Benjamin Reeves

The installation of a new attorney general with close ties to the party founded by former dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt likely signals the end of any effort to pursue a genocide conviction against the retired general.

A rat’s nest of wires snarled near the peak of a power pole is a common sight in Guatemala. Rather than being the result of sloppy installation, the disorderly mass is evidence of an extraordinarily common crime in Latin America: electricity theft.

Hundreds of supporters of Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz rallied outside Guatemala’s highest court Wednesday as the justices inside heard final arguments on whether the human rights champion should be allowed to stay in office until December or be forced to step down in May.

Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz is a small, soft-spoken woman with the quiet mannerisms of an academic, which she is. But she also displays a dogged perseverance that has made her a champion of human rights and the rule of law. And that may put her out of a job soon.

A strange act of protest last week in which two women tossed white powder into the face of Guatemala’s vice president has underscored the political tensions in the Central American nation.

Representatives of Guatemala’s indigenous Ixil Maya have filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights in Washington accusing the Guatemalan government of failing in its legal obligation to investigate and prosecute genocide.

The human rights prosecution of former Guatemalan dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt, whose brutal rule in the early 1980s saw the deaths of tens of thousands of the country’s indigenous people, has hit another obstacle, with one of the country’s two high courts saying the retired general may be entitled to amnesty.