Fight Club

When I first saw this story, all I could say was "That's fucked up."

The gist of the story is that, in a small town outside Guatemala City, three criminals kidnapped a local official. He attacked the driver because he thought they were going to kill him, and the locals realized what was going on. Two of the men got away and the townspeople grabbed the one bad guy left.

They took him to the municipality to demand action be taken, but also wondering what to do with the man. This isn't all that rare in Guatemala, towns take the law into their own hands all the time. But as the mob was standing out there holding this man, another man walked by. That man was accused of having scammed some of the locals.

So here's what they did: they caught the other guy, beat him up a little bit, and then forced the two of them to fight each other. One of the men was beating up on the other pretty good, was choking him, doused him with gasoline, and lit him up after someone gave him a match.

Cops finally showed up and arrested the man that "won." The townspeople demanded that this criminal (he was the kidnapper) be released since he had won. Cops said "Umm, no" and took him away. There was no mention of what happened to the guy that was lit on fire (this is a standard hiccup in Guatemalan journalism).

The inevitable question: if the town took the law into their own hands, should the guy be allowed to go, as they wanted him to be, because he had been "put through trial" by the town? Because he "won" the fight?

These are the questions we tackle in Guatemala, we hope you'll still come and visit.

Guatemalan Soccer

So last week Guatemala lost to Canada to end their run in the 2007 Gold Cup. The next day the papers in Guatemala thrashed the team for it's ineptitude. The real reason people got so worked up though was because they had been given hope, again. And, again, they felt bamboozled.

The gist of the comments in the paper (and by readers) was this:

"Here we go again. One more time the National team shows they are nothing but amateurs playing against professional athletes."

Lately they haven't been blaming the coaches, which used to be SOP. But our last two coaches have been pretty good—the one thing everyone agreed on.

Now the only thing people agree on is how slow, weak, and underskilled our players are when they play real teams.

It's an argument that has been made for a long time. Our players aren't professional athletes, they are guys who are getting paid a little bit of money (just enough) to play a sport they've played since they were kids. In a poor country like Guatemala, these guys' priorities have nothing to do with sports. It's about getting yours and providing for your family. It's the same thing that happens in politics—when anyone that isn't rich (and even those who are) get to a position of power, they go into self-preservation mode. Only they take it to an extreme. Once they realize the amount of money they can take (which everyone else is taking), they figure they better get in on in too or else they'll miss their chance at having a little bit of comfort in their lives.

It's poverty, it makes things like morals and values something you can't afford to think about, and never do.

That is all.