The first revelation from the cable is that President Colom had decided to sign an agreement with PetroCaribe, but rejected overtures to join ALBA.
Colom defended his decision to sign a PetroCaribe deal with Venezuela and argued that the deal would help to alleviate rising fuel and food prices. The foreign minister added that the decision to join PetroCaribe was strictly economic. The Venezuelan government had pressured them to join ALBA anti-American trade block, but Colom was not interested and would not accede to any Venezuelan political conditions.
"We're Social Democrats, but we're not fanatics, and we're aware that radicalism in governance leads to failure," Colom said. [Italics mine]I'm sure that the US was happy to hear this. However, I'm not so sure how much ALBA members are going to appreciate being called fanatics. Maybe, he just meant Chavez.
President Colom lamented the recent deaths in a helicopter accident of Minister of Government Vinicio Gomez and Vice Minister Edgar Hernandez Umana and expressed confidence that newly appointed Minister Francisco Jimenez would continue to reform the police. Regarding the new Attorney General, Juan Luis Florido, Colom said he was amicable and was making a sincere effort. However, he expressed frustration at the office's inability to show advances with certain kinds of prosecutions, such as corruption, the murders of two union leaders, and the recent scandal over the illicit investment of congressional funds.
Colom also said Commissioner Carlos Castresana (CICIG) was very demanding and that CICIG was making some progress in helping the Attorney General's Office to put its house in order.
Colom called Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu a "fabrication" and said that she had incited indigenous residents of San Juan Sacatepequez to oppose local construction of a cement plant. Colom said that Menchu was at least partly responsible for inciting local opposition to the proposed plant and that during the opposition to the plant, at least one person had been murdered. The US Ambassador seems to have been concerned with the impact that murder would have on foreign investors.
In the statement that will most likely get the most foreign press, Colom called Menchu a "fabrication" of Elizabeth Burgos, the French anthropologist and author of "I, Rigoberta Menchu." (Colom has already responded that he respects Menchu even though he often disagrees with her and that he didn't say those things about her to the US ambassador). While I don't think that fabrication is an accurate term to describe Menchu, Colom isn't the only person to have reservations about her story (See David Stoll). From what I understand, while Menchu and Burgos present the information in the book as purely biographical, some incidents did not occur as as Menchu and Burgos related them. Given the outrageous claims in book, I've always thought that it's held up pretty well against criticism. I would hesitate to comdemn Colom's use of the word fabrication until I better understood the overall context in which he was using the term.
Finally, Colom said that Menchu is widely disliked by Guatemalan indigenous people, as demonstrated by her poor showing in the 2007 presidential election. I don't know about disliked. He's right that Menchu does not have a lot of political support. She has always been more popular internationally than domestically, so that's not much of a revelation. In December's poll by Borge y Asociados, Menchu only captured 3% support for the presidency. And it's not a problem of name recognition, as in January 2009 96% of the population knew who she was.
All in all, I imagine that the left in Guatemala is not going to be too happy with what has been revealed whether or not Colom said such things or not, but it's not likely to be that significant. More to come, perhaps.
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