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From Our Own Correspondent: Guatemala and Canada

04/03/2013

Guatemala and Canada

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Guatemala and Canada

How Mexico's drug wars are spreading south; why Canadians have concerns about free trade.

Humphrey Hawksley sees Mexico's drug wars spreading south to Guatemala's sugarcane belt. Jennifer Chevalier skates along with a protest against a Canada-EU free-trade agreement.

Pascale Harter introduces personal stories, insights and analysis from correspondents around the world. Humphrey Hawksley visits rural Guatemala and hears how Mexico's drug wars are spreading south. Now parents have a new dilemma: is it better to take children along with you to work in the sugarcane or banana plantations - exhausting, unloved and badly-paid work, but at least safe - or send them to school and risk their getting caught up in the world of the narcotraffickers?

And on Ottawa's frozen Rideau Canal, Jennifer Chevalier skates along with a protest. Just as in 1988, during the negotiations which brought in the NAFTA era, Canadians are again debating their country's place in the world - and whether the USA will always "suck all the oxygen out of the room". Can Canadian identity, business and healthcare survive the proposed CETA agreement with the EU?

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