Action Center - Latin America Working Group

A Lawyer for Rural Justice in Honduras Slain

by Lisa Haugaard on September 25, 2012

On Saturday night, September 22th, 2012, after he attended a wedding, Antonio Trejo Cabrera was shot six times. He later died at a Tegucigalpa hospital. He was the legal representative of the MARCA campesino movement, and in June he had won the historic though still contested judgment in favor of returning three plantations to campesinos in Bajo Aguán.

“Since they couldn't beat him on the courts, they killed him,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan's peasant movements, cited in an Associated Press story. Trejo "had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions." Trejo also prepared legal challenges to a proposal by U.S. and Honduran companies to run privately-run charter cities that critics call unconstitutional, as they would skirt national labor and other laws.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Honduras, Lisa Haugaard

Sin País Airing on PBS

by Omar Martinez on August 02, 2012

As part of their Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program, PBS will be broadcasting Sin País nationally on August 9, 2012.

Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Guatemala, Latin America, Omar Martinez

What Should Be on the Agenda at the Summit: Protect Human Rights Defenders

by Lisa Haugaard on April 12, 2012

I can tell you what should be on the table for discussion at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia: The safety of the region’s human rights defenders.

Alexander Quintero campaigned for justice for the victims of Colombia's 2001 Naya River massacre, committed by paramilitary forces. “He brought us all together, indigenous, Afro-Colombian and mestizo communities,” said a colleague. “It could have been any of us,” a sobbing defender said, as she told me about his May 2010 murder.

:2012, Blog Posts, Colombia, Honduras, Latin America, Lisa Haugaard

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator Airing on PBS

by Omar Martinez on June 25, 2012

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator will be nationally broadcasted on June 28, 2012 by PBS as part of the Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program.

In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efrain Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war against the country's Mayan people in the 1980s -- and Pamela Yates' 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film, aiding a new generation of human rights activists, became a granito -- a tiny grain of sand -- that helped tip the scales of justice.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Guatemala, Omar Martinez

Honduran Human Rights Defenders at Risk, Says UN

by Lisa Haugaard on March 13, 2012

:2012, Blog Posts, Honduras, Lisa Haugaard

Notes from the Evidence Project: Guatemalan Government to Dismantle its “Archives of Peace”

by Kate Doyle on June 06, 2012

In a surprise move, the Guatemalan government has announced the effective closing of the “Peace Archives,” one of the most active and important institutions created in the wake of the 1996 peace accords to promote peace, truth and reconciliation. According to Guatemalan press accounts, the Secretary of Peace Antonio Arenales Forno stated that by June 29 the government would “cancel [labor] contracts for which I see no justification and end the functions of an office that I find makes no sense.”