News stories by Danilo Valladares, page 6

'Now it's really dangerous to go out to sea, because of the huge waves. The few who brave it do so to survive,' said fisherman Venancio Morales, one of the residents of the Guatemalan beach town of Champerico who have been affected by the construction of an unfinished new port.

'If we can manage it, we buy something at the butcher's every 15 days, even if it's only a bone, although we normally just eat maize and beans,' says Marvin Fajardo, a small-scale farmer and father of three from the southern Guatemalan province of Escuintla.

The countries of Central America have set their sights on research and innovation in the production of tomatoes, cassava, potatoes and avocados to increase food supply and combat hunger, which mainly affects rural areas.

Pilar Toc, a 45-year-old Quiche Maya woman, used to work endlessly in a factory making traditional clothing in northwest Guatemala. Even so, her situation was so precarious that she could not enrol her son in school. But her life changed when she took out a microloan from a community bank.

Taxing large landholdings in Central America could help curb the heavy concentration of land ownership that characterises the region, and contribute to rural development, experts say.

A retired general and a populist tycoon will face off for the Guatemalan presidency in a Nov. 6 runoff, since no candidate won 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections.

The violent eviction of 91 rural families in northern Guatemala was the latest incident in the ageold conflict over land in a country where the army is frequently called in to force peasant farmers off their land.

'Women have more opportunities nowadays to participate in the economic, social and political development of the country, but this has still not improved the quality of their lives,' said Laura Reyes, one of the three women candidates for vice president of Guatemala.

The appalling experiments carried out by U.S. doctors in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 using 1,300 human subjects who were infected with sexually transmitted diseases highlighted the inadequacy of controls and safeguards in clinical testing in this Central American country — still a major problem today, according to experts.

Although he is accused by the opposition of failing to live up to his promises of transparency, job creation and security, Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom has received praise from all sides for his government's successful social programmes.