An ugly race in Guatemala

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Guatemala’s presidential race is getting ugly in its final weeks. This reporter is receiving daily, unsolicited messages suggesting that candidate Alvaro Colom, once the clear front-runner, is suffering from various fatal diseases, or that drug traffickers are backing his campaign. Many of these e-mails contain crude caricatures showing Colom as a skeletal, drug-emaciated figure.

Colom, a center-left former businessman, denies all the charges, of course. Earlier in the campaign, he found himself obliged to issue a news release denying claims that he was a Manchurian candidate working on behalf of the devil.

This week, Colom claimed that his rival, rightist former general Otto Perez Molina, sent him 75 death-threat text messages. Earlier this month, an aide to Perez Molina was gunned down in the capital city. Colom won the first round of voting, and polls show the two men running neck and neck ahead of the Nov. 4 runoff.

Posted by Héctor Tobar in Mexico City