Exploring Volunteering

Just caught this published on St Margaret's Community website in Teddington, West London: “Each year during Lent the people of St Margarets Roman Catholic Church
parish commit to helping some of the poorest people on our planet. This
year they are supporting the villagers of Panimaché in Guatemala and
children and babies orphaned in Uganda. If you would like to help you
can send a donation to St Margarets RC Church Lenten Project and drop it in at the Parish House opposite St Margarets BR Station.”

“Alternatively you could support one of the many events that are taking place.

• Sunday 23^rd April Don Rush will run for the 26^th time in the London Marathon
  with his long time running partner Rush Yadave. They are grateful for
  sponsors in support of the Lenten Project. As two of the ˜evegreens’
  they will get to start with the elite runners.
• Saturday, 29^th April Grand Jumble Sale ” 11am St Margarets Church Hall.
• Saturday, 21^st May Family Fun Day ” 12.00 onwards.

Thank you for your support and interest.”

In these Delegation-Seminars, Rights Action
takes a comprehensive historical and global approach to understanding
the endemic poverty-exploitation, enviro-destruction, repression /
foreign interventions, and racism of a place like Guatemala.

FOR WHOM: Concerned citizens and activists, donors, professors and
educators, law students and teachers, who are concerned about
exploitation-poverty-development / foreign interventions and
repression / enviro-destruction / and about community-based resistance
and work for equality, justice and enviro-well being.

STUDY PLAN: Through a series of city-based meetings with development,
enviro- and HR activists and travel to rural areas (including mining
company-affected regions) to meet with and learn from community
organizations where the negative impacts of the exploitation, racism
and repression have been most felt, the Delegation-Seminar will focus
on:

¢ HISTORY: In readings sent to delegates before the trip, and
discussions on the first day, this Seminar-Delegation will provide an
understanding of 500 years of Guatemalan history – including the past
and on-going negative role played by the powerful, wealthy countries of
the global north, a perspective necessary to understanding Guatemala’s
endemic poverty, racism, repression, impunity and lack of democracy
today

* PARTICULAR ISSUES: Indigenous and popular resistance to the harms and
violations associated by the global mining industry, including the
Glamis Gold open pit mining company; efforts to seek justice and
reparations for the U.S.- and western-backed genocide of the 1980s;
efforts to seek justice and reparations for forced evictions and
massacres related to the World Bank, Inter-american Development Bank
funded Chixoy Hydro-electric Dam project;

¢ RESISTANCE & GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS: Despite the on-going
repression – on top of exploitation and widespread enviro-destruction
-, there are courageous and vibrant grassroots organizations organizing
and fighting for a just development model, for democracy and the rule
of law, for the environment and women’s rights.

This Delegation-Seminar – led by Grahame Russell of Rights Action, in
conjunction with key partner groups that Rights Action supports and
works with in Guatemala – will enable participants to learn first-hand
about community development, enviro- and HR struggles and organizing,
and about how to be involved, in North America, with political, legal
and quasi-legal activism and organizing in support of Guatemalan
community-controlled development, enviro- and HR work.

RISKS: Rights Action will have an open discussion with participants
about potential risks: on-going political issues; crime; health; etc.
Participants will sign a waiver, accepting responsibility for what
might happen during the Seminar.

COSTS: US$900. This includes 3 meals a day for 7 days; board for 8
nights/in-country transportation/translation/guiding/honorariums for
local community-based groups that participants visit with. Participants
are responsible for arranging and paying for their travel to and from
Guatemala.


More information

For more information (including costs in UK£), contact Jane Pelly de Jocolt in the UK rightsactionuk [at] yahoo.co.uk 

In early February, over 300 survivors of the 1982 Plan de Sánchez
massacre in Rabinal finally began receiving the first of three
reparations payments from the Guatemalan government as ordered by an
Inter-American Court of Human Rights sentence in 2004.  The
community had accepted a proposal from the state to make the three
payments of approximately $8,000 each in February 2006, December 2006
and December 2007. While the original sentence mandates that the total
amount of approximately $25,000 per beneficiary be paid in December
2005, the government proposed otherwise.
 
The survivors’
receipts of these payments are definitely a victory for a community
that has struggled for justice over the course of 20-plus years, but
this process MUST not be considered complete now that the first payment
has been made.  The sentence also requires the government to
provide the community with health care, mental health services,
multicultural education, water systems, roads and a dignified housing.
It also requires that the intellectual and material authors be
investigated, tried and convicted.  This last point provides
further impetus for bringing to trial the genocide cases against former
dictators Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt, which have been stuck in the
investigative phase within the Guatemalan Attorney General’s office
(Ministerio Público) for more than five years, due in large part to a
lack of political will to see the cases move forward.  NISGUA has
been providing human rights accompaniment to the witnesses of these
cases throughout Guatemala since the charges were first filed in 2000
and 2001.  For more information about accompaniment work or how to
become an accompanier, visit Guatemala Solidarity Network in the UK or www.nisgua.org in the U.S. 
 
NISGUA
is committed to ongoing monitoring of this historic process in Plan de
Sánchez and will continue to keep you updated on the situation. Please
read the below testimony from one of our accompaniers on the ground in
Guatemala, Ellen Moore, who has witnessed first-hand the deceit and
manipulation surrounding the government’s payments.

  
Eye Witness: Ellen Moore

A fierce mountain sun beats down on Gloria and me as we make our way
up the hill to the Plan de Sánchez chapel.  I look over to the 78
year-old woman and see that she is equally swept up in the excitement
and anticipation of the day.  Gloria is on her way to the public
ceremony to commemorate the first of three payments to be issued to
survivors of the Plan de Sánchez massacre by the Guatemalan State as
mandated by an Inter-American Court sentence.  The government has
brought in clowns, jugglers and at least 40 members of its staff for
the event.  We sit on the ground as other members of the Plan de
Sánchez community join us and wait for the ceremony to begin. Frank La
Rue, the director of COPREDEH (the Presidential Commission for Human
Rights) stands in front of the crowd, microphone in hand and begins to
speak. His voice echoes throughout the mountains, as he exclaims that
“this is a victorious day won by the truth.”
 
As he
continues his speech, the soft chatter of the crowd, which had been
constant up until this point, ceases so as to produce unusual silence.
The 300-plus beneficiaries of the Inter-American Court case have
gathered at the chapel in Plan de Sánchez, the site of the massacre
that occurred there twenty-four years ago. As the former director of
CALDH (the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights), the legal
organisation responsible for bringing the Plan de Sánchez case before
the Inter-American system, La Rue played a key role in the birth of the
Plan de Sánchez case before leaving his position to work for the
Guatemalan government. Despite this change in affiliation, community
members know and continue to respect La Rue. He claims that he has been
with the community from the start, and now he has come to finish the
job. Today La Rue stands before the survivors and tells them what they
have been waiting to hear. This is their victory. Today they will
receive the first fruit of their fourteen year battle. 
Unfortunately, the words that La Rue proceeds to voice reflect a
strategy of deception and manipulation that has consistently
characterized the work of COPREDEH regarding the Government of
Guatemala’s compliance with the Inter-American Court sentence.
 
I
scribble notes throughout La Rue’s speech. The final
victory¦transaction has been completed¦must sign today to get out money
tomorrow¦he has been with them for years¦must have trust. It becomes
disturbingly clear that Frank La Rue has an agenda. First, he reminds
the community of his previous affiliation with CALDH and his continued,
personal commitment to their struggle. He then launches into an attack
of the very organisation that he just finished exalting, discretely but
openly criticising CALDH’s commitment to the case and to the community.
 
Next
Frank La Rue reveals the driving political force behind the completion
of the first payment. He makes sure to mention at least three times
that the Berger administration was not responsible for the horror that
occurred on July 18, 1982, but it should be given credit for the
completion of the first payment to the survivors.  He assures the
beneficiaries that the deposits have been completed and that the money
has been distributed to the individual accounts.  La Rue concludes
by stating that the final step is for the beneficiaries to sign the
paperwork that will allow them to withdraw their money the following
day.     
 
Because COPREDEH only
notified CALDH of the ceremony less than 24 hours in advance, and in
order to make a public statement about the illegitimacy of the event,
the legal organisation chose not to attend. Instead, two CALDH
representatives went to the bank with a number of beneficiaries to see
for themselves if what Frank La Rue and the director of the bank said
was true. What they encountered were completely empty accounts and a
growing list of lies. CALDH and the beneficiaries returned to Plan de
Sánchez to relay the bad news. I watch as looks of confusion and panic
sweep across the community member’s faces, as they realize that they
have been deceived.
 
After a community member states that
he is not going to sign paperwork if the money is not in the bank, the
man is pulled into the chapel to face Frank La Rue. “What do you mean
the money is not there?!” La Rue yells at the community member. La Rue
then tells the man that if he does not complete the paperwork today, he
will lose his money. The community leader does not believe him. La Rue
tries another, softer tactic, explaining that folks must sign in order
for the money to be deposited in their accounts, a direct contradiction
to what he had stated less than an hour before. This pitch works, and
La Rue convinces the community member that he has no alternative but to
sign.  The man later tells me that he felt bad questioning the
word of La Rue and did not want to offend him by not complying. The
same reluctance but eventual resignation is evident throughout the
crowd, as one by one, the members of the Plan de Sánchez community
sign. The survivors know that their money is not there and that they
have been lied to, but with more than forty COPREDEH representatives
swarming, they feel as though they have no choice. Community members
succumb to the pressure and sign paperwork acknowledging receipt of
payment when their bank accounts are, in fact, empty.

The following afternoon, I visit Gloria at her home. She brings me a
steaming cup of coffee and sits down heavily on the bench. I ask her if
she is feeling alright and she says no. Gloria had gotten up early that
morning to make the hour trip in the back of a large cargo truck down
the mountain to the bank in Rabinal. She waited in line for another
hour to check her account balance. Gloria was informed by the bank
attendant that her account was empty. Nobody explained why the money
had not
arrived or when it would be coming. With COPREDEH long gone
and no other alternatives, Gloria returned home feeling worried,
confused and helpless. By the time I arrived, she had a headache and
had thrown up the small amount of tortilla that she had been able to
eat for lunch.
 
After days of travel and worry, the money
promised by COPREDEH finally began to arrive. It is not enough,
however, to complete payments if the people involved are not treated
with respect and if the recognition for the wrongs committed is not
sincere.  COPREDEH believed that it could lie to people, not just
on February 2nd, but throughout the process. Because those involved are
poor indigenous people, COPREDEH decided it could cut corners and do
away with legal formalities.  It is doubtful that such laxity
would be acceptable in dealing with other high-profile ladino cases
based out of Guatemala City.  Would Helen Mack, for example, have
been asked to sign paperwork indicating receipt of payment before she
ever saw a cent of government reparations?
 
Frank La Rue,
a supposed ally of the community, did not take the time to have his
speech translated into Achi, even though he knows that Spanish is not
the first language of the majority of the beneficiaries. Likewise, La
Rue seemed to think it too time consuming to make sure that each
beneficiary had read or had read to them the document they were to
sign.  Witnessing such blatant disrespect, one feels that not much
has changed since the time of the conflict, as government lies are once
again undermining trust and organisation within the community.
 
The
fulfilment of portions of the Inter-American Court sentence in Plan de
Sánchez is a painful reminder of the work that remains to be done in
the search for justice throughout Guatemala.  While the survivors
of one massacre have won an important victory, there are hundreds of
communities that are still fighting for recognition and even hundreds
more for which exhumations remain to be done.  Therefore, it is
vitally important that Plan de Sánchez serve as an example of what can
be accomplished, as well as a reminder of the struggles that
remain.  The first payment has shown that, for the government,
paying people is easy. What is not easy, and what the government has
yet to comply with in the Plan de Sánchez sentence, is justice for the
victims of genocide.  
 
It is easily forgotten
or conveniently overlooked that the sentence dictates numerous other
essential steps that the government must complete, including providing
the community with health care, mental health services, multicultural
education, water systems, roads and dignified housing.  The ruling
also mandates that the intellectual and material authors of the Plan de
Sánchez massacre be investigated, tried, and convicted, which would be
concrete steps towards real justice.
 
Instead of
investing resources in the above measures, the State of Guatemala is
hoping that the beneficiaries of the Plan de Sánchez case will take
their money and fade into the background.  It hopes that the
survivors will forget that Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia continue to walk
free, unpunished for the crimes they committed.  Fortunately, the
beneficiaries of Plan de Sánchez have not forgotten.  Just
yesterday the community gathered once again at the chapel. The
community members did something that COPREDEH has not done – they cast
blame and named names. Monetary reparations may pay back that which was
stolen during the war, but the community of Plan de Sánchez stands firm
in its belief that money does not equal justice.

Further Information

You can read a recent article (26-02-06) on the first compensation
payment to be made to victims in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz that appeared in
Prensa Libre. More…

CERIGUA (Centro de Reportes Informativos de Guatemala) also has a
section dedicated to news on compensation and reparations which is
regularly updated. More…

If you are interested in volunteering as an international accompanier, we have more information on volunteering and links to different accompaniment programmes.

UPDATE: Ellen Moore has done an interview with her local paper in the US, the Daily Citizen WISC News.
“It blew my mind, in the beginning, that people felt safer because I
was there. To me, that was ridiculous,” Moore said in April, while at
home in Juneau.

“I'm a dissuasive presence,” she said, referring to supporters of
former Guatemalen dictators Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia who still
threaten survivors of massacres investigated by the Inter-American
Court on Human Rights.

On human rights:

Amnesty International, Guatemala: Breaking the Wall of Impunity -

Prosecution for Crimes Against Humanity, AI-index: AMR 34/020/2000

19/06/2000 (Amnesty International: London, 2000).

Amnesty International, Guatemala: Human Rights Community Under Siege,

AMR34/22/2001, (Amnesty International: London 2001).

Amnesty International, Guatemala annual report 2001 (Amnesty International:

London 2001b).

Human Rights Watch, World Report 2001: Guatemala at

www.hrw.org/wr2k1/americas/guatemala.html (New York: HRW 2002).

most of the AI and HRW reports are available on line

On the violence during the armed conflict:

Patrick Ball, Paul Kobrak, Herbert Spirer, State Violence in Guatemala,

1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection, (New York: American Association for

the Advancement of Science, 1999).

REMHI Nunca Mas (London, CIIR/LAB: 1999)

Comision para el Esclarecimiento Historico, Guatemala: Causas y Origenes del

Enfrentamiento Armado Interno (Guatemala, FEG Editores: 2000)

UN, Informe de la Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (Guatemala: UN,

1999). Online at  http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/default.html

Falla, Ricardo: Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala 1975-1982,

Westview Press, Boulder et al., 1994.

Manz, Beatriz: Refugees of as Hidden War: The Aftermath of Counterinsurgency

in Guatemala, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.

Zur, Judith: Violent Memories: Mayan War Widows' Memories of 'La Violencia',

Westview Press, Boulder y Oxford, 1998.

Linda Green, Fear as a Way of Life

David Stoll, Between Two Armies

On the peace process

Susanne Jonas, Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala's Peace Process (Boulder and

London, Westview Press, 2000) .

Rachel Sieder (ed.): Guatemala After the Peace Accords, Institute of Latin

American Studies, London:1998.

MINUGUA reports available on-line

Any of the Hemisphere Initiatives/WOLA reports on the peace process in

Guatemala

On rural/ethnic history

David McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760-1940 (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1994).

Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala (Durham, Duke University Press: 2000).

These two are both fantastic books

On the Mayan Movement

Kay Warren's book on the Maya movement

Manuela Camus and Santiago Bastos' trilogy on the Mayan movement, published

in Spanish by FLACSO Guatemala

Diane Nelson's book, A Finger in the Wound – California UP.

On the Guatemalan military, apart from the REMHI/CEH reports, the book by
Jennifer Schirmer, A Violence called Democracy (Pittsburgh UP).

Post by Wendy Tyndale

A leaflet of the Front for Life in San Marcos, Guatemala, describes to people in the municipalities of San Miguel Ixtahuacán and Sipacapa what the presence of a giant mining company in their region means. It explains that in order to process the rock an enormous quantity of water is needed – 250,000 litres an hour – so that another consequence of this activity will be a shortage of water in the area. Worse still, the cyanide used in the process will poison the water supply, the people and animals that drink it and the crops that are irrigated with it. It will also pollute the air.

So, asks the Front for Life, what will be left for us from the open pit mining? The grim answers it gives are based on the experience of people in Honduras and elsewhere: Harm to our health, more poverty, mountains destroyed and soil contaminated, conflicts among people, polluted water and, in addition to all of this, corruption.

Our life, the life of our families and of future generations are worth much more than all the gold and silver in the world, says the Front and, reflecting the spirituality of many of the movement’s members: Let us remember that we are not the owners of the land but only the stewards of it. NO TO MINING!

The people who live in the areas that have been selected for mining activities in the department of San Marcos are Mayan: Mam in San Miguel and Sipakapense in Sipakapa. For several years they had been concerned about people who were arriving from outside to buy land using deception, coercion and promises of development for the communities. But it was only in 2003 that the motives of these strangers became clear when a company was installed in the region to mine gold in villages of San Miguel and Sipakapa.     

Alarmed and dismayed, the local people began to take action.  Encouraged by the Bishop of San Marcos, Alvaro Ramazzini, they have formed a coalition of indigenous and Catholic organisations to organise protests. A protester was killed in Los Encuentros, Sololá on 11 January this year as peasant farmers tried to hold up a truck carrying equipment to the mine and Ramazzini has received a series of death threats as a consequence of his support.

The company that is developing the Marlin mine in San Marcos is Montana Exploradora de Guatemala S.A., a subsidiary of the Canadian multinational, Glamis Gold Ltd. that has also been managing the San Martín mine in Honduras for several years. In Honduras children have been suffering from skin diseases and loss of hair and a report commissioned by Caritas-Honduras documented high levels of water contamination. Supported by the Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez, the communities around the mine have been protesting since 2002.

The history of Canadian mining companies even in their own country leaves little room for optimism. Fewer than 20 Canadian indigenous communities have managed to negotiate agreements with the companies whose activities have left thousands of abandoned mines in indigenous territories, many of them leaking toxic waste into the water supply.

The Guatemalan government gave a concession to Montana without informing the local people, let alone consulting them. This clearly violates Convention 169 of the ILO on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of which Guatemala became a signatory in 1996. The company will only leave one per cent of its profits in Guatemala (50 per cent for the Government and 50 per cent for the municipalities affected). Forests will be cut down and huge craters left which will lead to a high risk of landslides. Already armed patrol guards have been preventing the local people from going to visit other communities and even from working in their own fields. And San Marcos is not the only place in Guatemala where all this is taking place: exploration is also going on in the Petén, Quiché and Alta Verapaz.

At the beginning of December last year, the Ministry of Mines and the Environment held the First National Mining Forum in which environmentalists, the private sector, the World Bank and the UNDP as well as the Canadian Embassy participated. The Vice-Minister for Mines and Energy, Carolina Roca, declared that the National Forum was the beginning of a process of agreements that would improve the climate of governability in Guatemala and assure the investors of a favourable context for their investment. However, social and environmental movements in Guatemala dubbed the event as propaganda and held their own Alternative Forum of Resistance to the Mining of Metals. Peter Van de Veer of the World Bank believes that more consultation by the government will be necessary, as local opposition will risk investors pulling out but the protest movement fears that consultations will come too late.        

The reform of the Mining Law of 1997 is on the agenda of the Guatemalan Congress but the debate is polarised between those who want the mining companies to pay 10 rather than one per cent of their revenue to Guatemala and those who wish to scrap any payments whatsoever, in order to be more competitive on the international market.   

The Constitution of the Republic and the Peace Accords signed in December 1996 to end 30 years of civil conflict commit the Guatemalan Government to protect both the people of Guatemala and the country’s natural resources. Following a thousands-strong march on 1 April in San Marcos led by Bishop Ramazzini, the Vice President of Guatemala, Eduardo Stein, said that there might have to be a temporary postponement of mining activities. But are we not witnessing once again the power of multinational corporations to overrule national laws, to violate national interests and to disregard the most elemental rights of the people who get in the way of their relentless quest for profit?

¢    Leaflet of Frente por la Vida, San Marcos (undated but sent to me by Movimiento Trabajadores Campesinos of San Marcos 3rd week in April 2005)
¢    Inforpress 10 December, 2004
¢    Canadian solidarity movement La mineria canadiense en el mundo, February 2005 (sent to me by MTC not further identified)
¢    Comunicado de los pueblos mayas Sipakapense y Mam, y de organizaciones sociales comprometidas con el altiplano marquense , San Miguel Ixtahuacán, noviembre 2003
¢    Internacional Indian Treaty Council, 17 January 2005: Guatemala: mining, repression and local development needs.