As Guatemala's election campaign got under way, it was announced that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt had been nominated by his Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) party to run for a seat in congress in the September vote.
The move makes it unlikely that Montt will face charges of genocide for his role during the country's 36-year civil war. People running for public office enjoy immunity from prosecution and although a Guatemalan court has been considering for some time whether to order Montt's arrest, for crimes allegedly committed while he ran the country from 1982-83, the former dictator looks likely to escape trial.
Montt ruled during what was considered the bloodiest period of Guatemala's 1960-96 civil war, in which 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed or disappeared.
According to a UN report, the government carried out more than 90 per cent of the killings. Montt denies culpability but following his nomination for the September election, 31 US congressmen wrote to Guatemala's attorney general urging him to move quickly to arrest the former dictator on outstanding warrants for genocide issued in Spain.
The Spanish case stems from charges levied by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú against former military and government officials over a fire at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City in 1980 that killed her father and 36 others. But the judiciary has dragged its heels, while the FRG has said publicly it will do anything to ensure Montt remains its candidate. "Anything could mean anything," said Ruth de Valle, a local human-rights defender.
Guatemala's election campaign began against a backdrop of an extraordinarily high murder rate of women, a dramatic increase in organised crime and endemic police corruption.
Official figures for violent deaths show that in 2006, 5,885 Guatemalans were murdered, a 60 per cent increase since 2003. The murder rate is even higher than during the 1960-96 conflict, fought between left-wing guerrillas and the military.
"Guatemala is a good place to commit a murder, because you will almost certainly get away with it," said Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings. His colleague, Anders Kompass, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala, described the country as a "failed and collapsed state".
The UN is investigating the secret forces thought to be behind much of the violence aimed at destabilising Guatemalan society.
On a recent visit to Guatemala City, I met with people who'd lost friends and family during the war and also in the recent upsurge of violence: Sergio Ortega, whose 25-year-old daughter, Velvet, was murdered in broad daylight in July 2005, and Wendy Mendez, who, in March 1984, aged nine, was tortured in front of her mother while in police custody. It was the last time she saw her mother.
Sergio and Wendy despair at the lawlessness engulfing their nation and ask why, after more than a decade, are those responsible for war atrocities holding positions of power within the police, the military and the government.
Montt, who received 11 per cent of votes during the 2003 presidential election, personifies the country's culture of impunity. Barred from running for office, Montt was nonetheless allowed to stand after thousands of masked FRG supporters took to the streets of Guatemala City with machetes, clubs and guns.
Ten years after the so-called peace, Guatemala is still ruled by the sword rather than the ballot box.
