Deadly Raid on Indigenous Villages Documented In Guatemala By Cummunity Media Groups (Video)

Photo courtesy @PrensaComunitar via Twitter – https://twitter.com/PrensaComunitar/status/501271337038807040

By Madeleine Bair, WITNESS
Five weeks ago, reports emerged from the highlands of Guatemala documenting indigenous communities under attack by the national police force. Testimony of men beaten and dragged away in front of their families, along with images of homes burning to the ground, are reminiscent of stories from the Guatemalan genocide thirty years ago, when the army used violence against entire Mayan communities. While details are unclear due to grave dangers faced by activists and independent journalists working in the region, online reports from community media outlets paint a picture of a deadly three-day police raid of indigenous villages.

Correspondents from Prensa Comunitaria Km. 169 and other community media groups documented the events, which began on August 14 and took place in several communities along the Rio Dolores river in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala. For years, the predominantly Q’eqchí Mayan communities have resisted the proposed Santa Rita hydroelectric dam, which they say has gone forth without their consultation and would destroy natural resources and their territory.

The video above, titled “Eviction in Rio Dolores,” is described as showing the community of Monte Olivo on August 14. It captures a standoff on a dirt road between throngs of Guatemalan police officers and children from the community protesting against the eviction. Monte Olivo is known as the center of resistance to the hydroelectric dam. Last year, two children were shot and killed there by suspected contractors of the company behind the project.

This raw footage is described as showing the community of Semococh the following day. From a vantage point above the streets, it shows dozens of police vehicles blocking a road, and men throwing rocks at them. As the vehicles drive away, tear gas canisters go off, and then officers return suddenly on foot, running in riot gear into the village. The sound of gunfire can be heard throughout the video.
A report published on August 15 by Prensa Comunitaria details the raid that took place that day, including the killing of two Q’ecqhí villagers (a third later died of injuries), the arbitrary detention of five people, and more than 60 injuries.

The video above is described as testimony from a Semococh resident about what happened that day. Speaking in Q’eqchí (a Spanish translation begins at 4:05), she recounts how police officers forced their way into her home. As she tried to cover her children from a cloud of tear gas, they beat her husband with guns and dragged him out of the house. The Spanish translator off-camera adds (at 5:57) that he heard one say they would even kill her. “But another officer said to leave her. It’s bad luck,” they said, “to attack a woman with a baby in her arms.”

The following day, Prensa Comunitaria published photographs of police officers standing by as structures burn down, and a fleet of police vehicles driving along a dirt road for as far as the eye can see. According to the article, the homes of 50 Q’eqchí families were destroyed within hours. The outlet reported that several other nearby communities experienced similar raids by a large contingent of the national police force from August 14 through 16.

The police spokesperson told the press that the three deaths resulted from confrontations between indigenous communities against and those in favor of the hydroelectric project.

Threats Against Reporters
The August 15 report by Prensa Comunitaria noted that the two journalists who had been covering the story for the outlet (and who produced the video testimony above, Rony Morales and Alfredo Rax), were notified that the police were looking for them. The Centro de Medios Independientes-Guatemala also denounced direct threats that its reporter covering the story had received. Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists released a new report about threats against journalists in Central America.

More Footage and Testimony
For more videos of the recent campaign of repression against the indigenous communities of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, see this Human Rights Channel YouTube playlist. For more testimony of the raids, this Prensa Comunitaria report from August 23 includes stories from eyewitnesses, survivors, and family members who have since visited detainees in prison.


Stay up to date on the latest videos of human rights abuse by citizens and activists around the world, follow @ythumanrights on Twitter and subscribe to the Human Rights Channel on YouTube.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Monsanto Law Defeated in Guatemala by Mayan People’s Movement

By Christin Sandberg
On September 4, after ten days of widespread street protests against the biotech giant Monsanto’s expansion into Guatemalan territory, groups of indigenous people joined by social movements, trade unions and farmer and women’s organizations won a victory when congress finally repealed the legislation that had been approved in June.

The demonstrations were concentrated outside the Congress and Constitutional Court in Guatemala City during more than a week, and coincided with several Mayan communities and organizations defending food sovereignty through court injunctions in order to stop the Congress and the President, Otto Perez Molina, from letting the new law on protection of plant varieties, known as the “Monsanto Law”, take effect.

On September 2, the Mayan communities of Sololá, a mountainous region 125 kilometers west from the capital, took to the streets and blocked several main roads. At this time a list of how individual congressmen had voted on the approval of the legislation in June was circulating.

When Congress convened on September 4, Mayan people were waiting outside for a response in favor of their movement, demanding a complete cancellation of the law –something very rarely seen in Guatemala. But this time they proved not to have marched in vain. After some battles between the presidential Patriotic Party (PP) and the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER), the Congress finally decided not to review the legislation, but cancel it.

Lolita Chávez from the Mayan People’s Council summarized the essence of what has been at stake these last weeks of peaceful protests as follows: “Corn taught us Mayan people about community life and its diversity, because when one cultivates corn one realizes that there is a variety of crops such as herbs and medical plants depending on the corn plant as well. We see that in this coexistence the corn is not selfish, the corn shows us how to resist and how to relate with the surrounding world.”

CONTROVERSIES SURROUNDED LAW

The Monsanto Law would have given exclusivity on patented seeds to a handful of transnational companies. Mayan people and social organizations claimed that the new law violated the Constitution and the Mayan people’s right to traditional cultivation of their land in their ancestral territories.

Antonio González from the National Network in Defense of Food Sovereignty and Biodiversity commented in a press conference August 21: “This law is an attack on a traditional Mayan cultivation system which is based on the corn plant but which also includes black beans and herbs; these foods are a substantial part of the staple diet of rural people.”

The new legislation would have opened up the market for genetically modified seeds which would have threatened to displace natural seeds and end their diversity. It would have created an imbalance between transnational companies and local producers in Guatemala where about 70 per cent of the population dedicate their life to small-scale agricultural activities. That is a serious threat in a country where many people live below the poverty line and in extreme poverty and where children suffer from chronic malnutrition and often starve to death.

The law was approved in June without prior discussion, information and participation from the most affected. It was a direct consequence of the free trade agreement with the US, ratified in 2005. However, recently the protests started to grow and peaked a couple of weeks ago with a lot of discussions, statements and demonstrations.

At first the government ignored the protests and appeared to be more interested in engaging in superficial forms of charity like provision of food aid while ignoring the wider and structural factors that cause and perpetuate poverty in Guatemala such as unequal land distribution, deep rooted inequalities, racism, to name but a few.

But soon enough they decided to act. Even though politicians claimed not to act on social demands, it is without doubt a decision was taken after enormous pressure from different social groups in society.

CRIMINALIZING THE MAYAN PEOPLE – AGAIN

There was a great risk that the Monsanto Law would have made criminals of already repressed small farmers who are just trying to make ends meet and doing what they have done for generations – cultivating corn and black beans for their own consumption. The Monsanto Law meant that they would not have been able to grow and harvest anything that originates from natural seeds. Farmers would be breaking the laws if these natural seeds had been mixed with patented seeds from other crops as a result of pollination or wind, unless they had had a license for the patented seed from a transnational corporation like Monsanto.

Another risk expressed by ecologists was the fear that the costs for the patented seeds would have caused an increase in prices and as consequence caused a worsened food crisis for those families who could not afford to buy a license to sow.

Academics, together with the Mayan people, also feared that the law would have intensified already existing fierce social conflicts between local Mayan communities and transnational companies in a country historically and violently torn apart.

MAYAN PEOPLE AND MOTHER EARTH

Currently international companies are very interested in gaining control of the abundant and rich natural assets that Guatemala possesses. There is just one problem: the Mayan people – or actually most people – in Guatemala do not agree with a policy of treating nature like a commodity to be sold off piece by piece, especially when they receive nothing in return. It is very difficult to argue that it is a rentable business for Guatemalan society as a whole, and less the local communities, when it is a rather small but powerful economic elite which benefits on behalf of the environment, nature and society.

So what happens when the people organize in defense of their territory? The international companies call the government and have them use whatever means necessary to remove those standing in their way so they can construct megaprojects like mines or hydroelectric dams or extend monocultures in any region they see fit without much concern for those who might be affected.

Last month three men were killed when police used violent force to evict a community whose population had organized itself to protest against a hydroelectric megaproject in their community in Alta Verapaz. Hundreds of police officers were sent to the area on orders from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mauricio López Bonilla. It was not an exceptional case by any means.

ONGOING CONFLICT

As for the Monsanto Law, for a chilling reminder of where this was most likely headed, one need look no further than the USA: according to information from Food Democracy Now, a grassroots community for sustainable food system, Monsanto’s GMO Roundup Ready soybeans, the world’s leading chemical and biotech seed company, admits to filing 150 lawsuits against America’s family farmers, while settling another 700 out of court for undisclosed amounts. This has caused fear and resentment in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy.

It is impossible to predict how this controversy might unfold, but the reality in Guatemala today is one marked by an ongoing conflict between the government and the Mayan people, who constitute over half of the population.

Nim Sanik, Maya Kaqchikel from Chimaltenango comments on the victory over the Monsanto Law: “The fight to preserve collective property of Mayan communities such as vegetable seeds, which historically have served as a source of development and survival for the Mayan civilization, is a way to confront the open doors that the neoliberal governments have widely open in favor of national and transnational corporations that genetically modify and commercialize the feeding of mankind. We have just taken the first step on a long journey in our struggle to conquer the sovereignty of the people in Guatemala.”


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This article was previously published by Intercontinental Cry.

The Migrant Crisis and the Dead-End of US Imperialism

“Deporter-in-Chief” Obama’s policies towards Latin American immigrants are incontrovertible proof that both major parties serve the same neoliberal master. Neither party tells the truth about the migration crisis: “US imperialism's dual military and economic assault in the Central American region is the primary reason thousands of youth are being forced to flee from the conditions of their native countries.”





By Danny Haiphong

“CIA-backed mercenaries murdered hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.”

The hegemony of corporate imperialism, otherwise termed "neo-liberalism" and "globalization," has pushed the liberal paradigm to its limit. Imperialism's crisis in the center of US society and on the world stage can no longer reform itself to satisfy the conditions expected by social-welfare liberals a half a century ago. For the oppressed and exploited of the planet, this means either becoming trapped in the paralysis of bankrupt liberal ideology or building an alternative to a bankrupt system. The left in the US imperial belly is in a crisis of its own, one that directly connects to the crisis of the imperialist system. The dominant mode of preservation for US imperialism is the imprisonment of left ideology within the political theater of the Democratic and Republican Party.

Most of us digest the political theater of the Democratic and Republican Party from the corporate media. The Democratic Party masks itself as the "progressive" force within Washington. However, in the neo-liberal era, "progressive" no longer means policy that benefits poor and working class people. The terms “liberal” and “progressive" are defined merely as digestible rhetoric that contrasts from the Republican Party "extreme" positions. The Republican Party plays the overtly racist and sexist "extreme" right. This posture distracts oppressed people from the fact that both Parties are on the same imperialist page. Washington's game of Republican "bad guys" versus Democrat "good guys" is little more than a face-saving brand for US imperialism in a time where the trajectory of its rule is crisis, crisis, and more crises.

“The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ are defined merely as digestible rhetoric that contrasts from the Republican Party "extreme" positions.”

The coverage of the migrant crisis by the outlet “Democracy Now!” is one recent example of how the liberal wing of the ruling class is doing everything it can ideologically to maintain a "populist" image. Democracy Now! interviewed Illinois representative Luis Gutierrez, focusing on the debate in Washington on the future of the tens of thousands of children entering the US from Central America. Gutierrez did the typical Democratic Party run-around, claiming that President Obama should be "as wide and as broad and as generous as [Republicans] have been small and mean-spirited." Further, the Illinois representative said, in a cruel twist of irony, that he is "tired that Democrats and that my party always brands itself as not being as bad as Republicans." Such statements shed all accountability on the Republican Party of imperialism and legitimize Democratic Party "reason" as the rule of law in the empire.

When critically examined, Gutierrez erases US imperialism's role in the migrant crisis. The Democratic Party under Barack Obama has deported twice as many undocumented peoples than the prior Republican Bush Administration. And given that many of the youth traveling North into the US are from Central America, the question as to why indigenous peoples from the region would travel thousands of miles to escape their native countries needs to be answered. Luis Gutierrez’s dominant narrative of "violence" and "drug cartels" being the driving force of migration is a vast oversimplification of the context of the migrant crisis.

“The Democratic Party under Barack Obama has deported twice as many undocumented peoples than the prior Republican Bush Administration.”

In accordance with nearly 2 centuries of US imperial plunder, the nations of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and much Central America remain under US imperialism's corporate and military thumb. CAFTA, a “free trade” agreement that mirrors NAFTA, privileges US-Western corporate interests at the expense of sovereign agricultural and industrial development in the region. Furthermore, the US ​maintains a large military presence in Central America to allegedly fight the War on Drugs, a policy that was a product of its own covert intelligence work beginning in the late 70's and early 80's. The continuation of this policy was made explicitly clear in the 2009 Honduran-coup sponsored by the Obama Administration. US military aid and intelligence in the age of Reagan sponsored death squads and counter-revolutionary militaries to destabilize the revolutions in Central America. These CIA-backed mercenaries murdered hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. US imperialism's dual military and economic assault in the Central American region is the primary reason thousands of youth are being forced to flee from the conditions of their native countries.

The fact that Washington’s coverage of the migrant crisis is so divorced from the geopolitical and economic context of the issue is not merely crude deception. Ferocious reliance on the game of chicken between the "good" (or lesser evil) Democratic Party versus the "evil" Republican Party is a sign of crisis in US imperialism's ideological arsenal. There should be no doubt that both parties will continue to act in cohesion for the ultimate master: US capital. A new left movement is needed to educate and mobilize the exploited classes in a way that relates issues like the migrant crisis to the racist imperial order. Either we organize an offensive to overturn US imperialism’s crisis-ridden system or watch history pass us by.

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Danny Haiphong is an activist and case manager in the Greater Boston area. You can contact Danny at: wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.