More precisely, they attribute the assault, which resulted in the death of 27 rural workers, to a group called Z200. It appears the group is an arm of the Zetas from bordering Mexico.

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a state of siege for 30 days on Monday. This implies that the military authorities may stop people without a warrant, and that the right to assembly is hereby restricted.

But besides the controversial government response to the massacre in Los Cocos estate, in Libertad municipality, the peasant organizations’ explanation of the incident calls the attention.

They believe the core issue is a different one that is not solved by means of a state of siege. CLOC – Via Campesina Guatemala, says the deaths of innocent peasants reflect “once again” the state’s inability to secure “individual and collective rights enshrined in the Political Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala”, such as a dignifying job.

They claim that all the murdered peasants had done “was to leave their family, their community for a while to sell their labor and meet their urgent needs”. Of the 27 peasants killed, 2 were women.

This hypothesis is supported by the only survivor of the massacre, who was interviewed this week by the newspaper Prensa Libre. “They had hired us for a month and they were going to pay 50 quetzales (seven US dollars) a day. We were working on the zecate harvest (a herb for cattle)”, said the 23 year-old, who had arrived in the estate a week before.

CLOC considers that these terrible incidents are related with the government’s inability to meet the needs of all Guatemalan families, something reflected in the “malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, hunger, violent evictions, burning down of peasant crops, persecution and threats”, which had been a usual practice in the previous administrations.

Photo: www.prensalibre.com