The 2024 Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Awards were given to Rabbis for Ceasefire and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), and the Concejo de Autoridades de 48 Cantones de Totonicapán of Guatemala; and a slain former awardee was honored. The following article was published in the November-December 2024 issue of NewsNotes. The Institute for Policy…
A candidate running on an anti-corruption platform unexpectedly overtook the former first lady.
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns stands with the Guatemalan people, condemning the Guatemalan Public Ministry’s judicial meddling in the country’s presidential elections.
A surprise second-place finish for anti-corruption candidate bodes well for a country plagued by corruption.
The resolution calls for ensuring that U.S. government-sponsored investment and international financial loans do not go to corrupt businesses and government entities, investigating and freezing the financial assets of corrupt individuals in the U.S. financial system, and suspending military assistance.
Growing crackdown on political dissent amid already significant corruption and human rights abuses raise concerns of authoritarianism.
An international campaign for alleviating poverty and suffering in Guatemala has launched a petition calling for new targeted sanctions by the United States.
Maryknoll Affiliate Claudia Samayoa and fellow Guatemalan Jose Martinez face false accusations of criminal behavior by the president of Guatemala’s Supreme Court for speaking out against corruption and impunity.
In the past few months, Guatemala has seen dangerous efforts to rollback key human rights protections instituted after the Guatemalan Civil War.
Since his inauguration in January, former comedian and now President Jimmy Morales has faced an intense Congressional transition and renewal of mass protests in Guatemala.
On October 25, former comedian and television celebrity Jimmy Morales won Guatemala’s presidential election after a rising anti-corruption citizens’ movement helped bring down President Otto Pérez Molina. The underlining challenges and the political views of Jimmy Morales signal major troubles ahead.
The arrest of Guatemala’s President Pérez Molina on charges of corruption on September 3 was a surprising turn of events that brings a ray of hope to a long-suffering country where Maryknoll missioners have served for decades.
In Honduras and Guatemala, corrupt and criminal elites have colluded to enrich themselves by stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years alone from government agencies that provide social services, and revenue for the government.
This article by Sr. Ann Braudis, published in the May-June 2015 NewsNotes, relates something of the struggle in Guatemala during recent decades: it reflects on where the majority of indigenous and poor people find themselves today.
Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt’s retrial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity was postponed, again, on January 5.
The following press release from Carbon Market Watch reports on efforts by civil society organizations to raise awareness around the troubling classification of a dam project in Guatemala.
In mid-August, the Guatemalan government deployed over 1,500 police to Monte Olivo to evict 160 families of the community 9 de Febrero in order to allow the construction of the Santa Rita dam to go forward.
The following article was originally published in the December 2013 issue of El Quetzal, the newsletter of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA. It was reprinted in the March-April 2014 NewsNotes.
