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December 12, 2025

2025 December Newsletter


** Shout out to people ‘Behaving Magnificently’
In these quite brutal local-to-global times
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We suspect that many folks who follow and support the work of Rights Action and/or similar groups working to address a range of serious local-to-global issues, are feeling slightly if not quite overwhelmed by human affairs on our one and only planet. Many who read this are likely involved in their own work and struggles, from the local to global levels.

We feel this, and have no easy response beyond that of again taking strength and inspiration from the work and struggles of so many who came before, and from so many engaged today across the planet in serious work and struggle for “another world is possible” ([link removed]) , as Arundhati Roy wrote about.

In his book “You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train” ([link removed]) , Howard Zinn reminds:

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Rights Action has long abided by this, as we do our best to chip away, for as long as it takes, on community-based land and environmental, human rights and justice struggles in Guatemala and Honduras – work and struggles that are at once local, national and global struggles. Chipping away, we remind ourselves:

"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: search for understanding, education, organization, action ... and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future." (Noam Chomsky)

This newsletter is part two in our end-of-year series.
Click here to read the first email: Highlighted E-newsletters & Articles from 2025 ([link removed])

“Behaving Magnificently”

The Maya Q’eqchi’ plaintiffs in the Hudbay Minerals lawsuits and over-lapping Mynor Padilla criminal trial are some of those people who behaved magnificently, beginning long before 2004 when Rights Action began to support their mining resistance struggle, and then over the course of the two inter-connected landmark legal battles from 2009-2024. We are very pleased to share this report ...

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BLUEPRINTS of DISTRUPTION podcast

In this podcast, Grahame Russell discusses “Canadian mining imperialism, Hudbay Minerals lawsuits and Guatemala's 13 Brave Giants”.

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In these complicated, interconnected times …

Rights Action will continue to add our voice to those of people and organizations behaving magnificently, denouncing and working
* to end the violent, racist crackdown in the U.S. against migrants and people of color;
* to end the on-going U.S., Canadian and Western European-supported ethnic cleansing genocide in Palestine; and
* to denounce and resist the U.S. ‘regime change’ military build-up near Venezuela, including the murder of 100 (and counting) unidentified people in military strikes against small boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia.

Each of these situations is directly or indirectly related to our work, as we have set out in posts to our list-serve.

Honduras and Guatemala

No one who follows our work over the years and decades will be surprised that despite elections in Honduras (2022) and Guatemala (2024) that brought legitimate reformist governments to power for the first time in decades, the traditional elites (known also as the “pact of the corrupt”’ in Guatemala) remain on the offensive.

Since the first days in office of President Xiomara Castro (Honduras) and President Bernardo Arevalo (Guatemala), Rights Action has denounced efforts by the traditional elites – often in conjunction with their international allies led by the U.S. - to block any serious reforms. In both countries, particularly Guatemala, these corrupt elites continue with lawfare, using the legal and penitentiary systems as tools of repression against Indigenous and campesino land and environmental defenders, against honest judges, lawyers and prosecutors, and against the ruling parties themselves – LIBRE in Honduras and Semilla in Guatemala.

Honduras: The U.S. just stomped all over the electoral process

This aggression was at feverish pitch in lead up to the November 30, 2025 general elections. Rixi Ramona Moncada Godoy, the new leader of the LIBRE party, was in a solid position to win the Presidential elections and continue with reforms the LIBRE party has been trying to implement over the past four years.

The traditional elites and the U.S. (quite openly) had been pulling out all the stops to block her election, as we reported in a number of posts … and this was before the “U.S. stomped on Honduras’ electoral process and pardoned the former drug-trafficking President of Honduras” ([link removed]) .

As of the posting of this December Newsletter, the fall-out of the destructive intervention of the U.S. into the electoral process and release of drug-trafficking cartel leader and former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, is still playing itself out, as set out in these articles by Dana Frank and John Perry ([link removed]) .

Guatemala: Battle for Attorney General’s office

Going back to 2018, the Attorney General’s office has been controlled and corrupted by Guatemala’s traditional elites. Consuelo Porras, current head of the office, is the tip of the spear in endless lawfare attacks against land and environmental defenders, judges, lawyers and prosecutors. Many are jailed, many more in exile. With her term ending in May 2026, the traditional elites are pressing hard to find a corrupt way to keep her in office, or force President Arevalo’s hand with respect to her replacement. This crucial battle for power and control will worsen in early 2026, until it plays itself out in May 2026.

Guatemala’s next presidential elections are slated for 2027, and everything indicates that the traditional elites and their historic allies, led by the U.S., will do everything (think Honduras!) to have their candidates and party back into the offices of the President and VP.

No rest for the weary of Central America in this local-to-global order. Stay tuned.

Where your funds go

In this local to global context, Rights Action continues our chipping away work. Find here a summary of where your funds go ([link removed]) . As of December 1, we have sent over $220,000 to community organizations and NGOs (mainly in Guatemala and Honduras) working to confront and resist the cocktail of exploitation and repression, forced evictions and land theft, corruption and impunity that characterize the interests and actions of the traditional elites, usually in partnership with the U.S. and Canada, and global companies, banks and investors.

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Focus areas of work going forward

While continuing support for organizations, work and struggles summarized in “where your funds go”, Rights Action will also continue our focus on key areas.

Mining harms, violence and corruption

Even as we successfully wrapped up the Hudbay lawsuits and overlapping Padilla trial ([link removed]) , the global mining industry has logically not slowed down. We continue to support Indigenous and campesino communities in both countries that are resisting the harms, corruption and violence so often linked to global extractive companies, while denouncing the policies of the U.S. and Canadian governments forever in support of the endless expansion of our economic interests.

Tourism and ethnocide of Garifuna people

Along Honduras’ north coast, Rights Action has supported, since 1998, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) ([link removed]) , and their work in Afro-Indigenous Garifuna communities, denouncing and resisting the harmful impacts of tourism. Going back decades, and increasing since the U.S. and Canadian-backed coup in 2009, these impacts include land dispossession, violations of ancestral communal rights, violence and lawfare - all fueled by racism and structural privileges enjoyed by local elites and foreign tourism investors.

Rabinal, in the aftermath of the Maya Achi genocide

Since 1994, Rights Action has supported work for truth, memory and justice in the Achi region of Rabinal ([link removed]) . This work is spear-headed by survivors and family members of the U.S. and Western-backed repression in the 1970s and 1980s, including genocides carried out in four Mayan regions of Guatemala. Rabinal, center of the Maya Achi people, is one of those regions. Rights Action also supports education and agroecology projects carried out by survivors (and family members) of the Achi genocide; and we support community initiatives in Rio Negro, the village most devastated by the horrific Chixoy hydro-electric dam project of the World Bank and International Development Bank in partnership with the genocidal regimes headed by generals Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt.

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Rights Action's archives
Find here ([link removed]) reports and articles about all this going back to the mid-1990s.

THANK-YOU always for years of trust and support, and your own chipping away work and activism, as we all do our best to support work and struggle for “another world is possible”. As always, send us ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ) your questions, concerns and comments.

Grahame Russell
Camila Rich

Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)

To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2

Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

Change media sources
Rights Action urges everyone to diversify their news sources, as a necessary antidote to the oftentimes harmful, misleading reporting coming from much of the government and corporate media in the U.S., the E.U. and Canada. We recommend Democracy Now ([link removed]) , The Real News ([link removed]) , Al Jazeera News ([link removed]) (for coverage of Genocide in Palestine), The Gray Zone ([link removed]) , The Orinoco Tribune ([link removed]) ...

13 BRAVE GIANTS ([link removed])
How We Won the Landmark Hudbay Minerals Lawsuits in Canada and the Mynor Padilla Criminal Trial in Guatemala, and at What Cost! ([link removed])
By Grahame Russell, Rights Action, 2025

TESTIMONIO Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala ([link removed])
Edited by Catherine Nolin & Grahame Russell , Between The Lines, 2021

More info: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.rightsaction.org
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