NEWS: A lawyer and a president

As of today, it looks like the biggest news in the country is a scandal involving a murdered lawyer and Guatemala’s president. Tell me if this sounds like a movie:


On May 10, 2009, Rodrigo Rosenberg—a lawyer—was riding his bike in Guatemala City. “Unknown assailants” shot and killed him.

On May 11, a video surfaced. Rosenberg made a tape before he died! And on this tape Rosenberg, talking directly into the camera, stated that should anything happen to him (like, say, being murdered while biking—ed.), President Alvaro Colom should be blamed.

Apparently, Rosenberg was a vocal opponent of Colom and recently accused Colom in the murders of Khalil Musa and Musa’s daughter in April of this year. You can read all about it here.
Now, apparently, protestors have taken to the street demanding an investigation into President Colom.


I know nothing about the president or Rosenberg. Therefore, I have no opinion. We’ll have to wait and see whether the political unrest, which appears minor at the moment, will escalate if/when more evidence surfaces.



BTW: If you want to learn more about Guatemala, you can check out the CIA World Factbook page.

Welcome

Since I know you all want desperately to know what I'm doing for the next several weeks, I've created this page.

Here are the basics:

I'm in Guatemala from May 24 to mid-July. I'll be in two different Spanish schools.

- One school is in La Antigua. It's a fairly small town that I spent a week in back in December 2008. I'll be there for a couple of weeks.


- The other school is in Quetzaltenango (Xela). There are about 300,000 people in the city. I'll be there for 4 weeks.

I'm also working on two magazine articles. One has to do with volunteers helping a school for street kids. The other is about a unique collaboration between environmental conservation and political/economic development.

I've created a map where you can track my (geographic) progress.
(The map may need a little extra time to load...)