A little help for institutional reform in Guatemala

Some interesting stories on international support for transforming Guatemala's weak, corrupt criminal justice system.

An NGO to be proud of, if there’s any justice talks about the work of the Justice Education Society.

The US Agency for International Development has a story on Renewing Police Reform Efforts in Guatemala.

Finally, Brain Hardzinki, Suzette Grillot, and Matt Addison have an interview with Adriana Beltran in Changing Guatemala's Decades-Old Culture Of Corruption.

GRILLOT: What about generational change? I mean, is this going to change, I suppose, with the generations as you have some of these other people leave power and young people coming up?

BELTRÁN: I mean, that’s the hope of many. You know, one of the questions that I’ve often asked myself, particularly when it comes to the elite, is if a new generation, particularly given the concerns of organized crime and even threats that they face, will that lead them to support a more reformative agenda? Other changes, now, even within the police and military, because you have the old guard kind of leaving and how can you, you know, push reform processes to ensure that these new people that are emerging have a different vision of what their country ought to look like. But also, how do you build a civil society, and how do you get generations that, you know, in the case of Guatemala, didn’t necessarily experience the conflict, to understand their own history? You know, and that, in one of the setbacks or issues of the peace accords that was never implanted was the need to include in the curriculum mention of the conflict, and that hasn’t happened. So, often times, we are talking to younger Guatemalans, they don’t really know their own history.

Now with the dean of the graduate school of social sciences at the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City, I am not that optimistic.Take a look at his latest. I don't think that he is entirely wrong, well mostly, but he's got some dozies in here.