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.
Let me come clean. I have problems with transnational and transracial adoptions. There, I said it. I think the system is racist on a number of levels. The president of Guatemala has some concerns too, leading him to suspend adoptions starting in the new year.
While here in the U.S. we watched 
Every year thousands of undocumented people pass into the U.S. through the border with Mexico, and not all of them are Mexican. Many begin their journey in their homelands in Central America, and in order to reach U.S. territory must become, in the words of Los Tigres del Norte –“dos veces mojados” — crossing not one border but two. Central Americans entering Mexican territory do not have it easy, and allegations of abuse on the part of Mexican officials has been a catalyst for a demand by Mexico’s Human Rights Center for the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) to investigate the allegations:
While the U.S. is caught up in the 
What I love (really hate) about the report in yesterday’s New York Times about hate crimes against the Guatamalan community in West Palm Beach, Florida, is how right in the headline the fact that the crime victims are undocumented is highlighted (as “illegal”) as if their undocumented status makes it ok that they are being attacked. While the article attempts to make the point that the undocumented status of many Guatemalans makes them easy targets because of their distrust and fear of the criminal justice system, the fact that the NYT chooses to constantly use “illegal” as an adjective to describe the victims in an underhanded way lays the blame on the Guatemalans.
Over the last five years at least 2,000 mujeres have been murdered in Guatemala. The majority of these women have been poor young women found with body parts missing including their breasts. So is Guatemala becoming another Ciudad Juarez, Mexico? And why is the mainstream media not covering this story? The answer is that obviously the mainstream media doesn’t consider the murders of Latina women important but a delegation of U.S. advocates does and will be travelling to Guatemala to call attention to the crimes against women there and to the fact that over the past five years only 14 of these murder cases have been solved. Juana Batzibal, a human rights lawyer with the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH) in Guatemala City said:
Colombian rocker Juanes and Mexican actress Salma Hayek joined forces with actress Ashley Judd this week to raise awareness about AIDS in Guatemala: