New leftist President Salvador Sánchez Cerén -- an ex-rebel commander who has decided to keep living in his family home in a middle-class area of the city -- reopened the building as a place where the socially excluded can come to reflect on their country and its artistic wealth.
GUATEMALA CITY – Teenage pregnancies are on the rise in Guatemala, giving the country the highest adolescent fertility rate in Latin America. In 2011, according to the Reproductive Health Observatory, 49,000 mothers aged 10 to 19 became pregnant, and last year that number increased to 61,000. Of those, 35 were 10-year-old girls.
Barely clinging to the side of a mountain, Vista Hermosa lies beyond the dump on the outskirts of Jocotenango, in Guatemala’s Sacatepéquez department, 34 kilometers west of the capital. Home to 375 squatter families, the precarious community lies open to the elements and lacks even the most basic infrastructure of a normal town.
Costa Rica could reduce its poverty rate by 8.5 percent if all employers paid the legal minimum wage and poor families could find work, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Program released Monday.
In Guatemala, the rule of law hangs in the balance following the ouster of human rights champion Claudia Paz y Paz from the post of attorney general. A right-leaning former Supreme Court justice, Thelma Esperanza Aldana Hernández, was named as Paz y Paz’s replacement, and may be about to roll back recent gains against corruption and human rights violations, analysts say.
GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemala City’s ghettos are renowned for their gangs, drugs and violence. But when U.S.-born director Coury Deeb stayed in one, he saw a different side to life in the slums – one of people trying to escape their surroundings through dance.
PETÉN, Guatemala – For much of Guatemala’s monolingual Mayan population, the ability to access medical attention is often impeded by their inability to speak Spanish. The right to adequate health care without discrimination is enshrined in their country’s constitution; however, since hospitals work only in Spanish, indigenous people often are marginalized and restricted from obtaining basic treatment due to their vernacular.
