Two Maya K’iche’ pro-democracy leaders who were key in fending off an electoral coup in 2023 and 2024 have now been arrested and accused of terrorism, including a member of President Bernardo Arévalo’s cabinet. In response, Arévalo and Indigenous authorities… Read More ›
Criminalisation
Ongoing Struggles for Justice: Criminalisation of Maya Ch’orti’ Indigenous Defenders in Guatemala
Members of the Maya Ch’orti’ Indigenous Council of Olopa stand in solidarity against the mining on their land An article was recently published on the website of Peace Brigades International UK (PBI-UK) highlighting the criminalisation of Indigenous defenders in Olopa…. Read More ›
Exile is ‘a little bit less than death’ for lawyer forced to flee Guatemala
Haroon Siddique wrote in The Guardian on Virginia Laparra’s struggle for justice and her receiving of the Sir Henry Brooke award. A Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutor forced into exile after being pursued by the country’s conservative elite has said that leaving… Read More ›
The Genocide Trial and the Tightrope
José Luis Sanz wrote a two-piece chronicle in El Faro, published in Spanish in 2014, on CICIG, Claudia Paz y Paz, the genocide trial of Efraín Ríos Montt, and exile. The chronicle has been translated by Max Granger amid the… Read More ›
Mayans in Guatemala call on multinational companies to stay away
Una Kelly writes on the RTÉ website about the struggle of Indigenous Q’eqchi Maya in their opposition to multi-national resource extraction in eastern Guatemala. Indigenous Mayans in Guatemala have called for a halt on multinational companies coming to their communities… Read More ›
Fighting Corruption – Virginia Laparra awarded the Sir Henry Brooke award
In a significant acknowledgment of her relentless fight against corruption under perilous conditions, Virginia Laparra Rivas, a former prosecutor in Guatemala, was honoured with the prestigious Sir Henry Brooke Award for 2025. The ceremony, organized by the Alliance for Lawyers… Read More ›
Migrants Describe Journey As Military Deportation Flights Continue
Jeff Abbott writes in the El Paso Times of the trauma of the military deportation flights as Guatemalan nationals are forcibly removed from the United States. It was a somber — and for some degrading — return to their politically… Read More ›
Claudia Paz y Paz: “What Consuelo Porras seeks in Guatemala is impunity in all cases”
Yuliana Ramazzini writes in El Faro on the continuing corruption of the Guatemala judicial system through an interview with former Attorney General, Claudia Paz y Paz, internationally known for bringing to trial the first charges of genocide in Guatemalan history,… Read More ›
Guatemala: A 2025 Snapshot
Emilie Sweigart provides a snapshot for 2025 on Guatemala in Americas Quarterly. Elected on an anti-corruption platform, President Bernardo Arévalo and his center-left Semilla Party (which holds only 23 of the 160 seats in Guatemala’s unicameral Congress) have faced strong… Read More ›
Guatemalan AG Wants to Send Jose Rubén Zamora Back to Prison
After spending more than two years in prison in a corrupt judicial process, Guatemala’s most prominent newspaperman was released on house arrest pending retrial. But a Guatemalan court, at the request of AG Consuelo Porras, wants to send Zamora back… Read More ›
Guatemala Solidarity Network 