Ongoing eviction attempts, violence, and police repression in CCDA communities in Izabal
The CCDA and a human rights commission from Costa Rica documented the inhumane conditions Q’eqchi’ families in Izabal, who have been victims of evictions, have been experiencing. Photo credit: CCDA
On April 7th, 2025 the communities of Macho Creek, Yojoa, and Las Brisas in the municipality of Livingston, Izabal were met with immense police presence as the national authorities attempted to evict local campesinxs from their communally held lands. These attempted evictions followed the same pattern that several other communities in the Izabal and Alta Verapaz regions have faced in the first quarter of 2025: large police presence, attempted eviction, and state-backed violence.
This attempted eviction comes only a week after an international mission of sister organizations from Costa Rica arrived in Guatemala to visit these communities alongside the CCDA in an attempt to document cases of state violence and human rights violations. According to the CCDA, the group of Costa Rican representatives were giving a press conference in Guatemala City condemning the levels of violence that Indigenous and campesinx communities in Guatemala face, when they got word of yet another eviction attempt. The CCDA quickly reacted by sharing information they received from community members, denouncing the impressive amount of police forces that had arrived in the communities.
This is not the first instance of violence and attempted eviction that the community of Macho Creek has faced. Since its first registered census appearance in 1913, Macho Creek has faced numerous threats from cattle ranchers, forestry services, and large landholders. The land claim itself is approximately 9,000 hectares, meaning there are several competing interests in this area given the vastness of the land claim. Of particular interest in this attempted eviction is that, legally speaking, the authorities used the lanzamiento mandate and not the desalojo (eviction) mandate. What differentiates the two legal mandates is that the latter mandate requires the courts and the government to comply with certain standards for removing communities from their lands so as not to violate international law; however, the former mandate does not require these standards. Instead, it calls for an immediate removal of people and communities from their lands without other mechanisms in place to protect their rights at the international level.
On a practical level, this is a tool that the large landholders use to accelerate the removal process by which they invoke the presence of the police to violate the rights of local Indigenous landholders. Important to note in the case of the Macho Creek, Yojoa, and Las Brisas attempted eviction was the level of police presence in the area. According to CCDA sources, 125 police squads, 4 convoys, 4 buses, and several airboats surrounded the communities in the eviction attempt. In the case of Yojoa, it is worth mentioning that only five families currently live in the community.
The CCDA expressed immense outrage at the level of police presence, considering the fact that this level of repression is absent when confronting true criminal presence in Guatemala. The CCDA said that this was “an immense operation that is not used to deal with the mafias, to battle corruption or to arrest those committing violent crimes against the population”. Yet in the few moments that the state is present in communities such as Macho Creek, it arrives with such high police to civilian ratios when the only “crime” communities have committed is existing on land that is coveted by the landholding class.
Thankfully, by around 11 am on April 7th, the police left the area and the eviction did not go through. For now, it has been postponed to another date that has yet to be announced, though the community lives in fear that it could happen at any time given that it is under the lanzamiento mandate. Nonetheless, the CCDA emphasized that these evictions are not the solution to land issues in Guatemala, rather, the solution is to listen to the demands of the Indigenous and campesinx communities that are the stewards of their lands and who play a fundamental role in the functioning of the country. Though the eviction did not go through in the communities of Macho Creek, Yojoa and Las Brisas this time, the CCDA is paying close attention to how this situation continues to develop. BTS will continue to stay vigilant and is working with the CCDA to create a strategic plan for addressing these ongoing eviction attempts.
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