On August 9, 2018, the UN International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Costa Rican National Front of Indigenous Peoples made up of members of the Cabecare, Bribri, Teribe, Ngöbe and Ngöbe Bugle Peoples gathered at the National Assembly and issued a declaration stating that the Costa Rican government answered their call to pass an Indigenous autonomy law with “violence, ethnocide, impunity, humiliation, contempt and discrimination against the Indigenous Peoples of Costa Rica.”
“On August 9, 2010, Indigenous delegates and representatives, sick and tired of waiting for a debate on the Autonomous Development of the Indigenous Peoples Law project, met in the Legislative Assembly in San José to demand a yes or no to that project,” stated the declaration. “Their answer was to remove us with violence, beatings and dragging from the Legislative Assembly, as criminals.”
Indigenous leaders said that they returned to their “peoples and territories to continue with the struggle for autonomy, recovering [their] lands and territories, spirituality, cultures and strengthening [their] own organizations.”
“Throughout these years of exercising our rights we have been shot, macheted, beaten, threatened with death, slandered, offended, imprisoned and denounced,” said the declaration, “and despite all we have denounced, impunity prevails in all cases.”
The State of Costa Rica, through its different administrations, has ignored the national and international laws that protect and safeguard the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration comes as the controversy over the take-over of Indigenous lands in the southeastern region of Salitre continues to simmer.
Teribe and Bribri peoples in 2014 took their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and obtained an order obliging the government of Costa Rica to take precautionary measures to protect Indigenous Peoples against non-Indigenous settlers on Indigenous land. In July 2012, Sergio Rojas, a Bribri community leader, led Bribri and Teribe community members in an effort to reclaim land within the Salitre Indigenous reserve in the Talamanca Mountains in southwestern Costa Rica.
Though the 11,700 hectares of land had been guaranteed to Indigenous communities by a 1977 Indigenous Law. The failure of the government to compensate landowners or control the illegal sale of the land to “white” outsiders resulted in the displacement of Indigenous communities.
The government at the time said addressing Indigenous people’s complaints was complicated by the fact that various factions exit in Indigenous communities. While the territory belongs to the Bribri people, cases exist of Bribris married to outsiders or to the closely related Cabecar people, complicating ownership rights.
In the August 9 declaration, Indigenous leaders requested a meeting with President Carlos Alvarado to discuss and propose concerns and like the previous rulers, the President ignored requests, and on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the day Indigenous Peoples of Costa Rica were violently evicted from the Legislative Assembly will be commemorated.
“We reaffirm our struggle for our autonomy, land, and freedom. We maintain our slogan of total recovery of Indigenous territories, in the process of autonomous territorial affirmation, which includes land, territory, governance, culture and spirituality. We support the peoples who are recovering their territories and denounce any compensation that is intended to be made to the usurpers of our land.”
–John McPhaul is a Costa Rican-American freelance writer. During his many years in Costa Rica, the land of his birth, he wrote for the Miami Herald, Time Magazine and Costa Rica’s The Tico Times among other publications.
On June 11, 2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that domestic violence is not a valid reason to seek asylum in the United States. His decision overturned a previous ruling made in 2016 by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which allowed an abused woman from El Salvador to seek and obtain asylum on the basis of her abuse. Sessions’ ruling affects many women seeking asylum from Latin American countries, but might disproportionately affect Indigenous women and their children.
Sessions wrote that domestic abuse is “private violence,” as opposed to violence perpetrated by the government, and as such is not a qualifying factor for asylum unless an asylum seeker can show that the government not only has difficulty protecting her from violence, but actually condones the violence or is totally incapable of stopping it.
Sessions goes on to say that asylum is based on protection of a person who is under threat as a result of her social group, and argued that domestic violence is not such a threat. Instead, he claims that it is based on a personal relationship with the victim. Sessions wrote in his ruling that “generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum…. The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.” A study conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, on the other hand, says that “UNHCR’s long-standing interpretation of refugee law recognizes that gender violence (including intimate partner violence)… meet the criteria for protection.”
The new ruling is especially significant because women in Latin America, and elsewhere, are at high risk of injury, long-lasting psychological harm, chronic pain, and death from domestic abuse. While all women are in danger of domestic assault, and potentially negatively affected by Sessions’ ruling, there is reason for particular concern for Indigenous women. Cultural Survival’s recent reports on the state of Indigenous women’s rights in Mexico and Guatemala showed that gendered violence disproportionately affects Indigenous women.
Many women who are victims of any sort of gender-based violence do not report, in part because they do not trust the authorities, but Indigenous women face additional systemic barriers to seeking and obtaining help from their governments because they are often located in rural areas with fewer sources of care and because they cannot always find someone in authority who speaks their language. Indigenous women might also face discrimination based on ethnicity from their home governments and judicial processes if they do report violence. As such, Indigenous women are more likely to be unable to gain help from their home governments or communities.
Even when women manage to report violence, they seldom receive justice. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala receives more than 40,000 cases of violence against women every year but few cases are brought against perpetrators of violence against women, and even fewer sentences are carried out. One to two women are murdered every day in Guatemala, where the impunity rate in cases of femicide is estimated at 98 percent.
In Mexico in 2017, seven women were killed every day and domestic violence is a key cause of women’s deaths in the country. In almost half of the reported cases of violence against women in Nicaragua, the attack took place at home. In 2015, the deaths of 275 women were reported in Argentina, 39 of whom had reported violence to the police before their deaths. 171 of the killings took place inside the women’s homes, making the home one of the most dangerous places to be a woman. One El Salvadoran woman said that she went to the police to report domestic violence and was told simply “well, he’s your husband.” These stories and statistics paint a clear picture that domestic violence is a serious threat from which Indigenous women have little chance of escape, especially if we no longer count it as a reasonable cause to flee to safer ground.
Featured image: Two recently constructed temples serve as the centerpiece of the Garifuna community of Vallecito. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
The Garifuna, an Afro-indigenous ethnic group, have inhabited eastern Honduras since the late 18th century, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems.
In recent decades both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
The Garifuna have been mounting a resistance, aided in part by a network of community radio stations.
In addition to serving up traditional music and shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other topics, the stations have helped raise the profile of people struggling to protect indigenous lands and ways of life and serve as a strong means of mobilization, according to local activists.
LA CEIBA, Honduras — In the small, sky-blue studio at the Faluma Bimetu community radio station, 32-year-old Cesar Benedict reaches for the controls and slowly fades out the fast percussive rhythms and flighty guitar of a well-known Garifuna praise song. He leans his considerable bulk closer to the microphone and delivers a clipped message about the threat of deforestation and global warming in Honduras. Then he adeptly fades the track back in.Located in the rural village of Triunfo de la Cruz, in Honduras’s Atlántida department along the country’s palm-fringed northern Caribbean coast, Faluma Bimetu broadcasts the plight of the Garifuna people. The station’s name means “sweet coconut” in the distinctive Garifuna language.The Garifuna are a unique Afro-indigenous ethnic group descended from mutinous West African slaves and indigenous Carib and Arawak groups that dispersed across parts of South America and the Caribbean. The Garifuna have inhabited this part of Honduras since the late 18thcentury, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems and sustaining themselves on subsistence agriculture and small-scale fishing.
In recent decades, however, both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
According to reports from organizations including Global Witness and Amnesty International, Garifuna communities along the Honduran coast have routinely faced threats, harassment and gross human rights violations. Faluma Bimetu was set up in 1997 in response to the murder of three local land activists.
Cesar Benedict looks out to sea in Triunfo de la Cruz. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Benedict was born here in Triunfo de la Cruz. When he was just 11 years old, he decided it was time to “join the social struggle,” as he puts it, to help protect the Garifuna’s land and culture against what he saw as an onslaught by external forces. He started volunteering at Faluma Bimetu, carrying out various menial tasks after school and picking up a few tricks of the trade from the radio hosts, who included his older brother.
Today, Benedict is Faluma Bimetu’s hardworking director. With no salary and minimal funding, he manages a team of seven radio hosts and oversees a 24-hour schedule that includes shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence and substance abuse, the environment, youth and women’s leadership development, religion and spirituality, and traditional music.
A “strong means of mobilization”
Benedict quickly creates a playlist to cover the next hour of his show, then we duck out for a short tour of Triunfo de la Cruz, a village of approximately 2,000 inhabitants characterized by pastel-colored wooden houses divided by uneven dirt roads. The sound of Benedict’s music selection pours through the open windows of many of the households we pass.
Benedict says that Faluma Bimetu, which broadcasts almost exclusively in Garifuna, plays a pivotal role in both informing and mobilizing the community of Triunfo de la Cruz. “I’d go so far as to say that the radio has saved the life of this community. Without it, I’m not sure we’d still be here,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Benedict cites a 2016 judgment by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an international appeals court in Costa Rica for countries in the Americas. The judgment found the state of Honduras responsible for the violation of collective ownership rights and a lack of judicial protection in Triunfo de la Cruz and the nearby Garifuna community of Punta Piedra, after the municipal government sold off Garifuna land to private developers.
Benedict believes that Faluma Bimetu was crucial in raising awareness of the case and reiterating the importance of conserving ancestral lands. Recordings of on-air discussions that included call-ins from aggrieved local residents were also submitted to the court as evidence.
Miriam Miranda, a prominent Garifuna activist and the general coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), sits in her office in the city of La Ceiba. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Miriam Miranda is a prominent Garifuna activist and the general coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH is its Spanish acronym), a Garifuna advocacy group that finances Faluma Bimetu and facilitates the training of its team. She shares Benedict’s sentiment that the radio station has served as a “very strong means of mobilization” in Triunfo de la Cruz, adding that “it’s also a very cheap one.”
Furthermore, Miranda points out that community radio can still operate with relative freedom in Honduras’s increasingly repressive media environment, where most commercial radio stations and television channels are either state sponsored or forced to self-censor for fear of heavy-handed state reprisal. In small and largely neglected Garifuna communities, independent stations like Faluma Bimetu have a better chance of flying under the government’s radar.
Miranda’s organization helps run a total of six Garifuna community radio stations across Honduras, all of which have close links with other indigenous radio stations and causes. In a country renowned as the most dangerous in the world for environmental rights activists, these stations have helped raise the profile of people on the frontlines of the struggle to protect indigenous lands and ways of life. They also highlight the regular injustices activists face at the hands of the Honduran state.
In November 2016, Radio Lumamali Giriga, a Garifuna community radio station in the coastal town of Santa Fe, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Triunfo de la Cruz, ran an interview with local Garifuna leader Madeline David Fernandez. The activist had been detained and allegedly tortured by Honduran police in response to her attempts to occupy ancestral Garifuna land that the municipal government had sold to a Canadian company for a large-scale tourism development. Lumamali Giriga was first to pick up this story, then a number of other community radio stations and human rights organizations followed suit.
According to Francesco Diasio, secretary general of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, radio is a particularly powerful and accessible medium in indigenous Latin American communities, which often have low internet connectivity and literacy rates and strong oral traditions.
Persistent threats
However, Diasio cautioned that there is “very little protection and often considerable risk” for journalists and activists working in community radio in Central American countries such as Honduras. “You only have to do a quick Google search to see that the Garifuna community radio stations have faced harassment from the Honduran government,” he adds.
In January 2010, after various incidences of intimidation and theft, Faluma Bimetu was the target of an arson attack that destroyed broadcasting equipment and badly damaged the building. No arrests have ever been made in connection with the incident. Benedict places the blame at the feet of Indura Beach and Golf Resort, a flagship luxury tourism destination near Triunfo de la Cruz that was initiated in 2008 as a joint venture between the Honduran Tourism Institute and a number of the country’s most powerful business figures.
A January 2017 Global Witness report titled “Honduras: the deadliest place to defend the planet,” wrote of Indura that “Beneath the perfect travel brochure surface, is a story of threats, harassment and human rights abuse.” In the months preceding the arson attack, Faluma Bimetu had frequently criticized Indura on air.
The report also claimed that the boundaries of Jeanette Kawas National Park, located just west of Triunfo de la Cruz, were redrawn to allow for the construction of Indura. In addition, Global Witness alleged that in 2014 police and military units tried to forcibly evict 157 Garifuna families from the same area as part of a plan to expand the tourism complex, incorporating two new hotels that would take the total number of rooms to 600.
Playa Escondida Beach Club is one of two luxury tourism developments that have been built on land claimed by the Garifuna in Triunfo de la Cruz. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Keri Brondo, an anthropologist with the University of Memphis in Tennessee, U.S., who has written extensively on the Garifuna, testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2013 for the case brought by Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra. In her testimony she said that creating protected tourism areas that excluded local populations had led to overcrowding and the perpetuation of poverty in places like Triunfo de la Cruz. She added that lack of access to these protected areas had “hindered the community’s ability to maintain its traditional way of life.”
Mark Bonta, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Penn State Altoona in Pennsylvania, U.S., who has been working in Honduras for almost 20 years, told Mongabay that coastal tourism development in this region threatens not only local communities’ environmental sustainability, “but also coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass, strand, and other marine and coastal ecosystems.”
Bonta added that “local communities themselves, against all odds, if left alone, are able to protect their own resources sustainably, and there are many cases of their doing so.” He believes that community radio can make a “huge difference” in propagating such causes.
Indura Beach and Golf Resort declined to comment for this story, but in a January 2017 press release the resort stated that it had “all legal permits required by law for the development of the project” and that Global Witness had made “several false allegations.” Indura denied any attempt to force out Garifuna and said it had sought to work hand in hand with local communities.
In the past week three human rights defenders from the Campesino Development Committee have been killed, totaling seven fatal attacks on human rights defenders in Guatemala over the past four weeks.
CODECA (by its Spanish acronym) is an Indigenous-led grassroots human rights organization that fights for Indigenous and campesino rights in Guatemala. Its main goals include improving working and living conditions of the rural poor, fighting against exploitative energy companies and engaging in political advocacy.
On June 8, 2018, Francisco Munguia was found hacked to death by machete in the Jalapa region in eastern Guatemala. Munguia, a member of the marginalized Indigenous Xinca nation in Guatemala, was the community vice president of CODECA in the village of Divisadero Xalapan Jalapa.
This comes four days after Florencio Pérez Nájer and Alejandro Hernández García, were found dead by machete attack on June 4, 2018. As human rights defenders for CODECA, they mainly advocated for farmers’ labor rights, land reform and the nationalization of electric energy.
Last month, the regional director of CODECA, Luis Arturo Marroquín, also Xinca, was fatally shoton May 9, 2018 in San Luis Jilotepeque central square when he was on his way to a training of Indigenous women. This came only a week after president Jimmy Morales made a speech that publicly defamed CODECA, which CODECA leaders believe “strengthen[ed] hatred and resentment” towards their organization.
In response to the murder of their colleagues, CODECA issued a press release, saying “While the murder of our friends hurts us dearly, it will never intimidate us. We will fight harder and more united to reach our goals and those of our deceased defenders and friends.”
In a speech from the community cemetery in Xinca territory of Xalapán, Thelma Cabrera Perez, National Director of CODECA, declared, “What we demand is the defense of our rights and to live a dignified life [and] when we organize ourselves to defend our rights, that is when we are persecuted.”
In addition to the murders of these CODECA members, three other Indigenous Q’eqchi human rights defenders have been murdered this month; Ramon Choc Sacrab, José Can Xol and Mateo Chamám Paau from the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (Comité Campesino del Altiplano, CCDA). Attacks on human rights defenders has been on the rise in Guatemala, as UDEFEGUA reported 493 attacks against human rights defenders in Guatemala in 2017. This is happening in the context of government attempts to criminalize and defame human rights organizations such as CODECA.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples condemned these murders in an op-ed in the Washington Post last week, calling them evidence of institutionalized racism against Guatemala’s Indigenous Peoples. The UN has also called out Guatemala in the past for its criminalization and imprisonment of human rights defenders. Guatemala has received 17 recommendations from UN member states through the Universal Periodic Review system to combat this wave of violence; for example,
In 2012, Australia recommended Guatemala to: “Ensure effective and independent investigations into all reports of extrajudicial executions and ensure that reports of killings, threats, attacks and acts of intimidation against human rights defenders and journalists are thoroughly and promptly investigated and those responsible brought to justice’’
Often times, murders of Indigenous activists are not featured in mainstream news or media outlets, despite Indigenous activists constituting 40 percent of environmental activists murdered worldwide last year.
On June 12, 2018, CODECA supporters marched in protest to Guatemala City to “demand justice for the murder of their colleagues” and call for the resignation of president Jimmy Morales. They demand a fair investigation into the murders of those killed.
CODECA tweeted, “From the fields to the city, our southern contingency at the Trébol begins to organize. We demand justice for the assassination of our defenders; we demand the resignation of Jimmy Morales, his inept cabinet, and corrupt congressmen.”
CODECA is one of Cultural Survival’s grant partners for the community media grants project, through which it receives support for its radio programs on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, decolonization, and the establishment of a plurinational democratic nation.
Cultural Survival stands in solidarity with CODECA and firmly condemns these murders of Indigenous human rights defenders. We call for an immediate investigation into the pattern of violence against human rights defenders in Guatemala, in line with international human rights recommendations.
We join Amnesty International in demand authorities:
Initiate a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation on the recent killings of human rights defenders from CODECA and CCDA. The investigation should include the theory of the attack being a possible retaliation for their legitimate activities as human rights defender.
Guarantee the safety of all CODECA and CCDA members at risk in accordance with their wishes;
Condemn the killings and publicly recognize the important and legitimate work of all human rights defenders in Guatemala and refrain from using language that discredits, stigmatizes, abuses, disparages or discriminates them.
Guatemala’s southern coast is in a constant conflict caused by the expansion of agro-industry. Across the region, small farmers struggle to feed their families as companies buy up more and more land for export crops.
Since the arrival of the Spanish to Guatemala in 1524, the country’s fertile southern coast has been the site of some of the most intense social conflicts over land. These conflicts have continued into the 21st century with the massive expansion of sugar cane and palm oil production.
Many of these land holdings have come to include illicit interests, including drug trafficking. But local small farmers, known as campesinos, have pushed back.
Since September 2016, 135 families associated with the Committee for Campesino Unity, also known by its Spanish acronym CUC, have maintained an occupation of a finca, or a large plantation, named Las Palmeras near the municipality of Cuyotenango. They are calling for the state to expropriate the land, which was once owned by a known drug trafficker, to the campesinos.
“We see the necessity [in our communities],” said Marcos (a pseudonym), a resident of the community of Progreso, who is supporting the occupation. “We have no place to work the land due to the amount of monoculture that surround us. They have made themselves the owners of the land. We have taken this finca because we need the land to sow the basic crops.”
The campesinos come from the surrounding departments of Quetzaltenango, Suchitepequez, and Retalhuleu.
The farmers have set up a small settlement on the finca, building small structures, as well as using the houses that are on the finca. They have established a collective store in the center of the finca, where they sell sodas, cooking oil and other common household items.
Since taking the finca, the campesinos have also begun to divide the land among the families. Many families have spent nearly two years sowing and harvesting several seasons of crops, including maize, beans, peanuts and fruits.
“They accuse us of land invasion,” said Francisco (a pseudonym), a campesino from a neighboring town who is supporting the occupation. “This is not an invasion, but rather a recuperation the lands of our ancestors.”
Organizing the occupations
Occupations have long been used in Guatemala by campesinos to gain titles to land. That practice grew dramatically in the 1950s following the passage of land reform under President Jacobo Arbenz. His administration expropriated unused land from large land holders, including the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, to be distributed among landless farmers across the country. After the U.S.-backed coup d’état in 1954, however, the tactic fell out of practice due to the threat of violence.
According to research by Charles D. Brockett, occupations would return to prominence in the late 1970s with the formation of the CUC. The organization was founded during the Guatemalan internal armed conflict and worked for the interests of the small farmers across Guatemala, as well as against structural inequalities and racism.
A woman wears a CUC flag while holding the hand of her daughter who wears a CUC hat during the 2016 water march. (WNV/Jeff Abbott)
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the region has seen the massive expansion of monocrops, such as sugar cane and bananas, for export by large landholders. This expansion of export crops further exacerbated the land crisis on the coast, driving many campesinos on the coast to organize to occupy the land due to the inequalities in land availability.
“The problem is that there is a lot of African palm oil, sugar cane, rubber and bananas being planted on the coast,” Marcos said. “These monocrops are leaving us without land to support our families. It was the necessity that drove us to take the finca. [The large land owners] have left us without any land.”
But the support from the CUC has been the key for the occupation on the Guatemalan coast, with the organization providing moral and legal support for the campesinos in Suchitepequez.
“After we launched the occupation, the CUC arrived to provide support,” Francisco said. “The CUC has worked for years to serve and support campesinos across Guatemala.”
The campesinos have also received support from other farmers who have participated in other occupations in the country. They sent others to support the occupation when it began.
“We had a meeting a few days [before the occupation] with other campesinos [that had participated in occupations],” Francisco said. “They saw the necessity of launching the occupation of the land. They decided on the date, where everyone came at 4 p.m. to occupy the land.”
Guatemala has a land problem that has dictated social relations from the Spanish invasion until today. A small percentage of the population controls the majority of arable lands that they utilize for the production of export crops for foreign markets such as sugar cane, African palm oil and bananas. This problem is being exacerbated by the rise of the influence of drug traffickers and criminal networks in the two decades since the end of the internal armed conflict in 1996.
Following the signing of the peace accords, the Guatemalan government established the Land Fund, which was meant to resolve the historic land problem. Yet the high price of the land often keeps it out of reach of landless farmers.
Narcos and land
Drug traffickers have increasingly taken to purchasing land as a means of laundering money, and as a means of transporting narcotics through Central America. As the country continues to work to fight drug trafficking in the country, campesinos have increasingly taken to occupying lands owned by convicted and accused drug traffickers, as well as lands owned by their associates.
The case of Finca Palmeras is a good example of this.
The finca was founded when the Ralda family purchased extensive land holdings in the department of Suchitepequez. Prior to the establishment of the finca, the land was largely used for rice production and cattle ranching.
When Manuel Ralda died, he divided the farm among his children, but his children chose to sell the land, including Finca Palmeras. In 1995, the lands of Finca Palmeras were transferred into the national land registry. Campesinos and others lined up to purchase the lands, but the price was outside the range made available by the Land Fund. The owners of the nine caballerias of land (or a little more than 850 acres) were set at 1.5 million quetzales per caballeria, or a little over 205,000 dollars.
“A group of campesinos entered that wanted to purchase the finca,” Francisco said. “But at the time, the Land Fund only provided credit for 1 million quetzales per caballeria. The fund would not provide the money to buy the land.”
Then entered Juan Alberto Ortiz Lopez — commonly known as Juan Chamale — who was one of the principal drug traffickers in Guatemala, and the main connection to the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. He offered to buy the finca for 3 million quetzales per caballeria, and purchased the property. His goal was to create a front company to hide the transit of drugs from Colombia through the coastal region.
He quickly put in place security to block the local residents from passing through the finca to access the nearby Icán river, which was a popular fishing spot.
“Before we could fish in the rivers without any problem,” Francisco said. “But when Jaun Charmale bought the finca he put in place security guards, and it was prohibited to pass through the finca.”
According to the neighbors and campesinos occupying the finca, Charmale built new routes through the finca in order to move drugs. These routes connected to other fincas, eventually arriving at the Mexican border.
During the time that Ortiz Lopez owned the finca he would rent the lands to the neighboring fincas. This has caused problems for the campesinos occupying the land.
Furthermore, the campesino communities face an uphill battle to gain access to the land. The campesinos have faced intimidation and repression from the nearby fincas, including legal action over their occupation.
“We found ourselves with a problem,” Francisco said. “The neighboring fincas had sugar cane on part of the finca, and they filed a lawsuit against us in order to harvest that years’ crop.”
These lawsuits have included orders for the arrest of the organizers. The farmers also faced an eviction order that the police to date have not carried out.
Ortiz Lopez was finally arrested in 2011 on drug trafficking charges, and eventually extradited to the United States in 2014. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of eight or nine fincas across Guatemala, which he would rent out to sugarcane producers, especially the nearby finca Palo Gordo. He had used the fincas as a means to launder his money from trafficking.
“The end of [Alvaro] Colom’s administration was when he finally fell,” Francisco said. “The government began to take the cattle that he had on the land.”
The campesinos are emboldened through the Law of Extinction of Domain, which was established in 2010. The law permits the expropriation of any assets of anyone convicted of a crime related to narco-trafficking, or any illicit crime.
Yet the campesinos’ claim is complicated. By the time he was arrested, Ortiz Lopez had put the titles for his land in his youngest son’s name. But campesinos from the region have laid claim to the lands, arguing that the Guatemalan government must apply the law, and expropriate the farm and distribute it among the small farmers.
Violence against occupying farmers
Despite the constant threat of eviction, the community has yet to see any violence. Meanwhile, other communities that have utilized the same law to argue for expropriating land have not been so lucky.
On October 30, 2017, the residents of the Q’eqchi’ Maya community of Chaab’il Ch’och were violently evicted from the homes they had occupied for a year. Police and military burned houses and crops, as well as the belongings of residents.
The community of Chaab’il Ch’och sits on a finca called Santa Isabel located in the municipality of Livingston, Ixabal. The finca was acquired by a shell company owned by former President Otto Pérez Molina.
The finca is currently being administered by Rodrigo Lainfiesta, a businessman and ally of Pérez Molina, who is also facing corruption charges. Pérez Molina is currently being prosecuted for corruption, as well as charges related to his association with drug traffickers.
In an interview for Upside Down World, one member of the occupation stated that they believed the land was used or going to be used for drug trafficking.
Yet, in spite of the violence against other communities, the campesinos in Suchitipequez are confident that they will emerge victorious.
“We are asking God that we will win, and believe we will,” Francisco said. “For our children, we do not want to see any more malnutrition in our communities.”
