Ok, I'm in a kinder mood. I find that when I take a moment to look up, I feel better. There's a road between here and Cuidad Vieja that I call the "pretty road" - Andres always knows what I mean when I say, Let's take the calle bonita. It's like the nicest paved road in the whole darn country. At one point there's a glorious view across a field of coffee plants and into a bunch of hills surrounding Antigua. It's always super pretty. So that's a happy place. Tomorrow we are going to drive into the capital to go to a baby-wearing workshop by a cool group called Lomas Natural. They do cool birth & parenting stuffs down here & in Chile. Not sure the connection between here & Chile. I'm really looking forward to it because we have two baby-wearing contraptions that I'd really like someone to show me how to use. Plus I secretly just need to be around some other mamas or something.

So time is ticking toward the ridiculous elections down here. All signs point to a sure win by Otto Perez Molina - who apparently the Guatemalans love and the international community considers a war criminal. Aaah, Latin American politics. Andres was telling me about how there's always a threat that the votes will be tampered with, people will be bullied into voting for a certain candidate and ballots will be burned. With all that it's hard to take the electoral process seriously here. I hope someday this country & it's peeps get the leaders they deserve and a true democracy...until then it's just a fight for the best-case scenario.

Interesting bit about Guatemala with a shout-out to that awesome lady in San Marcos... who I mentioned frequently back in April 2010 -era blog posts...
Politics of Poverty: Ideas and analysis from Oxfam America's policy experts » Blog Archive » Guatemala’s presidential election: A golden opportunity to end mining conflict