Alvaro Colom in search of social justice: Guatemala's new president is relying on the support of the people and the vigilance of the international community to bring about profound reform.

• Author: Diaz, Hector Pena
• Position: Interview

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From an airplane window, the beauty of Guatemala's altiplano stretches out below, the peaks of volcanoes looming above the clouds like soleran guards and, spread at their feet, tranquil lakes and silent towns. These dramatic landscapes still hold the footprints of the Maya civilization--"the people of corn" without whom Guatemala would not exist.

Arriving in Guatemala City--the seat of government for Central America during colonial times--I prepared to sit down with President Alvaro Colom Caballeros for an exclusive interview with Americas. He had been elected a few weeks earlier, following a tumultuous electoral campaign that reflected profound divisions in Guatemalan society, and would take office on January 14.

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Before meeting with Guatemala's new leader, I began to chat with people on the streets of the capital to find out what they thought about him and the changes ahead. Almost without exception, they expressed a sense of fatalism: God's will would come to pass. Most people interviewed gave the new president credit for his good intentions, but more than one added pointedly that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Many described Colom as a simple man who is interested in the problems faced by the poor.

The new president had not yet taken office, but already the three national newspapers were debating the decisions he might make. In the day's headlines, there were more violent deaths of women, problems caused by the Maras (gang members), and a cold wave sweeping across the country. Given the power invested in the presidential persona, the focus was on what he might or might not do about all this.

But beyond being the president, just who was this man I was about to inter view? Alvaro Colom Caballeros has a degree in industrial engineering from the University of San Carlos--the country's leading public university, which has had a major influence on Guatemala's contemporary history--and studied at a high school run by Marist priests. The Coloms are a middle-class family that settled in the capital at least five generations ago. Colom's father and two of his uncles were attorneys who fought against the authoritarianism of the right-wing governments that arose after the fall of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that dominated Guatemalan politics throughout the Cold War. The younger uncle, Manuel Colom Argueta, was a Social Democrat who was assassinated by members of the military in 1979 after a car chase through the city streets as the presidential chief of staff watched from a helicopter. People remember his funeral as drawing one of the largest crowds in the country's recent history. Manuel Colom was not only mayor of Guatemala City from 1970 to 1974--the best in the city's history, many people say--but he was shaping up to be the sure winner in presidential elections.

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Public figures, particularly politicians, hide behind their words; as a result, people often don't know much about those who govern them. I decided to talk to some of the people closest to Alvaro Colom--his sister Yolanda, his wife, Sandra Torres, and some of his friends--to find out...