September 29, 2016 We, the undersigned, express our solidarity with Angelica Choc and family after gunshots were fired against her home on Friday, September 16, 2016. The attack occurred just after midnight. Four bullets impacted the walls of her home, where… Read More ›
Justice
Nim Ajpu: Indigenous lawyers who are changing the face of Guatemala
Manuela Picq writes in the Intercontinental Cry magazine website about the Association of Maya Lawyers and Notaries in Guatemala. Nim Ajpu is a name that’s known to all Quiché Maya Peoples. A nahual or spirit that accompanies and protects us… Read More ›
La Puya – La Antorcha de la Dignidad (The Torch of Dignity)
September the 15th is Guatemala’s Independence Day and is celebrated by marches, formal activities, and patriotic symbols. You cannot avoid the proliferation of the national flag across the capital and in the towns. Like every nationalist project, it is the… Read More ›
Guatemalans’ Fight Against Rogue Canadian Mining Giant Heats Up
Guatemalan communities form the area of Santa Cruz del Quiche unanimously vote against resource extraction on their lands. | Photo: Courtesy James Rodriguez, MiMundo.org Communities in Guatemala have repeatedly voiced their opposition to a Tahoe Resources silver mine. The company… Read More ›
Myrna Mack’s Daughter Appointed Guatemala Health Minister
Guatemala’s newest minister marks a break from the country’s political elite as she is a self-described leftist, Telesur reports. Recently, in a surprising move, Guatemala’s military brass-linked president’s new health minister is the daughter of Myrna Mack, an anthropologist assassinated… Read More ›
The Secrets in Guatemala’s Bones
One afternoon in 1994, during his senior year in college, Fredy Peccerelli sat at an anthropology conference in Atlanta and stared at the man onstage. Peccerelli had seen the renowned bone detective Clyde Snow before, but only in a textbook…. Read More ›
Panel Discussion Held to Discuss Children and Violence in Guatemala
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), humans rights organisations, and members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations took part in a panel discussion last month (May 27) to discuss the issue of children and violence in… Read More ›
Former HudBay Mineral’s Head of Security Accused of Murder Gets Protection Detail
Rights Action, a Washington-based Human Rights NGO, has reported that last Thursday (May 18) a Guatemalan judge ruled that Hudbay Mineral’s former head of security, Mynor Padilla, will be provided with police protection. Padilla stands accused of murdering Adolfo Ich,… Read More ›
Justice Comes Slowly for Guatemala’s Maya Achí
In 1982, over 400 Maya Achí men, women, and children were murdered for opposing a hydroelectric dam under construction on the Chixoy River. The next year, the completed Chixoy dam flooded more than 30 Maya Achí communities. In 2014, the… Read More ›
Amatitlán and the ‘Magic Solution’ of salty water
A Guatemalan court has ordered that the former vice president, Roxanna Baldetti, be investigated for alleged corruption linked to the “magic solution” which she promised would clean up a polluted lake. The mysterious chemical, bought for millions of dollars from… Read More ›