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Police talk on their phones in-front of a murder victim in Guatemala City. The victim was killed in a shoot-out with police in Zone 2 of the city. A police officer was also wounded in the fracas...Guatemala's newly inaugurated president Alberto Colom has promised to sharply decrease the violence in his first 100 days in office. Unfortunately, there has been a sharp increase in the violence in Guatemala City since he made his promise. Violence is endemic and epidemic. During February at least 18 bus drivers and their assistants were killed and there seems to be no end in sight. 6292 people were murdered in Guatemala in 2008. Most of them were killed in the capital of Guatemala City. The violence in this small Central American country knows no limits and currently it is one of the most violent and insecure places in the world that is not in a declared state war. People are consistently murdered for their cell phones on the streets, bus drivers are shot in the head in broad daylight in front of crowds of onlookers and people are openly extorted and killed if they do not pay. ..Violence is on the rise and many here feel that the current government has little or no control over the various forces undermining basic civilian normalcy...As part of a project examining the collective experience of Latin American migrants to the United States I have traveled to Guatemala at least 4 times over the past several years to show the devastating effect that violence has on everyday people in the nation's capital and demonstrate why some people choose to leave their country's homeland in search of a better and hopefully safer life in the United States. ..With the daily drumbeat of intimidation, fear, extortion, and murder continually met.with impunity, the local population grows increasingly desperate. Because the police often do nothing, it is not uncommon for street justice to take over, with mobs clamoring to protect their neighborhoods and enforce provisional order. This body of (KEYSTONE/NOOR/jon lowenstein / NOOR)