Over the past decade in Guatemala, criminalization has increasingly served as a strategy to stifle public participation in civic life. In most cases, Guatemalan authorities have collaborated with both business and military interests to criminalize those who seek justice and fight against impunity. Unending criminalization of Indigenous land defenders Early [...]
Nueva Jerusalen homes burned in violent eviction, photo credit: CCDA On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples - Wednesday, August 9th - police and private security forces attacked the Xinka community of Nueva Jerusalen and ruthlessly burnt people's homes and possessions. Located in Escuintla, the sugar-cane [...]
By Raphael Freston Water is ubiquitous this time of year in San Lucas Tolimán. Streets become streams; fields become swamps. The sky, the silvery sky, feels ever closer and heavier. Fog creeps into every corner, burying San Lucas in one vast cloud. You can see no more than an arm’s [...]
The Xinka Parliament accepts the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation's Human Rights Award, photo credit: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation On June 6, the Xinka Parliament was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation's annual Human Rights Award. The award honors human rights defenders who face oppression [...]
Members of the CCDA and BTS travel to Macho Creek to learn community members' ties to the land. Photo credit: Raphael Freston By: Raphael Freston, a cooperant with the Highlands Small Farmers Committee (CCDA) Shifting Seasons Come April, fireflies flit through San Lucas Tolimán at dawn. Community members [...]
By Jim Hodgson After a drenching ride along Guatemala’s Atlantic coast from the city of Livingston, our boat approached Macho Creek. It’s a small, mangrove-lined river that leads inland to the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ community also known as Macho Creek. This day, March 21, the river was overflowing its banks [...]
Guatemala will hold presidential, congressional, and municipal elections on Sunday, June 25. The outgoing administration, led by President Alejandro Giammattei, has been marked by corruption scandals, the dismantling of judicial and accountability systems, the criminal prosecution of judges, prosecutors, and journalists, and the ever-increasing criminalization of land defenders and entire [...]
By Jim Hodgson An Indigenous Xinca community on the Pacific coast, south of the Guatemalan capital, has the support of a Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking The Silence Network (BTS) partner in its effort to remain on their land. The 53 families of Nueva Jerusalén (New Jerusalem) have the backing of the Comité [...]
Fourth in a series by Jim Hodgson Read the third post, here. Granada Uno hearing reports. Photo Credits: CCDA Guatemala’s 1996 peace accords ended the civil war, but did not restore land to people displaced by conflict, or result in a plan for agrarian reform, or create a system for [...]
President Arbenz achieves: ‘Farmer, here is your land. Defend it, care for it, cultivate it.’” (C.P.R. Urbana from LIFE magazine). President Jacobo Arbenz (Cubadebate). Bitter Fruit tells the story of the 1954 coup. Tanks in front of the National Palace after the coup (TeleSUR). Seventy years after land reform promise, [...]
