Historical, Political Context of Guatemala and Honduras

Realities within which our partner groups live and resist

"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is human made, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

- Nelson Mandela

Rights Action expanded its work from Guatemala into Chiapas, Mexico in 1995, and then into Honduras in 1998, after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America.

There is a complex historic context that helps understand the underlying causes of the problems (poverty and exploitation; racism; repression and generalized violence; environmental degradation; corruption and impunity; foreign invasions and interventions) that our partner communities are suffering, resisting and struggling to change. Our understanding of these issues has been influenced by many of the arguments set out in books like “Open Veins of Latin America” by Eduardo Galeano.

Mexican muralist Diego Rivera’s “Glorious Victory” depicting the 1954 U.S. coup in Guatemala.  In the foreground, CIA director Allen Dulles shakes the hand of coup “leader” (selected by the U.S.) Colonel Castillo Armas.  Allen Dulles’ left hand rests on a bomb with the face of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.  Behind Allen, brother John Foster Dulles, head of the State Department, and John Peurifoy, Ambassador to Guatemala, hand out cash to Guatemalan military commanders.  A Catholic priest officiates over the killing of Mayans and other poor Guatemalans, while exploited workers carry United Fruit Company bananas.

Rights Action is not working on “national” issues in Honduras and Guatemala.  The underlying causes of the problems are found at the local, national and international levels, all at the same time.  In many ways, Rights Action is working to address and remedy “American” and “Canadian” problems in Honduras and Guatemala.

Policies and actions of the U.S. and Canadian governments, of the U.S. military, of North American companies and investors, and of intergovernmental institutions like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, oftentimes cause and benefit from repression, harms and violations, environmental degradation, corruption and impunity in Honduras and Guatemala. Rights Action documents and denounces these “northern”/ “global” policies and actions, and directly funds and supports Hondurans and Guatemalans working and struggling for their collective and individual rights, and for Mother Earth, the environment.