Venezuela is offering oil at market prices (abiding by OPEC rules) and offering 90 days to pay 40% of the bill and financing 60% for 25 years at 1% interest. Go and ask the IMF or the World bank for a loan and see what they offer you and under what conditions.

Venezuela offer comes with no conditions and it is also offering costumers to pay with products and services, so that means that the 60% being financed could be pay with beans, rice, bananas or cattle, whatever it is that Guatemala produces.

Chavez also offered to sell 100,000 tons of urea (fetilizer) at a similar deal. This is intended to help the poor and to increase food production in the Petrocaribe countries and to avoid the world’s food crisis caused by the use of food to make ethanol, Agriculture Ministers just concluded a meeting in Honduras regarding food production and Venezuela has asigned $0.50 of every barrel over $100 which will translate in $450,000,0000 annually to support food production.

There is plenty of information in the net about Petrocaribe, do your own research and do not let the main stream media deceive you, after all they are owned by those who have oppressed us for decades.

You’re right. There´s not enough information about Petrocaribe. But WHY?
Why aren´t the media not only not providing accurate details, but deliberately misleading the public with false information?.

Prensa Libre, for example, talks of getting entire generations into debt, but it fails to inform that the current oil bill is being financed with credits at a much higher interest rate. Aren’t the new generations getting in debt this way also? Or couldn’t the money from Petrocaribe be used to pay off more expensive debt?
Isn’t the money invested bringing a rate of return greater than 1%?

The position adopted by Prensa Libre and others is odd to say the least, even for their standards. Even the most staunch right wingers from all over the world acknowledge that Petrocaribe is a good deal. It would be a good deal even if all they do is deposit the money in the bank.

In my opinion, the real reason why the status quo that owns most media in Guatemala opposes Petrocaribe has nothing to do with Petrocaribe and everything to do with the fact that the project comes from Venezuela. And since history shows that they traditionally get their cues from the US embassy, the rabid anti Chavez position shouldn’t be a surprise. Sadly, objectivity and journalistic integrity are nothing but foreign concepts in Guatemala.

By the way, saying that someone is controversial is not exactly neutral. It is often used as a thin veil for a derogatory label in the mind of the labeler.

Cheers