IRTF News

Four years after the installation of the Camp for Water and for Life, defenders of Guapinol reiterated their commitment to the defense of the river and the demand for the cancellation of illegal mining operations in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. “They tried to silence our opposition to illegal mining with jail and repression. They tried to end our love for the river, but they can't." The Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Assets pointed out that the opposition of the communities to the mining projects and the defense of the Carlos Escaleras National Park persists despite the violent attacks, criminalization, imprisonment, and hate campaigns against them.

In El Salvador, testimony from police officers and conflicting statistics on mass graves are leading critics to question if homicides in the Central American country are being fully reported as access to official information tightens. Documents from El Salvador's Institute of Legal Medicine, seen by Reuters, show authorities recovered 207 bodies from mass graves over two and a half years, between June 2019 and February 2022. In contrast, documents from the Attorney General Office show 158 bodies recovered in over three years, between January 2019 and February 2022 – a difference of 49. Human rights groups and family members of homicide victims say they are alarmed by this discrepancy. The confusion is partly caused by restrictions to previously public information across government agencies under President Nayib Bukele, they said.

Nacla reports on the destruction of a 200-year old Maya Chortí cemetery by the mining company Aura Minerals. "MINOSA, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based multinational mining company Aura Minerals, enjoys free rein in the municipality of La Unión. Despite the legally binding decision taken at the 2015 cabildo abierto, the company had exhumed over a hundred bodies by 2018 as part of its strategy to exploit the gold deposits below the cemetery. The company did so in full view of municipal authorities, who on a number of occasions colluded with MINOSA to undermine community decision-making power. (...) In the weeks and months that followed, MINOSA seems to have given up any pretense of respect for Honduran law. Shortly after the initial mass exhumations, an appeals court overturned Judge Tabora’s ruling. In March, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued a subsequent executive notice reiterating the company’s obligation to halt all activity in the area. Video footage of mining activities taken after the communique’s publication indicate that the company has continued to prepare the area for exploitation."

In January 2022, Xiomara Castro became Honduras’s first woman president, restoring electoral democracy to the country after more than a decade of dictatorship. Running with the leftist Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE) party, Castro’s election breaks with the century-old two-party system that traded power between elites in the establishment National and Liberal Parties. With a mandate for transformation and high popular expectations, Castro faces significant challenges in a context of profound systemic crisis.

Last month, the White House announced more than $1.9 billion in ​“private sector commitments” to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as part of Vice President Harris’ ​“Call to Action” to address the root causes of migration from northern Central America. The irony apparently lost on the White House is that it is promoting the same economic model that has caused so many to be forced to leave their homes and migrate in the first place. The United States has long promoted corporate interests, which generate profits for U.S. companies and local elites, at the expense of the majority of the peoples of northern Central America, and this new ​“Call to Action” is no different. One of the defining features of the economies of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is the small group of extremely powerful families whose business empires control much of each country’s economy. Many members of the oligarchy have amassed enormous riches precisely by impoverishing the majorities, whether it be by paying miserable wages on agricultural plantations, profiting from stolen Indigenous land, or exerting influence over political actors to win favorable state contracts. 

Last month, the White House announced more than $1.9 billion in ​“private sector commitments” to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as part of Vice President Harris’ ​“Call to Action” to address the root causes of migration from northern Central America. The irony apparently lost on the White House is that it is promoting the same economic model that has caused so many to be forced to leave their homes and migrate in the first place. The United States has long promoted corporate interests, which generate profits for U.S. companies and local elites, at the expense of the majority of the peoples of northern Central America, and this new ​“Call to Action” is no different. 

Using the law as a weapon of repression, the corrupt, pro-global capitalist regime in Guatemala arrested Ruben Zamora, the latest defender of democracy and rule of law, human rights and justice, land and the environment to be ‘criminalized’. The U.S., Canada, IMF, World Bank and transnational companies and banks maintain ‘business-as-usual’ economic, political and military relations.

Just months after Florida Atlantic University “booted the braids“, confirming that their university would not be renewing its contract with Wendy’s after years of student organizing, the Florida State University Student Senate passed a resolution recognizing the achievements of the Fair Food Program and endorsing the national boycott of Wendy’s. With this historic resolution in the state’s capitol, FSU joins other universities like the Methodist Theological School in Ohio and Florida Gulf Coast University that have added their voices to the nationwide movement of student and city governments calling for universities and communities alike to refuse to give so much as a dollar of business to the hamburger giant until it joins the award-winning Fair Food Program.

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.