Magazine Layout Design

El Diario Queztal

May 2011

IN THIS ISSUE

TRAVEL 2 Article One Verison One

Trekking Through the Highlands

TRAVEL 8 Article One Verison Two

Trekking Through the Highlands

GOSSIP 14 Article Two Version Two Love Affair

GOSSIP 18 Article One Verison Two Love Affair

Trekking Through the Highlands

Mark Sudden

A personal story of a simple vacation that evoled into a great adventure of culture and beauty in a refound land.

e walked into the village around dusk, but with the fog pouring down the dirt streets, it could have been anytime. It was cold, and I could hardly see across the concrete plaza. The Catholic church had been cleaved by an earthquake, the gap between its two halves now spanned with sheets of plywood, but that didn’t stop people from praying in the dank cavern on a floor littered with boughs of long green pine needles.

Our accommodations were a municipal building, a cinder block structure around a courtyard with a fountain that didn’t work and an ash heap where skinny mutts gnawed leftovers. We were to sleep on the tile floor of a room with no furniture and a nonfunctioning light bulb hanging from a wire. I recognized the place from Hollywood thrillers: this was where the narco-cartel tortured its enemies.

The Beginning It was the first day of our three-day walk across the highlands from Quetzaltenango to Lake Atitlan. I was back in Guatemala, and pretty pleased about it. Later that night, in the yard of someone’s house, we crawled on our knees to enter a smoky sauna. Inside, a fire had been burning for an hour and the temperature was well over 100. It was like a large doghouse, a concrete box with a pitched roof, not tall enough to stand in, but we could sit upright on a wooden bench. From a steel drum we scooped bowls of steaming water and rinsed ourselves. It felt good after hauling a pack 13 miles through sun-beaten cornfields, dropping into cloud forests where bamboo and orchids grew and where weathered woodcutters with machetes heaved beneath 100-pound loads of firewood.

We sweated in this Mayan sauna, a temescal, for half an hour, before crawling outside to discover that the fog had dispersed and the sky was exploding with stars. Back at the plaza a town meeting was under way, and the villagers were debating something in their glottal, popping language called Tz’utujil.

3 El Diario Queztal

Remember when Guatemala was the world’s coolest destination, when your dorm-mates returned from winter break bedecked in purple ponchos for which they’d bargained— in Spanish! — from some actual Maya on market day in Chichicastenango? As decades of civil war calmed enough to allow tourism, your friends reported hair-raising rides aboard rickety chicken buses, those Blue Birds pimped like low-riders with flashing lights, naked-lady mud flaps, and Jesus and the Virgin airbrushed on the hood.

But that was so 1990. When the next generation lugged its backpacks

“...its cobblestone streets so heavily trod by foreign sandals that it ceases to feel Guatemalan and takes on an international character all its own.“ to more exotic places like Uzbekistan and Laos, Guatemala became a donethat, losing its cachet among the Lonely Planet vanguard and opening itself up to the Frommer’s masses. Tourism is now the country’s top industry, a fact made evident by the tour buses spilling North Americans, Europeans

and South Americans into destinations like Antigua, Tikal and Lake AtitlĂĄn. Just how tame has Guatemala become? Well, in the past two decades my 72-year-old mother had gone there 15 times.

But when my parents invited my girlfriend and me to join them on Trip No. 16, I was struck with nostalgic yearning. It had been 17 years since my only visit to Guatemala, and in the intervening years as a writer searching for new places, I had ended up in a few locations that were just as well left unvisited. Maybe the reason so many people still flock to Guatemala is that it is fun to be there. It is, after all, a country where a man in a cowboy hat will board the public bus and sell you a pink ice cream cone for 25 cents.

Non-Gringo Trail Our plan was to travel the new gringo trail with my parents and then peel off into parts unknown. First we took a week of Spanish classes in Antigua, its cobblestone streets so heavily trod by foreign sandals that it ceases to feel Guatemalan and takes on an international character all its own. The narrow sidewalks teem with mimes and Michigan State students among the Mayas and marimbas, and you can choose Thai, Italian or sushi each night. The one-on-one Spanish lessons cost just $120 a week, and even if you don’t want to learn the language, paying someone $7 an hour to listen to you is a pretty good deal. We spent afternoons climbing volcanoes and riding bikes through hillside villages, the pat-pat-pat of hands slapping dough audible through the open doors of the tortillerias.

Then we spent a week on Lake AtitlĂĄn, which has perhaps borne the hardest brunt of backpackers. While the indigenous villagers, since the landing of Pedro de Alvarado 500 years ago, have resisted outside conquest well enough to maintain their native language, they appear to have capitulated almost entirely in the four decades since the arrival of the hippie.

Wood craving of a man hiking up hill carring national instrament. Made in Guatemala City

Travel 4

You can get by easily here with no language but English and no currency but dollars, and fantasies of Mayan immersion are disrupted by barefoot white people hawking trinkets and busking Bob Marley on the guitar.

We avoided these Haight Street dregs- not to mention all glimmers of native culture -when my parents checked us into the exquisite Hotel Atitlán. Here amid captive blossoms and parrots in cages, the waters of the infinity pool seemed to merge with the lake, and as mist hovered on the volcano tops, cocktails were delivered caldron-side by Mayas dressed in the warrior costumes of their ancestors.

Once my parents left, my girlfriend, Cedar, and I wanted to get off the pavement. In the 15 years since the civil war, the dangers of wandering Guatemala’s wilderness have greatly decreased, and these days, outdoor adventure is booming: mountain biking tours, sea kayaking and treks across the highlands, like the one that landed us in the tiny fog-laden village of Santa Catarina.

New Friends After packing up in the ramshackle municipal building that had proved a perfectly acceptable campsite, we crossed the plaza for breakfast in a one-table diner where an elderly woman named Maria was pressing torti-

5 El Diario Queztal

llas over a fire. After our breakfast of eggs and rice and beans, we started the day’s hike, which would take us across plots of corn and green peas that clung to the steep hills like patchwork, and then down a ravine to cross a rickety wooden footbridge and hoist ourselves up the mountain on the other side. Our guides were young volunteers from Britain and Ireland. The company was called Quetzaltrekkers, a nonprofit that operates a school and a youth home with the funds it raises through these trips.

Late in the afternoon, after criss-crossing a creek shaded with alder groves and banana trees and orange lilies, we climbed out of yet another canyon. The lead guide, Anne McGarr, a 25-year-old Dublin speech therapist on indefinite leave from her job, whipped out a phone and said, “Who wants strawberry, and who wants pineapple?” Fifteen minutes later when we arrived at the house on whose floor we’d be sleeping — an upgrade from the previous night’s interrogation chamber. Don Pedro, the house’s owner, was ready with two blenders of cold fruit licuados.

He and his wife served us chicken, rice and beans, and afterward we sat around a fire passing a guitar back and forth. Don Pedro sang us songs in both Spanish and Quiche, and paused to tell us of the dire poverty he’d grown up in, just a thatched roof shack for all 14 siblings, 10 of whom had died young. I didn’t want to interrupt his story, so I never asked if they died from poverty, or the war, or something else. He said that the hardship had ended, thanks to God, only with the arrival of missionaries from Spokane and Helena who brought with them radios, medicine, and irrigation. They even taught Don Pedro to read. He thanked us for passing through his village, for supporting the school and the youth home with the money we spent for the hike. “Somos todos los hijos de Dios,” he concluded. We are all God’s children.

I guess I expected resentment toward the unending stream of foreign do-gooders — from missionaries to the Peace Corps to Quetzaltrekkers — who can create one set of problems as they address another. I was surprised by Don Pedro’s earnest appreciation: the closest

“ He thanked us for passing through his village, for supporting the school and the youth home with the money we spent for the hike. Somos todos los hijos de Dios, he concluded. We are all Gods children.“ translation of his words was, “We love tourists here.” And I suppose that’s what I’m looking for when I ramble across other countries — not obliterating my own identity or merging with the locals, but just that thrill of not knowing what will happen next.

Before bed Anne informed us that our wake-up call was 4 in the morning. She told us to trust her, it would be worth it. So when the alarm chirped we packed in chilly darkness, hauled ourselves past the lone bulb of a church, dodged buses as we climbed a paved road and emerged at a rim overlooking Lake Atitlán, the lights of the villages twinkling below. There on a rugged patch of earth we rolled out of our sleeping bags and boiled water for powdered coffee and chocolate, watched the sky go gray and the lake go blue. Only a few hours had passed since Don Pedro’s lullabies. Now with the sun in the sky, we descended the rest of the way to the waters

Images of the village and local students. All were taken on the trip.

Travel 6

Guatemala, Trekking Through The Highlands Mark Sudden

A personal story of a simple vacation that evoled into a great adventure of culture and beauty in a refound land.

W

e walked into the village around dusk, but with the fog pouring down the dirt streets, it could have been anytime. It was cold, and I could hardly see across the concrete plaza. The Catholic church had been cleaved by an earthquake, the gap between its two halves now spanned with sheets of plywood, but that didn’t stop people from praying in the dank cavern on a floor littered with boughs of long green pine needles.

Our accommodations were a municipal building, a cinder block structure around a courtyard with a fountain that didn’t work and an ash heap where skinny mutts gnawed leftovers. We were to sleep on the tile floor of a room with no furniture and a nonfunctioning light bulb hanging from a wire. I recognized the place from Hollywood thrillers: this was where the narco-cartel tortured its enemies.

“...its cobblestone streets so heavily trod by foreign sandals that it ceases to feel Guatemalan and takes on an international character all its own.“ The Beginning It was the first day of our three-day walk across the highlands from Quetzaltenango to Lake Atitlan. I was back in Guatemala, and pretty pleased about it. Later that night, in the yard of someone’s house, we crawled on our knees to enter a smoky sauna. Inside, a fire had been burning for an hour and the temperature was well over 100. It was like a large doghouse, a concrete box with a pitched roof, not tall enough to stand in, but we could sit upright on a wooden bench. From a steel drum we scooped bowls of steaming water and rinsed ourselves. It felt good after

9 El Diario Queztal

hauling a pack 13 miles through sun-beaten cornfields, dropping into cloud forests where bamboo and orchids grew and where weathered woodcutters with machetes heaved beneath 100-pound loads of firewood.

We sweated in this Mayan sauna, a temescal, for half an hour, before crawling outside to discover that the fog had dispersed and the sky was exploding with stars.

Back at the plaza a town meeting was under way, and the villagers were debating something in their glottal, popping language called Tz’utujil.

Remember when Guatemala was the world’s coolest destination, when your dorm-mates returned from winter break bedecked in purple ponchos for which they’d bargained— in Spanish! — from some actual Maya on market day in Chichicastenango? As decades of civil war calmed enough to allow tourism, your friends reported hair-raising rides aboard rickety chicken buses, those Blue Birds pimped like lowriders with flashing lights, naked-lady mud flaps, and Jesus and the Virgin airbrushed on the hood.

But that was so 1990. When the next generation lugged its backpacks to more exotic places like Uzbekistan and Laos, Guatemala became a done-that, losing its cachet among the Lonely Planet vanguard and opening itself up to the Frommer’s masses. Tourism is now the country’s top industry, a fact made evident by the tour buses spilling North Americans, Europeans and South Americans into destinations like Antigua, Tikal and Lake Atitlán. Just how tame has Guatemala become? Well, in the past two decades my 72-year-old mother had gone there 15 times.

But when my parents invited my girlfriend and me to join them on Trip No. 16, I was struck with nostalgic yearning. It had been 17 years since my only visit to Guatemala, and in the intervening years as a writer searching for new places, I had ended up in a few locations that were just as well left unvisited. Maybe the reason so many people still flock to Guatemala is that it is fun to be there. It is, after all, a country where a man in a cowboy hat will board the public bus and sell you a pink ice cream cone for 25 cents.

Non-Gringo Trail Our plan was to travel the new gringo trail with my parents and then peel off into parts unknown. First we took a week of Spanish classes in Antigua, its cobblestone streets so heavily trod by foreign sandals that it ceases to feel Guatemalan and takes on an international character all its own. The narrow sidewalks teem with mimes and Michigan State students among the Mayas and marimbas, and you can choose Thai, Italian or sushi each night. The one-on-one Spanish lessons cost just $120 a week, and even if you don’t want to learn the language, paying someone $7 an hour to listen to you is

a pretty good deal. We spent afternoons climbing volcanoes and riding bikes through hillside villages, the pat-pat-pat of hands slapping dough audible through the open doors of the tortillerias.

Then we spent a week on Lake Atitlán, which has perhaps borne the hardest brunt of backpackers. While the indigenous villagers, since the landing of Pedro de Alvarado 500 years ago, have resisted outside conquest well enough to maintain their native language, they appear to have capitulated almost entirely in the four decades since the arrival of the hippie. You can get by easily here with no language but English and no currency but dollars, and fantasies of Mayan immersion are disrupted by barefoot white people hawking trinkets and busking Bob Marley on the guitar.

We avoided these Haight Street dregs- not to mention all glimmers of native culture -when my parents checked us into the exquisite Hotel Atitlán. Here amid captive blossoms and parrots in cages, the waters of the infinity pool seemed to merge with the lake, and as mist hovered on the volcano tops, cocktails were delivered caldronside by Mayas dressed in the warrior costumes of their ancestors.

Once my parents left, my girlfriend, Cedar, and I wanted to get off the pavement.

In the 15 years since the civil war, the dangers of wandering Guatemala’s wilderness have greatly decreased, and these days, outdoor adventure is booming: mountain biking tours, sea kayaking and treks across the highlands, like the one that landed us in the tiny fog-laden village of Santa Catarina.

New Friends After packing up in the ramshackle municipal building that had proved a perfectly acceptable campsite, we crossed the plaza for breakfast in a one-table diner where an elderly woman named Maria was pressing tortillas over a fire. After our breakfast of eggs and rice and beans, we started the day’s hike, which would take us across plots of corn and green peas that clung to the steep hills like patchwork, and then down a ravine to cross a rickety wooden footbridge and hoist ourselves up the mountain on the other side. Our guides were young volunteers from Britain and Ireland. The company was called Quetzaltrekkers, a nonprofit that operates a school and a youth home with the funds it raises through these trips.

Late in the afternoon, after criss-crossing a creek shaded with alder groves and banana trees and orange lilies, we climbed out of yet another canyon. The lead guide, Anne McGarr, a 25-year-old Dublin speech therapist on indefinite leave from her job, whipped out a phone and said, “Who wants strawberry, and who wants pineapple?”

Fifteen minutes later when we arrived at the house on whose floor we’d be sleeping — an upgrade from the previous night’s interrogation chamber. Don Pedro, the house’s owner, was ready with two blenders of cold fruit licuados.

“ He thanked us for passing through his village, for supporting the school and the youth home with the money we spent for the hike. Somos todos los hijos de Dios, he concluded.

We are all Gods children.“ He and his wife served us chicken, rice and beans, and afterward we sat around a fire passing a guitar back and forth. Don Pedro sang us songs in both Spanish and Quiche, and paused to tell us of the dire poverty he’d grown up in, just a thatched roof shack for all 14 siblings, 10 of whom had died young. I didn’t want to interrupt his story, so I never asked if they died from poverty, or the war, or something else. He said that the hardship had ended, thanks to God, only with the arrival of missionaries from Spokane and Helena who brought with them radios, medicine, and irrigation. They even taught Don Pedro to read. He thanked us for passing through his village, for supporting the school and the youth home with the money we spent for the hike. “Somos todos los hijos de Dios,” he concluded. We are all God’s children.

I guess I expected resentment toward the unending stream of foreign do-gooders — from missionaries to the Peace Corps to Quetzaltrekkers — who can create one set of problems as they address another. I was surprised by Don Pedro’s earnest appreciation: the closest translation of his words was, “We love tourists here.” And I suppose that’s what I’m looking for when I ramble across other countries — not obliterating my own identity or merging with the locals, but just that thrill of not knowing what will happen next.

Before bed Anne informed us that our wake-up call was 4 in the morning. She told us to trust her, it would be worth it. So when the alarm chirped we packed in chilly darkness, hauled ourselves past the lone bulb of a church, dodged buses as we climbed a paved road and emerged at a rim overlooking Lake Atitlán, the lights of the villages twinkling below. There on a rugged patch of earth we rolled out of our sleeping bags and boiled water for powdered coffee and chocolate, watched the sky go gray and the lake go blue. Only a few hours had passed since Don Pedro’s lullabies. Now with the sun in the sky, we descended the rest of the way to the waters

Gossip 10

The first lady of Guatemala files for divorce days before she begins her race for president against her former lover.

Sophia Wright

n the 8 of March, 20011, Guatemala’s First Lady Sandra Torres de Colon announced her run for the presidency. On March 11, 2011, the presidential couple applied for divorce, the news was published today in the newspaper La Hora. La Hora published the following information: It was confirmed that the presidential couple Alvaro Colom and Sandra Torres de Colom filed for divorce at the Second Family Court. It is a civil enforcement proceeding and thereby it is private.

However, the spokesman of the judiciary, Edwin Escobar, confirmed that on 11 of March, 2011, divorce proceedings where presented. Opponents and constitutionalists call this strategy as a joke and immoral.

Escobar did not state the names of lawyers acting on behalf of the Presidential couple; he confirmed that the divorce was applied in terms of mutual consent.

Some hours earlier, Roxanna Baldetti, secretary general and vice-presidential candidate of the Patriotic Party, had warned about the possibility of a divorce process for electoral purposes, since there is a constitutional ban on the president’s wife. When asked, Fernando Barillas, spokesman for the National Unity for Hope Party (UNE), denied the divorce process.” Representatives of the UNE Party stated that they had no comment at this time, but that there would be a press release or a press conference to announce the official party position.

ANALYSIS The constitutional lawyer Carlos Molina Mencos said that despite circumventing the constitutional prohibition, the strategy of divorce must be regarded as a “mockery” and “immoral.”

The Guatemalan Constitution prohibits relatives of the President to qualify for the candidacy of President. According to Molina Mencos, although technically the divorce evades this ban, the action has no moral and ethics.

13 El Diario Queztal

Molina Mencos indicates that constitutionally when the divorce is signed, the candidacy of Sandra Torres will be legal. There are four legal requirements: 1) change of address, 2) stop using the surname Colom, 3) complete separation of property, and 4) settlement of marital property.

On the other hand, from the moral point of view, he described the event as “immoral.” “No presidency should be worth a marriage, for me, her campaign touched bottom, it is based on an immoral act, meaning that the marriage, the foundation of the family, does not apply to the presidential candidate,” says the expert.

Given that marriage is a guarantee of protection for women and family, Molina Mencos believes that whoever does not respect marriage, does not respect any of those principles. “In addition it denigrates the husband, when I need him there I have him, and when he becomes an obstacle I thrown him into the trash” -Molina Mencos.

REACTIONS For her part, Ninth Montenegro, Member of Encuentro por Guatemala, stated that “all I can say is it’s amazing where your ambitions to be the next President of this country can lead you, even, to leave her husband.

This is not ethical or moral. When she is no longer the wife of the President, it does not mean that it never was his wife. “ Zury Rios, Member of the Guatemalan Republican Front, FRG, Party, stated: “First, it is sad that for the love of power she left the love of her life.

One can divorce for many reasons, but for the love of power, is unthinkable. Sandra de Colom has to change her electoral platform, divorced she is no longer eligible for any security service or access to the media, also she has to vacate the presidential palace, and I do not know if the President will leave her a pension. “ Prensa Libre published this afternoon the comments of ex- general Otto Perez, Presidential candidate of the Patriotic Party, concerning the divorce proceedings of the first couple. He stated that it was a fraud, he said that they where using the law to do something illegal. He explained

that this divorce will not eliminate the constitutional ban of relatives of the president to run for the presidency. “The law does not state a time frame of when a person ceases to be a relative of the President.” He stated that they would not allow that the law should be mocked and fraud would be committed.

The members of the new Constitutional Court in Guatemala have been elected. They will take position on April 15, 2011.The legal experts who have followed the election proceedings have serious concerns about the honorability and impartiality of the elected magistrates, there where ominous signs of political pressures of different power sector of Guatemala. Serious concerns exist that the new magistrates elected will be defending the interests of political parties and will not be impartial. The Constitutional Court of Guatemala is the highest legal authority that decides the legitimacy of each of the the presidential candidates and interprets the Guatemalan constitution.

A group of lawyers filed suit to block the divorce being sought by Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom that would allow his wife Sandra Torres de Colom to seek the presidency. Judge Mildred Roca said the petition filed in the Central American nation’s Supreme Court seeks to “suspend the process of divorce” of the first couple. The lawsuit and a similar one filed last week represent the latest drama in Guatemala where the president and first lady agreed to split to circumvent legal obstacles to her running for his office.

Mynor Berganza, one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuit, said the divorce of the presidential couple “affects the public interest” because it seeks to “circumvent or skip” a constitutional ban. The country’s constitution prohibits the spouse and other relatives of the outgoing president to run for the presidency.

Torres said last month she was divorcing despite her love for her husband. “The love for Guatemala is the reason why the president and I put the interests of the country ahead of our own interests,” said Torres

“...when I need him there I have him, and when he becomes an obstacle I thrown him into the trash” Torres shed tears as she described the “great and solid love” she felt for her husband, but said that her love for the people was “limitless.”

Critics say the move mocks the constitution, but the couple dismiss the critics as politicians and business interests opposed to the government’s strick social reforms.

What the People Think The divorce is causing a ruckus in Guatemala for political and religious reasons, also Torres was involved in programs that had deep corruption problems.

Follow Sara Ines Calderon on Twitter @SaraChicaD Hillary should of thought of that!

Follow Emily Diaz on Twitter @em27zzza She feels compelled to do what she believes in. She believes in Guatemala. He know that she will always love him but she has to do what she needs to do.

Follow Richard on Twitter richhy@socccr456

Gossip 14

G

GREEDY LOVE The first lady of Guatemala, Sandra Torres, files for a fast divorce just days before she begins her own race for president against the current president, Alvardo Colon.

Sohia Wright

ANALYSIS The constitutional lawyer Carlos Molina Mencos said that despite circumventing the constitutional prohibition, the strategy of divorce must be regarded as a “mockery” and “immoral.”

The Guatemalan Constitution prohibits relatives of the President to qualify for the candidacy of President. According to Molina Mencos, although technically the divorce evades this ban, the action has no moral and ethics.

0

n the 8 of March, 20011, Guatemala’s First Lady Sandra Torres de

Colon announced her run for the presidency. On March 11, 2011, the presidential couple applied for divorce, the news was published today in the newspaper La Hora. La Hora published the following information: It was confirmed that the presidential couple Alvaro Colom and Sandra Torres de Colom filed for divorce at the Second Family Court. It is a civil enforcement proceeding and thereby it is private.

However, the spokesman of the judiciary, Edwin Escobar, confirmed that on 11 of March, 2011, divorce proceedings where presented. Opponents and constitutionalists call this strategy as a joke and immoral. Escobar did not state the names of lawyers acting on behalf of the Presidential couple; he confirmed that the divorce was applied in terms of mutual consent.

Some hours earlier, Roxanna Baldetti, secretary general and vice-presidential candidate of the Patriotic Party, had warned about the possibility of a divorce process for electoral purposes, since there is a constitutional ban on the president’s wife. When asked, Fernando Barillas, spokesman for the National Unity for Hope Party (UNE), denied the divorce process.” Representatives of the UNE Party stated that they had no comment at this time, but that there would be a press release or a press conference to announce the official party position.

17 El Diario Queztal

“No presidency should be worth a marriage, for me, her campaign touched bottom, it is based on an immoral act,” Molina Mencos indicates that constitutionally when the divorce is signed, the candidacy of Sandra Torres will be legal. There are four legal requirements: 1) change of address, 2) stop using the surname Colom, 3) complete separation of property, and 4) settlement of marital property.

On the other hand, from the moral point of view, he described the event as “immoral.” “No presidency should be worth a marriage, for me, her campaign touched bottom, it is based on an immoral act, meaning that the marriage, the foundation of the family, does not apply to the presidential candidate,” says the expert.

Given that marriage is a guarantee of protection for women and family, Molina Mencos believes that whoever does not respect marriage, does not respect any of those principles. “In addition it denigrates the husband, when I need him there I have him, and when he becomes an obstacle I thrown him into the trash” -Molina Mencos.

REACTIONS For her part, Ninth Montenegro, Member of Encuentro por Guatemala, stated that “all I can say is it’s amazing where your ambitions to be the next President of this country can lead you, even, to leave her husband. This is not ethical or moral. When she is no longer the wife of the President, it does not mean that it never was his wife.”

Zury Rios, Member of the Guatemalan Republican Front, FRG, Party, stated: “First, it is sad that for the love of power she left the love of her life. One can divorce for many reasons, but for the love of power, is unthinkable. Sandra de Colom has to change her electoral platform, divorced she is no longer eligible for any security service or access to the media, also she has to vacate the presidential palace, and I do not know if the President will leave her a pension.”

Prensa Libre published this afternoon the comments of ex- general Otto Perez, Presidential candidate of the Patriotic Party, concerning the divorce proceedings of the first couple. He stated that it was a fraud, he said that they where using the law to do something illegal. He explained that this divorce will not eliminate the constitutional ban of relatives of the president to run for the presidency.

“The law does not state a time frame of when a person ceases to be a relative of the President.” He stated that they would not allow that the law should be mocked and fraud would be committed.

The members of the new Constitutional Court in Guatemala have been elected. They will take position on April 15, 2011.The legal experts who have followed the election proceedings have serious concerns about the honorability and impartiality of the elected magistrates, there where ominous signs of political pressures of different power sector of Guatemala. Serious concerns exist that the new magistrates elected will be defending the interests of political parties and will not be impartial.

The Constitutional Court of Guatemala is the highest legal authority that decides the legitimacy of each of the the presidential candidates and interprets the Guatemalan constitution.

“...when I need him there I have him, and when he becomes an obstacle I thrown him into the trash.”

A group of lawyers filed suit to block the divorce being sought by Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom that would allow his wife Sandra Torres de Colom to seek the presidency. Judge Mildred Roca said the petition filed in the Central American nation’s Supreme Court seeks to “suspend the

process of divorce” of the first couple. The lawsuit and a similar one filed last week represent the latest drama in Guatemala where the president and first lady agreed to split to circumvent legal obstacles to her running for his office.

Mynor Berganza, one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuit, said the divorce of the presidential couple “affects the public interest” because it seeks to “circumvent or skip” a constitutional ban. The country’s constitution prohibits the spouse and other relatives of the outgoing president to run for the presidency.

Torres said last month she was divorcing despite her love for her husband. “The love for Guatemala is the reason why the president and I put the interests of the country ahead of our own interests,” said Torres. Torres shed tears as she described the “great and solid love” she felt for her husband, but said that her love for the people was “limitless.” Critics say the move mocks the constitution, but the couple dismiss the critics as politicians and business interests opposed to the government’s strick social reforms.

What the People Think v The divorce is causing a ruckus in Guatemala for political and religious reasons, also Torres was involved in programs that had deep corruption problems.

Follow Sara Ines Calderon on Twitter @SaraChicaD

v Hillary should of thought of that!

Follow Emily Diaz on Twitter @em27zzza

v She feels compelled to do what she believes in. She believes in Guatemala. He know that she will always love him but she has to do what she needs to do.

Follow Richard on Twitter richhy@socccr456

Gossip 18