Truth and justice
The land disputes date back to efforts in the 1960s to entice landless farmers to the fertile region of the Bajo Aguan. The initial agrarian reform laws contained protections intended to ensure that the land remained in the hands of small landowners by limiting the amount of hectares individuals could accumulate. In 1992, the Law for Modernisation of Land gutted many of the protections written into the original agrarian reform efforts, creating pressure on peasant land cooperatives to sell their land to large landowners.
"Militarization in Central America is less about controlling crime than ensuring access to natural resources" (Annie Bird)
On March 15th, Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez, an Indigenous Zapotec community leader and member of the Coordinating Committee of the United Peoples of the Valley of Ocotlán (CPUVO) in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, was murdered in an ambush by a group of some three gunmen.
A Guatemalan news article (translated for Rights Action by Rosalind Gill) concerning trials, in Guatemalan courts, against material authors of the July 18, 1982 "Plan de Sanchez" massacres
A communiqué from FAMDEGUA (Family Members of the Disappeared in Guatemala), the FAFG (Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala) and CALDH (Center for Human Rights and Legal Action), concerning the exhumation of a mass grave in Guatemala. Also, an article about more delays in the genocide legal trial against former General Efrain Rios Montt, a trial that began in 2000, for atrocities committed in 1981-1982!
