Statement denouncing the murder of indigenous people in Latin America
"They thought they were burying you, but what they were doing was burying a seed." - Ernesto Cardenal
El CLACSO Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Projects We express our sorrow for the assassination of Maya leader Dominga Ramos of the peasant organization Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (CODECA), which occurred on March 5th in Guatemala, and we extend our deepest condolences to her family, her community, and her people. Dominga Ramos has returned to Mother Earth; she will continue to live on among us, accompanying the struggle for the right to live with dignity and for respect for Mother Earth.
We wish to express our outrage at the Guatemalan state's responsibility for creating a climate of repression and criminalization against Indigenous movements in Guatemala for their struggle to recover, restitute, and defend their ancestral lands, including CODECA's fight for the nationalization of electricity. We also denounce the human rights violations perpetrated through the imposition of mining and hydroelectric projects, African palm monoculture, land dispossession, the Central American Energy Transmission Company (TRECSA), and the Mega Collector project in Lake Atitlán.
The murder of Dominga Ramos is not an isolated incident; it occurs within a context in which, in 2019 alone, according to reports from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 10 other members of CODECA were also murdered, including: Angel Leonel Guzmán Morales and Manuel Pérez Hernández in November, Jorge CucCucul on July 25, Julio Ramírez on July 12, Isidro Pérez and Melecio Ramírez on July 5, and Delfino Agustín Vida in January.
Nor are these events unique to Guatemala. Since 2019, some of the murders of Indigenous leaders in Latin America have included the following: in Costa Rica, on February 24, 2020, the Brörán Indigenous leader Jerhy Rivera Rivera was murdered by non-Indigenous people illegally occupying Indigenous lands, as was Sergio Rojas Ortiz, who was murdered in March 2019. In Nicaragua, on January 29, 2020, Jarle Samuel Gutiérrez, Juan Emilio Devis Gutiérrez, Cristino López Ortiz, and Amaru Rener Hernández, all members of the Mayagna Indigenous communities, were murdered. In Brazil, on December 7, 2019, the Guajajara Indigenous leaders Firminio Praxede Guajajara and Raimundo Belnicio Guajajara were murdered, and a month earlier, Paulo Paulino Guajajara had been murdered. In Colombia, on October 29, 2019, Indigenous leader Cristina Bautista was murdered. In Mexico, in December 2019, Popoluca Indigenous artist Josué Bernardo Marcial Campo was murdered. In May, Tzotzil Indigenous leader Ignacio Pérez Girón, and Nahua Indigenous leaders José Lucio Bartolo, Modesto Verales, Bartolo Hilario Morales, and Isaías Xanteco Ahujote were murdered. On May 31, a young Indigenous man from Zacualpan was murdered. On April 12, Mephaa Indigenous leader Julián Cortés Flores was murdered, and on February 20, Nahua Indigenous leader Samir Flores Soberanes was murdered. On January 17, Chol Indigenous leaders Noé Jiménez Pablo and José Santiago Alvarez were murdered. In Paraguay, on February 24, 2019, Takuara'i Indigenous leader Francisco López was murdered.
According to Front Line Defenders, in 2019, 40% of human rights defenders killed worldwide were defenders of land, Indigenous peoples, and the environment. 75% of these killings occurred in Latin America, and approximately half of them targeted Indigenous leaders, even though Indigenous people make up only 10% of the region's population. All of these murdered Indigenous leaders were defending Mother Earth and their communities against mining projects, agribusiness, hydroelectric plants, oil projects, logging, the usurpation of their lands by non-Indigenous people, and harmful megaprojects. Many of them had precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or national courts, which were not implemented by their governments.
The members of the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Projects denounce the assassination of indigenous leaders in Latin America as a widespread, intentional practice, constituting serious human rights violations, incompatible with a democratic and plurinational order, and a constitutive part of the power structures through which extractive industries, governments, and non-indigenous groups promote and protect a development discourse based on extractivism that perpetuates the dispossession of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, favors the continuity of neocolonial projects of national societies, and violates indigenous rights.
We express our solidarity with the families, communities, and indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples who suffer the murder of their members and we stand in solidarity with their struggles to protect Mother Earth.
We demand that States respect and implement the rights of indigenous peoples recognized in ILO Convention 169, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Inter-American Charter of Human Rights, the precautionary measures of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and take effective measures for the protection of indigenous peoples, accelerate, in agreement with indigenous peoples, the processes of restitution and demarcation of lands, respect the right to prior, free and informed consent of communities in accordance with international law, and investigate, prosecute, and punish those who are guilty and provide reparation in accordance with international standards to the affected persons, families and communities.
We demand that the States of the extractive industries operating in the region implement legislation that allows for the reporting, investigation, prosecution, punishment, and reparation within their countries of human rights violations committed against indigenous communities in the region within the country of origin of the extractive industry.
March 2020
CLACSO Working Group
Indigenous peoples and extractive projects
