Presidency by way of divorce
Earlier this month, Guatemalan First Lady Sandra Torres announced she'd be running in the country's presidential elections in September. Critics and opponents were quick to point out that her candidacy was illegitimate, since Guatemala forbids close family members of presidents from running -- a measure intended to stem nepotism and promote democracy. But laws aren't always completely respected in that neck of the woods, and she didn't seem too worried about it. 
Well, yesterday, word got out that Torres and her husband, President Alvaro Colom (with whom she claims to have an "excellent relationship"), have filed for divorce. According to their political party, "They are doing it for national interests and not personal interests. They are making a sacrifice." Bless their hearts.
Torres, who gained recognition (both good and bad) for social programs she has supported as First Lady, is up against Otto Pérez Molina, an army general who was active in the country's civil war in which the military behaved very badly. Molina is doing well in the polls because he has promised to crack down on organized crime.
Last week, Daniel Altschuler and Javier Corrales wrote an insightful piece for Americas Quarterly, discussing Guatemala's lamentable choice between "the Iron Fist and conjugal continuismo." They sum it up well.
Obama’s visit to El Salvador
As many of you are probably aware, President Obama is currently in the middle of a rare five-day trip to Latin America with stops in Brazil, Chile and El Salvador. There's been a great deal of discussion about why Obama chose these three countries, while excluding others, like Argentina.
El Salvador, for its part, is an interesting itinerary choice. It's the smallest of the three countries comprising the troubled "Northern Triangle" of Central America, along with Guatemala and Honduras. What the three nations have in common, beyond geographical proximity, is rampant violence, much of it connected to the drug trade. But with Guatemala's upcoming election, Obama wouldn't want to be seen as a meddler, and with Honduras' recent coup, the perceived message of a visit there would be messy as well.
So El Salvador it is, a tiny country not far away that many of us know very little about. But an estimated 700 Salvadorans flee their country every day, many of them winding up in the U.S. Now is as good a time as any to plug my friend Jamie Moffett's documentary, Return to El Salvador. It's narrated by Martin Sheen (a decidedly less crazy Sheen) and has been endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others. The documentary takes a look at the history of El Salvador, and particularly its civil war, and how these events are shaping modern realities in El Salvador and in our own backyard.
I interviewed Jamie about the project last summer, and today he called to let me know the film is currently screening in El Salvador (were President Obama to squeeze a screening into his schedule, I'm sure he'd get a better understanding of the country). But luckily for the rest of us, the film has also been added to Hulu and is now among the top ten documentaries featured there. I encourage you to check it out, but to whet your appetite, the trailer is below.
Roots
I've spent the past three days retracing my roots here in Guatemala City, where twelve days past the due date and weighing in at ten pounds, six ounces I came into this world back in the year of 1982. An evangelical televangelist was the president of the country at the time - or dictator, I guess I should say - and once the dust settled on the 36-year civil war it turned out he was one of the most ruthless offenders of indigenous human rights the country had ever seen. And the country has seen its fair share, tragically.
I share that for no reason other than that this country is a land of contradictions, which was perfectly illustrated earlier in the week at a restaurant way out in the highlands when the faucet in the restroom didn't work -- instead you had to dip a bowl into a bucket of water sitting in the corner -- and yet the automatic hand-drier worked just fine. As I was pondering this afterwords it occurred to me that Guatemalans ought to really like Johnny Cash because he too was quite contradictory for most of his life.
So here I am in this city of three million in a fairly poor and tumultuous country, this city where I was born and where I have so many memories, and I've been going here and there in taxis, without a clue as to the layout of the place. It's a tricky city to navigate because it is on a plateau but has ravines all around it with little fingers of flatness sticking out as if to taunt the elements of nature, which also means you rarely can get from points A to B in a direct line.
On Thursday I headed over to a bookstore/cafe I had read about because, well, it is a bookstore/cafe and I am who I am. It was so posh, though, it made me scratch my head, puzzled that this place and Sipacapa -- where I had been just one day prior -- could actually exist in the same universe, much less the same developing country. Yesterday I visited a few museums and a market, and on the way back in the taxi I got into a discussion with the driver about world Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism. He said that in Guatemala City people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves and joining evangelical and Pentecostal churches. I had heard that 60% of the country identified as either Pentecostal or charismatic, but I also know about where Guatemala ranks in terms of homicide and corruption, and you wonder how these faith and crime statistics can coexist. But they do.
So today I headed downtown, to Kilometer Zero, to the central plaza which has on two of its sides the National Palace and a cathedral, respectively. During part of the tour of the palace we walked through a photography display of the quetzal, Guatemala's national bird. Legend has it that when the Mayan warrior Tecun Uman was fighting against the Spanish invaders back in the day, a quetzal descended on him as he was dying, and ever since the bird has a bright red chest on account of spilled Mayan blood, and it refuses to sing. It is also said that the quetzal cannot live in captivity, which alludes, apparently, to the fact that Guatemalans highly value their freedom.
Today on the tour as the guide pointed out the series of photos of quetzals in captivity, an older Guatemalan man said, "What about the saying, about quetzals not being able to live in captivity?" The guide didn't skip a beat, and responded, "That's right. They cannot live in captivity." And we moved on, down the hallway, no questions asked.
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