Tune in: Radio show on "Guatemala: Behind the famine"

Last month, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a “state of calamity” to shunt mass hunger and the worst drought in 70 years. More than half of Guatemala’s 13 million inhabitants live below the poverty line and 50 percent of children are malnourished. But these are only the surface casualties of a vulnerable nation ravaged by 36 years of civil war, genocide and now, the encroaching drug war spilling over from Mexico’s northern border.

Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Savidge explores the current eroding conditions, the promise of the Peace Accords and the sanctity of land.

GUESTS:

Dr. Anita Isaacs is a political science professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. For the last decade, she has researched democracy, justice and the peace process in Guatemala. She conducts field research in the country four to five times a year. Anita is writing a book with the working title At War with the Past? The Politics of Transitional Justice in Postwar Guatemala. She has also served as consultant to the Ford Foundation, the Inter-American Dialogue, Freedom House and the Open Society Institute.

Samuel Loewenberg is a journalist who covers public health and politics. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic Online, The Washington Post and many others.  He has reported from Latin America, Europe, China, Africa, and the former Soviet Union.

In our weekly radio show, Martin Savidge explores the causes behind Guatemala’s chronic malnutrition and escalating narco war. He hosts a panel of guests to discuss the remnants of war and genocide and to land rights. http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/10/th_guatemala_manwithpitch.jpg

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