The voices of those who live in the mountains

BY NEIDA SOLIS / TRANSLATED BY DAVID HÖRHAGER

Resistance of Guatemalan communities in the face of dispossession.

Being born from the land in the Verapaces. The departments of Alta and Baja Verapaz are located in northern Guatemala. Among lush forests inhabit people of Mayan origin q’eqchi and pocomchi’. In their own language, the people describe themselves as Ral Ch’och, which means son or daughter of the earth. These words have an important meaning in an area of high agrarian conflict.

The agrarian problem in Guatemala has deep roots. Different events throughout history have shaped a social and agrarian structure marked by inequality and permanent conflict. In addition to the land dispossession against the native population that resulted from the European invasion, the liberal reforms at the beginning of the republic contravened the recognition of land titles that some indigenous communities had obtained during the colony. This process favored the farmers who settled in the territory, many of them foreigners dedicated to coffee, who exploited the landless peasants.

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“We are Ral Ch’och, which means: we were born, we live and we are in our lands. We cannot go anywhere else that is not ours.” Pascual Miranda, Río Cristalino Community.

In this context, the internal armed conflict that lasted 36 years in the country had the land issue at the center, and generated new displacements and loss of lands that in many cases had colonial titles. In the present century, new actors have emerged in the territories in the context of extractivist policies and exert pressure on indigenous territories. The governments in power have been mostly allied with the agrarian economic power, to the detriment of thousands of communities that are violently forced to leave their lands and homes because they do not have legal security over them.

Alta and Baja Verapaz are two of the departments where most cases of violent evictions are concentrated due to the legal insecurity that indigenous and peasant communities have over the land they inhabit. These communities claim their ancestral right to live there and their role as protectors of the environment and the territory, in the face of agribusiness and other forms of land grabbing that are violating their rights.

In the first seven months of 2024 alone, 15 evictions were registered in the departments of Petén, Escuintla, Jalapa, Alta and Baja Verapaz. Four of the cases were extrajudicial, motivated by paramilitary groups without prior notification, 11 were by court orders. The biggest problem of the evictions is that the families lose all their livelihoods and are left in subhuman conditions, without shelter and food.

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The role of the State

Within the framework of the 1996 Peace Accords, the Secretariat of Agrarian Affairs (SAA) was created to seek peaceful solutions to land conflicts. This entity was dismantled in 2020 as part of the reforms promoted by the government of Alejandro Giammattei to concentrate the resolution of conflicts in the executive branch. The measure left more than 1,500 agrarian cases adrift, currently assigned to the Private Secretary of the Presidency.

On the other hand, justice institutions have increased the persecution and criminalization of community leaders who struggle to obtain legal security over the lands they inhabit. An example of this is the creation of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office against Usurpation Crimes in 2021, whose objective is to investigate land and property usurpation, including agrarian conflicts between indigenous and peasant communities, companies and landowners.

The following data was shared by Social Communication of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala, via Whatsapp message: since its creation, the prosecutor’s office has registered 1,455 complaints, mostly for the crime of usurpation and aggravated usurpation. The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) does not clarify who filed these complaints and, although it claims to have resolved 91% of all cases, it does not indicate whether they were dismissed or resolved by a judge. Of the complaints received, there are 128 requests for evictions pending to be authorized by the Judicial Organism.

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The creation of the Usurpation Prosecutor’s Office was strongly criticized by human rights defenders in Guatemala and peasant organizations, because far from resolving the agrarian conflict, it promotes the judicialization of indigenous communities fighting for access to and recovery of land. One indicator of this is the high rate of aggressions against environmental defenders. The Unit of Defenders of Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) registers 1002 aggressions between 2021 and 2023.

For their part, businessmen and landowners applauded the creation of the Usurpation Prosecutor’s Office. Their interest is demonstrated by the signing of an inter-institutional agreement between the MP and the Property Rights Observatory, an entity created by the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF) and the Chamber of Agriculture. The former brings together businessmen from all over the country, while the latter brings together landowners who oppose the recovery of lands by indigenous communities who claim their ancestral right to inhabit them (…)

A new beginning

In February 2024, a few days after taking office, progressive President Bernardo Arévalo signed an Agrarian Agreement with four peasant organizations that have been working for nearly 30 years with communities at risk of eviction.

In this agreement, the president committed himself to address the agrarian conflict in the national territory, promote access to land, renew the agrarian institutional framework, strengthen the peasant economy, and establish a permanent dialogue mechanism between the government and the peasant organizations.

We believe that with the signing of this agreement we will have some improvement, there are 100 cases that are on the table, explains Carlos Morales of the Verapaz Union of Campesino Organizations (UVOC), one of the organizations that signed the agreement along with the Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC), the New Day Ch’orti’ Campesino Indigenous Association and the Campesino Committee of the Altiplano (CCDA).

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Here we are not favoring indigenous peoples or peasants, what is happening is that historically these sectors have been excluded. This government is more sensitive, of course within the framework of legality, it is trying to attend and listen to the demands of the population and assign specialized teams to address the cases according to their characterization, explains Leocadio Juracán of the CCDA.

One of the first achievements of the dialogue between the government and peasant organizations is the recent change in the Board of Directors of the Land Fund, the institution in charge of regularizing the State’s land adjudication processes, which has allowed the entry of new indigenous and peasant representatives seeking to renew this entity.
To learn about land issues and agrarian conflicts in Guatemala from the voices of those who suffer from them, the cases of the Canasec, Dos Fuentes, Rio Cristalino, Calijá and Lajeb Kej communities, located in Alta and Baja Verapaz, are presented. These communities have inhabited their territory ancestrally, but are at risk of losing their lands due to threats of evictions and legal insecurity.

This research was created with the support of vistprojects.com and consists of five chapters and five videos that portray and narrate the stories of resistance.

Neida Solis, journalist and Chalchiteka Mayan sociologist. She writes about extractivism, territorial defense, women’s struggles, human rights and others.