Ambient audio: Antigua, Guatemala, at night.

(Images: Ivan Castro)

Click on the embedded audio below, and you'll hear a 10-minute chunk of ambient sound I taped one night in the old colonial city of La Antigua (literally, "The Old"), Guatemala: centuries-old church bells, popping firecrackers, rumbling mopeds, and a Kakchikel Maya family walking home on ancient cobblestone streets.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

[Browser-compatibility note -- The audio link in this post appears as embedded Flash, and is brought to you by our sponsor: HP's iPaq 510 Voice Messenger. If your web reader doesn't allow you to access Flash, here's a direct MP3 Link. ]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I taped this outside my bedroom window there in November, 2006, while in the country working on a series of reports for NPR News. I'd been out in the field all day taping interviews. I was sun-fried, road-weary, hunched over a Marantz digital audio recorder and backing up what I'd taped that day to portable hard drives, ipods, and CDs for redundant safekeeping.

I heard a bunch of loud explosions -- pulled off my headphones for a sec -- an escalating cluster of pop pop pop, again and again, and the churchbells ringing nonstop. WTF? Firecrackers are familiar sounds there, lit for any and every birthday or saint's day, any excuse it seems. But the bells were just going and going and going this time. Some big Catholic holiday? An emergency? Are those guns mixed in with the firecracker sounds? Couldn't figure it out, and neither could the family in whose home I was staying.

Anyway, the editors and producers I learn from at NPR always tell me, tape first, ask questions later. So I stuck my mic out the window and hit "record."

Never did figure out exactly what was going on.

But when I listen to this recording now, it transports me back. I keep this file in my iTunes playlist and fall asleep to it sometimes. I remember the things that filled my senses, while falling asleep there: warm tortillas cooking over wood fires; copal resin burning in the church next door; cool breezes from nearby pine forests; diesel fumes from overburdened trucks; and the volcan de fuego puffing ash and intermittent red sparks off in the distance.

I hope you enjoy it. I love this old place like you might love a person. This sound reminds me of that.

- - - - - - - - - -

PHOTOGRAPHS of nighttime Antigua, Guatemala in this post ganked from the flickr stream of Ivan Castro, a prolific and (obviously) very talented photographer based in Guatemala.

Related: Link to an archive of my posts from the road in Guatemala.

March for civil war "desaparecidos" in Guatemala: photos

Snip from independent photojournalist James Rodriguez' first-person account of a demonstration that took place in Guatemala City on June 30:

The March for Remembrance, organized by H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetfulness and Silence) [ Ed.: in Spanish, "hijos" means "children" ] , brought a number of activists and families of victims from the civil war together with the goal of halting the parade which commemorated the 136th annual Military Day.

The demonstration congregated in Jocotenango Park, formerly Morazan Park, in Zone 2 of the Capital City. Those drawn on the sheets represent only a small fraction of the more than 200,000 victims killed during the 36 year internal conflict.

A member of H.I.J.O.S. waves a flag depicting the image of one of the many victims killed by Guatemalan security forces during the civil war. In many cases, the person represented on the flag is the flag-waver’s own father or mother.

(...) Meanwhile, the military parade continued just a block behind the anti-riot forces.

Today is not for celebrating
It’s for struggling and protesting
Because forgiving is not enough
Those who carried on genocide must pay (...)

Who kidnaps, tortures and assassinates?
The Genocidal Army.
Children of the motherland, Children of the Quetzal,
Which son of a bitch took my father?

A demonstrator, while still recovering from the effects of tear gas, adjusts a homemade gas mask in case of a second skirmish.

Link 1, Link 2 (English), Versión en Español aquí.

James Rodriguez has many, many photosets on Flickr, including 11+ from Guatemala (where he's based). You might just want to start at the top of the stream and scroll back, tons of absolutely incredible photography in here. (Gracias, Margarita).

Snip from an advisory about "HIJOS," dated 2000, from Amnesty International:

HIJOS is a new human rights group, made up of young people, many of them students, who were children when their parents were ''disappeared'', killed or massacred and have joined together recently, some of them returning from exile, to try and establish what happened to their parents and who was responsible for it. They also want to help educate the new generation in Guatemala about what happened during the years of repression. Amnesty International shares their view, that understanding what happened, who was responsible and who allowed it to happen are vital in efforts to make sure that no such future violations will be either repeated or tolerated.

HIJOS work to discover the fate of their family members who were victims of the civil conflict which raged in Guatemala over a period of more than 30 years. Before the conflict was formally ended with the signing of the final Peace Accords in 1996, it is estimated that some 200,000 people were extrajudicially executed or ''disappeared'' at the hands of the Guatemalan security services or the civil patrols and so-called ''death squads'' acting under their command. The number of cases where the perpetrators have been identified and brought to justice can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Previous BoingBoing posts about Guatemala: Link.

Guatemala: very large earthquake

I just spoke to a friend in Guatemala who says there's just been a very large seismic event -- at or over 7.2, is what local news says. No official reports of injury or damage, and no report from Guatemala's institute of Seismology. I'm hearing it was centered near the southern coastal area of Escuintla, 70 miles away from the capital, Guatemala City -- and that the quake was very deep, but they're not expecting tsunamis.

I spent the better part of the last month working on a documentary series in Guatemala. The area where this quake hit was heavily waterlogged from intense rains over the last few weeks, there was flooding and some small mudslides... I wonder if there will be reports of further damage of that kind, it's possible that a quake this strong would dislodge wet soil.

I've spoken to a number of people on the phone since the quake hit, and it was felt in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala City, and as far north as some of the small indigenous towns in the upper part of the department of Sololá.

The quake just happened within the past hour.

Update: Reuters says 6.8: Link (in Spanish). Ah, here's a CNN report (thanks, Seth Rosner). The quake hit at 3:29PM ET, 1:29PM Guatemala Time. People felt it as far away as Mexico and the capital city in El Salvador, and the activity even registered on seismographs 1,800 miles away (!) on Midway Island.

Early reports indicated some homes were damaged and people may be missing, journalist Patzy Vazquez told CNN en Español. Torrential rains have made telephone communication difficult, hampering efforts of rescuers trying to reach the region. The USGS has received no confirmed reports of damage or casualties, and no immediate reports of aftershocks, the agency's Rafael Abreu told CNN. As a precaution, authorities were evacuating high-rise buildings and homes that might be vulnerable to damage if there were any aftershocks.

(map image ganked from cnn.com)

Central America: snapshots from the road

I'm grabbing a bunch of little detail snapshots while I'm wandering around through Central America. Here's the growing flickr set of little stuff that adds up to my memory of texture here. Most of what's uploaded now is from urban areas, though I've been elsewhere, too. Includes: internet laundry, tortillas and more tortillas, a bus named Daniela, telephone utility covers in the street, an interesting "no pets" sign, local citizen journalism, baby cocos, coca cola chickens, trompe l'oeil en el mercado, political paint jobs, lots of patterns to recognize, ethanol rides, pan dulce, economic indicators, footwear for honkys, and salas de video juegos.

Central America: notes from the road -- Palenque, old books, DNA

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) -- "It is by no means improbable that these fantastic forms, and others equally whimsical, were the delineations of some of their deities, to whom they paid an idolatrous worship, consistent with their false belief and barbarous customs."

Here's a post on the excellent Bibliodyssey blog that points to a collection of texts at Mesoweb about the Mayan ruins at Palenque.

Referenced publications include a scholarly work about evidence of physical deformities that may have been genetically transmitted as a result of heavy intermarriage within the god-king class in preColumbian Mayan society.

Physical Deformities in the Ruling Lineage of Palenque, and the Dynastic Implications," By Merle Greene Robertson and Marjorie S. Rosenblum Scanidizzo and John R. Scandizzo.

Central America: Notes from the road

Image: snapshot of a religious poster in Antigua, Guatemala -- blood-soaked Christ. (Link 1, Link 2 / Xeni).

I'm in Central America for a few weeks -- in Guatemala right now following up on stories I reported earlier this year for NPR, and exploring others.

Where I am right now, the coffee and wifi flow freely, wisps of smoke puff out of the volcan de fuego nearby, and all is well.

A quick skim through TV and the daily papers today (Prensa Libre, Siglo 21, and the like) shows several top stories as common themes. I'll recap them quickly here.

Much of what's in the news in Guatemala right now involves the upcoming presidential elections in September. TV and radio are saturated with campaign ads. Concerns over transparency and potential electoral fraud are high (not that we'd have any such worries in the US).

Crime is the dominant theme in the Guatemalan election campaigns, and it's a big problem here. A number of particularly violent attacks have taken place on public transportation in the nation's capital, Guatemala City, in recent weeks. People are asking if some of the attacks may have been orchestrated with political motives, because a climate of destabilization could help certain political parties running on a law and order platform. Billboards everywhere for one party promise "a strong hand" against crime. Some folks I've spoken with fear that this could presage an abandonment of human rights protections hard-won in peace accords after Guatemala's 36-year civil war. Link.

"El femicidio." The ongoing, growing problem of murder and violent sexual crimes against women. Nearly 600 killed in Guatemala in the past year, according to one source. Thousands of cases in the past few years, too few resources dedicated to investigating and punishing the crimes, and almost no criminal convictions.

Amnesty International released a statement about the widespread violence against women in Guatemala recently, and this was covered in local papers this week. More here.

Editorials in Guatemalan papers and conversations with people who work on this issue generally come down to this idea: the femicide epidemic is the direct, logical result of decades of impunity for human rights violations committed during the civil war. "The highest officials in our country got away with torture, disappearances, and murder for nearly four decades, and still walk among us as free men" one human rights worker told me, "of course impunity leads to more violence."

I haven't seen the Canadian documentary film "Killer's Paradise" yet, but it sounds like a truly worthy project. The director, Giselle Portenier, has been following the story closely for years. Here's the film's official website, and here's the trailer.

Efraín Ríos Montt, the former head of a military regime responsible for some of the worst atrocities during Guatemala's civil war, is running for office again. Several Guatemalan papers ran op-eds this week from people who are basically asking (summarizing with some editorial liberty here): "WTF? How can this mass murderer be running for office again? Are we insane, that our country could even consider this -- when he should be in jail for war crimes?" Link to related item.

Police in El Salvador this week found the corpses of two young men identified as gay, and four (or more?) women identified as sex workers, in a house near the capital. The young people who died were tortured, sexually assaulted, then killed in particularly violent ways, according to news reports here. Some of the bodies were smashed, then half-buried under large rocks. Much discussion about the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and of sex workers. I can't find the story online, but read it in a cafe this morning. It ran with a photo of the father of one victim, crying as he recognized the body of his child.

Reports of violence, break-ins, theft, death threats, and killings of human rights workers are on the rise in Guatemala: Link. Some of the most recent victims include people who work to protect the Mayan biosphere (an ecological protection zone), others who are working for the rights of indigenous farmers/peasants, and a group that provides legal support to people seeking justice on behalf of relatives killed in massacres during Guatemala's internal armed conflict.

Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan fried chicken franchise with an international cult following, is taking over the world. They're launching sites in China and Indonesia now, and this report says they've opened 600 sites in the past 7 years: Link. Overhead bins on the flights from Guatemala City to LAX are always packed with family-sized cartons of the stuff. To me, the stuff tastes like D-list KFC, but -- (shrugs).

Image above: from a series of Guatemalan street life photographs by Atlanta-based photojournalist Allen Sullivan.

Sandra Guamux, 21, sits with her 5 month old son, Alfredo, at an abandoned gas station in Zona 4 of Guatemala City. About 20 otherwise homeless people live inside the station and most are addicted to huffing paint thinner to numb the cold and their hunger pains. Guamux said another baby was stolen from her five days after it was born last year, and she is convinced the baby went into an illegal adoption system. She said that the police told her they would not investigate the situation since she had no photographs of the child.

Adoptions: Guatemala is one of the top "sender" countries for foreign adoptions -- 4,000 Guatemalan babies were adopted by Americans last year. Guatemala signed on to an international adoption treaty this week, committing to bring adoptions under government regulation and make sure babies are not bought or stolen:

Guatemalan law currently allows notaries to act as baby brokers who recruit birth mothers, handle paperwork and complete foreign adoptions in less than half the time it takes in other countries.

But U.S. officials have urged Guatemala to tighten up the procedure amid concern brokers were paying or threatening mothers to give up their babies.

Link. In some of the Mayan communities I've visited here -- extremely poor places where this is a big problem -- the phenomenon is known as "el robo de los ninos," the "theft of the children."

The virgin birth of a child to Cheney's gay daughter is totally weird news here. It's all over the tabloids. Guatemala is way Catholic, the Iraq war is extremely unpopular here, nobody likes Cheney, so this news is perceived as bizarre on many levels. Screenshot below.

Guatemala: "tattooed terrorist," "Antichrist" denied entry

It's hard to imagine a country more traditional, and more religious, than Guatemala. For that reason, news that the country is denying entry to a cult leader who tattooes "666" on his arm, calls himself The Antichrist, and whose (alleged) 2 million followers describe him as a living deity -- it's pretty much the last thing you'd expect there.

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda (Wikipedia link) is the head of the Florida-based Growing in Grace church. He runs a 24-hour Spanish-language television network, and hosts a radio program broadcast on 287 stations. This week, he tried to fly on his private jet to Guatemala, where he apparently has a big following, to celebrate his 61st birthday.

But Guatemalan officials flagged him as a terrorist, and say he's a security risk because he provokes conflict with Roman Catholics and evangelicals.

Photo at left (Alexandre Meneghini, AP): A follower of Miranda holds a baby with "SSS" painted on her head. The letters stand for Miranda's motto, "salvo, siempre salvo," or "saved, always saved."

Snip from an AP story:

He often takes aim at the Catholic Church — the most powerful faith in Latin America — calling all priests child molesters and saying chastity vows go against the Bible's teachings. Members of his church have torn up images of saints and other religious symbols in El Salvador, and marched in Guatemala and Honduras.

He preaches that sin and the devil do not exist. In January, he revealed tattoos of the numbers 666 on his forearms and declared that he and his followers were Antichrists because their beliefs supersede those of Jesus Christ. The Bible describes the Antichrist as someone who will fill the world with wickedness but be conquered by a second coming of Christ.

Despite the Guatemalan government's security block, his supporters say...

"It has been predestined, and angels will make it happen," said Axel Poessy, Miranda's media director. "He is, after all, God himself."

Link to that AP story. Well, that didn't work out. Miranda was indeed denied entry to Guatemala. Miranda spun the story of the nixed visit as his choice:

He had vowed to defy the ban but canceled Saturday and will instead address the gathering in a video teleconference, said the sect's head pastor in Guatemala, Jorge Batres. "We're a church respectful of the law and we will have to wait until the judge gives us an injunction," Batres said.

Batres said De Jesus Miranda's Guatemalan followers will "firmly fight within the law so that he can come and let the world know that Jesus the Man is in Guatemala."

Link.

The church's website appears to be a very important part of their "Antichrist ministry."

The most interesting part of the site, to me, is this photo gallery documenting "Day of the Tattoo," where followers of de Miranda all got tattoos of "666" and "SSS" ("salvo, siempre salvo") on their bodies to proclaim their faith.

Related posts on BoingBoing:

Xeni's NPR series "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future"

Xeni's notes from the road in Guatemala

Mayan priests to "purge" Iximche after Bush's visit

Guatemala: Photos from indigenous protest of Bush visit

More BB posts about Guatemala

(via Warren Ellis)

Guatemala: Photos from indigenous protest of Bush visit

Click on any of the photos in this post to view a larger (900 px wide) version.
(image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4).

Allen Sullivan, a photojournalist currently working in Guatemala who shot these images, says:

These images were made in Tecpán, Guatemala on Monday, March 12. US President Bush, Guatemala President Oscar Berger and their entourages visited the nearby Mayan historical site, Iximché, while Bush was on his Latin American tour.

I was working with Marc Lacey, a New York Times writer, the previous week on a story about child labor in Guatemala. On the day of Bush's visit, I decided to head to Tecpán instead of Guatemala City because I knew there would be protests there, too, and I wanted something that said "Guatemala" more than another riotous metropolis like those in his previous stops.

My assistant and I had little trouble getting there, even though they were closing the road to Tecpán well before Bush arrived. The police here seem to have much more respect for the press than some I've encountered in the US. Marc tried to head to Guatemala City, but got tied up in crazy roadblocks and traffic. He turned around to join me in Tecpán.

I've covered heated demonstrations before in the US, but this was my initiation to doing so in Guatemala. I had a few reservations about how I would be perceived by the demonstrators. Turns out I had no trouble at all from them, the police or the army. Oddly, a Brazilian photographer did get a bit of trouble from the crowd, but I'm not sure exactly why.

All in all the demonstrations were peaceful, but of course boisterous at times. They were made up of indigenous groups, farmers co-ops, and various others with mostly leftist leanings. A local boy told me he'd never seen any of them in Tecpán; seems they mostly came from other parts of the country. They tried to get past the police blocks at times by taking back routes, but to no avail. It was half protest, half party.

The "high point" for the demonstrators was when Bush's motorcade speed down through the road to Tecpán. Slogans yelled, fingers flipped, signs waved, etc., but no violence. Forty-five minutes of rest and the motorcade returned the other way, the fingers and shouts again. Not long after, everyone dispersed. I heard two people were arrested near the site itself, but otherwise I know of no incidents. Protests are quite common here and sort of expected.

It was said that some Mayan priests were going to "cleanse" Iximché after the presidents' visit, but I hung out there for a while and didn't see anything like that.

Previously:

Xeni's NPR series "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future"

NPR Xeni Tech - Reporter's notebook: Guatemala

A five-part series I produced with the NPR News program Day to Day, "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future," concludes with this "reporter's notbook" -- an overview of how innovative uses of technology are creating change in this Central American nation. From forensic scientists using DNA to identify death squad victims, to digital archivists preserving once-secret police documents from the civil war, to grassroots infrastructure tech providing electricity and clean water to Mayan villages.

Link to part 5 on Day to Day, "Technology in Guatemala: An Overview."

"Xeni Tech" home, and podcast feed. Here's a reporter's notebook blog with more background on these stories: Link.

Previously:

Guatemala: Xela Teco Builds Grassroots Tech (part 4)

Guatemala: Digital archives may help find "disappeared." (part 3)

Guatemala: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala (part 2)

Guatemala: A Database for the Dead. (part 1)

IMAGES: 2007, Xeni Jardin, under this cc license. Top: a macaw on the grounds of a luxury hotel in Antigua, Guatemala. Center: I'm standing with Gustavo Cosme of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), inside a room where they store boxes of human remains of death squad victims, prior to reburial. Bottom: a centuries-old monk's skull, at the site of a 15th century monastery in Antigua.

NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala Project Builds Grassroots Tech

Today on NPR "Day to Day," the fourth of a 5-part report I brought back from Central America -- "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future." In the series, we learn how new technology is being used to solve old problems, and this fourth segment is all about infrastructure tech devices hecho a mano -- made by hand -- in Guatemala.

Link to today's episode, "Grassroots Technology at Xela Teco," with streaming audio (Real/Win), and some short video clips. MP3 Link. Link to narrated slideshow. Here are more photos: Link.

Link to series home page.

"Xeni Tech" home, and podcast feed. Here's a reporter's notebook blog with more background on these stories: Link

Many of Guatemala's rural indigenous communities lack infrastructure basics such as clean drinking water, sanitation and electricity.

A group of American eco-engineers in the United States from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group is working with a number of Mayan villages to change that.

At Xela Teco, a workshop in the town of Quetzaltenango (or Xela for short), tech-minded Guatemalans build eco-friendly devices. The workshop is a small business supported by the U.S.-based nonprofit Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group.

Xela Teco builds environmentally friendly technology that can be used to bring survival basics to poverty-stricken villages in the Mayan highlands: clean water, electricity and fuel.

While Americans are part of the Xela Teco effort right now, their goal is to step aside. The hope is that arming rural communities with certain skill sets will help break a cycle of poverty, disease and malnutrition.

If the effort is successful, Xela Teco may end up becoming a blueprint for the future of development work.

IMAGES: 2007, Xeni Jardin. SPECIAL THANKS to Alex Lee, a longtime BoingBoing reader who emailed and suggested this story in the first place! (Link

Previously:

NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala: Digital archives may help find "disappeared." (part 3)

NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala (part 2)

NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala: A Database for the Dead. (part 1)

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: digital archives may help find "disappeared."

Today on NPR "Day to Day," the third of a 5-part report I brought back from Central America -- "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future." In the series, we learn how technology is being used to solve historic problems in Guatemala.

Link to today's episode, "Guatemalan Archives May Help Locate Missing," with streaming audio (Real/Win), and some short video clips. Link to series home page.

Link to narrated slideshow. Here are more photos: Link.

"Xeni Tech" home, and podcast feed.

- - - - - - - - - -

In rural areas of Guatemala, work is under way to recover and identify remains from mass graves dug during the country's civil war. But in the country's capital city, thousands of people also disappeared. The answers to their fates may lie buried in a massive police archive — one that wasn't supposed to exist.

At a police compound in Guatemala City, each dark room overflows with documents, some as old as 100 years.

These archives may shed light on early US involvement in Guatemala. In 1954, the CIA backed a military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president, and a long series of military dictatorships followed.

The national police were believed to be responsible for so many atrocities during the civil war that their organization was dissolved and replaced by a new institution when the conflict ended.

Buried in this enormous, dingy compound are answers that the Guatemalan people have waited for for decades. The archive was discovered by accident, during an investigation of a munitions dump. For years, authorities denied these archives existed. The space and all it contained were left for the rodents and the bats.

The Project for the Recuperation of the National Police Historic Archives (PRAHPN) works under the Guatemalan government's human rights ombudsman, trying to build a digital library so that the information on these crumbling pages will last. Patrick Ball and the US-based nonprofit Benetech are helping the police archive project -- Benetech produces free, open-source software specifically designed to record and store data about human rights abuses.

IMAGES: 2007, Xeni Jardin.

Previously:

NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala series, Part 2: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala

NPR "Xeni Tech" - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future. Part 1, ""A Database for the Dead."

NPR Xeni Tech: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala

Today on NPR "Day to Day," the second segment in a 5-part series I filed called "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future," about how technology is being used to solve historic problems. Today's piece follows the FAFG, a group of forensic scientists who are working to exhume and identify the remains of victims buried in a mudslide caused by Hurricane Stan.

- - - - - - - - - -

Link to "Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala," a profile on the work of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, with streaming audio (Real/Win).

MP3 Link for today's segment.

Link to narrated slideshow. More photos here.

"Xeni Tech" home, and podcast feed

- - - - - - - - - -

Before the mudslide, there were more than 50 homes in the Tzujutil Mayan village of Panabaj. Now, the houses and hundreds of the people who lived in them are 10 feet underground. Along the edges of the site, makeshift memorials stand as monuments to the dead.

The Guatemalan government cordoned off the zone as a high-risk area, and had no plans to recover the dead. But survivors resisted and joined with the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) to unearth the victims.

For more than a decade, the FAFG has exhumed mass graves from political massacres that took place during Guatemala's decades-long civil war. This time, they are working in the wake of a natural disaster. The country's army has offered to help with the exhumation, but the mudslide survivors have refused. The military killed 13 unarmed civilians in Panabaj in 1990.

Along with tractors to clear the 400,000 square-foot mudslide site, FAFG is using mapping software and other technology to create a secure database on the remains. As of today, the FAFG has uncovered 82 sets of human remains, and identified nearly 60. They believe there may be as many as 500 bodies in all.

IMAGES: Top, FAFG workers exhume victims of the October 5, 2005 mudslide in Panabaj. (photo - courtesy FAFG). | A makeshift memorial marks the site where one family was buried alive (photo - Xeni Jardin) | When a corpse is unearthed, forensic anthropologists with the FAFG radio their tech team for a code that will help to track all that becomes known about the victim. (photo - courtesy FAFG) | 8-year-old Juan Ramirez survived that night, and said villagers at first thought the noise was an airplane, not a mudslide. (photo - Xeni Jardin)

Previously:

NPR "Xeni Tech" - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future. Part 1, ""A Database for the Dead."

NPR "Xeni Tech" - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future (and new podcast)

This week on NPR "Day to Day," a five-part series of reports I brought back from Central America: "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future."

One European visitor in the 1800s called this country "Land of the Eternal Spring," and its volcanoes, ancient ruins, and rich Mayan culture make the place feel mythic even today. But suffering also defines Guatemala, and scars from a decades-long civil war have yet to heal. The war that claimed more than 200,000 lives ended ten years ago, but its lingering effects have left some 80% of the population in poverty. In this series, you'll hear stories from people who are trying to fight that, applying innovative, home-grown technologies to solve old problems.

The first of these reports focuses on a group called the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), a nonprofit comprised of technologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists who unearth mass graves from political massacres. They work to identify the dead and return the remains to their families for dignified reburial. The process begins with the hard work of the exhumation itself, but they also use DNA forensics and software they develop themselves, so they can identify a greater portion of the remains, and preserve evidence that could be used in criminal trials against the perpetrators of these atrocities. FAFG staff routinely deal with death threats from those who do not support their work.

- - - - - - - - - -

Link to "A Database for the Dead," streaming audio (Real/Win).

MP3 Link for today's segment.

Link to narrated slideshow.

Also today, NPR is launching a "Xeni Tech" podcast where these reports (and everything else I file for the network) will be available in DRM-free MP3: Link.

- - - - - - - - - -

Images (2007/Xeni Jardin): Above, FAFG anthropologist Raquel Doradea logs information about another incident -- this information will be entered into their database, along with testimony from survivors. Below, her colleague Patricia Ixcoy works on remains from a 1982 massacre that killed 26 K'iche Maya people in Kanakil, a rural pueblo in the department (think:state) of El Quiché. The bones look charred because the victims were first shot, then set on fire.

Guatemala: E. Howard Hunt and the CIA

E. Howard Hunt Jr. died last week at age 88. The former CIA officer is best known for his role in the bungled 1972 Watergate break-in, which later led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

But Hunt is also linked to a significant turning point in the history of Guatemala: he assisted in the planning and execution of a CIA-backed coup in 1954 ("Operation Success") which overthrew the democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz. Soon after, a decades-long civil war began, and would ultimately claim the lives of more than 200,000 Guatemalans, many of whom were Mayan peasants or dissidents.

Hunt was also involved in the Bay of Pigs incident, and wrote more than 80 spy and detective novels under various pseudonyms: more on that in this NYT story.

Slate has republished an interview he gave A.L. Bardach in 2004. In it, Hunt gloats over his role in the Guatemalan coup and other exploits, including the assasination of Che Guevara. Asked if he had any regrets, Hunt replies, "No, none. [Long pause] Well, it would have been nice to do Bay of Pigs differently."

Slate: So it seems you were the architect for the Guatemalan operation?
Hunt: It was mine because nobody else knew more than I did. I would say that I had more knowledge about it than anybody did. I knew all the players on both sides.

Slate: How did you run the Guatemalan operation?
Hunt: We set up the first Guatemalan operation/shop at Opa-Locka [airport in Miami, formerly an Army base]. There were three barracks, and we used the airstrip to fly in people from Guatemala and to send our people into Guatemala. These were known as "the black flights." They always occurred at night; they are a secret and officially do not exist as having happened.

Slate: Do you think the Guatemala coup went well?
Hunt: Yes—it did. And I'm glad I kept Arbenz from being executed.

Slate: How did you do that?
Hunt: By passing the word out to the people at the airport who had Arbenz to "let him go.

Slate: To whom did you give the word?
Hunt: It was a mixed band of CIA and Guatemalans at the airport and their hatred for him was palpable.

Slate: You were worried they would assassinate him right there?
Hunt: Yeah. … And we'd [the CIA and the United States] get blamed for it.

Slate: Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen?
Hunt: Deaths? What deaths?

Link. Image: Associated Press.

Guatemala: American aid worker killed in traffic accident

Earlier on this blog, I pointed to "Recycled Life," a documentary film by Leslie Iwerks and Mike Glad about an aid organization that helps children who live inside a Guatemala City dump.

The name of that group is Safe Passage, and its founder, 36-year-old Hanley Denning, has been killed in a traffic accident in Guatemala. She was known to many in Guatemala as "La Angel del Basurero," or "the guardian angel of the dump dwellers."

News reports: 1, 2, and here is a Hollywood Reporter story about the bittersweet news that "Recycled Life" has been nominated for a 2007 Academy Award.

Previously:

Guatemala: Recycled Life, film on dump residents

Guatemala: Accused mass murderer Montt to run for congress

Image: anti-Montt grafitti in Guatemala City (2007, Xeni Jardin)

Former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt, who is accused of having ordered the killings of more than 70,000 dissidents and indigenous peasants, has announced that he will run for congress this September. If his campaign continues and succeeds, the move would represent a major setback for an ongoing case against him in Spain, in which he is charged with crimes against humanity (he has so far evaded extradition). Why? Members of congress cannot be prosecuted unless a court suspends them from office.

Snip from AP item:

"I am certain and sure" of getting a seat in Congress, Rios Montt told a news conference. He ran for the presidency in 2004 and came in third.

A Guatemalan court is still considering whether to order the arrest of Rios Montt for crimes allegedly committed while he ran the country from 1982 to 1983. Rios Montt has denied any wrongdoing.

Rios Montt ruled during what was considered the bloodiest period of Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war, in which 200,000, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed or disappeared. Spanish Judge Santiago Pedraz has issued warrants against Rio Montt and others on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention.

The case stems from charges levied in Spanish courts by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu against five ex-military officials and three ex-government officials in the disappearance of Spanish priests and a fire at the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City that killed Menchu's father and 36 others.

Here's a recent story in Guatemala's Prensa Libre newspaper: Link. Amnesty International has issued a statement on Montt's announcement here: Link. Related information: Link to killerfile, Link to Wikipedia entry, here's an excerpt:

Ríos Montt's ties with the United States military go back fifty years when he received training by the Pentagon. In 1950, Ríos Montt graduated as a cadet at the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone, which at the time educated students in counterinsurgency tactics for the purposes of combating potential "communist" influence in the region.

In 1954, the young officer played a minor role in the successful CIA-organized coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who was alleged to have embrace socialist ideologies largely as a result of his efforts to break the economic monopoly of the United Fruit Company, a US firm with strong ties to Washington.

Montt is also an ordained Pentecostal minister. His daughter Zury currently serves as a member of the Guatemalan congress, and is married to the American congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL).

Guatemala: political refugees in US face deportation threat

My NPR News colleague Mandalit del Barco recently filed this report:

Civil war drove hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans to the U.S. two decades ago. Many have sought legal status ever since. Now U.S. authorities are threatening to deport thousands.

Link to audio.

Guatemala: Market Report

Quick walk through the mercado central in Antigua, Guatemala, shot on an Altoids-sized camera. Link to 1:11 video (in Flash or Quicktime).

Guatemala: art in response to "femicides"

Blogger arte-sano writes (my ham-fisted translation of their more eloquent Spanish):

My friend Rosa is an artist of Mexican heritage from the Bay Area who has strong connections to the Guatemalan community. She recently began working on an art project about "femicide" in Guatemala. The project is designed to create awareness of the crimes against women, to create solidarity among the families and friends of the victims, and above all -- to denounce the impunity that prevails in our country [Guatemala] which has allowed to proliferation of this type of violence. Rosa has sent out an invitation to participate in the project, and it occurred to me that by sharing this on my blog, perhaps more people might want to collaborate on this project, so here it is.

Link to full text in Spanish. The artist, Rosa Valdez, can be reached at rosavaldez at hotmail.com.

Background: Amnesty International has more information on femicide in Guatemala here. By various estimates, approximately 2,000 women were murdered in Guatemala from 2001 through March 2006. AI states,

Exceptional cruelty and sexual violence characterize many of the killings. Some of the victims had their throats cut, were beaten, shot or stabbed to death. Many of their bodies show signs of rape, torture, mutilation or dismemberment.

Previous posts:

* Film -- Killer's Paradise
* Thousands of women protest wave of "femicides"

Technorati Tags: art, femicide, guatemala, photos, sex

Guatemala: vintage video about evil volcano near Antigua

Found on archive.org: a sensationalist (and racist) newsreel film from 1934 about indigenous communities that live near the volcan de agua near Antigua, Guatemala. The room where I stayed during my time in Antigua looked out over this "menacing monster volcano." This 72-year-old film is full of offensive comments that reflect the bias of the time -- at one point, the narrator refers to the "semi-barbarous" Mayan people as "human mules" -- but the images of daily life are amazing. In some communities in Guatemala, those daily scenes have changed very little since 1934. Link to "Menace of Guatemala" on archive.org (about 9 minutes long) where you can stream or download.

Technorati Tags: film, guatemala, indigenous, video

Guatemala: vintage video, "Journey To Banana Land"

A corporate promotional video produced by United Fruit Company in 1950, four years before a CIA-backed coup protected that firm's interests in Guatemala by overthrowing democratically-elected leader Jacobo Arbenz.

If the company's foreign policy ambitions had a name: Bananifest Destiny.

Link to archive.org page where you can download or stream the video, which is about 20 minutes long.

Previously:
Guatemala: internet video on CIA role in 1954 coup

Technorati Tags: film, guatemala, indigenous, video

Guatemala: internet video on CIA role in 1954 coup

Was noodling around on YouTube, archive,org, and Google Video for material related to the 1954 CIA-backed coup of democratically elected Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz, and found:

Documentary: "A Coup: Made In America," written by Alan Mendelsohn and Nadine Pequeneza, originally aired in 2001 on Canadian television program "Turning Points of History." Patrick at Guatemalan Solidarity Network blog wrote about this here, and arte-sano (who pointed me to these videos via comment on this blog -- thanks!) wrote about it here. A Google Video embed of one clip is below, but I found a bunch of sections on YouTube, too: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Then-vice-president Nixon says in this clip, below: "In other words, the Arbenz regime was not a Guatemalan government, it was a foreign government controlled by foreigners."

"The CIA in Guatemala, 1954" -- snip from a documentary on U.S. intervention in Guatemala and the 1954 coup, mostly in Spanish. I'm not sure who produced this, but it opens with former CIA agent Philip Agee.

And an odd related find on YouTube -- a bunch of film clips from the 1944 Guatemalan revolution, set to motion over the Radiohead song "Sail to The Moon."

The GSN video blog points to a number of other interesting Guatemala-related video finds online, including more recent documentary films produced by Guatemalan filmmakers: Link.

Technorati Tags: film, guatemala, indigenous, CIA, video

Guatemala: Is "Apocalypto" Racist?

The actual title of the essay in question was "Is 'Apocalypto' Pornography," but IMO that gives perfectly respectable porn a bad name. Here's a critical analysis of Mel Gibson's colonialist co-opting of Mayan history for his latest vanity vehicle. The author is Traci Ardren, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, who...

...has studied Classic Maya society for over 20 years while living in the modern Maya villages of Yaxuna, Chunchucmil, and Espita in the Mexican state of Yucatan. Her credentials include contributing to and editing Ancient Maya Women (2002) and The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica (2006). Ardren's reaction to the new film "Apocalypto," follows. Scholars are well aware that some aspects of Maya culture were violent, but Ardren finds fault with what she sees as a pervasive colonial attitude in the film.

Snip from Ms. Ardren's essay:

Before anyone thinks I have forgotten my Metamucil this morning, I am not a compulsively politically correct type who sees the Maya as the epitome of goodness and light. I know the Maya practiced brutal violence upon one another, and I have studied child sacrifice during the Classic period. But in "Apocalypto," no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities. Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue. This same idea was used for 500 years to justify the subjugation of Maya people and it has been thoroughly deconstructed and rejected by Maya intellectuals and community leaders throughout the Maya area today. In fact, Maya intellectuals have demonstrated convincingly that such ideas were manipulated by the Guatemalan army to justify the genocidal civil war of the 1970-1990s. To see this same trope ab