In the last couple of weeks, Guatemala has seen the swearing in of its new President, Alejandro Giammattei, and the unedifying site of Jimmy Morales scurrying off to the Central America Parliament (PARLACEN) so as to maintain his impunity from… Read More ›
Poverty
What the CICIG Taught Guatemala
Irma A. Velasquez Nimatuj writes on the Americas Program website about the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG by its acronym in Spanish). It is a timely piece, as President Morales is about to step down from his role… Read More ›
A Translation Crisis at the Border
Rachel Nolan writes in the New Yorker magazine about the grassroots group of interpreters who are often the only hope for migrants who speak Mayan languages. “The U.S. government claims to provide proper translation at all points in the immigration… Read More ›
Safe Third Country?
In November, a 23-year-old Honduran man became the first asylum seeker to be sent from the US to Guatemala under the “Safe Third Country” deal. Since then, it appears that up to two dozen asylum seekers have been flown to Guatemala. Two… Read More ›
The cold cases of Guatemala’s civil war were impossible to identify—until now
Decades after 45,000 people vanished in Guatemala, an anonymous skeleton finally gets a name. Nina Strochlic writes in the National Geographic For 14 years, a human skeleton known as 317-38-10 sat in a cardboard box stored in a metal shipping… Read More ›
PBI – Indigenous land defenders criminalized for opposing open-pit mine, dam
Brent Patterson, of PBI Canada writes, On December 20, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted, “Today we have accompanied the Law Office of Human Rights to Puerto Barrios at the initial debate hearing of Eduardo Bin Poou, Q’eqchi’ defender and… Read More ›
Central American mine resistance visits Vancouver
Hayley Woodin writes on BIV’s resources and agriculture website. It was the first advocacy effort of its kind in a mining conflict that has spanned a decade, three countries and multiple legal challenges. In November, a representative of Guatemala’s Indigenous… Read More ›
The People Will Not Forget
Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno has written a fine piece, here, in the Los Angeles Review of Books setting out the importance of CICIG in the fight against corruption and impunity in Guatemala, and the forces that coalesced in its ultimate removal…. Read More ›
Rodrigo Tot wins Goldman Environmental Prize for land-title quest
Rodrigo Tot (Goldman Environmental Prize) Rodrigo Tot, an indigenous leader in Guatemala’s Agua Caliente, led his community to a landmark court decision that ordered the government to issue land titles to the Q’eqchi people and kept environmentally destructive nickel mining… Read More ›
El Oriente
Guatemala’s El Oriente (Eastern land) is a region which has systematically been left aside by the state’s political and economic system. The population’s suffering is visible as they have one of the highest levels of malnutrition in the country. It… Read More ›
Guatemala Solidarity Network 