On November 26, members of Guatemalan Maya, Mestizo, Garifuna and Xinca communities met to make a historic decision to ally with the Convergence for a Democratic Revolution party to run senatorial candidates in the the 2015 presidential election. This meeting was a grassroots and participatory assembly aiming at consolidating a platform for the participation of indigenous peoples.
If economic growth is sustained and there are ambitious strategic plans in place, the two weaknesses of the current process of change are in the environment and the autonomy of social movements. […]
The clamor of indigenous peoples for recognition of their ancestral lands resounded among the delegates of 195 countries at the climate summit taking place in the Peruvian capital. “I want my land…that’s where I live and eat, and it’s where my saintly grandparents lie,” Diana Ríos shouted with rage. […]
The orphans of the Ayotzinapa tragedy are not alone in their determined search for their lost loved ones in the chaos of burning garbage dumps and ditches filled with human remains.
“All of us, [even] our animals—we don’t want mining!” said the elderly María Isabel as she left the voting center on November 23. By a staggering vote of 235 to 2, she and fellow residents of San Isidro Labrador municipality, located in the northern Salvadoran department of Chalatenango, voted to ban mining in their territory.
General Emiliano Zapata would roll over in his grave. The Morelos Integral Project, or PIM for its initials in Spanish, is a 160-kilometer natural gas pipeline and two thermo-electric plants in the heart of Mexico’s fertile central valleys, and in the shadow of an active volcano, Popocatépetl. […]
The road to Junín, one of Íntag’s 76 communities, crosses rivers and tree-lined farms. The population here has opposed mining for 20 years. They managed to force two multinationals, Japan’s Bishi Metals in the ‘90s, and Canada’s Ascendant Copper in the first decade of the 2000s, to leave the zone. Today, however, Íntag is divided.
On November 14, the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – the three countries that comprise Central America’s Northern Triangle – presented their “Alliance for Prosperity” plan at an event at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Ostensibly a response to the root causes of migration that led to this summer’s child refugee “crisis,” the plan brings to mind various past cases of crises exploited for economic gain, as Naomi Klein detailed in her landmark book, The Shock Doctrine.
The disappearance of 43 students from a rural school in Ayotzinapa, Mexico dedicated to training teachers that are mostly from indigenous communities has sparked outrage and solidarity throughout Mexico and the world.
Miskitu and Garifuna community leaders are speaking out to defend their territories from oil and gas activity in Honduras. In contrast to Belize and Costa Rica, where environmental NGOs, scientists, and others formed powerful national alliances to fight oil exploration, in Honduras, Indigenous opposition is as of yet largely unheard and unsupported.
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