Guatemala

1. La gobernanza forestal es necesaria para poder alcanzar una gobernanza más amplia que permita conservar los bosques en el paisaje. 2. Asegurar derechos de propiedad sobre la tierra y recursos forestales son la base para que funcionen los mercados de bosques y productos forestales (madera). 3. Resolver los derechos de propiedad del carbono, y definir las reglas del juego para el funcionamiento de los mercados de carbono. 4. Promover el acceso e intercambio de información, e impulsar mecanismos de coordinación entre las instituciones asociadas al manejo y conservación de los bosques en el paisaje. 5. La participación de los actores interesados relevantes, en especial los grupos más vulnerables, garantiza alcanzar acuerdos que fortalecen la gobernanza y la protección de los bosques, y permite alcanzar los objetivos de los procesos FLEGT y REDD+. 6. Se requiere que los Estados revisen los mandatos institucionales de sectores antagónicos a la conservación y manejo sostenible de los bosques 7. La legalidad forestal debe ser costo-efectiva y ayudar a garantizar que el bosque y las cadenas de valor de productos forestales sean alternativas económicas competitivas 8. Los incentivos de mayor impacto son aquellos que crean las condiciones favorables para desarrollar negocios forestales legales 9. Los costos de transacción para la conservación de los bosques deben transferirse a otros sectores causantes de la deforestación, para así reducir en alguna media las asimetrías de competitividad del sector forestal con otros sectores productivos del paisaje 10. Para garantizar efectividad y eficiencia, se deben alinear los procesos FLEGT y REDD+ en los países

This article traces a century of efforts to create a National Museum in Guatemala City. Political instability and natural disasters thwarted these efforts, which nevertheless, formed a significant chapter in the country’s museum history. The contents of the laws and decrees that ordered the formation of museums provide indications about their political context and aims, while travelers’ reports and museum publications provide a hint at the collections and exhibitions of the first and second national museums, which functioned at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (1866-1881) and the Palacio de La Reforma (1898-1917). In addition to local politics, the country’s participation in international expositions, and foreign involvement in archaeological research and collecting played a role in museum formation and demise. Special attention is given to the laws and initiatives of the 1920’s, which led to the opening of a National Museum in 1930, with a critique of previous work on this critical period of Guatemalan museum history.

Resumen: Los santuarios religiosos representan, en la actualidad, espacios de atracción de turistas, creyentes o no, y de devotos; sobresalen algunos que, por su magnetismo espiritual, exhiben áreas extendidas de adherencia devocional y turística. Guatemala se inserta en el escenario anterior a través del caso de la Basílica de Esquipulas que resguarda a la venerada imagen del Cristo Negro; ubicada en la Ciudad-Santuario homónima al suroriente del arribo cíclico de miles de turistas y peregrinos que incentivan la economía local. El contexto territorial referido motivó la realización de este trabajo que tiene como objetivo revelar características geográficas del turismo religioso en el Santuario del Cristo Negro de Esquipulas; en una primera parte, se precisan los postulados teórico-conceptuales examinados que atañen al turismo religioso; posteriormente, se describen particularidades geográficas del contexto regional y local; finalmente, se detallan los hallazgos que comprueban la importancia geográfica del turismo religioso en el Santuario a partir de la investigación en gabinete y el trabajo realizado en campo. Palabras claves: Turismo religioso, lugar sagrado, magnetismo espiritual, Esquipulas. Abstract: At present, religious sanctuaries all over the world, attract a considerable amount of tourists, devotees or otherwise. Due to their spiritual magnetism, these places create ample devotional and tourist hinterlands. It is in this context that Guatemala stands prominently; in the southeast of the country, the Esquipulas Basilica homes the wood-carved Black Christ, a popular image which annually attracts thousands of tourists and pilgrims that endorse the local economy. Considering this situation, the city of Esquipulas is recognized as the Faith Capital of Central America. This paper aims at examining the geographical attributes of religious tourism in the Black Christ sanctuary of Esquipulas. In the first part of the text, we present the theoretical platform used to study religious tourism; then, we describe the geographical features of Esquipulas at both regional and local scales. Finally, we present our main research results; they authenticate the geographical importance of religious tourism in this Basilica.

Within Central America, family is recognized as the most prominent and visible social institution.  Within this context, one of the most fundamental elements of gangs' strategy of terror involves the targeting the families.  This paper describes the social constructs around family in the region; social, cultural and economic factors that give rise to its visibility in society; elements of gang mentality that give rise to the targeting of families; gang related forced internal displacement; and variables that affect internal relocation as a strategy for addressing risk from gangs.

The ethnographic case upon which this article is based concerns a project of "governability strengthening" implemented in the indigenous municipality of Todos Santos Cuchumatán by an international NGO. Throughout the voices of the NGO func-tionaries as well as those of the local authorities, I want to bring to surface the implications of a misunderstanding concerning hegemonic ways of perceiving Mayaʼs other-ness that are implied in multicultural neoliberalism, the new form of governance adopted by postwar Guatemala. The article focuses particularly on a performance of democratic skills that highlights an indigenous ritual appropriation of the development discourse , resulting in a process of acculturation/resistance. The article explores the ways local indigenous leadership is redefined as the capacity of mediating between the humanitarian reason of the International Cooperation, where the majority of the resources lies, and community rules of prestige and power, which is ultimately, where their legitimacy comes.

Las propuestas comunitarias son alternativas de generación eléctrica en la Zona Reina en el Departamento de Quiché, Guatemala. Representan formas no arbitrarias ni perjudiciales para los bienes comunes, como el agua de los ríos, que se contraponen a la cultura mercantilista promovida por las empresas.

The participatory methodology and the video have shown to be valuable tools for the empowerment of communities and the improvement of communication, promoting horizontality in the decision-making process. This article displays one of the projects which has worked with participatory video in Guatemala with the specific aim of overcoming ethnic discrimination and valueing the cultural wealth of the country. The information collected through personal interviews tries to go deeper in the analysis of the case study of INCREA. In addition to providing a theoretical frame about the video and the participatory method, the text approaches to the inequality and discrimination of the country to facilitate the understanding of the context where the project has been developed. Among the conclusions, it has to be highlighted that personal involvement means to be a factor of continuity. Moreover, the productions and the knowledge multiplication carried out by the participants are shown to support the plurality of the Guatemalan communication context, promoting the democratic system.

On 25 February 1999, Guatemalans received the much anticipated report of the United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), Memory of Silence, which detailed wartime atrocities and decades-long American support of the Guatemalan army. This document followed the earlier release of the Catholic church's own REMHI report (Recuperation of Historical Memory Inter-diocesan Project), Guatemala: never again . Using the recently released reports and databases of the CEH and REMHI, we explore the significant use of testimonio as a tool of shared witnessing, collective remembrance, and individual recollection of the special brutality directed against Maya women. Through testimonio, the outcomes of visible and invisible terror and violence in Guatemala are articulated as personal, social and geographic spaces of terror, all of which are gendered and racialised. With the civil war officially over, Maya women of Guatemala see the spaces of terror diminish. Given debates over testimonio, however, the grounds for assault and denial remain fertile.

Aquí encuentran la historieta: "Antes de que el Pueblo la Proclame", cuyo objetivo es promover un análisis crítico sobre la situación actual de Guatemala, vista desde una perspectiva histórica, en el marco de la conmemoración oficial del "Bicentenario de la Independencia" que el gobierno de Alejandro Giammattei Falla ha pretendido hacer en el presente año.

Se pretende contribuir de forma lúdica a interpretar la historia política de Guatemala partiendo de los hechos de la independencia y aportar insumos para el análisis crítico del Bicentenario, que se evidencian en las distintas problemáticas que aquejan a la sociedad guatemalteca de hoy en medio de una pandemia gestionada de forma mediocre, corrupta, injusta y desigual.

La historieta parte de la visión encontrada de dos personajes ficticios, Ana y Jorge, ambos trabajadores guatemaltecos, quienes interpretan distinto lo que la historia y la propaganda oficial enseña y la realidad que se impone ante sus ojos.

Este material es de suma utilidad para ser leído en familia o en los salones de clase, y esperamos que pueda ser ampliamente difundido para coadyuvar en la reflexión de la Guatemala, que los pueblos necesitamos, merecemos y queremos.

La historieta es el resultado del trabajo colectivo de un grupo de profesionales que debe ser divulgado como parte de la crítica que El Observador promueve para la transformación necesaria de Guatemala.

Este grupo está conformado por:

Betzabé Alonzo Santizo
Alejandro del Águila Mejía
Juan Pablo Muñoz Elías

Arte e ilustración

Cristian de León.

Solicitamos difundirlo y sus observaciones como siempre son bienvenidas.

Expressing gratitude is central to the lives of Guatemalan youth. Despite limited empirical evidence on gratitude in Guatemala, anecdotal reports and cultural values point to its importance, providing a rich cultural context to continue Baumgarten-Tramer’s work. We have situated the current sample of 104 Guatemalan youth ( M = 10.85, SD = 2.28, 53.8% girls) as autonomous and related using Kağıtçıbaşı’s framework, given their relatively advantaged socioeconomic status and the cultural importance of family. Participants’ responses to the Wishes and Gratitude Scale and the Imaginary Windfall resource distribution activity revealed that older children were more likely than younger children to express connective gratitude. Regardless of age, expressions of verbal gratitude were frequent, while concrete gratitude was extremely rare. Older participants were more likely to spend their hypothetical resources saving for the future; younger children’s resources were often allocated to buying g...

This paper examines how international development funding and accountability requirements are implicated in the so-called disarticulation of a social movement. Based on field studies in Guatemala and El Salvador, we show and explain the way accountability requirements, which encompass management and accounting, legal, and financial technologies, constitute the field of international development through the regulation of heterogeneous social movement organizations. We highlight how accountability enables a form of governance that makes possible the emergence of entities (with specific attributes), while restricting others. Our analysis has implications for governmentality studies that have examined the interrelation of assemblages by analyzing how these interrelations are operationalized at the field level through the Deleuze-and-Guattari-inspired processes of territorialization, coding, and overcoding.

For over four centuries the Catholic Church enjoyed a religious monopoly in Latin America in which potential rivals were repressed or outlawed. Latin Americans were born Catholic and the only real choice they had was whether to actively practice the faith. Taking advantage of the legal disestablishment of the Catholic Church between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Pentecostals almost single-handedly built a new pluralist religious economy. By the 1950s, many Latin Americans were free to choose from among the hundreds of available religious "products," a dizzying array of religious options that range from the African-Brazilian religion of Umbanda to the New Age group known as the Vegetable Union. R. Andrew Chesnut shows how the development of religious pluralism over the past half-century has radically transformed the "spiritual economy" of Latin America. In order to thrive in this new religious economy, says Chesnut, Latin American spiritual "firms" must develop an attractive product and know how to market it to popular consumers. Three religious groups, he demonstrates, have proven to be the most skilled competitors in the new unregulated religious economy. Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diaspora religions such as Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou have emerged as the most profitable religious producers.

Chesnut explores the general effects of a free market, such as introduction of consumer taste and product specialization, and shows how they have played out in the Latin American context. He notes, for example, that women make up the majority of the religious consumer market, and explores how the three groups have developed to satisfy women's tastes and preferences. Moving beyond the Pentecostal boom and the rise and fall of liberation theology, Chesnut provides a fascinating portrait of the Latin American religious landscape.

This paper analyzes the historic 2013 trial against former dictator General (r) Jose Efrain Rios Montt. Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, but a controversial decision by the Constitutional Court annulled part of the proceedings, thereby vacating the verdict. The author was a trial observer at the Rios Montt proceedings, and drawing on her ethnographic research and interviews with relevant parties to the trial, argues that despite the verdict's undoing, the case remains significant historically and politically for Guatemala, and has lasting lessons for theoreticians and practitioners of transitional justice.

The paper describes the process of security sector reform in Guatemala with reference to the efforts to implement community-based policing practices. The results point to the difficulties of shaking-off public understandings of security honed during the armed conflict and underscore the efforts of a still young police institution to position itself in a democratic context. The study posits that community-oriented policing strategies open opportunities to forward police reform in the high-violence, low-trust, weak-institutions, and post-conflict context of Guatemala. The argument is supported by field data gathered in indigenous territories in the Western Highlands, where traditional forms of social organization persist, and in metropolitan Villa Canales municipality, an urban, high-violence site of research.

In the mid-nineteenth century Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1857-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and later Ladinos from Lake Petén Itza to form a multiethnic village in the sparsely occupied Petén jungle of northern Guatemala. This chapter discusses the analysis of the mass-produced consumer goods found at the Tikal village. The historic inhabitants of Tikal were well connected to exchange networks of the societies encircling the Petén, reaching the world through the global markets emanating from nearby British Honduras. This small village was poised to renegotiate social and economic relationships with peripheral societies from deep within the frontier zone, and may be demonstrating consumer behavior observed in refugee populations in the modern era.

Editorial Familias y fracciones oligarcas guatemaltecas se disputan el control y la hegemonía del Estado guatemalteco Una disputa interoligárquica tiene lugar entre las fracciones familiares-empresariales que son parte e integran el Bloque en el Poder en Gua-temala, la cual ha venido tomando la forma pública de un pulso político entre el gobierno de Jimmy Morales Cabrera y el Frente de Con-vergencia Nacional (FCN)-Nación por un lado, y el Ministerio Público (MP) bajo la otrora di-rección de Thelma Aldana, y la Comisión In-ternacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG), bajo el mando de Iván Velásquez, por otro. Fue a finales de agosto de 2017 que esa disputa asumió nuevos ribetes al momento que el mandatario declaró "persona no grata" al Co-misionado de la CICIG y ordenara su expulsión inmediata de Guatemala, luego que éste y la Fiscal General hicieran pública la investigación que evidenció financiamiento electoral ilícito al partido de gobierno durante la campaña electoral de 2015, a la vez que plantearan ante la Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) una solicitud de antejuicio contra el mandatario para investi-garlo y abrir un proceso de cancelación del par-tido oficial, posicionándolo a él y al FCN-Nación como algunos de los protagonistas más visibles de la coyuntura política, aunque no los únicos. Esa disputa interoligárquica y la coyuntura po-lítica que se ha desenvuelto a partir de esa tentativa del actual mandatario de expulsar al titular de la CICIG, representa una continui-dad igualmente de la coyuntura política que se abrió con el juicio por genocidio en su eta-pa de debate abierto a los generales retirados Efraín Ríos Montt, ya fallecido, y Mauricio Ro-dríguez Sánchez, Jefe de inteligencia militar del régimen de facto que encabezó el golpe de Estado en 1982. Debe recordarse que la sen-tencia del 10 de mayo de 2013 en este juicio, hizo confluir nuevamente los intereses de los empresarios corporativos de las cámaras que se articulan en el Comité Coordinador de Aso-ciaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales y Financieras (CACIF), y de los militares contra-insurgentes retirados enjuiciados por las graves violaciones a los derechos humanos durante la guerra interna. Aunque la CICIG no lleva a cabo investigaciones relacionadas con los crímenes de lesa humanidad ejecutados por los milita-res, hay una relación entre estos casos y los de corrupción de alto impacto debido a que los actores son los mismos. La parte resolutiva de la sentencia del Tribunal de Mayor Riesgo "A" contra Ríos Montt en el caso por genocidio, es ilustrativa en ese sentido: Se ordena al Ministerio Público continuar con la investigación correspondiente en contra de las demás personas que pudieren haber parti-cipado en los hechos. Aunque la sentencia no mencionó directamente a las familias que han integrado históricamen-te lo más granado de la oligarquía guatemalte-ca, sus miedos salieron a flote pues está claro que el Ejercito no actuó solo durante la guerra interna en la defensa de sus propios intereses sino también y fundamentalmente, en defensa del status quo vigente y del modelo de acu-mulación agroexportador profundizado desde la Contrarrevolución de 1954.

Analiza el impacto esperado del establecimiento de una unión aduanera entre El Salvador y Guatemala en la economía salvadoreña. Para ello se evalúan las implicaciones de pasar de un esquema de libre comercio a una unión aduanera: el establecimiento de un arancel externo común, la anulación de las reglas de origen y la eliminación de controles fronterizos para las operaciones comerciales entre ambos países. El estudio prevé que los beneficios asociados a esta política superan el efecto negativo en los sectores salvadoreños que se verían afectados por una reducción arancelaria.

Le comunità indigene del Guatemala sono coinvolte in una lunga fase postguerra che aggiunge alle drammatiche fratture del conflitto interno nuove complesse sfide. Questo libro si basa su una ricerca etnografica multisituata realizzata tra la comunità maya mam di Todos Santos Cuchumatán e i gruppi di migranti indigeni in California e in esso si analizzano in particolare due dei fenomeni sociali che segnano la contemporaneità mesoamericana: le migrazioni verso gli Stati Uniti e le politiche multiculturali di sviluppo. Le genealogie storiche di tali fenomeni e le esperienze di vite che essi generano permettono di riflettere su come una comunità indigena riconfigura il proprio sistema di potere e il proprio senso di appartenenza collettivo. I migranti maya si scontrano con i discorsi e le pratiche burocratiche della legalità, con le logiche di verità delle richieste di asilo e con le tensioni razziali delle periferie statunitensi. In questo modo acquisiscono la capacità di riprodurre discorsi e rappresentazioni dell’alterità e della sofferenza indigena che, una volta ritornati, possono utilizzare come chiave d’accesso alle imprescindibili risorse della Cooperazione Internazionale, affermandosi come nuove autorità comunitarie.
Il libro offre perciò il ritratto di una comunità che si ricrea in tensione dialettica tra il viaggio e la trama, che cerca una sintesi tra i flussi transnazionali e la reciprocità comunale.

International migration has been progressively perceived as a security issue and so it has been included in the discipline of Security Studies. Focusing on state actors, International Relations and Security Studies scholars have dealt with Migration as a security threat in the aftermath of the Cold War, specifically after 9/11 and the rise of International Terrorism.
In this work, I will address two main issues: “why” and “how” migration has been understood as a security issue. I will consider three different schools of thought (Samuel Huntington’s theory on the Clash of Civilisations; the Copenhagen School of International Relations; the Paris School of International Relations), and I will view migration to be a matter related to the concept of what these scholars defined as “societal security”.
I would take as the initial cornerstone the notion that migration has become a security issue because of the social construction of the migrant as a threat. Through a couple of case studies, I seek to prove why migrants have been included into the security sphere of the state, so providing the distinction between the locals (i.e. the “us”) and the external threat (i.e. the “them”). So, I will firstly consider the cases of “vigilantism” in the Mexico – US border and secondly the case of the Mexico – Guatemala border.
This discussion would supply the answer to the first question (the question of the “why”) which I expect to prove throughout the first part of this work.
Differently, answering the “how” problem entails an explanation of the process of securitisation. In this context, to be selective is a must, since opting for broader examples could result in vagueness. Thus, I will confront the securitisation process within the European Union.
Jeff Huysmans interprets the securitisation of migration in the European Union as a spill-over effect from an internal economic need to a security threat.
In fact, after the European Enlargement of 1973, Member States started to put limits on migration flows, taking advantage of the fact that Migration Policy had stayed in the sphere of national prerogatives, so denying the possibility of a supranational, centralised response to the Migration Crisis as we had later (2011). Member States’ inadaptability in responding to the challenge has turned Migration into a security threat. To prove this, I wish to focus on two specific factors: Welfare Chauvinism and the Paradox of the Schengen Agreement.
The literature defines “Welfare Chauvinism” as the fear of the migrant as a threat to the locals’ economic advantages provided by the State.
Instead, the Schengen paradox is the purely European pattern of closing external borders while eliminating internal barriers.
The Operation Mare Nostrum and its suspension is the final example to illustrate how South-North Migration has been securitised in the European Union.

Resumen En este ensayo se propone una lectura de la novela Sopa de caracol (2002) del escritor guatemalteco Arturo Arias, centrada en el tema de la función de la sexualidad como elemento desubjetivante del prota-gonista. Se examina también cómo la estética del grotesco y el modelo carnavalesco son puestos en movimiento para desestabilizar la identi-dad de género y así mostrar la imposibilidad de reconstruirse después de la catástrofe de la guerra. Palabras clave: novela centroamericana; posguerra; identidad de gé-nero; sexualidad; desubjetivación. AbstRAct In this essay we propose an interpretation of the novel Sopa de caracol (2002) by Guatemalan writer Arturo Arias based on the role of sexu-ality in the desubjetivization of the protagonist. We also analyze how the aesthetic of the grotesque and the carnivalesque model are set in motion to destabilize gender identity and thus demonstrate its inability to reconstruct itself after the catastrophe of war.

El objetivo del manual es motivar al lector a adentrarse al estudio de la comunicación no verbal, en donde aprenderá como darle el significado correcto a los gestos y bajo que circunstancias, podrá ver las aplicaciones que la comunicación no verbal tiene en la vida y el trabajo, por ejemplo, en la detección de mentiras, en entrevistas de trabajo, en relaciones padre-hijo, relaciones sentimentales, política en fin cualquier lugar en donde haya interacción humana.

En este estudio se examina la participación de las mujeres en el Organismo Judicial, presenta la experiencia vivida por juezas y magistradas que se enfrentan a un sistema de discriminación y violencia de género, sus manifestaciones y consecuencias. En Guatemala muchas mujeres en estos puestos han realizado una labor ejemplar para romper con la impunidad, pero han pagado un costo muy alto. Este estudio muestra que las mujeres se enfrentan a estructuras masculinas, en donde existen mecanismos que promueven la corrupción y la impunidad, compuestos por una cultura patriarcal que obstruye la labor de las juezas. Estas estructuras y mecanismos no son únicamente internos sino que también grupos de poder externos que quieren obstruir la justicia y atacan a las juezas.