FFF - MEMORIES!

So... this is a perfect timing for this post, since my baby's 2nd birthday is coming next week!
I have a ton of pictures from baby Angie and I lost another ton when my desktop computer broke, so even when I was the one taking her pictures most of the time, and she was the one looking gorgeous and I was the one looking awful or just waking up in the morning... I will try to find the better looking ones :)

These are some of my favorites:

She was about 3 months old here, look at that tiny little thing, how I miss those times :'(
And look and her hair! It took a long time to get it down xD

She started making that wrinkly nose right before her mommy came for her and it was all her and her happiness.

This is christmas 2007, with matching hats

She used to loved those bells so I used to take her to the door and make them sound for her.

visiting grandma and hanging out with cousin Diego

Here's my cutie

I think I look like a momma in this one lol!
I miss my baby!!

I'm Back :)

So... we got some pictures from my baby girl's mommy last sunday.
We love her so much for keeping us updated of how my baby is growing up. We appreciate it so much and thank God everyday for giving my sweet Angie such a wonderful family.

My sweet baby's birthday is coming next week, June 3! I can't believe she's almost 2 years old!!
I wish I could be there to hug her and kiss her!
Well, even being so far away we always manage to send her a little something. This year my mom and I went to the Mercado Central, a place were you can find ANY kind of handcraft and got her and her sister the most beautiful hand embroidered dresses! Perfect for summer!
We love the Mercado Central, a lot of things at my home come from there and are just beautiful. We go there pretty often, sometimes just to look around lol!

We are crossing our fingers that we picked the right sizes :s but I think we did.
The little box is already in the mail, hopefully to reach them next wednesday.
Angelina is getting a big birthday party next saturday. We are eagerly waiting for the pictures and video!

Now on to the pics....
I have to mention that my camera is dying... :(

Both dresses have different designs, this is Angelina's

And this is Andrea's

In other news, we had a BIG earthquake today, at 2:24 am! It scared the hell out of us.
It was very very looonnnggg! We were ready with sweaters and shoes to run when it stopped.
It actually happened in Honduras but it was also sensitive in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Here we go again

Tomorrow another manifestation will take place, same place, same time, hopefully a lot more people!
The manifestation from last weekend was historical, never in the history of Guate so many people has gather demanding justice even when we have lived in the same impunity situation almost since democracy started.
And so we went from bad to worst with the same attitude we've been having for centuries. Bending our knees and turning away our heads unless violence hits very close to our hearts and homes. All of it is finally ending and in the past week we have since at least one protest per day!

Seems like we finally had enough! People is rising, specially the youth.
This makes me sooo happy! I know this thought has been in a lot of minds here, we want a better Guatemala, for ourselves, for our children. We are now fighting for it.

I truly enjoyed last Sunday, I felt truly happy and just watching those thousands of people united for our beloved Guatemala. I had tears in my eyes when we sang our national hymn, more than 35,000 people singing their hearts out! Unbelievable!
We were sunburned and we are still pealing off some skin but we are sooo there tomorrow!

Not so Wordless Wednesday! :s

This are just a couple of pictures of Last Sunday, as you can see a Big protest took place, we were all asking for justice, no more impunity, no more murders, no more corruption, we want PEACE!
That is the reason we are dressed in white. We were more than 30,000 people.
But this is not it, another protest just like this one, and hopefully with more people, will be taking place next Sunday, May 24th.

This is completely unusual here, it takes a LOT to make guatemalans gather like this. It means we are tired of having to live in the middle of so much violence.

Now, guess what President Colom did... he brought a similar amount of people from all over the country to protest in his favor! Believe me he and all his government did it.
Some of the people there even said they were offered Q.60, a meal and some others said they were there because they were threatened saying that if they didn't show up they were going to lose their jobs or wouldn't recieve the government's help anymore!!!
The press says the government spent around 1 MILLION DOLLARS bringing all those people and feeding them. Where do you think all that money is coming from???

Please Sign the Petition!

Petition to ask Alvaro Colom his resignation from the presidency.

Go here to sign the petition

http://www.petitiononline.com/gtRemove/petition.html

To: Guatemalan Congress and all international comunity -


Preamble:

In Guatemala City, on May 9, 2009 the lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano was despicable and cowardly murdered. After his death was released a document and a video recorded by himself, which explains in detail why Alvaro Colom Caballeros, the current President of Guatemala and his senior aides are responsible for his death.

Counsel Rosenberg was a father with a wife and 4 children for whom and by ensuring that he certainly had reason to live.

Considering that no human being would give his life in exchange for a political scandal as the government has been speculation in the propaganda that is currently airing on all media in the republic of Guatemala.


Lawyer Rosenberg Video is in YouTube and other websites. The journal "El periódico" has published a note with the transcript of the document and the link to the videos (all in spanish) at http://www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20090511/pais/100336/

Petition:

Mr. Alvaro Colom Caballeros to be removed from office as President of the Republic and the withdrawal of the immunity currently enjoyed by constitutional mandate, to go to the courts for the serious accusations leveled against him.

The same way, everyone involved in the facts by lawyer Rosenberg Marzano to be removed from their public charges and submitted to the courts.

The people of Guatemala do not want to break the institutional order, it is requested that Dr. Rafael Espada, current Vice President of the Republic takes office as President, while Alvaro Colom resolves his legal status.

We also ask to the international community to lend its support, through established channels, to be conducted independent and thorough investigation of the facts until the very end.


It is suspected that, at this stage, the material perpetrators of this crime have been eliminated, so that they can not incriminate the accused to be the intellectual authors of this crime. We calls to embassies and diplomatic missions accredited in the country immediately and publicly offer to provide a asylum for these people, so that if some of them are still alive, can give their testimony to help clarify this.

In the same way we ask to withdrawn entry visas to their respective countries and not be given political asylum or any other assistance to those involved in this crime.


I found this in facebook and I don't know for sure this will truly help my country but my people is finally rising all together and figthing for our rights to be respected, please sign the petition and help the guatemalan people to finally be able to live in Justice!
In this country 98% of all the murder cases remain UNSOLVED!
Last year 6,200 guatemalans died due to violence and this year, just a few months ago a 2 month old baby boy was killed in a shooting in a city bus. We want the Rosenberg murder to be the last one! (Add to the mentioned number the already hundreds of people killed this year).
I am adding a couple pictures of the protests taking place in front of the National Palace. This is a group of people already fighting for the president's resignation. A massive protest its being organized for next Sunday and many national organizations are getting together to make thousands of people to join this cause.

.

update

This is an update from my previous post, since the release of the Rosenberg video the news has gone around the world. The video is now translated into various languages and has been post to many newspaper's websites.
The International comission against the impunity in Guatemala, CICIG, is now in charge of the Rosenberg investigation. Though the CICIG director has recommended the president and everyone else directly accused in the video and the written declaration.
To this, the president has responded that he would only leave the presidency dead.
This can only show his lack of good sence and dignity. If he was truly innocent he would have any problem with his innocence to be proved.
Everyone else involved says they are innocent. International and national opinions lead to the thought that to have a clear and believable investigation, the president, his wife and the presidency secretary must leave their spots in the government at least for the time the investigation takes place and the CICIG finds the truth. Their staying there can only obstruct the path to the truth.

The Ministerio Público looked for the people who distributed the video in Rosenberg's funeral first instead of the assassins!
Then the national district attorney had an almost secret meeting in the president's house!

Since Monday, the family of the Musa's and the attorney Rosenberg organized protests in front of the National Palace to ask for the president resignation and for Guatemala to finally see Justice and to stop the death of so many innocent people everyday due to violence.
The government response was (as it has always been everytime they have a problem or someone protesting against them) to move a mass of people in buses, planes and helicopters to the same place, but the difference is this people are defending the president and his government. They say this is the only government that has remembered the poor (yeah right!).

No one believes this things anymore, there have been cases of journalist asking random people in the crowd why they are protesting and sometimes they just don't have any idea, sometimes they say they were offered some money or a meal and sometimes they say they were threatened saying he government was going to take away the little help they have given to their families.
You can tell these people are poor and illiterate, they have no choice but to show up everytime they are asked for.
We all know these groups are brought by the same government, how else would anyone be organized to move hundreds of people away from their jobs and homes? Believe that just doesn't happen in Guatemala.

The fact of gathering these two groups of people in the same place can only be meant to create disputes, and make everything worst.
Every day the group of the ones against the president grows and so does the group of the ones in favor of the president. And it seems like this will continue for a few more days with more and more people joining the cause.

I truly hope the death of this honorable man doesn't go innoticed. It is time for Guatemala to wake up and finally fights for the JUSTICE we need so desperately!

And I totally believe him!

This is the latest news, this video and his written declaration was distributed by every media in our country, websites even crashed from so many visits in order to watch and read his words.

This was a very important attorney assassinated last Sunday, May 10th while he ride his bike in las Americas Avenue, he worked for an important business family, Khalil and Marjorie Musa, who were both assassinated a few weeks ago. This man knew the truth behind this murders and as he knew his death sentence was already signed didn't surrender by the same fear all guatemalans feel and made this two declaration to shout the truth that we all know but refuse to do something about.
This has turned into a big scandal and I believe every word he said and wrote. How many other good guatemalans are going to have to die until we rise and stop these filth trying to take our country. The national TV channels didn't show any of these Big News (wonder why?), except for Guatevision and in the radio.

This breaks my heart, I can't even imagine what his family must be feeling. It fills me with shame and indignation. People has been asked to dress in black today to protest for Rosenberg's death, so he won't become another statistic.
I truly hope every man guilty rots in jail.

Attorney Blames President for His Assasination

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q...

Rodrigo Rosenberg's Declaration, prior to his death

If you are reading this message, it means that I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was murdered by the President's Private Secretary Gustavo Alejos and his associate Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of mister Alvaro Colom and Sandra de Colom.

The reason for which Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez have ordered my death, and for which the President of the Republic Alvaro Colom has approved it, is because until the day I was killed, I was the lawyer for two incredible Guatemalans, Mister Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, and knew exactly how Alvaro Colom, Sandra de Colom, Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez were responsible for this cowardly assassination, which I made known to them and to anyone who could and would hear me.

I was a 47 year old Guatemalan, with 4 beautiful children, with the best brother one could ask in life, with wonderful friends, and with an overwhelming desire to live in my country, but I could not have lived with myself without rebelling, arming myself with valor and denouncing before all Guatemalans who have principles and values the real reasons for the deaths of Mister Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, without regarding the consequences, and understanding that my life was in danger, I wanted to leave behind this testimony, should something come to happen to me, as it unfortunately did.

It was Alvaro Colom who, through Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez, asked for the collaboration of Mister Khalil Musa to form part, Ad honorem, of the board for Banrural, without Mister Khalil Musa being aware of the illegal, million-dollar business transactions taking place daily in Banrural, which range from money laundering to the deviation of public funds to non-existent programs belonging to the President’s wife, Sandra de Colom, as well as the funding of paper firms employed for drug-dealing.

It was Alvaro Colom, in agreement with Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez, who withheld Mister Khalil Musa’s already signed appointment, without his knowledge, for over three months, for in reality they had no intention whatsoever of granting him this post, but were using his good name with the argument that if new quotas of power were not distributed, Mister Khalil would denounce the corruption with which Banrural’s General Manager Fernando Peña operates this bank at his whim, for the service of Mrs. Sandra de Colom, as an associate and financier with the funds of the bank and of the businesses owned by Gregorio Valdez and Gustavo Alejos, without the bank’s president, José Angel López, doing anything to stop Fernando Peña from turning Banrural into the dwelling for thieves, drugdealers and murderers which it is now.

With the impunity with which Guatemalans in recent years have granted to thieves and murderers, José Angel López, Fernando Peña and the cowardly Gerardo de León directly threatened and intimidated Mister Khalil Musa a few weeks before his assassination, so that he’d give up his post and Mister Khalil Musa, as a true gentleman, told them he had no problem with his appointment being canceled, as it was Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez, in agreement with our most splendid President Alvaro Colom and his perennial shadow, Sandra de Colom.

Mister Khalil Musa let Gustavo Alejos and Alvaro Colom know that he’s decided not to take part in the board of Banrural to avoid troubles, but they asked that he give them time, as all was getting resolved, without Mister Khalil Musa having the slightest idea that once the thieves and murderers had everything settled, they would kill him along with his daughter, Marjorie Musa (whose only crime was to be an exemplary daughter who always accompanied her father), as he’d served his purpose, without caring for anything or anyone and with the utter leisure of knowing that good Guatemalans would once more do absolutely nothing, justifying their inactivity in the impotence which always pervades us, or simply saying “Most likely, they were involved in something…”

Boasting lack of moral principles or values and of the vaguest sense of shame, Gustavo Alejos, after trying to invent other theories who nobody accepted on the grounds of the moral virtue of the victims, personally told Mister Khalil Musa’s family that he’d regrettably been assassinated for the horrible problems which exist in Banrural, reaching the point that the very President Alvaro Colom invites one of Mister Khalil Musa’s political relatives to his office to confirm what’s been said by his Private Secretary.

Now you can understand why neither Alvaro Colom and much less Gustavo Alejos publicly declared what they told to the family of Mister Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, and ordered the corrupt and incompetent Secretary of the Interior and the nonexistent Attorney General to let this assassination slide, as always occurs with the murders, thefts and violations which have thrust Guatemala into its darkest depths.

Day by day this horrible story repeats itself and fills with grief one more of our Guatemalan families, while good Guatemalans decide to look the other way and pray it’s not our turn.

It’s enough! Let’s rescue our country from thieves, murderers and drugdealers, and once united, let us reclaim our Guatemala, our values and our faith in justice, and let us kick out the current puppet we have for president, and let us imprison the thieves and murderers, starting with Gustavo Alejos, Gregorio Valdez, Fernando Peña and Gerardo de León, among others, and once and for all, let us demand the resignation of all the current members of Congress, all of who, with very few exceptions, are a bunch of thieves, and let us start all over again, for the love of God and our country.

Surely the cowards will try to defend themselves by staining the memory of Mister Khalil Musa or his daughter Marjorie Musa, and will try to convince Guatemalans that this is all a new ploy, but in the end, the one and only truth that matters is that if you are reading this message, it’s because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was murdered by Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Mister Alvaro Colom and Sandra de Colom, for refusing to allow the vile and cowardly assassination of two incredible people like Mister Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa to become another statistic, thus continuing to hand over my country to the killers, cowards, thieves and drugdealers who currently govern it.

Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano

PS
I remind Mister Vicepresident of the Republic, Doctor Rafael Espada, that he who’s silent, yields, and that you are neither a thief nor a murderer, and should be the first one to head the movement to recover our Guatemala, and make the law be carried out with the help of all the good Guatemalans who support it without reserve.

FFF - Mommy!!

So I scanned these old pics from me and my mommy just for this special post!
I so love my mom, she is the greatest mom ever. I have mentioned my love for her in previous posts but I never get tired or saying it and hugging her every chance I have.
I thank God everyday for sending her to be my mommy and my brother and sister's mom of course. She rocks!
Oh and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the mommies and grandma's around the world! You definitively deserve more than one day a year.




This one is from my baptism, I think I was 6 months old :)



This was taken by my uncle Byron (rip), he was the official photographer lol
I was about 18 months old.

And the next couple of pics are from our past Holy Week vacation.


At my uncle's house for a BBQ


Showing some love :)

Swine Flu is Here!

We heard on the news early this week the first case of swine flu hit Guate!
To be honest we are all kind of bewildered because being so close to Mexico we hear about the first case until now, when the disease has spread all over the world!
Anyway they say the 11 year old girl who brought it from Mexico is already in her home feeling well and so is her family. More cases are about to be confirmed on Saturday, since the samples have to be sent to Atlanta.
As I was talking today with my school mates, if we have only ONE confirmed case of the A H1N1 virus... why did the alarm go from zero to ORANGE?! and then to a Calamity State along with some gossiping about everything being shot down? That is causing people to be over worried and the masks are already sold out! Anyhow, I haven't seen anyone wearing them to go anywhere.
It seems like there are a lot of other issues in this country to be worried about...
I will be praying and praying that this thing won't explode and that they don't find any more cases, and that they are not hiding any info from us, so we can be prepared.

If the flu spreads here... it could be really really bad...
People doesn't seem to understand well what the illness is about, they said in the newspapers that a lot of people stopped eating anything comming from pigs so they would not be infected??!
And some others just don't trust the system and rather die in their homes than send their relatives to a hospital or whatever. Sad huh?

Hope this stops very soon and that they find a vaccine soon.

Sticking with the dear friends theme

Last week I got to meet two dear blogging friends that happened to be visiting Guate City to see their baby girls. They are Pam and Brittney, they are really wonderful people, loving mommies, courageous women and a lot of other good virtues.
Lucky me, I got one of my labs at school cancelled and so I dropped by their hotel to chat a little and get to meet them in person after following their stories via blog.
I truly had a wonderful time with them and beautiful Kinsey (I LOVE her curly hair!).
I definitively would love to meet with them again in another visit and take them to really know GC at least :) and also I'll keep on praying so they are able to take their beautiful angels home to their forever families VERY VERY SOON!

Party with dear friends!

Well, it was my best friend Rita's birthday on April 16th. She turned 21 so her parents let her throw a little party in her front yard on the 25th.
She invited some friends both from high school and from university, so we had a lot of fun and it ended up being some sort of reunion for me since I hadn't seen some of my old high school best friends since we graduated. We laughed and laughed and really enjoyed our company and all the school stories.
Let's move to the pics!


Here I am with my dear friend Rita, we are friends since I started in Bethania School in year 2000, when we moved from Flores, Petén to Guatemala City. We are so alike, maybe not fisically but we share so many thoughts about so many things we call ourselves "sisters".
She is such a nice girl.


Here's one of my high school friends, the one in the glasses is Mimi and the guy by her side is her boyfriend, then on her other side with the funny face is Fallon, she is a very very SPECIAL girl... kind of CRAZY but I can tell you she has a BIG HEART (see how I exagerate those words?)
Then comes Nadyezhda (weird name huh?) she is like the smartest person I know.



Yes, we had some tequila shots in honor of the birthday girl, 'cause you know... Doctors party too! lol! We were a little extra happy when the party ended... :s
*note to self: do not mix vodka and tequila EVER!



And here's the last one.... just so can have and idea of how much we laughed!
Happy Birthday Rita!


p.s. I am craving for a new cameraaaa! + we had and earthquake while I was writing this... that or I am having some serious palpitations :s