Honduras: 15 women murdered in first two weeks of 2020
From Democracy Now, 15 January 2020
In Honduras a new report by the Violence Observatory at the
Honduran National Autonomous University says that at least 15 women have been
murdered in the first 14 days of this year. Violence against women, LGBTQ
people, indigenous leaders and environmental activists has skyrocketed in
Honduras under the US-backed government of President Juan Orlando Hernández. Honduran
media reports that another migrant caravan has congregated in San Pedro Sula
and is preparing to head northwards, as violence and poverty continue to push
Hondurans to flee the country.
El Salvador: 17 assassinations in one weekend
From a
report by Beatriz Calderón in La Prensa Gráfica, 15 January 2020
After a period of relatively low homicide numbers which has
marked the early part of Nayib Bukele’s presidency, the director of the
National Civil Police (PNC) Mauricio Arriaza Chicas described the weekend of
the 11th and 12th January as ‘atypical’ and very
different from the the average figure of 2.7 assassinations that the government
announced during the previous week. Six people were assassinated on the
Saturday and another eleven on the Sunday. Monday 13th also turned
out to be a murderous day with another six assassinations. In total 56 people
were assassinated during the first 15 days of January. Moreover another 65 – 70
people have disappeared in that same time period, although Arriaza Chicas
suggested that these were accounted for either by them having lost their phones
or having gone away with their partners.
Arriaza Chicas also gave the comparative figures for 2018 and 2019: 2019 – 2,383 assassinations.
On 14th January [2020] Alejandro Giammattei took
over as President of Guatemala from Jimmy Morales.
Guatemalan civil society groups pressured authorities to arrest
President Jimmy Morales for corruption during the few hours of the 14th
January between the handover to the new President and the swearing in of
Morales as a representative on the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).
During those few hours his immunity from prosecution lapsed and only during
that time could he be arrested.
Morales and more than a dozen outgoing congressional
representatives face allegations of corruption and other crimes. Unlike most
previous presidents, Morales was keen to join Parlacen in order to retain his
immunity from prosecution. The timetable for the swearing in to Parlacen was
suddenly advanced in order to limit the time available to bring about any such arrest
or prosecution.
Most of the investigations into political corruption were
initiated by the UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG). CICIG was formed in 2007 and exposed networks of corruption
that had been entrenched in state institutions. CICIG investigations led to the
resignation and arrest in 2015 of then-President Otto Pérez Molina and many in his
administration. With the campaign slogan ‘neither a thief nor corrupt’ Morales
won the election just weeks later, but he turned against CICIG after he, his
relatives and his party were named in connection with investigations in 2017.
In 2018 he refused to renew CICIG’s mandate and later barred CICIG’s head
commissioner Iván Velasquez from the country.
President Giammattei represents the extreme right wing of
politics and was backed by a group of hard-line former military officers who
opposed the peace process which brought an end to Guatemala’s 36 year war. Amongst
other things, he has no intention of bringing CICIG back but has vowed to bring
back the death penalty. His only other experience of public political service
was as Director of the Penitentiary System during which time he was denounced
by human rights organisations for the high number of extrajudicial executions
of prisoners.
Giammattei has promised to promote the extractive industries
which, as experience shows us, cause forced displacement of rural and
indigenous populations. He is also linked to the Foundation Against Terrorism
which uses malicious prosecution to prevent defenders of human rights, land
rights and environmental rights from pursuing investigations into,
denunciations of and prosecutions of those who abuse these rights.
Under the heading ‘President Alejandro Giammattei appears to
be a new face backed by the same old criminal networks’, the Guatemala Human
Rights Commission (GHRC) has produced an in-depth analysis of human rights
concerns regarding Giammattei’s forthcoming presidency. A pdf of this analysis
can be found here: [pdf version here].
Telesur, 14 January 2020, ‘Guatemala: Giammattei
takes office in a poor, insecure country’.
GHRC, 15 January 2020, ‘No relief in
sight: President Alejandro
Giammattei appears to be a new face backed by the same old criminal networks’. www.ghrc-usa.org
If you read the following litany of
crimes, abuses, death squad activities and much more, you won’t be surprised to
hear that Guatemala’s human rights community is concerned about the country’s
future under the presidency of Alejandro Giammattei. The following report by
the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) reads like a political corruption
and organised crime novel, but this one is based on real life in Guatemala. I
am grateful to the GHRC for permission to reproduce their report here and in
particular to GHRC Director Annie Bird who wrote the introductory letter which
accompanies the report.
I suppose that it shouldn’t really be a
surprise given that gangsters and gangsterism now dominate the politics of the
western world.
Dear
Friends,
Yesterday,
January 14, Alejandro Giammattei assumed the presidency of Guatemala.
Guatemala’s human rights community is concerned. Here are key points to keep in
mind.
Four trials in
Guatemala, Switzerland and Spain have demonstrated that police death
squads killed inmates during Giammattei’s term as National Prisons
Director – his only previous experience in public office. Other
convictions show the same death squads were involved in violent disputes
between drug traffickers, indicating the prison killings could be
attributed to similar motives. While his direct participation has not been
proven, this is a concerning precedent to what could happen under his
watch as president. Related trials are ongoing, though prosecutors
and judges are under attack.
Giammattei has
promised to expand and promote extractive industries that displace the
livelihood and provoke forced displacement of rural and indigenous
communities.
At least two
key cabinet appointments are active members of the Foundation Against
Terrorism, which uses malicious prosecution to promote impunity for human
rights abuses. On the day of the inauguration, Daniel Pascual,
Coordinator of the Campesino Unity Committee, began trial on slander
charges – a violation of freedom of speech, this process places the
defender in danger, and is marred by procedural anomalies.
Giammattei has
promised to dissolve the Presidential Security Secretariat (SAAS), a
civilian security agency created to comply with the peace accords, and
instead has focused on strengthening the National Security Council.
He has promised to appoint retired military officers active during
Guatemala’s genocide to almost all key security positions.
Students
protesting the inauguration were illegally detained and apparently
beaten. A judge ordered their release this morning and an
investigation into police aggressions.
Below
please find an in depth analysis of human rights concerns surrounding
Giammattei’s inauguration [pdf version here].
Also please see GHRC’s analysis of the August 11, 2019 run off elections [pdf version here], the June
16 general elections [pdf version here], and the
Constitutional Court decisions to bar candidates Zury Rios and Themla Aldana [pdf version here].
Many
Thanks,
Annie
Bird
No
Relief in Sight:
President
Alejandro Giamattei appears to be a new face backed by the same old criminal
networks
January
15, 2020
GHRC
President-elect
Alejandro Giammattei took office yesterday in Guatemala City. He was
never expected to win. After three unsuccessful presidential bids, Giammattei
made the runoff Presidential election in August by just one percentage point
and only after three candidates had been eliminated through legal
actions. His only experience in public office was a 2004-2008 stint as
National Prisons Director. In 2010, he was charged with the extrajudicial execution
of seven inmates under his watch. Though others indicted on related charges
were convicted, charges against Giammattei were eventually dismissed by a judge
who was later sanctioned as a result of unrelated corruption charges.
Giammattei
comes to the presidency backed by a group of hard-line former military officers
reportedly associated with the sector that opposed the peace process
that ended Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. Many are also associated with
industries that extract resources from rural communities – often with US,
Canadian and European investment – a sector Giammattei has pledged to promote.
Some are active members of organisations that have promoted dozens of malicious
lawsuits intended to stop the work of public prosecutors, judges, experts, and
human rights defenders who contribute to ending impunity for corruption,
ongoing human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity carried out during
Guatemala’s civil war.
Giammattei
won 13.9% of the votes in the June 16, 2019 general election, taking second
place to former first lady Sandra Torres’ 25.53%. He came in just 2.5%
ahead of Thelma Cabrera – the highest polling indigenous presidential candidate
ever, who reported very serious problems during her campaign, including murders
of party leadership – and just 1% ahead of a career diplomat. Giammattei then
won the August 11th run-off with just under 58% of votes.
The
same day, Giammattei announced most of the members of his cabinet, but didn’t
divulge the names of key security appointments. Then, during an October
25 regional security conference in El Salvador, retired Air Force General Roy
Dedet announced who would be appointed Secretary of Defense, Interior Minister,
and the National Security Council. Though Giammattei confirmed the announcement
days later, the fact that such an important announcement was made while
Giammattei was visiting Taiwan left Guatemalan news analysts speculating that
Dedet was the power behind the presidency.
What
Peace Accords?
A
key player in Giammattei’s campaign, Dedet announced that he would become
Giammattei’s National Security Advisor, and that he was in charge of the
presidential transition. He attributed authorship of the new
administration’s security strategy to former General Gustavo Adolfo Díaz López,
best known for leading a failed coup in 1988 of hard-line officers opposed to
the peace process, the ‘Mountain Officers’. Guatemalan press reported
that, when asked if the appointment of former military officers to public
security positions was a violation of the 1996 Peace Accords, Giammattei
replied, “What peace accords? The peace accords have been
violated.”
The
war has not ended for networks of military officers active during the genocide.
Not only do they undermine democracy in order to maintain impunity for the most
heinous crimes against humanity imaginable, but they continue to exploit the
spoils of war, concessions to water and mineral rights, and land titles
obtained through corruption and violence. Thousands of residents of rural
communities seeking respect for their land and resource rights are targeted by
false prosecutions that violate their fundamental rights, while political
opposition has been targeted in killings bearing the hallmarks of death squad
operations.
On
January 6, an umbrella organisation of associations of former military officers
actively working to achieve impunity for appalling crimes made a statement
denouncing the date as the four year anniversary of the “cowardly” arrest of 18
military officers on crimes against humanity charges related to the CREOMPAZ
and Molina Theissen cases. The organisation voiced support for Giammattei, and
echoed his assessment that the peace “agreements have been violated” but went
on to elaborate, “by terrorist criminals and that have served as a political,
ideological flag for the perverse persecution against the military, military
commissioners and civil self-defense patrollers.”
The
expected National Security Council appointments include former military
officers with terrible human rights records and credible allegations of close
relationships with members of organised crime networks. The proposed
Interior Minister, charged with overseeing law enforcement, is former general
Edgar Godoy Samayoa. Press reports he has been a close associate of one of the
most notorious organised crime figures in Guatemala, Luis Francisco Ortega
Menaldo – during the campaign, Giammattei used a helicopter registered to a
company owned by Ortega Menaldo. The anticipated Vice Minister of Security
Elmer Anibal Aguilar Moreno has been criticised in the press for his close
relationship to members of the Zeta crime syndicate.
Dedet
himself was named during the trial of three military officers convicted of
Bishop Juan José Gerardi’s 1998 murder. Bishop Gerardi was killed
following the publication of the Catholic Church’s truth commission that
reported atrocities committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. A
witness testified that Dedet, a member of then President Álvaro Arzú’s
Presidential Guard (Estado Mayor Presidential – EMP), coordinated protection
for Captain Byrón Lima Oliva, convicted of the murder in 2001 alongside his
father Coronel Byrón Lima Estrada and intelligence Sargent Obdulio
Villanueva. All three convicted murderers were fellow members of Arzú’s
EMP. Byrón Lima grew to influence significant control of the prisons through
corruption networks. In October 2017 prosecutors requested removal of former
president Arzú’s immunity so he could face corruption charges for facilitating ‘phantom
salaries’ from Guatemala City’s municipal budget to imprisoned Byrón Lima Oliva
and Obdulio Villanueva’s widow; Villanueva was beheaded in jail in 2003.
The request was initially denied. Arzú died before the prosecutor’s appeal was
reviewed.
The
EMP was a military institution responsible for protecting the president.
Considered the power behind the presidents, in compliance with the 1996 peace
accords, the EMP was closed, replaced by the SAAS in 2003. In 2008 the
National Security Council (CNS) was created. Comprised of top-level security
related presidential appointees, it assumed many of the functions of the
defunct EMP. The CNS maintained a low profile, but gained visibility on
September 4, 2018 when the administration of President Jimmy Morales announced
the CNS had barred Iván Velasquez – then Commissioner in charge of the International
Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) – entry into Guatemala, a move
the Constitutional Court ruled illegal. In December Giammattei announced
his intention to close the SAAS.
Giammattei’s
appointees promote impunity, weaken the justice system
Guatemalan
press also reports that Dedet and Godoy are both active members of the Foundation
Against Terrorism, an organisation which has used its influence within the judiciary
to promote malicious, false prosecutions of human rights defenders – and even
internationally acclaimed public servants such as prosecutors with the Office
of Special Prosecutor for Human Rights. Many defenders have spent years
in preventive detention or have pending arrest warrants, illegal reprisals for
their efforts to use the justice system to prosecute human rights
abuses.
Just
yesterday, the day of the inauguration, the trial began of internationally
renowned land rights defender Daniel Pascual on slander charges promoted by the
Foundation, a case which the International Federation for Human Rights has
called an infringement on freedom of expression that places the human rights
defenders at risk, noting procedural anomalies in the process. The
charges against Pascual stem from a press conference following a January 2013
violent attack against him in which Pascual cited incendiary publications by
the president of the Foundation Against Terrorism as contributing to the
attack.
In
another prominent case, the chief prosecutor in charge of Guatemala’s
internationally renowned Human Rights Prosecutors Office, Orlando López was
removed from his position, arrested and held in prison after the Foundation
Against Terrorism formally joined in the prosecution of a traffic accident. The
Foundation’s participation in the case is illegal as it bears no relevance to
its mandate.
After
the Foundation’s involvement, the treatment of the case showed irregularities.
López led the January 6, 2016 arrest and prosecution of 18 former military
officers on charges of crimes against humanity, and also led the prosecution of
Efraín Ríos Montt on genocide charges. López had been subjected to many
previous attempts of malicious prosecution by the Foundation; his colleague,
the Chief of the Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), CICIG’s national
counterpart, has been subject to approximately 80 complaints, as have many of
their colleagues, judges, forensic experts and human rights defenders. López’s
case is expected to go to trial early this year.
Reorganisation
and weakening of State agencies that protect human rights and combat impunity
is another tactic that has been aggressively pursued by the administration of
outgoing president Jimmy Morales and it is feared that Giammattei will continue
along this path. The Office of the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights
is being divided into three smaller prosecutors’ offices, a measure that could
weaken the office. This office has been key not only to prosecution of crimes
against humanity, but also resolving malicious prosecution of rights defenders.
Other key institutions targeted include the Constitutional Court, the Supreme
Court, the office of Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH) Jordán Rodas, the Secretariat
of Peace charged with implementing the 1996 peace accords, and the Peace
Archives from the former police headquarters.
In
the most notorious institutional change, the Morales administration ended
CICIG’s mandate on September 3, 2019, after attempting an illegal, summary
closure. While FECI is expected to continue prosecutions started under
CICIG, it is greatly weakened without the presence of CICIG. Many important
cases are currently being prosecuted by FECI, including one that involves
Giammattei.
Four
trials in three countries show extrajudicial killings happened under
Giammattei
In
one of CICIG’s first prosecutions, on August 9, 2010 an arrest warrant was
issued against Giammattei on charges of extrajudicial execution related to
violent deaths in the Pavón prison on September 25, 2006 while he was the
National Director of the Penitentiary System. His then assistant and
three police officers were arrested that day, but Giammattei, apparently
alerted, had requested political asylum days before in Honduras’ embassy in
Guatemala. His request was denied, so on August 13, 2010 he was taken into
detention on the Mariscal Závala military base.
Giammattei
was held until May 11, 2011 when judge Carol Patricia Flores dismissed charges
against him and the four others in the same indictment, citing a lack of
evidence. Two of the three police officers were later convicted on
related charges. Just a few months later, Judge Flores lost, but later
recovered on appeal, immunity from prosecution on charges of money laundering,
illegal enrichment and breach of duty in an unrelated case but was
sanctioned.
In
the same case arrest warrants were issued for National Police Director Erwin
Sperinsen who fled to Switzerland, then Interior Minister Carlos Vielman fled
to Spain, and the former Deputy Director of the National Police, Javier
Figueroa, fled to Austria. All requested political asylum. Each country
refused extradition, but instead conducted trials in Switzerland, Austria and
Spain.
Former
National Police Director Erwin Sperinson was convicted and sentenced to 15
years in Swiss prison for his role in the September 2006 murder of seven
inmates. Vielman and Figueroa were acquitted in Spain and Austria
respectively. Observers note that Swiss prosecutors conducted the most thorough
investigation, whereas Austrian and Spanish prosecutors did not travel to
Guatemala. The Spanish court found that extrajudicial executions had
occurred in Pavón but Vielman’s involvement was not proven. Four police
officers were convicted for those killings in Guatemala on August 8, 2013,
including Police Director, Victor Hugo Soto Dieguez.
Vielman
returned to Guatemala in April 2017. On October 29, 2018 he was arrested and
charged in the murders of two escapees and one bystander, and the torture of
two escapees, all distinct cases from those tried in Spain, but connected to
the same death squads. Judge Claudette Dominguez charged Vielman in the torture
case but not the murders, granting him conditional release on bail. That
case is pending trial, prosecuted by FECI. Judge Dominguez’s independence has
been questioned in other high-profile human rights cases. Most recently her
ruling to dismiss charges of mass rape by civil patrollers against indigenous
Achi Maya women during the civil war was overturned on appeal by the
victims.
Death
Squads Connect Politicians and Drug Traffickers
The
Pavón Case was just one in a series of killings that prosecutors attribute to
death squads operating with the knowledge of top-level government security appointees
between 2005 and 2007. Evidence suggested specific inmates were targeted,
that killings were not the result of excessive force during clashes. Subsequent
killings by the same death squads suggest the motives may have been disputes
between drug networks; they happened as the Zetas moved into Guatemala; control
of prisons is critical to drug networks.
The
death squads were led by Victor Soto Dieguez, convicted in the Pavón case, and
also allegedly by Victor Rivera, a Venezuelan security advisor to Interior
Minister Vielman who first came to Central America to collaborate with the CIA
in the Contra supply operation. Rivera and Soto allegedly played a role
in the February 20, 2007 murder of three Salvadoran representatives to the
Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and their driver. Guatemalan
congressman Manuel de Jesús Castillo Medrano was convicted of the murders in
2010. An arrest warrant is pending for former Salvadoran congressman, Roberto
Silva, who allegedly ordered the killings. Four police officers associated with
Rivera and Soto were arrested as material authors in the case in 2007, but they
were murdered in preventative detention just three days after their
arrest.
Manuel
Castillo was murdered in prison this past December 16, 2019. Roberto
Silva, his alleged accomplice, was deported to El Salvador from the United
States on January 8, 2020 after fighting deportation since 2007. He faces
corruption and money laundering charges in El Salvador, and the PARLACEN murder
charges in Guatemala. On January 13, 2020, Giammattei claimed he had learned of
a plan to assassinate him during yesterday’s inauguration, a scheme he related
to Castillo’s murder.
While
Giammattei’s direct involvement in extrajudicial executions during his term as
National Prison Director was never proven, it has been proven in courts in
Switzerland, Spain and Guatemala that death squads killed inmates under his
watch. The appointments he has announced for key security positions, men
who justify the most extreme degradation of human life, give rise to serious
concern that more atrocities could happen during his term as president.
In 2018, our annual report on killings of land and environmental defenders took a new focus: for the first time, we looked more closely at the tool of criminalisation, and how it is used by states and businesses to silence and attack defenders.
We recently interviewed the defender Abelino Chub Caal to learn about his experiences of criminalisation, his recommendations on how states and businesses can stop this happening, and what must happen next.
Abelino, the Q’eqchi community and the expansion of palm oil on their land
For over a decade Abelino Chub Caal has worked in his native Guatemala for the civil society organisation the Guillermo Toriello Foundation, supporting indigenous communities with legal processes to have their land rights recognised, and driving forward self-sufficient sustainable agriculture projects.
Over the last two years his life, the lives of the communities he works to protect and the lives of his own family have been turned upside down.
This story starts in 2016, with two agribusiness companies that were looking to expand from bananas into palm oil. To do that, they wanted to use land which indigenous Q’eqchi communities claimed to have lived on for centuries and had ancestral rights to. But according to Abelino, the companies did not consult fully with the communities living there, before rolling out their new crops and starting to plan their projects.
This is where Abelino enters. In carrying out his work for the Guillermo Toriello Foundation, he looked to mediate the conversation happening between communities living in the area, and the agribusiness companies looking to expand into their area.
Criminal charges of aggravated trespass, arson and illicit association were then brought against him. It was claimed that Abelino had previously organised members of the community to burn oil palm trees which had been planted on land at the Plan Grande estate where the Q’eqchi community lived, and of provoking a confrontation against the police.
Abelino was arrested on 4 February 2017, while celebrating his birthday with his wife and two young children. He remained in custody awaiting trial for more than 2 years. In April 2019, having produced evidence that he was not even in the area on the day of the fire, he was acquitted of all charges at his trial. The Court concluded that Abelino’s charges should be dismissed, and commented that “criminal law was being used to criminalise the defendant’s conduct.”
I was in jail for more than two years, for a crime that I hadn’t committed.
“But when you are in jail, it doesn’t matter if you are guilty or not, you are simply treated as a criminal. You share the prison with hitmen, assassins, robbers. I was under the same ceiling of an Army man who was convicted for his involvement in a massacre against indigenous people, during the civil war. This is unjust, and is one of the psychological damages that being in jail gives you.”
This pattern – where states and powerful businesses use the criminal law against those seeking to challenge them – is not a new one.
Attacks from all sides
Abelino identifies criminalisation as only one of the strategies used in Guatemala to silence those that resist forced evictions, land grabs and pollution from dams, mines, and palm oil or sugar plantations.
“In 2007, a Canadian mining firm evicted 100 families from El Estor, near Guatemala’s Pacific coast. People were injured and women from the community were raped during this eviction, but these rapes were never investigated in Guatemala”, he alleges.
He goes on with his account: “In 2009, security guards from the company shot various people from Las Nubes community. The community leader Adolfo Ich Chamán was killed during this event.” The company denied involvement with any forced evictions or with the death of Mr Chamán.
Abelino says it is not the first time the Q’eqchi people have faced these kinds of attacks:
“In 2011, I witnessed some ruthless evictions by the police of 732 Q’eqchi indigenous families from their land in the Polochic Valley, which was later planted with sugar crops for biofuels. One person died, several were injured and hundreds displaced from their homes. Their shacks and crops were burnt down.”
Following the eviction of Q’eqchi families in the Polochic Valley, the organisation Abelino works for, the Guillermo Toriello Foundation, suffered a serious break-in, with equipment containing sensitive information stolen. Abelino and members of the Foundation believed this incident was not a burglary, but a reprisal for their attempt to support the victims of evictions.
The ripples of criminalisation spread wide
The criminal prosecution of Abelino did not just harm him, but was felt by his own community over distance and time.
During two arduous years in jail, he was constantly worried about his family and their well-being. His family’s visiting time was limited and they had to rely on other family members to survive. “When they wanted to visit me, they had to queue in front of the prison at 3am, and if they were lucky, they would see me at around 10am. Some days, they were sent home without seeing me, because the visiting time was over.
But probably the worst part of it all was the uncertainty: the system kept postponing the hearings and the trial, and therefore I had no clue about when I would be able to prove myself innocent nor when I would be released.
The role that corporates and governments must play
Where there are natural resources, those looking to exploit them for profit inevitably follow. The economic model in Guatemala relies heavily on agricultural and natural resource extraction and export. This model has directed land concentration toward the wealthy, pushing poorer communities off their land and fuelling violence.
But while defenders are targets of evictions and legal attacks like these, often driven by or at the hands of businesses, Abelino still welcomes corporations that operate in an ethical way and that are supportive of the community and the wider environment.
“We are not against corporations, but we oppose the enterprises that evict people from their land and divide communities with total impunity. We oppose businesses that do not respect the right to life and the way communities organise themselves. They should at minimum consult us, and respect the international treaties.”
Businesses, and those that fund them, are not the only ones who need to act. Governments, both nationally and internationally, must take decisive action to hold businesses and investors to account.
Following cases like Abelino’s and a fivefold increase in killings of Land and Environmental defenders in Guatemala in 2018, the government must take steps now to support and protect defenders protecting their land and our global environment from rapidly escalating climate breakdown.
And other governments – like those in the UK, US, EU and beyond, should introduce proper due diligence rules that mean that their companies, investing and extracting abroad, are not making money at the expense of human lives or freedoms.
The fight continues
Abelino is now free, but his fight, and those of others, is still far from over.
Whilst he has been acquitted, criminalisation of community activists still continues, enabling big businesses to profit from indigenous land and risking severe destruction of the planet in the process. The Q’eqchi community from Palo Grande is still at risk of being evicted. Abelino fears this could be imminent.
Despite suffering criminalisation, Abelino never thought of giving up, and when asked what he is going to do next, he says:
I will carry on uncovering all the problems affecting the communities. Like other land and environmental defenders, I don’t work for myself, but to protect the rights of communities that have been abandoned by the State.
Entrevistamos recientemente al defensor Abelino Chub Caal, conversamos sobre su historia de criminalización, sus recomendaciones y sobre cómo los Estados y las empresas pueden evitar estos hechos.
Abelino, las comunidades Q’eqchi y la expansión de la palma aceitera
En su Guatemala natal, Abelino Chub Caal ha trabajado para la Fundación Guillermo Toriello durante más de una década. Abelino ha apoyado a comunidades indígenas con procesos legales para el reconocimiento de sus derechos territoriales e impulso de proyectos autosuficientes de agricultura sostenible.
En los últimos dos años, su vida, las de las comunidades que él busca proteger y la de su propia familia se han puesto cuesta arriba.
Esta historia comienza en el año 2016, cuando dos empresas de agronegocio intentaron expandir su producción de banano a la de palma aceitera. Para hacer eso, decidieron utilizar tierra donde comunidades indígenas Q’eqchi alegaban haber vivido por siglos y por lo tanto, haber adquirido derecho sobre el territorio ancestral indígena. De acuerdo con Abelino, antes de introducir sus nuevos cultivos y comenzar a sembrar, las empresas no consultaron integralmente las comunidades que vivían allí.
Aquí es donde Abelino empieza a hacer parte de esta historia. Como parte de su trabajo con la Fundación Guillermo Toriello, él intermedió las conversaciones entre las comunidades que vivían en la zona y las empresas de agronegocio que tenían como objetivo expandir su producción.
Los cargos de usurpación agravada, incendio y asociación ilícita fueron entonces presentados en contra de él. Se alegó que Abelino había organizado miembros de las comunidades para incendiar la plantación de palma aceitera en la finca Plan Grande, donde vivían comunidades Q’eqchi, y de provocar un enfrentamiento contra la policía.
El 4 de febrero del 2017, Abelino fue detenido mientras celebraba su cumpleaños con su esposa y sus dos hijos. Él permaneció en custodia esperando por su juicio por más de dos años. En abril de 2019, tras haber presentado evidencia de no haber estado en la zona el día del incendio, Abelino fue absuelto de todos los cargos durante su juicio. La Corte concluyó que los cargos de Abelino deberían ser desestimados, y comentó que “el Derecho Penal había sido utilizado para criminalizar la conducta del acusado.”
Estuve en la cárcel por más de dos años, por un crimen que no he cometido.
“Pero cuando estás en la cárcel, no importa si eres culpable o no, simplemente eres tratado como un criminal. Compartes la prisión con sicarios, asesinos, ladrones. Estuve bajo el mismo techo que un militar condenado por su participación en una masacre contra pueblos indígenas, durante la guerra civil. Esto es injusto y es uno de los daños psicológicos que te causa la cárcel.”
Este patrón, donde Estados y empresas poderosas utilizan la legislación penal en contra de aquellos que cuestionan sus acciones, no es nuevo.
Ataques desde todos los lados
Abelino identifica la criminalización como una de las estrategias utilizadas en Guatemala para silenciar a quienes se resisten a los desalojos forzosos, al acaparamiento de tierras y a la contaminación producto de la construcción de represas, la explotación de minas y la expansión de plantaciones de palma aceitera o de caña de azúcar.
“En 2007, una empresa minera canadiense desalojó a 100 familias de El Estor, cerca de la costa del Pacífico de Guatemala. Personas resultaron heridas, y mujeres de la comunidad fueron violadas durante el desalojo, pero esas violaciones nunca fueron investigadas en Guatemala.” – alega Abelino.
Él continúa su relato: “En 2009, fuerzas de seguridad de la empresa dispararon a varias personas de la comunidad de Las Nubes. El líder comunitario Adolfo Ich Chamán fue asesinado durante este evento.” La empresa negó haber estado involucrada en los desalojos forzados o con la muerte de Adolfo Ich Chamán.
Abelino dice que ésta no es la primera vez que las personas Q’eqchi se enfrentan a este tipo de ataques:
“En 2011, presencié los despiadados desalojos de 732 familias indígenas Q’eqchi de sus tierras en el Valle de Polochic, donde posteriormente fueron plantados cultivos de azúcar para la producción de biocombustibles. Una persona murió, varias resultaron heridas y cientos fueron desplazadas de sus hogares. Sus ranchos y cultivos fueron quemados.”
Tras el desalojo de las familias Q’eqchi en el Valle de Polochic, la oficina de la organización para la cual Abelino trabaja, la Fundación Guillermo Toriello, fue allanada y equipos que contenían información confidencial fueron robados. Abelino y miembros de la FGT creen que este incidente no fue un simple allanamiento, sino una represalia por su intento de apoyar a las víctimas de los desalojos.
Los efectos de la criminalización se expanden
La persecución penal de Abelino no sólo lo perjudicó, sino que su propia comunidad lo sintió a lo largo del tiempo y la distancia.
Durante los dos arduos años que estuvo en la cárcel, se preocupaba constantemente por su familia y su bienestar. Su horario de visita era limitado y sus familiares dependían de otros miembros de la familia para sobrevivir. “Cuando querían visitarme, tenían que empezar a hacer fila frente a la prisión desde las 3 de la mañana; y si tenían suerte, me veían alrededor de las 10 de la mañana. Algunos días los devolvieron a la casa sin haberme visto, porque se había terminado el horario de visita”.
Pero probablemente la peor parte fue la incertidumbre: el sistema seguía posponiendo las audiencias y el juicio y, por lo tanto, no tenía idea de cuándo podría demostrar mi inocencia ni cuándo sería liberado.
El papel que deberían jugar las corporaciones y los gobiernos
Los lugares donde hay recursos naturales, son inevitablemente perseguidos por aquellos que buscan explotarlos con ánimo de lucro. El modelo económico vigente en Guatemala depende en gran medida de la extracción y exportación de recursos agrícolas y naturales. Este modelo ha promovido la concentración de la tierra por parte de los sectores más acaudalados, frecuentemente desplazando las poblaciones pobres fuera de sus tierras y provocando altos niveles de violencia.
Si bien las personas defensoras son blanco de ataques físicos y legales como estos, a menudo impulsados o provenientes de las empresas, Abelino ve con buenos ojos a aquellas personas que operan de manera ética, apoyando a la comunidad y al entorno en general.
“Nosotros no estamos en contra de las corporaciones, pero nos oponemos a aquellas que desalojan a las personas de sus tierras y dividen a las comunidades con total impunidad. Nos oponemos a las empresas que no respetan el derecho a la vida y la forma en que las comunidades se organizan. Como mínimo, ellas deberían consultarnos y respetar los tratados internacionales.”
Las empresas y quienes las financian no son las únicas que deben actuar. Los gobiernos, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional, deben tomar medidas decisivas para exigir rendición de cuentas a empresas e inversores.
Después de casos como el de Abelino y de ver los asesinatos de personas defensoras de la tierra y el medio ambiente quintuplicarse en Guatemala en 2018, el gobierno debe tomar medidas urgentes para apoyar y proteger a las personas defensoras que protegen su tierra y el medio ambiente del colapso climático que se aproxima a un ritmo vertiginoso.
Otros gobiernos – como los del Reino Unido, Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y otros países – deberían introducir normas claras sobre debida diligencia, que garanticen que sus empresas, que invierten y extraen en el extranjero, no generen ganancias a expensas de la libertad o de la vida de las personas.
La lucha continúa
Abelino ahora es libre, pero su lucha, y la lucha de otras personas defensoras, aún están lejos de terminar.
Si bien él ha sido absuelto, la criminalización continúa, permitiendo que las grandes empresas generen ganancias a costa de la explotación de tierras indígenas y causen una destrucción severa al planeta en ese proceso. La comunidad Q’eqchi de Palo Grande todavía está en riesgo de ser desalojada. Abelino teme que esto podría ser inminente.
A pesar de haber sido criminalizado, Abelino nunca pensó en darse por vencido, y cuando se le pregunta qué hará ahora, dice:
Seguiré denunciando todos los problemas que afectan a las comunidades. Al igual que otros defensores de la tierra y del medio ambiente, no trabajo para mí, sino para proteger los derechos de las comunidades que han sido abandonadas por el Estado.
Comparte este caso para demostrar solidaridad y apoyo a Abelino.
From 2010 onwards, the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA) formed a link with MUFRAS-32 (Movimiento Unificado Francisco Sánchez – 1932) in El Salvador, supporting the latter’s projects through solidarity and financially. In 2022, unable to find sufficient funds of its own to support a MUFRAS-32 project designed to stimulate the production of organic crops in the municipality of San Isidro (Department of Cabañas, El Salvador), ENCA applied to the Unicorn Grocery for funding for the project. In 2023, the application was accepted and the project went ahead.
In February 2024, on behalf of ENCA, Liz Richmond visited El Salvador and met up with Hector Berrios and Zenayda Serrano, the two main protagonists of the MUFRAS-32 project. Her report to ENCA and the Unicorn Grocery is split into two parts:
A general background to the Salvadoran socio-economic and political situation in which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like MUFRAS-32 have to operate. This part of the report will be uploaded onto the ENCA website (enca.org.uk ) and will be included as a stand-alone item in the website of The Violence of Development (www.theviolenceofdevelopment.com ). A copy of the report will also be sent to the Unicorn Grocery.
A report more specifically directed at the progress of the MUFRAS-32 project funded by the Unicorn Grocery. This part of the report is intended for inclusion in the next edition of the ENCA Newsletter (No. 92), and a copy will also be sent to the Unicorn Grocery.
By Liz Richmond (ENCA member)
September 2024
MUFRAS-32 is a community-minded environmental political lobbying group, formed in 2001, based in the San Isidro Municipality in the Department of Cabañas, El Salvador. The organisation supports local efforts in rural areas to improve the quality of life of residents and works to promote and defend human and environmental rights and prevent harmful ‘developments’.
Its members seek social and environmental justice via political activism and community organisation, training, and awareness raising, along with the production of organically grown vegetables to promote the protection and defence of strategic resources, such as water and soil, whilst caring for the consumer’s health in local communities.
Brief summary of El Salvador’s political, social and environmental contexts
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele remains in presidency since the February 2024 election, despite the constitution prohibiting a second term in office. His government implemented a state of emergency from 27 March 2022, which has been granted repeated extensions to date, which restricts the right to protest, or gather, to be informed of rights and have access to a lawyer. It extends the time that someone can be held without charges to 15 days.
Human rights groups, nationally and internationally, report that the authorities have committed widespread human rights violations in arresting thousands due to alleged gang activity; however, many have no discernible links to gang crime and are law-abiding citizens. Others have been forced to collaborate by the major gangs, and there are links to some state involvement with the gangs. Abuses include mass arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in detention, and due process violations. Deprivation of liberty can be due to anonymous telephone calls (tip-offs), any crimes which previously would have been attributed to gangs, minor arguments, or for having tattoos, or previously being booked by the police, or to meet the detention quotas of the police or the Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador/FAES).
Cristosal, a national human rights organisation (who have had to relocate to Costa Rica) has documented deplorable prison conditions, torture cases and over 265 deaths in custody. Arrests are calculated to be almost 80,000 at July 2024 since the state of emergency. Amnesty International states that the suspension of fundamental human rights “is an action that cannot be justified under any circumstances or in any context.”
Zenayda Serrano and Hector Berrios of MUFRAS-32 say that Bukele, founder of the political party ‘Nuevas Ideas’, poses as a ‘saviour’ and provides a false sense of security to the people in answer to violent gang crime, as opinion polls demonstrate. Whilst the streets appear to be safe, the militarism associated with the state of emergency allows the regime to exert a permanent measure of repression, to violate human rights with impunity and to contravene the constitution. Thousands of innocent people are detained with a presumption of guilt. Zenayda’s elderly father was detained, due to alleged money laundering from his farming supplies shop, and it took 18 days to gain his release. He confirmed abysmal prison conditions, including lack of hygiene and medication, despite him having hypertension, and food served to multiple inmates in one bowl.
Zenayda and Hector report underhand tactics prior to the February 2024 election, including free food parcels delivered to poor communities, and school shoes, uniforms, laptops and free meals for school pupils. However, they remind us that the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional) when in government had passed the law to secure this provision to schools and pupils. Electoral corruption was believed to be high, and 62% of people did not vote for fear of, or lack of faith in, the system, and there are reportedly errors in the electoral system.
Amnesty International (AI) warns that El Salvador is experiencing the “gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence”.
They spoke further of the human rights challenges under the state of emergency, exacerbated by poverty, social exclusion, and socio-political pressures. There is limited transparency and accountability. Femicides and violence against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) people are common. They regularly hear of abuses committed against children and young people, some as young as 10 years of age, forced to have sex with military personnel in exchange for not being arrested or imprisoned. Those detained are reportedly as young as 12 years of age. There are regular disappearances, and these include children and young people. Genocide Watch report 6,443 disappeared persons since Bukele came to power in 2019, of which one-third have not been found, and 327 reports of forced disappearances since the state of emergency began in March 2022. On 21 August 2024, several non-governmental organisations launched a registry of disappeared persons in El Salvador. https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/ngos-start-registry-of-disappeared-persons-in-el-salvador#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20most%20recent,6%2C443%20reports%20of%20disappeared%20persons.
The evolution of the organised crime wave that started last year in Guatemala reached a boiling point yesterday. Gun fire attacks on buses and killings of bus drivers in several strategic locations in the capital virtually paralysed Guatemala City. It was a very well organised plan of attack, … Guatemala City has over 4 million inhabitants, it is severely overcrowded and congested by too many cars …
Yesterday, the local radio stations were reporting the attacks and the citizens of the capital started to have a feeling of being under siege by unstoppable crime. Rumours started to circulate and disinformation transmitted by the radios started to create a sense of panic in the population. Calls were made to local radio stations demanding the military to be put on the streets to bring order and for the government to impose a state of emergency.
The strategy of assassination of drivers of the public bus system started before the presidential elections in 2007. Some sectors accused one of the presidential candidates, ex-general Otto Pérez Molina[1], of being the brains of that particular strategy to create insecurity and fear in the population. (The accusation has not been documented or confirmed.) …
In his message last night, broadcast on national television, President Alvaro Colom stated that the events that occurred yesterday are part of a strategy to destabilise the government. He insisted that it is a reaction of organised crime to the security actions taken by the government. …
There are unconfirmed theories that the military and its usual sympathisers, certain power sectors of the country, want to establish military presence to control the security situation as soon as possible. …
There are other theories that claim that the publication of the police files from the period of the civil war – when the police were under the control of the military – is causing concern among the people who then ruled the country officially and unofficially (1960 – 1996). The recent declassification of military files covering some operations during the same time period and the creation of a Presidential Commission to declassify more military files is making some people extremely nervous. …
So, the question is: are yesterday’s events of violence, reporting of the media and demands for military presence, just a coincidence, or were they orchestrated?
[1] In November 2011, Otto Pérez Molina was elected President of Guatemala and assumed power in January 2012
The following is a brief summary of an article published in September 2008 in NotiCen which offers news and analysis of international political matters as they manifest themselves in Central America and the Caribbean.
A tourism project of astounding proportions is rising up out of the ashes of the grandiose but defunct Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), replaced by Plan Mesoamerica – see Chapter 7. The tourism project was proposed for the Petén, Guatemala’s largest and most remote department. President Alvaro Colóm proposed an archeological park extending some 22,500 sq km across this, Central America’s largest, forested wilderness. The park would include both El Mirador, a giant ruins considered the cradle of the Mayan civilisation, and Tikal, the gem of the Mayan classic period.
Some of this vast area has been raped, turned into cattle ranches, denuded of the forests that could not be seen for the trees whose value as illegally felled timber has spelled their doom. It also necessitates the eviction of subsistence campesino families and would include a large area of the Petén which is lawless and in which forest is clear-felled with impunity for cattle grazing. Additionally, the area is used as a major trans-shipment route by drug smugglers. The Guatemalan NGO Trópico Verde refers to those responsible for the illegal felling as ‘narco-cattle ranchers’.
Carlos Albacete, Co-Director of Trópico Verde, said that the organisation first denounced the situation in 2006 and has documentation showing that, in at least five cases, lands within the Laguna del Tigre park were illegally deeded to persons linked to narco-trafficking. In the Mirador area of the central zone of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, the group has documentary evidence of state lands taken over by drug traffickers that were subsequently robbed of their timber and turned to grazing. After Trópico Verde made its charges, authorities nullified the titles, but they did not act against the drug traffickers. “They don’t mention that, to get the deeds issued, they had to bribe lawyers and officials, or that in Laguna del Tigre so far 40 small planes used to transport cocaine from Colombia to Guatemala have been found,” added Albacete.
The full article on which this summary is based is accessible on the ENCA website
Information from Rights Action (info@rightsaction.org), 13 April 2014
Radio Progreso has reported that Carlos Mejía, a member of its staff, was murdered last night in El Progreso, Honduras. In 2009, Carlos had received precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights due to threats that he had received. Radio Progreso issued this statement:
“Carlos was a beneficiary of precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and therefore we demand that the State of Honduras through the relevant institutions investigate the facts and that this crime does not go unpunished.”
This table also appears, slightly amended, in the book as Box 9.4 (page 184).
24 October 2009 – Victor Galvez shot 32 times as he left his office in Malacatan, San Marcos.
13 January 2010 – Evelinda Ramírez shot and killed in the municipality of Ocos – see Chapter 4.
29 January 2010 – FNL member Pedro Garcia shot and killed while driving home.
17 February 2010 – FNL leader in San Marcos Octavio Roberlo shot 16 times from a passing car while closing his store in the bus terminal.
21 March 2010 – Three community leaders who had denounced Unión Fenosa, Carlos Noel Maldonado Barrios, Leandro Maldonado and Ana María Lorenzo Escobar, killed by gunshots and machete wounds in the municipality of Ocos.
22 March 2011 – Head of the local committee for the nationalisation of energy, Santiago Gamboa, shot and killed by Guatemalan soldiers during protests in the town of Las Brisas.
The reader is also referred to the interview with Dr Juan Almendares in the Honduras section of the Interviews page.
Let us defend the right to land of the peasants of Aguán and the National Front of Popular Resistance in Honduras. My grandmother used to say that the umbilical cord is always buried in some place and that my mother buried my umbilical cord in the roots of Ceiba, because this tree represents the unity of Mother Earth with the heavens. I learned the first lessons inside my mother when she was pregnant through the pedagogy of dreams, based in three principles: an intimate love for Mother Earth and for humanity, telling the truth and respecting dignity and life.
In every little piece of land, or close to the spring or the river – my grandmother would say – “you have to plant a tree or a little nutritious or medicinal plant. Clean earth and the water maintain the health of the body, the mind and the animal and human community.”
I grew up watching my mother pedal day and night on a sewing machine to make shirts for a factory that exploited her without minimal labour rights. We were “those from below” the railway, where poverty, brothels, alcoholism and violence proliferated. On the weekends the “campeños” – agricultural workers from the banana companies – would come to get drunk and attack each other with their machetes. It was a form of self destruction and of taking out their impotence against the power of the US banana companies.
When I was eight years old, at three in the morning I went with my mother to see the almost decapitated body of my father, who was killed by a hired assassin to take away a piece of land. There were seven of us brothers and sisters, we learned from that not to have hate or vengeance, nor violence or consumption of drugs and alcohol. A tropical storm came and we lost everything including our own house.
In my years as a secondary student I met the peasant Chepe Campos, of Salvadoran origin, who had migrated to the city because of poverty. He was a bricklayer; we worked together on the dream of organizing a bricklayers’ union. The project didn’t get finished because of the repressive anti-union forces and because of the flooding that destroyed the brick yards.
The other teacher was Cristóbal, a shoemaker from the neighbourhood with whom we would talk about social injustice. When I was studying in secondary school at the José Trinidad Reyes Institute I met a Guatemalan peasant who was an agricultural worker for the banana companies. He explained to us with extreme wisdom the painful experiences of being exploited by those companies.
We suffered hunger, humiliations and poverty to be able to study medicine. I worked with one main idea: to serve the poor, the peasants, workers, original peoples, Garífunas and students.
I carried out post-grad studies in medicine in the United States. The peace movement of the US youth against the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi were inspiration for my position against militarism, torture and structural violence.
Nonetheless I came to the understanding that the essence of capitalism is anti-human and racist, that in its bosom is engendered the process of qualitative transformation of humanity itself and that we can’t be indifferent nor neutral but have to take a position against injustice, war and the violation of human rights.
I never wanted to stay in the north, even when I was condemned in Honduras by the death squads and the Argentinean Anti-Communist Alliance (Triple A). I have been a victim of the policy of the “three t’s”: trauma, torture and terror. This has not made it possible for me to hate any of my adversaries nor detractors. I start from the principle that the life of every being on the planet should be preserved and that this principle should be defended everywhere. That is why I have the firm conviction of not being racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, a participant in patriarchy nor authoritarianism; but I can’t keep silent before the crimes and lies of the military geopolitics of international financial capitalism, articulated with the oligarchic power and the ideology of neoliberalism.
In essence, I am anti-imperialist. I have the firm conviction that without local, regional and global solidarity and vice versa the substantial transformations in the bosom of humanity will never be made.
With this preamble of my life I want to respectfully invite the nice readers, friends of life and of Mother Earth to move your consciousness to protest against the injustice happening in Honduras and Meso-America and the plans of war against the peoples of the ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas] and Our America.
I have served as a doctor with profound love for the poor and the condemned of the earth who live in the world of injustice. I express my testimony of solidarity against the unjust conditions lived in by the Lenca people, where the oligarchy took ownership of the rivers and wants to build in San Francisco de Opalaca a dam to change the course of the waters and generate electricity for their multinational projects. Nonetheless the Lenca people are enlightened; they reject the shady light of corruption that make vulnerable the life of the rivers and of the forest; and they join in with the National Front of Popular Resistance to participate in the Re-foundation of Honduras and install the National Constitutional Assembly which takes a step towards a Constitution for everybody.
When I examine the original and peasant peoples I observe the infamous process of social injustice that forces beings into autophagy (eating oneself). The boys and girls have sad, anaemic, dry eyes, with their bellies bulging and full of parasites, bare-foot, emaciated and swollen because of pain. This horrendous reality doesn’t just move me and make me cry, but my consciousness acquires a greater commitment with the people in resistance.
Some years ago I presented my testimony of solidarity against the killing of the Tolupanes in Yoro, caused by the occupation of their lands by cattle. The authors of this sinister plot paid $500 for each human head. This practice is an indicator of the extreme racism in Honduras and that the hired killers have always been a normal tool in the hands of the powerful.
I remember Tacamiche, to cite one of so many violent evictions in Honduras. In July of 1995 close to 500 people who had been living since the middle of the century on lands abandoned by a branch of the North American business Chiquita Banana were evicted by the Honduran military. The symbolic cost of these lands for the banana company was one dollar. To evict the peasants they launched hundreds of teargas bombs. We attended boys and girls who were burned and several women aborted because of exposure to the toxic gases. They destroyed the health centre, the Church School, and the corn and bean fields. The five hundred evicted people were relocated in a building with just one bath and one bathroom.
If we ask ourselves who are those who have been dispossessed of their lands and of the waters by the mining, banana, shrimp and wood companies and the plantations of African Palm for agro fuel, it is the original peoples, the Garífunas, the Misquitos and the peasants. They are the ones who make the land produce, who live in pauper conditions, and those who have the worst conditions of health, education, potable water and housing.
Based on these historical antecedents, we appeal to unity, organization and mobilization of the local national and world conscious with the objective of stopping the machinery of geopolitical, ideological and anti-human war against the peoples of Latin America. In Bajo Aguán, in Honduras, plans for a peasant massacre are being developed. The demand for delegations, economic solidarity and every type of humanitarian support for the families of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán (MUCA) is an urgent message.
The violence screams in every sweaty pore of the peasant and the system buys the consciousnesses to hide the truth. To defend at all costs the life of humans and of the planet should be our mission. In this small country, with an oligarchic system and an army of international capitalism the multimillionaire plans for proliferation of military bases, media campaigns and growing multimillionaire religious and media fundamentalism against Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and the suffering people of Colombia are reflected.
They are rehearsing and experimenting with a war in Honduras that begins against the peasantry and the original and Garífuna peoples. It is the power of the arms business and the buying of consciousnesses against the process of liberation and historic dignity of the peoples of Latin America.
We celebrate the strength of the spiritual and cultural unity of the resistance of the peoples of the world against pain and suffering. Our ethical and libratory commitment should be to such a degree that with the slightest showing of injustice, the subtle flight of the hummingbird moves us and invites us to defend dignity and life.
Although aware of the problem of street children, especially in Latin America, I was unaware of the general hostility felt and expressed towards them and to teams of street educators who try to protect them until one evening in 1995 when I accompanied one such team around the centre of Tegucigalpa. It was only then that I began to appreciate the constant danger experienced by both street children and the workers of organisations such as Casa Alianza and the Quincho Barrilete Association. The experience and the hatred that so many citizens feel towards street children are described more fully in an account of that evening given in ‘The Violence of Development’ website. It is this widespread hatred which excuses the unofficial programme of social cleansing carried out largely by police and death squads.
Later that year I had the displeasure of proof reading the English version of Casa Alianza’s submission to the UN Committee Against Torture, a report on ‘The Torture of Guatemalan Street Children 1990 – 1995’, a thoroughly unpleasant booklet documenting “a PARTIAL list of cases of torture against street children in Guatemala City” [emphasis in original.][1] If proof were needed that the major perpetrators of the torture and killings of street children were to be found amongst the ranks of the police and security forces, this booklet provides it.
Eighteen years later the number of street children in Central American cities has not decreased and governments have failed to implement solutions that prevent children feeling the need to seek refuge on the streets. Despite some successful and valuable programmes to tackle the problem, it is not possible to report much progress. A total of 373 children and youth under the age of 23 were murdered in Guatemala City during the first six months of 2003. 105 of these (28 per cent) were under 18 and some as young as 12 years. The statistics were collected by the Legal Aid Programme of Casa Alianza Guatemala.[2] In Honduras between 1998 and December 2003, Casa Alianza documented 2,089 extrajudicial murders of children and youth under the age of 23.[3] Figure 9.1 brings the statistics for Honduras up to the year of 2011 and shows a shocking recent increase, suggesting a deliberate strategy of social cleansing – as Duncan Campbell writes, some in Honduras would see it as getting rid of the vermin from the streets.[4]
Founded in Guatemala in 1981, Casa Alianza expanded into Honduras and Mexico in 1986 and Nicaragua in 1998 and serves 4,000 – 5,000 children each year. It describes the situation of most of them as:
abused or rejected by dysfunctional and poverty-stricken families, and further traumatised by the indifference of the societies in which they live. Ubiquitous and growing in numbers, many far too young to comprehend their fate, they beg, steal and sell themselves for a hot meal, a hot shower, a clean bed. Living on the edge of survival, they are often swept in an undertow of beatings, illegal detentions, torture, sexual abuse, rape and murder.[5]
The Quincho Barrilete Association is a NGO which works with abused children in Managua, Nicaragua. There is of course considerable overlap between abused children and street children and María Consuelo Sánchez, director of the organisation, outlines the extent of this overlap for those children helped by the Association, at the same time indicating the nature of the problems they suffer:
76 per cent experience intra-family violence; 31 per cent experience sexual violence; 58 per cent spend much of their time on the street; 18 per cent are at risk of commercial sexual exploitation; 21 per cent have already been victims of commercial sexual exploitation; and 31 per cent work on the streets, selling. Basically, the children who are not at school are on the streets.[6]
Jessica Shepherd reports that Viva, an umbrella organisation for charities that help street children, says that up to 1.5 million Guatemalan children are consistently out of school – that is a fifth of the country’s pupil population.[7] Casa Alianza has also reported several times on threats which have been issued to street educators by patrolling soldiers and policemen. In one extreme case in 2005, lawyer Harold Rafael Pérez Gallardo was murdered in Guatemala City. Harold was a legal programme advisor to Casa Alianza and at the time of his killing was advising the organisation on several pending cases regarding irregular adoptions, murders, sexual exploitations, the trafficking of children and other human rights violations against children.[8]
Like the Casa Alianza observation above, María Consuelo Sánchez also noted the close correlation between family poverty, unemployment and the abuse of children which her organisation attempts to prevent and/or overcome. Behind this link with poverty, at least in part, are the structural adjustment programmes and stabilisation programmes forced on Central American governments by the international financial institutions such as the IMF and supported by various international aid organisations such as the USAID. These ‘agreements’ implemented painful economic reforms which threw thousands of state employees and others out of work and forced the end of food subsidies and school meal programmes, as a result of which, as Dafna Araf noted, “more and more families needed their children to work in order to help the family to survive.”[9]
Such neoliberal economic policies led to more flexible working patterns, or put another way, to the chance for employers and companies to pay their workers less and demand more from them. In such a world, “children make good employees – the cheapest to hire, the easiest to fire and the least likely to protest.”[10] The link between such policies and the increase in the number of street children is indirect, but the link between street children and the violence meted out to them is direct. Many working class and middle class commuters of Tegucigalpa resented the existence and presence of these children and were prepared to turn a blind eye to their removal – by whatever means and with whatever violence necessary.
[1] Casa Alianza / Covenant House (November 1995) ‘Report to the UN Committee Against Torture on the Torture of Guatemalan Street Children’, Guatemala City, p.4.
[2] Casa Alianza (July 2003) ‘Six months of bloodshed in Guatemala City – 373 young victims’, Guatemala.
[3] Casa Alianza (December 2003) ‘Increase of Child Murders in Honduras in November’, Tegucigalpa.
[4] Duncan Campbell (29 May 2003) ‘Murdered with impunity, the street children who live and die like vermin’, London: The Guardian.
[5] Casa Alianza (undated) ‘Giving Children Back Their Childhood’, Covenant House Latin America.
[6] María Consuelo Sánchez (6 July 2009) interviewed specifically for this book by Martin Mowforth, Alice Klein and Karis McLaughlin, Managua, Nicaragua.
[7] Jessica Shepherd (8 March 2011) ‘Street life’, London: Education Guardian, p.1.
[8] Casa Alianza (5 September 2005) ‘Legal Program Advisor from Casa Alianza Murdered’, Guatemala City: Casa Alianza.
[9] Dafna Araf (November 2003) ‘Children of the Street – Troubled Past and Uncertain Future’, San José: Mesoamerica, 22 (11), p.6.
[10] Ibid.
Carlos Mejía Orellana killed
Let us defend the right to land of the peasants of Aguán and the National Front of Popular Resistance in Honduras. My grandmother used to say that the umbilical cord is always buried in some place and that my mother buried my umbilical cord in the roots of Ceiba, because this tree represents the unity of Mother Earth with the heavens. I learned the first lessons inside my mother when she was pregnant through the pedagogy of dreams, based in three principles: an intimate love for Mother Earth and for humanity, telling the truth and respecting dignity and life.
