Yearbook 2010
Guatemala. During the year, as well as its closest
neighbors, the country struggled with the growing violence
and rising murder rates, in Guatemala nearly 50 murders per
100,000 residents. According to
COUNTRYAAH, Guatemala
has a population of 17.25 million (2018). The fight against crime was not made more
effective by the fact that top politicians and police chiefs
were also regularly decided on criminal activities. At the
beginning of the year, President Álvaro Colom, who took
office in 2008, dismissed his fourth Minister of the
Interior, Raúl Velásquez, for corruption and his fourth
police chief, Baltazar Gómez, for involvement in drug
smuggling. At the same time, the UN-backed International
Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) contributed
to the arrest of several police officers for similar crimes.
However, the Commission itself was hit by an internal
crisis in early June, when its chief Carlos Castresana
resigned in protest of President Colom's appointment of
Conrado Reyes as state prosecutor. Castresana accused Reyes
of links to organized crime, but himself was accused of
irregularities.
In May, Guatemala was hit by tropical storm Agatha while
volcano Pacaya erupted. The death toll was relatively low
after Agatha, but 160,000 people were evacuated and a
quarter of a million people were in need of relief as a
result of the destruction of 5-10 percent of the harvests.
In May 2007, the United Nations published a study showing
that the number of homicides in Guatemala had increased by
60% in the previous 5 years. In 2006, almost 6,000 people
had been murdered. Acc. Political scientist Rachel Sieder of
the University of London has several explanations for this
development: «the long-standing tradition of state actors to
hide human rights violations; a weak, corrupt and
ineffective judiciary; and a fundamental lack of confidence
by civil society against the judiciary ».
Despite widespread protests, Guatemala joined the CAFTA
free trade cooperation in 2007, which includes countries in
Central America and the United States.
In the second round of November 2007, the presidential
election was won by center-left candidate Álvaro Colom
Caballeros with 52.7% of the vote. His counterpart was
General Otto Pérez Molina. Caballeros is president of the
Social Democracy-oriented UNE (National Union of Hope). His
father was mayor of Ciudad de Guatemala in the 1970's, but
in 79 he was killed by the military.
Nor did the new president manage to reduce the level of
violence in the country. In 2008 alone, 687 women were
murdered. A large part of them had been raped or shown signs
of torture. Death patrols remain active, security forces
continue to be involved in murders, tortures and
disappearances and enjoy widespread impunity for their
crimes. In the countryside, conflicts over the earth
continue. In 2008, at least 22 families were displaced from
their land.
In May 2010, the Pacaya volcano began spewing rocks and
rocks. The whole of Guatemala City was covered by an 8cm
thick sand and dust layer the following days.
At the September 2011 parliamentary and presidential
elections, PP's Otto Pérez Molina gained 36.0% in the first
round. In second place Manuel Baldizón got 23.2%. Former
Nobel laureate and human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú
was also in the stand, but only in 6th place with only 3.3%.
In the second quake round in November, Molina got 53.7%. He
was inducted into the presidential post in January 2012. The
parliamentary election was a staggering defeat to the
UNE/GANE coalition, which went back 37 seats to 48. In
contrast, PP went 26 seats up to 56. Despite Guatemala's
long string of generals and other officers in the
presidential post, it was the first time it was consumed by
an elected officer. In the 1980's, Molina was an officer of
the notorious Kaibile's elite unit, which left hundreds of
massacres on the civilian population. Since then, he became
chief of military intelligence and then head of defense
under President Ramiro de Leon Carpio. Molina belonged to
the wing of the military who wanted a peace settlement with
the guerrillas. He himself took part in the negotiations and
helped negotiate the 1996 agreement in place. He retired
from active military service in 2000 and formed his own
party of PP in 2001.
In January 2012, former military dictator Efrain Rios
Montt was brought to trial in Guatemala, charged with
genocide. At the inaugural hearing, the prosecution provided
evidence of over 100 massacres, 1771 killings, 1445 rapes
and the displacement of about 30,000 during his 17-month
dictatorship in 1982-83. The prosecution wanted him jailed
because of the risk of him fleeing, but the judge ruled that
he could be released on bail. He was placed under house
arrest and guarded by police. On May 10, 2013 became Rios
Montt found guilty of the charges and sentenced to 80 years
in prison. It was the first time a former head of state was
found guilty of genocide by a national court. The verdict
was subsequently overturned by the Constitutional Court,
which claimed Montt had not been given due process. The case
was due in 2015.
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