Guatemala: Kamikaze mission 自杀式使命

ASH still smears the pavements of Guatemala City, three weeks after nearby Mount Pacaya blew its top. On June 7th the city was shaken by a second explosion, this time of the political sort: the resignation of Carlos Castresana, a Spanish prosecutor who heads the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a body set up in 2007 by the UN and Guatemala’s government to investigate organised crime and its links to the state. In a brief statement, Mr Castresana blamed the government for failing to support his effort to root out the mafias that have long penetrated its ranks.更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

附近帕卡亚火山爆发三周后，危地马拉城的人行道上灰烬依然。6月7日，第二次爆发震动了这个城市，不过这一次是政治爆发：危地马拉反对有罪不罚国际委员会（CICIG）的负责人西班牙籍检察官Carlos Castresana辞职。CICIG是联合国和危地马拉政府在2007年成立的机构，旨在调查有组织的犯罪及此类犯罪与国家的勾结。Castresana先生在一次简短的声明中，谴责该国政府未能支持他根除长期以来渗透政府的犯罪组织。

His departure came as a shock. It followed a string of successes. In January CICIG secured the arrest of Alfonso Portillo, a former president charged with embezzling $15.7m, as he tried to flee the country. In the same month it cracked the stranger-than-fiction case of Rodrigo Rosenberg, a lawyer who, the commission found, had arranged his own murder in a bid to frame the president, Álvaro Colom. In all, CICIG has forced out some 2,000 police officers, ten prosecutors and, in its first year, an attorney-general.

在取得一系列成功之后，他的离开令人震惊。1月，在被控贪污1570万美元的前总统Alfonso Portillo试图逃离危地马拉时，CICIG促成当局将其逮捕。同月，CICIG侦破了比小说还离奇的Rodrigo Rosenberg一案。该委员会发现这位律师在一项陷害总统Álvaro Colom的图谋中策划了他自己的谋杀。总而言之，CICIG已经揪出了大约2 000名警察和十名检察官，并在第一年使一名检察总长落网。

The trigger for Mr Castresana’s resignation was the naming on May 25th of a new attorney-general, Conrado Reyes, whom CICIG had publicly accused of having ties to drug-traffickers and illegal-adoption rings. Once in office, Mr Reyes sacked more than 20 officials and demanded to oversee all wiretaps. Fearing a slow death of CICIG, Mr Castresana sacrificed himself instead. It worked: his resignation generated enough fuss to force the Constitutional Court to annul Mr Reyes’s appointment.

触发Castresana先生辞职的是5月25日任命新检察总长Conrado Reyes一事。此前CICIG已公开指控Conrado Reyes勾结毒贩和非法领养团伙。Reyes先生一上任就解雇了20多名官员，要求监管所有窃听装置。担心CICIG会慢性死亡，Castresana先生选择为该委员会而牺牲自己。他成功了：他的辞职引起的争论足以迫使宪法法院撤销对Reyes先生的任命。

Whoever replaces Mr Castresana can expect plenty of opposition. In a final press conference on June 14th, he presented evidence that various criminal factions had joined together since January to fight CICIG with a campaign of smears and intimidation. In one wiretapped phone call, two suspected criminals discussed cooking up a rumour that Mr Castresana was having an affair with a colleague. He also said that two suspects in the Rosenberg case bribed the officials that choose the attorney general with designer suits and ties, in order to secure Mr Reyes’s nomination.

无论接替Castresana先生的是谁，都会遭到很多反对。在6月14日最后的记者招待会上，他出示证据表明自1月以来各种犯罪集团合力发起一场诽谤加威胁的战役来对付CICIG。在一次被窃听的电话通话中，两个嫌疑犯谋划炮制Castresana先生与同事关系暧昧的谣言。他还说Rosenberg一案的两个嫌疑犯用高档套装和领带贿赂了选任检察总长的官员以促成对Reyes先生的任命。

Mr Castresana also accused the government of failing to boost the powers and resources of the justice system—a witness-protection programme now exists in name only, after the government stopped funding safe houses, for instance. And no one can explain why the president keeps appointing senior officials who later turn out to have criminal links.

Castresana先生还谴责政府未能加强司法系统的权力和资源——例如在政府停止资助安全密室之后，证人保护程序现在名存实亡。而且无人能够解释为何总统一直任命后来被发现与犯罪分子勾结的高级官员。

The government counters that it has no money (central-government spending is the lowest as a share of GDP in Latin America) and that it is politically hamstrung, now that Mr Colom’s party holds barely a fifth of the seats in the legislature. Many appointments, including Mr Reyes’s, are partly in the hands of (allegedly crooked) independent commissions.

政府反驳说它没有钱（中央政府开支在拉丁美洲GDP中所占比例最少），而且在政治上是残废的。现在Colom先生的政党在立法机关中仅占刚到五分之一的席位。包括对Reyes先生的任命在内的许多任命部分掌握在一些（据称不太正当的）独立委员会手中。

As Mexico and Colombia crack down on them, drug gangs are finding refuge in Guatemala. In the jungle state of Petén, the Zetas, a Mexican drug-trafficking group, have hung up signs recruiting soldiers. A report from America’s state department says that “entire regions of Guatemala are now essentially under [their] control.” The country’s lawlessness exposes it to the appeal of a strongman. Otto Pérez Molina, a former general who promises an “iron fist” against crime, leads the opinion polls for the next presidential election in September 2011. Much-needed change is unlikely to come from the left: the candidate most likely to run for Mr Colom’s party is Sandra Torres, his wife.

由于墨西哥和哥伦比亚严厉打击贩毒团伙，他们逃窜到危地马拉。在多丛林的佩滕省，墨西哥贩毒集团Zetas打出广告招兵买马。美国国务院的一份报告称：“危地马拉的所有地区现在基本上处于[他们的]控制下。”危地马拉法制薄弱的情形使其容易产生铁腕统治。承诺对犯罪活动施以“铁拳”的前将军Otto Pérez Molina在针对2011年9月的下任总统选举的民意调查中居于领先地位。左翼不大可能出现非常需要的改变：最可能代表Colom先生的政党参加竞选的候选人是他的妻子Sandra Torres