Word: guatemalan
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There were 34 of them, Indian peasants from the troubled Guatemalan province of El Quiché. As they entered the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City at 9:30 one morning last week, some were bearing machetes. Others, according to police accounts, were carrying pistols and Molotov cocktails. In short order, the embassy was peacefully occupied, and the Indians announced that they would hold a news conference at noon. In another part of the building were Spain's Ambassador Máximo Cajal y López, Guatemala's former Vice President Eduardo Caceres Lehnhoff and onetime Foreign Minister...
...week's end was still sending shock waves throughout much of Latin America. Ignoring the fact-Iran notwithstanding-that embassies are "foreign soil," the government ordered police to begin an assault on the Spanish mission. It started shortly after noon, bringing the frantic Ambassador and the former Guatemalan officials to an upstairs window in protest. "Please don't enter!" pleaded the Ambassador. "We have immunity!" He was ignored...
...Indians apparently retreated to an inner room where, according to Ambassador Cajal, a Molotov cocktail exploded, instantly enveloping the building in flames. Witnesses claimed that the police did nothing to help the more than 40 people in the embassy. As a result, almost all the campesinos, the two Guatemalan dignitaries and two embassy staffers were burned alive. The Spanish Ambassador and one campesino, Gregoria Yuga Xona, managed to escape. The next day Xona was kidnaped from his hospital bed by a group of unknown armed...
...Guatemalan government, moving quickly to issue its own version of events, claimed that its forces stormed the embassy at the request of the Spanish Ambassador. "The terrorists sacrificed the hostages and immolated themselves afterward," read an official statement. The Ambassador vehemently denied the government account, saying that the police attacked his embassy "with extraordinary brutality," and that their behavior was "absolutely intolerable." In Madrid, the Spanish government handed the Guatemalan Ambassador a stiff note declaring that the police had acted "in violation of the most elementary norms of international law." In protest, Spain broke off diplomatic relations with Guatemala...
Most of all it lacks enthusiasm. For two months Theroux's only travelling companion is his grumpiness. For 400 pages we have to put up with both of them. For example, when caught in the mad pre-game rush of a Guatemalan soccer match, all he thinks about is leaving. Throughout the book Theroux keeps asking whether it's worth the trouble. An unadventurous adventurer, he skips carnivals and sidesteps invitations at every turn, like the man who goes to a museum and refuses to look at the pictures...