The news from Guatemala, especially from Alta Verapaz, is something to dread in this year of election, especially with the notion that this will impact on the popular vote come November. The situation provides the ideal opportunity for someone to… Read More ›
Land
Wrenching Testimony and a Historic Sentence: US Court Convicts Dos Erres Perpetrator for Lying about Role in Massacre.
We were recently notified of this Kate Doyle article on the National Security Archive site. History was made yesterday (September 17, 2010) when a U.S. District Court Judge in Southern Florida, William J. Zloch, sentenced former Guatemalan special forces soldier… Read More ›
Massacre remembered – current struggles in mind?
Exactly 32 years ago today a massacre took place in the small town of Panzos, in Alta Verapaz. A group of campesinos had gathered in the town square to protest about the depredations of local landowners, among them the town’s… Read More ›
“The palm has more right to water than us”
The psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have a hierarchy of needs, from the most basic, required for our very survival, to what he called the need for self-actualisation. These needs are often visualised as a pyramid, with the most… Read More ›
‘Our lives can be cut short at a stroke’
‘This is a time of great tension because we know that at any moment, when we least expect it, our lives can be cut short at a stroke’. So titled an article by Danilo Valladares for Inter Press Service. As… Read More ›
Guatemalan communities reject mining in local territory
As multinational companies continue to seek licences for mineral exploitation in Guatemala, time and again local communities reject these initiatives in popular consultas comunitarias. Not only do they site the environmental damage that will be done to their lands, and the lack… Read More ›
Recent killings linked to Canadian-owned nickel mine in Guatemala
Dawn Paley writes in The Dominion that two Qeqchi leaders were shot and killed and over a dozen wounded this week near the site of a shuttered nickel mine in Guatemala. This article appeared on Upside Down World. The first… Read More ›
Mining in San Miguel Ixtahuacán: Conflict and Criminalization
“Experts often consider open-pit mining to be the most destructive industrial activity in terms of environmental depletion, social and cultural impact… In San Miguel Ixtahuacán and Sipakapa, San Marcos, intensive mineral exploitation has already left its mark. Local residents from… Read More ›
Unease over Guatemalan goldrush – BBC radio
With gold prices skyrocketing, the Mayans of Guatemala find themselves caught up in a new rush for the precious metal. ‘Crossing Continents’, on BBC radio, features mining in Sipakapa and the consequences of the large increase in the price of… Read More ›
Guatemala Solidarity Network 