Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope.

This enables them to obtain food from plots of land that would otherwise be difficult to farm.

Funded by the Swedish government and implemented by international organizations, some 7,000 families benefit from a program that seeks to provide them with the necessary technologies and tools to set up rainwater catchment tanks, alleviating water scarcity in this region of the country.

These families live around micro-watersheds in seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotán, Camotán, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to grow plants here. Even if you try to grow them, due to the lack of water, (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the beneficiary families, told IPS in the village of San José Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, Jalapa department.

The Central American Dry Corridor, 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people. Here, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty, and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has taken action to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. She has installed a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geomembrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs off the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to irrigate the small garden and fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10 harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. For fruits, they have bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

They also have a fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geomembrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

Another beneficiary is Ricardo Ramírez. From the rainwater collector installed on his plot, he manages to irrigate, by drip, the crops in the macro-tunnel: a small greenhouse next to the tank, where he grows cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among other vegetables.

“From one furrow I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds of tomatoes (204 kilos). And the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester, and I just opened the little valve for just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got well moistened,” Ramírez told IPS with satisfaction.

En español: Video: La sequía en el este de Guatemala se alivia con la cosecha de agua de lluvia

Brazil's Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, attends a meeting during the UN Climate Change Conference COP 30. Credit: Hermes Caruzo/COP30

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India & BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 8 2025 (IPS)

A report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight paints a stark picture of how extractive industries, deforestation, and climate change are converging to endanger the world’s last intact tropical forests and the Indigenous Peoples who protect them.

The report, ‘Indigenous Territories and Local Communities on the Frontlines,’ combines geospatial analysis and community data to show that nearly one billion hectares of forests are under Indigenous stewardship, yet face growing industrial threats that could upend global climate and biodiversity goals.

Despite representing less than five percent of the world’s population, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) safeguard more than half of all remaining intact forests and 43 percent of global biodiversity hotspots.

These territories store vast amounts of carbon, regulate ecosystems, and preserve cultures and languages that have sustained humanity’s relationship with nature for millennia. But the report warns that governments and corporations are undermining this stewardship through unrestrained extraction of resources in the name of economic growth or even “green transition.”

One of the main report authors, Florencia Librizzi, who is also a Deputy Director at Earth Insight, told IPS that the perspectives and stories from each region are grounded in the lived realities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and come directly from the organizations from each of the regions that the report focuses on in Mesoamerica, Amazonia, the Congo Basin, and Indonesia.

Across four critical regions—the Amazon, Congo Basin, Indonesia, and Mesoamerica—extractive industries overlap with millions of hectares of ancestral land. In the Amazon, oil and gas blocks cover 31 million hectares of Indigenous territories, while mining concessions sprawl across another 9.8 million.

In the Congo Basin, 38 percent of community forests are under oil and gas threat, endangering peatlands that store immense quantities of carbon. Indonesia’s Indigenous territories face 18 percent overlap with timber concessions, while in Mesoamerica, 19 million hectares—17 percent of Indigenous land—are claimed for mining, alongside rampant narcotrafficking and colonization.

These intrusions have turned Indigenous territories into sacrifice zones. From nickel extraction in Indonesia to oil drilling in Ecuador and illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, corporate incursions threaten lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems. Between 2012 and 2024, 1,692 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared across GATC countries, with 208 deaths linked to extractive industries and 131 to logging. The report calls this violence “the paradox of protection”—the act of defending nature now puts those defenders at deadly risk.

Yet the report also documents extraordinary resilience. In Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, Indigenous forest communities have achieved near-zero deforestation—only 1.5 percent forest loss between 2014 and 2024, compared to 11 percent in adjacent areas. In Colombia, Indigenous Territorial Entities maintain over 99 percent of their forests intact.

The O’Hongana Manyawa of Indonesia continue to defend their lands against nickel mining, while the Guna people of Panama manage autonomous governance systems that integrate culture, tourism, and ecology.

In the Congo, the 2022 “Pygmy Law” has begun recognizing community rights to forest governance, a historic step toward justice.

The report’s findings were released ahead of the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30), emphasizing the urgency of aligning international climate and biodiversity frameworks with Indigenous rights.

The 2025 Brazzaville Declaration, adopted at the First Global Congress of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities from the Forest Basins, provides a roadmap for such alignment.

Signed by leaders from 24 countries representing 35 million people, it calls for five key commitments: secure land rights, free and informed consent, direct financing to communities, protection of life, and recognition of traditional knowledge.

These “Five Demands” are the cornerstone of what the GATC calls a shift “from extraction to regeneration.”

They demand an end to the violence and criminalization of Indigenous leaders and insist that global climate finance reach local hands.

The report notes that, despite the 2021 COP26 pledge of 1.7 billion dollars for forest protection, only 7.6 percent of that money reached Indigenous communities directly.

“Without financing that strengthens territorial governance, all global commitments will remain symbolic,” said the GATC in a joint statement.

Reacting to the announcement of the The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) announced on the first day of the COP Leaders’ Summit and touted as a “new and innovative financing mechanism” that would see forest countries paid every single year in perpetuity for keeping forests standing, Juan Carlos Jintiach, Executive Secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) said, “Even if the TFFF does not reach all its fundraising goals, the message it conveys is already powerful: climate and forest finance cannot happen without us Indigenous Peoples and local leadership at its core.

“This COP offers a crucial opportunity to amplify that message, especially as it takes place in the heart of the Amazon. We hope the focus remains on the communities who live there, those of us who have protected the forests for generations. What we need most from this COP is political will to guarantee our rights, to be recognized as partners rather than beneficiaries, to ensure transparency and justice in climate finance, and to channel resources directly to those defending the land, despite growing risks and violence.”

Deforestation in Acre State, Brazil. Credit: Victor Moriyama / Climate Visuals

Jintiach, who is also the report’s author, told IPS  the Global Alliance has proposed establishing clear mechanisms to ensure that climate finance reaches Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ initiatives directly, not through layers of external actors.

“That’s why we have established our Shandia Platform, a global Indigenous-led mechanism designed to channel direct, predictable, and effective climate finance to our territories. Through the Shandia Funds Network, we ensure that funding is managed according to our priorities, governance systems, and traditional knowledge. The platform also includes a transparent system to track and monitor funding flows, with a specific indicator for direct finance to Indigenous Peoples and local communities,” he said.

The report also warns that global conservation goals such as the “30×30” biodiversity target—protecting 30 percent of Earth’s land and sea by 2030—cannot succeed without Indigenous participation. Policies under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement must, it says, embed Indigenous governance and knowledge at their core. Otherwise, climate strategies risk reinforcing historical injustices by excluding those who have sustained these ecosystems for centuries.

Jintiach said that based on his experience  at GATC, Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’-led conservation models are not only vital but also deeply effective.

“In our territories, it is our peoples and communities who are conserving both nature and culture, protecting the forests, waters, and biodiversity that sustain all of us,” he said.

He added, “Multiple studies confirm what we already know from experience: Indigenous and local community lands have lower rates of deforestation and higher biodiversity than those managed under state or private models. Our success is rooted in ancestral knowledge, collective governance, and a deep spiritual connection to the land, principles that ensure true, lasting conservation.”

According to Jintiach, the GATC 5 demands and the Brazzaville Declaration are critical global reference points and we are encouraged by the level of interest and engagement displayed by political leaders in the lead-up to COP 30.

Map highlighting extractive threats faced by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities across the Amazon basin. Credit: GATC

“We are hopeful that these principles will be uplifted and championed at COP 30, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, CBD COP 17 and on the long road ahead,” he said.

When asked about the rising violence against environmental defenders, Jintiach said that the Brazzaville Declaration calls for a global convention to protect Environmental Human Rights Defenders, including Indigenous Peoples and local community leaders.

According to him, the governments must urgently tackle the corruption and impunity fueling threats and violence while supporting collective protection and preventing rollback of rights.

“This also means upholding and strengthening the Escazú Agreement and UNDRIP, and ensuring long-term protection through Indigenous Peoples and local communities-led governance, secure land tenure, and accountability for human rights violations.”

Earth Insight’s Executive Director Tyson Miller described the collaboration as a call to action rather than another policy document. “Without urgent recognition of territorial rights, respect for consent, and protection of ecosystems, global climate and biodiversity goals cannot be achieved,” he said. “This report is both a warning and an invitation—to act with courage and stand in solidarity.”

The case studies highlight how Indigenous governance models already offer proven solutions to the climate crisis. In the Brazilian Amazon, Indigenous organizations have proposed a self-determined Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to reduce emissions through territorial protection. Their slogan, “Demarcation is Mitigation,” underlines how securing Indigenous land rights directly supports the Paris Agreement’s goals. Similarly, in Central Africa, communities have pioneered decolonized conservation approaches that integrate Indigenous leadership into national park management, reversing exclusionary models imposed since colonial times.

In Mesoamerica, the Muskitia region—known as “Little Amazon”—illustrates both crisis and hope. It faces deforestation from drug trafficking and illegal logging, yet community-based reforestation and forest monitoring are restoring ecosystems and livelihoods. Women and youth play leading roles in governance, showing how inclusive leadership strengthens resilience.

The report’s conclusion is unequivocal: where Indigenous rights are recognized, ecosystems thrive; where they are ignored, destruction follows. It argues that the fight for land is inseparable from the fight against climate change. Indigenous territories are not just sources of raw materials; they are “living systems of governance, culture, and biodiversity” essential to humanity’s survival.

The Brazzaville Declaration urges governments to ratify international human rights conventions, end deforestation by 2030, and integrate Indigenous territories into national biodiversity and climate plans. It also calls for a global convention to protect environmental human rights defenders, whose safety is central to planetary stability.

For GATC’s leaders, the message is deeply personal. “Our traditional knowledge is the language of Mother Earth,” said Joseph Itongwa, GATC Co-Chair from the Congo Basin. “We cannot protect the planet if our territories, our identity, and our livelihoods remain under threat.”

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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Excerpt:

Merlyn Sandoval next to the rainwater collection tank built on the small plot where she lives, in the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in eastern Guatemala. She and her family participate in a program to alleviate the effects of the drought in the Central American Dry Corridor. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Oct 30 2025 (IPS)

Water scarcity that relentlessly hits the rural communities in eastern Guatemala, located in the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, is a constant threat due to the challenges in producing food, year after year. But it is also an incentive to strive to overcome adversities.

The peasant families living in this region struggle to counter hopelessness and, with the help of international cooperation, manage to confront water scarcity. With great effort, they produce food, aware of the importance of caring for and protecting the area’s micro-watersheds."Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it's difficult for us here, that's why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don't have water" –Ricardo Ramirez.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to produce the plants here, even if you’ve tried to produce them, because due to the lack of water (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the families benefiting from a project that seeks to provide the necessary tools and knowledge for people to overcome water insecurity and produce their own food, told IPS.

Sandoval is a native of the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, in the department of Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. Her community has been included in the program, funded by Sweden and implemented by several organizations, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), together with the Guatemalan government.

The initiative, which began in 2022 and ends this December, reaches 7,000 families living around the micro-watersheds of seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotan, Camotan, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

The project focuses on creating the conditions to promote food and nutritional security and the resilience of the population, prioritizing water security that allows for food production.

“The strength of the (project’s) goals lies in the training and the action of the micro-watershed concept… people were trained depending on whether they were upstream, downstream, or in the middle of the watershed,” Rafael Zavala, FAO representative in Guatemala, told IPS.

He added: “The area is highly expulsive of labor due to migration, and this causes women to be the heads of households.”

The San Jose River basin is one of the watersheds being targeted for protection and preservation due to its importance for the water security of the towns in San Luis Jilotepeque, in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Drought and poverty

A report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that the area included in the program shows a significant deterioration of livelihoods and a scarcity of economic opportunities.

It adds that in the department of Chiquimula, 70.6% of the population lives in poverty, while in Jalapa, the figure reaches 67.2%.

The Central American Dry Corridor, which is 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people.

In this belt, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

Central America is a region of seven nations, with 50 million inhabitants, of which 18.5 million live in Guatemala, the most populous country, with high inequality and where a large part of poor families are indigenous.

In the home of Merlyn Sandoval’s family in San Jose Las Pilas, the granary for storing the corn and beans, which are so difficult to produce due to the lack of water in the area of eastern Guatemala, is never missing. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Learning to Harvest Rainwater

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has learned the key points about micro-watershed management and has developed actions to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. There, she has set up a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geo-membrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs down from the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to water the small garden and the fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10, harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. In fruits, they harvest bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

Next to the rainwater harvester is the fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geo-membrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

When the fish reach a weight of half a kilo, they can be sold in the community.

“The harvesters fill up with what is collected from the rains, and that helps to give a water change for the tilapia and also to give water to the fruit trees,” said Sandoval, 27.

The young woman also produces corn and beans, on another nearby plot, of approximately half a hectare. These plantings, more extensive than the garden and fruit trees in the backyard, cannot be covered by irrigation from the tank.

Ricardo Ramirez shows the inside of the macro-tunnel (a small greenhouse) where he has managed to harvest cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chilies, and where the plants of the new tomato planting can already be seen, on his small farm in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

As a result, these crops, in this region of the Dry Corridor, are always vulnerable to climatic fluctuations: they can be ruined both by lack of rain and by excess rain during the same rainy season, from May to November.

Sandoval has already lost 50% of her harvest due to excess rain, she stated, with a hint of sadness.

This has also happened to Ricardo Ramirez, another resident of San Jose Las Pilas, who has experienced these fluctuations of lack and excess of water in his crop of corn and beans, staples in the Central American diet.

“Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it’s difficult for us here, that’s why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don’t have water,” said Ramirez, 59, referring to his bean crop, planted on two plots totaling half a hectare, of which he has lost roughly half.

From the rainwater collection tank, Ricardo Ramirez manages to drip-irrigate the crops in the macro-tunnel, as this type of greenhouse is called. The system has allowed him to harvest produce despite water insecurity in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Green Hope

However, the support from the program driven with Swedish cooperation funds has been vital for Ramirez, not only to stay afloat economically as a farmer, but also to bet, with hope and enthusiasm, on the land where he was born.

Through this international initiative, Ramirez was also able to set up a rainwater collection tank with a capacity of 16 cubic meters, as well as an agricultural macro-tunnel: a kind of small greenhouse, with a modular structure covered by a mesh that protects the crops from pests and other bugs.

Inside the macro-tunnel, he planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among others, and watered them by drip irrigation through a hose that carried water from the tank, just three meters away.

“From one row I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds (204 kilos) of tomatoes, and the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester and I just opened the little valve, gave it just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got wet,” Ramirez told IPS, while checking a bunch of bananas or guineos, as they are known in Central America.

All of that generated sufficient income for him to save 2,000 quetzales (about 160 dollars), with which he was able to install electricity on his plot and also buy an electric generator to pump water from a spring within the property, for when the collection tank runs out in about two months.

In this way, Ramirez will be able to maintain irrigation and production.

San José Las Pilas has a community water system, supplied by a spring located nearby. The tank is installed in the high area of the village so that water flows down by gravity, but the resource is rationed to just a few hours a day, given the scarcity.

Nicolas Gomez still has to walk two hours, like many others, to get water from a river when his collection tank runs out during the dry season in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Long Walks to Obtain Water

However, not everyone is as lucky as Ramirez, to have a water spring on their property and to irrigate gardens when the collection tank runs out.

When that happens, Nicolas Gomez has to walk almost two hours to reach the San Jose River, the closest one, and carry water from there, loading it on his shoulder in containers, to meet basic hygiene and cooking needs.

“So now, in the rainy season, we have water stored in this tank. But for the dry season we have nothing, we go to the river to fetch water, to a spring that is quite far, about a two-hour walk, that’s how hard it is for us to obtain it,” said Gomez, a 66-year-old farmer who has also suffered the climate onslaughts of drought and excess water on his corn crops.

Gomez lives in Los Magueyes, a rural settlement, also within San Luis Jilotepeque. Poverty here is more acute and visible than in San Jose Las Pilas. There is no community water system or electricity, and families have to light themselves with candles at night.

“Life here is hard,” stated Gomez, amidst the smoke produced by the wood-fired stove he was using to cook a meal when IPS visited on October 21.

Farmer Gustavo Panameño stands in the middle of what is left of his cornfield, hit hard by drought and windstorms, near Santa María Ostuma, in central El Salvador. Many Salvadoran small farmers are feeling the impact of El Niño, as are many others in Central America and the rest of the world. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SANTA MARÍA OSTUMA, El Salvador , Oct 10 2023 (IPS)

The effects of El Niño on agriculture in Central America are once again putting pressure on thousands of small farmer families who are feeling more vulnerable economically and in terms of food, as they lose their crops, due to climate change.

But that is not all. In addition to the obvious fact that poor harvests lead to higher food prices and food insecurity, they also generate a lack of employment in the countryside, further driving migration flows, said several experts interviewed by IPS."I lost practically all the corn, and the beans too, they couldn't be used, they started to grow but were stunted." -- Héctor Panameño

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather phenomenon had not been felt in the area since 2016. But now it has reappeared with stronger impacts. Meteorologists define ENSO as having three phases, and the one whose consequences are currently being felt on the ground is the third, the strongest.

Impact on the families

“The lack of water made us plant later, in June, when a drought hit us and ruined our corn and beans,” Gustavo Panameño, 46, told IPS as he looked disconsolately at the few plants still standing in his cornfield.

The plot Gustavo leases to farm, less than one hectare in size, is located in Lomas de Apancinte, a hill in the vicinity of Santa María Ostuma, in the central Salvadoran department of La Paz.

“The beans were completely lost, I expected to harvest about 300 pounds,” he said.

The corn and bean harvest “was for the consumption of the family, close relatives, and from time to time to sell,” said Gustavo.

A large part of Héctor Panameño’s corn crop in central El Salvador was destroyed by strong winds during a period when rain was scarce as a result of the El Niño phenomenon. The small farmer also lost his bean crop, making it a challenge to feed his family of nine. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Nearby is the plot leased by Héctor Panameño, who almost completely lost his corn crop and the few beans he had planted.

Corn and beans form the basis of the diet of the Salvadoran population of 6.7 million people and of the rest of the Central American countries, which have a total combined population of just over 48 million.

This subtropical region has two seasons: the wet season, from November to April, and the dry season the rest of the year. Agriculture contributes seven percent of GDP and accounts for 20 percent of employment, according to data from the Central American Integration System (SICA).

“I lost practically all the corn, and the beans too, they couldn’t be used, they started to grow but were stunted,” said Héctor, 66, a distant relative of Gustavo.

At this stage, the stalks of the corn plants have already been “bent”, a small-farming practice that helps dry the cobs, the final stage of the process before harvesting.

And what should be a cornfield full of dried plants, lined up in furrows, now holds barely a handful here and there, sadly for Héctor.

Both farmers said that in addition to the droughts, the crops were also hit by several storms that brought with them violent gusts of wind, which ended up knocking down the corn plants.

“The plants were already big, 45 days old, about to flower, but a windstorm came and knocked them down,” recalled Héctor, sadly.

“After that, there were a few plants left standing, and when the cobs were beginning to fill up with kernels another strong wind came and finished knocking down the entire crop.”

A few weeks ago both Gustavo and Héctor replanted corn and beans, trying to recover some of their losses. Now their hopes are on the “postrera”, as the second planting cycle is called in Central America, which starts in late August and ends with the harvest in November.

The windstorms mentioned by both farmers are apparently part of the extreme climate variability brought by climate change and El Niño.

The photo shows a parched ear of corn in a small cornfield that was destroyed in central El Salvador. It is estimated that losses of the staple crops corn and beans in the country, as a result of the impacts of extreme weather events, such as El Niño and the historical shortage of rainfall, on local production, will lead to a grain deficit of about 6.8 million quintals (100-kg). CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

El Niño 2.0

“It’s part of the same process, the warming of the water surface generates those winds,” said Pablo Sigüenza, an environmentalist with the National Network for the Defense of Food Sovereignty of Guatemala (REDSAG).

Guatemala is also experiencing what experts have noted in the rest of the region: because El Niño has arrived in the “strong phase”, in which climate variability is even more pronounced, there are periods of longer droughts as well as more intense rains.

That puts the “postrera” harvest in danger, said the experts interviewed.

This means that whereas El Niño would bring drought in the first few months of the agricultural cycle, now it is hitting harder during the second period, in August, when the postrera planting is in full swing.

“For the farmers it was clear since April that it was raining less, compared to other years,” Sigüenza told IPS from Guatemala City.

“Then, in August, we had the first warnings from the highlands and the southern coast that the plants were not growing well, that they were suffering from water stress,” he said.

The most affected region, he said, is the Dry Corridor, which in Guatemala includes the departments of Jalapa, Chiquimula, Zacapa, El Progreso, part of Chimaltenango and Alta Verapaz, in the central part of the country.

The Dry Corridor is a 1,600 kilometer-long strip of land that runs north-south through portions of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

It is an area highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, where long periods of drought are followed by heavy rains that have a major effect on the livelihoods and food security of local populations, as described by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Sigüenza said that food security due to lack of basic grains is expected to affect some 4.6 million people in Guatemala, a country of 17.4 million.

Even the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “predicted that August, September and October would be the months with the greatest presence of El Niño,” said Luis Treminio, president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Small and Medium Agricultural Producers.

Treminio said that 75 percent of bean production is currently planted, and because it is less resistant to drought and rain than corn and sorghum, there is a greater possibility of losses.

“So the risk now is to the postrera, because if this scenario is fulfilled, we will have a very low postrera production,” he said.

Treminio’s estimate is that El Salvador will have a basic grains deficit of 6.8 million quintals, which the country will have to cover, as always, with imports.

This bean plant growing on a Salvadoran farm may or may not make it to harvest. The El Niño phenomenon has begun to hit hard the “postrera” or second harvest in Central America, in which farmers hope to recover some of the losses suffered in the first harvest, in May and June. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Nicaragua, hardest hit

Nicaragua, population 6.8 million, is the Central American country hardest hit by El Niño, Brazilian Adoniram Sanches, FAO’s subregional coordinator for Mesoamerica, told IPS.

As in other countries in the region, Nicaraguan farmers suffered losses in the first planting, in May, and again in the second, the postrera, “and all of this leads to a strong imbalance in the small farmer economy,” the FAO official said from Panama City.

Sanches said that El Niño will be felt in 93 percent of the region until March 2024 and, in addition, 71 percent is in the “strong phase”.

He added that in the Dry Corridor 64 percent of the farms are less than two hectares in size. In other words, there are many families involved in subsistence agriculture, and with fewer harvests, they would face unemployment and would look for escape valves, such as migration.

“All this would then trigger an explosion of migration,” said Sanches.

With regard to the impacts in Nicaragua, researcher Abdel Garcia, an expert in climate, environment and disasters, said that, in effect, the country is receiving “the negative backlash” of El Niño, that is, less rain in the months that should have more copious rainfall, such as September.

García said that the effects of the climate are not only being felt in agriculture, and therefore in the economy, but also in the environment.

“The ecosystem is already suffering: we see dried up rivers and surface water sources, and also the reservoirs, which are at their lowest levels right now,” García told IPS from Managua.

García said that some farmers in the department of Estelí, in northwestern Nicaragua, are already talking about a plan B, that is, to engage in other economic activities outside of agriculture, given the harsh situation in farming.

In late August, FAO announced the launch of a humanitarian aid plan aimed at mobilizing some 37 million dollars to assist vulnerable communities in Latin America in the face of the impact of the El Niño phenomenon.

Specifically, the objective was to support 1.1 million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Even more ambitious is an initiative in which FAO will participate as a liaison between the governments of 30 countries around the world and investors, multilateral development banks, the private sector and international donors, so that these nations can access and allocate resources to agriculture.

At the meeting, which will take place Oct. 7-20 in Rome, FAO’s world headquarters, governments will present projects totaling 268 million dollars to investors.

Among the nations submitting proposals are 10 from Latin America and the Caribbean, including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Meanwhile, despite the gloomy forecasts for farming families, who are taking a direct hit from El Niño, both Gustavo and Héctor remain hopeful that it is worth a second try now that the postrera harvest is underway.

“We have no choice but to keep working, we can’t just sit back and do nothing,” said Héctor, with a smile that was more encouraging than resigned.

Medardo Pérez, 60, sprays paraquat, a potent herbicide, to kill the weeds growing in his corn crop in the San Isidro canton of the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, in central El Salvador. Most small farmers in Central America use this and other agrochemicals on their crops, just as agribusiness does on monocultures such as bananas, pineapples, coffee and sugar cane. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SANTA MARÍA OSTUMA, El Salvador , Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

In his green cornfield, Salvadoran farmer Medardo Pérez set about filling the hand-held spray pump that hangs on his back, with the right mixture of water and paraquat, a potent herbicide, and began spraying the weeds.

Paraquat, the active ingredient in brands such as Gramaxone, from the German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer, is sold without any restrictions in El Salvador and in other nations in Central America and around the world, despite its toxicity and the fact that the label clearly states “controlled product”."We are risking our lives with these poisons, since we don't even use a waterproof cape to protect ourselves, so the chemical wets our backs, it gets inside our bodies, through our pores." -- Medardo Pérez

“We are risking our lives with these poisons, since we don’t even use a waterproof cape to protect ourselves, so the chemical wets our backs, it gets inside our bodies, through our pores,” the farmer from San Isidro, in the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, in the central Salvadoran department of La Paz, told IPS.

Pérez, 60, said he was aware of the risks to his health, but added that using the agrochemical made it easier and faster for him to get rid of the weeds growing in his cornfield on his two-hectare farm.

“Paraquat is restricted here in Guatemala, but it is commonly used in agriculture; any peasant farmer can buy it; it is sold freely,” David Paredes, an activist with the National Network for the Defense of Food Sovereignty in Guatemala, told IPS.

In 2016 the New York Times reported that scientific reports linked paraquat to Parkinson’s disease, and explained that the product could not be sold in Europe but could be marketed in the United States and the rest of the world.

Agrochemicals everywhere and no controls

Central America is a region where these and other agrochemicals are imported and marketed with virtually no controls, and where governments appear to have given in to the interests of the powerful transnational corporations that produce and sell them.

Some 51 million people live in the region and 20 percent of jobs are in the agricultural sector, which accounts for a total of seven percent of the GDP of the seven countries of Central America.

In addition to small farmers, agroindustry in the region uses agrochemicals intensively to produce monocultures for export, such as bananas, pineapples, African palm, coffee and sugarcane.

Sugarcane is the raw material for the sugar that the region exports to the United States, Europe and even China, through trade agreements.

The sugar agribusiness uses glyphosate, patented in 1974 by the U.S.-based Monsanto, to accelerate sugarcane ripening, but there are reports around the world about the damage caused to the environment and to health, including possible cancer risks, as warned by environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

And yet it continues to be widely used in the region and in other parts of the world. Glyphosate is known by commercial names such as Roundup, also owned now by Germany’s Bayer.

“There is indiscriminate use of agrochemicals by agribusiness,” Paredes said from his country’s capital, Guatemala City.

Paredes shared with IPS the preliminary results of a study, still underway, that has detected the presence of 49 chemicals in the water due to the use of pesticides, half of them banned in more than 120 countries, he said.

The research has been carried out along the southern coast of the country, where monocultures such as sugar cane, banana, African palm and pineapple are predominant, he said.

Juan Mejía, a small farmer, takes a break from his daily chores on his two-hectare plot in the El Carrizal canton, in the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, El Salvador. Mejía still continues to use herbicides such as paraquat, but has reduced their use by 90 percent, and is now shifting to agroecological production. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala

The fight against agrochemicals

“Glyphosate is applied through aerial spraying, it is very common in that area, and when the wind spreads it to the crops of poor communities, their harvests are destroyed,” he said.

The same is true in El Salvador, where environmental organizations have been carrying out the Bitter Sugar campaign for several years, against the indiscriminate use of glyphosate, in particular, and agrochemicals in general.

“In this campaign we have protested the fact that spraying by light aircraft continues, and that it is punishable, as an environmental crime,” Alejandro Labrador, of the Ecological Unit of El Salvador (UNES), told IPS.

In September 2013, El Salvador’s single-chamber legislature approved a ban on 50 agrochemicals, including paraquat and glyphosate. But the decree was rejected by then President Mauricio Funes and the bill has been bogged down ever since.

However, except for a list of 11 products – including paraquat and glyphosate – the agrochemicals that the legislature wanted to ban were already regulated by other national and international regulations, although in practice there is little or no state control over their use in the fields.

“The corporate lobby twisted their arm,” Labrador said, alluding to the failed attempt to ban them via legislative decree.

He also hinted at the influence exercised over presidents and government officials by transnational biotechnology corporations such as Bayer and Monsanto, whose interests are usually defended by the agricultural chambers of the Central American region.

He added that El Salvador is the Central American country that imports the most agrochemicals per year, “at a very high cost to ecosystems and people’s health.”

In this regard, in the last decade, the use of glyphosate during the sugar cane harvest has been linked to a high rate of kidney failure in El Salvador.

This nation has the highest rate of deaths from chronic kidney disease in Central America: 47 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, according to a UNES report published in 2021, which states that 80,000 tons of fertilizers, 3,000 tons of herbicides and 1,200 tons of fungicides are imported annually into El Salvador.

The bittersweet taste of pineapple

In Costa Rica, the use of pesticides is also intensive in monoculture export crops like bananas and, above all, pineapples, activist Erlinda Quesada, of the National Front of Sectors Affected by Pineapple Production, told IPS.

Quesada pointed out that the product known generically as bromacil has been linked to cases of cancer, while nemagon has been linked to cases of infertility in men and women.

“It happened to us with the nemagon in banana production, which sterilized a lot of men in Costa Rica,” said Quesada, from Guásimo, a municipality in the province of Limón, on the country’s Atlantic coast.

Complaints from environmental organizations led the government to ban bromacil in 2017, due to the impact on underground water sources.

“However, I doubt that they have stopped using it,” Quesada said.

A report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) revealed in May 2022 that Costa Rica uses up to eight times more pesticides per hectare than other Latin American countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“The average apparent use of pesticides in agriculture between 2012 and 2020 was 34.45 kilos per hectare, a figure higher than previous estimates” in the Central American country, the report cited, more than in OECD members Canada, the United States, Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

One of the one-liter cans of paraquat that Salvadoran farmer Medardo Pérez used during a day’s work to eliminate weeds in his cornfield. Paraquat is one of the most widely used agrochemicals in Central America and the world, despite health risks and environmental contamination. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

A blow to food sovereignty

The focus on intensively produced monocultures among national and international economic leaders has ended up damaging the capacity to produce food for the local population, Wendy Cruz, of the local affiliate of the international farmers’ rights movement Via Campesina, told IPS from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

“Now it is the consortiums and elites that occupy large tracts of land to produce for global markets, and agrotoxins increasingly weaken the capacity of the land to produce food for our people,” Cruz said.

“We need to push for a change of model, with governments adopting an agroecological vision that sustains life,” she said.

Seeds of passion fertilize Brazil’s semiarid Northeast

This vision of producing agricultural products without damaging the environment with agrochemicals is shared by another Salvadoran, Juan Mejía, a 67-year-old small farmer who grows some of his products using ecological fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

Paraquat is still used, he said, to “burn the weeds,” but on a smaller scale, and he is trying to use it less and less. He also uses – but “very little” – Monarca, another Bayer pesticide, whose active ingredient is thiacloprid.

“We have learned to work organically, maybe not 100 percent, but as much as possible,” said Mejía, during a break in the work on his two-hectare plot, located in the canton of El Carrizal, also in Santa María Ostuma, in central El Salvador.

Mejía produces organic fertilizer known as gallinacea and a pesticide based on chili, onion, garlic and a little soap, with which he combats whiteflies, a pest that damages growing vegetables.

“It’s effective, but it doesn’t work automatically, right away, it takes a little more time,” he said.

He added: “We farmers have always mistakenly wanted to see immediate results, like we get with chemicals. But organic agriculture is a process, it is slower, but more beneficial to our health and the environment.”

In addition to milpa, a traditional ancestral pre-Hispanic system of planting corn, beans, chili peppers and pipián, a type of zucchini, Mejía grows citrus fruits, plantains (cooking bananas) and cacao.

“We have diversified and included other crops, such as green leafy vegetables, so that we are not buying contaminated products and are harvesting our own, healthier food,” he said.

Two pregnant girls walk through the center of the capital of El Salvador, a country with one of the highest rates of pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14, and where, as in the rest of Central America, what prevails are conservative views opposed to the teaching of sex education in schools, which is essential to reducing the phenomenon. CREDIT: Francisco Campos / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Aug 3 2023 (IPS)

Pregnancies among girls and adolescents continue unabated in Central America, where legislation to prevent them, when it exists, is a dead letter, and governments are influenced by conservative sectors opposed to sex education in schools.

The most recent incident reflecting this situation was the Jul. 29 veto by Honduran President Xiomara Castro of an Integral Law for the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy, approved by the single-chamber Congress on Mar. 8 and criticized by conservative groups and the country’s political right wing."When I became pregnant I didn't even know what a condom was, I'm not ashamed to say it." -- Zuleyma Beltrán

“We don’t know the arguments behind the veto, but we could surmise that the law is still being held up by pressure from these anti-rights groups,” lawyer Erika García, of the Women’s Rights Center, told IPS from Tegucigalpa.

The influence of lobbying groups

Conservative sectors, united in “Por nuestros hijos” (“for our children”), a Honduran version of the regional movement “Con mis Hijos no te Metas” (roughly “don’t mess with my children”), have opposed the law because in their view it pushes “gender ideology”, as international conservative populist groups call the current movement for the dissemination of women’s and LGBTI rights.

In June, the United Nations expressed concern about “disinformation campaigns” surrounding the Honduran law.

The last of the marches in favor of “family and children” took place in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital, on Jul. 22.

These groups “appeal to people’s ignorance, to fear, to religion, with arguments that have nothing to do with reality,” said García. “They say, for example, that people will put skirts on boys and pants on girls.”

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), one in four births is to a girl under 19 years of age in Honduras, giving the country the second-highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America.

According to the Honduran Penal Code having sexual relations with minors under 14 years of age is statutory rape, whether or not the girl consented.

In 2022, 1039 girls under 14 gave birth.

“The problem is quite serious, and it is aggravated by the lack of public policies to prevent pregnancies among girls and adolescents,” García said.

In the countries of Central America, which have a combined total of some 50 million inhabitants, ultra-conservative views prevail when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and education.

In El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – as well as the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean – abortion is banned under all circumstances, including rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life.

In the rest of Central America, abortion is only permitted in certain circumstances.

The Honduran president vetoed the law under the formula “return to Congress”, so that it can be studied again and eventually ratified if two thirds of the 128 lawmakers approve it.

Zuleyma Beltrán, 41, talked about becoming pregnant at the age of 15 because there is no proper sex education in El Salvador. A second pregnancy led to a miscarriage that landed her in jail in 1999, where many Salvadoran women who miscarry or have abortions end up due to a draconian anti-abortion law. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“I didn’t even know what a condom was”

However, having laws of this nature does not ensure that the phenomenon will be reduced, since legislation is not always enforced.

Since 2017 El Salvador has had a National Intersectoral Strategy for the Prevention of Pregnancy in Girls and Adolescents, and although the numbers have declined in recent years, they are still high.

An UNFPA report noted that in this country the pregnancy rate among girls and adolescents dropped by more than 50 percent between 2015 and 2022.

However, “it is worrisome to see that El Salvador is one of the 50 countries in the world with the highest fertility rates in girls aged 10-14 years,” the UN agency said in its latest report, released in July.

Among girls aged 10-14, the study noted, the pregnancy rate dropped by 59.6 percent, from 4.7 girls registered for prenatal care per 1000 girls in 2015 to 1.9 in 2022.

The map of pregnancies in girls and adolescents in El Salvador added that the country “needs to further accelerate the pace of reduction, adopting policies and strategies adapted to the different realities of girls aged 10-14 years and adolescents aged 15-19 years.”

Such actions must be “evidence-based,” the report stressed.

The reference appears to be an allusion to the prevalence of conservative attitudes of groups that, in Honduras for example, reject sexual and reproductive education in schools.

This lack of basic knowledge about sexuality, in a context of structural poverty, led Zuleyma Beltrán to fall pregnant at the age of 15.

“When I became pregnant I didn’t even know what a condom was, I’m not ashamed to say it,” Beltrán, now 41, told IPS.

She added: “I suffered a lot because I didn’t know many things, because I lived in ignorance.”

Two years later, Beltrán became pregnant again but she miscarried, which landed her in jail in August 1999, accused of having an abortion – a plight faced by hundreds of women in El Salvador.

El Salvador not only bans abortion under any circumstances, even in cases of rape. It also imposes penalties of up to 30 years in prison for women who have undergone abortions, and women who end up in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage are often prosecuted under the law as well.

“The State should be ashamed of forcing these girls to give birth and not giving them options,” said Anabel Recinos, of the Citizens’ Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion.

“The State does not provide girls with sex education or sexual and reproductive health, and when pregnancies or obstetric emergencies occur as a result, it is too cruel to them, it only offers them jail,” she added.

Recinos said that, due to pressure from conservative groups, the State has backed down on the strategy of providing sexual and reproductive information in schools.

“Now they are more rigorous in not allowing organizations working in that area to go and give talks on comprehensive sex education in schools,” she noted.

Not even baby formula

In Guatemala, initiatives by civil society organizations that since 2017 have proposed, among other things, that the State should offer reparations to pregnant girls and adolescents, to alleviate their heavy burden, have made no progress either.

These proposals included the creation of scholarships, making it possible for girls to continue going to school while their babies were cared for and received formula.

“But unfortunately we have not been able to take the next step, to get these measures in place,” said Paula Barrios, general coordinator of Women Transforming the World, in a telephone conversation with IPS from the capital, Guatemala City.

Barrios said that most of the users of the services offered by this organization, such as legal and psychological support, “are girls and adolescents who are pregnant because of sexual violence and are forced to have their babies.”

She said that in the last five years some 500,000 girls under 14 years of age have become pregnant, and the number is much higher when teenagers up to 19 years of age are included.

“Today we have half a million girls who we don’t know what they and the children who are the products of rape are eating,” Barrios stressed, adding that as in El Salvador and Honduras, in Guatemala, having sex with a girl under 14 years of age is considered statutory rape.

“Society sees it as normal that women are born to be mothers, and so it doesn’t matter if a girl gets pregnant at the age of 10 or 12 years, they just think she has done it a little bit earlier,” she said.

Patriarchy and capitalism

The experts from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador consulted by IPS said the root of the phenomenon is multi-causal, with facets of patriarchy, especially gender stereotypes and sexual violence.

“The patriarchy has an interest in stopping women from going out into the public sphere,” said Barrios.

She said the life of a 10-year-old girl is cut short when she becomes pregnant. She will no longer go to school and will remain in the domestic sphere, “to raise children and stay at home.”

For her part, Garcia, the lawyer from Honduras, pointed out that there is also an underlying “system of oppression” that is intertwined with patriarchy and colonialism, which is the influence of a hegemonic country or region.

“We have girls giving birth to cheap labor to feed the (capitalist) system, and there is a greater feminization of poverty, girls giving birth to girls whose future prospects are ruined,” she said.

In the meantime, to avoid a repeat of her ordeal, Beltrán said she talks to and teaches her nine-year-old daughter about sexuality.

“In order to keep her from repeating my story, I talk to her about condoms, how a woman has to take care of herself and how she can get pregnant,” she said.

“I don’t want her to go through what I did,” she said.

O'Brian Robinson (R) sits with two friends at the beach. He is a trans man, coordinator of Negritudes Trans HN, a group that fights for the rights of the trans community in Honduras, including those of the black Garífuna population living mainly on the Atlantic coast, in the north of the country. CREDIT: Courtesy of Negritudes Trans HN

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

There is still a long way to go before the LGBTI population in Central America stops being discriminated against and begins to make progress in gaining recognition of their full rights, including the possibility of changing their name to match their gender identity, in the case of trans people.

“The issue of the rights of LGBTI people is extremely precarious. There is no recognition of our rights, obviously including the identity of trans people in our country,” O’Brian Robinson, general coordinator of Negritudes Trans Honduras, told IPS from Tegucigalpa."The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society.” -- O’Brian Robinson

In the heavily conservative Central American countries, public policies with a strong moralistic bias predominate on issues such as the right to abortion or the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) population.

That is the reason for the strong institutional resistance to the passage of a gender identity law recognizing the rights of this community, without discrimination. In none of the six countries in the region – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama – has such legislation been enacted.

The vast majority of the LGBTI population experiences marginalization and social rejection that in many cases leads to physical violence and even murder – phenomena that are not exclusive to this region.

A June 2022 Amnesty International report stated that El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Honduras are among the countries in the Americas with “high levels of hate crimes, hate speech, and marginalization, as well as murders and persecution of LGBTI activists.”

As in other regions of the world, the LGBTI community in Central America has been marginalized and is the victim of frequent human rights violations, including murders and other hate crimes. One of the chief demands is the approval of laws that allow transgender people to legally change their name so it matches their gender identity and expression. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The right name

Regarding the fight for a name that matches an individual’s gender identity and expression, Robinson pointed out that daily aspects such as carrying out bank transactions, undergoing a medical consultation or enrolling in an academic course are difficult for a trans person in Honduras.

And this is especially true if the legal name on their document is the one they no longer use, which is generally the case due to the obstacles they face in obtaining an ID that reflects their transgender identity.

“The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society,” added the 29-year-old activist.

These daily tasks can be carried out, but often after facing ridicule, contempt, and arguments with civil servants who do not understand that State institutions are there to serve everyone, without distinction.

In Honduras, it is forbidden to change your name, according to article 61 of the National Registry of Persons Law, with only three exceptions: that it is unpronounceable, that it is the name of some object, or that it violates decency and good customs.

This third category makes it impossible for a trans person to change their name.

According to the Amnesty International report, the concept of transgender encompasses people who identify as such and also includes transsexuals, transvestites, gender queer or “any other gender identity that does not meet social and cultural expectations regarding it.”

Robinson added that LGBTI, and specifically trans, organizations have been pushing for changes in the legal regulations since 2010 in order to pass a law that brings visibility to and protects people with anything other than a heterosexual gender expression and sexual identity.

In 2021 they also promoted a reform of the registration law, which would open the door to a legal name-change process for trans people.

More than 4,000 signatures were collected in support of the proposed bill. But it was rejected by the authorities, who alleged that only 200 of the signatures were real and the rest were false, which Robinson said was untrue and a “ridiculous” argument.

In Guatemala and El Salvador, trans people can change their names, but that is because the legal regulations allow anyone to do so if they wish and can afford to.

“The Civil Code in Guatemala has always allowed everyone to change their name, but from a heterosexual perspective,” Galilea Monroy, director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, told IPS.

Monroy, a trans woman, said that through this mechanism around 500 people from that community have been able to change their names, with financial support from international organizations.

But a name change costs around 600 dollars in Guatemala and about 4,000 dollars in El Salvador.

Monroy also pointed out that the name change does not include modifying the “sex” in the personal identity document, and in her case, her ID continues to say she is a “man”. The same is true in El Salvador.

Galilea Monroy is the executive director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, which pushes for respect for the rights of trans people in a nation where, like the rest of Central America, it is difficult to work for changes on behalf of LGBTI people, and where hate crimes against this community are frequent. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala

A region of hatred and death

In El Salvador, transgender activist Karla Avelar, with the support of several Salvadoran human rights organizations, filed a lawsuit against the government on Jan. 31 for not providing a legal mechanism allowing her name to match her gender identity on her ID.

The case came to light on May 17, during a conference in San Salvador in which the organizations and Avelar participated by means of videoconference.

In February 2022, the Constitutional Chamber, a five-judge court that is part of the Salvadoran Supreme Court, ruled that the legislature had one year to pass a law that would allow trans people to change not only their names but the gender on their ID.

But parliament, which since 2021 has been controlled by Nuevas Ideas, the party of President Nayib Bukele, failed to meet the deadline.

Avelar also held the government responsible in her lawsuit for failing to investigate or prosecute those responsible for the violence against her and her mother, which forced them to seek asylum in a European country in 2017.

In addition, the lawsuit mentions the forced displacement that she and her mother suffered because they had to flee the violence, including gang violence.

“El Salvador has a history of violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community that mainly affects transgender people,” Avelar said in an online call from the conference held in San Salvador by the organizations backing her case.

The violence suffered by Avelar, 45, included an attempt on her life in 1992.

In a March 2021 ruling on the case of Vicky Hernández, a Honduran trans activist murdered in June 2009, allegedly by agents of the State, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered a series of reparations for the LGBTI community to be fulfilled by Honduras in the area of human rights.

Among the provisions to be complied with, the Inter-American Court included the “right to recognition of legal personality, to personal liberty, to private life, to freedom of expression, to their name and to equality and non-discrimination,” as included in several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, known as the San José Pact.

This international treaty, in force since 1978, makes Inter-American Court rulings final and binding on the States parties, which currently number 23 as some countries have pulled out. But Honduras has not complied with the requirements in the ruling.

Trans women, the most prone to violence

Transgender women are the most prone to suffering attacks, whether verbal or physical, the Amnesty International report says, because due to the lack of job opportunities they tend to engage in sex work on the streets, unlike trans men.

This was corroborated by the Guatemalan activist, Monroy, who pointed out that around 90 percent of trans women engage in sex work and are thus victims of all kinds of abuse and attacks.

“Most of us trans women have to do sex work because we don’t have social coverage or basic rights such as access to education, work, decent justice, not to mention a pension,” Monroy stressed.

She added that around 90 percent of transgender women engage in sex work on the streets of Guatemala, and the rest work in trades such as hairdressing, or are in the informal sector.

To this must be added the transphobic attitudes that prevail among the population of Central American countries.

“Discrimination is latent in social spaces, in parks, in restaurants, in nightclubs, and in many cases they reserve the right of admission when they identify you as being part of the LGBTI community, and much more so if you are trans,” Monroy said.

She added: “It’s horrible when they tell you: ‘there is no service here’, or there is, but they tell you ‘sit there in the corner where nobody will look at you’.”

She said that far from promoting laws in favor of gender identity, in Guatemala 20 lawmakers “who are totally religious are pushing for approval of Law 5940, which does not recognize gender identity and in which they want to implement the famous conversion therapies.”

A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CHINAMECA, El Salvador, May 2 2023 (IPS)

“This is a very difficult place to live, because of the lack of water,” said Salvadoran farmer Marlene Carballo, as she cooked corn tortillas for lunch for her family, on a scorching day.

Carballo, 23, lives in the Jocote Dulce canton, a remote rural settlement in the municipality of Chinameca, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, a region located in what is known as the Central American Dry Corridor."The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking.” -- Santa Gumersinda Crespo

Acute water crisis

This municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, which covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people and where over 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Food security is particularly threatened because the rains are not always constant, which creates major difficulties for agriculture.

“My grandfather has a water tank, and when he has enough, he gives us water, but when he doesn’t, we’re in trouble,” said the young woman.

When that happens, they have to buy water, which is not only the case in these remote rural Salvadoran areas, but in the rest of the Central American region where water is scarce, as is almost always the case in the Dry Corridor, which stretches north to south across parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

When IPS visited several villages in the Jocote Dulce canton in late April, the acute water shortage was evident, since all homes had one or more plastic tanks to store water and many were empty.

A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Women in the forefront of the struggle for water

The persistent water shortage has led rural women in Central America to organize in recent years in community associations to promote projects that help alleviate the scarcity.

In the villages of Jocote Dulce, rainwater harvesting projects, reforestation and the creation of small poultry farms have the support of local and international organizations and financing from European countries.

In some cases, depending on the project and the country, rainwater harvesting is designed only for domestic tasks at home, while in others it includes irrigation of family gardens or providing water for livestock such as cows and chickens.

In other parts of the country and the rest of Central America, institutions such as FAO have developed water collection systems that in some cases have a filtering mechanism, which makes it potable.

In El Salvador, FAO has been behind the installation of 1,373 of these systems.

Carballo said she and her family are looking forward to the start of the May to November rainy season, to see their new rainwater harvesting system work for the first time.

Through gutters and pipes, the rainwater will run from the roof to a huge polyethylene bag in the yard, which serves as a catchment tank.

Gumersinda Crespo (R) and her daughter Marcela stand next to the kitchen of their house in the Jocote Dulce canton in eastern El Salvador, an area with a chronic water crisis because it is located in the Central American Dry Corridor, where the shortage of rainfall makes life complicated. Almost every household in this remote location has various plastic containers and tanks to capture rain. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“When the bag fills up, we’ll be so happy because we’ll have plenty of water,” she said, as she cooked corn tortillas in her “comal”, a clay or metal cylinder used to cook this staple of the Central American diet.

Women suffer the brunt

The harsh burden of water scarcity falls disproportionately on rural women, as national and international reports have shown.

In this sexist society, women are expected to stay at home, in charge of the domestic chores, which include securing water for the family.

“The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking,” Santa Gumersinda Crespo told IPS.

Crespo, 48, was feeding her cow and goat in her backyard when IPS visited her. In the yard there was a black plastic-covered tank where the family collects water during the rainy season.

“Without water we are nothing,” Crespo said. “In the past, we used to go to the water hole. It was really hard, sometimes we left at 7:00 at night and came back at 1:00 in the morning,” she said.

Marta Moreira is one of the community leaders who has worked the hardest to ensure that in Jocote Dulce, a remote rural settlement in eastern El Salvador, programs are helping supply water and strengthen food security. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In Guatemala, Gloria Díaz also says it is women who bear the brunt of water scarcity in rural families.

“We are the ones who used to go out to look for water and who faced mistreatment and violence when we tried to fill our jugs in the rivers or springs,” Díaz told IPS by telephone from the Sector Plan del Jocote in the Maraxcó Community, in the southeastern Guatemalan municipality and department of Chiquimula.

In that area of ​​the Dry Corridor, water is the most precious asset.

“It’s been difficult, because drinking water is brought to us from 28 kilometers away and we can only fill our containers for two hours a month,” she said.

Almost all of the homes in the villages located around Chinameca, in the Salvadoran department of San Miguel, have several water storage tanks, given the scarcity of water in that area, which forms part of the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Projects that bring relief and hope

Climate forecasts are not at all hopeful for the remainder of 2023.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon is likely to occur, which would bring droughts and loss of crops, as it has before.

“When the weather is good, we sow and harvest, and when it is not, we plant less, to see how winter (the rainy season) will shape up; we don’t plant everything or we would lose it all,” Salvadoran farmer Marta Moreira, also from Jocote Dulce, told IPS.

Most people in these rural regions depend on subsistence farming, especially corn and beans.

Moreira added that last year her family, made up of herself, her husband and their son, lost most of the corn and bean harvest due to the weather.

In Central America climate change has led to longer than usual periods of drought and to excessive rainfall.

A farmer gets ready to fill a jug at one of the water taps located in the Jocote Dulce canton, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, where water is always scarce. The community taps are padlocked, so that only people with permission can use them. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In October 2022, Tropical Storm Julia destroyed 8,000 hectares of corn and bean crops in El Salvador, causing losses of around 17 million dollars.

Given this history of climatic effects, rural families and groups, led mostly by women, have received the support of national and international organizations to carry out projects to alleviate these impacts.

For example, around 100 families from the Jocote Dulce canton benefited in 2010 from a water project financially supported by Luxembourg, to install a dozen community water taps.

Programs for the construction of catchment tanks have also been carried out there, such as the one that supplies water to Crespo’s family.

In addition to using the water for household chores, the family gives it to their cow, which provides them with milk every day, and Crespo also makes cheese.

The water collected in the pond “lasts us for almost five months, but if we use it more, only about three or four months,” she said, as she brought more fodder to the family cow.

If she has any milk left over, she sells a couple of liters, she said, bringing in income that is hard to come by in this remote area reached by steep dirt tracks that are dusty in summer and muddy in the rainy season.

Other families benefited from home poultry farm and fruit tree planting programs.

Drinking water is provided by the community taps, but the water crisis makes it difficult to supply everyone in this rural settlement.

Yamilet Henríquez, 35, shows the reservoir set up outside her home in eastern El Salvador. Water is increasingly scarce in this area of ​​the ecoregion known as the Central American Dry Corridor, and things could become more complicated if the forecasts are right about the looming arrival of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which will bring droughts and damage to crops. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Only 80 percent of rural households in El Salvador have access to piped water, according to official figures.

“The water runs for only three days, then for two days the pipes dry up, and that’s how things go, over and over,” said Moreira, who also has a small tank, whose water is not drinkable.

When the rains fail and the reserves run out, families have to buy water from people who bring it in barrels in their pick-up trucks, from Chinameca, about 30 minutes away by car. Each barrel, which costs them about three dollars, contains some 100 liters of water.

The same is true in the Sector Plan del Jocote in Chiquimula, Guatemala, where Díaz lives, and in neighboring communities. “People who can afford it buy it and those who can’t, don’t,” she said.

Díaz added that families in the area are happy with the rainwater harvesting programs, which make it possible for them to irrigate the collectively farmed gardens, and produce vegetables that are important to their diet.

They also sell their produce to nearby schools.

“We grow vegetables and sell them to the school, that has helped us a lot,” she said.

There are 19 water harvesting systems, each with a capacity of 17,000 liters of water, which is enough to irrigate the gardens for two months. They also have a community tank.

These programs, which have been promoted by FAO and other organizations, with the support of the Guatemalan government, have benefited 5,416 families in 80 settlements in two Guatemalan departments.

However, access to potable drinking water remains a serious problem for the more than eight rural settlements in the Sector Plan del Jocote and the 28,714 families that live there.

Thelma Cabrera and Jordán Rodas launch their candidacy for the presidency and vice presidency of Guatemala in December 2022, which has been vetoed by the courts, in a maneuver that has drawn criticism from human rights groups at home and abroad. CREDIT: Twitter

By Edgardo Ayala
SANTA CATARINA PALOPÓ, Guatemala, Mar 4 2023 (IPS)

Centuries of racism and exclusion suffered by indigenous peoples in Guatemala continue to weigh heavily, as demonstrated by the denial of the registration of a political party that is promoting the presidential candidacy of indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera in the upcoming general elections.

On Mar. 2, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled against Cabrera’s party, the leftist Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), which had appealed a Feb. 15 Supreme Court resolution that left them out of the Jun. 25 elections.“There is a racist system and structure, and we indigenous people have barely managed to start climbing the steps, but with great difficulty and zero opportunities.” -- Silvia Menchú

Cabrera’s candidacy and that of her vice-presidential running-mate Jordán Rodas are now hanging by a thread, with their hopes depending on a few last resort legal challenges.

The deadline for the registration of candidates is Mar. 25.

A centuries-old racist system

Guatemala’s political and economic elites “are looking for ways to keep her (Cabrera) from registering; everyone has the right to participate, but they are blocking her,” Sonia Nimacachi, 31, a native of Santa Catarina Palopó, told IPS. The municipality, which has a Cachiquel Mayan indigenous majority, is in the southwestern Guatemalan department of Sololá.

“We would like a person with our roots and culture to become president, I think it would help our people,” added Nimacachi, standing by her street stall in the center of town.

Nimacachi, a Cachiquel Mayan woman, sells “granizadas” or snow cones: crushed ice sweetened with syrup of various flavors, perfect for hot days.

“There is a racist system and structure, and we indigenous people have barely managed to start climbing the steps, but with great difficulty and zero opportunities,” Silvia Menchú, director of the K’ak’a Na’oj (New Knowledge, in Cachiquel) Association for the Development of Women, told IPS.

The organization, based in Santa Catarina Palopó, carries out human rights programs focused on indigenous women.

Santa Catarina Palopó, a picturesque Cachiquel Mayan town located on the shore of Lake Atitlán in the southwestern Guatemalan department of Sololá, is preparing for the upcoming general elections, where voters will choose a new president, vice president, 160 members of Congress, 20 members of the Central American Parliament, as well as 340 mayors. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“Racism has prevailed, we are mistreated everywhere by the government and the authorities, we are seen as people with little capacity,” said Menchú, of the Maya Quiché ethnic group.

An alleged illegality attributed to Rodas, the vice-presidential candidate, was the cause for denying the MLP the right to register for the elections.

Analysts and social organizations perceive obscure maneuvering on the part of the powers-that-be, who cannot accept the idea that an indigenous woman is trying to break through the barriers of the country’s rigid, racist political system.

Cabrera is a 51-year-old Mayan Mam woman who is trying for a second time to run in the unequal fight for the presidency of this Central American country of 14.9 million inhabitants.

Of the total population, 43.7 percent identify as indigenous Mayan, Xinca, Garífuna and Afro-descendant peoples, according to the 2018 census.

In the 2019 elections Cabrera came in fourth place, winning 10 percent of the total votes cast.

In the Jun. 25 general elections voters will choose a new president for the period 2024-2028, as well as 160 members of Congress and 20 members of the Central American Parliament, and 340 mayors.

In Guatemala, the ancient Mayan culture was flourishing when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century.

The descendants of that pre-Hispanic civilization still speak 24 different autochthonous languages, most of which are Mayan.

Years of exclusion and neglect of indigenous rural populations led Guatemala to a civil war that lasted 36 years (1960-1996) and left some 250,000 dead or disappeared.

The presidential candidacy of Thelma Cabrera, of the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), must be allowed by the Guatemalan authorities, so that the indigenous population is represented in the Jun. 25 elections, says Silvia Menchú, director of the K’ak’a Na’oj (New Knowledge, in Cachiquel) Association for the Development of Women. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A blatant maneuver

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s (TSE) rejection of the MLP arose from a complaint against Rodas, who served between 2017 and 2022 as head of the Office for the Defense of Human Rights.

In that office, Rodas strongly questioned alleged acts of corruption by the current government of Alejandro Giammattei, who took office in January 2020.

The criminal complaint against the vice-presidential candidate was filed on Jan. 6 by the current head of the Office for the Defense of Human Rights, Alejandro Córdoba.

After Cabrera and Rodas attempted to register as candidates, Córdoba said he had “doubts” about some payments allegedly received by his predecessor in the Office for the Defense of Human Rights.

His “doubts” apparently had to do with some alleged illegality on the part of Rodas, but since Córdoba has not described it in detail, his statements have been nothing but a weak half-hearted accusation.

However, that was enough for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to reject the MLP on Feb. 2, which triggered protests by rural and indigenous people, who blocked roads in at least 12 parts of the country.

According to Guatemalan law, all candidates for popularly elected positions must have a document that attests that they have no pending legal issues.

But analysts have pointed out that this document should only take into account actual legal rulings handed down by courts, and not “doubts” vaguely expressed by some government official.

By vetoing Rodas, the TSE automatically bars his presidential runningmate Cabrera, who may actually be the ultimate target of the maneuver, since she is the one who is trying, once again, to win the votes of the indigenous population.

On Feb. 15, the MLP runningmates filed a provisional injunction with the Supreme Court, so that it would take effect immediately and overrule the TSE’s decision, while the Supreme Court studied and resolved the matter in depth.

But the injunction was rejected, so the MLP appealed the next day to the Constitutional Court, asking it to review the case and order the Supreme Court to admit the provisional injunction, to allow the fight for the registration of Cabrera and Rodas to continue forward.

But the appeal was denied Thursday Mar. 2 by the Constitutional Court.

However, the Supreme Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the injunction, but only a provisional stance. This means that when it is finally issued, if it goes against the MLP, Cabrera and Rodas could once again turn to the Constitutional Court, in a last-ditch effort.

But it seems as if the die is already cast.

In a tweet on Thursday Mar. 2, Rodas wrote: “The constitutional justice system has denied my constitutional right to be elected and denies the population the right to choose freely. We await the Supreme Court ruling on the injunction and the position of the @IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). Our fight continues.”

Guatemala’s political and economic elites are determined to block the candidacy of indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, says Sonia Nimacachi, a Cachiquel Mayan woman selling snowcones in Santa Catarina Palopó, in the country’s southwest. She would vote for Cabrera again, if her candidacy is finally allowed. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Cabrera’s second attempt

This is Cabrera’s second attempt to run for the presidency. Her first was in the 2019 elections, when she failed to fully capture the indigenous vote.

“I would dare to think that the majority of the indigenous population did not vote for her because of those instilled prejudices: that she is a woman and also indigenous, not a professional, are issues that have nothing to do with the dignity and the quality of a person,” argued Silvia Menchú.

She added that the right-wing parties have been allies of the country’s evangelical churches, through which they keep in submission segments of the indigenous population that end up supporting conservative parties, rather than a candidate who comes from their Mayan culture.

To illustrate, she said that in Santa Catarina Palopó, a town of 6,000 people, there is only one school to cover primary and middle-school education, “but there are about 15 evangelical churches.”

The TSE’s veto of the registration of Cabrera and Rodas puts the credibility of the elections at risk, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) warned on Feb. 27.

In a joint statement, the two organizations said the electoral authority’s rejection of aspiring candidates “is based on dubious grounds, puts political rights at risk, and undermines the credibility of the electoral process.”

“The electoral process is taking place in the context of a decline in the rule of law, in which the institutions responsible for overseeing the elections have little independence or credibility,” they stated.

In addition to Cabrera and Rodas, the TSE also rejected the registration of right-wing candidate Roberto Arzú, because he allegedly began campaigning too early.

HRW and Wola added that “efforts to exclude or prosecute opposition candidates create unequal conditions that could prevent free and fair elections from taking place.”

Meanwhile, the TSE did endorse, on Feb. 4, the presidential candidacy of Zury Ríos, daughter of General Efraín Ríos Montt, who governed de facto between 1982 and 1983.

In 2013 the general was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacre of more than 1,400 indigenous Ixil people in the north of the country.

He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, but the Constitutional Court later revoked the ruling. Ríos Montt died in April 2018.

Article 186 of the Guatemalan constitution prohibits people involved in coups d’état, or their relatives, for running for president.

Meanwhile, snowcone vendor Sonia Nimacachi said in the central square of Santa Catarina Palopó that she still held out hope that Cabrera would be able to register as a candidate.

“If they let her participate, I would vote for her again,” she said, while serving a customer.

One of the voting centers of the popular consultation held on Sunday, Sept. 18 in Asunción Mita, a town of 50,000 people in eastern Guatemala. The majority of the people who voted said no to the Cerro Blanco mine, due to its environmental impacts. CREDIt: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
ASUNCIÓN MITA, Guatemala , Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

The majority of the Guatemalan population continues to oppose mining and other extractive projects, in the midst of a scenario of socio-environmental conflict that pits communities defending their natural resources against the interests of multinational corporations.

The most recent rejection of mining projects in this Central American country took place on Sunday Sept. 18 in the town of Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the capital of Guatemala, in the department of Jutiapa.

The “No” vote wins

Here, through a citizen consultation, 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the operations of the Cerro Blanco gold mine, owned by Elevar Resources, a subsidiary of Canada’s Bluestone Resources.

“In my view we can’t allow this to go ahead, we are getting older, but we don’t want the children and young people to suffer from the environmental impact of the mine,” said Petronila Hernández, 55, after voting at a school on the outskirts of Asunción Mita.

Hernández added to IPS that “we don’t agree with the mine, it affects our water sources, we carry the water from the water source, and the mine contaminates it.”

Hernández was accompanied by her daughter, Marilexis Ramos, 21.

“Hopefully our ‘No’ vote will win,” said Ramos during the voting. At the end of the afternoon the counting of votes began, and by Monday Sept. 19 the results began to be clear.

Mother and daughter live in the Cerro Liso hamlet, on the outskirts of Asunción Mita, very close to the mine.

Marilexis Ramos (r), 21, voted on the continuity of the Cerro Blanco mining project, located near Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the Guatemalan capital, in the department of Jutiapa. A full 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the gold and silver mine. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The Cerro Blanco underground mine was licensed to operate in 2007 for a period of 25 years, but since then it has not been able to extract gold and silver, due to unforeseen issues.

The project encountered thermal water veins in the subsoil that released heat that made it impossible to work for long enough inside the two tunnels built in the mine, activist Juan Carlos Estrada, of the Water and Sanitation Network of Guatemala, told IPS.

“The mine has been stranded for almost 15 years without extracting a single ounce of ore,” Estrada said.

However, the community struggle continues because, despite the setback it suffered in Sunday’s vote, the company still intends to operate the mine and to do so it aims to modify the original plan and turn it into an open pit mine.

People vs. transnational corporations

Guatemala, a nation of 17.4 million inhabitants, has experienced socio-environmental conflicts in recent decades as a result of the communities’ defense of their territories against the advance of mining and hydroelectric projects and other extractivist activities.

Many of the conflicts have taken place in the territories of indigenous peoples, who make up 60 percent of the total population. Members of affected communities have put up resistance and have faced crackdowns by police and soldiers.

This has earned them persecution and criminalization by the authorities.

Dalia González, of the Salvadoran movement Green Rebellion, on the banks of the Ostúa River in eastern Guatemala, talks about the impact that pollution from the Cerro Blanco mine will have on the river, which in turn will end up polluting the Lempa River in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In February, IPS reported on the struggle of indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the municipality of El Estor, on the outskirts of Lake Izabal, in the department of the same name in eastern Guatemala.

The only active mine in Guatemala operates there, as similar projects have been blocked by the communities through citizen consultations or by court rulings, after the communities requested injunctions complaining about the lack of such votes, which are required.

The nickel mine in El Estor has been operated since 2011 by the transnational Solway Investment Group, headquartered in Switzerland, after purchasing it from Canada’s HudBay Minerals.

“Almost 100 consultations have been held, in 100 municipalities around the country, and in all of them mining and hydroelectric projects, mainly, have been rejected,” said José Cruz, of the environmental collective Madreselva.

The high number of consultations expresses the level of struggle of the population and the companies’ interest in the country’s natural resources.

“The only mining project currently operating is El Estor,” Cruz told IPS. And it is still active thanks to a “mock” consultation, manipulated by the company, which apparently endorsed the mine.

The Oxec I and Oxec II hydroelectric projects have also been a source of socio-environmental conflict.

The first plant began operations in 2015 and the second has been under construction since two years later. Both are owned by the Energy Resources Capital Corporation, registered in Panama.

In 2015, local Q’eqchi indigenous communities launched a struggle against the two hydroelectric power plants on the Cahabón River, located in the municipality of Santa María de Cahabón, in the department of Alta Verapaz in northern Guatemala.

After suffering persecution for his active participation in defense of his people’s territories, Q’eqchi leader Bernardo Caal was imprisoned in January 2018 and sentenced the following November to seven years in prison by a court “without any evidence,” as denounced at the time by Amnesty International, which considered him a prisoner of conscience.

However, he was released in March 2022 for good behavior and because there was essentially no evidence against him.

An anti-mining banner hangs on the façade of the church in Asunción Mita, in eastern Guatemala. The company operating the Cerro Blanco mine called the consultation process held in the town on Sept. 18 illegal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Projects that pollute across borders

Although the victory of the “no” vote in Asunción Mita represents an achievement for local residents, the project still presents a pollution risk, not only for this town of 50,000 people, but also for neighboring El Salvador.

Asunción Mita is located near the border with El Salvador.

Environmental organizations in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have warned that heavy metal pollution from the mine would end up impacting the Ostúa River on the Guatemalan side.

The waters of that river, in turn, would reach Lake Guija, on the Salvadoran side. And a segment of that lake is reached by the Lempa River, which provides water to more than one million people in San Salvador and neighboring municipalities.

The Lempa River is 422 kilometers long and its basin covers three countries: It originates in Guatemala, crosses a small portion of Honduras and then zigzags through El Salvador until flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

El Salvador passed a law in March 2017 prohibiting mining, underground or open pit, but the proximity to the Cerro Blanco mine makes it vulnerable to pollution.

“We are concerned, our main source of water is under threat,” Salvadoran activist Dalia González, of the Green Rebellion movement, told IPS.

González added that the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador have an important role to play in protecting natural resources and the health of the local population.

“Because the effects of the mines cross borders,” said the young activist on the banks of the Ostúa River, where she had arrived along with Salvadoran environmentalists and journalists after witnessing the consultation process.

González called on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to engage in a dialogue with his Guatemalan counterpart Alejandro Giammattei to find a solution to the problem of pollution that would also affect El Salvador.

“The situation is serious and requires urgent action,” said the Salvadoran activist.

After learning the results of the citizen consultation in Asunción Mita, the company behind the Cerro Blanco mine, Elevar Resources, called the process illegal, according to a press release made public on Monday Sept. 19.

The company’s managing director, Bob Gil, said, “this consultation process is clearly illegal and full of irregularities,” according to the statement.

In the company’s view, the process was flawed by what it called “anti-mining groups”.

“We are disappointed with the actions of these groups who use biased referendums to create doubt and uncertainty regarding responsible mining projects such as Cerro Blanco,” he added.

The consortium said the aim is to continue developing the project and to produce 2.6 million ounces of gold during the life of the mine.

Due to the problems it has had with the tunnels and the heat that prevents it from working and extracting the minerals, in November 2021 the company submitted a request to the authorities to transform the current underground mine into an open-pit mine.

The company “spoke of updating the Environmental Impact Study, but what was needed was a new study, because it was a completely different project,” said Madreselva’s Cruz.

Reporters and photojournalists cover an Aug. 11 press conference at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in San Salvador. Independent media outlets in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua suffer constant persecution and harassment by state entities and government officials in an attempt to silence them and discredit investigations into corruption and mismanagement of public funds. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 15 2022 (IPS)

Practicing journalism in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the persecution of independent media outlets by neo-populist rulers of different stripes, intolerant of criticism.

The most recent high-profile case was the Jul. 29 arrest of José Rubén Zamora, founder and director of elPeriódico, one of the Guatemalan media outlets that has been most critical of the government of right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, who has been in office since January 2020.

The union of Guatemalan journalists and the reporter’s family say the arrest is a clear example of political persecution as a result of the investigations into corruption and mismanagement in the Giammattei administration published by the newspaper, which was founded in 1996."The last bastions of the independent press (in Nicaragua) are under siege and the vast majority of independent journalists, threatened by abusive legal actions, have had to flee the country" -- Reporters Without Borders

“I definitely believe it is a case of political persecution and harassment, and of violence against free expression and the expression of thought,” Ramón Zamora, son of the editor of elPeriódico who has been imprisoned since his arrest, told IPS from Guatemala City.

A case out of the blue

The 66-year-old journalist is one of the most recognized in Guatemala and in the Central American region, and has been awarded several times for elPeriódico’s investigative reporting.

Zamora is being charged with money laundering, influence peddling and racketeering, although the evidence shown at the initial hearing by prosecutors “are poor quality voice messages that show nothing,” according to Ramón.

The preliminary hearing ended on Aug. 9 with the judge’s decision to continue with the case and keep Zamora in pre-trial detention. Prosecutors now have three months to present more robust evidence before taking him to trial, while the defense will seek to gather evidence in order to secure his release.

“We are going to clearly demonstrate as many times as necessary that this case was staged, that the evidence, or rather the evidence they have, cannot be stretched as far as they are stretching it,” said Ramón, 32, an anthropologist by profession.

He added that from the beginning President Giammattei showed signs of intolerance towards criticism of his administration.

“We knew he was an angry person, authoritarian in the way he acted, but we never thought he would go this far,” he said.

Since the arrest, Ramón said that his father is in good spirits, upbeat, although he has had problems sleeping, while the newspaper continues to be published in the midst of serious difficulties due to the temporary seizure of its bank accounts and liquidity problems to pay the staff and other costs.

On Friday Aug. 12, elPeriódico gave key coverage to a decree approved by the Guatemalan legislature that gives life to a Cybercrime Law, which could become another governmental tool to silence critics.

The newspaper quoted the organization Acción Ciudadana, according to which article 9 of this law “contravenes free access to sources of information – a right stipulated in the constitution; furthermore, it violates the Law of Broadcasting of Thought, restricting freedom of information.”

Zamora Jr. regretted that in Central America journalistic work is restricted and persecuted by governments and other de facto powers, as is happening in Guatemala with Giammattei, in El Salvador with the government of Nayib Bukele, and in Nicaragua, with that of Daniel Ortega.

“Ortega, in Nicaragua, is a mirror that we all have in front of us in the region, it is worrisome,” he said.

Journalist José Rubén Zamora, editor of elPériódico, one of the newspapers most critical of the government of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, leaves the courtroom on Aug. 9 after a judge ordered pretrial detention, on accusations of money laundering. But his family, the journalists’ union and civil society organizations maintain that the case is part of political persecution promoted by the government. CREDIT: Courtesy of elPériódico

Press freedom in free fall

In these three countries there is an openly hostile policy against the independent media, whose journalists suffer harassment, persecution, blackmail, intimidation and restrictions of all kinds in the line of duty.

Central America, a region of 38 million people, faces serious economic and social challenges after leaving behind decades of political strife and civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s, specifically in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Further progress towards democracy is undermined by attacks on or harassment of media outlets that criticize corrupt governments, according to reports by national and international organizations.

In this regard, the World Press Freedom Index 2022 report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out the decline suffered by Nicaragua, which dropped 39 positions in the ranking to 160th place out of 180, and El Salvador, which lost 30 positions, dropping to 112th place.

“For the second year in a row El Salvador had one of the steepest falls in Latin America,” the report states.

And it adds that since he took office in 2019, Bukele, described as a “millennial” leader with a vague ideology and an “authoritarian tendency…is exerting particularly strong pressure on journalists and is using the extremely dangerous tactic of portraying the media as the enemy of the people.”

According to the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (Apes), from January to July 2022, 51 incidents have been reported against the press, related to digital attacks and obstruction of journalistic work by state institutions, officials and even supporters of the ruling party.

Bukele himself, in press conferences, often accuses the media and even specific journalists, who he names, of being part of an opposition plan to discredit the work of the government.

A number of reporters have left the country to avoid problems.

Of those who have left the country, at least three have done so almost obligatorily because government agencies or officials have pressured them to reveal their sources of information, Apes Freedom of Expression Rapporteur Serafín Valencia told IPS.

“Bukele decided to undertake a wave of attacks against the press, although not against the entire press, but against those media outlets and journalists who have a critical editorial line and try to do their work in an independent fashion,” said Valencia.

With regard to Ortega in Nicaragua, the RSF report states: “Nicaragua (160th) recorded the biggest drop in rankings (- 39 places) and entered the Index’s red zone.”

It adds: ” A farcical election in November 2021 that carried Daniel Ortega into a fourth consecutive term as president was accompanied by a ferocious crackdown on dissenting voices.

“The last bastions of the independent press came under fire, and the vast majority of independent journalists, threatened with abusive prosecution, were forced to leave the country,” says the report.

“You can’t kill the truth by killing journalists” reads a banner set out by press workers following the death of a colleague in Nicaragua, where the government of Daniel Ortega has shut down critical media outlets and forced many independent reporters into exile. CREDIT: Jader Flores/IPS

Guerrilla leader accused of being a dictator

One of the reporters who had to leave Nicaragua was Sergio Marín, who for more than 12 years hosted a radio program called La Mesa Redonda.

“There were very strong indications that my arrest was imminent,” Marín told IPS from San José, the capital of Costa Rica, the country he fled to on Jun. 21, 2021.

Marín said that the situation in Nicaragua was, and continues to be, untenable for independent media outlets and reporters since Ortega returned to power in January 2007, after a first stint as president between 1985 and 1990.

Ortega was a leader of the leftist guerrilla Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) that in July 1979 overthrew the Somoza dynasty’s dictatorship, which directly or through puppet rulers had been in power since the 1930s.

But the FSLN’s progressive ideas of justice and freedom were soon buried by Ortega’s new power dynamics: he forged obscure pacts with the country’s political and economic elites to set himself up as Nicaragua’s strongman, with actions typical of a dictator.

“With Ortega’s return to power in 2007, he began a process of isolation of journalists who ask questions that question power,” said Marín, 60.

Then, according to Marín, the government threw up a “financial wall”: denying state advertising to media outlets that were critical, or even advertising from private businesses allied with the Ortega administration.

That is when the first media closures began to be seen, he said.

The situation worsened with the popular uprising against the government in April 2018, massive protests that were stopped with bullets by the police, military and pro-Ortega paramilitary forces.

Around 300 people died in the repression unleashed by Ortega, said Marín.

These events were a turning point for journalism because, in the face of the crackdown, the media in general, except for pro-government outlets, came together in a united front.

“So the regime identified us as a key enemy, which must be silenced,” Marin added.

Since then, the Ortega government has maneuvered to close down independent media outlets and critical news spaces, such as those directed by veteran journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is now also in exile in Costa Rica.

“Now, the newspaper El Nuevo Diario is closed, and La Prensa was taken over by the government and the entire editorial staff is in exile, and in total there are more than 70 journalists who have left the country,” he added.

In the first week of August Ortega stepped up harassment against dissenting voices, and began targeting Catholic priests. Since Aug. 4 police forces have been holding Bishop Rolando Alvarez, of the Diocese of Matagalpa, in the north of the country, in the Episcopal Palace.

A hundred Central American migrants were rescued from an overcrowded trailer truck in the Mexican state of Tabasco. It has been impossible to stop people from making the hazardous journey of thousands of kilometers to the United States due to the lack of opportunities in their countries of origin. CREDIT: Mesoamerican Migrant Movement

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 19 2022 (IPS)

The immigration agreement reached in Los Angeles, California at the end of the Summit of the Americas, hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden, raises more questions than answers and the likelihood that once again there will be more noise than actual benefits for migrants, especially Central Americans.

And immigration was once again the main issue discussed at the Jul. 12 bilateral meeting between Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Biden at the White House.

At the meeting, López Obrador asked Biden to facilitate the entry of “more skilled” Mexican and Central American workers into the U.S. “to support” the economy and help curb irregular migration.

Central American analysts told IPS that it is generally positive that immigration was addressed at the June summit and that concrete commitments were reached. But they also agreed that much remains to be done to tackle the question of undocumented migration.

That is especially true considering that the leaders of the three Central American nations generating a massive flow of poor people who risk their lives to reach the United States, largely without papers, were absent from the meeting.

Just as the Ninth Summit of the Americas was getting underway on Jun. 6 in Los Angeles, an undocumented 15-year-old Salvadoran migrant began her journey alone to the United States, with New York as her final destination.

She left her native San Juan Opico, in the department of La Libertad in central El Salvador.

“We communicate every day, she tells me that she is in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and that everything is going well according to plan. They give them food and they are not mistreating her, but they don’t let her leave the safe houses,” Omar Martinez, the Salvadoran uncle of the migrant girl, whose name he preferred not to mention, told IPS.

She was able to make the journey because her mother, who is waiting for her in New York, managed to save the 15,000-dollar cost of the trip, led as always by a guide or “coyote”, as they are known in Central America, who in turn form part of networks in Guatemala and Mexico that smuggle people across the border between Mexico and the United States.

The meeting of presidents in Los Angeles “was marked by the issue of temporary jobs, and the presidents of key Central American countries were absent, so there was a vacuum in that regard,” researcher Silvia Raquec Cum, of Guatemala’s Pop No’j Association, told IPS.

In fact, neither the presidents of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, or El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, attended the conclave due to political friction with the United States, in a political snub that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

Other Latin American presidents boycotted the Summit of the Americas as an act of protest, such as Mexico’s López Obrador, precisely because Washington did not invite the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which it considers dictatorships.

From rural communities like this one, the village of Huisisilapa in the municipality of San Pablo Tacachico in central El Salvador, where there are few possibilities of finding work, many people set out for the United States, often without documents, in search of the “American dream”. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

More temporary jobs

Promoting more temporary jobs is one of the commitments of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection adopted at the Summit of the Americas and signed by some twenty heads of state on Jun. 10 in that U.S. city.

“Temporary jobs are an important issue, but let’s remember that economic questions are not the only way to address migration. Not all migration is driven by economic reasons, there are also situations of insecurity and other causes,” Raquec Cum emphasized.

Moreover, these temporary jobs do not allow the beneficiaries to stay and settle in the country; they have to return to their places of origin, where their lives could be at risk.

“It is good that they (the temporary jobs) are being created and are expanding, but we must be aware that the beneficiaries are only workers, they are not allowed to settle down, and there are people who for various reasons no longer want to return to their countries,” researcher Danilo Rivera, of the Central American Institute of Social and Development Studies, told IPS from the Guatemalan capital.

The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection states that it “seeks to mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform our approach to managing migration in the Americas.”

The Declaration is based on four pillars: stability and assistance for communities; expansion of legal pathways; humane migration management; and coordinated emergency response.

The focus on expanding legal pathways includes Canada, which plans to receive more than 50,000 agricultural workers from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean in 2022.

While Mexico will expand the Border Worker Card program to include 10,000 to 20,000 more beneficiaries, it is also offering another plan to create job opportunities in Mexico for 15,000 to 20,000 workers from Guatemala each year.

The United States, for its part, is committed to a 65 million dollar pilot program to help U.S. farmers hire temporary agricultural workers, who receive H-2A visas.

“It is necessary to rethink governments’ capacity to promote regular migration based on temporary work programs when it is clear that there is not enough labor power to cover the great needs in terms of employment demands,” said Rivera from Guatemala.

He added that despite the effort put forth by the presidents at the summit, there is no mention at all of the comprehensive reform that has been offered for several years to legalize some 11 million immigrants who arrived in the United States without documents.

A reform bill to that effect is currently stalled in the U.S. Congress.

Many of the 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States come from Central America, especially Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as Mexico.

While the idea of immigration reform is not moving forward in Congress, more than 60 percent of the undocumented migrants have lived in the country for over a decade and have more than four million U.S.-born children, the New York Times reported in January 2021.

This population group represents five percent of the workforce in the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors, the report added.

Despite the risks involved in undertaking the irregular, undocumented journey to the United States, many Salvadorans continue to make the trip, and many are deported, such as the people seen in this photo taken at a registration center after they were sent back to San Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

More political asylum

The Declaration also includes another important component of the migration agreement: a commitment to strengthen political asylum programs.

For example, among other agreements in this area, Canada will increase the resettlement of refugees from the Americas and aims to receive up to 4,000 people by 2028, the Declaration states.

For its part, the United States will commit to resettle 20,000 refugees from the Americas during fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

“What I took away from the summit is the question of creating a pathway to address the issue of refugees in the countries of origin,” Karen Valladares, of the National Forum for Migration in Honduras, told IPS from Tegucigalpa.

She added: “In the case of Honduras, we are having a lot of extra-regional and extra-continental population traffic.”

Valladares said that while it is important “to enable refugee processes for people passing through our country, we must remember that Honduras is not seen as a destination, but as a transit country.”

Raquec Cum, of the Pop No’j Association in Guatemala, said “They were also talking about the extension of visas for refugees, but the bottom line is how they are going to carry out this process; there are specific points that were signed and to which they committed themselves, but the how is what needs to be developed.”

Meanwhile, the Salvadoran teenager en route to New York has told her uncle that she expects to get there in about a month.

“She left because she wants to better herself, to improve her situation, because in El Salvador it is expensive to live,” said Omar, the girl’s uncle.

“I have even thought about leaving the country, but I suffer from respiratory problems and could not run a lot or swim, for example, and sometimes you have to run away from the migra (border patrol),” he said.

Mayan indigenous communities in eastern Guatemala are waging an ongoing struggle for the defense of their lands and resources, in the face of encroachment by mining, power and oil corporations. These struggles have resulted in protests on behalf of the affected communities and against the Guatemalan government's repression of activists and indigenous inhabitants, and have now reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. CREDIT: Courtesy of Raúl Ico Pacham/FB

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Feb 21 2022 (IPS)

A struggle for the defense of their territories waged by indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in eastern Guatemala could set a historic precedent for Latin America’s native peoples because it would ensure not only their right to control their lands but also their natural resources, denied for centuries.

This could happen if the Inter-American Court of Human Rights based in San José, Costa Rica rules in favor of these communities involved in litigation for the defense of their ancestral territories and for control over their own future and development.

The struggle is against a nickel mine operated since 2011 by the Switzerland-based transnational Solway Investment Group on lands in Guatemala that these communities consider their own, in the municipality of El Estor near Lake Izabal, in the department of the same name in eastern Guatemala."We hope it will be a historic decision, that the Court can decide for the first time on the permanent sovereignty of indigenous peoples over their natural resources.” -- Leonardo Crippa

The mine is a private venture over which the local indigenous communities had no say. Furthermore, they argue that there is evidence that it is contaminating the area’s natural resources, lawyers and activists told IPS.

The mine “pollutes the rivers, destroys the hills, without regard for the lives of the people in the municipality,” said activist Abelino Chub of the Maíz de Vida Association, in an interview with IPS from El Estor.

Chub, of the Mayan Q’eqchi indigenous people, lives in El Estor and has worked for years in defense of indigenous territories in Izabal, in the face of inroads made by international consortiums in the production of nickel, bananas, electricity and oil, he said.

Because of his involvement in that struggle he was arrested and imprisoned in February 2017, as part of a pattern of persecution that other people who have fought against the transnationals have also experienced firsthand.

Solway Investment has been operating the mine since 2011, after purchasing it from the Canadian corporation Hudbay Minerals, which obtained the exploration permit in 2004 and the mining permit in 2006.

However, work on the mine came to a halt when Guatemala’s Constitutional Court accepted an appeal for legal protection from a union of fishermen from Izabal, who alleged that fishing had been hurt by pollution from the mine.

In addition to Guatemala, Solway Investment operates in Ukraine, Russia, Macedonia and Indonesia, and in 2019 reported more than one billion dollars in total assets, according to its official website.

Abelino Chub, a Mayan Q’eqchi’ activist from the Maíz de Vida Association, who is part of the struggle in defense of the Mayan territories located in the area of El Estor and surrounding municipalities in the eastern Guatemalan department of Izabal, was arrested and imprisoned in February 2017 for opposing extractivist projects granted concessions by the Guatemalan government in the area. CREDIT: Courtesy of Abelino Chub/FB

In the hands of the Court

Since 1974, more than a dozen Q’eqchi’ Mayan communities have been trying to obtain a collective land title from the government’s National Land Fund (Fontierras).

But the government of that time and subsequent administrations denied them that right, despite the fact that since that year they have met all the legal requirements.

In 1985 they even obtained a provisional collective agrarian title, attorney Leonardo Crippa of the Washington-based Indian Law Resource Center (ILRC) told IPS.

In 2002 the communities met the last of the requirements: the payment to Fontierras of a quota on the value of the land, Crippa said from the U.S. capital.

But they were denied their right to collective title as a result of obscure legal maneuvering.

The General Property Registry claimed that documentation on the provisional title had been lost, and demanded that the communities themselves make the effort to replace it, despite the fact that by law it was the responsibility of the government agency.

“The Registry allowed a page from a document to be extracted that made the registry entry disappear and that prevented the land titling agency from granting the definitive title in due time and form,” Crippa said.

As a result, the communities were not only denied their right to collective ownership of their land. In addition, extractive industry projects were imposed on them in their territory, and in other indigenous communities in the country, without carrying out the consultations required by law, or without conducting them properly.

In the case of the nickel mine, “they never asked the communities, they only asked the workers to sign some forms in support of the supposed consultation,” said Chub, 39.

The mining activities are carried out on overlapping lands, i.e., the boundaries are unclear and intermingle with those of the indigenous villages, due to problems in the land registry, and to date the discrepancy is still in place.

Following the struggles of the Mayan communities to defend their territories, which included the seizure of land in eastern Guatemala, the Guatemalan government authorized evictions that turned violent. Now the Maya Q’eqchi’ communities await an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling. CREDIT: Courtesy of Raúl Ico Pacham/FB

These indigenous communities, where the majority of the population speaks only their ancestral Mayan language, Q’eqchi’, did not stand idly by.

In August 2018, following legal action in Guatemala, they brought the case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), based in Washington.

The ILRC had been working with them since 2005 and three years later they had a clear strategy: to focus on one of the 16 communities, known as Agua Caliente, because it best represented the indigenous cause.

Agua Caliente is home to some 400 people, according to a 2014 census.

In a March 2020 report, the IACHR recognized the responsibility of the State of Guatemala for the violation of the indigenous community’s right to property, and violation of due process, among other rights protected by the American Convention on Human Rights.

Furthermore, the IACHR added that the State does not have a law that recognizes the right of indigenous peoples in Guatemala to collective ownership or dominion of their lands and the resources under their possession, as guaranteed by international agreements to which the country is a signatory.

The IACHR also said that the titling procedure to which Agua Caliente was subjected for more than 45 years had not been effective because it did not grant a definitive title within a reasonable period of time.

As the basis of the litigation still remains, regarding the overlapping of the Agua Caliente and mine lands, the case has been referred to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which together with the IACHR make up the inter-American human rights system created by the Organization of American States (OAS).

In a Feb. 9 hearing the parties were heard, and final arguments will be presented in writing on Mar. 11.

“We hope it will be a historic decision, that the Court can decide for the first time on the permanent sovereignty of indigenous peoples over their natural resources,” said Crippa. As an Inter-American Court verdict, this would have regional effects, especially since its rulings are not subject to appeal and set a legal precedent.

Raúl Ico Pacham, a Mayan Q’eqchi’ native of the Chab’ilch’och’ community in the municipality of Livingston, in the eastern Guatemalan department of Izabal, had to flee the country following the persecution of activists in defense of their ancestral territories. He is now living as an undocumented immigrant in New York and has applied for political asylum in the United States. CREDIT: Courtesy of Raúl Ico Pacham/FB

Government persecution of activists

In the midst of this struggle, in October 2021, the State of Guatemala, through the Public Prosecutor’s Office and police forces, persecuted people who led protests against the government for granting the concession, and against the mine.

The government also declared a one-month state of siege in the area.

“They did that to scare people,” said Chub, who had to flee because he feared for his life, mainly because of his involvement in the fight against banana companies in the area.

He added, however, that in this area there are several major companies that band together to persecute activists regardless of whether they are fighting against mining, oil or banana companies.

Chub’s home was raided on Oct. 26, during the state of siege. But he had already fled to another part of the country.

“They broke the lock with a sledgehammer and entered. The only thing they found there was water, corn and beans,” he said.

Raúl Ico Pacham, who also belongs to the Q’eqchi’ Mayan people, had to leave Guatemala, fleeing persecution by the State. He is a native of Livingston, one of the municipalities in the department of Izabal, and has been an activist with the Guatemalan Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA).

“My struggle was, more than anything, for the recovery of our ancestral lands that had been taken from us long ago by landowners and the military,” Pacham, 35, told IPS in an interview from New York, where he arrived without documents in April 2021 and has requested political asylum.

In 2016 the activist participated with other members of the affected indigenous communities in a takeover of ancestral lands. But the government ordered their eviction, a process that turned violent in October 2017.

In August of that year they broke into his house and stole, he said, documents from investigations they were carrying out on the land that had been taken from the indigenous people.

“In 2021 I was almost killed, I was stabbed and I had to leave the country,” he said.

Angélica María Posada, a teacher and school principal in the village of El Guarumal, in eastern El Salvador, poses with primary school students in front of the school where they use purified water collected from rainfall, as part of a project promoted by FAO and Mexican cooperation funds. The initiative is being implemented in the countries of the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SENSEMBRA, El Salvador , Jun 23 2021 (IPS)

At the school in El Guarumal, a remote village in eastern El Salvador, the children no longer have to walk several kilometers along winding paths to fetch water from wells; they now “harvest” it from the rain that falls on the roofs of their classrooms.

“The water is not only for the children and us teachers, but for the whole community,” school principal Angelica Maria Posada told IPS, sitting with some of her young students at the foot of the tank that supplies them with purified water.

The village is located in the municipality of Sensembra, in the eastern department of Morazán, where it forms part of the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, a semi-arid belt that covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to some 11 million people, mostly engaged in subsistence agriculture.

In the Corridor, 1,600 kilometers long, water is always scarce and food production is a challenge, with more than five million people at risk of food insecurity.

In El Guarumal, a dozen peasant families have dug ponds or small reservoirs and use the rainwater collected to irrigate their home gardens and raise tilapia fish as a way to combat drought and produce food."We are all very proud of this initiative, because we are the only school in the country that has a (rainwater harvesting) system like this.” -- Angélica María Posada

This effort, called the Rainwater Harvesting System (RHS), has not only been made in El Salvador.

Similar initiatives have been promoted in five other Central American countries as part of the Mesoamerica Hunger Free programme, implemented since 2015 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and financed by the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid).

The aim of the RHS was to create the conditions for poor, rural communities in the Dry Corridor to strengthen food security by harvesting water to irrigate their crops and raise fish.

In Guatemala, work has been done to strengthen an ancestral agroforestry system inherited from the Chortí people, called Koxur Rum, which conserves more moisture in the soil and thus improves the production of corn and beans, staples of the Central American diet.

José Evelio Chicas, a teacher at the school in the village of El Guarumal, in El Salvador’s eastern department of Morazán, supervises the PVC pipes that carry rainwater collected from the school’s roof to an underground tank, from where it is pumped to a filtering and purification station. The initiative is part of a water harvesting project in the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“The best structure for conserving water is the soil, and that is where we have to work,” Baltazar Moscoso, national coordinator of Mesoamerica Hunger Free, told IPS by telephone from Guatemala City.

Healthy schools in El Salvador

The principal of the El Guarumal school, where 47 girls, 32 boys and several adolescents study, said that since the water collection and purification system has been in place, gastrointestinal ailments have been significantly reduced.

“The children no longer complain about stomachaches, like they used to,” said Posada, 47, a divorced mother of three children: two girls and one boy.

She added, “The water is 100 percent safe.”

Before it is purified, the rainwater that falls on the tin roof is collected by gutters and channeled into an underground tank with a capacity of 105,000 litres.

Farmer Cristino Martínez feeds the tilapia he raises in the pond dug next to his house in the village of El Guarumal in eastern El Salvador. A dozen ponds like this one were created in the village to help poor rural families produce food in the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

It is then pumped to a station where it is filtered and purified, before flowing into the tank which supplies students, teachers and the community.

The school reopened for in-person classes in March, following the shutdown declared by the government in 2020 to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are all very proud of this initiative, because we are the only school in the country that has a system like this,” added the principal.

There are 40 families living in El Guarumal, but a total of 150 families benefit from the system installed in the town, because people from other communities also come to get water.

A similar system was installed in 2017 in Cerrito Colorado, a village in the municipality of San Isidro, Choluteca department in southern Honduras, which benefits 80 families, including those from the neighbouring communities of Jicarito and Obrajito.

Rainwater is filtered and purified in a room adjacent to the classrooms of the school in the village of El Guarumal, in the eastern department of Morazán, El Salvador. Gastrointestinal ailments were reduced with the implementation of this project executed by FAO and financed by Mexican cooperation funds. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Vegetable gardens and tilapias boost food security

About 20 minutes from the school in El Guarumal, following a narrow dirt road that winds along the mountainside, you reach the house of Cristino Martínez, who grows tomatoes and raises tilapia in the pond dug next to his home.

The ponds are pits dug in the ground and lined with a polyethylene geomembrane, a waterproof synthetic material. They hold up to 25,000 litres of rainwater.

“The pond has served me well, I have used it for both the tilapia and watering tomatoes, beans and chayote (Sechium edule),” Martínez told IPS, standing at the edge of the pond, while tossing food to the fish.

The cost of the school’s water harvesting system and the 12 ponds totaled 77,000 dollars.

Martínez has not bothered to keep a precise record of how many tilapias he raises, because he does not sell them, he said. The fish feed his large family of 13: he and his wife and their 11 children (seven girls and four boys).

And from time to time he receives guests in his adobe house.

“My sisters come from San Salvador and tell me: ‘Cristino, we want to eat some tilapia,’ and my daughters throw the nets and start catching fish,” said the 50-year-old farmer.

Cristino Martínez and one of his daughters show the tilapia they have just caught in the family pond they have dug in the backyard of their home in the village of El Guarumal in the eastern department of Morazán, El Salvador. The large peasant family raises fish for their own consumption and not for sale. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

According to FAO estimates, the ponds can provide about 500 fishes two to three times a year.

The ponds are built on the highest part of each farm, and the drip irrigation system uses gravity to water the crops or orchards planted on the slopes.

Tomatoes are Martínez’s main crop. He has 100 seedlings planted, and manages to produce good harvests, marketing his produce in the local community.

“The pond helps me in the summer to water the vegetables I grow downhill,” another beneficiary of the programme, Santos Henríquez, also a native of El Guarumal, told IPS.

Henríquez’s 1.5-hectare plot is one of the most diversified: in addition to tilapias, corn and a type of bean locally called “ejote”, he grows cucumbers, chili peppers, tomatoes, cabbage and various types of fruit, such as mangoes, oranges and lemons.

“We grow a little bit of everything,” Henríquez, 48, said proudly. He sells the surplus produce in the village or at Sensembra.

However, some beneficiary families have underutilised the ponds. They were initially enthusiastic about the effort, but began to let things slide when the project ended in 2018.

A farmer proudly displays some of the tomatoes he has grown in the region known as Mancomunidad Copán Chortí in eastern Guatemala, which includes the municipalities of Camotán, Jocotán, Olopa and San Juan Ermita, in the department of Chiquimula. Water harvesting initiatives have been implemented in the area to improve agricultural production in this region, which is part of the so-called Central American Dry Corridor. The initiative is supported by FAO and Mexican cooperation funds. CREDIT: FAO Guatemala

An ageold Chorti technique in Guatemala

In Guatemala, meanwhile, some villages and communities are betting on an agroforestry technique from their ancestral culture: Koxur Rum, which means “wet land” in the language of the Chortí indigenous people, who also live in parts of El Salvador and Honduras.

The system allows corn and bean crops to retain more moisture with the rains by combining them with furrows of shrubs or trees such as madre de cacao or quickstick (Gliricidia sepium), a tree species that helps fix nitrogen in the soil.

By pruning the trees regularly, leaves and crop stubble cover and protect the soil, thereby better retaining moisture and nutrients.

“Quickstick sprouts quickly and gives abundant foliage to incorporate into the soil,” farmer Rigoberto Suchite told IPS in a telephone interview from the village of Minas Abajo, in the municipality of San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula department in eastern Guatemala, also located in the Central American Dry Corridor.

Suchite said the system was revived in his region in 2000, but with the FAO and Amexcid project, it has become more technical.

As part of the programme, some 150 families have received two 1,500-litre tanks and a drip irrigation system, he added.

“Now we are expanding it even more because it has given us good results, it has improved the soil and boosted production,” said Suchite, 55.

In the dry season, farmers collect water from nearby springs in tanks and, using gravity, irrigate their home gardens.

“Many families are managing to have a surplus of vegetables and with the sales, they buy other necessary food,” Suchite said.

The programme is scheduled to end in Guatemala in 2021, and local communities must assume the lessons learned in order to move forward.

An older woman panhandles on a street in San Salvador. Criminal trafficking groups take advantage of vulnerable people, such as the destitute, to force them to beg. But in Central America, 80 percent of the victims of trafficking are women and girls, for purposes of sexual exploitation. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 8 2019 (IPS)

Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world – as a major source of migrants heading towards the United States.

Human trafficking has had deep roots in Central America, especially in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, for decades, and increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks, and to offer support programmes for the victims.

The phenomenon “has become more visible in recent years, but not much progress has been made in the area of more direct attention to victims,” Carmela Jibaja, a Catholic nun with the Ramá Network against Trafficking in Persons, told IPS."We know that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are countries with a heavy flow of undocumented migrants, which puts them at risk of becoming victims of trafficking." -- Carlos Morán

This Central American civil society organisation forms part of the Talita Kum International Network against Trafficking in Persons, based in Rome, which brings together 58 anti-trafficking organisations around the world.

Jibaja pointed out that “the biggest trafficking problem is at the borders, because El Salvador is a country that expels migrants,” as well as in tourism areas. The most recognised form of trafficking in the region is sexual exploitation, whose victims are women.

Carlos Morán, Interpol security officer and a member of the Honduran police Cybercrime Unit, concurs .

“We know that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are countries with a heavy flow of undocumented migrants, which puts them at risk of becoming victims of trafficking,” Morán told IPS while participating in a regional forum on the issue, hosted Nov. 4-8 by San Salvador.

The “Regional Seminar on Investigation Techniques and Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Persons” brought together officials from the office of the public prosecutor, police officers, legal experts and other key actors and experts from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the countries that make up the so-called Northern Central American Triangle.

The objective is to strengthen capacities and good practices in the investigation of trafficking, especially when the crime is transnational in nature.

Morán and other participants in the meeting declined to talk about figures on the extent of trafficking in the region, due to the lack of reliable data.

Prosecutors, police officers, government officials, experts and representatives of social organisations from Central America are participating in a special seminar on human trafficking Nov. 4-8 to identify and coordinate joint efforts. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Civil society supports victims

In the countries of the Northern Triangle there are government efforts to develop victim care programmes, but they are insufficient and civil society organisations have had to take up the challenge.

Mirna Argueta, executive director of the Association for the Self-Determination of Salvadoran Women (AS Mujeres), told IPS that “the problem is serious, because we are facing networks with great economic and political influence, and victims are not being protected,” and there are very few programmes to help with their reinsertion in society.

Her organisation has been working since 1996 with victims of trafficking, offering psychological and medical support, and is also an important ally of the Attorney-General’s Office in victim protection work.

AS Mujeres collaborates with the police and prosecutors when victims have to be moved from one place to another, in the most secretive way possible, especially when judicial cases against organised crime networks are underway.

In the past it has also offered shelter to women victims of trafficking, but now the prosecutor’s office does, said Argueta, who is also coordinator in El Salvador of the Latin American Observatory on Trafficking in Persons, which brings together 15 countries.

AS Mujeres’ victim care programme includes, in addition to psychological support, medical assistance which incorporates non-traditional techniques such as biomagnetism, performed by a physician specialising in this area, as well as massage and aromatherapy.

“Experience has shown us that with the combination of these three techniques, recovery is more effective, and care is more integral,” said Argueta.

She added that since the programme’s inception in 1996, it has served some 600 trafficking victims.

They currently offer support to five women, who IPS could not speak to because they are under legal protection, and providing their names or a telephone number for them has criminal consequences.

For the same reason, the public prosecutor’s office also vetoed conducting interviews with victims under its protection.

AS Mujeres also promotes a self-care network.

“When the victim has gone through different stages, we integrate her with other women and they can share their experiences, making it less painful, and helping them with their reinsertion in society,” Argueta added.

She said many victims feel they are “damaged,” or worthless, and they turn to prostitution.

Victims can spend anywhere from six months to two and a half years in the programme, depending on the complexity of each case. For example, there are women with acute problems of depression, suicidal thoughts and persecutory delusions.

According to figures from the United Nations office in Honduras, released in July, 80 percent of the victims of human trafficking in Central America are women and girls.

In El Salvador, 90 percent of cases involve sexual exploitation, according to official figures provided by the public prosecutor’s office during the regional forum in San Salvador.

However, other types of trafficking have been detected, such as labour exploitation, forced panhandling and others.

So far this year, the prosecution has reported 800 victims, cases that are still open.

Mirna Argueta (L), executive director of the Association for the Self-Determination of Salvadoran Women, and Catholic nun Carmela Jibaja, of the Central American Network against Trafficking in Persons, are two activists working to provide care for victims of trafficking, who are mostly women. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In Guatemala, in 2018, the Public Prosecutor’s Office detected 478 possible victims of human trafficking, four percent more than the previous year. There were 276 reported cases, also an increase of four percent.

Children and adolescents continue to be vulnerable to trafficking, as 132 children and adolescents were detected as possible victims of human trafficking, 28 percent of the total, 111 of whom were rescued.

They were victims of illegal adoptions, labour exploitation, forced marriage, forced panhandling, sexual exploitation and forced labour or services. But the most invisible form of trafficking, according to the prosecutor’s office, is the recruitment of minors into organised crime.

Gangs involved in people trafficking

Experts consulted by IPS point out that many trafficking cases are the product of a relatively new phenomenon: involvement in trafficking by the gangs that are responsible for the crime wave in the three Northern Triangle countries.

The gangs have mutated into bona fide organised crime groups, with tentacles in the illicit drug trade, extortion rackets, “sicariato” or murder for hire and now human trafficking, among other criminal activities.

In El Salvador, it is common to hear stories in neighborhoods and towns controlled by gangs about young girls who gang leaders “ask for”, to be used as sex toys by the leaders and other members of the gang, and the families hand them over because they know that they could be killed if they don’t.

But the gangs go farther than that, forcing their victims to provide sexual services for profit, another aspect of trafficking.

Official figures from the National Council against Trafficking in Persons, which brings together government agencies to combat the phenomenon, indicate that in 2018 there were 46 confirmed victims, 43 police investigations and 38 judicial proceedings.

The trials led to four convictions and two acquittals. The rest are still winding their way through court, according to the Council’s Work Report 2018.

The document also reported that the attention to victims included programmes to help them launch small enterprises, as well as measures of integral reparations for families of children and adolescents in the shelters.

Emergency response teams were also coordinated to provide assistance to victims, whether the women are foreigners or nationals.

El Salvador is part of the Regional Coalition against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants, along with Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Honduras has also provided support for economic reinsertion, offering seed capital to set up small jewelry businesses, among others, said Interpol’s Morán.

At least 337 people from Honduras have been rescued since 2018, including 13 in Belize and Guatemala, according to a report by the Inter-Institutional Commission Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons in Honduras.

Excerpt:

By Edgardo Ayala
USPANTÁN, Guatemala, Jul 3 2019 (IPS)

Because the government has never provided them with electricity, indigenous communities in the mountains of northwest Guatemala had no choice but to generate their own energy.

Now electricity lights up their nights and, most importantly, fuels small businesses that provide extra income to some of the 1,000 families who benefit from the community energy projects.

These community projects have been implemented in four indigenous villages located in the Zona Reina eco-region, in Uspantán municipality in the northwestern department of Quiché.

The miracle of having light initially occurred more than 10 years ago in 31 de Mayo, a Maya indigenous village.

Thanks to financial cooperation from organisations in Spain and Norway, the hard work of the community and support from the environmental group MadreSelva, the first mini-hydroelectric plant began to operate there, harnessing the waters of the Putul River.

Given the success of the first community hydropower plant, other villages also decided to generate their own electric power: El Lirio, in May 2015; La Taña, in September 2016; and La Gloria, in November 2017.

And these four villages share their electricity with five neighbouring communities.

Life has changed today in these villages, local resident Zaiada Gamarro told IPS. She stressed the importance of electricity for women, who can now cook and perform other household tasks at night, for children, who can now do their homework after dark, and for businesses like small bakeries or shops that can now sell refrigerated products.

A similar plan is under way to build mini-dams in eight other indigenous villages in the neighbouring region of Los Copones. They will also share their electricity with 11 communities in the surrounding area, in a project for which the German development aid agency has contributed 1.25 million dollars.

For further information, read the IPS article: Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemala.

Diego Matom, a member of the Ixil indigenous community, poses happily with his family, surrounded by fresh loaves of bread which were baked thanks to community electricity generation, which has given his business a big boost, in the 31 de Mayo village in the mountainous ecoregion of Zona Reina, in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
USPANTÁN, Guatemala, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local authorities.

“The bakery used to operate with a gas oven, but the cost was very high because baking took a long time; now everything is faster and cheaper,” Matom told IPS, surrounded by his freshly baked loaves of bread.

Matom, a 29-year-old Ixil Indian, lives in the village of 31 de Mayo, located in the ecoregion of Zona Reina, Uspantán municipality, in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala.

The village, some 300 kilometers north of the capital, was the first of four in the area to build its own hydroelectric plant, driven by necessity, since the state does not bring basic public services to this remote region.

There is no piped water, and medical and educational services are scarce, as is the case in many rural areas of this Central American nation of 17.3 million inhabitants.

In the communities of Zona Reina, water for human consumption comes from the springs perched in the mountains surrounding the villages, which is stored in tanks from which it is piped.

The 31 de Mayo power plant, called Light of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, consists of a turbine that generates 75 kW and is powered by the waters of the Putul River, channeled by a two-kilometer concrete channel into a 40-cubic-meter tank.

From there, the water runs down with enough pressure to move the turbine in the engine room.

The name of the village recalls the date on which some 400 Ixil and Quiché indigenous families were resettled there by the government in 1998, after the end of the 1960-1996 civil war.

These families were part of the so-called Communities of Population in Resistance, which during the conflict had to flee to the mountains due to repression by the army, which considered them supporters of the left-wing guerrilla.

Once resettled, each family received a small plot of land, where they plant corn and cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), of which Guatemala is the world’s largest producer and one of the top exporters.

Following the example of 31 de Mayo, three other communities in Zona Reina struggled to become self-sufficient in electricity: El Lirio in May 2015, La Taña in September 2016 and La Gloria in November 2017.

The machine house for the mini-hydropower dam in the 31 de Mayo village, which provides energy to some 500 families and has served as a model for self-generation from community dams to extend throughout the Zona Reina ecoregion in the municipality of Uspantán in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Unlike large-scale dams, which typically use 100 percent of river flow, community dams use only 10 percent, maintaining normal flow and preventing communities from running out of water downstream.

The four mini-hydroelectric plants supply the four villages where they are located and five neighbouring villages, benefiting a total of 1,000 families. But much remains to be done to promote access to energy throughout the Zona Reina, where there are a total of 86 villages.

But word is spreading and there is already another project approved for eight other villages, in the neighbouring ecoregion of Los Copones, that will share the energy generated with 11 neighbouring communities. The plan has received 1.25 million dollars in development aid financing from Germany.

The population in the Zona Reina is mainly indigenous, composed mainly of the Q’eqch’is, although they live alongside other Mayan peoples, such as the Ixil.

“Now that we have electricity we can do whatever we want, the kids come home from school and plug in their computers and do their homework,” said Zaida Gamarro, 31, a resident of La Taña.

Life used to be more difficult because at night the villagers used candles or lanterns for which they had to buy kerosene regularly, Gamarro told IPS during a tour of the villages that have community dams, located in a mountainous area where travel by road is difficult.

Several businesses such as the Matom bakery have also emerged, along with mechanics’ garages, carpentry workshops and several shops that can now use refrigerators.

“The business is going well, because we are located on the main street, and people are interested in our refrigerated products,” said José Ical, 38, a native of La Gloria and the owner of a small grocery store.

These efforts were made possible thanks to European development aid funds and local work by the environmental collective MadreSelva, in charge of designing and executing micro-hydroelectricity projects.

The families pay an average of 30 quetzals (about four dollars) per month for energy – less than what is paid by families in municipalities on the main power grid.

Countercurrent self-generation

The idea for local inhabitants to produce their own energy clashed with the interests of international consortiums and ran into resistance from mayors allied with those groups, said those interviewed in the communities.

A man shows the 27-cubic-meter tank of the La Taña community hydropower system, one of four installed in this remote mountainous region populated mostly by indigenous people in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Specifically, they accused the Italian transnational company Enel Green Power, which runs the Palo Viejo Hydroelectric Project in the area, of carrying out a smear campaign against community dams.

A community hydroelectric plant, they said, runs counter to the system by which the state grants concessions to companies, which become the sole providers of those services.

The company, they added, maneuvered to divide the 31 de Mayo community, convincing some 100 families to abandon the project and thus weaken it, through a South African Pentecostal evangelist, Gregorio Walton, who offered solar panels to those who left the community project.

“There is a great deal of manipulation on the part of Enel, it wants to make people believe that the community project can’t work, that only the company can provide good electricity,” said Regina Ramos, from the community of 31 de Mayo.

Enel Green Power representatives did not respond to IPS’ request for comment.

“We don’t want companies like Enel, they just come to destroy our rivers and leave the community nothing,” said Max Chaman Simac, president of the Amaluna Nuevo Amanecer Association of La Taña.

Enel’s Palo Viejo power plant began to operate in March 2012, with a capacity of 85 MW. The consortium now has five hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. In total, it has 640 plants in Europe and the Americas.

The inhabitants of these villages maintained that the consortium was able to enter the region thanks to the permit granted by the then mayor of Uspantán, Víctor Hugo Figueroa.

“He was part of a strategy of land grabbing, in favour of extractive projects,” one of MadreSelva’s members, José Cruz, told IPS.

Other projects flourish

Meanwhile, the MadreSelva collective has sought to develop agroecological projects that help conserve ecosystems, especially in watersheds, and at the same time generate incomes for families.

Taking advantage of the organisation originally set up for the energy projects, a group of women now produce eco-friendly shampoos and soaps made from plants, ash, salt and other ingredients.

The families thus save money on basic products, and some of the women have also started to market them.

“We are encouraging people to plant home gardens, including herbs like rosemary, chamomile, etc., as well as the usual vegetables,” Mercedes Monzón, an activist in charge of these projects on the part of Madre Selva, told IPS.

Another initiative in this direction is the production of natural broths, based on rosemary, basil, dill, parsley and other aromatic herbs, which reduces the purchase of these products, whose wrappers bring pollution to the area.

In the central park of the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, a camp was improvised, where thousands of migrants stopped to rest and wash before proceeding to the border with the United States, 2,000 kilometres away. People of all ages, entire families and many children are part of the caravan that began its desperate trek on Oct. 13 in Honduras. Credit: Javier García/IPS

By Daniela Pastrana
TAPACHULA, Mexico, Oct 22 2018 (IPS)

A long chain of people is winding its way along the highways of Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state. It is moving fast, despite the fact that one-third of its ranks are made up of children, and it has managed to avoid the multiple obstacles that the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and now Mexico, under pressure from the United States, have thrown up in a vain effort to stop it.

Every attempt to make it shrink seems to have the opposite effect. And on Monday Oct. 22, some 7,000 Central Americans, most of them Hondurans, kept walking northward, in defiance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning to do everything possible to “stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing” the U.S.-Mexico border."This is giving rise to something like a trail of ants, and we don't know where it's going to end…We're going to be seeing mass exoduses much more similar to those we see from Africa to Europe." -- Quique Vidal Olascoaga

The caravan that set out from San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, in the early hours of Oct. 13, has put the migration policy of the entire region in check. Trump took it up as the campaign theme for the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, and via Twitter, threatened Honduras with immediate withdrawal of any financial aid.

“People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away,” Trump tweeted.

The caravan isn’t stopping. In nine days it has travelled a little more than 700 kilometres to reach Tapachula, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, close to the border, which has welcomed the migrants’ arrival with food, beverages and encouraging messages.

Groups of activists and human rights defenders are preparing to meet them in different parts of the country. “This is not a caravan, it’s an exodus,” say migrant advocates.

There is still a long road ahead, however. The migrants still have 2,000 kilometres to go before reaching the nearest Mexican-U.S. border crossing, in an area governed by criminal groups, which have made migrant smuggling one of the country’s most lucrative businesses.

In addition, the Mexican government has threatened to detain them if they leave Chiapas, where local legislation allows them to be in transit with few requirements because it is a border zone.

But none of this has prevented new groups of migrants from arriving every day to join the caravan.

The number of children in the arms of their parents is striking, as they walk kilometre after kilometer, cross rivers and border barriers, or wait for hours in crowded, unsanitary conditions, in suffocating temperatures.

The stories they tell are heartbreaking.

A line of more than five kilometres of migrants walked on Sunday, Oct 21, from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula, 40 kilometers inside the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. There are 2,000 kilometres left to the U.S.-Mexico border, along a route that is partly controlled by organised crime groups. Credit: Javier García/IPS

“We don’t have a job, we don’t have medicine, we have nothing in our country, we can’t even afford to eat properly. I want to get to the United States to raise my children,” Ramón Rodríguez, a man from San Pedro Sula who arrived with his whole family to the Guatemalan-Mexican border on Oct. 17, told IPS in tears.

In the last decade, human rights organisations and journalists have documented the massive displacement of Central Americans toward the southern border of Mexico, and have repeatedly warned of a humanitarian crisis that is being ignored.

In 2016, the Global Report on Internal Displacement, published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, devoted a special section to an emerging phenomenon of displacement in Mexico and the countries of the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador).

In May 2017, Médecins Sans Frontières presented the report “Forced to Flee Central America’s Northern Triangle: A Neglected Humanitarian Crisis”, in which it warned of an exodus, caused above all by criminal violence in the region.

The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, which has organised 14 caravans of mothers of migrants who have disappeared in Mexican territory, has also described the situation in the Northern Triangle as a “humanitarian tragedy”.

The violence, along with precarious labour and economic conditions, skyrocketed a few days ago when the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez announced hikes in the electricity rates.

According to versions given by Hondurans who arrived in Mexico, it was Bartolo Fuentes, a pastor and former legislator who has participated in several caravans in Mexico, who launched the call for a collective march to the United States.

They were to gather in the Great Metropolitan Central bus station in San Pedro Sula. Around one thousand people showed up.

Hundreds of Mexicans mobilised to help Central American migrants, many giving rides in their cars and trucks to members of the caravan, to ease their journey to Tapachula, where other supportive residents provided them with food and beverages. Credit: Javier García/IPS

“Many of us thought that in a group it was easier and safer, because we know that going through Mexico is dangerous,” a member of the caravan who asked for anonymity told IPS. “Later, messages began to arrive through Whatsapp (the instant messaging network), and people began to organise to flee the country,” he said.

By Oct. 15, another group had organised in Choluteca, in southern Honduras, and yet another in Tegucigalpa.

The Honduran government tried to close the border crossings, but was unable to stop some 3,000 people from leaving the country and crossing Guatemala. The detention and deportation of Pastor Fuentes did not stop them either. On Oct. 17, the caravan arrived in the city of Tecún Umán, on the border with Mexico.

The Mexican government had stepped up security at the border and the caravan was stranded on the bridge that joins the two countries. Desperation set in: on Oct. 19, the migrants crossed the police cordon and were dispersed with tear gas.

Faced with media pressure, the Mexican authorities offered “orderly passage” for groups of 30 to 40 people who were to take the steps to apply for refuge.

But it was actually a ruse, because the migrants were taken to an immigration station where they must stay 45 days, and have no guarantees of the regularisation of their immigration status.

The border bridge became a refugee camp, without humanitarian assistance from either government. The only thing the Guatemalan government provided were buses for those who wanted to “voluntarily” return to their country.

Exhausted, many decided to turn around, the disappointment plain to see on their faces.

However, the bulk of the caravan made the decision to swim or raft across the Suchiate River.

For more than 24 hours, images of thousands of people crossing the river circled the world, while other groups of migrants continued to arrive at the border to join the caravan that today numbers more than 7,000 people, according to human rights groups.

Some activists believe that, because of its size and the form it has taken, this caravan could fundamentally change migratory movements in Central America, with people increasingly turning to a new strategy of migrating in huge groups.

“This is giving rise to something like a trail of ants, and we don’t know where it’s going to end,” Quique Vidal Olascoaga, an activist with the organisation Voces Mesoamericanas, told IPS. “We’re going to be seeing mass exoduses much more similar to those we see from Africa to Europe.”

With reporting by Rodrigo Soberanes and Angeles Mariscal, from various places in the state of Chiapas.

A meeting to discuss the restoration of land in Colombia to rural victims of the half-century armed conflict – a situation that the voluntary guidelines on land tenure can help solve. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Apr 6 2016 (IPS)

Voluntary guidelines on land tenure adopted by the international community to combat the growing concentration of land ownership and improve secure access to land have begun to make headway in Latin America, a region that is a leader in the fight against hunger and that is taking firm steps towards achieving food security.

“The guidelines are an absolutely political document, which helps even out the playing field,” promoting dialogue and negotiation, said Sergio Gómez, a consultant with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) regional office, in the Chilean capital.

“The dynamics of the land market and the concentration of land ownership and land-grabbing by foreign interests had gotten out of control, and the FAO addressed this because if these things are not kept within reasonable limits, food security is jeopardised,” he told IPS.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security can only be understood in relation to the existing levels of land concentration and land-grabbing, he said.“The land tenure situation today is unprecedented, because it is happening at a very particular moment, when the food crisis that applies heavy pressure to natural resources is compounded by an energy crisis and a financial crisis.” -- Sergio Gómez

According to a FAO studied carried out in 17 countries in this region, land-grabbing has increased significantly since the turn of the century.

In this region, the concentration of land ownership and land-grabbing are at their strongest in Argentina and Brazil, followed by the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

These problems are at a mid- to high level of intensity in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru, while they are less present in the countries of Central America and the English-speaking Caribbean.

“The land tenure situation today is unprecedented, because it is happening at a very particular moment, when the food crisis that applies heavy pressure to natural resources is compounded by an energy crisis and a financial crisis,” Gómez said.

“All of this leads to unprecedented pressure with regard to the land question,” he said.

The Guidelines, approved in 2012 by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) – described as the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition for all – are aimed at serving as a reference point for and providing orientation to improve the governance of land tenure, fisheries and forests.

“The Guidelines are a negotiating tool in an area where there are no clear formulas, but where, in a wide range of situations, the affected groups have to sit down and dialogue, to seek agreements,” Gómez said.

The document establishes 10 rules that the different actors must accept before engaging in dialogue. They are called implementation principles, and are obligatory and designed to provide orientation for this kind of discussion.

They range from respect for human dignity and existing laws to gender equality and transparency.

All of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have signed the accord, and although it is not binding, “it is understood that there is a willingness to comply,” Gómez said.

Three approaches

But the guidelines are just now starting to be applied in the region.

Concrete experiences in three countries – Guatemala, Colombia and Chile – represent three different approaches.

In Guatemala, the initiative emerged from a request from the government, which in 2013 asked the FAO to provide support and technical assistance to strengthen the country’s agricultural institutions.

“What we did in Guatemala is the most significant thing we have done in the region,” said Gómez.

The land issue, fraught with conflict and inequality, is a major problem in that Central American country of 15.8 million people, where nearly 54 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and 42 percent are indigenous.

In rural areas in Guatemala, the poverty rate climbs to 75 percent, and six out of 10 people living in poverty are considered extremely poor.

This Mapuche couple, Luis Aillapán and his wife Catalina Marileo, were tried and convicted under an anti-terrorism law for protesting the construction of a road across their land, which violated their land rights. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

In terms of land ownership, two percent of farmers own 57 percent of the land, while 92 percent own just 22 percent.

As a result of the progress made, 80 percent of the aspects tackled in discussions in the country were incorporated in the 2014 national agrarian policy plan.

But the 2015 political crisis brought the process to a halt, although the FAO hopes to get things moving again.

In Colombia, meanwhile, land questions are at the heart of the armed conflict that has shaken the country for over half a century, and resolving this problem is essential to achieving peace, and to ensuring compliance with a preliminary agreement on justice and reparations reached Dec. 15 in the peace talks between the government and the FARC insurgents in Havana.

An estimated 6.6 million hectares – roughly 15 percent of Colombia’s farmland – were stolen or abandoned when the families were forcibly displaced since the early 1990s. Today, 77 percent of the land in the conflict-torn country of 48 million people is in the hands of 13 percent of owners, while just 3.6 percent own a full 30 percent of the land.

“In Colombia, land is a hot issue, and it is key to the peace agreement” expected to arise from the peace talks in the Cuban capital, Gómez said.

He added that the authorities “have passed a few laws to restore land to people who were forced off it, who number in the tens of thousands. But now we’re entering another phase, based on a project for cooperation with the European Union, as part of the peace process.”

On the road to implementation of the Guidelines, the FAO has discussed holding regional workshops and has stressed the need for local involvement.

Nury Martínez, a leader of FENSUAGRO, the largest agricultural workers union in Colombia, which has contributed to the process aimed at implementing the Guidelines, said some of the points included in the Guidelines “are very important to us as peasant farmers…and are tools of struggle.”

But to use a tool it is necessary to be familiar with it. With that aim, the Food Sovereignty Alliance drew up a popular manual on the Guidelines, “aimed at helping people understand them better and enabling peasant farmers and indigenous people to make them their own,” Martínez, who is also a regional leader of the international peasant movement Vía Campesina, told IPS from Bogotá.

In Chile, meanwhile, the FAO has worked in the southern region of La Araucanía, where the Mapuche indigenous people have long been fighting for their right to land.

In the South American country of 17.6 million people, forestry companies own 2.8 million hectares of land, with just two corporations owning 1.8 million hectares.

José Aylwin, co-director of the Citizen Observatory, a Chilean NGO, told IPS that in Chile, “there is no other case, except private conservation projects, of such heavy concentration of land in so few hands.”

He added that the context surrounding the conflict in southern Chile “is that of a people who lived and owned that land and the natural resources, and a state and private interests that came in later and stripped the Mapuche people of a large part of their territory.”

Despite the polarisation of groups in the area, the FAO managed to bring together 67 people, including Mapuche and business community leaders, in May 2015.

Aylwin said these talks demonstrated “the timeliness of the Guidelines” with respect to conflicts generated by the concentration of land in the hands of the forest industry.

“The conflicts in La Araucanía do no one any good; solutions are needed, and the Guidelines provide essential orientation,” he said.

Despite the difficulties, Gómez predicted that the Guidelines would increasingly be applied in the region. “So although we feel distressed that faster progress isn’t being made, we’ll have Guidelines for several decades.”

With additional reporting by Constanza Viera in Bogotá.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

It is astonishing that every week we see action being taken in various part of the world against the financial sector, without any noticeable reaction of public opinion.

It is astonishing because at the same time we are experiencing a very serious crisis, with high unemployment, precarious jobs and an unprecedented growth of inequality, which can all be attributed, largely, to speculative finance.

Roberto Savio

This all began in 2008 with the mortgage crisis and the bursting of the derivatives bubble in the United States, followed by the bursting of the sovereign bonds bubble in Europe.

It is calculated that we will need to wait until at least 2020 to be able to go back to the levels of 2008 – so we are talking of a lost decade.

To bail out the banks, the world has collectively spent around 4 trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money. Just to make the point, Spain has dedicated more than its annual budget on education and health to bail out the banking sector … and the saga continues.

Last week, five major banks agreed to pay 5.6 billion to the U.S. authorities because of their manipulations in the currency market. The banks are household names: the American JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, the British Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the Swiss UBS.“To bail out the banks, the world has collectively spent around 4 trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money”

In the case of UBS, the U.S. Department of Justice took the unusual step of tearing up a non-prosecution agreement it had reached earlier, saying that it had taken that step because of the bank’s repeated offences. “UBS has a ‘rap sheet’ that cannot be ignored,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.

This is a significant departure from the Justice Department’s guidelines issued in 2008, according to which collateral consequences have to be taken into account when indicting financial institutions.

“The collateral consequences consideration is designed to address the risk that a particular criminal charge might inflict disproportionate harm to shareholders, pension holders and employees who are not even alleged to be culpable or to have profited potentially from wrongdoing,” said Mark Filip, the Justice Department official who wrote the 2008 memo.

Referring to the case of accounting giant Arthur Andersen, which certified as valid the accounts of the Enron energy company that went into bankruptcy for faking its budget, Filip said that “Arthur Andersen was ultimately never convicted of anything, but the mere act of indicting it destroyed one of the cornerstones of the Midwest’s economy.”

This was in fact a declaration of impunity, which did not escape the managers of the financial system, under the telling title of “Too Big to Fail”.

Two weeks ago, a judge from the Federal District Court of Manhattan, Denise L. Cote, condemned two major banks – the Japanese Nomura Holdings and the British Royal Bank of Scotland – for misleading two mortgage public institutions, Fannie Mae [Federal National Mortgage Association] and Freddie Mac [Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation], by selling them mortgage bonds which contained countless errors and misrepresentations.

“The magnitude of falsity, conservatively measured, is enormous,” she wrote in her scathing decision.

Nomura Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland were just two of 18 banks that had been accused of manipulating the housing market. The other 16 settled out of court to pay nearly 18 billion dollars in penalties and avoid having their misdeeds aired in public.

Nomura Holdings and Royal Bank of Scotland refused any settlement and instead went to court against the U.S. government, arguing that it was the housing crash which caused their mortgage bonds to collapse. Judge Cote, however, wrote that it was precisely the banks’ criminal behaviour which had exacerbated the collapse in the mortgage market.

It is worth noting that, until now, the cumulative fines inflicted by the U.S. government on just five major banks since 2008 amount to a quarter of a trillion dollars. No one has yet gone to jail – fines have been paid and the question closed.

Now the question: is all this due to the misconduct of a few greedy managers or is it due to the new “ethics” of the financial sector?

By the way, let us not forget that it was revealed recently that 25 hedge fund managers took close to 14 billion dollars only last year and that the highest paid manager took for himself the unthinkable amount of 1.3 billion dollars, equal to the combined average salaries of 200,000 U.S. professionals.

Well, just a week ago, the respected University of Notre Dame was reported as having published a startling report, based on a survey of more than 1,200 hedge fund professionals, investment bankers, traders, portfolio managers from the United States and the United Kingdom, in which about one-third of those earning more than 500,000 dollars a year said that they “have witnessed or have first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in their workplace.”

The report went on to say that “nearly one in five respondents feel financial services professionals must sometimes engage in unethical or illegal activity to be successful in the current financial environment” and in any case,  nearly half of the high income professionals consider authorities to be ”ineffective in detecting, investigating and prosecuting securities violations.”

A quarter of respondents stated that if they saw that there was no chance of being arrested for insider trading to earn a guaranteed 10 million dollars, they would do so.

And nearly one-third “believe compensation structures or bonus plans in place at their companies could incentivise employees to compromise ethics or violate the law.”  It should also be noted that the majority were worried their employer “would likely to retaliate if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace.” So, the bonus that goes to those in the financial sector every year practically amounts to a bribe for silence on misconduct.

At the same time, we have learned that in Guatemala the Governor of the Central Bank has been arrested for embezzling 10 million dollars. Of course, everything is a question of scale…but in sociology there is a mechanism called “demonstration effect”.

The example of Wall Street and the City will increasingly seep down once a new “ethic” is in place. It will propagate if it is not stopped … and this is not happening.

A final note. In the same week (how many things have happened in such a short space of time), the Federal Trade Commission of Columbia accused four respected cancer charities of misusing donations worth millions of dollars.

One of them, the Cancer Fund of America, declared that it spent 100 percent of proceeds on hospice care, transporting patients to chemotherapy sessions and buying medication for children. The Federal Trade Commission found in fact that less than three percent of donations was spent on cancer patients.

The “new ethic” is in reality a cancer, and it is metastasising rapidly. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

The government of Guatemala has been praised for a programme helping young women avoid unwanted pregnancies and finish their education.

On the opening day of the Commission on the Status of Women at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday, Guatemala was held up as an example of how governments can develop frameworks to protect and promote the rights of young women.

Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, praised Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti for her government’s ‘PLANEA’ initiative, providing sexual education to adolescents.

“Young people can break away from the cycle of poverty and create a sustainable future, but first we have to invest in their health, sexual and reproductive health, education, and empower them going forward,” Osotimehin said.

“By helping girls stay in school, we prevent pregnancy, and give them greater autonomy and agency. This can be shared as good practice in Latin America and around the world.”

The ‘Abriendo Opportunidades’ (‘Opening Opportunities’) programme has reached over 6,000 girls. Around 97 percent of Abriendo girl leaders remained childless during the programme, compared with a national average of 78 percent. All participants completed sixth grade of schooling, compared with a national average of 82 percent.

UNFPA said child marriage and adolescent pregnancy are common among girls, especially indigenous Guatemalan girls, in poverty. Around 74 percent of indigenous girls live in poverty.

Baldetti, speaking through a translator, said rape – especially family rape – and adolescent pregnancy were far too common in Guatemala, and outlined changes to policies on young women since her government came to power in 2012.

Baldetti said she was the country’s first female vice president and had instituted a Specific Cabinet for Women – the only one of its type in Latin America, she claimed.

“Complications in pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death. This is not just a population issue, it is a development issue rooted in inequality, power imbalances, forced marriages, lack of education, and a failure of systems and institutions to protect them,” she said.

Baldetti explained how Guatemala now treats pregnancies of girls under the age of 14 as “rape crimes,” with a view to prosecuting the man responsible. Specific clinics to deal with such cases have been installed in over 40 locations nationwide.

“We collect the DNA of the person who raped them and collect evidence… in 48 hours, we know who owns that DNA and who aggressed this child,” she said.

Other programmes help young women with children of their own to access food and social assistance, as well as help the young woman back to school.

Guatemala and UNFPA also signed an agreement on ‘South-South Cooperation’ during the presentation, recognising Guatemala’s work and how it might be applied to other countries, especially in Latin America.

“Investing in young people, helping them realise their human rights and capabilities, is key to human development and sustainability. Guatemala is standing up to be counted, and providing this unique example to follow,” Osotimehin said.

“This is a part of the world we need to make progress rapidly. Adolescent girls must be the centre of that development.”

María Mercedes Coroy, first-time lead actress in ‘Ixcanul Volcano’, winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 2015 Berlinale. The film, directed by Guatemalan Jayro Buscamante, emerged from a community-media storytelling project involving local women in discussion groups and script writing workshops in Kaqchikel, one of the 12 regional Mayan languages. Credit: © La Casa de Producción

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Feb 26 2015 (IPS)

In recent years, the Berlin International Film Festival, known as the Berlinale, has established a European hub for indigenous voices across a number of platforms, including its NATIVe – A Journey into Indigenous Cinema series and Storytelling-Slams in which indigenous storytelling artists share their stories before opening the floor to contributions from the audience.

This year’s Berlinale, with a focus on Latin America, dabbed a rainbow of native flair to Berlin’s greyest month, with a chorus of voices and perspectives from indigenous people, including Guarani, Hicholes, Xavante, Wichi, Kuikuro, Mapuche, Tzotzil and Quechua.

And it was an indigenous story from Guatemala – ‘Ixcanul Volcano’ by Jayro Buscamante (37), set among the Maya community in the Pacaya volcano region – which took home the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize this year for a film that “opens new perspectives on cinematic art”."I wanted to reveal the state of impotence, the real situation faced by indigenous women who have no power, told from their own perspective, in their own language” – Jayro Buscamante, director of ‘Ixcanul Volcano’

Ixcanul Volcano is the story of Maria, a 17-year-old Mayan girl from a coffee-farming community in the volcano’s foothills, who is torn between an arranged marriage to the local foreman and her attraction to a young local man, Pepe, who seduces her with his dreams of a different life, beyond the volcano, up north.

Following a botched-up elopement attempt, Maria finds herself bearing the consequences of an unwanted teenage pregnancy. The young girl and her mother, played by Maria Telon, a Mayan community theatre actress-activist, are soon engulfed in a precipice of dramatic circumstances.

Based on true events, Ixcanul Volcano emerged from a community-media storytelling project where Buscamante involved local women in discussion groups and script writing workshops in Kaqchikel, one of the 12 regional Mayan languages. Inevitably, the story came to reflect the glaring nexus among human rights abuses, poverty and powerlessness.

“I wanted to reveal the state of impotence, the real situation faced by indigenous women who have no power, told from their own perspective, in their own language,” explained Buscamante, who learnt Kaqchikel growing up among the Maya.

It was his mother, a community health worker, who first told him about the scourge surrounding child-trafficking practices, one of the darkest chapters of Guatemala’s long civil war (1960-1996), involving public health employees and state authorities.

The United Nations has reported a staggering 400 cases of abductions of Mayan children and minors per year, a human rights scandal carried out with impunity.

“There is an insidious social-legal framework which can chain and cheat the poorest of the poor even while pretending to help them out. This leads to a state of impotence and submission, sometimes the only response left available,” explained Buscamante.

Yet, in Berlin, Maria Telon and the hauntingly beautiful, first-time lead, María Mercedes Coroy,  spoke of their gratitude for “liking our story” and for being heard and appreciated, something which, Telon said, is not always the case for indigenous women and communities.

The horrors and human rights crimes perpetrated by the massacre of the Mayan population, which accounted for 85 percent of the victims of the Guatemalan civil war, are outlined in a report by Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission’s report titled “Memory of Silence”, drafted by three rapporteurs, including German jurist Christian Tomuschat, professor of public international law at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

Memory was the thread linking native perspectives on water, the crucial element sustaining life on the planet and the subject of The Pearl Button (El boton de nazar), Chilean film director Patricio Guzman’s documentary, which took home a Berlinale Silver Bear Prize for Best Script.

Countries which deny their past remain stuck in collective amnesia and Guzman, for whom “a country without documentary cinema is like a family without a family album,” applies this conviction to Chile’s denial of its colonial history and the extermination of its native inhabitants.

The documentary’s title refers to the legend of Jemmy Button, a Yagan teenager who was sold off to a British naval captain in 1830 for the price of a pearl button.

It pays tribute to three of the all but extinguished Yacatan original inhabitants, the “water nomads” of the Patagonian estuary, and to the native wisdom of those who navigated these waters which sustained human existence for centuries.

Interviewed by Guzman, who endured 15 days of detention in Pinochet’s infamous torture stadium in 1973 and is internationally acclaimed for the documentary trilogy ‘The Battle of Chile’ (1975-1978), Gabriela Paterito recalled a 600-mile voyage aged 12 with her mother to collect fresh water.

Asked to translate Spanish words into her own native Kawesquar, Paterito recalls many words including “water”, “sun” and “button” and, pushed to find the equivalent for “police”, she nods replying: “No, we don’t need that.” And as far as God is concerned, her response comes as a resolute: “No, there is no God.”

The fate of Gabriela’s people was sealed in Chile’s colonial past. Five distinct ethnic groups tied to the water environment of the archipelagos were exterminated by Catholic missionaries and conquistadores.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recognises that “indigenous knowledge is the local knowledge that is unique to a culture or society” and that knowledge of the natural world cannot be confined to science because it represents the accumulated knowledge which has sustained human societies in their interaction with the natural world across the ages.

Another protagonist in The Pearl Button explains how the government denies him the use of his handmade canoe,  and consequently access to his own traditional livelihood, ostensibly for  his own protection – a disturbing disconnect in a country which exterminated its native maritime inhabitants and was never able to make use of the  potential of its 2,670 miles of coastline.

“Ixcanul is a significant step for a native, Latin American film. With 80 percent of our screens spewing out U.S. blockbusters it leaves a small niche for alternatives from Europe and a tiny one for Latin American films, Leo Cordero of Mexico’s Mantarraya Distribucion told IPS. “Paradoxically, it is only if the film is well received in Europe and around the world that we can take a chance on it.”

Strongly committed to the Guatemalan peace process and the emancipation of the Maya people, Ixcanul Volcano comes at a time when indigenous media are flourishing with a new understanding of the native retelling of history and film-making as a “common good”.

Bolivia and Ecuador have acknowledged the world view of indigenous people based on a sacred conception of the Law of Rights of mother Earth – the concept of Pachamama, which prioritises the collective good over individual gain.

At the Berlinale’s NATIVe Storytelling-Slam, indigenous perspectives were centre stage.  David Alberto Hernandez Palmar, a Venezuelan video artist and producer of the documentary Owners of Water about an indigenous campaign to protect an Amazonian river, insisted that the Kueka stone, which originated in Venezuela’s Gran Sabana nature reserve in the Pemom Indian lands, should be returned from Berlin’s central park, the Tiergarten. “Mother Earth is sad,” he said.

Whether or not Berlin will become involved in a case of restitution of indigenous property is unsure but, increasingly, indigenous arts, media and communications are building bridges.

“The medium of film can provide a crucial path towards understanding because you have to open up to the perspectives of others,” said Buscamante, who stressed his interest in the relationships among different cultures and ethnic groups.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Daniela Alfaro standing in front of the University of El Salvador med school, where the complaints she has filed about the harassment and aggression she has suffered as a transgender student of health education have gone nowhere. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Feb 18 2015 (IPS)

Despite the aggression and abuse she has suffered at the University of El Salvador because she is a trans woman, Daniela Alfaro is determined to graduate with a degree in health education.

“There is very little tolerance of us at the university. I thought it would be different from high school, but it isn’t,” Alfaro, a third year student of health education at the University of El Salvador med school, in the capital, told IPS.

Rejected by the rest of her family, Alfaro only has the emotional and financial support of her mother, “the only one who didn’t turn her back on me,” she said.

Like her, many members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community suffer harassment, mistreatment and even attacks on a daily basis in Central America because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, said activists from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua interviewed by IPS.

The discrimination, aggression and harassment that Alfaro has experienced at the university have come from her own classmates, as well as professors and university staff and authorities.“We don’t exist for the state in the areas of health, education, work or social matters, there is no protocol for how public employees should treat us.” -- Carlos Valdés

Since 2010 she has been filing reports and complaints with the university authorities for the aggression she has suffered in the men’s bathroom, which she is forced to use. “But they don’t take my complaints seriously because I’m trans,” said the 27-year-old student.

Alfaro has also experienced the invisibility of LGBTI persons when they receive no response from institutions or officials because their complaints or reports are dismissed or ignored simply because of prejudice against non-heterosexuals, said Carlos Valdés, with the Lambda Organisation in Guatemala.

“We don’t exist for the state in the areas of health, education, work or social matters, there is no protocol for how public employees should treat us,” Valdés told IPS by phone from Guatemala City.

Lambda and three other organisations in Central America are carrying out the regional programme “Centroamérica Diferente” (Different Central America), aimed at securing respect for the human rights of people with different sexual orientations or gender identities.

“Basically we want to improve the quality of life of the LGBTI community, so we are no longer discriminated against by sectors and institutions of the government,” said Eduardo Vásquez, with the Salvadoran Asociación Entreamigos, which is involved in the initiative.

The programme began in May 2014 and will run through June 2016 in the four participating countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

With funds from the European Union, it aims to get 40 organisations and more than 200 human rights activists involved, and to reach 3,550 members of the LGBTI community, 160 communicators, 600 public employees, 8,000 adolescents and 10 percent of the population of the four countries.

The programme provides legal support in cases of abuse and violence, and training for sexual diversity rights activists, and it carries out national and regional campaigns against homophobia.

The activists coordinate the activities with government institutions that provide public services to the LGBTI community, and exercise oversight to prevent abuses and discrimination, for example in health centres, schools and the workplace, or in police procedures.

“We are sad to see that some police continue to use poor procedures during searches, or refer in a disrespectful manner to gay or transgender persons,” Norman Gutiérrez, with the Centre for AIDS Education and Prevention in Nicaragua, another group taking part in the initiative, told IPS by telephone.

The programme will also set up a regional LGBTI human rights observatory to monitor cases of abuse, attacks and violence, and will conduct a study to gauge the magnitude of human rights violations based on sexual orientation or identity.

Hate crimes

The observatory and the study will play a key role in detecting, for example, how severe is the phenomenon of homophobic murders, especially against transgender persons, since official statistics do not recognise hate crimes and merely classify them as homicides, the activists explained.

“In Guatemala the right to life is one of the rights that is most violated, and these murders often target trans persons,” Valdés said.

Given the lack of clear official figures, the organisations compile information as best they can, without the necessary systematisation. Based on this information, the groups participating in the programme estimate that in the last five years, at least 300 members of the LGBTI community, mainly transgender women, were murdered in hate crimes.

These murders occur in a context of generalised violence in the region. The so-called Northern Triangle, made up of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, is one of the most violent regions in the world.

The murder rate in Honduras in the last few years has stood at around 70 per 100,000 population, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – far above the Latin American average of 29 and the global average of 6.2.

In Honduras, LGBTI activists have reported at least 190 homophobic murders in the last five years, some of which were included in a report published Dec. 17 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The document reports human rights violations against the LGBTI community committed between January 2013 and March 2014 in 25 Organisation of American States member countries. In that period, at least 594 people perceived to be LGBTI were killed, while another 176 were victims of serious physical assaults.

The IACHR “urges States to adopt urgent and effective measures to prevent and respond to these human rights violations and to ensure that LGBTI persons can effectively enjoy their right to a life free from violence and discrimination.”

Among the cases compiled by the IACHR is the murder of a trans woman in Honduras who was stoned to death on Mar. 4, 2013 in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. She was identified as José Natanael Ramos, age 35.

Unlike other programmes that are implemented only in the capital cities, Centroamérica Diferente plans to reach small cities and towns as well, where the violence, discrimination and vulnerability are generally worse.

“In small towns there is much more ‘machismo’, more violence and more homophobia. Some hate crimes and murders aren’t even reported,” added Gutiérrez, the Nicaraguan activist.

There is also a high level of discrimination in the workplace against the LGBTI community in Central America, said Valdés, with the Lambda Organisation from Guatemala.

“For example, gays have to hide their identity in order to get a job, and if their sexual orientation is discovered, they are harassed until they quit,” he said.

Alfaro, meanwhile, said in front of the med school where she studies that she will not stop denouncing the discrimination and harassment she suffers, until she finally sees justice done.

“I just hope that someday they will respect my identity as a woman,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist. Cyclone survivors in Myanmar shelter in the ruins of their destroyed home. Credit: UNHCR/Taw Naw Htoo

By Ido Liven
LONDON, Nov 10 2014 (IPS)

Climate change is projected by many scientists to bring with it a range of calamities – from widespread floods, to prolonged heatwaves and slowly but relentlessly rising seas – taking the heaviest toll on those already most vulnerable.

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist.

While many could be uprooted in search of a safer place to live, either temporarily or permanently, some may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape.

“People around the world are more or less mobile, depending on a range of factors,” argues Prof Richard Black from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, “but they can become trapped in circumstances where they want or need [to move] but cannot.”When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist … they may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape

According to Black, “it is most likely to be because they cannot afford it, or because there is no [social] network for them to follow or job for them to do … or because there is some kind of policy barrier to movement such as a requirement for a visa that is unobtainable, in some countries even the requirement for an exit visa that is unobtainable.”

For the most vulnerable, climate change could mean double jeopardy – first, from worsening environmental conditions threatening their livelihood, and second, from the diminished financial, social and even physical assets required for moving away provoked by this situation.

A project on migration and global environmental change led by Black was one of the first to draw attention to the notion of “trapped populations”.

In its report, published in 2011 by the Foresight think tank at the U.K. Government Office for Science, the authors warned that “in the decades ahead, millions of people will be unable to move away from locations in which they are extremely vulnerable to environmental change.”

An example the Foresight report mentions is that of inhabitants of small island states living in flood-prone areas or near exposed coasts. People in these areas might not have the means to address these hazards and also lack the resources to migrate out of the islands.

The report warned that such situations could escalate to risky displacement and humanitarian emergencies.

In fact, past cases offer some evidence of groups of people who have become immobile as a result of either extreme weather events or even slow onset crises.

One such example, says Black, is the drought in the 1980s in Africa’s Sahel region, when there was a decrease in the numbers of adult men who chose to migrate – the same people who would otherwise leave the area.

“Under drought conditions they were less able to do so because that involves drawing on your assets – in the Sahel often assets would be livestock – and the drought kills livestock, which means you can’t convert livestock into cash, and then you can’t pay the smuggler or afford the cost of the journey that would take you out of that area.”

Nevertheless, Black argues that in many cases it would be especially difficult to distinguish people who remain because they can and wish to, from those who are really unable to leave. In addition, environmental change could also drive people to migrate towards areas where they are even more at risk than those they have left.

In the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam, researchers foresee climate change contributing to floods, loss of land and increased soil salinity. Facing these hazards, local residents in an already impoverished region could find themselves unable to cope, and also unable to move away.

“It would generally be income and assets that will determine whether people can stay where they are or need to relocate,” says Dr Christopher Smith from the University of Sussex, who is currently conducting a European Community-funded project assessing the risk of trapped populations in the Mekong delta.

“Within the short term, it would mostly be temporary movement, but in the future … there could be more permanent migration.”

According to Smith, “the Mekong, being such a long river that flows through so many different countries, will make [this case] quite unique in terms of changes to the water budget in the delta and, of course, factors like cultures and populations in the delta will play a part.”

Conclusions from the study are likely to be relevant to other cases around the world, and specifically to other low lying mega-deltas with similar characteristics, Smith adds.

In Guatemala, researchers found that relatively isolated mountain communities could also be facing the risk of becoming stranded by climate change.

According to a study published earlier this year, irregular rainfall could be posing a serious threat for the food security and sources of income of communities in the municipality of Cabricán who rely on subsistence rain-fed agriculture.

Yet, the risks associated with climate change are not confined to developing countries. Hurricane Katrina, which hit the south-east of the United States in 2005, offered a vivid example when the New Orleans’ Superdome housed more than 20,000 people over several days.

“That was to do with the fact that an evacuation plan had been designed with the idea that everybody would leave by car, but essentially there were sections of the population that didn’t have a car and were not going to leave by car, and also some people who didn’t believe the messages around evacuation,” says Black.

“And those people who were trapped in the eye of the storm were then more likely to be displaced later – so they were more likely to end up in one of the trailer parks, the temporary accommodation put on by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Scientists are wary of linking Hurricane Katrina, or any single extreme weather event, to climate change. Yet, studies show that a warmer world might not necessarily mean more hurricanes, but such storms could be fiercer than those that these areas are used to.

Beyond science, says Black, international organisations are aware of the issue. “I’ve had quite extensive discussions with UNHCR [the U.N. refugee agency], the International Organization for Migration, the European Commission and a number of other bodies on these matters. There is a degree of interest in this idea that people can be trapped.”

A paper on Populations ‘trapped’ at times of crisis written by Black with Michael Collyer of the University of Sussex and published in February, notes that while it might still be early to suggest specific policy measures to address this predicament, there are several steps decision makers can take, and not only on the national level.

“As long as we have limited information on trapped populations,” say the authors, “the policy goal should be to avoid situations in which people are unable to move when they want to, not to promote policy that encourages them to move when they may not want to, and up-to-date information allowing them to make an informed choice.”

Intergovernmental fora – and among them the loss and damage stream in international climate negotiations – are yet to address specifically the challenge of trapped populations, but Europe might already be showing the way.

A European Commission working paper on climate change, environmental degradation and migration that accompanies the European Union’s strategy on adaptation to climate change adopted in April 2013 mentions the risk of trapped populations, albeit implicitly only outside the region, and recommends steps to address the issue.

Reviewing existing research on the links between climate change, environmental degradation and migration, the authors note that relocation, while questionably effective, “may nevertheless become a necessity in certain scenarios” such as the case of trapped communities.

“The EU should therefore consider supporting countries severely exposed to environmental stressors to assess the path of degradation and design specific preventive internal, or where necessary, international relocation measures when adaptation strategies can no longer be implemented,” states the working paper.

Ultimately, the situation where individuals, families, and indeed entire communities, find themselves unable to move out of harm’s way is not unique to the effects of climate change – it can be other natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or human-induced crises like armed conflict.

The international community’s response to people moving in the face of such crises is most often based on giving them a status, such as “internally displaced persons”, “asylum seekers” or “refugees”.

But this would not be the appropriate response when people remain, argues Black.

For them, “the issue is not a lack of legal status – it’s a lack of options … Public policy needs to be geared around providing people with options, in my view, both ahead of disasters and in the immediate aftermath of disasters.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

By Luz Mendez
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 28 2014 (IPS)

On Oct. 14, Guatemala’s Court for High-Risk Crimes ruled that charges would be brought against two members of the Army for sexual slavery and domestic slavery against q’eqchís women in the military outpost of Sepur Zarco, and other serious crimes perpetrated in the framework of the government counterinsurgency policies during the armed conflict.

At the public hearing, Judge Miguel Angel Galvez ruled that there is sufficient evidence to open a trial against Colonel Esteelmer Reyes Girón, former chief of the Sepur Zarco military outpost, and Heriberto Valdéz Asij, former military commissioner in the region.

Credit: Luz Mendez

Reyes will be tried for the crimes against humanity of sexual violence and sexual slavery, domestic slavery, and the assassination of Dominga Coc and her two young daughters on the base. Valdez will face charges for the crimes against humanity of sexual violence and forced disappearance.

Acts of violence

For six years, women of rural communities of the Alta Verapaz and Izabal departments were the objects of sexual slavery and domestic slavery at the military outpost of the community of Sepur Zarco, located on the border between the townships of Panzós and El Estor.

These crimes formed part of attacks on the civilian population between 1982 and 1988. At the outpost, the women were organised in three-day shifts, and forced to do domestic work, including cooking and washing soldiers’ clothes with no pay whatsoever.

The forced work was accompanied by sexual violence – every time they did their shifts, they were systematically raped by soldiers at the outpost. The sexual and domestic slavery perpetrated against the women of Sepur Zarco formed part of a military plan executed in stages that started with the kidnapping, torture and forced disappearance of their husbands, who were peasant leaders.

After that, soldiers and officers brutally gang-raped the women in their homes, in front of their children. Their homes and belongings were burned and their crops destroyed. Then the women were named by the soldiers as “the widows” and had to move to Sepur Zarco, where they were forced into sexual and domestic slavery at the military outpost.

Even after the military outpost was closed in 1988, the women still faced the physical and psychological consequences of the sexual violence. One of the cruelest results has been that they are stigmatised in their communities.It will be a precedent-setting case for all efforts to end sexual violence during armed conflict, one of the most widespread and unrecognised violations of human rights, as well as eradicating impunity for these crimes.

According to the patriarchal logic, sexual violence is a crime for which the victims must pay. In spite of the fact that the rapes were committed in a context of terror and militarisation, today the women are blamed for the sexual violence they suffered.

The long road to justice

Today the women of Sepur Zarco are demanding justice for these horrendous crimes against them. The road to justice they’ve come down started 10 years ago.

One of the most important strategies they employed was to build groups of women and alliances on the local and national level. They broke the silence and told their hard truth in a process of constructing the historic memory of the sexual violence against indigenous women during the armed conflict, published in a book in 2009.

In 2010, the protagonists in this history, along with women of the other three regions of the country, participated in the Tribunal of Conscience against sexual violence against the women during the armed conflict in Guatemala.

And in 2011, 15 women of the Sepur Zarco group presented a criminal suit in a national court, demanding justice for the crimes committed against them and their family members in the framework of transitional justice.

In this process they have relied on the support of feminist and human rights organisations. For these organizations, the fight for justice of the women of Sepur Zarco is part of their political commitment in favor of eliminating gender violence and the emancipation of women.

A historic trial

The criminal trial brought by the Sepur Zarco women has national and international significance. In Guatemala, to date there is still total impunity for the crimes of sexual violence during the armed conflict.

Although the Commission on Historical Clarification documented the sexual violence against the women was widely and systematically carried out by agents of the state, this is the first time that the charge has been presented in a court of law specifically for rape and sexual slavery.

This case also has worldwide relevance, since it is the first legal proceeding for sexual slavery during armed conflict that has been presented in the national jurisdiction where the acts took place.

It will be a precedent-setting case for all efforts to end sexual violence during armed conflict, one of the most widespread and unrecognised violations of human rights, as well as eradicating impunity for these crimes.

This article originally appeared at cipamericas.org

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A traffic jam in Jaciara, Brazil, caused by repairs to the BR-364 road. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 2 2014 (IPS)

“We could be the last Latin American and Caribbean generation living together with hunger.”

The assertion, made by Raúl Benítez, a regional officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), shows one side of the coin: only 4.6 percent of the region’s population is undernourished, according to the latest figures.

By 2030, however, most of the countries in the region will face a serious risk situation due to climate change.

With almost 600 million inhabitants, Latin America and the Caribbean has a third of the world’s fresh water and more than a quarter of its medium to high potential farmland, points out a book published this year by the Inter-American Development Bank in partnership with Global Harvest Initiative, a private-sector think-tank.

It is the largest net food-exporting region, while it uses just a fraction of its agricultural potential for both consuming and exporting.

But almost a quarter of the region’s rural people still live on less than two dollars a day, and the region is prone to disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts), some of them exacerbated by climate change.

Global warming poses serious challenges to the international community’s goal of eradicating poverty and hunger. Changes in rainfall patterns, soils and temperatures are already stressing agricultural systems.

Currently, more than 800 million people worldwide are at risk of hunger. Through its devastating impact on crops and livelihoods, climate change is predicted to increase that number by as much as 20 percent by 2050, according to a recent United Nations report.

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns could lead to food price rises of between three percent and 84 percent by 2050, thereby feeding a vicious cycle of poverty and inequality.

Oxfam reports that in the more extreme scenarios, heat and water stress could reduce crop yields by 25 percent between 2030 and 2049.

Climate change is likely to impact mostly small and family farmers, who produce more than half the food in the region and have inadequate resources with which to deal with unpredictable weather.

Despite this looming threat, strategies for sustainability are far from clear. Regional drivers of growth are export-oriented commodities, and while some sectors have advanced in added value, technology and innovation, natural resources exploitation is still the key of the whole regional boom.

By 2011, raw materials and commodities accounted for 60 percent of regional exports, compared to 40 percent in 2000. At the same time, this growth of commodities exports led to a replacement of domestic manufactures by imported goods, affecting manufacturing industries in the region.

In rural areas, conflicting models of small farming and extensive monocultures based on genetically modified seeds compete for the land in a David versus Goliath fight.

In Paraguay, the fourth largest exporter of soybeans in the world, 1.6 percent of owners hold 80 percent of the agricultural land. In Guatemala, eight percent of producers own 82 percent of farmlands, while 80 percent of productive land in Colombia is in the hands of 14 percent of landowners, according to Oxfam.

Agriculture and related deforestation are major sources of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in Latin America, though other sources are growing rapidly. Brazil, for example, is joining the club of big polluters, with the burning of fossil fuels accounting for the majority of its GHG emissions in the last five years.

As the extractive industries grow, they demand more highways, railroads and ports, putting pressure on governments to avoid the so-called logistics blackout.

Energy demand is increasing too, not only from industries, but also from millions of people lifted out of poverty, and thus with larger consumption needs. The region’s energy demand for the period 2010-2017 increases at an annual rate of five percent.

The region is poised to cross a new fossil fuel frontier, when Argentina, Brazil and Mexico overcome their own political, financial and technical challenges to exploit substantial reserves of unconventional hydrocarbons, like the Argentinian Vaca Muerta geological formation or the pre-salt layer located in the Brazilian continental shelf.

It is difficult to argue that a region so rich in natural resources has no right to thrive on the demand and supply of commodities, particularly when the resulting fiscal revenues have allowed impoverished countries like Bolivia to drastically reduce extreme poverty numbers (from 38 percent in 2005 to 20 percent in 2013).

However, experts warn this path is unsustainable and climate change impacts, felt across the region, can undermine any social gain.

In Guatemala, the worst drought in 40 years is putting 1.2 million people at risk of suffering hunger in the next months. Those who suffer the worst impacts of unsustainable development models will ironically be those who contribute the least to global warming.

A recent U.N. document summarising actions for the follow-up to the programme of action adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) found that only about a “third of the world’s population could be considered as having consumption profiles that contribute to emissions.”

Fewer than one billion of them have a significant impact, while “a smaller minority is responsible for an overwhelming share of the damage,” the report added.

Still, it will be the poorest people who will bear the brunt, and Latin America, dubbed ‘the next global breadbasket’, is in desperate need of strong local and global action towards the goal of achieving sustainable development in the next decade.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Rosa Nelly Santos arranges photos of missing Honduran migrants on a sort of shrine to ensure they are not forgotten, at the premises of the Committee for Disappeared Migrant Relatives in El Progreso. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Thelma Mejía
EL PROGRESO, Honduras, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

United by grief and anxiety, the grandmothers, mothers and other relatives of people who disappeared on the migration route to the United States formed a committee in this city in northern Honduras to search for their missing loved ones.
Founded in 1999, the Comité de Familiares de Migrantes Desaparecidos de El Progreso (COFAMIPRO – El Progreso Committee for Disappeared Migrant Relatives) is now one of the most highly regarded migrants’ rights organisations in Honduras.

For the past 14 years, COFAMIPRO has aired a radio programme on Sunday afternoons called “Abriendo Fronteras” (Opening Borders) on Radio Progreso, a station run by the Society of Jesus (a Catholic religious order) in Honduras.

The programme was originally called “Sin Fronteras” (Without Borders), but Rosa Nelly Santos, a member of COFAMIPRO, told IPS that as the committee expanded its activities, “we decided to call it Abriendo Fronteras, because we have indeed opened them. We are listened to by a larger audience than ever before, and not only by migrants but also by governments.”“Every time I heard the rumble of The Beast [the Mexican freight train ridden by migrants] I would shudder because that’s where I discovered how dangerous the migrant route is. For them, the train tracks are their pillow. They sleep on the tracks and when they get on to the roof of the train they wait for it to get going, but some fall asleep from exhaustion and fall off when it moves.” -- Marcia Martínez

The hour-long radio programme fulfills a vital social function. It advises migrants about conditions on the routes, plays the music they request to lift their spirits, and provides a sevice by enabling them to send messages to their relatives in Honduras.

Emeteria Martínez, a founding member of COFIMAPRO, died in 2013 just months after locating one of her daughters , who had been missing for 21 years.

Finding their family members was the driving force that united them, Santos said. “The group was created out of nothing, by discovering that one woman’s grief was the same as another’s. We would meet in the home of one of the group and that’s how we built up courage to go out into the world and search for our relatives,” she said.

Twenty women started the group, and now the leadership group is composed of more than 40 members.

They are unassuming women but they are buoyed by hope, in spite of the pain of not knowing anything about their missing relatives and of facing dreadful tragedies like the Tamaulipas massacre in Mexico. Four years ago, 72 migrants, 21 of whom were Hondurans, were shot at point-blank range by Los Zetas, a Mexican criminal cartel. Their bodies were found on a ranch in the San Fernando district.

The Tamaulipas massacre brought home to Hondurans the suffering involved in migration, over and above the issue of the remittances sent back by those who make it to the United States.

“It was like a defeat for us. You hope that your son or daughter will travel safely on the migrant route and manage to cross the border, but you do not expect him or her to be massacred and shipped back to you in a box. That is really shocking,” said Santos, who together with other members of COFAMIPRO has helped and comforted victims’ relatives.

The women on the Committee are all volunteers who have overcome their fear of the unknown. For over a decade they have taken part in the mothers’ caravans , motorcades organised by the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano (Mesoamerican Migrant Movement), which in September every year travel the migrant routes, looking for clues to the whereabouts of missing relatives.

The migratory route begins in Guatemala and ends at Mexico’s northern border.

“The first time I went on the caravan, three years ago, I understood the importance of my mother’s work. I learned from her grief and I decided to take a full part in the Committee,” Marcia Martínez, 44, another daughter of the Committee’s deceased founder, told IPS.

“I had no idea of the huge number of mothers and relatives who join the motorcade, nor of the epic nature of the journeys my mother undertook. They cover all the routes used by the migrants, asking about them with placards, looking for answers that sometimes never arrive, or arrive too late. When we find someone we were looking for, the joy is indescribable,” she said.

“Every time I heard the rumble of The Beast [the Mexican freight train ridden by migrants on their way north] I would shudder because that’s where I discovered how dangerous the migrant route is. For them, the train tracks are their pillow. They sleep on the tracks and when they get on to the roof of the train they wait for it to get going, but some fall asleep from exhaustion and fall off when it moves,” Martínez said.

COFAMIPRO’s premises are in a shopping centre in El Progreso, one of Honduras’s five largest cities, in the northern department (province) of Yoro, 242 kilometres from Tegucigalpa. Formerly they were housed in Jesuit property, but thanks to donations they were able to rent their own small locale where people can come for support to find their relatives.

In the years since it was founded it has documented more than 600 cases of disappeared persons, of whom over 150 have been found. They continue to seek the rest, although they believe that many must have died on the way or fallen in the hands of human trafficking networks.

Initially the government would not recognise the Committee, but the success of its work with the Mesoamerican caravans led to its voice being heard. It has presented cases of disappeared migrants to the foreign ministry. In June, the group finally acquired formal legal status.

Their struggle has not been easy. Honduran officials dismissed them as “crazy old women” when, years ago, they organised their own march to Tegucigalpa to demand action for their missing loved ones.

Their response was a song they chanted at the foreign office building. Santos sang it with pride: “People at the foreign office call us liars, but we are decent women and we prove it with deeds; what we are here to demand is completely within our rights.”

Their steady, silent work has yielded fruit. When IPS interviewed a group of these women, they had just saved the life of a Honduran man, a relative of a local official in El Progreso, through their Mexican contacts.

He had been kidnapped by a criminal organisation that extorted more than 3,000 dollars from his family before they approached the Committee, which secured his release through an operation by the Mexican prosecution service.

Five years ago, COFAMIPRO issued a warning about the present migration crisis, but no one listened. According to the group, migrants will continue to flee from unemployment and criminal violence.

In the baking hot city of El Progreso, cases have been known of mothers who left town when criminal gangs told them their children would be forcibly recruited into the criminal organisations when they were old enough, and that in the meantime the gangs would provide money to raise the children and pay for their education.

An estimated one million Hondurans have emigrated to the United States since the 1970s, but the exodus has intensified since 1998. As of April 2014, Washington has intensified its deportations of families with children as well as adults.

The Honduran authorities say that 56,000 people were deported back to the country in the first seven months of this year. Of these, 29,000 arrived from the United States by air and 27,000 from Mexico by land.

Honduras has a population of 8.4 million and a homicide rate of 79 per 100,000 population, according to official figures.

In 2013, migrants contributed 3.2 billion dollars to the Honduran economy in remittances, close to 15 percent of GDP, according to the Central Bank.

In COFAMIPRO’s view, the migratory crisis should spur governments to reform their public policies and refrain from stigmatising and criminalising migrants, because “they are not criminals, they are international workers,” Santos said.

She, at least, has the consolation of having found her missing nephew four years ago.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 29 2014 (IPS)

“Survival migration” is not a reality show, but an accurate description of human mobility fuelled by desperation and fear. How despairing are these migrant contingents? Look at the figures of Central American children travelling alone, which are growing.

The painful journeys of children and teenagers from Central America to the United States border sounded alarms this year.While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Refugee Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far.

More than 52,000 children —mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador— were detained when they crossed the border without their parents in the last eight months, says the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

While it is an unprecedented crisis, Gervais Appave, special policy adviser to the International Organisation for Migration’s director general, frames it “within a more general global trend”, which could be defined as “survival migration”.

Children travelling from the Horn of Africa to European countries, through Malta and Italy, or seeking to reach Australia by boat from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka, are just two examples.

The European agency dealing with borders, Frontex, reported an increase in the “phenomenon of unaccompanied minors claiming asylum in the European Union (EU)” during 2009 and 2010.

According to Frontex, the proportion of children migrating alone “in the overall number of irregular migrants that reach the EU is worryingly growing.”

Appave told IPS it is impossible to identify a single cause for the spread of this child migration. But he pointed out there is a “very effective and ruthless smuggling industry”. There is “a psychological process that kicks in if you have a critical mass of people moving. Then others will try to follow because this is seeing as ‘the’ solution to go forth,” he said.

The muscle of smugglers and traffickers is apparent in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. But nobody flees without a powerful reason.

According to a report published in July by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, 85 percent of the new asylum applications received by the United States in 2012 came from these three countries, while Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize registered a combined 435 percent increase in the number of individual applications from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

While in recent weeks there have been fewer children crossing the U.S. southern border, “this phenomenon has been here since years ago,” Adriana Beltrán, WOLA’s senior associate for citizen security, told IPS.

Criminal gangs, mafias and corruption are major drivers, agree Beltrán and José Guadalupe Ruelas, director of Casa Alianza – Honduras, an NGO working to promote children’s rights.

Killings, extrajudicial executions, extortion and fear “have grown dramatically” in Honduras, Ruelas told IPS.

The country has 3.7 million children under 18, and one million do not attend school; half million suffer labour exploitation; 24 out of 100 teenage girls get pregnant; 8,000 boys and girls are homeless, and other 15,000 fled the country this year, according to official statistics.

“Five years ago, there were 43 monthly murders and arbitrary executions of children and under-23 youths,” he said. Now the monthly average is 88, according to Casa Alianza’s Observatorio de Derechos de los Niños, Niñas y Jóvenes.

Moreover, the perception of security is altered. When people in the “colonias” (poor neighbourhoods) see an ambulance, they “immediately presume a murder or a violent death, instead of a life about to be saved or an ill person to be cured,” and if they see a police or a military patrol, “they think there will be heavy fire and deaths.”

These terrified people mistrust state institutions. Only last year, 17,000 families left their homes following gangs’ threats, “and the state could do nothing to prevent it.”

“They are displaced by the war,” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández said in June.

The 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol establish that a refugee is a person who fled his or her country due to persecution on the grounds of political opinion, race, nationality or membership to a particular social group.

While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far. Instead, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration (see sidebar) offers a more flexible refugee definition for the region.

Through a 10-point plan of action, the UNHCR asks governments to include refugee considerations in migration policies, particularly when dealing with children, women and victims of trafficking.

According to a 2008 law, U.S. authorities must screen all cases of children under 18 who crossed the border alone to determine whether they are victims of trafficking or abuse, to provide them with legal representation and ensure due process. But the agencies in charge are overloaded and lack adequate resources.

“Some sectors want to change this law and, despite the fact that there have not been deportations, Washington has not clearly indicated yet which stance will take,” said Ruelas.

With elections set for November, it is highly unlikely the political parties will keep this issue out of the electoral fight, he added.

Beyond the urgency of this refugee crisis, underlying causes are a much more complicated issue.

It is not just violence or poverty, but “incredibly weak criminal justice institutions penetrated by organised crime,” said Beltrán.

Ruelas points out the “wrongful” militarisation of Honduras, which will further erode the state’s ability to control its territory. “Despite more soldiers patrolling the streets, criminals feel free to threaten and murder in the colonias,” he said.

According to Beltrán, the United States’ ad hoc assistance through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) is excessively focused on the “anti-drug fight”, when the region requires more investment in prevention policies, particularly at the local level.

“Washington needs to refocus its policies toward the region, but Central American governments can’t evade their own responsibility,” she added.

Their fiscal revenues, for example, are among the lowest in Latin America, thus undermining their capacity to provide services and respect human rights.

However, the crisis of migrant children is providing a golden opportunity to reexamine all of these larger issues, Ruelas says. “We need a human security, one which regains the public space for the citizens.

“When people control the territory,” he argued, “because the police protect and support them, they gain the chance to rebuild a more peaceful community life.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at dia.cariboni@gmail.com

The presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador speak at the Organisation of American States on Jul. 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 25 2014 (IPS)

As the presidents of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala prepare to meet with President Barack Obama Friday, more than 40 organisations issued a petition urging U.S. lawmakers to meet their “moral and legal obligations” by providing emergency aid to Central American children and families.

The petition, spearheaded by the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group here, insists that “more border security will not help,” and is instead calling for the U.S. to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections” and “face the root causes of violence at the community level.”“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect.” -- Adam Isacson

In the last nine months, more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the U.S. southern border, and the wave shows no signs of abating. Many are now facing deportation.

Less than 24 hours after WOLA released their petition, a separate batch of legal groups accused the U.S. government of violating both international and domestic law, based on its inspection of the New Mexico-based Artesia Family Detention Facility.

After representatives from 22 organisations interviewed families detained at Artesia, the groups concluded that the U.S. government is violating both their moral responsibility to provide the refugees with physical and mental health support, as well as their legal obligation to guarantee them due process.

“Family detention is always an awful and damaging process, but the conditions at the Artesia Family Detention facility in New Mexico should make every American hang their head in shame,” the groups said in a statement.

“The Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families – mothers, babies, and children – back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.”

Fixing the roots

While such humanitarian concerns surrounding the Central American migration crisis persist from a variety of sources, top officials from both the U.S. and Central America are considering both long-term and short-term intervention from the top-down.

As a pre-cursor for Friday’s meeting between U.S. President Obama and the Central American presidents, foreign ministers from the three respective nations – collectively known as the “Northern Triangle” – convened on Thursday at the Wilson Center, a think tank here, to discuss the crisis’ roots and debate its solutions.

While all three of the Northern Triangle’s representatives agreed that there was not one cause behind the current crisis, they collectively cited the drug smuggling network, the prevalence of organised crime, and lack of taxpayer dollars as their biggest problems.

As such, the three ministers advocated for “all-encompassing” reform, both to stop the short-term crisis at the border, and to provide economic and educational opportunities- such as universal secondary school coverage- for children and adults alike.

Call for legal protections

While Michelle Brané , director of migrant rights & justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), a New York-based advocacy group that participated in Artesia’s inspection, agrees with the Northern Triangle’s conclusion that such a “holistic response…addressing root causes” is necessary, her central issue is with U.S. justice system.

“The problem is that our court system is woefully under-funded,”Brané told IPS, hopefully adding that “we can create a due process system that works,” even if it takes years.

Clarifying that she is “not saying everyone should stay, [but rather] that everyone should have a fair shot at presenting their case,” Brané believes that providing attorneys to represent these migrants and using alternative detention centres, such as shelters and community support programs,  are both more humane and “cost-effective” solutions than the status quo.

Asked about the desired outcome of Friday’s presidential meeting, Brané informed IPS that she would like to see “[the U.S.] take a leadership role in protection, as opposed to a ‘close the borders’ stance and lack of respect for human rights law.”

“This is more than just something that requires them to stem the flow to stop up the borders,” Brané told IPS. ‘It really requires…strengthening protections systems, as opposed to interception.”

Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at WOLA, echoed Brané’s call for more protections.

“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told IPS.

While his list of desired protections included “getting police to respect people”, “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities,” Isacson added that such requests be “combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”

Isacson further agrees with WRC’s Brané in that there is a need for systematic reform of the U.S legal system, calling for “more capacity” and a reduction in the average trial’s wait time, which he believes can be up to two or three years.

Yet others, including the Virginia-based Negative Population Growth (NPG) nonprofits, have expressed different legal concerns.

“Asylum and refugee status is something for specific persecution, and it’s not intended to be a relief measure for general societal strife,” Dave Simcox, senior adviser of NPG, told IPS.

Simcox also told IPS that there is a distinction between being trafficked and being smuggled, and while “a few [migrants] will be able to make the case that they were taken against their will for exploitation,” he ultimately agrees with NPG President Don McCann, who argued in a statement that “granting refugee or temporary protected status on the current wave from Central America would be a disastrous precedent,” and that U.S leaders should instead apply “strong deterrent measures” by “supplementing border forces” with additional personnel and fencing.

But Isacson thinks “judges will get it right much more than border patrol agents on the spot will get it right,” and believes that that providing due process to such migrants is the best way for the U.S. to “enforce its own laws.”

By Isolda Agazzi
GENEVA, Jun 1 2014 (IPS)

Erwin Sperisen was chief of Guatemala’s National Civil Police from 2004 to 2007, when he left the country for Switzerland. In August 2010, the Guatemalan authorities issued an international arrest warrant, accusing him, among others, of extrajudicial executions in the prisons of Pavon and Infiernito.

The authorities of the canton of Geneva arrested him on August 31, 2012, but he could not be extradited to Guatemala because he also holds a Swiss passport. He is now standing trial in Switzerland and risks life imprisonment. The verdict in the trial, which started on May 15, is expected to be handed down on June 6.

Philip Grant

TRIAL (Track Impunity Always), an NGO that brings international crimes to justice in Switzerland and before international institutions, played a major role in bring Sperisen before the court. IPS talked to TRIAL director, Philip Grant.

IPS: What is at stake in this trial?  

Philip Grant: The capacity of the Swiss judiciary to judge facts or crimes committed thousands of kilometres away, in a completely different context and culture. Switzerland has not held such a criminal trial since 2000, when a Rwandan mayor was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for his participation in genocide and crime against humanity.

More broadly, there is a wider trend that is pushing states to handle cases where the crimes are committed abroad and the links to the country are very weak or possibly not existent, except that the suspect is caught on the territory.

The legal basis is universal jurisdiction. International law, particularly the Geneva conventions and the Convention against Torture, require the international community to investigate and judge those crimes.

IPS: Is this a new trend?

Philip Grant: No, but it is growing rapidly. There have been dozens of cases, starting with the Eichmann case in Israel in 1961, then Pinochet in 1998 and now there are more and more cases. In Great Britain the Home Office indicates that hundreds of suspects have entered the country from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Sierra Leone and elsewhere."Nineteen people were indicted for extrajudicial killings around Sperisen. A lawyer has been assassinated, at least one witness has been assassinated and the mother of one of the victims may be in danger" - Philip Grant

No other country compiles similar figures, but the Netherlands has mentioned that dozens of suspected Rwandan genocidaires are present on its soil, and in France alone, more than 25 criminal complaints have been filed by NGOs against Rwandan suspects.

Several countries have set up war crimes units. The Dutch war crime unit has 35 investigators who regularly arrest people. The French one was created two years ago and a first trial earlier his year has ended in the conviction of a Rwandan man to 25 years in prison.

IPS: Is this limited to Western countries?

Philip Grant: No. Cases are currently being investigated also in Senegal – against Hissène Habré, a Chadian citizen, and in South Africa, against Zimbabwean suspects. Argentina tried to open up cases linked to Franco’s crimes in Spain.

Many countries may not be ready to investigate, but most of them have a criminal code that gives them the capacity to investigate and judge international crimes.

Another trend is that Northern prosecuting authorities start judging also their own nationals and not only people from the global South.

IPS: Does that refer also to economic crimes?

Philip Grant: Timidly. In Switzerland, the Swiss General Attorney opened a criminal investigation into the Swiss company Argor, one the most important gold refiners in the world, for its alleged complicity in the pillage of gold in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In France, prosecutors are investigating a company that sold surveillance material to Libya that allowed the former regime to track down and torture opponents.

The rationale is to judge not only the perpetrators of the crimes, but also those who profit from them.

The Netherlands investigated a Dutch company, Riwal, which contributed to erecting the separation wall between Israel and Palestine, a clear violation of international humanitarian law. The offices were raided by the Dutch police. The case was later halted, but the company had stopped its business around the wall.

When the decision was made public, another company working in the Occupied Territories put an end to its collaboration with Israel, fearing that it might be breaking international law.

So it is beginning to have real effects.

IPS: Could Erwin Sperisen have been tried in Switzerland even if he had not been a Swiss national?

Philip Grant: If you don’t have any close link to a country like nationality, the threshold to risk prosecution is the level of crimes you commit. For stealing a car, there is no universal jurisdiction.

You can become a target of universal jurisdiction if you commit human rights violations that amount to international crimes – like genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The system was not used very much in the past, but now more and more NGOs are working on this issue. In Switzerland, TRIAL is the only one that goes to the field to investigate such cases and comes back to file complaints.

IPS: What are the main difficulties in this kind of procedure?

Philip Grant: The protection of the witnesses and the victims. Nineteen people were indicted for extrajudicial killings around Sperisen. A lawyer has been assassinated, at least one witness has been assassinated and the mother of one of the victims may be in danger. She is the only plaintiff in this affair.

Though it involves ten cases of extrajudicial killings and ten families could potentially have filed a complaint, some were afraid, others are living abroad. The Swiss judiciary faces difficulties in ordering protection measures that would apply in Guatemala.

IPS: How do you work with organisations in Guatemala?

Philip Grant: By working with local NGOs and human rights defenders, or with the Procuradoria de los Derechos Humanos, we were able to gather evidence against Erwin Sperisen.

The United Nations established the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala to investigate crimes committed by illegal security forces because the national investigators themselves were considered too corrupt and unreliable. We also talked to them, even though they could not share the results of their investigations with us.

Although we have filed the initial complaint with other fellow NGOs, we are not party to the case. What we did for instance was to feed information to the authorities and to put them in contact with witnesses. During the trial, only the plaintiff is represented in court. If Erwin Sperisen is sentenced, she can ask for reparation.

TRIAL has filed many other cases, of which a few are still under investigation. Others are closed: when George Bush announced that he was coming to Geneva in 2011, we started working on a complaint for torture. At some point it was made public and suddenly he decided not to come.

Currently we are investigating a small number of cases of citizens of Western countries as well.

IPS: The verdict will come on June 6. What will be the consequences of this affair?

Philip Grant: Sperisen’s direct superior, the former Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann, is in Spain under investigation. If Sperisen is convicted, it will trigger strong calls to have Vielmann also judged there.

I can imagine that effects will also be felt in Guatemala. I assume that the current chief of police of Guatemala must be following the trial. If Sperisen is sentenced, I bet there will be changes in the way the Guatemalan police operates.

But whatever the verdict, it will be a further step in the fight against impunity across the board.

Excerpt:

Guatemala’s first female attorney general has managed to reduce impunity in a country where over 90 percent of murders go unsolved.

The question is whether the changes will vanish once Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz’s term ends in December 2014.

Never before had a former head of state been tried for genocide in his own country, anywhere in the world. But Paz y Paz managed to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to trial – above and beyond the fact that the final outcome is hanging by a thread.

The changes undertaken by Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz could collapse if they are not institutionalised. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

Paz y Paz, 46, also carried out a purge in the public prosecutor’s office and achieved unprecedented results in sentences for homicide, rape, extortion and kidnapping.

And she did all this in the only country in the world where the United Nations, in conjunction with the government, set up an International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), in 2007.

Guatemala is considered one of the most violent countries in the world, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 population in 2009.

The first change introduced by Paz y Paz was the implementation of a performance evaluation system in the public prosecutor’s office.

The prosecutors who resolve the most cases are rewarded with opportunities for promotion, while those who bring in poor results must explain why they have failed to meet their targets and can face disciplinary processes if negligence is found, Paz y Paz told IPS.

Nearly 80 percent of the prosecutors who had spent two decades in the public prosecutor’s office and were between the ages of 65 and 75 decided to retire when the new system was put into effect.

That paved the way for younger prosecutors better qualified to handle forensic evidence to be promoted to section chiefs and district attorneys.

Another stride forward was the priority put on violence against women. Under the administration of Paz y Paz, a special unit that operates around the clock was opened in the public prosecutor’s office, making it possible for a judge to issue restraining orders and other precautionary measures against the aggressors in a timely fashion, without requiring the victim to go from the public prosecutor’s office to the courthouse.

In addition, a specific unit was established to investigate sex crimes, and more resources were assigned to the special prosecutor’s unit for crimes against women.

Furthermore, a new evaluation system uses surveys to ask victims who have filed a complaint how they were treated and whether they suffered discrimination.The public prosecutor’s office managed to dismantle drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping rackets, thanks to “more proactive investigations, targeting illegal markets or criminal structures.” – Claudia Paz y Paz

The surveys led to the dismissal of a prosecutor in the northern province of San Marcos for sexual harassment of a young woman who had gone to his office to report a rape.

The public prosecutor’s office has also managed to dismantle drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping rackets, thanks to “more proactive investigations, targeting illegal markets or criminal structures,” Paz y Paz said.

In June 2012, a court in Guatemala found 36 members of the Los Zetas – a notoriously violent Mexican drug cartel – guilty of kidnapping, murder and attacks on the security forces. They were sentenced to between two and 158 years in prison.

“The public prosecutor’s office, headed by Claudia Paz y Paz and supported by CICIG, has made important strides,” political scientist Juan Carlos Garzón, a visiting expert from the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told IPS. “A former president has been tried and the clandestine structures have begun to come to light.”

Portillo and Ríos Montt: controversial cases

Another high-profile case was the prosecution of former president Alfonso Portillo, extradited to the United States in May to face charges of conspiracy to launder money during his 2000-2004 term.

The Constitutional Court authorised Portillo’s extradition in 2011, but the fact that he is still facing charges in court in Guatemala has raised questions about whether his extradition was legal.

“Portillo’s extradition was carried out hastily, and was plagued with irregularities,” Lizandro Acuña, a researcher in the area of justice and security in the University of San Carlos Institute on National Problems, told IPS.

Meanwhile, the trial against Ríos Montt continues. The public prosecutor’s office presented evidence and expert and eyewitness testimony to demonstrate that genocide was committed against the Ixil Maya indigenous community during Ríos Montt’s presidency (1982-1983).

The charges include overseeing the armed forces’ murder of at least 1,771 Ixil indigenous people and the rape of 1,485 girls and women during his 17-month rule – the bloodiest period of the 1960-1996 civil war.

In May, Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison. But the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction just 10 days later in response to one of the numerous challenges presented by the defence.

The Constitutional Court ordered a retrial, after ruling that the proceedings should be voided dating back to Apr. 19, when one of the judges suspended the trial over a dispute with another judge about who should hear it.

The trial further polarised public opinion, between those who defend the army’s actions and those who are demanding justice for the victims of the armed conflict, who numbered around 250,000 and were mainly highlands Maya Indians.

Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, president of the right-wing Foundation Against Terrorism, made up of retired members of the military and their family members, accuses Paz y Paz of “unleashing a witch hunt against soldiers.”

In 2011, Méndez Ruiz filed a lawsuit against 26 former members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), which was active during the civil war – including two of the attorney general’s cousins: Margarita and Laura Hurtado Paz y Paz, who he accused of kidnapping him in 1982.

But Paz y Paz said that clarifying the human rights violations committed during the armed conflict “is not a biased action; it is about being responsible for the duties one assumes as attorney general.”

While the case against Ríos Montt is set to reopen in April 2014, survivors and witnesses who have to testify again report that they have been the targets of intimidation and threats.

The attorney general has not yet announced whether she will seek a new term.

She says she is immersed in the task of institutionalising the changes she has introduced in the public prosecutor’s office, and warns that if her successor is not willing to give continuity to the reforms, the progress made will be reversed.

Garzón said “she has made an enormous effort towards strengthening the institution itself. The question is whether it will be capable of weathering her absence when she’s gone.

“What do the political forces want? To destroy what the public prosecutor’s office has done or to continue along the path that has begun to be followed? It’s a political question, and the outlook is very uncertain,” he said.

Guatemala, which has the highest number of femicides in Central America, launched a women-only bus service in 2011, to prevent sexual harassment. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 2 2013 (IPS)

Douglas Cuc, a 32-year-old clown, entered the courtroom with the same smile on his face as when he told jokes for coins on the buses in the town of San Miguel Petapa, near the Guatemalan capital. But this time there was no greasepaint on his face, he did not wear his clown’s nose, and he was in handcuffs.

A year and a half earlier he visited his ex-wife, Evelin Pacheco, on the pretext of taking something to their 10-year-old daughter. Neighbours said that on the night of Jan. 25, 2012 they heard screams and then complete silence. The next morning, the young mother’s lifeless body was found at the foot of the stairs.

Cuc was later taken to the scene of the crime, where he tried to persuade the investigators that his ex-wife had fallen down the stairs. But her body showed signs of strangulation and bruising.

Based on the forensic evidence, the history of violence in the relationship and the testimony of neighbours and other witnesses, the public prosecutor’s office charged him with femicide – gender-based murder – in a trial that is being held in a new type of court specialising in violence against women.

Cuc, who by day made bus passengers laugh, by night became a tyrant who repeatedly beat the 26-year-old Pacheco, who worked full-time to support the family.

Eventually she left him, but her ex-husband continued to attack her and make death threats. Pacheco denounced the harassment to the authorities, and on three occasions requested restraining orders, which were granted. But as her mother told the court, weeping and holding her photograph, none of this prevented the tragedy.

Pacheco is one of 708 women who suffered violent deaths in Guatemala in 2012, according to the National Institute of Forensic Sciences (INACIF). During the first half of this year there were 403 deaths, 66 more than in the same period of 2012.

The Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Council of Ministers for Women in Central America (COMMCA) rank Guatemala as the country with the highest number of killings of women in the region.

This Central American country is also one of the most violent in the world overall, with a murder rate of 48 per 100,000, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Central American Human Development Report 2009-2010. That is in comparison to a Latin America average of 25 per 100,000 and a global average of nine per 100,000.

Justice with a gender perspective

The first hearing in Cuc’s trial was held Jul. 15 at the court for crimes of femicide and other forms of violence against women, in the province of Guatemala, where the country’s capital city is located.

The court, composed of three women judges, is the result of advances in Guatemala which in 2010 became the first country in the world to create specialised courts for femicide and other forms of violence against women.

The “law against femicide and other forms of violence against women”, which created the specialised courts, was approved in 2008 in response to the wave of murders of women in this impoverished country.

It establishes preventive measures, criminal offences and penalties that seek to guarantee women the right to a life free from physical, psychological, sexual, moral or economic violence.

The specialised courts have been set up so far in the provinces of Guatemala, Chiquimula, Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango and Alta Verapaz, which together account for the majority of violent deaths of women in the country.

The National Centre for Judicial Analysis and Documentation (CENADOJ) told IPS that while in ordinary courts only 7.5 percent of cases of femicide and other forms of violence against women result in conviction and sentencing, in the specialised courts the proportion is already over 30 percent.

The key to their success has been addressing the violence from a gender perspective, analysing each case in the context of inequity, discrimination and misogyny, Ana María Rodríguez, the presiding judge of the court trying Cuc, told IPS.

In the case of Pacheco, for instance, the public prosecutor’s office and Fundación Sobrevivientes (Survivors Foundation), an NGO that represents the young woman’s family, are trying to prove that the actions of her ex-husband sprang from deep-rooted machismo, as he regarded the victim as his property.

With the exception of two male judges in Quetzaltenango, the cases before these specialised courts are heard by women judges who were trained in gender and justice issues at the judicial branch’s School of Judicial Studies.

The courts also employ a psychologist and a social worker, and have daycare facilities to look after children while their mothers testify, so that they are not hindered from participating in trials by the difficulty of finding childcare.

Angélica Valenzuela, the head of the Centre for Research, Training and Support for Women (CICAM), told IPS that the specialised courts have had a positive impact. But she pointed out that they are still not operating all over the country, and the cases that they deal with must be filtered through courts of first instance, which determine the classification of crimes but do not have direct contact with the victims.

Judge Miriam Méndez of the femicide court in Guatemala province said that prosecutors skilled at arguing cases are as important in the prosecution of a crime as having specialist courts for crimes against women.

She said one of the problems is that “testimony remains the chief evidence,” due to the shortcomings in the use of other types of evidence, like forensics.

As Norma Cruz, the head of the Survivors Foundation, told IPS: “The goal is zero deaths and zero impunity,” and there is still a long way to go to make this happen.

Retired general Efraín Ríos Montt (left) will face a new trial, possibly in April 2014. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Louisa Reynolds
GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 11 2013 (IPS)

Fear and mistrust reign in Santa María Nebaj. The people of this Maya Ixil indigenous town in the highlands of northwestern Guatemala are worried about intimidation attempts to keep them from testifying again in a retrial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

Worry began to spread in the town when the witnesses learned they could be summoned to court again to tell their heart-wrenching stories in a new trial, after Guatemala’s Constitutional Court overturned a genocide conviction against Ríos Montt in response to one of the numerous challenges presented by the defence.

Ríos Montt had been sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10 after he was found guilty of overseeing the armed forces’ murder of at least 1,771 Ixil indigenous people during his 1982-1983 rule – the bloodiest period of the 1960-1996 civil war.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the proceedings should be voided dating back to Apr. 19, when one of the judges suspended the trial over a dispute with another judge about who should hear it.

Under Guatemalan law, a retrial cannot be held in the same court. But because of the backlog of cases in the court where the new trial is to take place, it is not scheduled to start until April 2014.

The court had ruled that Ríos Montt “held absolute power (from March 1982 to August 1983) and as a result had full knowledge of the crimes committed and did not bring them to a halt even though he had the power to do so.”

In the same trial, his intelligence chief, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence of involvement in the crimes against humanity in question.

The ruling against Ríos Montt was historic, not only for Guatemala but for many other countries in Latin America and other regions, because it was the first time a head of state has been tried for genocide by the courts in his own country.

Strange visitors

Just days after 98 Ixil survivors testified in the trial about gang rapes of girls and women, torture and mass killings, several people came to the town saying they belonged to a government agency for agricultural development and claiming they were carrying out a census.

But the visit by the purported government officials awakened suspicion, because they only went to the homes of those who testified in the trial, and they already had the witnesses’ personal details, such as their names and identity document numbers.

Local residents reported the incident to the local offices of the Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), one of the groups that brought the lawsuit against Ríos Montt.

CALDH found that no such agricultural development agency was registered, and filed a complaint with the prosecution service and the office of the human rights ombudsman, demanding safety guarantees for witnesses and survivors.

During the first trial, the victims were determined to fight for justice despite fears for their safety. “Since I started to fight I haven’t been afraid. I have confidence in what I am saying. We need a real sentence,” Ixil leader Antonio Caba told IPS on Apr. 12, just a few days after testifying in court about the massacres and torture he witnessed at the age of 11.

Helping survivors overcome their fears and become ready to speak in court about such painful, traumatic experiences was a lengthy process that took years of psychological support, CALDH spokesman José Rodríguez told IPS.

According to the 1999 report by the United Nations-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), under Ríos Montt the army and paramilitary militias known as “civil self-defence patrols” committed 334 massacres and 19,000 murders and forced disappearances, and destroyed 600 villages. As a result of the violence, one million people fled their homes.

The 36-year civil war claimed some 250,000 lives, mainly rural indigenous villagers, the CEH reported.

The CEH was created to investigate human rights abuses and crimes against humanity after a peace agreement between the army and the insurgent Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) put an end to the war in 1996.

Something happened on the way to the forum

Throughout the trial, the defence presented a volley of challenges based on technicalities.

The last challenge had been rejected and the trial proceeded to sentencing. But on May 20, the Constitutional Court ruled that the trial should not have continued until the challenge had been addressed, and overturned the conviction of Ríos Montt.

“Since the start of the trial, the defence attorneys have tried to trip up the proceedings through challenges and injunctions, and they finally managed to do so,” Ramón Cadena, director of the Central America division of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told IPS. “What has prevailed here is malicious litigation that finally ended in a ruling that leads to more impunity.”

The Constitutional Court has not yet clarified whether the change in venue means the trial must start from scratch.

According to Rodríguez, the interpretation by the CALDH lawyers is that it must start over, which means the 98 witnesses would have to testify again.

But due to the setbacks, the survivors have lost faith in the justice system, and over half of them have said they are not willing to give their testimony again, and especially not in the face of tension and attempts at intimidation in the Ixil communities.

“The victims have said they are not a toy, to be summoned to court over and over again. They put their trust in the justice system, and now they feel they have been let down, and they are afraid,” Rodríguez said.

Cadena said he had little hope that a new conviction against Ríos Montt would be achieved if a new trial was held.

“Although judges are showing greater independence, there are economic interests that are not going to allow the powerful to be tried,” he said.