Justice for Guatemala?
Justice for Guatemala?
Exclusive 3 March, by Ravi Katari
As ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt stands trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, media attention is turning once more to Guatamala and the economic situation there. On January 5, the New York Times published an article titled “As Biofuel Demand Grows, So Do Guatemala’s Hunger Pangs”, describing the ripple effects of U.S. laws that mandate the partial use of biofuel in automobiles — and more specifically laws that require fuel companies to ensure a minimum contribution of corn-derived ethanol in gasoline pools. Poor countries such as Guatemala are hit particularly hard as increasing proportions of agricultural resources are shifted away from food production. The article notes that the “average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development.”
Guatemalan farmers are further subjected to devastating corn production fluctuations that result from anthropogenic climate change as noted in an April 2012 article published in Nature Climate Change. Westerners are virtually insulated from such market volatilities by buffers such as Latin America. This disclosure weighs even more heavily on the conscience when we consider that chronic under-nutrition rates are 49% among children under the age of five, earning Guatemala the rank of fourth highest rate in the world according to the World Food Programme and the United Nations. This is an ignoble distinction that those of us who are U.S. consumers evidently contribute to.
Guatemala is a dramatic example in which the poverty that is closely related to its poor health outcomes has deep—though not entirely causative—ties to U.S. policies in the region as the historical record indicates. Though this is no secret to those remotely familiar with the nation’s politics, it’s worth running through given the recent headlines concerning Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s former military dictator, who was recently ordered to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
His influence, dictatorship and de facto presidency was central to Guatamala’s violent civil war that lasted 36 years. The NYT notes that “survivors have described how military units wiped out Indian villages with extraordinary brutality, killing all the women and children along with the men.” Furthermore, a United Nations truth commission found that 200,000 people were killed “mostly by state security forces”; the report, Guatemala, Memory of Silence, noted that “whilst anti-communism, promoted by the United States within the framework of its foreign policy, received firm support from right-wing political parties and from various other powerful actors in Guatemala, the United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard”.
More:
http://mondediplo.com/blogs/justice-for-guatemala