Exploring Volunteering

The Observer (15-01-06) has made “The Divine Husband” by US novelist Francisco Goldman, paperback of the week. The story is set in 19th century Central America mostly in Guatemala or thereabouts (although this is never explicitly stated in the book). Goldman, a jounalist who has written in Granta, the New Yorker, and the New York Times has written other novels on Guatemala including the “The Long Night of the White Chickens”. He has also written on the assessination of Guatemalan bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera.Goldman was also a prominent defender of Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, against accusations made by US academic David Stoll in his book, “Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans”.

An excerpt from an article in the Daily Telegraph (06-02-06) about Francisco Goldman:

'The obsession with 'boom' writers is the most absurd, tedious, painful thing that's happened to three generations of Latin American writers,” says the author Francisco Goldman, born in Boston in 1954 to a Guatemalan mother and Jewish father. “Publishers manufactured the magical realist genre, and it's still mixed up with a bigoted notion that if you aren't doing it, you aren't authentic.”

Goldman, who grew up in New England and Guatemala, says, “Writing is always an act of deciphering yourself¦ at the heart of what I do is an obsession with blending.” That characterises his writing. First, he married the “Jewish-American coming-of-age novel with the multi-voiced narration of some of the great boom novels”; now, in a story about the settling of 60,000 K'iche Indians from Guatemala in Massachusetts, home to H P Lovecraft, he is working to merge “the Gothic, New England horror novel with the immigrant novel”.

“My imaginary homeland, the world where Guatemala and the US meet, is now a reality,” he says.

Mayan Mural: San Bartolo

The news of the recent discovery by US archaeologist, William Saturno,
of a 2,000 year old Mayan mural in San Bartolo was picked up initially by
the BBC (13-12-05). The Daily Telegraph
has picked up on the news this week (07-01-05) of the further discovery of
the oldest Mayan glyphs to date. Saturno has written a full report on
his discovery in the January issue of National Geographic magazine out in the UK.

Guatemala Oil Exploration Deal with UK Firm

Tag's licence relates to an area
of about 77,718 acres in the northwestern corner of
Guatemala in the department of Alta Vera Paz. Based
on the review of available data, the company estimates the possible
reserves on the licence to be in the region of five to 16 million
barrels of oil.

According to an interview with Taghmen's US founder, living in London, Greg Smith in The Sun Taghmen
stands for the names of his kids, nephews and nieces- Tess, Abby, Greg, Hannah, Mary, Emily
and Nick. Mr Smith explained to The Sun why he decided to invest £1.8
million in oil exploration in Guatemala:

The government is fairly stable, as governments
go. In any Latin American country, there is always the risk of
kidnapping, but I don’t see that there.

I’d rather be in Guatemala than somewhere like Russia.

The Taghmen agreement is one of a number of
concessions that Berger's Government has made with private companies
keen on exploiting Guatemala's natural resources.