It's not everyday that a guerrilla movement hosts an alternative art festival, but that's exactly what just happened in southern Mexican city of San Cristobal, in the state of Chiapas. From July 23 to 30, over a thousand artists from 45 countries flocked to the city's outskirts to participate in CompArte for Humanity, a festival of art, poetry and music organized by the left-wing militant group, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

Support has come in from across Mexico’s social movements and civil society for the victims following the latest state repression against Oaxaca’s teachers and their supporters on June 19, 2016. That day, federal police opened fire on protesting teachers and supporters in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, leaving 9 dead and well over 170 injured.

Faced with the cowardly repressive attack suffered by the teachers and the community in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca—in which the Mexican state reminds us that this is a war on all—the peoples, nations, and tribes who make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation say to the dignified teachers that they are not alone, that we know that reason and truth are on their side, that the collective dignity from which they speak their resistance is unbreakable, and that this the principal weapon of those of us below.

On June 9, Ana Mirian Romero, a 29-year-old indigenous Lenca woman and mother of five from the department of La Paz, Honduras, was recognized by the European human rights organization Front Line Defenders. Romero was awarded the organization’s annual award for Human Rights Defenders for her work struggling for the recognition of indigenous lands and against the corporate destruction of the environment in Honduras.

The long-running struggle of rural communities in Guatemala against the United States-based mining firm Kappes, Cassiday, and Associates (KCA) continues in Guatemala’s national courts. A recent investigation by the Guatemalan public ministry could come with criminal charges for executives of the controversial gold mine.

Guatemala's war and counter-insurgency have continued through other means. Today social and indigenous movements face free speech and legal challenges that threaten to tear them apart by dismantling leadership and organizational structures, and sending movement bases into disarray.

“Water is life” is the message that countless organizations across Guatemala have rallied around as thousands march more than 260 miles to demand that the Guatemalan government act, and protect right to water. Tens of thousands of protesters set out on the long, and grueling march to Guatemala City on April 11 to demand that the government protect their right to water, and for an end to the privatization of water resources.