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Civil War by Other Means

Rigoberta Menchú’s presidental bid could turn the page on Guatemala’s bloody past

By Jacob Wheeler

Guatemalans will go to the voting booths on Sept. 9 for their third national election since the country’s bloody civil war ended in 1996. But 11 years later, the miseries of the 36-year conflicto armado, and its most notorious characters, are still visible across the landscape. On one side is the Mayan indigenous-rights activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum, who etched her… return to article

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    There are serious questions about the accuracy of Rigoberta Menchu’s book “I, Rigoberta Menchu”.  She did not come from a completely impoverished family as she stated in her book but one relatively prosperous by Guatemalan standards.  This article could have at least acknowledge some of the controversies about the book that made her famous.

    United States Posted by chopper on Aug 11, 2007 at 10:56 AM

    “...if elected, she wouldn’t try to carry out the kind of radical agrarian reforms that prompted the United States to engineer a coup in 1954 against the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz—an action that spiraled the country into civil war six years later.”

    What makes the agricultural reforms implemented by Arbenz “radical”?

    Canada Posted by alba on Aug 15, 2007 at 11:18 AM

    alba, you should know by now that the terms “radical”, “leftist”, “progressive” “commies”, etc. have no other intention that discrediting anybody who wants to do something about poverty in his/her country, while it is accepted as mandatory that the USA “engineered coups” , starts wars and mingles in everybody’s affairs as if they had been appointed by some unknown authority to do so. Don’t pay any attention to those words, they don’t mean a thing, just look at facts and their consequences.

    Costa Rica Posted by Maria on Aug 15, 2007 at 11:55 PM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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