7:35 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Guatemala| Twitter · Comments Off
9 Jul 2009
Nearly two months age we wrote about the “tweet heard ’round Guatemala” and how that tweet landed Jeanfer, also known as Jean Anleu, in jail facing charges of inciting financial panic. Well it looks like he’s a free man and that all charges have been dropped.
Via / Boing Boing
7:09 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Guatemala| Internet| Twitter · 4 Comments
15 May 2009The situation in Guatemala is getting heavier by the moment with reports of arrests of street vendors and at least one twitter user A little background. Attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg was killed and a video released posthumously points the finger at President Alvaro Colom.
The video’s release has led to widespread protest, calling for President Colom to step down and face justice. The twittersphere in the Central American country also responded. Twitter user “Jeanfer” was arrested for suggesting in a tweet that people who had money deposited in Banrural should remove those funds, and by doing so, break the control that “corrupt people” have over the state-controlled financial institution. The murdered attorney, who was shot to death this past weekend, represented a finance expert, Khalil Musa, who was said to have refused to participate in corrupt transactions involving Banrural.
9:51 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism| Blogs| Cuba| El Salvador| Guatemala| Immigration| Internet| Linking Latinos| Philly| Venezuela · Comments Off
21 Mar 2009The Bustelo machine is running and this is what Mala is reading:
Raven’s Eye is live: Women and trans folk of color ISSUES have been done to death, we want OUR LIVES.
Seriously, where is the Change? Another Workplace ICE Raid
From the City of Brotherly Love :Where is the love for free speech and for Mumia?
Tech and Human Rights Justice in Guatemala
Is Cuba Keeping It’s Citizens Prisoners?
Ay that wacky Hugo Chavez is at it again.
And El Salvador’s new President wants to help with U.S. immigration.
Now go outside! It’s a nice Spring day.
Reuters is reporting on the deadly consequences of landslides in Guatemala occurring off season. Landslides in Guatemala are common, but they usually occur between June and November.
The victims were laborers returning home from coffee farms in a nearby department. They had apparently ignored warnings not to use the road, which was closed in December after a smaller rockfall killed two people.
“I was watching when it started. I thought it was an earthquake but the rocks just fell and fell and fell,” said laborer Leandro Salam, 26, who was working in a nearby cornfield at the time and ran over to help dig out bodies.
The mayor of San Cristobal Verapaz, Leopoldo Ical, told Reuters around 80 farmworkers had been traveling in two trucks when they reached the closed road near the hamlet of Los Chorros and continued on foot.
“The trucks stopped and the workers got out and continued on foot. They are the dead and disappeared,” Ical said.
I live in a region where tornadoes are common, but usually in early spring. There was a horrible wind storm the other night that woke the whole family up and left me terrified that we were in the middle of a tornado. I think we need to ask ourselves why all these normal weather events keep happening off season. Is there really nothing called Global Warming?
May the workers rest in peace.
9:56 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Guatemala| Immigration · Comments Off
18 Feb 2008
They say third time is a charm, but this wasn’t the case for the Denver-based consul of Guatemala, that renewed passports and embassy identifications for its citizens living and working in Utah, Colorado and Nevada. Anti-immigration groups protested the event because the Guatemalan nationals didn’t have to prove their status in the U.S. (why would they- this was for Guatemalan documents!). Protest groups said if the Guatemalans were legal immigrants, they wouldn’t need secondary forms of identification.
Via / Local News 8
11:07 am By Maegan La Mala · Guatemala| Politics · Comments Off
15 Jan 2008
Guatemala swore in a new president yesterday; Alvaro Colom, a social democrat, defeated a scary army general back in November, and officially began his term with a pledge to help the less fortunate of his country:
“I thank God that Guatemala got the chance for the first time in 50 years to change to a social democratic government,” he said today after being sworn in. “I’m convinced that by giving to those who have the least, we will all have more.”
How many administrations have begun with just those words? Let’s hope Alvaro will keep his word. Guatemala faces serious issues many of which — like discrimination and violence — are age-old. On the topic of racism, Colom says he plans to govern Guatemala “with a Mayan face”.
8:58 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Guatemala| Politics · Comments Off
5 Nov 2007
Álvaro Colom beat out an army general proving that Latin American countries want more than just un gran macho to lead them. It doesn’t get less macho than this guy. At least that’s how the U.S. media is painting him. I mean seriously, the New York Times couldn’t find a more flattering pic?
Álvaro Colom is a business man who focused on Guatemala’s poverty throughout the campaign.
Colom himself said that vote was more about saying ‘no’ to the perpetuation of Guatemala’s militaristic history.
10:40 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Guatemala| Health| Women| children · Comments Off
25 Oct 2007
Childbirth isn’t an easy process for any woman, but an article I came across this morning highlights the problems women, mostly Indigenous women, face in rural Guatemala. Part of the problem is poverty, made worse by machista attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth
….in Guatemala, where 1 in every 71 women who becomes pregnant during her lifetime dies from causes associated with pregnancy, delivery and the postpartum period. In the Latin America-Caribbean region that’s second only to Haiti, where the risk is 1 in 44. Often women in difficult labor are carried down in a hammock by menfrom the 16-family community, a journey that takes about two hours. Once they reach the nearest passable road, they could try to flag down a ride. But more often they would still have to walk the rest of the way as well, taking at least another four hours.
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