Crises

Two crises have shaken Guatemala this month. In a video shot before his death, a lawyer for a person who had accused the Guatemalan president, Alvarez Colom, and his family of siphoning money off of government-funded development programs that they help run, accused the president of being behind his killing. The lawyer apparently made the statement in case he was later killed, and associates released it after he was indeed killed (May 10). Protests and counterprotests have subsequently rocked the country.

Critics of the president have called for his prosecution, while supporters of the president have defended him. Colom, who won election in 2007 on a rural development platform, is Guatemala’s first center-left president since 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup toppled the then president. Colom and his allies have for months accused people with links to the general whom Colom defeated in the 2007 election and with links to the military and drug cartels of trying to destabilize the country. Colom has also asked the FBI and the United Nations commission investigating lawlessness in Guatemala to investigate the killings. Click here to read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/world/americas/22guatemala.html

Pictured above are protests (with the slain lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, pictured on the banners) and below is President Colom. Click here to see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC_ODpxMA10

Earlier this week an earthquake shook eastern Honduras, Guatemala, and Honduras. Although the earthquake and aftershocks knocked out a bridge in Guatemala and destroyed at least a couple of hundred homes in the Izabal area, our friends around El Estor have told us by e-mail that the earthquake did not do damage around there. Not sure if that means Livingston and Puerto Barrios (where two Estoreño Presbytery congregations are located) are unscathed too.

-- Perry