a population of 12 million. It is natural that this is important to people. After all, what is the use of civil liberties and other human rights if there is a real daily threat to your right to life? But the problem is that the hard handed approach doesn't seem to have worked anywhere in the world (with the possible exception of NYNY under Guiliani?). First of all it takes huge amounts of resources - a large well-trained and 'clean' police force, an efficient and non-corrupt system of criminal justice, and a very capacious and secure prison system, as well as human rights protections for those who suffer abuse of process (though some may think this is an optional extra). I'm afraid it is pretty clear Guatemala is lacking in all of these fundamentals. Besides, cracking down on organized crime is only going to work if it goes right to the top and as long as it doesn't do that, and as long as there are hoardes of unemployed, poor young men with nothing better to do than join the gangs, the source of the problem is not going to go away.
So what would my Presidential campaign be? "OK folks, its time to pay some taxes! And what will we do with them? We'll educate all your kids - provide universal access to primary, secondary, technical and university education - support your old folks, build hospitals and community health centres all around the country, train and resource your police force, create an extensive, efficient and incorruptible judiciary, wrest control of the prison system from the criminal gangs, cut back on military spending, regulate fireams, introduce a proper system of land ownership and land use regulation in the regions (and a spot of redistribution while we're at it), enforce minimum standards for employment conditions and wages, establish mechanisms to appeal against race, gender and other discriminatioon... ummm anything else?'
I'm starting to sound familiar to myself....
Would anyone vote for me I wonder? Evo Morales perhaps? No, wait, he's in Bolivia...
Mariposa Pesada
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