News stories by Danilo Valladares, page 4

'It benefits both our finances and our health, because the vegetables help prevent illness while they nourish our children,' says Lesbia Huertas, standing in the middle of her yard filled with containers sprouting vegetables in Palencia, 28 km northeast of the Guatemalan capital.

'In 1982 they killed my mama and 15 other people, and they burned down our house. Now we are trying to get support, because we have not received any aid,' says Jacinto Escobar, an Ixil Indian who is seeking reparations for the damages sustained during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war.

'In 1982 they killed my mama and 15 other people, and they burned down our house. Now we are trying to get support, because we have not received any aid,' says Jacinto Escobar, an Ixil Indian who is seeking reparations for the damages sustained during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war.

Central America, a narrow tropical isthmus flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, suffered 259 extreme weather-related events between 1930 and 2009, while the cumulative effects of innumerable smaller-scale events have not even been recorded.

'We don’t want a repeat of welfare-oriented programmes, because they are unsustainable,' said Rony Palacios of the National Network for the Defence of Food Sovereignty in Guatemala, criticising President Otto Pérez Molina’s Zero Hunger plan.

'No one will pay for the damages when work at the mine has finished,' says María del Rosario Velásquez, who lives in a town near the Oasis mine 100 km southeast of the Guatemalan capital.

The relentless wave of femicides in Guatemala, which has one of the highest female murder rates in the world, has prompted actions by the government, civil society groups, and two Nobel Peace laureates to try to put a stop to this brutal violence against women, which has reached horrific proportions.

After a hearing that lasted more than 11 hours, a Guatemalan court ordered the trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), who could face up to 30 years in prison if he is convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Guatemala's new president, retired general Otto Pérez Molina, made campaign promises to deal with crime with a firm hand ('mano dura') in this country, one of the most violent in the world where impunity is almost absolute, giving rise to cautious hopes from civil society.

The end of the Maya long-count calendar does not predict a global catastrophe, let alone the end of the world, say native activists and elders who spoke to IPS in Guatemala. But what are coming to an end are the world's natural resources, as a result of human activity, they warn.