Indigenous activist Sebastian Alonso Juan was killed protesting hydroelectric dams in northern Guatemala. Now, others are fighting for justice and an end to the corporate projects that condemn their communities to death. […]
Indignation is flowing into the streets again in Guatemala, and protesters demand that President Jimmy Morales and his accomplices in Congress put an end to impunity. […]
Since Guatemalan law prohibits the unauthorized removal of river water, people in surrounding communities claim that their rivers have been “kidnapped.” But the people are fighting back to free them. […]
Guatemala’s Congress attempted to double down to protect the political elite from being accountable for corruption, but social movements are fighting back. […]
Guatemala’s indigenous communities have worked tirelessly to recuperate their communal lands in the 20 years since the end of the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict. But these communities have faced the constant threat of dispossession […]
Pension giant TIAA is leading a global wave of deforestation and the destruction of small farmers’ livelihoods.
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.
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