Colom Leads, But Race Wide Open in Guatemala

[arcos]

Source: Angus-Reid

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Álvaro Colom is the most popular contender in Guatemala’s presidential race, according to a poll by Vox Latina released by Prensa Libre. 21.2 per cent of respondents would vote for the left-wing National Union of Hope (UNE) member in this year’s ballot.

Otto Pérez Molina of the right-wing Patriot Party (PP) is second with 10.5 per cent, followed by Alejandro Giammattei of the Grand National Alliance (GANA) with 7.5 per cent, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú of Encounter for Guatemala (EPG) with 2.2 per cent.

<snip>

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the next presidential election?

Álvaro Colom (UNE)
21.2%

Otto Pérez Molina (PP)
10.5%

Alejandro Giammattei (GANA)
7.5%

Rigoberta Menchú (EPG)
2.2%

Read more: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15252

[Peace Patriot]

1. DUers may not realize that TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers are not

represented in this poll, because they are dead--slaughtered, with the direct complicity of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s.

A few of the old folks might be dead anyway, by this time. But what of the babies, the pregnant mothers, the children who were skinned alive or burned alive, or gutted in front of their families, and the others--of all ages--who are gone, after horrible tortures by death squads trained at the School of the Americas in the land of the free, home of the brave?

Noble Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu--indigenous herself--would likely have more votes, don't you think? Probably all of those 200,000 villagers would vote for her, and work for her election?

It's kind of like when they say that George Bush is President. Well, yeah, if you deduct the 4 million black voters who were purged from the voter registration rolls in systematic violations of the Voting Rights Act, and if you leave out the fact that all the votes were "tabulated" by rightwing Bushite corporations, using "trade secret," proprietary programming code, in all the shiny new election theft machines that were fast-tracked across the nation during the 2002-2004 period.

If you leave out a whole lot of facts, Bush could be called "the President."

If you leave out all of the people that Reagan slaughtered, Menchu is left with 2.2% of the votes. I don't know the total population of Guatemala, or the voting population, so I'm not sure what % is missing here. I just want us to keep things in context. In reality. And never forget.

[Judi Lynn]

2. That's voter purge done the extreme way, isn't it? My god.

There's also another aspect to the genocidal massacres: they reinforce the already lethal levels of racism in Guatemalan society already. They re-identify the native people as the people the Spanish-descended oligarchy really doesn't like. They reassert the primacy and unique "acceptability" of the European Guatemalans, and obviously narrow the "acceptable" range of political candidates who feel welcome to run.



Guatemalans carrying the remains of their loved ones after
disinterrment following mass grave burial after a massacre.

You know there's a problem when forensic scientists investigating mass graves at the site of a massacre are bombarded with death threats years later.

Photos portraying this vast scale tragedy not that far from our country, to which enormous amounts of money were contributed by our right-wing "great communicator," Ronald Reagan, as well as money sent there by the congregations of American fundamentalist preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who slavishly adored the great mass murdering right-wing dictator, and fundie preacher, Efraín Ríos Montt. They are generally too hideous to post here:

http://images.google.com/images?q=Guatemala+massacre&btnG=Search+Images&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en