IRTF News

Practicing journalism in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the persecution of independent media outlets by neo-populist rulers of different stripes, intolerant of criticism. The union of Guatemalan journalists and the reporter’s family say the arrest is a clear example of political persecution as a result of the investigations into corruption and mismanagement in the Giammattei administration published by the newspaper, which was founded in 1996. “I definitely believe it is a case of political persecution and harassment, and of violence against free expression and the expression of thought,” Ramón Zamora, son of the editor of elPeriódico who has been imprisoned since his arrest, told IPS from Guatemala City.

The parsimony of the waves of the Caribbean Sea that bathe this paradise contrasts with the context of violence and dispossession experienced by the Garífuna communities. Between the years of 2012 and 2022, they have reported 105 attacks against their members and in the last seven years alone, 25 defenders of the Garífuna territories have been assassinated. According to the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), this situation worsened after in 2015 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ruled in favor of this Garífuna community and held the State of Honduras responsible for violating the ancestral and collective right to territory of its inhabitants.

IRTF's solidarity with the people of Central America began in El Salvador 41 years ago. Salvadorans fought long and hard to build democracy and far too many paid for it with their lives. Three decades since the end of the civil war, the struggle continues. Here we share an urgent action from our friends at CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), which echoes what we heard on August 5 in Cleveland from Leslie Schuld of the CIS (Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad). Thank you for taking a couple of minutes to read this and for taking the click action.

Send a letter to authorities in Honduras in support of Garífuna communities’ demands for justice and defense of their territories.  Sounding drums, maracas, and other instruments, dozens of Garífuna community members of OFRANEH (The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) demonstrated on August 9 in front of the main headquarters of the Public Ministry in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

President Alejandro Giammattei is under fire for his reappointment of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has been criticized by the United States government and others for blocking corruption investigations and instead pursuing the prosecutors and judges who used to carry them out. Hundreds of Guatemalans set out from various points of the capital Thursday to protest alleged corruption by a deeply unpopular government, the high cost of living and attacks on freedom of expression. University students, faculty and other employees marched from the campus of the capital’s only public university carrying signs demanding that the corrupt get out. “If there is no justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government!” read one.

Thousands of Colombians have celebrated in the streets what is hoped to be a “second liberation,” now from neoliberalism, via the ascension of the first left-wing president in the country’s history, Gustavo Petro, together with his vice president, Francia Márquez, to power. A former guerrillero and an Afro-Colombian activist now hold the highest political positions in the country, a turning point in Colombian political history and a key moment for the whole of Latin America. But Petro and Francia will not have much time to celebrate. Huge challenges await them.

While the US and Colombia are different, the need to reckon with structural racism and its effects on the basic, civil, economic, socio-political rights of ethnic minorities are not dissimilar. The obstacles faced by Afro-descendant and Indigenous persons in both nations share root causes and challenges. Ethnic communities have a strong history of leadership, resistance, resilience, organization, and activism in both countries. Also, the drug and military policies in the US and Colombia that disproportionately negatively affect ethnic communities are interlinked.

Former right-wing President of Colombia, Ivan Duque, has landed a job at the Washington-based Wilson Center as a “Distinguished Fellow” and Global Advisor” for issues including defense of democracy and climate change, despite his atrocious record on human rights and environmental destruction. Whilst Duque’s supposed democratic credentials are lauded in Washington, Colombia is the most dangerous places in the Americas to be an indigenous or union leader, a situation that has worsened under Duque’s leadership. As of May 2022, the murder of community leaders averaged out at one every two days.  

Deportations of children in Honduras have increased by 60% compared to the previous year. 27% of these are unaccompanied minors who undertake the migratory route fleeing violence, poverty, criminality, lack of access to quality education and health in the face of the lack of public policies for the care of children. As of July 30, the Coordinating Network of Private Institutions for Children, Adolescents, Youth and their Rights (Coiproden) reports that 11,263 children have been deported to Honduras (mainly from the United States), which represents an increase of 62% of cases compared to the same dates in 2021.

The Garífuna indigenous group of Honduras demanded Tuesday an investigation into the disappearance of five of its members in July 2020 in the Caribbean Triunfo de la Cruz community. “We are here to demand justice and to investigate the disappearance of our five brothers from Triunfo de la Cruz two years ago,” said one protester. The missing people, who are suspected to have been kidnapped in the early hours of July 18, 2020 by armed men wearing vests bearing the logo of the Police Investigation Directorate, are Milton Joel Martínez, Suami Aparicio Mejía, Gerardo Misael Trochez, Albert Snaider Centeno and Júnior Chávez, the latter president of the board of trustees of the Triunfo de la Cruz community and a member of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras.