Confronting Violence in Postwar Guatemala: An Introduction

Abstract

A Strange Yet Familiar Violence in Postwar Guatemala ON 10 MAY 2009, RODRIGO ROSENBERG, a prominent attorney in Guatemala City, was shot in the head and killed while riding his bike. Days before his murder, Rosenberg videotaped an 18-minute message, subsequently circulated widely in Guatemala and internationally, in which he stated that should he be killed in the near future, the intellectual authors of the crime would be standing president Alvaro Colom and his wife, Sandra Torres. Their motive would be retribution, specifically for Rosenberg's representation of another recently murdered member of the Guatemala City elite, the businessman Khalil Musa. In the videotape, Rosenberg states that Musa was murdered because of the information he was about to release, which clearly showed the president's links to organized crime and drug trafficking. Rosenberg said he made the recording because he feared that Colom and his associates would not stop at killing Khalil Musa.The killing never stops in Guatemala. More than a decade after the 1996 Peace Accords were signed, which ended 36 years of civil war, homicide rates rival those during the war years. Progress on all fronts seems minimal at best; economic and social gaps between the wealthy and the poor are among the world's worst. Falling

La Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG): dilemas tras 12 años de actuación

“…Por otra parte, estos "poderes paralelos" buscan "garantizarse impunidad en los procesos de justicia, infiltrándose dentro de la institucionalidad estatal para continuar sus hechos delictivos que les generan lucro, así como atemorizar a la población civil y organizaciones sociales, especialmente de derechos humanos" (Dabroy, 2009, p. 8). Además del continuum de la violencia surgida durante el conflicto, la "nueva" violencia en Guatemala después de los acuerdos de paz se caracteriza por provenir y afectar a todos los sectores de la sociedad, dando lugar a un clima de desconfianza y miedo constante (Smith y Offit, 2010), siendo las principales causas de la violencia la exclusión social -Guatemala es uno de los países con mayor desigualdad de América Latina-y la impunidad (PNUD, 2007, p. 10).…”

Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala

“…First is the unpredictability of an ethnically difficult‐to‐decipher (to the Guatemalan state) transnational mobile population. Second is the ongoing actual and perceived violence in the Guatemalan countryside (Little and Smith ; Smith and Offit ) and in Guatemala City (O'Neil and Thomas ) that threatens to undermine Antigua's security. Both justify the deployment of security forces, because of violence, the threat of violence, and the imagination of violence.…”

“…Since the Peace Accords signing in December 1996, Guatemalans (Little and Smith 2009;Nelson 2009;O'Neill and Thomas 2011;Smith and Offit 2010) have been increasingly preoccupied with crime and security, a condition found in many places (Comaroff andComaroff 2004, 2007;Moodie 2010). This differs from the state violence perpetuated against its citizenry since the Spanish invasion (Carmack 1988;Green 1999;Smith 1990). Antiguëños commonly talk about the police in distinct ways from how they talked about the Guatemalan military and National Police during the period of the 36-year internal conflict.…”

“…In this section, I identify key moments in the development of Antigüeños' fears of crime. Much scholarly consideration has been given to the intense levels of violence that occurred over the course of Guatemala's internal conflict, 1960-96 (Carmack 1988;Green 1999;Smith 1990;Stoll 1993) and its legacies in the neoliberal period beginning in the 1990s (Little and Smith 2009;Nelson 2009;O'Neill and Thomas 2011;Sanford 2003;Smith and Offit 2010). The previous citations represent only a few of the works 4 dedicated to the analysis of this topic.…”

“…In complaining about lack of police protection, Doña Antonia is not alone. Since the Peace Accords signing in December 1996, Guatemalans (Little and Smith ; Nelson ; O'Neill and Thomas ; Smith and Offit ) have been increasingly preoccupied with crime and security, a condition found in many places (Comaroff and Comaroff , ; Moodie ). This differs from the state violence perpetuated against its citizenry since the Spanish invasion (Carmack ; Green ; Smith ).…”