We will be connecting the supply chain and hope you will join us! In this webinar we will hear from some of the important people whose work brings bananas to your stores and countertops. We'll hear about their day-to-day growing, harvesting, managing, and ripening, and about how they pivoted their businesses amidst pandemic challenges.
The Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz in the municipality of Tela, Atlántida Department, suffered an incursion by an armed group in search of Garífuna leaders. One hour after denouncing the incursion and intimidation on social media, Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), received threats to her life and her family’s life via text to her personal phone from an unknown number. For several years, Miriam Miranda has been threatened, harassed, and illegally jailed for her human rights defense work on behalf of Garífuna communities, whose members and leaders have been persecuted even more with criminalization and assassinations. In repeated rulings, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has criticized the government of Honduras for not adhering to its mandates to protect Garífuna ancestral lands from outside land invaders and adequately investigate the murders of Garífuna community leaders.
This spring, Colombia could elect its first progressive president. In primary elections earlier this month—held for left-wing, centrist, and ruling right blocs—former Bogotá mayor and 2018 presidential candidate Gustavo Petro won an astounding nearly 4.5 million votes to emerge as nominee for the left-wing coalition known as the Historic Pact. Petro has pledged to ban new fossil fuel exploration from day one, proposing to "end oil exploration, but not exploitation. The old coffee-growing country has been left behind and sadly we moved into oil and coal. This is unsustainable and will bring about extinction. We need to move away from an extractivist economy and move towards a productive one.” Petro has been involved in politics ever since the M19 pivoted toward the constitutional process, and is no stranger to challenging the right. He called out right-wing government connections to far-right paramilitaries as a lawmaker, consequently receiving death threats, which is no surprise as Colombia is the world’s most dangerous country for human rights defenders and environmentalists.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement at age seventeen has proved to be so successful that U.S. and Israeli imperialist and Zionist leaders have lobbied states in the U.S. and the federal government to enact anti-boycott laws. Ohio is one of those states that has limited constitutionally protected Free Speech. Panelists include Dr Nahida Halaby Gordon (CWRU), Dr mazin Qumsiyeh (Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities), Terry J. Lodge (Ohio Free Speech Coalition) and Eric Reisnick (Ohio Free Speech Coalition, Jewish Voice For Peace Cleveland)
Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice said on Tuesday it has suspended Judge Pablo Xitumul, who is known for his fight against corruption and handling high-profile cases against the military and former government officials. The decision comes a day after the prominent Judge Erika Aifan resigned from the post and fled into exile to the United States, alleging persecution over her work as a renowned anti-corruption figure in the institution. Xitumul and Aifan have both worked as judges in the country’s so-called “high risk” courts, which were created after the CICIG, a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission; and they both pushed for reforms to investigate organized crime and corruption. So far this year, at least 10 justice figures have fled the country to the United States due to the cases opened against those who worked on CICIG cases.
Although the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the trial against the Guapinol defenders, the Trujillo Court denied the definitive dismissal of the eight environmentalists who were illegally imprisoned for 914 days, now saying that the release was only provisionally granted. This decision by the Tocoa Court has provoked widespread concern that there is an attempt to reopen or manipulate the case. "We already know that they have been manipulating the process, that our comrades have spent 914 days deprived of liberty and that the company wants to continue to screw them," said Juana Zúniga, a partner of one of the eight defenders.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Pablo Isabel Hernández and Thalía Rodríguez lived far apart from each other in Honduras, and seemingly with nothing in common, yet one aspect of their lives linked them: both were defending human rights in their community. And both were killed in January of this year, along with Melvin Geovany Mejía, an indigenous rights defender who died on his way to the hospital after being shot. Isabel Albaladejo, representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras, believes that three killings in less than a month shows how it has become an increasingly hostile environment for human rights defenders in the country. Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous countries for human rights defenders in Latin America. Yet, activists have some hope that the arrival of a new government, led by the first female president Xiomara Castro, may bring much needed change in Honduras.
Nicaraguan opposition leader Cristiana Chamorro has been given an eight-year sentence after being found guilty of money-laundering. Shortly after Cristiana Chamorro announced she would run for president, prosecutors accused her of "abusive management [and] ideological falsehood" during her time at the helm of a media foundation she had led until early 2021.
Catholic priest José Enrique Vásquez left his mother’s house after a visit at 10am on March 2, returning to his parish in San Pedro Sula, Cortés Department, for Ash Wednesday religious services. He never showed up. At 10pm that night, his lifeless body was entered at the morgue as an unknown person. There were six bullet wounds in his body, including two in the head and two in the chest.
As the head of Guatemala’s High-Risk Tribunal D, a court specialized in handling complex high-stakes criminal cases, Erika Aifán spent six years trying dozens of the most powerful business people, politicians, judges, and capos of Guatemala on charges of corruption, money laundering, and drug trafficking. For that work she has faced constant threats, espionage, and judicial persecution. In February, El Faro revealed that a witness in her court accused President Alejandro Giammattei of financing his electoral campaign with $2.6 million in bribes from construction firms. It was reason enough for Attorney General Consuelo Porras, converted into Giammattei’s enforcer, to file seven motions to repeal Aifán’s judicial immunity from prosecution and look to incarcerate the judge who may otherwise have put the president of Guatemala behind bars. In the evening on Wednesday, March 9, and without warning her team of bodyguards, Erika Aifán crossed the land border into El Salvador to fly via Costa Rica to the United States. This morning her attorneys formally tendered her resignation from the Guatemalan judiciary. Her departure makes fifteen justice system operators to have abandoned Guatemala in the last 11 months.
