One Step Forward and Two Steps Back for Justice and Land Rights in Central America

Transcription

1 Newsletter - Spring 2016 One Step Forward and Two Steps Back for Justice and Land Rights in Central America On Friday the 26th of February this year, 15 indigenous Q'eqchi women from the community of Sepur Zarco, Guatemala won their case against the Guatemalan military for crimes against humanity committed during Guatemala's 36 year internal armed conflict, including sexual violence and sexual and domestic slavery. Only 6 days later, on the 3rd of March, Honduran Indigenous rights leader and founder of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras, COPINH, Berta Caceres, was murdered at her home. It may seem that these two apparently separate events have little to do with each other. But the women of Sepur Zarco and Berta Caceres have one particular thing in common: their participation in their communities struggle to protect their land rights. TheWomenofSepurZarcoandthe CommunityDemandforLand In early 1982 the husbands of all 15 women at the centre of this case were in the process of obtaining legal title over their lands through the National Institute for Agricultural Transformation.They were identified by local authorities and land owners and branded agitators. When the military soon came looking for them they were accused of aiding the guerilla forces.their wives were beaten and raped, some by up to five soldiers, and the men were beaten and taken to the military bases at Sepur Zarco and Tinajas for interrogation. These military bases had been established at the request of local land owners, for the specific purpose of halting the growing number of indigenous and campesino farmers Berta Cáceres on the banks of the Gualcarque who had begun to make legal claims for their land rights. River in Río Blanco. The women never saw their husbands alive again, seven Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize were murdered and eight more remain disappeared.

2 The 15 women were removed from their communities and brought to the Sepur Zarco army barracks where they were told that as widows they now belonged to the soldiers. Eleven of the women were held there against their will for six months to cook and clean for the 400 or so soldiers that were housed at the barracks. They were raped by multiple soldiers on a daily basis. After the initial six months they joined the other women in makeshift dwellings made of nylon sheets and pieces of corrugated iron. advantage over the women, sowing terror at the Sepur Zarco military base and surrounding villages. Former Lieutenant Esteelmer Reyes Girón and military commissioner Heriberto Valdez Asij, were found guilty of crimes against humanity committed during Guatemala's 36 year internal armed conflict. The three judge court, presided over by Jazmín Barrios, Patricia Bustamante and Gervin Sical, sentenced Reyes and Asij to 120 and 240 years in prison respectively. This victory follows six years of struggle by the 15 women at the centre of this case to achieve justice for the murder and disappearances of their husbands and for the sexual violence and domestic enslavement they suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Over six years they were obliged to take turns in cooking for the soldiers and washing their clothes.they were never paid for these services and had to use what little resources they had to buy corn and soap in order to perform these duties. As a result they and their children often went hungry. They were subjected to continued sexual abuse when they brought food to the barracks and when they washed the soldiers clothes at the river. They have been accompanied throughout this process by Trócaire partners Women Transforming the World (MTM), The Centre for Community Studies and Participation (ECAP) and National Union of Guatemalan Women (UNAMG), who provided psychological, social and legal support, carried out forensic investigations, gathered witness testimonies and expert reports and mounted the legal case against the former military officials. The women recounted how many of them had been pregnant at the time the aggressions first started and had suffered miscarriages. They also were routinely administered contraceptive injections so as to prevent further pregnancies. In the 30 years since the crimes were committed the women have had to bear their suffering in a profound silence, unable to share what they had lived through even with their closest friends or families. The Lenca People s Struggle to Protect Rio Blanco They have suffered years of physical and mental ill-health including chronic pain, gynecological disorders, anxiety and depression. They have lived in extreme poverty and deprivation and for many years were unable to access the necessary health care and emotional and psychological support they needed.the hardest part, they told the court, was living with the shame and fear. The Lenca indigenous people of Honduras have been resisting the imposition of a major hydroelectrical project, the Agua Zarca dam, in the Gualcarque River in Río Blanco, the principal river that runs through in their territory for the last 6 years. For the Lenca people the Rio Blanco is the source of all life in their territory, irrigating their lands and providing them all with water. The construction of the dam would irrevocably impact food and agricultural production, threatening the very sustainability of their communities. In 2010 they decided to break their silence and initiate legal proceedings against the two military officials who were in command of the military base of Sepur Zarco when the crimes occurred. The sentence handed down by the Supreme Court of Justice in Guatemala on the 26th of February included the following analisis: Berta Caceres was a leader of the Lenca community movement and founded COPINH in 1993 to protect the rights of indigenous peoples across Honduras. Initially COPINH focused on defending indigenous land from illegal loggings, support territorial rights and to improve their livelihoods. More recently COPINH has focused on the imposition of hydroelectrical projects in communities across Honduras particularly the Río Blanco dam. The pressure on communities to accept these investments has increased considerably since the the coup d état of 2009, with the government s declaration that the country is open for business. The court is in no doubt that the women of Sepur Zarco were raped. In the Q eqchi culture women are the bearers of life. They were raped in order to destroy life, they were denied their humanity. They were raped as a means of sowing terror into their communities and destroy their production. They were raped so as to morally and physically destroy their community because women s bodies represent the social body Rape was used as a weapon of war to dominate and terrorize the community. The violence they experienced transcended the minds and bodies of the women and caused a complete rupture of the social fabric ( ) The Honduras government issued a concession for the Agua Zarca dam in 2010 to the company DESA. This firm was supported by the Chinese state-owned Sinohydro (the biggest hydro engineering firm in the world), the World Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) and European financial institutions. The husbands of the women who were raped were in the process of obtaining legal rights over their lands, a fact which leads the court to believe that, at the heart of all this sexual violence and degrading treatment was the desire to put an end to their demands for land rights, by disappearing or murdering the men and taking sexual DESA did not follow the procedures for the required 2

3 community consultation and did not respect the decision of the community to refuse permission for the dam. The indigenous peoples of Honduras have the right to consultation protected under national and international law. More than 150 Lenca assemblies rejected the project, but the project went ahead anyway. Nobody has listened to the Lenca people, Cáceres said. The peaceful demonstrations of the Lenca community were met with strong Sepur Zarco plaintiffs at the trial. Photo: MujeresTransformando el Mundo repression from state security forces and were criminalised. Many leaders, spoke at a UN commission to say: I want us to honour including Cáceres, have faced legal proceedings against my mother s legacy, which is a legacy for all peoples. She them, have received threats, harassment and direct fought for life, for true, deep and integral transformations. attacks against them. Tomás García, another Lenca and This is why Berta will return; her spirit will inspire millions COPINH leader was killed by a soldier when he was to fight for life and our sacred earth. She already has. leading hundreds of people trying to dialogue with the company. Astruggleforland,astruggleforlife Thus Berta became a marked woman, actively opposing the State s model of development based on resource extraction and exploitation. She had received many death threats for her participation in the community resistance movement and one month before she was assasinated she confided in her lawyer that she fear the most recent threat might be real. Nevertheless she refused to quit. According to Berta Caceres, Central America is currently witnessing "one of the greatest handovers of sovereign indigenous territory of the past 500 years."this can also be said of many other regions across Latin America. A discussion on land rights and women in the Latin American context cannot therefore ignore the persistent, direct and structural violence women experience as a result of the repeated dispossession from their territories at the hands of state or private actors. As Berta rightly pointed out this is not a recent phenomenon: land grabbing in Central America must be considered as a contemporary manifestation of historic injustices in the access to land and natural resources. In November 2015 she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Award for her environmental activism and was internationally renowned as a human rights defender and for her quest to protect the lands and resources of her people from destruction. However, even such a prestigious award and the international support she has received over the years could not protect her life. Moreover, her colleagues in COPINH continue to be in serious danger. Less than two weeks following Berta s assassination her colleague Nelson Garcia, a 38 year old father of 5, was shot five times at his home. The Sepur Zarco sentence vindicates what many land rights activists and feminists in Central America have been insisting for years: that throughout five centuries of land accumulation and dispossession women have consistently been one of the most vulnerable groups.their bodies, seen as male property and an extension of the territory, become targets for conquest and domination. The Honduran government initially attempted to dress her murder up as a robbery. Subsequently the criminal investigation proved that the murder was directly linked to her role as a defender of human rights and the Lenca resistance to the Agua Zarco dam. The World Bank dropped the support for the project in Two European banks continued to support the project, but both of them stopped the disbursements following Berta s assassination.two weeks after the killing, Berta s daughter If one controls women's bodies, one controls the community, and therefore the territory. Rape becomes one of the principal tools for forcing communities into submission. Thus, sexual or gendered violence in the contemporary context of Guatemala and Honduras can be understood as part of the historical continuum where 3

4 women's bodies have been subjected to violence as a means of controlling populations and repressing indigenous and campesino movements that defend their rights and their territories. culture, their ancestral connection to the land, their sustenance and their livelihoods. Bertha Caceres, in her speech at the Goldman Environmental Prize award ceremony in November captures beautifully why the Lenca people and so many other women across Latin America are risking everything to defend their land rights: Indigenous and campesino women in Central America are routinely exposed to forms of physical, sexual and structural violence that are particular to their experience as rural, campesino and indigenous women. In the past this violence was exercised as a strategy for the colonisation and domination of indigenous communities, later it was a tactic employed by the counter-insurgent armies. "The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet... The women of Honduras and Guatemala, however, are not simply victims: they play a crucial role in the community resistance to extractive projects on their land. They have formed women's councils, they participate in marches, blockades and land occupations, they have been at the front lines when facing security forces and, in some cases, they have participated in negotiations with the state or the companies involved. COPINH, walking alongside people struggling for their emancipation, validates this commitment to continue protecting our waters, the rivers, our shared resources and nature in general, as well as our rights as a people. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of this Earth and of its spirits." They have become more conscious of their rights, particularly their right to own land. They have even begun to demand that their right to own land be recognised by their husbands, the community and the government. It is not easy though. Women have to fight for their space to be heard at community meetings or in decision making processes. They are often accused of being 'bad' wives or mothers for 'abandoning' family duties in other to participate in the community struggle. These macho attitudes are played upon by the media, the state and security forces to stigmatise and criminalise the women, in some cases going so far as to accuse the women of infidelity or even prostitution - a common strategy used to delegitimise the community struggle. They have faced threats, intimidations, sexual and physical violence, defamations, threats against their families, arrest warrants, imprisonment and assassination. Despite this, for many campesino and indigenous women in Guatemala and Honduras, the defence of their territories is a question of life and death. The alternative is the living death of migration or work as an agricultural day labourer for starvation wages. In some cases the struggle literally ends in death. The tragic assassination of Berta Caceres makes this painfully clear. There are real dangers being faced every day in Honduras and Guatemala by communities trying to assert their land rights and defend their territories against the imposition of resource exploitation projects by the state, national and transnational corporations and international financial institutions. Trócaire has launched an international petition calling on the government of Honduras to complete an independent and impartial investigation into Berta s assassination and for the protection of her colleagues in COPINH. You can sign at: -caceres In their resistance to resource extraction projects in their territories, indigenous and campesino communities are often told 'they are not thinking clearly' or they do not 'know what is best for them' in order to justify natural resource exploitation projects on their land without their Free Prior and Informed Consent. This is clearly not the case.they are consciously defending their way of life, their 4

5 Bringing closer Ireland and Central America Strengthening the links between Ireland and Latin America is always a priority for Trócaire. During the first months of 2016, we had several opportunities to do so. The Nicaragua office hosted the award-winning writer and former RTÉ journalist Kathleen MacMahon, who lived in the country as a child and didn't come back for 40 years. Nicaragua also helped UCD Volunteers Overseas to broaden their networks of partners. They have been working in the country since The Nicaragua team was also involved in preparing the visit of a group 8 teachers from Ireland, who had the chance to experience first-hand how climate change is affecting the communities Trócaire works with. They also discovered the Nicaraguan culture and nature. Travelling in the opposite direction, two Nicaraguan partners visted the main office in Maynooth. Ana Celia Tercero, (APADEIM), and Fernando Medina (Red Local) explained to the Trócaire staff their work bringing together a gender focus to DRR and strengthening the civil society respectively. Katheleen MacMahon and Martín Larrecochea. Photo:Trócaire Irish teachers with thetrócaire team in Managua. Photo:Trócaire 5

6 Disaster Risk Reduction in Honduras Trócaire will keep supporting disaster risk reduction in the San Pedro Sula bordos thanks to a new project co-funded by the European Commission's Humanitarian aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) through the DIPECHO programme for With this new project, Trócaire Honduras and our partners will expand, consolidate and institutionalise the previous work in this difficult areas of the city. Altogether 15 urban communities in three municipalities will be targeted. Four communities participated in the previous DIPECHO project but eight are new and three will be from Puerto Cortés, the main port of Honduras. This represents more than beneficiaries and 107 organisations. Laura Kennedy and Sean Byrne (UCDVO), Anabell García (Funarte) and Caroline O'Connor (UCDVO). Photo:Trócaire The last project worked in 10 communities of San Pedro Sula and Choloma to train people and create their local emergency committees (CODELs). Our partner in the project are the Mennonite Social Action Commission (CASM) and the NGO Association (ASONOG), along with the Honduras Association of Factories. Thanks to this partnership with the private sector, around 4000 workers have also benefited from the project. Factories employees can address emergencies in crowded environments, and they know how to protect each other. The companies have also trained CODEL's members to gain new skills to respond to an emergency and will scale up that supporting the new project as well as strengthening the local and national emergency prevention and response system (SINAGER). Fernando Medina (Red Local) talking about the situation of the Nicaraguan civil society in Maynooth. Photo:Trócaire The bordos are illegal, impoverished settlements built on the flood plains erected to protect San Pedro Sula from flooding, from where they take their name. People without anywhere else to go, build shanty houses in areas prone to floods, landslides and now earthquakes. There is no sanitation and fires caused by illegal energy connexions are common. The "maras", Central American violent youth gangs, control the neighbourhoods. Life here is tough, and climate change will only worsen it. Thanks to this project Trócaire and our partners will build on the previous experience with the aim of strengthening and expanding the achievements in the communities and with the private sector. Here you can watch pictures of the private sector brigade members showing their skills: Hilary Daly, Deirdre McArdle, Ana Celia Tercero and Deirdre Ni Cheallaigh in Maynooth Photo:Trócaire 6

7 Guatemala Sharing experience and solidarity with Ecuador Addressing El Niño consequences Trócaire Guatemala took part in a delegation to assess the damage caused by the recent Ecuadorian Earthquake. This South American nation was hit by a 7.8magnitud earthquake on April 16th, The quake and the subsequent aftershock caused extensive damage and killed more than 650 people. Guatemala shares the same tectonic characteristics with Ecuador and a high possibility of a similar event happening.. In recent years, Guatemala has also dealt with earthquakes in 2012 and To exchange and learn from their respective experiences, to enhance their response capacity and mitigate risks in future events, both the Guatemalan and Ecuadorian Disaster Risk Management Authorities arranged a visit by a Guatemalan delegation to Ecuador from May 4th to 8th. The humanitarian situation along Central America s Dry Corridor has reached crisis levels, with more than 3.5 million people facing food insecurity in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This drought is considerably more severe compared to the previous year, and the cumulative effect is further exacerbated by El Niño conditions. Throughout the Dry Corridor, communities are facing one of the worst crises in decades. Hardest hit are families who depend on subsistence farming, general day labourers and landless farmers who have had their livelihoods destroyed and their resilience eroded. Only in Guatemala, approximately 1.5 million individuals (248,000 families) are in need of humanitarian assistance in 108 municipalities affected by moderate and severe food insecurity. The Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET) predicts that Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador will be experiencing crisis level acute food insecurity (IPC3), where 1 in 5 households will face critical food consumption gaps with acute malnutrition rates. Given Trócaire's experience of responding to the San Marcos earthquake in 2014 and in recognition of its leadership in promoting and updating improved seismic resistant building codes, Trócaire s Humanitarian PO Marvin Ravanales was invited to participate in the Guatemalan Delegation. Trócaire Guatemala shared its experience and lessons learnt of responding to earthquakes. The delegation also reviewed the building codes that have been used in Ecuador to learn what has worked. Trócaire is providing Humanitarian support for six months to 1600 of the most vulnerable families across four communities in the departments of Quiche and Retalhuleu. Trócaire will support agricultural rehabilitation, food for work and safety net cash transfers for the most vulnerable families. The project is being implemented by Trócaire Partners CCDA and ACCSS with funding of 225,000 from the Euroepan Commission and Trócaire own humanitarian emergency fund. The food and cash for work component is being used to reduce the communities risk to the Zika virus as it supporting community work to get rid of mosquito breeding grounds and make improvements to schools, health centres, community buildings and shelters. While visiting the affected areas, I could observe the vulnerability of these zones and also the similarities with Guatemala. It is very likely that something similar will happen in Guatemala if the proper measures are not taken, DRR PO Marvin Ravanales said. The visit will provide useful material for the joint project between Trócaire and Guatemala Structural and Seismic Engineers aimed at revising the seismic resistant building codes for Guatemala. 7

8 Nicaragua Castillo, in Matagalpa. Thanks to this BLF-funded project, our partner ADDAC provided Maritza with a credit to buy a small piece of land just beside her house. "I work hard and I want to improve the Land for women, oppo harvest", she says confidently. Now women are Accessing land is a huge challenge for Nicaraguan recovering our right to be the owners of the land, women. Land is a fundamental asset in rural a right that we lost for some time. communities and the key to escaping poverty. However, women have been traditionally excluded from it. To challenge this situation Trócaire and six partners initiated a project; Land for Women, Opportunities for Life, supported by the Big Four organisations have joined forces to expand a Lottery Fund. Almost 1200 women have benefited gender-based violence alert system via SMS in North- Landforwomen opportunitiesforlife New technologies against old problems West Nicaragua. Trócaire and our partner APADEIM are working with Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) and the Chinandega Women's Movement to strengthen the system. These last two organisations started the first test three years ago. 28 women, called "enlaces" (links) are equipped with adapted mobile phones. The "enlaces" send SMS to alert about assaults, to denounce cases and to share information. The cell phones use an open-source software through which they can fill in a more detailed template. That way they also collect and store data about GBV in the area. A website presents all the data in a map with every case reported geolocated and classified by type. The data available for the first months of 2016 shows tha maintenance payments claims are the most common cases.the four organisations involved get together every two months to analyse the data. There have been some technical difficulties to obtain the devices chosen and with the network coverage in the area. Despite these problems, the "enlaces" are highly motivated to keep doing the job and to prevent violence against women in the Chinandega area. Beneficay Maritza García, from Matagalpa, standing on her newly purcfhased coffe flield. Photo:Trócaire from the project so far. The pool of partners mixes farmers and credit cooperatives, grassroots organisations and a national university. They work mostly in the North of the country with five mechanisms to ensure women s access to land: buying, renting, inheritance, sharecropping and legalisation. Having access to land does not automatically take people out of poverty. For that reason, the project also promotes agro-ecological techniques to improve food security and resilience towards climate change, helps women to diversify their sources of income through non-agricultural activities and also improves women s advocacy capacity. One of the beneficiaries is Maritza García, a 24 Two "enlances" learning to use the SMS alert system. years old woman from the community of Yale 1 El Photo:Trócaire 8

9 Farewell to Fernando Cardenal ( ) "From today until the day I die, I dedicate my life to the liberation of the poor in the struggle for Justice." Last February we said goodbye to Fernando Cardenal, Jesuit brother and revolutionary Minister of Education in the 80s. Cardenal was the Director of "Faith and Joy" in Nicaragua, a network of schools that belongs to the Company of Jesus and are located in poor areas, where there are no paved roads. Despite the fact that Faith and Joy was not a Trócaire partner, he was always ready to collaborate. Cardenal lead the Literacy Crusade during the Sandinista Revolution, which mobilised thousands of adolescents and youth to teach to more than a million Nicaraguans in remote locations in the country how to read and write. This crusade of solidarity in action was able, in months, to reduce the level of illiteracy in the country from more than 50% to 13%. The Vatican did not accept the fact that Cardenal was made minister of Education, and he was expelled from the order. However, he is the only case of a Jesuit being readmitted in the order in 500 years of the Company s history. "Fr. Fernando was not a common priest, he was a revolutionary priest. A man of prayer with clarity on his mission of serving the poor, and full of courage. His life is an example of courage and tirelessly seeking justice, which has been and it will continue being my source of inspiration to work in Trócaire" Nicaragua Director Martín Larrecochea stated. Contact: Santiago Agra, Communications Graduate, Nicaragua Santiago.AgraBermejo@trocaire.org