For your posting this, muy agradecido....Haven't been there in a while, but greatly suspect hyperbole, especially in regard to the extent to which the country is singled out for some generic Central American issues (maras, narcotrafficing)...Enough in the article to elicit a "same old Guatemala..." but the narco angle has brought about one huge difference--the customary "saviours of the nation," the Guatemalan Army, have been bought. Interesting to see who will pull the country's chestnuts out of the fire this time..or whether they'll simply muddle along (more likely, I suspect). Historically, Guatemalan solutions have been far from democratic ones. In the early 70's when Arana was president, the sardonic sense of humor of the Guatemalan people labelled one tactic ascribed to COIN forces "TACA"--same as the acronym of the Salvadorean airline, but in this case, "Transportes Aquaticos Carlos Arana," i.e., the bodies of leftists from the Zacapa/Izabal insurgency floating down the Rio Motagua. After left-right conflict lasting a lot longer than the thirty years the article stipulates (You'd want to take it back at least to Arbenz in the early 50's, if not Arevalo), sad (but not unforseeable) that the long awaited peace degenerated seamlessly into gangsterism.
Cheers,
Mike.
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