Category Archives: Indigenous peoples

Almost a decade later, truth still elusive in case of the 43 students in Guerrero, Mexico 

They’ve been gone for almost 10 years now, those 43 education students who were taken one night in Iguala, Guerrero. Hypotheses abound but despite promises and investigations, the crime is not solved. 

But there are new revelations about the cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of the Mexican state in weeks after the disappearance (see below).

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known popularly as AMLO) has done many good things as he nears completion of his six-year term. But his failure to press finally for the full truth of the Mexican army’s involvement in the disappearance of the students who attended the Ayotzinapa teachers training school stains his record. 

“A decade of failure,” says a headline in the Mexico City daily newspaper, La Jornada. Students, teachers and family members say their struggle will continue.

During a march in Mexico City on Monday, Aug. 27, Luz María Telumbre, mother of one of the disappeared students, told a reporter that she would be among the parents who would meet the president again the following day. This time, she said, it will be to say: “’thanks for nothing’ because we’re still walking, shouting in the streets for justice and truth.”

Another mother, Joaquína García, said “it isn’t fair that we should be in the streets for 10 years seeking justice and we still don’t know anything about the boys.” She added that she wants to tell the next president, Claudia Sheinbaum, “that we will not stop struggling until we find them and that as a woman and mother, we hope she will understand us.”

On the night of Sept. 26, 2014, students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School were attacked in Iguala, Guerrero, after they had commandeered buses to travel onward to Mexico City for a protest over the Oct. 2, 1968, massacre of student protesters at Tlatelolco plaza in Mexico City.

In Iguala, six people—including three students—were killed in the assault, 25 were injured and 43 students were abducted and presumably murdered later. Leading suspects are members of the Mexican army who worked alongside municipal officials and drug-traffickers who were trying to move opium gum (semi-processed heroin) on one of the buses that was taken.

What happened before?

One afternoon in the late 1990s, I accompanied a group of students from Canada and the United States to a meeting with rural teachers in the mountains near Tlapa in northeast Guerrero.

These teachers spoke for communities afflicted by poverty, military incursions and the drug war. They taught their students in Spanish as well as in Nahuatl or one of the other Indigenous languages spoken in the area. They dedicated their lives to strengthening rural communities through the education of children. They were convinced that people needed to be able to organize themselves and demand that their rights be respected so that things would begin to change.

“The rural teachers colleges are among the only means of social mobility within the reach of young people from campesino communities,” wrote Luis Hernández Navarro, opinion editor at La Jornada, back in 2011. “Through them, they have access to education, housing, food and later, with luck, a job they are qualified to do.” 

The first time I that I can recall hearing of the Ayotzinapa school was in January 2008, when Blanche Petrich, another La Jornada journalist, came to Toronto to support work by Canadian churches in defense of refugees from Mexico. She told us:

“To describe the panorama of repression in Guerrero, it’s enough to follow the route of the popular movement. ‘Wherever there is organization, protest, defense of human rights, mobilization of roadblocks, there is repression, irregular apprehensions and arrest warrants,’ we’re told by the [Tlachinollan] human rights organization in the La Montaña area, led by Abel Barrera. That is, the campesinos who oppose the taking of their lands for a dam in La Perota, close to Acapulco, the ecologists who resist cutting of trees in the Petatlán sierra, the laid-off workers of a government office in the state capital of Chipalcingo, the community leaders of Xochistlaguaca, the students at the normal school in Ayotzinapa: they all suffer persecution.”

And what’s new?

Through an access to information request, journalists obtained new information about the cover-up that was orchestrated after the abductions by high ranking authorities in the government during meetings presided over by then-President Enrique Peña Nieto and attended by then-Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam and other officials. Their “historic truth” version—since proven false—contended that local police turned the students over to a drug gang which murdered them, burned the bodies at a garbage dump, and put the remains into a river.

AP photo and story (left) about revelations by a former senior official; a tweet by the Fábrica de Periodismo about the cover-up led by high officials of the previous Mexican government.

Tomás Zerón, former head of investigations for Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, is now a fugitive hiding in Israel, beyond the reach of the Mexican justice system. But in 2022, he answered questions posed in writing by Alejandro Encinas, then Mexico’s Interior Undersecretary for Human Rights.

Appointed by AMLO’s government, Encinas chaired the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case (COVAJ). The commission included family members and their advisors. Their report, published in August 2022, said federal, state and municipal politicians, along with the armed forces and local police, knew what had happened. 

But that report and a subsequent one in September 2023 have been undermined by the refusal of President López Obrador to accept its conclusions and his accusations against the human rights groups that accompany the families, including Tlachinollan and the Jesuit-backed Miguel Augustín Pro Human Rights Centre.

Left: La Jornada story Tuesday with headlines (adding my own details): federal prosecutors may call former president Ernesto Peña Nieto to testify about Ayotzinapa; AMLO: “I don’t protect anybody.” Below the photo, the text says that AMLO has also called on Zerón “to clarify his position because he is accused of coordinating the torturers.” Right: story today about the last of the parents’ meetings with AMLO.

After a meeting Tuesday (Aug. 27) with the president, the parents said it was the last one they would hold with him before he leaves office Oct. 1. 

“We ended badly,” said their lawyer, Vidulfo Rosales of Tlachinollan. He added that while in the first three years of this government, they saw clear good will to get to the truth, in 2022, the situation changed. “This is when we touched the sensitive fibres of the Mexican Army; we could advance no further. There was a break, a crisis, including in the relationship, the dialogue.”

“This government, unfortunately, could not give us truth and justice,” he added.

Visiting scenes of climate disaster and getting ready for the next one

Contrasts: trees near Osprey Lake between Summerland and Princeton, and trees east of Spences Bridge, July 15, 2024.

by Jim Hodgson

David, Kamill and I headed out by car last Monday for a quick visit to a small patch of territory northwest of our Okanagan home where a forest fire and an extreme flood wrought havoc just months apart in 2021. 

We drove west from Summerland on a beautiful mountain route that follows an ancient Indigenous trail—later part of the Kettle Valley Railroad and now a bike path—to just north of Princeton. Then we turned north to Merritt. From there, we followed the Nicola River northwest on Highway 8.

Left: Southern British Columbia watersheds: the Okanagan valley is in the Columbia watershed; the Nicola and Thompson rivers are in the Fraser watershed.
Centre: our route (the inset shows where the Thompson enters the Fraser at Lytton).

On Nov. 14 and 15, 2021, an atmospheric river brought an unprecedented amount of rain to southern British Columbia. All highways leading east from Vancouver and into the province’s Interior were blocked by floods or landslides. Princeton and Merritt were among many communities flooded.

The Nicola valley was particularly hard hit. It’s a narrow valley, and areas along both sides of the river were farmland. It’s home to the Nooaitch, Shackan and Cook’s Ferry First Nation communities and to their settler neighbours. The flood destroyed homes, farms, the old rail bed and parts of the highway. You can see the devastation of the Nicola valley in a Globe and Mail photo essay or in a B.C. highways department video. In November 2022 after a year of work, the highway re-opened with partial repairs. 

As we drove towards Spences Bridge, we also passed through an area severely damaged in a forest fire some years ago. At the same time, we could see a new fire spreading on a mountainside ahead of us above the Thompson River—likely what came to be called the Shetland Creek fire.

We had lunch in a nice little restaurant called The Packing House in Spences Bridge—just next to the Baits Motel. We drove south on Highway 1 (the Trans-Canada) along the Thompson River to its confluence with the Fraser River. 

And here we came to Lytton, the town of 3,000 people that was destroyed by a wildfire on June 30, 2021. Back in the late 90s, David and I began stopping here occasionally on trips to or from Vancouver. (We like to vary our routes.) It was a lovely town. It had a museum about the history of Chinese migration to the area—and its creator hopes to rebuild. Elsewhere in town, there is more construction: signs that the community will recover.

As we observed how the blue Thompson flows into the muddy Fraser, we could see a helicopter collecting water to drop on another fire burning in the mountains across the river.

We drove home via Ashcroft, whose residents are now on evacuation alert because of the Shetland Creek fire. After passing the massive tailings pond of the Highland Valley Copper Mine—a disaster of a different sort—we returned to Merritt and took the Okanagan connector highway to Peachland, and then turned south on Highway 97 back to Summerland. We drove about 600 km that day.

Of flood and fire

On Tuesday, Toronto had another “once-in-a-century” rainstorm after previous ones in 2005, 2013 and 2018. That day, we were back on Highway 97 as we drove Kamill to the airport in Kelowna for the trip home to Ottawa.

On Wednesday, a wildfire south of Peachland closed Highway 97 for most of the day. Traffic was later restricted to “single-lane alternating” (a phrase I am getting used to) and fully re-opened Friday afternoon.

As the week progressed (and U.S. climate-change deniers held their party’s convention in Milwaukee), I gathered some stories of effects of the climate catastrophe elsewhere in the world. (I did this in post back in January as well.)

These AP stories were published June 20, the summer solstice. Eight days later, Hurricane Beryl formed in the Atlantic Ocean just east of the Caribbean’s Windward Islands. In just 10 hours, it jumped to Hurricane 4 level before striking Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and other islands before easing as it moved west across the Caribbean, the Yucatan peninsula and south Texas.

Back in April, U.N. secretary general Antonio Guterres warned that “we cannot replace one dirty, exploitative, extractive industry with another” as we reshape how we power our societies and economies. Some developing countries have large reserves of “critical minerals” such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt. But they “cannot be shackled to the bottom of the clean energy value chain. The race to net zero cannot trample over the poor.”

In May, Raúl Zibechi, longtime observer of the role of social movements in processes of political change in Latin America, warned that the climate crisis cannot be stopped. Politicians won’t act for profound change; those who prefer wars over struggles for peace won’t change. His suggestion is that impoverished or otherwise marginalized peoples (“los de abajo”) build collective “arks.” The rich and powerful (“los de arriba”) already have theirs. The example he points toward is that of the Zapatista movement in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, where for 30 years Indigenous communities have been living in a mostly self-sufficient and self-governing way.

Summers were always hot in the Fraser Canyon and up along the Thompson River towards Kamloops, just as they are where I live in the Okanagan valley. But it feels different now. There were always forest fires, but I don’t remember living in dread of them or having to put up with the long smoky days we have now. In the winter, there were cold spells, but I don’t remember the peach and grape crops being wiped out as has happened this year.

We are putting our emergency kit together (as we did last year) and placing all the important documents in one metal box. North American-style, I suppose: it’s an individualist sort of “ark.” We’re okay with having to take these steps. But we’re also talking about the election in B.C. later this year and a likely national one next year. How do we recover momentum for the dramatic changes necessary to carve a new way forward?

Human rights and land rights defenders are still under attack in Guatemala

by Jim Hodgson

Despite the inauguration earlier this year of a more progressive government in Guatemala, community land defenders still face criminal violence and judicial threats.

The government of President Bernardo Arévalo condemned the murder June 5 of a 47-year-old lawyer who worked to protect Indigenous and small-farmer land rights.

José Alberto Domingo Montejo worked with the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC, Committee for Farmworkers Unity) and had been part of CUC’s legal team since 2019. 

Left: A poster from Prensa Comunitaria denouncing the murder of José Domingo. Right: a statement from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights upholding the right of small farmers’ organizations to work freely and safely, and calling for a fast and impartial investigation.

Domingo was shot during an ambush on a gravel road in Palin, Escuintla department, southwest of the Guatemalan capital. Two other CUC members, Gustavo Yoxon and Marcelo Yoxon, were wounded in the same attack.

They were doing what CUC and another organization with which I am more familiar, the Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA, Highlands Committee of Small Farmers) do all the time: working to advance the interests of small farmers and Indigenous peoples by helping to legalize a community land title. The CCDA condemned the attack and expressed its solidarity with families of the victims.

“This attack is added to the wave of violent judicial and extrajudicial evictions, captures and arrest warrants,” said CCDA in a statement on social media. 

The Pact of the Corrupt

Guatemala may have that more progressive government but Arévalo and his cabinet do not control all the levers of power. 

A key obstacle is Consuelo Porras, the attorney general appointed in 2018; her term was renewed in 2022 and extends to 2026; she can only be removed if convicted of a crime. 

Left: A CCDA news conference [text in English] on June 3 warned the “Pact of the Corrupt” tries to provoke confrontations between government and small farmers and Indigenous communities.

The U.S. Department of State added Porras to a list of “undemocratic and corrupt” officials in 2021. And last year, the Organization of American States (OAS) called her efforts to annul Arévalo’s election “an attempted coup d’état.”

“Porras has served as the spearhead of the Pact of the Corrupt,” wrote former Guatemalan foreign minister Edgar Gutiérrez in December while she was still trying to quash the election result. He described the Pact of the Corrupt as “a loose coalition of politicians, bureaucratic and business elites, plus powerful drug trafficking groups, which has pushed back civil and political liberties, unleashing fierce persecution against dissent, particularly against independent justice operators, who now number half a hundred in exile.”

For people in a community that is struggling to establish a land claim, even with good legal advisors from CCDA or CUT, it is often a challenge to identify opponents. One example is the Xinca Indigenous community of Nueva Jerusalén, located further south in the same Escuintla department where José Domingo was killed. By March 2023, the community had exhausted legal avenues within Guatemala (despite having shown the land in question belongs to the government and having proven irregularities in the claim of a supposed owner. After I had joined a meeting with community leaders and CCDA advisors, I wrote about the community’s appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

But a few months later, on August 9, police and private security forces burned the community to the ground and forced the 53 resident families to flee. 

In these scenarios—and there are scores of them—it can be difficult to distinguish between a legal, court-ordered eviction (even if fraudulently obtained) and a private army: in effect, a paramilitary death squad. 

And so you find a paragraph like this one in an Amnesty International report that (correctly, in my view) blends the crimes of state and non-state actors. From the victims’ point of view, it’s hard to see the difference.

“The Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) reported 5,965 attacks against human rights defenders between January and November 2023, including threats, killings, harassment and arbitrary detentions. Criminalization increased, particularly against those involved in the fight against impunity and corruption.”

And this paragraph from a Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking The Silence (BTS) Network report on the Nueva Jerusalén eviction:

“[T]he state abets and perpetrates violence against the community. The police—the armed wing of the state—have…ransacked homes, destroyed possessions and sought to provoke community members to protect themselves. With this sleight of hand, they bring charges against community members, used to defame and criminalize the residents of Nueva Jerusalen.”

“Bringing charges.” “Criminalization.” 

Mélisande Séguin of BTS notes that land defenders continue to meet with government officials to stop future arrests. “Nonetheless, with Consuelo Porras at the helm of the Public Prosecutor’s office, criminalization remains a major threat for Indigenous and campesino movements.”

On Feb. 8, the new government signed an agreement with CCDA, CUT and other organizations of small farmers and Indigenous peoples. 

“For our administration, dialogue is not just a tool but a key pillar that promotes citizen participation in defining the agendas that effectively solve different needs,” said Arévalo during the signing ceremony. He said the agreement was the product of a dialogue process that began in the last quarter of 2023.

“All Guatemalans are equal in dignity and rights. The new government embraces the idea that everyone has something valuable to contribute and deserves to be heard,” he said.

Speaking at the ceremony, CCDA national coordinator Neydi Yasmín Juracán stated: “For us, it is a historic day because we have been meeting politically and technically for these agreements.” She said CCDA has worked for more than 28 years to prevent and end land evictions, but:

  • 12 community leaders were assassinated between 2018 and 2022.
  • Seven leaders are currently imprisoned.
  • 1,788 arrest warrants, 35 per cent targeting women.
  • Seven active temporary shelters to attend to agrarian conflicts.
  • 1,320 cases were accompanied by the CCDA.