Guatemala and United Fruit: US Policy Blunder
SUMMARY: Overview taken from Michael Reid’s Forgotten Continent on the US toppling of Guatemala’s elected government in 1954.
Guatemala is the saddest country in Latin America. The beauty of its verdant highlands dotted with whitewashed colonial towns, its shimmering lakes overlooked by soaring volcanoes and its Mayan ruins half buried in rainforest cannot conceal the ancestral oppression of its indigenous majority. It has had an elected civilian government since 1986. But a guerrilla war lasting almost three decades was settled only in 1996. It cost some 200,000 lives; most of the victims were Mayan Indians killed by the army. The war continues to cast a dark shadow. Guatemala’s democrats must struggle against what some have called poderes fácticos – shadowy networks linking corrupt former army officers and organized criminal gangs of drug traffickers and money launderers. In many ways, these networks are the real power in the country. They appeared to flourish under Alfonso Portillo, the country’s president from 2000 to 2005, who fled to Mexico on leaving office and faced charges of stealing $16 million of public money. Under Oscar Berger, a reforming liberal elected in 2004, a new effort began to cut Guatemala’s army down to size and to liberate democracy from military tutelage.
The CIA snuffs out the Guatemalan spring
And yet Guatemala might have developed into a far more robust democracy much earlier. That it did not do so is in large part the fault of the United States: more than anywhere else in Latin America, Guatemala is a victim of American intervention. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration organized a coup to topple the democratic, reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, which the American president alleged to be a possible ‘communist outpost on this continent’. … Read more
Fruit in Colombia
SUMMARY: Description and pictures of the several different exotic fruits I eat in Colombia.
My Rice Rant
SUMMARY: I explain why rice sucks.
A Facebook update from November 2009:
I’m spending 6 weeks in the States and I’m not eating one grain of rice the whole time!
My January 13 tweet (twitter.com/colinpost):
Life in Latin America is a daily struggle to minimize my consumption of rice.
Rice has no taste. Rice is nutritionally worthless. Rice is filler crap, the most abused filler crap in the world. … Read more
Life is But a Dream in La Candelaria
SUMMARY: Crime and indigente nuisances are way down in La Candelaria. I explain why.
I’ve written extensively on the crime situation in La Candelaria in these posts: Contributed Story: Hangin’ Tough in La Candelaria, Contributed Story: La Candelaria Pickpocket FAIL, La Candelaria in Pictures, Why I Hate Downtown Bogota, Crime and the Bogota Mentality, and My 1st Mugging in Colombia, I’ve written how bad crime was. WAS. As in past tense, not anymore. I have to go back to all those posts and link to this one, because La Candelaria is different.
After moving out of Chapinero, I moved into Hostal Fatima in La Candelaria. I noticed I was rarely getting asked for change or offered drugs. One of the gringos I knew at another hostel confirmed the neighborhood’s changed since last year. … Read more
Riot at Colombia’s National University
SUMMARY: Pictures and video of a riot at Colombia’s national university.
Alternate Title: My 2nd Time Tear-Gassed in Colombia
While Universidad de los Andes is the most prestigious in Colombia, the national university is actually ranked higher. One of the national university’s claims to fame comes from its former rector and recent presidential candidate, Antanas Mockus. He once mooned a disorderly crowd of students. … Read more
My 2nd Time Bribing Cops in Colombia
SUMMARY: Short dittie about my 2nd time busted smoking weed on the street with The Mick.
This story happened within a day or two after I published the story on my first time bribing cops in Colombia. Although that story occurred months before publishing it, I shied away from writing up this one because I would’ve felt like a dumb shit and a loser for having essentially the same story happen twice.
I quit drinking for over six months in Colombia. Toward the end, I started smoking weed every day all day to get by. That habit stuck after a month in the States and returning to Colombia in January. My smoking started to stink up the apartment building, annoying the neighbors. One day one of them said something about it to me and I decided not to smoke in the apartment anymore. … Read more
Sorreros: How to Move in Bogota
SUMMARY: Pictures of a sorrero, a cart guy, helping me move from my Chapinero apartment.
