Guatemala - Minority Rights Group

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Environment The Republic of Guatemala in Central America is bounded on the north and west by Mexico, and on the east by Belize and the Caribbean Sea. To the south-west is the Pacific Ocean and on the south-east it shares borders with Honduras and El Salvador.

The highland region, where most of the population lives, cuts across the country from west to east.

History Before the arrival of the Spanish, the physical ‘boundaries’ of the ancient Maya empire spanned the countries of modern-day Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and the five Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche and Chiapas.

The Maya civilization, established for centuries in the region with extensive cities, culture and agricultural production, was already in decline before the arrival of the first Spanish colonialists. However, the arrival of Pedro de Alvarado’s forces led to the subjugation of Maya tribes and the beginning of a long history of marginalization, poverty and violence. In the ensuing centuries Guatemala’s indigenous population faced continued repression by the dominant Spanish ruling class, including widespread land dispossession in the 19th century.

With the abolition of slavery in Guatemala in 1823, Africans from neighbouring Belize began to escape from forced labour in that country, by crossing into the ‘highland jungles’ of northern Guatemala. They remained and most eventually intermarried with the local indigenous population. The descendants of these original colonial groups now form part of the Guatemala mestizo population and no longer have any strong awareness of African ancestry.

Recent Guatemala history has been dominated by the land distribution question. It is the most unequal in the whole of Latin America: 3.2 per cent of the existing farms cover 65 per cent of the land, making nearly 90 per cent of the other agricultural holdings of an inadequate size to provide subsistence for a family.

The large plantations cover most of the fertile coastal strips, where the large landowners grow coffee, sugar, bananas and cotton for export. Small farmers, mainly Maya, try to grow subsistence crops (maize, beans, rice) on the stony leftover land in the mountains; many are forced to migrate annually to work on the large plantations for starvation wages.

From 1954, when a US-supported coup overthrew a government committed to social reform and the redistribution of land, Guatemala’s history was characterized by military rule, the repression of legal opposition and internal armed conflict. From the 1970s onwards, when many Maya joined the guerrilla movements, the Maya have made up most of the at least 200,000 victims of the armed conflict. A particularly brutal counter-insurgency campaign launched by General Ríos Montt in 1982 (defined as genocidal by the United Nations-sponsored truth commission), involved the complete destruction of 440 Maya villages in areas where the guerrillas were strong.

In 1985, the army restored civilian rule but maintained political control over a series of weak civilian governments. Prompted by significant pressure from the international community, after 1993, agreements were made between the government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) guerrillas. These accords on human rights, demilitarization, justice issues, refugees and displaced persons, and indigenous rights, led to the signing of a formal peace agreement between the government and the URNG in December 1996.

The signing in March 1995 of the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (AIDPI) accord was an important step forward, but subsequent accords, particularly the socio-economic accord of early 1996, proved a disappointment to those hoping for a serious response to the land problem.

Nevertheless, Maya rights have come to the fore of the national agenda for the first time since the Spanish conquest as a result of a series of internal as well as external factors. These contributed to removing the culture of fear that existed in the Maya highlands, and allowed the Maya movement to make its voice heard without fear of repression. Nevertheless, in the ensuing years Guatemala has continued to struggle with corruption, political violence and its legacy of genocide, facilitated by a broader climate of impunity. Both Maya and Guatemala’s Garifuna population have been disproportionately affected by these issues.

Governance Guatemala continues to struggle with widespread corruption, impunity and other governance challenges. In 2015, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the Attorney’s Office uncovered several high-profile cases of corruption involving former high-level public officials and those who were in power at the time. These scandals ultimately led to the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice-President Roxana Baldetti, who were subsequently arrested. The subsequent presidential elections were marked by violence between different political factions before the eventual victory of the National Convergence Front, led by Jimmy Morales, a former comedian with only a few years of political experience. Against this political backdrop, the country’s indigenous and Garifuna communities continue to suffer widespread discrimination and human rights abuses.

Political participation is also limited, with only 21 (13.3 per cent) of the 158 congressional deputies elected in 2015 having an indigenous background, although not all of these self-identify as indigenous. Official figures indicate that around 40 per cent of Guatemalans are indigenous – though some estimates are significantly higher. Only 2 of those 21 deputies are women. Minority Rights Group International understands that not a single deputy from the Garífuna community, who make up around 1 per cent of the population, was elected.

Guatemala’s justice system is another area where Garífuna and indigenous communities are still marginalized. In May 2015, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that the country still lacked a law acknowledging legal pluralism. Despite this lack of support, communities have maintained their traditional justice systems, with around 40 per cent of legal conflicts resolved through these systems – an important service when the formal justice system regularly fails to deliver. While a welcome development was the creation of a specialized unit in 2015 dealing with discrimination complaints within the prosecution system, the unit reportedly had only five staff members and has yet to prove its effectiveness. By the end of the year, of the 98 complaints of discrimination it received, not a single case had yet been brought before a judge.

The failures of Guatemala’s justice system have contributed to a persistent climate of impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses, particularly those targeting Garifuna and indigenous communities. The most high-profile example is former president Ríos Montt, responsible for the killing of 1,700 Ixil Maya in the early 1980s. While a court found Montt guilty in 2013, his 80-year sentence was withdrawn shortly afterwards and subsequent legal proceedings against him have been marred by delays and procedural irregularities. In January 2016, his retrial was suspended; a new trial was again suspended after having opened in March 2016. At the end of March 2017, however, a prosecutor outlined charges against Montt at a pre-trial hearing concerning the 1982 Dos Erres Massacre, at which 200 people were killed. The judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence against Montt for the trial to proceed. It remains to be seen whether this process will be more successful.

The systematic marginalization of indigenous peoples from the country’s political, social and economic life, despite representing a large proportion of the population, continues with no meaningful efforts by the government to overcome it. The two government agencies in charge of preventing and addressing ethnic discrimination, namely the Indigenous Women’s Public Defender Office and the Presidential Commission against Racism and Discrimination, lack the financial and human resources to perform their duties.

Some progress has been made in Guatemala to address systematic human rights abuses against indigenous peoples, including the 2008 Law against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence against Women. However, femicides remain uninvestigated and unprosecuted, and indigenous women face difficulties accessing the justice system. Guatemala does not disaggregate data on femicide by ethnicity, making it impossible to know exact numbers on how indigenous women are affected.

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Source link : https://minorityrights.org/country/guatemala/ Author : Publish date : 2017-08-07 18:54:39 Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source .