I'm beginning my research on Guatemala in preparation for a trip there at the end of my sabbatical. A number of people I know have gone, including my adventurous uncle.
He encouraged me to go and told me his crazy travel stories from the 1980s in the middle of their civil war. He said that he met one of the revolutionary leaders and could have been shot for just standing near him. He supported my travels to Guatemala 100%...until he found out that I'd be travelling alone. Being a foreigner and a woman, he felt that I'd be vulnerable. I paused.
I paused again when I heard this story produced by Maria Marti for Latino USA.
It's been almost ten years since a bloody civil war ended in the Central American nation of Guatemala. Despite the absence of war, there seems to be no end to the violence. Guatemala is a small country, yet it has a murder rate seven times greater than that of the United States. Increasingly these attacks seem to target social and human rights activists, who are there to monitor the Peace Accords signed in 1996.
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