Good news for Guatemala

This is surprisingly good news out of the U.S. Congress. (I'll pause to let the shock of those words sink in.) I'll be writing more in the next few days, about this forward-looking decision by the United States Congress not to cave in to the pressures of the Bush administration, but rather to put Guatemala's best interests first.

This analysis is presented by the Washington-based Latin America Working Group.

Good News, Bad News: Congress Votes to Finalize 2006 Appropriations

As the Congress wrapped up the FY06 foreign operations bill, there’s some good news and bad news for Latin America. Latin America Working Group and coalition groups won some of what we had called for in this bill, which funds US aid programs worldwide. The Congress decided to maintain the ban on military aid to Guatemala, in place since 1990.

The Bush Administration pushed harder than usual to lift the ban, arguing that Guatemala had made sufficient progress, and the House lifted the ban in its version of the bill. Grassroots activists, LAWG, NISGUA, Guatemala Human Rights Commission, WOLA and other groups called on Congress to keep the ban due to continued threats and attacks against human rights and social activists and lack of progress in implementing military reforms contained in the 1996 Peace Accords.

The final bill also contained $3 million in DNA analysis and support for forensic investigations in Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina and other parts of Latin America. It contained a provision we supported to stop the erosion of aid to Central America, by mandating that aid to the region not drop below 2005 levels.

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Tags: Guatemala, LAWG, Congress, Military, Aid