The Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network (BTS) recently published their annual review for 2024. The report not only celebrates their accomplishments over the last year, it also recognizes the incredible contributions of their partners, staff, cooperants, interns, volunteers, and donors!… Read More ›
Genocide
Indigenous Women Survivors of Guatemala’s Rape Camps Seek Justice
Forty years after surviving state violence, Maya Achi women return to court to demand justice, challenging a long legacy of impunity for crimes against humanity. Jo-Marie Burt, Paulo Estrada and Keily Colíndres write in NACLA Report about the long struggle… Read More ›
The Massacre of a Trial for Genocide
Benedicto Lucas García, a parachutist trained by France and the United States, was an iconic leader of the Guatemalan counterinsurgency. Decades after the horror, as some of the remaining Maya Ixil victims made the trek from the mountains of Quiché… Read More ›
Guatemala: Indigenous Leaders Face Terrorism Charges
International Scrutiny Needed as Attorney General Ramps Up Abusive Prosecutions Human Rights Watch recently issued a News Release concerning the criminalisation of Indigenous leaders by the Attorney General’s office. Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office has detained two Indigenous leaders on spurious… Read More ›
Central America’s Last Comandante
Writing in Jacobin, Emilie Teresa Smith and Margarita Kenefic, both former militants in the Guatemala’s Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) during the Guatemalan internal armed conflict, talk of César Montes, ‘Central America’s Last Comandante’, who led rebel forces, including the Guerrilla… Read More ›
Defense Strategy and Guatemalan AG’s Decisions Reduce Odds of Genocide Conviction
In the genocide trial against retired military commander Benedicto Lucas García, initially expected to end three weeks ago, the defense has attempted to recuse the court to delay sentencing. Last-minute tension is affecting proceedings: A judge is now on medical… Read More ›
Ixil Genocide Trial Against Benedicto Lucas García Nears End
Eleven years after the genocide trial of ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, that of General Benedicto Lucas García, a former chief of the General Staff, began this April. In over 85 hearings, witnesses, victims, and experts have testified about the scorched-earth… Read More ›
Ixil Dignity
Víctor Peña presented this photo essay in Spanish in March 2019, in El Faro. It is now translated in the lead-up to the verdict in the trial of retired Guatemalan General Benedicto Lucas García on the charge of genocide against… Read More ›
The Voices Of Those Who Live Among Mountains
Resistance Of The Communities Of Guatemala Against Dispossession “We are Ral Ch’och, that is to say: we were born, we live and we are on our lands. We cannot go anywhere else other than our own.” Pascual Miranda, Río Cristalino… Read More ›
GHRC: July Update
The July Update from the Guatemala Human Rights Commisison (GHRC) was recently shared. In hopeful news, Indigenous land rights activist Lolita Chávez has returned to her home in the K’iche after seven years of exile. In 2017, she suffered an… Read More ›
Guatemala Solidarity Network 