Blog Posts

José “Pepe” Palacios, a leading LGBT activist from Honduras, recently visited the United States at the invitation of the Honduras Solidarity Network and the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN). Pepe is a founding member of the Diversity Movement in Resistance (MDR), created in the wake of the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras that replaced the democratically elected government.  He is also a program officer at the Swedish aid agency Diakonia.  At events in Washington, DC that the Latin America Working Group helped arrange,  Pepe spoke about the violence the LGBT community has faced after the coup and what they are doing to organize for change...

President Obama's words as he discussed principles for immigration reform struck a deep chord. Some of us at the Latin America Working Group office decided to reflect on our families' paths to the United States.

Here's what he said:

When we talk about that in the abstract, it’s easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of “us” versus “them.”  And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of “us” used to be “them.”  We forget that.

It’s really important for us to remember our history.  Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else.  Somebody brought you...

Our partners at the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA posted this blog about a historic ruling for justice in Guatemala on January 28, 2013.  Here's their blog:

A Guatemalan judge affirmed there was sufficient evidence against Generals Ríos Montt and Rodríguez Sánchez to proceed with the case against them. The first hearing will be held on Thursday, January 31.  

Last year I visited Bajo Aguán, a land torn by a terrible land conflict.  You can see in this video many of the vivid realities I saw on that trip: the immense, silent, hundreds of miles of African palm plantations, used for biofuel, which wealthy landowners are seeking to expand, setting the stage for the struggle over land; the brutal and overwhelming presence of police and soldiers, with anti-riot gear and guns, up against poor peasants; the testimony of a young man who was doused with gasoline by security forces and threatened with being burned alive; the heartless and violent evictions of communities; the determination and bravery of campesino women and men who take over farms they claim as agrarian reform land, and the cooperative ways in which they eke out a living—until the next eviction or assassination. 

With passions running high on immigration and pitched defenses mounting on both sides of the question, the actual stories of immigrants get lost in the broader debate or simply become a backdrop to fierce ideological battles and arguments. That’s why we thought that you might like to hear about a new book by H. B. Cavalcanti, Almost Home: A Brazilian American’s Reflections on Faith, Culture and Immigration.  It is a reflection on migration by someone who lived it for 30 years, first as an immigrant, now as a citizen. Here’s what the author has to say:

U.S. policy towards our Latin American neighbors is, as usual, in need of a few New Year's resolutions. Here goes:

1. Ban assault weapons. Three months before the murders of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, 110 victims of violence and advocates from Mexico traveled across the United States calling on us to take action to stop the violence that has claimed over 100,000 lives in Mexico during the last six years. They asked us to ban the assault weapons that arm Mexico's brutal cartels. Some70 percent of assault weapons and other firearms used by criminal gangs in Mexico come from the United States. The United States should reinstate and tighten the assault weapon ban and enforce the ban on the import of assault weapons into our country, which are then smuggled into Mexico. Do it for Newtown. Do it for Aurora. Do it for Mexico's mothers and fathers who have lost their children to senseless violence.

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.

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.

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.