Following the exchange with the women of Copal AA, the women generously shared their fresh fruit and drinks with the delegation.
Published November 5, 2019
In September, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) representatives Simone Senogles (Anishinaabe), IEN Food Sovereignty Program Coordinator, and Ozawa Bineshi Albert (Yuchi and Anishinaabe), IEN Movement Building Coordinator and Luz Guerra (Afro-Carribean/Taino), former NISGUA Executive Director and consultant to IEN were honored to join a delegation hosted by NISGUA to Guatemala.
There is so much that cannot be captured in words from this trip – the laughs, the moments of recognition, the gifts and words of appreciation whispered through tight hugs.
The exploratory trip to Guatemala was born out of IEN’s commitment to global grassroots environmental organizing, women’s leadership in the Indigenous environmental movement, and grassroots feminism aligned with Indigenous cosmovision. Their goal was to learn more about the Guatemala-specific context and to directly exchange with grassroots Indigenous organizations about shared struggles to defend life, culture, and Mother Earth. The discussions during the trip were grounded in Indigenous feminisms and the historical memory of colonization and genocide, and exchanges with groups working at the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty and defense of land.
NISGUA delegations always attend tours at the House of Memory, a museum about colonization and genocide in Guatemala, offering regularly scheduled popular education tours staffed by youth docents. The House of Memory is a project by our long-time partners the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH). This time, the IEN representatives had the special gift of being accompanied not only by Maya Kakchiquel docent Rosario Jolón from CALDH’s unit dedicated to Indigenous women’s issues, but also by Maya Ixil community leader Ana Ceto. Ana Ceto, a young lawyer and community organizer, is a long-time comrade of other IEN representatives through her work with MUIXIL.
The migration program of Association Pop No’j supports women and children from Huehuetenango, Guatemala, who have been deported from the U.S. We were lucky that given the current U.S. border crisis and the invisibilization of Indigenous issues in the U.S. migration debate, three Pop No’j employees—Ana Luisa Sales, Delia Catu, and Yesenia Casillas—could talk with IEN to highlight their Indigenous-centered work in immigration. The group discussed extractivist projects that push people from their homes, ancestral paths of migration, and the way that Indigenous communities within the U.S. are supporting their immigrant relatives.
As Ana Luisa said, “In the news they say that immigrants are murderers and thieves, that they leave their countries to make easy money. But that’s not true, people put their lives in danger to immigrate. In the news they never talk about the U.S. government’s violence against Indigenous Peoples, they never talk about how they steal their resources and force them from their territories just like our government does to us.” IEN shared their concerns about the U.S. policy of separating children from their parents at the border, and underlined that the U.S. government has implemented policies of family separation against Indigenous communities for centuries.
Right before a long trip to north-central Guatemala, the IEN representatives met with Elvida Abrosio, an organizer and board-member for the ADH in north-western Guatemala. Elvida told the group about the ADH’s efforts to stop draft municipal legislation to protect water rights and organize community members into promoting the legislation at the local level. She also shared about the state of siege, which was, at the time, limiting the rights of mostly Maya Q’eqchi’ communities over nearly 10% of Guatemala’s land mass. Since IEN’s conversation with Elvida, the state of siege has been extended to even more municipalities and prolonged another 30 days. The state of siege is yet another example of the Guatemalan state’s use of criminalization and militarization to quell social movements and dissent.
In Copal AA, a community of returned refugees and genocide survivors that is in resistance against the Xalalá Dam, the state of siege was of prime concern. Land defenders, community leaders, and women’s groups all expressed that the state of siege looks and feels like the level of state violence that preceded massacres in the 1980s. Our partners across the country have echoed what we heard in Copal AA, and many are concerned that the state will soon extend the state of siege across the entire country in order to push through extractivist projects. Of particular impact on the IEN delegation was the familiar story about loss of land and homelands, relocation and displacement. The delegation was inspired to learn about the way that Copal AA is organized and built collectively despite sharing four distinct languages.
Our final afternoon in Copal AA was spent in an exchange with local women, many of whom participate in Mamá Maquín, a national organization that struggles for the rights of women and the defense of life. Women shared stories of domestic sexism, displacement during the Internal Armed Conflict, fears about the Xalalá Dam, and analysis of current events. Many stressed the importance of exchanges between Indigenous women so as to stay well-informed and organized in the struggle. As one woman said, “Sexism is so prevalent here in our community, our country, our world. But the struggle to protect our life and territory will never succeed without women. We need to be well informed and well organized because we as women will always be on the front lines, we will always be who suffers the most.”
The post Sisters in Struggle: Indigenous Environmental Network Leadership Trip to Guatemala appeared first on Native News Online.
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