IRTF News

We wrote to officials in Honduras to protest the police and military attack on two young adults in the community of Llano Largo in San José municipality, La Paz Department, on November 10. Ronald Alexander Gutiérrez Molina and Saúl Ramos were injured by the security agents. Ronald, age 24, is a community leader who organizes a youth soccer team and participates in a dance team. The security agents approached him on the street at 10:30pm and demanded that he direct them to gang members in the area. When he denied knowing anything about gang members, they grabbed, detained, beat, and shot him. (He has a gunshot wound on his right ankle.) They sprayed a toxic gas on his face and threatened to kill him.

Two campesino leaders, Celenia Bonilla and her husband Nelson García, were assassinated on November 21. They were attacked while gardening on the patio of their home in the Cañada de Flores sector of Guaimaca municipality, Francisco Morazán Department. Their three children (the youngest one-year-old) are now left orphaned. Nelson García was president of the campesino association Hombres y Mujeres de Fé (Men and Women of Faith). Together with another campesino association, 44 families have been farming the land in Cañada de Flores for ten years against a backdrop of persecution. Although the municipality of Guaimaca has the land registered as an ejido (common land), an individual has been claiming private ownership. The CNTC (National Center of Rural Workers) has previously denounced threats and harassment of members of these two campesino associations. We demand that the government investigate these killings and bring the perpetrators to justice. We also urge the government to develop public policies on access to and tenure of land in order to address the structural issues of land conflicts.

We wrote to the attorney general of Guatemala for the second day in a row about more state violence in El Estor. On November 16 the Guatemalan National Police (PNC) forcibly evicted 96 Maya Q’eqchi’ families from Chinebal, in the southern region of El Estor municipality, Izabal Department, which has been under a government-declared state of siege since October 23. The Maya Q’eqchi’ families of Chinebal have resided and farmed on this land at the foot of the Sierra de las Minas mountain range since the 1940s. The eviction (police bulldozing homes, burning families’ personal belongings) stemmed from a longstanding land dispute over rightful ownership of the Palestina Chinebal farm. Businessman Juan Maegeli leases portions of the land to the NaturAceites company to grow African palm trees for palm oil production. Palm plantations are now covering 9% of arable land in Izabal.