Category Archives: Resource extraction

Land rights defender Leocadio Juracán arrested in Guatemala

Jim Hodgson

Friends and allies of Leocadio Juracán, Agrarian Reform Coordinator of the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA), are protesting his arrest Wednesday as he was about to fly to South Africa for an international conference.

“He is being criminalized for his work as a land and human rights defender,” said the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking The Silence Network (BTS) in an urgent action request. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated trespass (usurpación agravada), directly related to his advocacy for Indigenous and farming communities across Guatemala.

(More details of the urgent action request and of Leocadio’s arrest follow below.)

Leocadio continued talking with reporters even as police escorted him from the airport and into a waiting room vehicle. Right: details of the conference he was to attend in South Africa.

I worked with Leocadio and other members of CCDA in May 2022 and March 2023, travelling with them to communities in Quiché and Izabal departments that face threats from people or companies purporting to be the true land-owners. In those communities and in scores of others across Guatemala, CCDA works with Indigenous and small-farmer communities to document their history on the land and to submit legal justification for their claims.

Leocadio and other CCDA members are known in many parts of Canada because they work with coffee farmers whose product is sent to roasters linked to Café Justicia in British Columbia and Just Us! in Atlantic Canada in a “fair trade plus” arrangement.

More details of the BTS Urgent Action request (including a template for letters in Spanish):

On August 13, Leocadio Juracán, Agrarian Reform Coordinator of the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA), was detained at La Aurora Airport as he was leaving the country to participate in a Translocal Social Movement Learning conference in South Africa. 

Leocadio is being criminalized for his work as a land and human rights defender. He is currently facing multiple charges, including Aggravated Trespass (usurpación), directly related to his advocacy for Indigenous and campesino communities.

We need your immediate action:

With the following Canadian officials copied:

In your message, please call on them to:

  • Ensure his protection until such time as he is released.
  • Follow recent UN Special Rapporteur advice to enact an immediate moratorium on evictions and grant amnesty for all criminalized land defenders.
  • End criminalization of the members and leadership of Indigenous and campesino communities and organizations.

Many of these government officials are Spanish speaking. If possible, write this letter in Spanish. Otherwise, you can also send it in English.

If you’d like to send it in Spanish, you may say:

Me dirijo a usted para exigir que:

  • Liberen inmediatamente a Leocadio Juracán.
  • Garanticen su protección hasta el momento de su liberación.
  • Sigan las recomendaciones recientes del Relator Especial de la ONU de declarar una moratoria inmediata de los desalojos forzados y de otorgar la amnistía a todos los defensores criminalizados.
  • Pongan fin a la criminalización de los miembros y líderes de las comunidades y organizaciones indígenas y campesinas.

After you write this email, please share with several of your friends and contacts. Thank you so much for your urgent support to help get Leocadio Juracán free.

Leocadio Juracán, March 21, 2023, speaking with the people of an Indigenous Q’eqchi’ community known as Macho Creek near Guatemala’s Atlantic coast. (Photo: Jim Hodgson)

Leocadio Juracán, campesino leader and former congress member, arrested

Prensa Comunitaria

Leocadio Juracán Salome, leader of the Highlands Committee of Small Farmers (CCDA), was detained Wednesday morning (Aug. 13) at La Aurora Airport in the Guatemalan capital as he was preparing to travel to South Africa for an international conference.

According to his defense attorneys, the crimes for which Juracán was arrested are aggravated trespass (usurpación agravada) and causing forest fires.

“Today, as I was preparing to travel to participate in this conference, I was arbitrarily detained at approximately 11:05 a.m. at La Aurora International Airport,” said the former congress member from the now-defunct Convergencia party.

Juracán asked his family to remain calm and told his fellow CCDA members that he is proud of their struggles “because these repressive practices by the State and corrupt officials only demonstrate that they cannot stop our just struggles with criminalization alone.”

The news of his arrest has generated expressions of solidarity from various individuals and sectors. The CCDA, the organization of which he is a member, stated that this arrest is an act of criminalization and prosecution against those who defend land, territory, and social justice and demanded his immediate release.

Representative and campesino leader

When he was elected representative for Convergencia (2015-2019), Juracán supported campesino organizations and other social sectors in their demands. In March 2017, along with then-representative Sandra Morán, he filed a preliminary lawsuit against former President Jimmy Morales in the Hogar Seguro case, which was unsuccessful.

Juracán remains one of the representatives of the CCDA, an organization dedicated to promoting rural development for Indigenous and small-farmer communities. Founded in 1982 during the military dictatorships, the organization was formally established in 1989.

Currently, CCDA supports Indigenous communities and land defenders facing issues of eviction and criminalization in several departments of the country, including El Estor, Izabal, and Cobán, Alta Verapaz. …

Catholic bishops from Latin America, Africa and Asia demand climate justice

by Jim Hodgson

In a new document, Catholic church leaders from across the Global South blasted the “openly denialist and apathetic stance” of “so-called elites of power” in the industrialized world who pressure their governments to back away from much-needed mitigation and adaptation measures.

Preparing for the next United Nations climate change gathering, COP30, which will take place in November in Brazil, conferences of bishops from Asia, Africa and Latin America (FADM, SECAM and CELAM respectively) published a joint document entitled A call for climate justice and the common home: ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions. (You can download the document here.)

It’s the first time the three regional bodies have created a joint statement. The document offers an expansive vision for the U.N. climate conference. “At COP30, we demand that States take transformative action based on human dignity, the common good, solidarity and social justice, prioritising the most vulnerable, including our sister Mother Earth,” the bishops said.

They described the U.N. climate gathering as a moment for the church “to reaffirm its prophetic stance.”

Part of the 32-page document states:

Our demand

The climate crisis is an urgent reality, with global warming reaching 1.55°C in 2024. It is not just a technical problem: it is an existential issue of justice, dignity and care for our common home.

The science is clear: we must limit global warming to 1.5°C to avoid catastrophic effects. We must never abandon this goal. It is the Global South and future generations who are already suffering the consequences.

We reject false solutions such as ‘green’ capitalism, technocracy, the commodification of nature, and extractivism, which perpetuate exploitation and injustice.

Instead, we demand:

Equity: Rich nations must pay their ecological debt with fair climate finance without further indebting the Global South, to recover losses and damages in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania.

Justice: Promote economic degrowth and phase out fossil fuels, ending all new infrastructure and properly taxing those who have profited from them, ushering in a new era of governance that includes and prioritises the communities most affected by the climate and nature crises.

“I am raising a voice that is not mine alone, but that of the Amazonian peoples, of the martyrs of the land—we could say of the climate—and of the riverside, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, peasant and urban communities,” said Cardinal Jaime Spengler, archbishop of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil and president of CELAM. He was speaking at a news conference July 1 at the Vatican.

Vatican News reported that Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Vatican’s human development office, spoke spontaneously in the news conference to point to the document’s connection to the legacy of Pope Francis. “Ten years ago, I wonder if there is anyone who could have imagined this press conference as a fulfilment and implementation of Laudato si’. This is an extraordinary expression of what Pope Francis has called for and what Pope Leo is continuing to underline and call. I am grateful,” he said.

WCC begins Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action

In Johannesburg ten days earlier, the World Council of Churches launched its Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action.

During a plenary session June 21 of the WCC central committee, church leaders from six continents shared reflections and urged action for climate justice.

The plenary emphasized the biblical concept of jubilee as a framework for systemic transformation—a key foundation of the Ecumenical Decade. Speakers called for churches to move beyond charitable responses toward addressing root causes of climate injustice, particularly the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.

“Our lifestyle consumes 1.8 times what Earth can renew. Economic transformation must begin in the heart; theology must shape discipleship and discipleship must shape the world,” said Rev. Dr. Charissa Suli, president of the Uniting Church in Australia, during a theological reflection on “Jubilee for People and Earth.”

[When I shared Dr. Suli’s comment on Facebook several days ago, my colleague and friend Mark Hathaway pointed out: “In the Global North, it is more like 4.5 times what the Earth can renew—and even higher in the U.S. and Canada (I think about 6 times). The richest 10-20 per cent of humanity is responsible for most consumption and most GHGs [greenhouse gases] and a mere 100 large corporations are responsible for 70 per cent of GHGs.”

WCC has held previous ecumenical decades in the past, including The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women (1988-1998) and The Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence (2001-2010).

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

Pope Francis and Our Common Home

By Jim Hodgson

On this Earth Day, I want to share with you a reflection by Bishop Francisco Duque of the Anglican Church in Colombia. I worked with him in a larger team in one period (already a dozen years or more ago) of ecumenical efforts for peace with justice in Colombia. 

Indeed, it was during that work that I stood with friends in a coffee shop in Bogotá and watched news of the election of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as pope on March 13, 2013.  I did not rejoice. All that I knew of Bergoglio was that he had opposed several of the initiatives of the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández as it expanded sex education in public schools and legalized same-sex marriage in 2010.

Images of St. Francis. Left: preaching to the birds. Right: “Make me an instrument of your peace / Bless your people, Lord” is one I saw in Real de Catorce, San Luis de Potosí, in October 2024.

But Pope Francis surprised me: first by choosing to be known by the name Francis, signalling he would follow St. Francis of Assisi, long admired for his inspiration to contemporary ecological commitment and for initiating dialogue with Muslim leaders during Christian Europe’s “crusades” in the Middle East. And then he surprised me again with steps that showed respect for LGBTQIA+ people: first, “Who am I to judge?”, and later with his openness to diverse voices heard through synods, his advocacy for peace, the rights of migrants and debt forgiveness. I can only wish he had done more with regard to the rights of women and pray that his successor can go further.

In Canada, Pope Francis will undoubtedly be remembered most for his “penitential pilgrimage” and encounters with Indigenous peoples in 2022. Despite resistance from most of Canada’s Catholic bishops, he came, offered a (not fully accepted) apology, and gave truth and reconciliation efforts a dramatic push forward in public awareness.

But I think his lasting global legacy will be his way of holding faithful action for social justice and action for ecological justice together coherently. Here’s what Bishop Duque had to say.

Left: Bishop Duque at a Methodist assembly in Medellín in 2012. Right: Pope Francis meets representatives of social movements in 2024.

Francis, pope of Amazonia and our common home

Francisco Duque

The world mourns the loss of a spiritual leader who transcended borders, creeds and generations. Pope Francis not only was the first Latin American pontiff. He was, above all, the pope of the Amazon and caretaker of our Common Home. His legacy, immense and profoundly humanist, will remain inscribed in the planet’s memory as a prophetic voice that urges us to hear the clamour of the earth and the cry of the poor as a single call.

From the time of the publication of his encyclical Laudato Si’ in 2015, Pope Francis illuminated the ways of global ecological awareness. With valiant and committed language, he denounced the structural causes of environmental collapse, unlimited resource extraction, climate injustice and indifference toward the suffering of communities that are most vulnerable, especially those who live in the lungs of the world: tropical forests, the Amazon in particular. 

His spiritual leadership was also political and ethical. He convened scientists, Indigenous leaders, activists and religious authorities from around the world to make a new pact between humanity and nature. He promoted an integral ecology that did not separate the environment from the social. He recognized in Indigenous peoples that they are millennial guardians of wisdom. His encouragement of the Synod of the Amazon in 2019 marked a before and after: Amazonia was heard in the heart of the Vatican, not as a forgotten periphery but as a vital centre for the future of the planet.

From the Inter-Religious Initiative for the Tropical Forests (IRI-Colombia), we hold up a prayer of gratitude and hope. Gratitude for his strong words, for his planetary vision, for having returned to the faith its active dimension of protection of creation. Hope because the fertile seeds he planted will continue to bear fruit in the struggles of those who do not resign ourselves to ecocide or silence in the face of injustice.

Pope Francis leaves us a road map for humanity. There will not be peace without environmental justice. There will be no future without forests. There will be no reconciliation without a deep ecological conversion. His legacy challenges governments, businesses, religions and people. His voice remains alive, inspiring a global inter-religious movement that is committed to life. In these days of farewell, we echo his own question, charged with urgency and tenderness:

“What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” (LS 160).?”

Thank you, Pope Francis, for reminding us that care for Amazonia is an act of faith, love and justice.