By Frank Smyth, January 13, 2012, World Policy Journal
For Guatemala and its majority Mayan population time is repeating itself. A former military commander and intelligence chief with a bloody past promises to bring law and order to the Central American nation. Worried about rising crime and the increasingly violent penetration by Mexican drug cartels, voters elected Otto Pérez Molina…
By Frank Smyth, March 9, 2007, The Nation
George W. Bush has embarked on the longest trip of his presidency to Latin America this week, a junket to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico that purports to advance social justice. His journey comes at a time when oil-rich Venezuela, under the radical populist…
By Frank Smyth, October 25, 2006, Chicago Reader
JERRY WELLER, THE 11th District representative who’s up for reelection in November, has some explaining to do. As I wrote in an August 25 cover story, “The Congressman and the Dictator’s Daughter,” he’s already raised questions about whether he has a conflict…
By Frank Smyth, September 1, 2006, Raices
Jerry Weller buscaba por sexta vez una silla en el congreso por el estado de Illinois, cuando en Julio del 2004 anunció que estaba comprometido con Zury Ríos Sosa, una dura diputada del congreso guatemalteco e hija del conocido dictador, (general) Efraín Ríos Montt.
By Frank Smyth, August 25, 2006, Chicago Reader
JERRY WELLER WAS running for his sixth term as congressman from Illinois’ 11th District in July 2004 when he announced that he was engaged to Zury Rios Sosa, an outspoken third-term legislator in Guatemala’s congress and the daughter of former dictator General Efrain…
By Frank Smyth, November 18, 2005, The Texas Observer
La alerta atravesó el estado en julio. Un analista de la FBI ubicado en McAllen escribió un informe clasificado que el Departamento de Seguridad Interna envió a agentes…
By Frank Smyth, November 18, 2005, The Texas Observer
The alert went out across the state this past July. A McAllen-based FBI analyst wrote a classified report that the Department of Homeland Security sent to U.S. Border Patrol agents throughout Texas. About 30 suspects who were once part of an elite unit of the Guatemalan special forces were training drug traffickers in paramilitary tactics






















