Guatemala News Roundup

The Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) held its National Assembly last week.  During the assembly, Efrain Rios Montt stepped down as the party's secretary general.  He was, however, named honorary president as a going away gift.  Well, maybe not so much going away.  His daughter, Zury Ríos Montt, might be the party's 2011 presidential candidate.  And should he not be reelected to congress in 2011, he will no longer maintain his immunity.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved $250 million in financing to help Guatemala's government prepare, supervise, strengthen and monitor its national climate change agenda and to develop an institutional framework for the plan's implementation. 

In the Peten, over 7400 acres of forest were seriously affected by tropical storm Richard last weekend.  And this week in the Peten, a “green battalion” comprised of 250 specially trained soldiers has begun operations to protect a national park in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.  The government claims that the soldiers are there to combat drug trafficking, natural resources, and archaeological sites of that region of the Laguna del Tigre National Park.

Laguna del Tigre National Park, a protected area measuring more than 334,000 hectares (1,290 sq. miles) that is part of the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance, is home to some 50 archaeological sites and more than 3,000 species of flora.

Euronews has an eight-minute video on food security in Guatemala and the work of a Portuguese NGO. 

The National Institutes of Health awarded the three-year, $2.7 million grant to study a possible connection between contaminated corn products and birth defects in Guatemala.  Creighton University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Duke University and Centro de Investigaciones en Nutricion y Salud (CIENSA) will collaborate on the study.

A human smuggling ring sending Indian nationals to Guatemala and then on to Mexico, the United States, and Canada  was discovered about ten days ago when Adil Vali Mohammed (38) was taken into custody at the Delhi airport with thirty-one passports.  

Finally, according to Center for Central American Studies, the number of Guatemalans living in the United States increased 700% between 1999 and 2010.  Today, there are an esimated 1.6 million Guatemalans living in the country, up from 225,000 just ten years ago.