Jeff Abbott writes in The Progressive Magazine about the current challenges facing Guatemala with regard to preventing and managing the many forest fires that have been registered during this period of El Niño and being exacerbated by climate change in… Read More ›
Poverty
When the Mountains Tremble: 40th Anniversary
The film-maker, Pamela Yates, of Skylight writes on the 40th anniversary of her hugely important film, When the Mountains Tremble, and its relevance for today. Although it’s been four decades since Mountains launched at the first Sundance Film Festival and… Read More ›
Peaceful Resistance of La Puya expects ICSID ruling in June as consultation process on El Tambor mine set to start this summer
On March 2, 2012, area residents, who had not been consulted about this mine, set up a 24-hour a day blockade at the entrance to the mine site. Within weeks, on May 8, 2012, the women of the Peaceful Resistance… Read More ›
International legal experts gravely concerned at lack of protections for Indigenous peoples and human rights defenders in Guatemala
Peace Brigades International UK (PBI-UK) accompanied a group of international lawyers to Guatemala concerned at UN and civil society reports regarding human rights violations associated with agrarian conflict in Alta Verapaz. The International Delegation of Independent Lawyers travelled to Alta… Read More ›
FONGI Denounces Use Of Excessive Force In Chapín Abajo
GHRC writes, ‘In the early morning of December 6, hundreds of Guatemalan police and military forces attacked the Q’eqchi’ community of Chapín Abajo in El Estor, Izabal. The group arrived via boat, working alongside what witnesses have reported as local… Read More ›
La Puya – A Mining Lawsuit In Guatemala Shows How Trade Courts Put Locals Last
A U.S. mining company is suing Guatemala over a shuttered project. The state relied on affected communities to mount a legal defense, but now it’s trying to bypass them to open the mine. Ana Sandoval writes in Foreign Policy In… Read More ›
The Lives of Those Who Died
Sergio Palencia Frener writes in NACLA about those who were killed during the Alaska (La Cumbre de Alaska) massacre in 2012. In the Mayan highlands of Guatemala there is a summit called Alaska. Known locally as Chuipatán, it is located… Read More ›
Guatemala’s past unearthed: The search for the disappeared
The Witness series on Al Jazeera features a film by Paula Monaco Felipe. A 40-year search for his disappeared father leads an Indigenous weaver into a world of forensic investigation. Carlos Poyon was just three years old when his father… Read More ›
Guatemala is Constructing a Religious Narco-State
Jeff Abbott has written a piece in The Progressive, for the “Other Americans” series, reflecting on the rise of right-wing evangelical forces in the once-Catholic majority nation which is reshaping its culture—and politics. As Christian nationalism rises within the Republican… Read More ›
FAO Report: Guatemala included among 19 countries with acute food insecurity
Ana Lucía González writes, in La Hora, about Guatemala being added to the list of ‘Hunger Hotspots’ compiled by the FAO/WFP. The report ‘Hunger Hotspots: FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity, October 2022 to January 2023 Outlook’ warns that… Read More ›