On January 26, the Guatemalan Congress ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, allowing the international tribunal to prosecute any human rights abusers if Guatemala fails to do so; the same day, after years of being shielded by parliamentary immunity, former de facto President Efraín Rios Montt was questioned for his involvement in the genocide of 1,700 Mayan indigenous people in 1982–1983, during Guatemala's thirty-six-year civil war (1960-1996).

Boy stands in front of the names of the victims of genocide. Photo by Renata Avila under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons license.

In the blog SALTLaw, in a post titled “A good dawn for justice in Guatemala,” Raquel Aldana writes about the significance of Rios Montt facing trial for genocide and crimes against humanity:

Today was a historic day for Guatemala. A few hours ago, after a long day of heady hearings, a Guatemalan court opened a criminal case for genocide against Retired Military General Efraín Ríos Montt and ordered him detained under house arrest. Now 85, the retired general must face trial accused of being responsible for one hundred massacres, which produced a death toll of one thousand, seven hundred and seventy one victims. Ríos Montt, who until recently enjoyed immunity after serving nearly two decades as Congressman in Guatemala, had been de facto president during the most brutal 17 months of the 36 year-long civil war, between 1982 and 1983.

She continues reporting on Rios Montt's appearance in court:

When asked in court today if he understood the charges he faced, Ríos Montt said into the microphone “I understand perfectly.” Then, instead of making a formal declaration of guilt or not guilt, he stated a preference for silence. Outside the courthouse today, indigenous Guatemalans laid red rose petals spelling impunity no more. Meanwhile, the Guatemalan Congress ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

On the Council of Foreign Affairs Blog, Natalie Kitroeff lays out Rios Montt's defense.

Ríos Montt has made his defense quite clear. Over the past month, he has repeatedly said that he can’t be tried for any human rights violations because he wasn’t in charge of the military’s on-the-ground operations as the country’s political leader. His lawyer has echoed these claims, telling the press recently, “We are sure that there is no responsibility, since he was never on the battlefield.”

She goes on to explain:

This strategy is a radical new approach in the Guatemalan context. Until now, the military has consistently denied that genocide was ever a part of the civil war. Even the current president, Otto Pérez Molina, said that he doesn’t believe the findings of the UN truth commission, and that he could “prove that [genocide] did not occur,” during the conflict. But Ríos Montt is now arguing not that the atrocities didn’t happen, but that he is not culpable.

While this doesn’t yet amount to an open acknowledgement of genocide, it does suggest that things have changed (if slightly) since the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) first brought charges against Ríos Montt in 1999. The discovery of mass graves by the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) and the tireless work of victims groups in pushing for trials – finally winning convictions for four ex-soldiers this year – has made it untenable for the military to negate the genocide outright, at least in a court of law.

"Wanted. Mejia Victores and Rios Mont for genocide." Graffiti in Guatemala City. Photo by The Advocacy Project under an Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) Creative Commons license

In the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis looks at what Rios Montt's trial means for Guatemala today:

Today, Guatemala faces a new period of instability due to the expansion of drug gangs from Mexico and El Salvador into their country and its unfortunately convenient stop on the drug highway to the United States. Whereas thirty years ago, people wanted to dismantle the police force because of its horrifying repression, today people are putting hope in the police as the one thing that could stand in the way of a new generation of shocking violence. Forcing Ríos Montt to face trial for his crimes is not going to solve any of Guatemala’s enormous problems, but it might at least force the defenders of violence in that nation to think twice about their actions.

Mike, in Central American Politics, reports that Rios Montt was granted bail and will remain under domiciliary arrest during the trial. Mike adds his opinion:

A tremendous victory for the people of Guatemala and a continuation of what I believe has been a pretty remarkable year-plus of human rights advancement in the region.

These two events show that, without turning a blind eye to the past and the terrible atrocities that were committed during the country's civil war, Guatemala seeks to become a country where international human rights standards are respected and enforced. The fact that President Otto Perez Molina, a former Army General, has not interfered with the case and has backed the signing of the Rome Statute gives Guatemalans hope that in the near future justice will arrive earlier, before criminals are dead, or too old or too sick to face trial.

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The Cathedral's website, catedralsansalvador.org, which included pictures of the mural is no longer online.

El Salvador has a bloody history: 75,000 civilians were killed by the armed forces and death squads during the civil war (1980-1992) and the religious community suffered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, the murder and rape of four United States churchwomen, and a massacre of Jesuit priests. The Catholic church was particularly harmed by State violence during this period.

After the signing of a peace agreement, memory and reconciliation became priorities for many citizens. Any act in the opposite direction tends to spark a lot of reactions, as happened recently regarding the controversial destruction of one of the most visible Salvadoran memorials: a mural in the facade of the capital's San Salvador Cathedral. The Internet quickly flooded with shocked comments and calls to actions.

San Salvador Cathedral. Image available on Wikipedia (GNU Free Documentation License).

Kabistan [es] explains on Tumblr:

Esta semana fue destruido sin previo aviso el mural que adornaba la fachada de la Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador;realizado por Fernando Llort; por parte de la autoridades eclesiásticas del recinto; particularmente nunca me ha gustado ni el mural ni la catedral , pero el acto en si es indignante, una falta de respeto para el artista(y la comunidad de artistas en general) que concibió la idea, y las personas que colaboraron en su construcción.

Blogger Mildred Largaespada [es] gathers several reactions and posts pictures of the destroyed mural. She wonders:

Cómo se les ocurrió este atentado contra la autoestima de las y los salvadoreños, la historia de este país, el arte…?

On his website [es], Llort, the artist who created the work as a tribute for peace, describes his work on the Cathedral:

The Catholic Church of El Salvador asked me to design the facade for the Cathedral. This was one of the most inspiring artistic moments of my life, because it meant to me that I was putting my art on a very important symbol of my country, with huge historical significance. It was a work that took us (me and a group of artisans) around one year to finish.

Llort's mural was a symbol of peace, as Linda Raftree states in an extensive post where she explains the meaning of the art work, and draws a timeline of El Salvador's history. In “On pueblo and cathedral, ruin and rebuilding” she writes:

La Armonia de mi Pueblo is the title of the work that Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort created in 1997 to adorn the front of San Salvador’s Cathedral. Armonia is easy to translate into English – it means harmony. Pueblo is a bit more difficult. It’s a term in Spanish that includes the notion of both place and people. It comes from the Latin populus and can refer to a) inhabitants of a nation, country or region who share a similar culture; b) a population that farms in a particular zone (eg., a village or community); or c) the peasant or working class. So in essence, the title of the work is “the Harmony of my People”.

Linda adds:

Church leaders have since apologized to the Llort family and to those who are upset by the surprise removal of the tiles. They contend that they consulted with the congregation of the cathedral, and got their approval to remove the tiles. But the Secretary of Culture has called the Catholic church out for their actions, condemning ’the destruction of the face of the Cathedral,’ and accusing the church of violating the ‘Special Law on Protection of Cultural Patrimony’ which states that ‘although the mural on the Cathedral of San Salvador was not declared a Cultural Site, it was in process of being declared, meaning that under no circumstances should any interventions have been made.’

In his article “Church ripping Llort mural from facade of Cathedral”, blogger Tim provides background information on the prominent artist and also points out the reactions on social networks against the destruction:

The Facebook page of the Fernando Llort Foundation was filled with expressions of sadness and solidarity. Another Facebook page, Indignados por El Mural, is rapidly filling with pictures and comments and anger at the blindness of the church to the meaning of this artwork.

Ironically, pictures of the mural are still included in the San Salvador Cathedral [es] website, together with a description that states that without doubt the mural contributes “a unique personality” to the Cathedral. It also states that the murals are the most meaningful reference of Salvadorean contemporary art.

Blogger Hunnapuh [es] said that it is incredibly disrespectful to destroy such valuable work of art. In his opinion the cathedral should be demolished, because of its authorities' narrow mentality and because he considers the cathedral a terrible work of architecture which the mural somehow helped look less ugly.

However, Copinapitli thinks [es] the Cathedral controversy is just a smoke curtain, distracting citizens from really important issues yet to be addressed, such as the growing violence which resulted in 50 murders in the first four days of the year, the risks of increasing scandals due to a tax reform, and a bad economic situation in general. According to this blogger, such situations deserve more attention from Salvadoran citizens.

Tim blogs that the artist responded to the destruction of the mural and made three requests:

First, he requested that the church make a full and complete explanation of its study and reasons for destroying the mural rather than restoring it. Second, he asked that there be greater recognition in El Salvador of the value and respect due for the work of Salvadoran artists and artisans. Third, he asked that the church return to him the rubble from the tiles removed from the facade so that he could create a new art work in homage to Salvadoran artisans.

Llort currently enjoys moral rights on his art work and the destruction might be considered against Salvadorean law. In any case, it is a good sign for Salvadorean democracy that its citizens are standing up to fight for the protection of their art, their common places, their memory.

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Election results were close with an evident advantage in urban areas for the elected candidate, a very different result from the past election when rural voters elected the social democrat President Alvaro Colom.

Presidential elections were peaceful but tense. Apart from isolated incidents involving irregularities with votes, especially with the transport of voters in rural or marginal areas, few violent incidents and murders were reported in the Ushahidi platform Mirador Electoral [es].

Otto Pérez Molina -Picture by Flickr user Lestermosh under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license (CC BY 2.0).

Bloggers like Luis Figueroa were inviting others to vote [es] from early in the morning.

Others were very disappointed as both candidates did not meet their expectations, and decided to express why they would not vote and the dark perspectives they have for the future of the country, like Fe de Rata [es] and Hunahpu Ixbalanque [es] expressed in their blogs and many others commented on different social networks.

Iván Morales (@ivancarrera) in his blog PoliticaGT points out in his article: “If they are there it is because they represent someone” [es]:

Después de conocerse los resultados de la primera ronda y hasta el día de hoy ha prevalecido un sentimiento de apatía y frustración por el hecho de que los votantes deben elegir entre dos candidatos que no los representan y por tener que verse obligados a votar por el “menor de los males”. Por otro lado, trato de recordarme a mi mismo que los guatemaltecos que participan en las redes sociales no son el universo de la población del país, sino una muestra pequeña y poco representantiva de la diversidad poblacional que es Guatemala.

Amazingly, it seems that the samples from social networks were accurate, at least in the city. Voters interviewed by Plaza Publica in an urban area of Guatemala said they were very skeptical [es] of the future of the country and the change any elected president can bring.

Since the ruling party did not present a candidate for president after former first Lady Sandra Torres Casanova was banned by the Constitutional Court to take part on the electoral process, the two parties which disputed the presidential seat were right-wing and very similar, promoting strong fist policies, militarization, benefits for foreign investors, and replicating the errors of the state sponsored assistance programs.

The elected president was a member of the Guatemalan Army, an institution with a vast record of human rights abuses; he served in one of the areas most affected by torture, murder, and massacres of indigenous peoples. During his presidency, high rank officers will be prosecuted for genocide and crimes against humanity, as Global Voices recently reported.

You can follow the conversation about the elections by browsing the hashtag #eleccionesgt. Reactions from Guatemalan citizens and from people all over the world are expected today and tomorrow. There is hope that the situation will remain as peaceful as it it now, a sign of mature and responsible democracy and citizenry.

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An earlier version of this post stated that two generals, not three, had been arrested. The post has been amended accordingly.

Guatemalan courts are set to face a challenge without precedent in the country: prosecuting genocide. After three decades of failed efforts to prosecute the Guatemalan Army, three generals are finally under arrest, accused of perpetrating genocide and other war crimes against the Maya Ixil people in the years 1982-83 by massacring and burning entire villages. More arrest warrants will follow.

Former General Hector Lopez Fuentes was the first arrested in connection with genocide in Guatemala.  His arrest was followed by the detention of José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, now in prison, and Oscar Mejía Victores, who is under hospital arrest whilst he is being evaluated to check if his health will allow him to stand trial, as reported by Mike in the blog Central American Politics.

Location where the massacres took place in the Triangulo Ixil, Quiche, Guatemala. Image by Renata Avila, dedicated to the public domain.

In the words of the 1999 report by the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH for its initials in Spanish) [es]:

The Army's perception of Mayan communities as natural allies of the guerrillas contributed to increasing and aggravating the human rights violations perpetrated against them, demonstrating an aggressive racist component of extreme cruelty that led to extermination en masse of defenseless Mayan communities, including children, women and the elderly, through methods whose cruelty has outraged the moral conscience of the civilized world.

NISGUA blog describes:

The members of the military with arrest warrants formed part of the Department of Defense in the de facto government of General Efraín Ríos Montt and actively participated in the intellectual planning of the genocide against the Maya Ixil people through Plan Victoria 82. Their roles were fundamental in the commission of crimes against humanity and genocide during this time.

Efraín Rios Montt, a former dictator and now member of the Guatemalan Congress, has not been not re-elected and will lose his immunity on January 14, 2012, when his mandate ends.

Maria Toj, a genocide survivor and advocate for justice. Image by Renata Avila, dedicated to the public domain.

As the blog Unredacted explains, it is likely that declassified official government records from both Guatemala and the United States will be used as evidence:

In 2009, the National Security Archive introduced Plan Sofía

One of the key records associated with Plan Sofía is a telegram from Army Chief of Staff López Fuentes to the commander of his Special Forces airborne brigade ordering the launching of Operation Sofía in the Ixil region of the Quiché.

The counterinsurgency assault that resulted displaced hundreds of Mayan residents and left an unknown number dead as soldiers destroyed their villages, burned their houses and slaughtered their livestock. (See summaries of witness testimony and more about the Spanish proceedings here.)

International Law Girls analyzes the importance of this process for the Guatemalan system of justice:

Guatemalan law allows for repeated delays in criminal cases as interlocutory challenges move through a lengthy appeals process. Many people involved in the genocidal campaigns of the 1980s still hold positions of power – including the country’s frontrunner for the presidency, Otto Perez Molina. If it is successful, the prosecution will be a breakthrough for the fight against impunity on a scale with the conviction of Peru’s former president Fujimori.

While families of the victims, who are following [es] the hearings closely, applauded [es] the arrests, some citizens strongly oppose the prosecution of the army, arguing that the country has to dedicate efforts to solving current violence and that forgiveness and reconciliation should be the goal.

Others mention that former guerrilla force members should be prosecuted too, arguing that an amnesty should not shield them from the responsibility and involvement in crimes against civilians [es], although a truth commission found that guerillas only participated in 3% of the crimes, as pointed out by Central American Politics in the post “Why not prosecute guerrillas?”.

Amnesty is inapplicable for international crimes, including genocide, torture, and forced disappearance. The struggle for justice in Guatemala is a heroic effort: less than 5% of cases are prosecuted every year. It seems that finally decades of effort by victims' associations will deliver justice to the families who survived the war.

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Our tribute for Ada Lovelace Day goes to women who are constantly working to make our world a more transparent and fair place; brave social leaders denouncing corruption while providing tools and directing campaigns who are increasing our awareness and uniting us to act for change.

'One Laptop Per Child' project. Image by Flickr user venkylinux (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

As we have done in the past, this year we are including smart women in the intersection between technology and social change who are a central presence in projects promoting a more accountable and transparent society.

Our tributes

Fernanda Viegas (@viegasf) is on the list of the top 100 more influential Brazilians. She is a computational designer whose work focuses on the social, collaborative, and artistic aspects of information visualization.

Viegas is a co-leader, with Martin Wattenberg, of Google's ‘Big Picture' data visualization group in Cambridge, MA. She is also one of the great minds behind public visualization platform Many Eyes, an experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis. In this video you can see her talk in TedX Sao Paulo:

Hok Kakada from Cambodia is creating a software program that will help Cambodian hospitals store data more accurately, allowing for better treatment. All her work is based on Open Source software. She challenged the difficulties girls face in her country and obtained a master degree in Japan.

Linda Kamau (@lkamau) is one of the coders behind the well known Ushahidi initiative. She is a software developer based in Kenya with a degree in Business Information Technology. Kamau develops both web and mobile applications and is contributing to change across continents, from election monitoring to corruption mapping.

Brenda Burell is the technical mind behind the Freedom Fone Project, a voice database where users can access news and public-interest information via land, mobile or Internet phones. Previously she directed the Kubatana initiative in Zimbabwe.

Camila Bustamante (@cabude), from Peru, is working on the design front, on design strategies for participatory processes mainly related to urban mobility, public space and new media. In 2010 Camila iniciated Todos somos dateros (”We are all data providers”), a participatory mechanism for sustainable urban mobility in Lima.

Working from the UK-based Open Knowledge Foundation, Kat Braybrooke @kat_braybrooke is a front-end web developer and Lucy Chambers (@lucyfedia) is in the process of learning how to code. They are involved in the organization of the world's biggest open government event, the Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw.

Kristin Antin (@kjantin) from the United States is participating in the design and organization of New Tactics in Human Rights, a technical on-line platform providing resources to human rights advocates that offer innovative tactical solutions for confronting specific local challenges, using technology.

Stephanie Hankey is the co-founder of Tactical Technology Collective, a small non-governmental organization dedicated to advance the skills, tools and techniques of rights advocates, empowering them to use information and communications as a critical asset in helping marginalised communities understand and effect progressive social, environmental and political change.

Daniela Silva (@danielabsilva) from Brazil is the founder of Sfera Brazil and Transparencia Hacker a community of over 800 designers, developers, coders and even government officers developing huge projects together to promote transparency and accountability.

These are some examples of brilliant women who are not afraid of the mouse, the screen, or the complexities of coding. They are inspiring others by doing amazing projects, all of them contributing to social change.

If you have an example in mind today, we invite you to write about them, to describe the amazing women working in technology you know; women who are an example and inspiration for girls in the generations to come as Ada Lovelace, more than hundred years ago, was for many others. Share your stories and inspire others!

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There has been an expanding and increasingly global movement of technology and digital media projects aimed at promoting government transparency, accountability, and public participation in political processes. After documenting dozens of cases around the world, the Technology for Transparency Network, a project of Rising Voices, documented these transparency projects to gain a better understanding of their current impact, obstacles, and future potential. Now it is time to start the conversation, with the help of the wonderful platform ‘New Tactics for Human Rights'.

Image by whiteafrican on Flickr (under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license).

This week we are inviting 11 experts from all over the world, from different projects promoting openness, collaboration and transparency, to answer your questions, comment on interesting topics and discuss the future of technology in promoting transparency.

Join Elizabeth Wolf from Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen), Chile; Susannah Vila and Jorge Soto from Citivox, Mexico; Mike Linksvayer from Creative Commons; Jonathan Gray from Open Knowledge Foundation, UK; Diego Casaes from Eleitor 2010, Brazil; Camila Bustamante from Dateros, Peru; Ulrich Muller from Germany; Maya Indira Ganesh from Tactical Technology Collective; John (Kipp) Kipchumbah of InfoNet, Kenya; Amr Gharbeia, Technology and Freedoms Programme Officer for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights; and Mendi Njonjo, Fund Manager for the Africa Technology and Transparency Initiative in Kenya.

The dialogue is an opportunity to share these case studies and tools with the New Tactics online community, learn from the experiences of practitioners implementing these projects, and discuss new ideas, challenges, risks and opportunities. Join us online from September 21-27 to share your stories, ideas and resources.

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This election will be special: for the first time in history the majority of voters will be young. Up to three million citizens are under thirty years old.

Also, for the first time in Guatemalan history the rural vote will be more important than the urban vote, and a woman will be elected Vice President –the three presidential candidates leading in the polls have selected women as their Vice President.

Josue Goge, jgoge on Flickr, "I'm ready to vote. Are you?" (CC BY 2.0)

Here is a selection of interesting projects and links to follow during the day (all links lead to Spanish-language sites):

@PlazaPublicaGT has set up a special coverage section with reports and independent analysis on the elections, publishing interesting articles and closely monitoring the electoral process with reporters in different areas of the country.

Tenemos el poder (We have the power) is a Web platform increasing the awareness of young people and encouraging them to learn why their role in politics will be crucial for the future of the country.

Pilas con tu voto is encouraging young people to inform themselves and vote. Other Websites are engaged in similar activities, like Ve por que, Se busca Presidente, Politica Stereo and Vozz Guatemala.

Guatemala Visible and Congreso Transparente provide comprehensive guides on the candidates' backgrounds and preparation.

Guatemalans already started voting and while mainstream media is covering the election in the most important urban concentrations, hyperlocal and citizen media are doing so in rural areas. From very early in the morning, sites like Mi Jutiapa, Pueblo Clic, and @Barillas in Huehuetenangoare are reporting from villages across the country.

For the first time, “Mirador Electoral”, an observatory on the legality of the elections, installed a #Ushahidi platform to allow citizens to report irregularities during the election day.

On Twitter, #eleccionesgt is the general hashtag to follow the elections; an alternative hashtag is #evoto

The election authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, will publish preliminary results on its website tonight.

It is hoped that these elections will be a peaceful and inclusive celebration of democracy, of the right to vote and to demand results from elected politicians. A second electoral round is expected if neither of the presidential candidates reach 51% of valid votes.

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Land distribution patterns in Guatemala are of the most inequitable in Latin America and the World: 2% of the population owns 70% of all productive farmland, and most of the owners are not exploiting it.

Most of the Guatemalan poor are indigenous peoples living in rural areas and working in agriculture. They face an alarming 49% of malnourished children, growing signs of famine, and a lack of effective rural development policies, as the blog Gestión Territorial [es] points out.

Peasants preparing corn, by Alberto Arce (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Latifundio owners are dedicating lands that were once used to produce food for locals to biodiesel crops or sugar cane, due to the rising price for these crops and the low tech and low number of peasants they require for cultivation, as the blog El Polvorin [es] explains. This is risking the food security of thousands who live below the poverty line.

Indigenous families live on a very humble diet, as described by the blog Mayan Families:

Most of the indigenous families have tortillas as staple in their diet. Often when families do not have anything else to eat, they can always have tortillas with salt, but now, even that is threatened by the shortage of corn and the rising cost of what is available.

As a survival mechanism and due to the lack of job opportunities and public policies to assist them, many families are using small portions of the underused productive lands (where they were born and have always lived) to produce the food their families need for their survival: corn, beans and some vegetables.

This is increasing the number of land disputes, as owners want peasants out of their private property and often use the help of armed forces and violent means to evict them. Human casualties from these evictions are often under-reported by the media.

That was the case last week, when a peasant was murdered by security forces during a land eviction in Retalhuleu, near the Guatemalan Pacific coast. There, Sergio de León, a 31-year-old landless peasant, father of five, was killed when the police fired a tear gas canister directly to his heart. Independent video journalist and blogger Alberto Arce [es] filmed this eviction (WARNING: graphic images):

For an English-subtitled version of this video visit DotSub.

In the article “Yet another peasant killed in a land dispute” [es] Plaza Publica [es], a new digital media outlet unveiling corruption and defying the traditional self censorship of the Guatemalan media, describes the Sergio de León tragedy and the dilemmas the poor face in Guatemala to survive.

On one side peasants fight and risk their lives to defend the land that will provide food for their children, the land where they were born, where their parents were born, where their whole family has worked all their lives. On the other side poor and under-trained police and members of the army have to follow the orders to shoot and use violence against peasants - as poor as they are, from common origins -  as a way to keep their jobs, to feed their families. The third player in this conflict is a government unwilling to solve the growing number of land conflicts and inequality in land distribution.

Death is the solidarity of the current government, according to the Popular Front [es] blog:

El saldo ha sido un campesino ejecutado extrajudicialmente, tres campesinos más  con heridas, viviendas campesinas destruidas, además del trauma causado  especialmente a los niños quienes grabarán de por vida la respuesta que el  “gobierno de la solidaridad” les ha propinado. Fuerza armada ante la  demanda de tierra y de fuente de trabajo. Estado, al servicio del capital, en  contra de la clase campesina. Esa es la respuesta y esta es la realidad  histórica que se confirma. Nunca fue una política pública, una alternativa laboral, una solución negociada, ya no digamos una transformación de la  estructura agraria. Siempre fue la defensa del régimen de propiedad que nos ha  privado de todo y del modelo económico para continuar acumulando por  explotación, por desposesión y por exclusión de las grandes mayorías.

Land conflicts and unequal distribution of wealth, which have increased due to economic crises in the last two decades, were core topics of the 1996 Peace Agreements. Poorly trained police serving the interest of the powerful is the other problem; De León's murder is not an isolated case. As different blogs mention, there have been several cases of excessive use of force while performing evictions, like in Nueva Linda [es], Salvador Xolhuitz [es], Bella Flor Community [es] and in other areas near the Polochic river, always with police assistance, always with human costs [es] on the peasants' side.

In the official blog of ‘Global Visionaries', in the article “Landlessness, Hunger and Social Change in Guatemala” Camron McDonald describes an eviction which took place earlier this year, describing similar abuses from armed forces:

On March 15, 2011 more than 1,000 police and soldiers showed up in the Polochic Valley of Northern Guatemala.They were there to evict more than 3,000 Q’eqchi Maya Indians living on land claimed by a Guatemalan agribusiness firm.  Many of these families have been living on and tending to this land for thirty years.According to Danilo Valladares, writer for the Inter Press Service, security forces burnt or bulldozed the peasants’ shacks and destroyed their subsistence crops with machetes and tractors. One young man was killed in the scuffle and many others were injured. Now, close to 800 families have been left homeless and without access to the land they need to grow food to eat.

He also adds:

At this point, you might be asking, how did it come to this? Unfortunately, this tragedy is only one of hundreds of cases similar it that have taken place throughout Guatemala’s history. Repeated calls for land reform over the years have been met with little real change. Today, the wealthiest 5 percent of the population owns 80 percent of the land. A lack of political will and a lack of clear laws regarding land tenure often lead to long drawn out disputes that usually end in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Meanwhile, landlessness has been identified as one of the leading causes of the wide-scale poverty and hunger that continues to plague the country.

The Chief of Police who gave the orders to evict Sergio de León was neither arrested nor sanctioned. The policeman who used a non lethal weapon (tear gas) with lethal purposes (shooting at the peasant's chest) was not arrested either. The community returned to the occupied land as they do not have anywhere else to go, but the police might return at anytime. And this is only one of approximately 1360 land disputes [es]. A different policy and a different way to solve land conflicts and eradicate hunger is not only necessary but urgent.

This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights.

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A new generation of politicians under 30, dubbed the ‘Dipukids', are causing controversy, after political parties released lists featuring young candidates with good chances to fill a seat in the next Congress for the 2012-2016 period.

DipuKids on You Tube by Veneno Cruz

Congreso Transparente [es], a new initiative to make the Guatemalan Congress open and closer to the people, provides information on some of the young candidates - in their twenties, from different political parties but with similar backgrounds - exercising their citizen right to be elected.

Most of them are in their early or mid twenties, were born after the war, enjoyed exclusive, high quality private education and have traveled the world - a privileged life, quite different from the average Guatemalan.

Some of the candidates top the lists, reflecting their good chance of getting elected. Most of them are young professionals such as Julio Hernandez [es] (25) (@jfhernandezgt) who has a degree in international relations; Diego Calvo [es] (26), Eduardo Smith [es] (26), and Hugo Morán [es] (26), all three with law degrees; and Elisa Stahl Biener (@ElisaSBiener) with a degree in public communication. Ana Lucía Mazariegos [es] (20), Juan Diego Asturias @judias9 (21), and Joan Godoy [es] (23) are still studying.

Here you can see Ana Lucía Mazariegos in action:

Nepotism is not absent from the ranks of the Dipukids: the son of a former president and current Mayor of Guatemala City, Alvaro Arzu Jr. is running for a seat in Congress. Alejandra García, the daughter of a prominent Congresswoman, also running for re-election, is listed as candidate of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).

Under the title ‘How young is too young?', British Ambassador Julie Chapel discussed the issue in her institutional blog:

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The report is being published by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (@TAInitiative) along with a over a dozen other reports on the global transparency movement. The reports focus on three key research areas: Impact and Learning, New Technologies, and Policy Innovations.

Many thanks go to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for supporting our work, to our amazing team of researchers, and to David Sasaki, who launched and directed the initial phase of the Technology for Transparency Network, which laid the groundwork for this report.

Get the report

• Full report via the Transparency and Accountability Initiative
• Executive summary: English

Executive Summary

This report contains the key findings from having reviewed more than 100 projects and having interviewed dozens of practitioners in Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, and Sub-Saharan Africa who use new technologies as a means to increase transparency and accountability. This summary helps to ‘take the pulse‘ of the Technology for Transparency and Accountability movement and suggests both exciting possibilities for scaling impact as well as important caveats and challenges.

For practitioners in the transparency and accountability space, it is useful to frame the potential for leveraging technology towards transparency and accountability initiatives in at least four ways:

• Bringing projects and interventions to scale.
• Bringing citizens closer to the policymaking process through new and improved channels of participation as well as citizen monitoring of government.
• Identifying policy priorities and service delivery challenges through ‘data mashing‘ and other visualisation and data manipulation techniques of both government and private datasets.
• Improving the efficiency of civil society organisations working in the transparency and accountability space through adoption of best practice technology platforms.

Additional Findings

The majority of projects we studied focus on the executive or legislative branches of government.  A smaller number of projects focus on the judicial branch, the media, the private sector, and donors.

Nearly half of the projects focus on monitoring elections.  While many of these use Ushahidi, some have developed their own approaches, including aggregating elections news from multiple sources on a single site and tracking official election monitors’ reports on Google Maps.

Projects in multiple regions focus on transparency in the legislature, often tracking legislative bills and posting profiles for each representative that include biographies and voting records. Some also include profiles of political parties or records of legislative spending.

Data visualization and navigation tools are a key feature in more than half of the projects we documented, as are diverse forms of data collection from citizens. Approximately one third of the projects use mobile phones in some way, most commonly by allowing citizens to submit or receive information via text messages.

What's next?

The Technology for Transparency Network website will remain open as a place where we can share projects, tools, and ideas, as a meeting point for successful initiatives and those who want to learn from the work others have done. You can subscribe to our mailing list, read or contribute with specialized articles on Global Voices Online, and follow us on Twitter (@techtransparent) and Facebook. This field is just beginning to emerge, and we look forward to helping nurture global efforts through collaboration and communication across borders.

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The conflict is out of the hands of the authorities. Not only were at least 28 peasants brutally killed, but also a school, a police station and other public places were bombed.

“Worst massacre in modern times”

Erwin C. in The Latin Americanist reports:

Guatemalan flag. Image by Flickr user olaf141 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

In an incident described by a Guatemalan police spokesman as “the worst massacre we have seen in modern times,” at least twenty-seven people were killed on Saturday at a ranch in the northern part of the country. Forensic doctors identified fifteen of the victims and among those killed were three minors and two women. All of those killed in the gruesome incident were bound with rope before being decapitated by the cold-blooded assassins.

There is little content published on blogs, but witnesses - people based in Petén and journalists who fled there to cover the news - have shared information about the situation:

@Tekandi: Todas las habitaciones de la finca en #Peten estaban de cabeza, las puertas forzadas, zapatos tirados, ropa y mucha sangre. Horror total

@Tekandi also links to pictures [WARNING: strong content] showing the brutality of the perpetrated crimes. @AnaLu185 also links to an image.

In the following tweets, Mauricio Vinicio Matta (@maurinho6), based in Petén, shares with a radio journalist [es] that there is a lot of activity: he can hear helicopters, patrols, and people are scared. He affirms that it is the first time something like this happens in Petén, that streets are deserted [es] and that they can hear gun shots from different points of the center of the city:

@maurinho6: @KarlaCalvillo hay mucha actividad de helicopteros y radio patrullas y todo el mundo asustado por que jamas habia sucedido esto en Peten

@maurinho6: @KarlaCalvillo Karlita soy de Peten y t comento que las calles estan solitarias y se oyen disparos en diferentes puntos del area central

Young and poor peasants

The victims were humble peasants, very young and poor, who were living as migrant workers after they left their homes in Izabal, a neighboring department. According to a tweet by the Ministry of Interior (@mingobguate), the victims were not involved with the Narco [people involved in organized crime relating to narcotics].

The Black Box, an economic and political blog from Central America, describes the complex ongoing armed conflict over there and provides context to better understand both the region and the violence taking place there:

El Departamento del Petén es el más extenso de la República de Guatemala, con casi 36 mil kilómetros cuadrados –su territorio es mayor que El Salvador y Belice, y solamente las Regiones Autónomas del Atlántico nicaragüense rivalizan en extensión como unidades sub-nacionales. Su población apenas supera los 600 mil habitantes, por lo que es la 9ª región menos densamente poblada de toda Centroamérica, incluyéndose los distritos de Belice, pues apenas llega a los 17 habitantes por kilómetro cuadrado. [1]

Con relación al resto de los departamentos guatemaltecos, la violencia homicida en Petén en el 2010 le situó en el puesto 7º de 22 (el más violento fue el departamento de Guatemala con 78 por 100 mil).

The attack comes a week after former President Alfonso Portillo was found “not guilty” of corruption by a criminal court, leaving many members of the organization Civil Society and the Commission Against Impunity (CICIG) speechless. The former presidential candidate was also cleared of extrajudicial execution charges. Mike comments on the verdict in Central American Politics:

CICIG and the Mutual Support Group (GAM) expressed their dissatisfaction with the court's ruling and the prosecutor's office is appealing the case. “The Monday ruling “reflects the true state of justice in Guatemala,” said the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an office created by the United Nations to clean up the country's legal system”.

Mike also added that the Alfonso Portillo and Alejandro Giammattei cases were supposed to bring an end to impunity in Guatemala. Convictions would have sent a former president and former presidential candidate to jail on corruption and murder charges.

In this context, the war against drugs is leaving a legacy of blood and it is clear that Guatemala is not winning it. As LuisFi [es] said:

Es un mito ese de que la guerra perdida contra las drogas acaba con la delincuencia y la violencia relacionadas con el narcotráfico.  Lo cierto, sin embargo, es que la guerra contra las drogas genera violencia y que los muertos, en esta guerra ajena, los ponemos nosotros.  Lo cierto es que Guatemala no tiene recursos para combatir la criminalidad, y que muchos de aquellos recursos escasos se van por el caño en esta guerra perdida.  Pero eso no es lo peor.  Lo peor es que como en toda guerra, las peores pérdidas se cuentan en términos de cádaveres.  Y en este caso, en términos de cadáveres decapitados.

Por las experiencias de Colombia y México -y por la de Petén- ya tenemos una idea de qué es lo que nos espera en esta guerra.  Y seguramente es tiempo de repensarla.

Rampant impunity and a weak state have opened the doors to drug traffickers and other criminals. In the crossfire there is a terrified and shocked civil society who has stopped looking for solutions and is only praying to not get killed and return home safely, one day at a time.

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When a very religious culture becomes dominated by yet another deeply religious people, often the religion of the conqueror is imposed on the conquered. However, cultures have always found ways to offer resistance; in Guatemala somehow the Catholic religion has been ”hacked”  to incorporate indigenous peoples' gods, goddesses, rites and ceremonies while integrating elements of Catholicism.

Maximón is the best example of such transmutation, as explained by the photoblog Mi Mundo:

Aq’ab’al Audelino Sajvín explains: “In oral tradition, Maximón represents Kaji’ Imox, the last ruler of the Maya Kaqchikel people [during the Spanish conquest], who was tied, tortured and murdered. This entire episode is known as Xkiyüt Xkixïm/Ximon, which is surely why they call him Maximón: ma refers to a male person in the Maya Kaqchikel language, and ximón means he who is tied up.” According to Aq’ab’al Audelino Sajvín the syncretism between Maximón and Saint Simon began when “the Christian [conquistadores] realized they could not eradicate the image of the great protector of the people. Hence, they began to promote the idea of Maximón as being the same as Saint Simon, often related with Saint Jude, a treacherous figure.”

Picture under a Creative Commons attribution license by Gustavo Jerónimo.

The different and very special elements of religion in Guatemala make the Holy Week (in Spanish, ‘Semana Santa') quite a unique experience, including characters like the “Cucuruchos“, communities gathering to create holy week carpets made of flowers, and devoted men and women carrying on their shoulders colonial images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary while wearing traditional outfits under the sun, in spite of the hot summer.

Holy Week is a family celebration where everyone is invited to participate, as the photo blog AntiguaDailyPhoto.com describes:

As I’ve mentioned before, the making of carpets from sawdust, pine-needles, flowers, vegetables is a community-forming tradition. People get together by block or near-by neighbors to create the carpets on which the processions will pass by. Sometimes the making of the carpets is done at night, all night so they are ready for next day’s procession. The colorful processional carpet elaboration process involves the whole family, close friends, the neighborhood and the entire community. It does not matter if it’s just grandma throwing some corozo (corozo palms) and dried purple flowers to elaborate a humble alfombra in front of her home or it is a team of members of the cuadra (the block), or if a son lends a hand to a dad to put the final touches on the brightly-colored sawdust carpet, the devotion and the do-good spirit are present everywhere you look.

Holy week carpet making. Image by Rudy Girón www.Antiguadailyphoto.com (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Antologia del Desengaño [es] explains how Holy Week is celebrated in a very different way in Santiago Atitlán:

En Santiago Atitlán, el Viernes Santo por la tarde, al igual que en el resto católico del país, da inicio la representatividad de la muerte de Jesucristo, pero a diferencia del mundo ladino, la celebración no tiene connotaciones ominosas. Al interior de la iglesia hay un tumulto de gente que participa en la preparación del cortejo procesional, con tambores y chirimillas, no hay pesadumbre; hay respeto al ceremonial, pero no hay tristeza, ni acongojamiento en el rostro y actitud de la gente .

Holy Week in Guatemala is rich with colors, scents and devotion. It is a cultural, spiritual and gastronomic experience for locals and visitors in this diverse country with more than twenty four languages and different indigenous groups. The best of different worlds come together to enjoy and find beauty in mixing, rather than imposing, their culture.

This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights.

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Picture under a Creative Commons License Attribution, Non Commercial, Share alike by Guatemalan Government.

Intolerance was exhibited through social media when the President's wife, Sandra Torres, announced she will lead the official party in the run for the Presidency. But these comments are not new; words of disapproval and hate by her critics were spread long before she announced her candidacy.

On Facebook there are at least two pages directed against Torres: one for people who hate Sandra Torres [es] and another page for those that reject her candidacy [es] –the latter with more than 21,000 “likes.” On Twitter, the same sentiment is expressed under the hashtag #novotoporSandraTorres (I will not vote for Sandra Torres). Comments on Facebook and Twitter are centered on her looks, her “evil intentions” and how she could become a Guatemalan version of Argentine Evita Perón.

Critics on blogs have focused on two topics: the Social Cohesion programs she has led, and an Article in the Guatemalan Constitution which would prohibit her candidacy.

Her social programs

El Crunch Chapin [es] strongly criticized her social programs and said he would rather vote for Laura Bozzo, the Peruvian talk show host in ‘Laura in America', than for her.

Cierto, las dos son unas “mujeres del pueblo” pero a diferencia de la esposa del presidente, Laura Bozzo en su programa no les regala una bolsa solidaria a la cada persona de la clase baja. Ella en cambio les da un CARRITO SANWICHERO. Lo que significa que en ves de regalarle las cosas, así por así, les da trabajo para que esta gente solita salga adelante y no se acostumbre a vivir de promesas vacías.

There are legitimate concerns that she will abuse her position as the leader of the Council of Social Cohesion and that she will force people to vote for her. The blog Santa Cruz Barillas [es] reports that some people from Northern Guatemala were mislead when members of the first lady's staff warned them that they have to vote for her if they want to keep their social benefits. Unfortunately, connectivity in rural areas is extremely slow and incidents like these are only reported by small digital news outlets like the blog Santa Cruz Barillas [es].

However, it is important to note that other candidates have stated that they will continue these social programs.

A constitutional impediment

Journalist José Valdizán comments that the Constitution forbids [es] the president's relatives to become President. However, he also adds that the Constitutional Court might interpret the text in a flexible way, authorizing her to participate in the election, as it did in the past with former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. Such views are shared by Luis Figuero in Carpe Diem who also highlights her poor results in a recent poll that gave her only 11% of votes.

Mike at Central American Politics explains,

On the one hand, the constitution prohibits a Torres candidacy because she is a close relative of the president (Article 168). On the other hand, Torres' lawyers can claim that she is allowed to run because the constitution has another clause that guarantees the rights of all to participate in the elections. You can't prohibit someone from running for the presidency because a close relative of theirs had previously occupied the post (Washington Post). (Sorry, you just can't say that my lawyers told me it was legal. Where have we heard that one before?)

Neither President Colom nor Sandra Torres have said much about the constitutionality of her candidacy other that it's not a concern. The Guatemalan constitutional court, however, will most likely have to determine whether Torres can run.

Sandra Torres has a vast number of supporters from underprivileged sectors. But those supporters will hardly have a voice and a space in social networks. Connectivity in Guatemala is as low as 10% and only few households in rural areas own a computer. Furthermore, indigenous communities are easily reached by radial spots in their language. During the elections, the campaign will be very different online and offline.

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Manuel Aristarian

When Manuel Aristaran (@manuelaristaran) heard the news about controversial contracts by the local government in the Argentinian city of Bahía Blanca, he explored its website and noticed that expenses by the municipality were simply not accessible: they were published in a long list and without tools to explore the data, and the format did not offer an efficient and effective way to watch the expenses. He decided to solve that problem and take transparency in Bahía Blanca to the next level, a more participatory one.

RA: Why did you start your project?

MA: I've always been interested in public policies and the real impact of data on how they're designed. After the news of some controversial purchases made by the government of Bahía Blanca broke out, I learned that its website contains information about some of the public contracts and purchases. Those documents were published as a long list, and the municipality's site doesn't provide any additional tools to explore that information. I thought that scraping, structuring and building a simple site to display that information (that is, transforming data into knowledge) might be a nice weekend project. After few weekends, I released Gasto Público Bahiense.

RA: Why did you get involved? What is your inspiration to dedicate your weekends to Gasto Público Bahiense?

MA: I think that involvement in public affairs is impossible if we don't understand how the government works. In other words, you can't commit to something you don't understand. Making government data available in a simple, concise and clear way is a step in the direction of “educating” people about their actions of their government.

RA: How are things changing after the release of your idea? Any success stories?

MA: There's been some reaction from inside the government: the city's legislative body declared the site of ‘municipal interest'. The project also succeeded in educating some government officials on the importance of publishing  information in open and standard formats.

RA: Can you describe the obstacles and barriers you overcome to create your project?

MA: The lack of good government data and the lack of a solid legal framework that guarantees that they won't stop publishing the information just because. In Argentina, the OpenData grassroots movement is just starting. Together with other transparency NGOs, we're trying to think of ways of raising awareness about the importance of making governments more transparent and accountable. That, I hope, will lead to better policies of transparency and information.

RA: As a concerned citizen, do you want other local governments to do the same? Are you sharing your knowledge and expertise with others? Tell me more about “the power of shared code”.

MA: During an Open Data Hackathon, the code that powers Gasto Público Bahiense was used to display purchase data from other local governments in Argentina.  Anyone can grab the code and adapt it. It just had to write the code that extracts the data from those cities' websites.

RA: Your idea has inspired others to explore the potential of open data, right? How are people using your tool?

MA: Yes, different actors have used my project in many ways, for example hyperlocal news outlets used the website as source, businesses that sell to the local government use the site to check on their competitors, and when government purchases are available, consumers can access a good reference to compare prices.

It is well known that corruption in Argentina is widespread and hinders the political system and the economic growth, in spite of its highly educated citizens. However, “social entrepreneurs” like Manuel use their skills to foster change and invite others to copy the idea and do the same, everywhere.

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Women, Panajachel by Marlin Harms under a Creative Commons attribution license version 3.o

In a country where only 32% of women [es] finish high school, where gender equality is low, where only 8% of members of the Parliament are women and where no women have presided ever the most important chambers of commerce and industry, recent appointments of women to public administration and key political positions could shake the political scene.

The newly appointed Director of the Criminal Public Defense Service, the Comptroller General, the General Prosecutor and the Secretary of the National Council for Migrant Services are women, as the blog Central American Politics explains:

Guatemala had made important strides in recent weeks as it relates to women occupying positions of power. In the last few weeks, women were appointed to the critical positions of Public Prosecutor and Comptroller General Claudia Paz y Paz was named Public Prosecutor and head of the Public Ministry for four years and will be in charge of the agency for criminal investigation and prosecution, while Nora Segura is the new Comptroller General, with a five-year term and will be in charge of auditing government expenditures, beginning with the 2011 budget, of 6.8 billion dollars. Paz y Paz and Segura join Blanca Stalling who President Colom reappointed as director of the Criminal Public Defense Institute, an institution that oversees the legal defense of accused criminals, and Heydi Gordillo, the secretary of the National Council for Migrant Services.

In Guatemala, where women of all social and ethnic groups are brutally murdered or harmed, the appointment of Claudia Paz y Paz as Public Prosecutor was especially welcomed by different sectors, especially the Human Rights community –as evidenced in the Blog Fundación de Sobrevivientes [es] (Survivors Foundation Blog).

The blog Breaking the silence congratulated and celebrated the appointment of the first woman as general prosecutor in Guatemala last December:

Dr. Paz y Paz has worked tirelessly for Human Rights and particularly for Women’s Rights, as an academic, activist and lawyer. She was the Director of the UN High Commission for Refugees Legal Office and as the National Consultant for the UN Mission for Guatemala. Dr. Paz y Paz also served as Director of the ICCPG, the Institute for Comparative Studies in Criminal Sciences in Guatemala.

However, the challenges are enormous. According to the blog Asociación por tí mujer [es] (Association for women), in 2010 alone, up to 680 women were killed by fire arms or stabbed in Guatemala City, and 48,000 complaints of domestic violence were filed. In Guatemala, hiring an assassin can be as cheap as $150.00 USD and impunity fuels violence against women.

Just last December, sociologist and researcher Emilia Quan was brutally murdered [es] in the Guatemalan mountains, near the border with Mexico. She worked for the Center for the Study and Documentation of the Western Border of Guatemala (Centro de Estudios y Documentacion de la Frontera Occidental de Guatemala; CEDFOG [es]). She was found blindfolded and hand-tied with a rag stuffed in her mouth, as the blog Guat's going on describes. A Mayan ceremony was organized in the locality and a prayer was elevated to ask for strength to fight violence and impunity in the country, as reported in Radio Santa Cruz Blog [es].

The case of Emilia Quan offers an opportunity for the newly elected prosecutor to carry out an investigation and prosecute the murderers. But this is not the only problem that needs to be solved, as pointed out by the blog Gender Across Borders:

Emilia was an amazing woman and a friend to many, who deserves the memoriam she has received. But this is also a moment to recognize the thousands of women whose names never grace the pages of our newspapers and magazines. It’s not just that in a country with such a violent past one woman a day is killed, or that scarcely 2% of crimes against women are solved. That would be horrendous enough. But it’s also that the bodies of women who have been kidnapped and murdered often show extra brutality – sexual violence, torture, mutilation – reflecting a societal disdain for women. The fact that many of these crimes are never even investigated reflects a insidious contempt and apathy for the lives of women by the Guatemalan government.

The challenges are as big as the hope of Guatemalans who still believe in change and in fighting impunity through the rule of law and institutions where women can make a difference.

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