The massive evictions of 800 families from 14 communities in Guatemala's Polochic Valley, removing peasant agriculture in order to install the Chabil Utzaj sugar plantation, began on March 15, 2011. When we heard, we were surprised. Not because we have any illusions about the benevolence of the Guatemalan government or the oligarchy it serves, but because we didn't expect the government to risk the public reaction that a major atrocity in the Polochic's symbolic municipality of Panzós would provoke. Here in Guatemala, the Colom administration poses as a populist movement that takes the side of the poor, but Colom and his now ex-wife Sandra Torres are enmbroiled in major electoral tension as Torres battles her disqualification from the electoral contest for President. Because Colom and Torres are banking on their ability to mobilize the working classes to protest on their behalf in order to win the elections and maintain power, we didn't anticipate that the government would be willing to shatter the illusion of their so-called “Times of Solidarity” so bluntly.

But that illusion is shattered…