by JEFF ABBOTT
Early in the morning on April 17, the international day of the campesino’s struggle, nearly 450 indigenous Q’eqchi’ Mayan families from the Guatemalan departments of Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, and Izabal arrived in the historic center of Guatemala and began setting up makeshift tents. The Campesinos would occupy the space in front of the Presidential Palace and demand President Otto Pérez Molina end the policy of forced eviction, end the criminalization of social movements, and pass an agrarian reform law to support small farmers.
“We are defending our right to our territory,” said Daniel Choc, a Q’eqchi’ campesino from San Juan Tres Rios, Alta Verapaz. He traveled to Guatemala City to protest the evictions. “We are not going to leave when the finca owners or foreign companies come and occupy our land. They say that we are invaders of the land, but no, we are the legitimate owners of this country. The land is ours; they are the invaders of the land, because they come from other countries and take our rights to our land.”
In the years since the signing of the 1996 peace accords, which brought an end to the country’s 36-year internal armed conflict, indigenous communities across Guatemala have faced increasing forced evictions by the national police and military. Evictions will make way for mining and hydroelectric projects, as well as the planting of African palm oil and sugar cane for the international biofuel trade. The expansion of the Palmeros into the indigenous communities has led to extrajudicial evictions and the formation of “private militaries” by landowners to force families from the land.
The Q’eqchi’ Maya territory in eastern Guatemala has seen the most drastic, rapidly growing conflict. Of the current 1,300 individual struggles over land in Guatemala, over 400 cases exist in Alta Verapaz alone. Of these cases, nearly 80 include communities organized by the Campesino Commite De Atiplano (CCDA).
“In the last few weeks and few months, there has been an incremental increase in the orders for arrest against campesinos organized with CCDA for the defense of their territory, rivers, forests, and of life,” said Leocadio Juracan, the national coordinator of CCDA, in a press conference with alternative media. “It is repression.”
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