Afro-Descendant & Indigenous: News & Updates

A recent shooting that left two Q’anjob’al Mayan farmers dead is only one spike in the ongoing conflict taking place in the community of Kumatz (Barillas municipality, Huehuetenango Department) between land occupiers and the Indigenous families trying to reclaim their ancestral lands. More than 130 of the families who had been displaced to Mexico during the armed conflict returned last year to Barillas to reclaim their ancestral lands. They have since been met with harassment, surveillance, and armed violence by private landowners (occupiers) who now claim the lands as their own. A legal dispute is pending.

In the early morning hours of June 13,  while on their way to tend to their crops, several Indigenous campesinos from Kumatz were ambushed by private security forces who arrived in multiple pick-up trucks, armed with various caliber rifles and guns. The attackers fired guns into the community.  A farmer managed to disarm one of the attackers but was shot in the back. The shooting lasted for a few hours, killing community members Carlos Fernando Calderón Herrera and Juan Francisco Artola Chub. Others were injured and taken to a hospital in Ixcán, Quiché Department. Hours later the National Civil Police (PNC) mobilized to regain control over the territory, with additional backup from army helicopters.

We are urging that authorities in Guatemala disarm the private security forces who are inflicting harm on the Q’anjob’al Mayan families and that they legally settle the land dispute. We are also calling for justice for the two farmers who were killed in the attack.

The communal land rights of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples are often disputed by private landowners, leading to violent conflicts and illegal evictions. The Lenca Indigenous Council of Nueva Palestina in Marcala, San José municipality, La Paz Department, knows this story all too well. Beginning on June 2, private landowner Juan Gabriel Argueta Montoya and his workers have been coming to the community with insults and threats to harm the families. At particular risk is Benjamín Cruz Bonilla, president of the Indigenous Council.

In 1999 the National Agrarian Institute (INA) gave property title to 229 hectares of ancestral land to the Lenca Council of Nueva Palestina.  However, a private landowner, Juan Gabriel Argueta, has an ongoing land dispute with the Lenca campesino cooperative. The community received a favorable ruling from on June 8 when the Court of Appeals of Comayagua ruled in favor of several members of the Indigenous Council who had been subjected to an illegal judicial process, accused of aggravated usurpation and alteration of terms or boundaries. Now, both the court and the Public Ministry agree with the Indigenous Council of Nueva Palestina that there is no aggravated usurpation or alteration of terms or boundaries.

We are urging that authorities (1) instruct the private landowner to abide by the June 8 court ruling in favor of the communal land title and (2) clarify any other land titles in dispute.

The 26 tribes of the native Tolupán peoples who live on ancestral lands throughout Yoro Department are organized in the Federation of Xicaques of Yoro Tribes (FETRIXY). The Tolupán communities are constantly organizing to defend their ancestral lands from the economic interests of outsiders: large private landholders, hydroelectric dam companies, mining companies, and the timber industry. After the election of new tribal leaders on March 26, there has been increased pressure from logging companies to threaten and discredit the Tolupán tribes. The newly leadership has asked the National Institute for Conservation and Forest Development (ICF) to not receive or process any requests for forest management plans in the territory that corresponds to the tribe of San Francisco de Locomapa. This has angered logging industry executives.

At particular risk is Tolupán tribal leader José María Pineda and his family in San Francisco de Locomapa, Yoro. Criminal groups at the service of the timber industry have publicly stated that they would look for José María Pineda and his daughters to attack them and burn down their house.

We wrote  to officials in Honduras about the killing of young Garífuna leader Ricardo Arnaúl Montero, an active member of the Land Defense Committee of Triunfo de la Cruz (CODETT), Tela municipality, Atlántida Department.  He was found dead on the beach on January 29. His body was quickly buried after police preliminarily considered it a drowning.  But then on January 31 authorities ordered an exhumation of the body to perform an autopsy. We have not yet read any results of the autopsy.

In December 2022, he requested protective measures from the Human Rights Secretariat because he had been receiving death threats.  Ricardo Arnaúl Montero and other Garífuna leaders are persecuted because of their opposition to private development projects in Triunfo de la Cruz.

We are urging that authorities in Honduras respect the mandates of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has ruled on more than one occasion in favor of the Garífuna people. We join with them in calling for a process of returning their illegally-seized Atlantic coastal lands to them and immediately put an end to the threats against them

We wrote to officials in Honduras about the forced displacement of at least 13 families of the Indigenous Lenca community of Nueva Esperanza, located in El Edén, Comayagua Department. On February 2, the Police Investigation Administration (DPI) used heavy machinery to destroy the houses, crops, and few assets that these families possessed, ruining their livelihoods and forcing them to live out on the streets.

The community of Nueva Esperanza had been occupying (“recuperar,” or recovering) this land for over 18 months, after the National Institute of Agriculture (INA), with promises of relocation, forced them to leave their previous peaceful settlement. The community has repeatedly stated that in order to feed their families, they have no choice but to recover land through occupation until they are granted land titles by INA.

We are urging that authorities in Honduras end the legal uncertainties that Indigenous communities have been experiencing around their ability to live on and work their land by issuing property titles and halting all evictions in the meantime.