Guatemalan politics

Although as a Peace Corps Volunteer I am supposed to (and do) refrain from any sort of political activity, including even discussing politics with Guatemalans, I do think that the current political situation in Guatemala is interesting, and I hope that whoever is responsible for monitoring Peace Corps blogs in Washington will be so kind as to let me keep this post up :)

Legally starting in May and illegally starting many months before that are Guatemalan presidential campaigns. Elections are this September, and since many Guatemalans don't have TVs or radios and are illiterate, the primary form of campaigning for the approximately 1 million candidates (from what I can tell) looks something like this:

Almost all of the posters in this picture are of political parties and/or presidential candidates

You'll note that the presidential candidate on the left of the above picture is named Sandra Torres. A few months ago, her name was Sandra Torres de Colom. This means that a few months ago, she was married to someone whose last name is Colom. Specifically, she was married to Alvaro Colom, the current president of Guatemala. Because the Guatemalan constitution states that relatives (including spouses) of current or former Guatemalan presidents cannot run for presidency, she was legally unable to run for president while still married to Alvaro Colom. So they divorced. So that she could run for president. I generally pick up a few new swearwords when I overhear Guatemalans talking about her.

It's kind of hard to tell from this picture, but it is taken from inside a bus, looking at a stone cliff on the side of the highway. All of the paintings
are of political parties. Pretty much every highway (and lamp-post, and curb, and mini-store, and anything else paintable) in Guatemala
looks like this right now.