Despite Historic Conviction, Genocide Continues in Guatemala
Despite Historic Conviction, Genocide Continues in Guatemala
Written by Leonor Hurtado
Thursday, 16 May 2013 12:04
By Leonor Hurtado, Food First
...
In the last decade, the expansion of oil palm plantations and sugarcane production for ethanol in Northern Guatemala has displaced hundreds of Maya-Q´eqchi´ peasant families, increasing poverty, hunger, unemployment and landlessness in the region, confirms Alberto Alfonso-Fradejas in the new Food First report, "Sons and Daughters of the Earth: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala" [3]. There is a tremendous contradiction here: at the same time that the ex-General Ríos Montt is convicted for genocide, the state allows the oligarchy, allied with extractive industries, to displace entire populations without taking into account the human cost, and in many cases, resulting in the murder and imprisonment of rural people who resist the assault. The genocide against the indigenous peasant population in Guatemala no longer has the face of a military dictatorship supported by the United States.... Now it is the corporations, the oligarchy and the World Bank who push peasants off their lands.
The fourteen families of the oligarchy who control the country's sugarcane-producing companies (AZAZGUA), the five companies that control the national production of ethanol, along with the eight families that control the production of palm oil (GREPALMA) (4) and members of the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF) are accumulating land and wealth with the support of investment from international institutions such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI). The convergence of multiple global crises: finance, energy, food and environment, has directed corporate investment into land-based resources such as agrofuels, minerals, pasture and food. The situation in Guatemala is extremely violent; this is due to the global trend in which agrarian, financial and industrial interests converge to grab control of peasant lands and resources.
In many ways, land grabbing is a new form of genocide. Ricardo Falla's study "What Do You Mean There Was No Genocide?" analyzes the definition of genocide and its characteristics (5). According to Falla, of the five acts that define genocide, two were most prominent in Guatemala: "the massacre of the members of a group" and "the intentional subjection of a group to living conditions which will lead to their total or partial physical destruction." The first genocide was against the Ixil peoples during the time of Ríos Montt. This second genocide is enacted through the privation of the Q´eqchi´ peoples' means of survival through land grabs. Hundreds of families have been displaced; they do not have land on which to produce or live and they are denied their cultural and community identity. These are conditions that lead to their physical destruction.
The conviction against a person who committed genocide is an historic victory, but it is not enough [6]. Ríos Montt was convicted only after he was no longer useful to the system of exploitation and subjugation. The oligarchy, which benefitted from the genocide, continues to commit genocide against the indigenous peasant population. They are supported by international investment and hidden by a legal system that favors land grabs to the detriment of the Guatemalan people.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/4264
= new reply since forum marked as read
