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Guatemala's Vice President Was the Victim of a Vicious Grain Attack

Roxana Baldetti, the first female vice president of Guatemala, was hit in the face by flour today.

By Sara Morrison
This article is from the archive of our partner .

Roxana Baldetti, the first female vice president of Guatemala, was hit in the face by flour today.

Baldetti was leaving Guatemala City's Teatro National after the president's speech (in which, the AP said, he talked about "advances in security and the fight against child malnutrition," in case you were wondering) when two women just walked right up to her and threw flour in her face. This seems like a serious security breech, but apparently one of the flour-throwers had time to hold an impromptu press conference before she was arrested:

I guess the Guatemalan secret service is just really chill?

"I have the right to express myself freely," was the unidentified woman's reasoning for wasting perfectly good flour on someone's face.

CB24.TV had step-by-step photos of the attack:

Those photos actually make the incident seem much more dramatic than it was. Here's the footage!

Enough flour was thrown for Baldetti to require medical assistance. She was taken out of the auditorium on a stretcher and went to a hospital because she was having trouble breathing. This seems kind of ridiculous considering that it's only flour, but studies have shown that flour dust can cause asthma.

Meanwhile, Baldetti's constituents seem to be taking things in stride:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.