News stories by Danilo Valladares, page 5

Women's rights groups are pinning their hopes on Roxana Baldetti, the first woman to be elected vice president of Guatemala, to boost the chances of increased female participation in politics.

'There's a big difference in the way indigenous people and mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) are treated. We are not paid the same wages for the same work,' Higinio Pu, an activist with the native group Waxaquib Noj, which means 'wisdom' in the Maya Quiché language, told IPS.

Relatives of former military personnel and businessmen are bringing lawsuits against ex guerrillas and journalists in Guatemala in connection with the 1960-1996 civil war — a legal offensive that human rights defenders say is politically motivated.

'Masked men came and threatened us. Some information was distorted, and they wanted to attack us all,' said Enrique Boj, an activist from San Juan Sacatepéquez, 31 km from the Guatemalan capital.

'At the clinic we were attended to by a woman who criticised us and only talked to us about religious questions,' says Carlos Valdez of Proyecto Unidos, an NGO in Guatemala that fights for access to HIV/AIDS prevention services by homosexuals and sex workers.

Millions of documents from the Guatemalan national police archive, shedding light on torture, forced disappearances and murders committed during the1960-1996 counterinsurgency war in this country, are now available on-line thanks to a collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin.

'Using high quality seed, I harvested 20 quintals (one quintal = 100 pounds), while with ordinary seed I only get 10 quintals,' Vilma Rodríguez, a beneficiary of a seed production programme in the northwestern Nicaraguan province of Estelí, told IPS.

One of the highest poverty levels in Latin America, one of the highest murder rates in the world, and much-needed political and tax reforms are some of the pressing challenges that will face Guatemalan president-elect Otto Pérez Molina.

'I learned to not be afraid, and to love myself. Before, I never wanted to talk to people because I felt like they looked down on me and that I was no good,' says 12-year-old Hilda Tura, one of the participants in a programme fostering leadership among indigenous girls in Guatemala.

'The governments of Central America outline a number of requisites for access to housing, and people don't have the money to meet them,' says Roly Escobar, an activist with a Guatemalan movement of slum dwellers fighting for the right to decent housing.