Criminalization Continues to Threaten the Agrarian Movement

The CCDA speaks out against the criminalization of General Coordinator Neydi Juracán and the campesino movement. Photo credit: CCDA

By Mélisande Séguin, CCDA Cooperant

Criminalization is the malicious use of the criminal justice system to paralyze and repress movements for social justice. Throughout Latin America, states use criminalization to demobilize communities and civil society groups, leveraging people’s fears and exhausting organization’s resources. This strategy relies on direct collaboration with security officials and the judicial system.

In Guatemala, many identify former president and general Otto Pérez Molina’s administration as the moment when criminalization became a common practice in the post-armed conflict era. As of 2012, Pérez Molina’s government carried out a political agenda that promoted the extractive sector and repressed any opposition to it through militarization and criminalization. At the time, Indigenous authorities opposing extractivist mega-projects and claiming their people’s self-determination over their lands and territories were among the most targeted by the judicial system. Subsequent governments maintained this tendency. Under the Alejandro Giammattei administration, and with Consuelo Porras as Guatemala’s Attorney General, criminalization reached unprecedented levels, forcing judges, journalists, progressive politicians, and activists to seek political asylum abroad.

The connection between the evictions of communities and criminalization of campesinos

Throughout the recent history of Guatemala, Indigenous and campesino communities have had to fight for land access. Land dispossession can be explained by the unequal redistribution of lands between large-scale landowners and communities, state neglect regarding the regularization of land tenure titles, and criminal activities such as land grabbing by oligarch interests.

The signing of the Peace Accords in 1996 was a turning point in Guatemala’s history. On the one hand, that moment was characterized by the end of the armed conflict. the hope for transitional justice, and agreements on the return of displaced communities, Indigenous identity and rights, and land access. On the other hand, the period is also marked by the neo-liberalization of the country and an increase in the extractive sector’s activities at the expense of rural communities. Indigenous and campesino organizations did not remain idle in the face of such a direct threat to the environment and rural communities’ well-being and ways of life. Instead, Indigenous and campesino communities organized in broad movements to oppose yet another form of dispossession from their lands and territories.

The instrumentalization of the legal system by politicians, corrupt elites, and private actors, including large-scale landowners, has become a typical response to Indigenous and campesino mobilization. This tactic, however, closely mirrors the repression that already existed in the era of the armed conflict.

Before, state forces circulated hit lists, executed leaders, and massacred communities. Now, the state circulates lists of arrest warrants, sentences leaders t0 prison, displaces entire communities from their lands and accused them of trespassing on private property. As it is harder, although not impossible, for the state to access land through direct physical threats and violence, institutions are using the judicial system to repress communities, misappropriate their lands, and grant concessions to extractive projects, including mining, hydroelectric, and large-scale monoculture farming. The state’s also misuses emergency measures and states of exception to assert the state’s control over large geographical areas of Guatemala, suspending people’s rights and once again subjecting them to militarized violence.

CCDA General Coordinator Faces Criminalization

On May 16, CCDA members demonstrated in front of several MP offices across the country. They are asking for Consuelo Porras’ resignation. Photo credit: CCDA.

On May 16, the University of San Carlos’s (USAC) Supreme Council notified Neydi Juracán, the CCDA’s General Coordinator, of a criminalization case against her. The Council has wrongfully accused Neydi of inciting students and professors to occupy the USAC campus between 2022 and 2023, a period in which many students, faculty, and community leaders stood in protest against the violent imposition of Walter Mazariegos as university president. Even though Neydi was a student representative of the Agronomy college for several years, she retired from the student union after graduating from the USAC in 2022.

Some students and professors were already indicted in 2023 for occupying the USAC campus or inciting students to protest. Neydi, however, still had not been notified of any charges against her, months after the criminalization of the student movement started.

Just hours before Neydi was formally notified of the case against her, the CCDA coordinated a nationwide action to demand that Consuelo Porras to step down from her position because of her involvement in corruption and the criminalization of the agrarian movement. The CCDA believes that the charges against Neydi are in direct retaliation to their calls for an end to the repression and criminalization of Indigenous and campesino communities across the country. If the charges against Neydi are upheld, the USAC Supreme Council could rescind her agricultural engineering degree, which she earned after six years of hard work.

CCDA faces 1000+ criminalization cases

While Neydi faces administrative criminalization for her role as the CCDA General Coordinator,* more than a thousand CCDA members have arrest warrants against them. In some cases, the Public Prosecutor’s office accuses all the adult community members of occupying private property, though they live on lands that belong to the State and should thus be available for landless communities. Others face criminalization because they do not have deeds for the lands their people have lived on for decades, if not hundreds of years. Finally, the state targets CCDA leaders because of their work organizing landless communities and denouncing corrupt institutions. In some cases, leaders are even targeted as they leave meetings or roundtables called by government officials or businessmen supposedly seeking to resolve their conflicts with communities.

The CCDA’s numbers also show that criminalization is not only used against leaders or even only against adults. Among the communities the CCDA accompanies, hundreds of women and children have arrest warrants against them.

The stress generated by legal uncertainty has deeply affected the agrarian movement. Widespread criminalization creates an atmosphere of constant fear of wrongful accusations and potential arrest. Communitarian feminists explain that criminalization causes an increase in terminal illnesses such as cancer. They also mention that living under the threat of arrest severely affects the healthy development of children.

In the Face of More Repression, More Organization

The CCDA plays an active role in the fight against criminalization. Throughout the country, its members loudly denounce the wrongful use of the law against Indigenous and campesino communities. Since Bernardo Arevalo’s election, they’ve also sought meetings with several state institutions to stop future illegal arrests of land defenders. Nonetheless, with Consuelo Porras at the helm of the Public Prosecutor’s office, criminalization remains a major threat for Indigenous and campesino movements.

* Note: Neydi Juracán is being charged by the Supreme Council of the USAC, not the Public Prosecutor’s office. This means that she doesn’t risk jail time or criminal charges. However, the disciplinary measures the USAC is trying to enforce against her could seriously affect, if not ruin, her professional life.