Did you know that IRTF’s fair trade program raises approximately $25,000 each year, providing vital income for fair trade artisans and farmers in Latin America? They depend on groups like IRTF to find markets for their fair trade goods.
And IRTF, with only two paid staff, depends on volunteers to generate this income for the artisans and farmers.
Can you help out IRTF for a couple of hours?
Click here to see the schedule of dates and hours, and sign up for a shift.
IRTF is grateful to the 200 supporters who gathered on October 27 at Pilgrim Church in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood for IRTF’s annual Commemoration of the Martyrs. In addition to marking the 44th anniversary of the martyrdom of Cleveland’s missioners in El Salvador (Jean Donovan and Sister Dorothy Kazel, alongside Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke), we commemorated 36 human rights defenders killed in Central America and Colombia this past year because they dared to speak truth to power.
Our keynote speaker, Lorena Araujo of the largest campesino organization in El Salvador (CRIPDES), held the crowd’s attention with horrific stories of mass arrests, detentions and deaths currently happening under their government’s State of Exception, now in its third year. With more 88,000 imprisoned (and more than 300 deaths in prison), El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world—surpassing the astronomical rate of incarceration in the United States.
As the people of El Salvador face the greatest challenge to their democracy since the end of the civil war in 1992, they invite us to renew and deepen our solidarity.
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René Alfonso Garavito is a valued community member of the Indigenous Makaguan tribe in Arauca Department. He juggles being a a father of three, a university student (studying public administration), and an active member of the Indigenous Guard on his people’s reservation (Reserve Cusay la Colorada).
Tragically, while he was commuting between two towns on September 20, three armed men apprehended him, held him at gunpoint, tied him up and took him away while his 11-year-old nephew watched. His relatives, who suspect he is being held by the National Liberation Army (ELN), are experiencing much distress and anguish; his nephew now has routine nightmares after watching the kidnapping.
IRTF has joined an international call to prioritize a thorough investigation into the kidnapping of René Alfonso Garavito, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice. With his family, we pray that he is released and returned unharmed.
Heber Rivera Méndez was a pivotal figure advocating for peasant farmer rights, human rights, and social justice in Valle del Cauca Department. He served as president of both the Communal Action Board of the Venus district of Tuluá municipality and the Association of Peasant Workers of Valle del Cauca (ASTRACAVA).
Tragically, in the early morning hours of September 24, armed individuals entered his home, shooting him multiple times and tragically ending his life. His death leaves behind a great void in the local community.
We are urging that the government work with community based organizations to dismantle illegal armed groups operating in the region that continue to impose norms and social control, targeting those who defend human rights.
Barranco de Loba, a municipality in Bolívar Department, has been the site of violence against social leaders. This area, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Second Division of the Army, has at least two illegally armed groups active in armed conflict: the National Liberation Army (ELN, Ejército de Liberación Nacional) and the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC, Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia, formerly known as the Clan del Golfo). The region has been plagued by violence and insecurity; social leaders are often targeted by the violence. In March 2022, a former Community Action Board president, Eduardo Emilio Vanegas Mendoza, was assassinated there.
On September 28, 2024, social leader Roxenda Sanguino Aguilar went missing. Her body was found the following day in the El Torito sector. There were several gunshots to her body and face. At the young age of 43, the former president of the Community Action Board of the Santa Rosa neighborhood of Barranco de Loba became the 123rd social leader assassinated in Colombia this year. Roxenda was not known to have any enemies.
Cauca, a department on the Pacific coast in the southwest of Colombia, is the site of many armed clashes. Due to the ongoing violence, community leaders (especially those from Indigenous and campesino communities) are at constant risk.
While leading a community assembly in the El Carmelo hamlet on September 23, armed men burst into the meeting and shot campesino leader Edwin Polanco, inflicting serious injuries. Adding to the growing sense of fear, the lifeless body of peasant leader Carlos Andrés Becoche Zambrano was found on the night of October 9, after being kidnapped by an armed group three days prior in the Cenequeta area of Cajibío. We are urging that the national government publicly denounce attacks against community leaders and implement new strategies to ensure their safety.
Luis Carlos Coicué serves as governor of the Nasa Reservation Jerusalén San Luis Alto Picudito in Villagarzón (Putumayo Department), which has consistently denounced violence committed by all armed actors—guerrillas, paramilitaries and the Colombian National Army alike. Despite this, Nasa leaders have been falsely attacked on social networks, unfoundedly accused of protecting “some border commandos.” This slander has placed leaders like Luis Carlos Coicué at particular risk.
The level of danger was heightened in March when an armed man with his face covered delivered a written warning. The unsigned document, which named leaders and community members from the reservation, stated: “Every collaborator becomes a military objective of our block.” The notice came during a period of weeks when paramilitary organizations were occupying schools and churches; community residents were confined due to minefields and other unexploded ordnance. Because of imminent threats, community members held an assembly for 12 days straight as a strategy to safeguard their reservation.
When Governor Coicué and his wife received specific death threats in September (“tell your husband to stop causing problems or we’ll blow your head off”), the National Protection Unit assessed the risk to Luis Carlos Coicué as “extraordinary,” but they only offered him a cell phone and armored vest as protective measures.
Indigenous communities in Colombia are under threat of extinction. Shifts in climate are severely impacting their ability to continue their ancestral means of subsistence (fishing, farming). But more immediate is the violent displacement from armed actors.
The Wiwa Indigenous communities in La Guajira Department are some of the largest native communities in the country. They are one of four Indigenous groups (along with the Arhuaco, Kogui, and Kankuamo) who reside on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, one of the highest coastal mountain ranges on the planet. IRTF has been writing on behalf of the Wiwa people for the past 20 years. Two years ago, we echoed the Wiwa’s call for all armed actors in the Caribbean coastal region to unite in a joint proposal for Global Territorial Peace. Shortly after their declaration for peace, the paramilitary organization Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Self-Defense Conquistadors of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta) began distributing pamphlets, in which they threatened to take measures against the Wiwa inhabitants of the region, whom they describe as "ass-kissers, drinkers, womanizers," among other adjectives.
In September of this year, four young Wiwa men from the community of El Limón Carrizal (Luis Elias Nieves Mendoza, Deivi Gomez, Eduardo Enrique Joño Calvo, and Luis Eduardo Mojica) were all stopped by armed men of the parmilitary organization Self-Defense Forces of the Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN) at illegal checkpoints, where they were assaulted and detained for several hours or even multiple days. Luis Eduardo Mojica was kidnapped for 24 days.
Since early 2023, IRTF has been involved in an international solidarity campaign to drop bogus criminal charges against five environmentalists in El Salvador. After 20 months of petition gathering, calls to the US State Departement and US Embassy, a sign-on letter from the US Congress and other advocacy efforts, we are happy to report that the Santa Marta 5 have been freed!
The five prominent community leaders (Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega) were all instrumental in the successful campaign to save El Salvador’s rivers from the threat of gold mining. With a unanimous vote in El Salvador’s National Assembly in March 2017, El Salvador became the first nation on earth to ban all metallic mining.
Since they were arrested in January 2023 on politically-motivated charges, IRTF has participated in an international campaign spanning 31 countries demanding that the bogus charges be dropped and denouncing the political motivations behind their detention given the lack of evidence presented by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s office.
