Rights Action - September 10, 2011
2 Educational-Solidarity Delegations

BELOW:

1. Delegation to Honduras & Guatemala, January 7-14, 2012
2. Delegation to Guatemala, March 10-17, 2012

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DELEGATION TO HONDURAS-GUATEMALA, January 7-14, 2012

MINING, BIOFUELS & MILITARIZATION:
US MILITARY AID & CANADIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC INTERESTS

Over the past five years, Guatemala and Honduras have seen a surge of investment in sugar cane and African palm plantations spurred by international financing mechanisms promoting biofuel production.  In a similar way, mining companies are taking advantage of benefits provided by so-called "free trade" agreements to use destructive extraction techniques which endanger communities and destroy watersheds.

This has generated land conflicts, evictions of indigenous and campesino communities, destruction of food production, undermining food sovereignty.  The response has been militarization with police, military and private security contractors, generating the highest levels of human rights abuses that the region has seen for decades.

Fenix nickle mine in El Estor (formerly owned by HudBay Minerals), Cerro Blanco gold mine in Asuncion Mita (owned by Goldcorp Inc), Chabil Utzaj sugar cane company in the Polochic Valley, are just a few of the projects that campesinos and indigenous communities are resisting in Guatemala. In the wake of the June 28, 2011 military coup in Honduras, the United States is promoting the remilitarization of Central America through the Central American Regional Security Initiative.

DELEGATION LEADER
Led by Annie Bird, co-director of Rights Action since 1995, this trip to will enable participants to learn first-hand about community development and indigenous and human rights struggles, about the unjust global "development" model, and about how to be involved, in North America, with political and legal activism in support of global justice and equality.

FOR INFORMATION
Annie Bird, 202-680-3002, annie@rightsaction.org

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DELEGATION TO GUATEMALA, March 10-17, 2012

DAMS, MINING & AFRICAN PALM PRODUCTION * versus *
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & HUMAN RIGHTS

"CHIXOY" HYDRO-ELECTRIC DAM -- 30th ANNIVERSARY OF THE RIO NEGRO MASSACRES
The timing of this delegation over-laps with the 30th anniversary of the March 13, 1982 "Rio Negro" massacre - one of 5 massacres that killed some 450 Maya Achi villagers, to help make way for the construction of the "Chixoy Dam", a "development" project of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank in partnership with the Guatemalan military regimes of the day. We will visit with surviving family and community members in the remote mountainous village of Rio Negro.

NICKEL MINING & PRODUCTION OF AFRICAN PALM & SUGAR FOR DIESEL BIO-FUEL -- REPRESSION & FORCED EVICTIONS OF MAYAN QEQCHI PEOPLES
The delegation will also visit with Mayan Qeqchi communities suffering repression and illegal evictions at the hands of nickel mining companies (going back almost 40 years), and producers of African palm trees and sugar for production of diesel bio-fuel.

DELEGATION LEADER
Led by Grahame Russell, co-director of Rights Action since 1995, this trip to will enable participants to learn first-hand about community development and indigenous and human rights struggles, about the unjust global "development" model, and about how to be involved, in North America, with political and legal activism in support of global justice and equality.

COST - US$750
This covers: 7 nights of hotel; 2 meals a day for 7 days; transportation in-country; trip organization, guiding, translation; honorariums for some people & communities we meet with.  Participants pay for their own travel to and from Guatemala.

DATES
Arrive in Guatemala City on Saturday March 10; depart on Saturday March 17. (There are no delegation activities planned for these dates) If delegates want to come earlier or stay later, to see more of Guatemala, that is obviously their decision.

FOR INFORMATION
Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448

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