IRTF News

An international coalition of activists delivered a petition to Pan American Silver leadership at the company’s annual meeting yesterday calling on the company to respect communities’ self-determination in Guatemala and Argentina. The petition, organized by corporate watchdog SumOfUs, garnered more than 85,000 signatures in just two weeks. But Pan American Silver took advantage of the lack of transparency afforded by the virtual platform at this year's Annual General Meeting in Vancouver, Canada to silence community voices and dodge questions about opposition to its projects. "Why is Pan American Silver refusing to engage with shareholders who are concerned about Indigenous rights?” asked Ellen Moore, International Mining Campaign Manager with Earthworks. “It is not clear if the company will respect Indigenous people’s right to say no to mining in their territory. That makes it a dangerous investment and shareholders should know that.”

Bukele’s “state of exception” – declared at the end of March and recently extended until late July – has outraged human rights activists who say massive human rights violations are being committed. “They have detained tens of thousands of people, many of them because of their physical appearance or because they have tattoos … We have found case after case in which the people [being arrested] have no links to gangs,” said Tamara Taraciuk, Human Rights Watch’s acting director in the Americas. “The reality is, this could happen to [anyone].” Exhausted with years of rampant gang violence, however, many Salvadorans see little extreme about Bukele’s crusade, which the president compares to chemotherapy and insists will continue until “the metastatic cancer” of crime is eradicated.

Honduras commemorated the 13th anniversary of the coup d’état this month, for many the first time since the coup this took place under a legitimate government. While some important steps have been made to improve the situation, for example strengthening UFERCO which started an investigation into the ZEDEs, the legacy of the last 12 years still loom heavily over Honduras. Two more members of the LGBTQ+ community were murdered in June. The militarization of Honduras continues as the Xiomara administration failed to to disband the Military Police. They even started talks with Southcom to strengthen the Honduran Armed Forces. On a more positive note, David Castillo was finally sentenced for his role in the murder of Berta Cáceres and the Guapinol defenders had the charges officially dropped against them. Welcome to another month in Honduras.

Forced migrants and refugees from Central America are again in the news. Most of the victims of the gruesome tractor-trailer death in Texas are from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. There is no focus on, no blame put on the global nation state system and the global capitalist, neoliberal economic system that create and re-create the very conditions that force people to flee home and country in the first place. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of impoverished Central Americans and Mexicans are attempting, right now, to cross northern Mexico into the US.

 The development promised by Minerales de Occidente S.A. (Minosa) in La Unión, Copán, has cost the inhabitants of Azacualpa the destruction of the historic Maya-Chortí cemetery of San Andrés, despite the fact that two high courts of Honduras have ruled to protect it. Minosa, a subsidiary in Honduras of the transnational Aura Minerals, imposed its project against the will of the Maya-Chortí people of Azacualpa, while at the same time promoting campaigns on social networks about the supposed economic development that mining produces for the communities. However, for the member of the Asociación de Organismos No Gubernamentales (Asonog), José Ramón Ávila, this development promoted by mining is not reflected in the municipality of La Unión. In fact, he believes that a socioeconomic study would find the same or greater poverty than in any other municipality.

Everything about the Supreme Court’s handling of Biden v. Texas, an important immigration decision it handed down on Thursday, emphasizes how easily the Court can sabotage President Joe Biden’s policies — even as it rules narrowly in Biden’s favor. The justices are sending the case back down to Trump-Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to resolve a few other lingering questions. And given Kacsmaryk’s past behavior, and his commitment to an extraordinarily conservative ideology, it is very likely that he will find a new excuse to order the Biden administration to reinstate the Remain in Mexico program once the case is back in his hands.

In February, four women sat down before the full glare of El Salvador's press. Between them, they had served nearly 50 years in prison. Their crime was to have the misfortune of suffering a miscarriage - in a country with one of the strictest abortion laws in the world. As recently as May, a woman identified as "Esme" was sentenced to 30 years, also for aggravated homicide following a miscarriage. But protests have been difficult since the country's controversial president, Nayib Bukele, imposed a state of exception giving the police wide-ranging powers of arrest. 

"Poverty and desperation" led to the deaths of at least 50 migrants abandoned in a Texas lorry, Mexico's president has said. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blamed trafficking and "a lack of control" at the border - the worst case of migrant deaths due to smuggling in the US. Nearly two dozen Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans were among the dead. The survivors were "hot to the touch" and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Edward Reyna, a security guard at a lumber yard just metres away, said he was not surprised to arrive for his night shift and hear the news. He said he had lost count of the times he had seen migrants jumping off the train that passes right next to where the truck was found. "I thought sooner or later, somebody was going to get hurt," Mr Reyna said. "The cartels that bring them over don't care about them."

"The government of Honduras should adopt reforms that provide greater protection for fundamental rights and the rule of law after years of setbacks since the 2009 coup", Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to President Xiomara Castro. The letter is accompanied by a 14-page report outlining the main human rights challenges in Honduras, as well as a series of key recommendations to address them. The main issues Human Rights Watch addresses in the report are the independence of the judiciary and the Public Ministry, the fight against corruption, the rights of women and girls, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, the independent work of civil society and journalists, the land rights of communities, and migration and internal displacement.