IRTF News

On Saturday, May 3, I flew to southern Arizona where I stayed for two and a half weeks for a border witness delegation. While hiking in the desert doing water drops, we always found clothing, shoes, and jackets left behind by migrants who had passed before us. There were also many black water bottles—used because they’re harder for Border Patrol to spot in the dark. Holding a black bottle and thinking about which hands had held it before was very powerful for me.

The whole trip to the borderlands was deeply meaningful to me. It gave me a much deeper understanding of the situation at the US-Mexico border and a deeper emotional sense of what migration means, not only at this border but at all borders. Seeing the vastness and dangers of the desert, walking on the same paths as people trying to migrate—this was very different from reading articles or looking at photos.

What I experienced brought me closer to IRTF—our  work and our mission.

Please consider donating to IRTF to make meaningful experiences like this possible for future volunteer staff associates.

This week, from July 14-16, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Transnational Institute (TNI), Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) and TerraJusta will co-host a three-day convening with local partners, the Network of Women Human Rights Defenders (RADDH), MASSVida y Caritas Honduras, in Choluteca, Honduras: ‘Without Human Rights, Energy Sovereignty Does Not Exist: A Meeting of Communities Affected by Energy Projects in Southern Honduras.’ The Central American country is facing an onslaught of international arbitration claims in secretive corporate courts, over a third of which have arisen from the renewable energy sector. This convening will shine a critical spotlight and offer an in-depth look at the negative impacts and community-driven opposition to the solar energy projects that benefited from deepening privatization and slew of renewable energy contracts approved in 2014, during the period known as the narcodictatorship. 

Guatemala has more fresh water than most countries, but its Indigenous population lacks safe, reliable access.

Human Rights Watch emphasized that the Guatemalan military’s legacy of racist policies continued to shape water access. During the country’s civil war, military campaigns targeted Indigenous communities, destroying infrastructure and displacing populations. Post-war reconstruction efforts largely excluded Indigenous areas, perpetuating inequality. The report stated, “The Guatemalan military’s historical role in marginalizing Indigenous communities laid the groundwork for today’s water crisis. Infrastructure development has consistently prioritized urban, non-Indigenous regions.”

Salvadoran political prisoner Atilio Montalvo is finally home with his family!

Montalvo, a signer of the 1992 Peace Accords on behalf of the FMLN and a leader of the National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador, had been unjustly imprisoned for 13 months without a trial. His fragile health was deteriorating rapidly but it took until a recent hospitalization, the courageous testimony of his family, and a renewed wave of public pressure for the courts to finally grant his release to house arrest.

Atilio – known to many as Chamba Guerra – is still in critical condition, but his family is hopeful that he will improve with access to the medical care he needs.

We are grateful to his family, to the Committee of Family Members of the Politically Imprisoned and Persecuted (COFAPPES) and to all the other popular movement organizations that tirelessly campaigned for his freedom.

We are also thankful to all of YOU who helped keep our international solidarity going strong. Every donation, every email, every social media share, and every vigil made a difference.

Now the struggle continues to free the other leaders from the National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador, all political prisoners and all those unjustly detained in Bukele’s prisons and to end U.S. support for repression.

¡La lucha sigue!

-all of us at CISPES

The recent arrests of two Maya leaders is emblematic of increasing repression and criminalization of Indigenous peoples by the Guatemalan state. With regards to Guatemala’s current state of affairs, many claim that the Public Ministry, Attorney General, and various judges criminalize human rights defenders and Indigenous peoples. It has been over two months since Pacheco and Chaclán were arrested, and the case is symbolic of the justice system in Guatemala, which works in favor of the Pact of Corrupt. “We are in a country that lives off corruption, that protects corruption, and that maintains impunity in many cases,” Herrera says. Yet, what is clear in talking to Herrera is that despite this criminalization and institutional challenges, they will continue to struggle undeterred and seek Pacheco’s and Chaclán’s freedom.