Recent COHA Publications

Research Memorandum: Guatemalan Democracy: Hanging on By its Fingernails

By Research Associate Courtney Carvill

In a country where an average of 17 murders are committed each day and 98 percent of criminal cases remain unsolved, the May 10, 2009 assassination of prominent Guatemalan lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, could easily have been dismissed along with thousands of other ill-handled and heavily manipulated political murder investigations. Instead, the dramatic elements of a video recording shown at the attorney’s funeral, in which Rosenberg forewarns the viewers of his own death as a result of the alleged plotting of President Álvaro Colom, his wife Sandra Torres, and Colom’s chief of staff Gustavo Alejos, has brought Rosenberg’s murder to the height of national attention.

Research Memorandum: Clarification of COHA’s Position on President Zelaya and What Went on in Honduras

By COHA Director Larry Birns

On Friday, June 26, COHA issued a statement regarding recent events in Honduras. As a result of this communiqué, the organization has received a heavy volume of mail on the subject, most of it intensely critical. The article was drafted by Brian Thompson, an extremely bright young Honduran national and an ardent opponent of President Zelaya. Brian was under significant pressure within his community to steer his piece in a direction that would censor Zelaya’s “irresponsible actions,” which had been not a few in number. The only problem was that Brian’s “take” on what was happening in Honduras substantially differed from that of COHA. The result was that in a crowded office of some 30 researchers, the Honduran piece was released without sufficient oversight, and carried an analysis that was much different from that of COHA’s.

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