Yesterday, the Vice-President of Guatemala, by order of the Inter-american Court of Human Rights, made a visit to a village in the highlands called Plan de Sanchez to apologize officially for the army's atrocities there during the early eighties . Some people say this is too little, too late, but I regard it as the first step towards forgiving and forgetting. It's really too bad that it took this long, but better late than never. It seems to me that the Berger administration is taking greater steps in this regard than any of Guatemala's other, corrupt governments.
I know this fact because I went straight to the Prensa Libre (Guatemalan newspaper) website and read it. It was also on Yahoo! news. Neither the BBC, the New York Times, nor the Washington Post even mentioned the event, and I read those front to back. How convenient to not let the world know about the positive things that happen in Latin America. But when a van full of missionaries gets attacked, it makes the front fucking page.
In other positive Guatemala news, ex-President of Guate. Alfonso Portillo, one of the most corrupt leaders in the country's history is about to land in jail, hopefully. A warrant has finally been issued for his arrest for stealing $16,000,000 by diverting the money from the finance to the defense department where he very cleanly pocketed the money. I think there's a lot more there, but something is better than nothing and like Malcolm said, by any means possible.
2 comentarios:
I agree with you 100%. It is at least a first step, and our newspapers are irresponsible when it comes to reporting important things like that. Cool post.
I don´t think people (specially Guatemalans) realize how much of a big deal what the vicepresident did was.
From a legal perspective, this step opens the flood gates to a river of lawsuits. This alone would generate so much debate that it would allow for the true history of the country to be known, at last. I think that would be a really good thing.
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