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January 23, 2024


** Educational Fact-Finding Delegation To Guatemala
May 4-12, 2024

TESTIMONIO: Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala,
and (now) in the Aftermath of Historic Elections
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On January 14, 2024, President Bernardo Arevalo and VP Karin Herrera of the Semilla Party assumed power. After a 6-month, country-wide struggle in defense of the election results against corrupt efforts by Guatemala’s traditional elites to overturn the results, it is only the third time in the country’s history (the others being in 1944 & 1951) that an actually democratic government has taken power. Read our Guatemala Election Watch alerts ([link removed]) .

Please consider joining our second TESTIMONIO educational trip, organized by Grahame Russell and Camila Rich of Rights Action. Professor Catherine Nolin (UNBC), co-editor with Grahame Russell of the book TESTIMONIO: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala ([link removed]) , will join the trip.

2022 Testimonio delegation visit with Maya Q’eqchi’ land defenders in El Estor, eastern Guatemala

“What is land?
A resource to be exploited? A commodity to be traded? A home to cherish?
In Guatemala, a country still reeling from 36 years of US-backed repression and genocides, the Canadian-led, global mining industry cashes in, while acting with near-total impunity.”

A main focus of the trip will be learning about Indigenous and campesino led struggles in defense of land, rights and the environment, against the voracious interests (and oftentimes corruption and violence) of global extractivist industries, including the Canadian-led mining industry.

In our book TESTIMONIO, we draw on over 30 years of direct community support work and community-based research in Guatemala to expose the repressive, corrupt state machinery that benefits the global mining industry—a profitable juggernaut of exploitation, sanctioned and supported at every step by the Guatemalan traditional elites and government and their ‘international community’ partner governments, companies and banks.

With the historic Presidential elections victory of the Semilla Party, our trip will also learn about the hopes and aspirations of the Indigenous and campesino communities we visit with, after 70 almost uninterrupted years of corrupt, repressive ‘open-for-global-business’ governments in power – all invariably referred to as “democratic allies” by the U.S., Canada and the E.U.

During this 8-night, 7-day trip, delegation members will visit and speak with Indigenous and non-Indigenous community defenders in their own communities, who are involved in extractive industries resistance struggles, as well as with human rights and environmental activists and academics. The trip will visit some communities profiled in TESTIMONIO and other communities leading their own community defense struggles.

DELEGATION COSTS: US $1250 (Based on group of 8)
Cost covers: 8 nights of lodging; 7 days of in-country transportation, driver & van; 2-3 meals/day; trip coordination; guiding & translation; honorariums for community defenders. Participants are responsible for their own travel to and from Guatemala.

MORE INFORMATION
Grahame Russell, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Catherine Nolin, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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