Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

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."

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Yesenia Portillo, a Salvadoran American activist raised in Los Angeles, said there is a perception that Salvadorans in the U.S. are overwhelmingly supportive of Bukele. But Portillo said there are many in the U.S. who don't support him, and are “becoming more vocal about their concerns, especially as more political exiles arrive in the U.S." Portillo said that in El Salvador, there is more opposition to Bukele than polls reflect. “Feminists, LGBTI+, labor, and environmental organizations in El Salvador have been taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to criticize his policies and that often doesn’t get highlighted,” she said.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s national drug strategy, which includes a focus on harm reduction to respond to an overdose crisis at home, is at odds with the country’s ongoing “Drug War” in Latin America, which has perennially failed to curb drug supplies, at a huge cost in human lives. A new report by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) argues that the global drug prohibition regime and the 50-year-long U.S.-led “war on drugs” has not only had disastrous results across the world but are increasingly exacerbating other serious problems. These include violence, corruption, organized crime, forced displacement and migration as well as forest loss and climate change.

On July 26, relatives of Salvadorans unfairly arrested during the current State of exception marched in front of the Human Rights Office and later went to the Legislative Assembly with a letter for the congresspeople. No representative spoke to them. This is not the first time that these people march for their families. They did it on July 19 and, as reported by Gato Encerrado, Josselyn Palacios, one of the most visible attendees found herself receiving the attack from social media managed by allies of the Salvadoran government.

A special peace tribunal investigating atrocities committed during Colombia’s decades-long conflict has charged 19 soldiers with war crimes and crimes against humanity for murdering 303 people, mostly civilians, between 2005 and 2008. The murders form part of what is known in Colombia as “false positives”, where the military killed civilians and then presented them as fighters to try to inflate the effectiveness of their fight against rebels. In return, the soldiers received special benefits such as help to gain promotion.