NPR Xeni Tech – Reporter's notebook: Guatemala

Resident of Antigua, Guatemala

Xeni and Gustavo Cosme of the FAFG

A five-part series I produced with the NPR News program Day to Day, "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future," concludes with this "reporter's notebook" — an overview of how innovative uses of technology are creating change in this Central American nation. From forensic scientists using DNA to identify death squad victims, to digital archivists preserving once-secret police documents from the civil war, to grassroots infrastructure tech providing electricity and clean water to Mayan villages.

Link to part 5 on Day to Day, "Technology in Guatemala: An Overview."

"Xeni Tech" home, and podcast feed. Here's a reporter's notebook blog with more background on these stories: Link.

Previously:

  • Guatemala: Xela Teco Builds Grassroots Tech (part 4)
  • Guatemala: Digital archives may help find "disappeared." (part 3)
  • Guatemala: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala (part 2)
  • Guatemala: A Database for the Dead. (part 1)

    IMAGES: 2007, Xeni Jardin, under this cc license. Top: a macaw on the grounds of a luxury hotel in Antigua, Guatemala. Center: I'm standing with Gustavo Cosme of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), inside a room where they store boxes of human remains of death squad victims, prior to reburial. Bottom: a centuries-old monk's skull, at the site of a 15th century monastery in Antigua.

    Guatemala: 16th c. monk's skull