Behind financial institutions' and NGOs' plans to “combat” the climate crisis, a project aims to generate profits through the indiscriminate sale of forests. This is the case of the Protected Areas of Guatemala. This model is being used to green capitalism, through local territorial reorganization policies that were implemented after the peace accords were signed in 1996.
In the department of Petén, in the north of this Central American country, the emergence of Protected Areas (PAs) was inspired by the traditional conservation models that the United States invented to colonize the “wild west”—areas where human presence or intervention is not allowed. This model, propagated by conservation organizations, set the “environmental” standard in tropical countries after the Second World War. It is responsible for expelling millions of peasants and indigenous people from their lands worldwide, for destroying ancestral systems of common goods management, for impoverishing and uprooting communities, and for imposing colonialist methods of territorial management.
Nearly 70% of the department of Petén has been declared as a Protected Area through the Maya Biosphere Reserve (RBM, by its Spanish acronym). This territory houses invaluable cultural wealth and biodiversity, including the most important archeological sites of Mayan culture, as well as Guatemala's largest reserves of oil, water, forests and fertile lands.
These resources place Petén at the center of “sustainable development” plans—which are based on the exportation of commodities alongside conservation projects. These plans were developed in the 21st century and stem from what appear to be contradictory ventures: The Mesoamerica Plan for infrastructure and economic-energy integration through extractive projects; and its green version, the Protected Areas of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Both of these land management models are financed by the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Protected Areas in Guatemala are managed through an alliance between weak state institutions and NGOs maintained by global financial institutions—such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Ford Foundation and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ). These financial institutions—working with The Nature Conservancy, World Wide Fund, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society and Rainforest Alliance, among other NGOs—advertise “sustainable forest management” projects as conservation success stories. These projects are made possible through mechanisms that seek to shape national regulatory frameworks to include a new commodity for export: carbon credits.
In this way, they seek to consolidate the territories of Petén—which will allow them to manage ecosystems with strategic value for transnational capital, while providing “ecosystem services” alongside hydrocarbon extraction, mega-tourism ventures and the expansion of agribusiness plantations. It is the same story of dispossession. Their objective is to preserve a kind of museum of what is being destroyed in the world, while developing an economic project to generate money for themselves in the Protected Areas. The latter entails extracting profits from counter-insurgency ecotourism; export-driven logging; and, above all—the flagship program of the green economy—Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).
This approach to territoriality, in an increasingly militarized context, intends to continue the forced displacement of populations that have been living in Petén for decades. It blames them for deforestation, and accuses them of working in collusion with criminal groups. This is manufactured discourse to justify stripping communities of their territories, in the name of conservation.
Mariela[1] was jostled violently as the train moved forward. She was sitting atop a rusty wagon, with few places to get a good grip. A small, brown-skinned young woman in her early twenties, Mariela looked as though her hair was dyed long ago and its color is now a kind of burnt black-red. She has a big smile and sparkling eyes. On top of the train, in the middle of the night, Mariela was exhausted, having only slept a few hours in the last three days. The rhythmic motion of the train was hypnotic, adding to the fatigue that almost overwhelmed her. I have to stay awake. If I fall asleep, I’m dead.
For many migrants like Mariela from Central America, traveling on top of freight trains to try to make it to the United States, staying awake is the last line of defense. People who fall asleep are more liable to fall off the moving train and get sliced to pieces by the blade-like steel wheels. Migrant advocates have a saying: if the train gets a piece of you, it wants to eat the rest of you. Though it isn’t death itself that necessarily frightens migrants. For many of them, the fear of losing an arm or a leg is what keeps them awake on the train. This would mean not just failing to cross the border, but it would be the end of all chances to succeed. All of this was in Mariela’s thoughts as she arrived, her sparkling, tired eyes kept open only by inertia, to Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
At two o’clock in the morning, along with another 25 migrants - 3 women and 22 men - she climbed down from the freight car as the train stopped near a dead-end street. She could hear cars driving across the bridge above. In spite of the weariness, everyone managed to make conversation, look around and laugh a bit about the journey. Laughter and camaraderie are some of the things that make this trip bearable.
Two young Central American men, one skinny and tall and the other short and pale, were already there when the train stopped. They started to talk with the forming groups of migrants. Everyone was nervous, waiting for the next train to come through, as this was the train that would take them northward to Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. The stories and myths about this next town were many, but they all contained the same basic information: Migrants were being kidnapped by men with guns and fancy trucks. People were taken into big deserted houses, placed deep in the mountains. By torturing the migrants, these men obtained the phone numbers of the migrants’ relatives in the United States. Then they made the migrants call their families and beg for the ransom money that would save their lives.
“…But we will help you, we know how to avoid them”, said Flaco, the nickname given to the skinny one. Mariela was smiling thankfully. They were Central Americans, like her. She could tell by their accents.
So far, I have met people willing to help me, point me in the right direction, or warn me about checkpoints. Maybe with their help, I can make it through Tierra Blanca and to the US border quickly.
The darkness of the night seemed to stop the course of time, but soon enough the next train arrived. All the migrants, including “Flaco” and “Shorty”, scrambled to the tops of the wagons and the engine screamed its departure. The train advanced slowly and suddenly it stopped. Two black trucks appeared with armed men inside them. Flaco and Shorty, clearly not surprised by this turn of events, climbed calmly down the wagon’s ladder, while the rest jumped down, running in panic as gunfire broke the early morning silence. Mariela stayed paralyzed as she watched those who tried to escape get shot.
It’s them. Los Zetas used to be a group of elite soldiers in the Mexican armed forces that deserted from the military and became the heavily armed “enforcement” wing of one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, The Gulf Cartel. They were hired by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the cartel’s leader from 1998 until 2003, to protect, gain and control territories for drug trafficking through sophisticated tactical operations. In the few years since, Los Zetas have become the most violent and diversified of Mexico’s transnational organized crime groups.
In 2008, five years after Guillén’s detention, los Zetas broke their ties with the Gulf Cartel and became an independent group, battling the Gulf Cartel for control of Mexico’s eastern territory.They quickly became a powerful new entity, consolidating control of every illegal market within their territory, which ensured them economic stability. Whether it was calculation or luck, the brilliance of the Zeta Corporation, as they call themselves, was to diversify their business to include any illegal market where they could turn a profit. The Zetas operate like a business, motivated solely by the bottom line. They combine an indiscriminate use of brutal violence with a pure capitalist corporate structure, making them a powerful force within the unregulated markets of trafficking.
As shockingly violent as they have proved to be, los Zetas are a product of modern society; they occupy a space made for them by political corruption, decades of neoliberal economic reforms, and the resulting deterioration in social cohesion. They are not simply a transnational company of drug trafficking like the drug cartels. They are a well-structured organization of mercenaries that seeks to control and paralyze those social structures necessary to allow them to master illegal markets: the police corporations and the justice system. War against them is not a war
against drugs, it’s war against uncontained free-market violence. They are a reflection of our own system: pure unfettered capitalism where the capacity for violence has market value. To date, the drug war in Mexico has an official death toll of nearly 50,000.
The violence of los Zetas against migrants is now famous, after the discovery of 72 executed bodies in a ranch in San Fernando, Tamaulipas in August 2010.
This case became well known, but it was not anomalous. Los Zetas have capitalized on the flood of undocumented migrants making their way across Mexico. Mostly Central Americans, many of the migrants cross Mexico by riding on top of a series of freight trains. The tracks pass through remote, Zeta-controlled areas, leaving little possibility for migrants to escape when los Zetas decide to stop a train. Other times they simply round them up when the train stops in the train yard; their power in the territories they control is so absolute that they fear little recrimination should someone notice the mass kidnappings. They hold migrants for months in their ironically termed casa de seguridad, or “security houses”, torturing them until they finally give up the phone numbers of relatives in the United States. They collect ransom money from these relatives, only after breaking the migrants, body and soul.
Mariela realized Chiqui and Flaco were standing in front of her. She didn’t remember when they appeared there. She had been watching the gunfire fixedly, memories of stories of los Zetas flashing through her mind while she saw her fellow migrants fall to the ground. Chiqui and Flaco picked her up and put her with the rest of the survivors. They counted them. Nineteen. How many had we been? Twenty five at least. What was her name? The Honduran girl, younger than me, we all just called her Morena. Someone should tell her family…
One of them, showing off a large gun, approached the group and told them, boldly, “don’t try to escape. You won’t be as lucky as your friends there”, pointing into the void of darkness where everyone knew the bodies lay. Someone might find the bodies of the two women and four men killed that night, but no one would claim them or recognize them, they were all unknown immigrants, shadows of another place.
At gunpoint, the men ushered the migrants back onto the train. During the whole trip, Mariela couldn’t tell how long they traveled; Chiqui and Flaco never took their eyes off her. Eventually they arrived at a small crowded town, one of the many that have seen corruption grow within its population, houses and streets. In Mexico, corruption has been one of the essential components of the endurance of the political system and drug trafficking.
A cattle truck was waiting for them in this town, and the kidnappers forced everyone to pack inside. After half an hour they arrived at a big, white house. It had no doors or windows, but a fortified fence at the entrance. Entering with her group of migrants, Mariela realized there were already more than a hundred people there. Most of them were sitting on the floor with their heads down, others were being interrogated, getting beaten, or making uneasy phone calls.
Mariela didn’t fully understand what was happening. She followed the others through the house, terrified by the bloody faces, the scared, weeping voices speaking on cell phones, and the prayers and screams. Then, all of a sudden, she heard nothing. As she collapsed to the floor, she barely managed to break her fall. She grabbed her right ear, ablaze with pain, hearing nothing but a long beep. She turned up slowly and saw Chiqui’s face. He was saying something, screaming at her like a mad dog, but she couldn’t hear. Flaco pulled her up, as she started to regain hearing.
“Mind your own business, you fucking whore, or I’m gonna rip off your ear the next time!” Flaco dragged her down a corridor, everybody looked at her as she passed. She was still dizzy from the hit, and she could barely keep her balance. Where am I?
Finally, they stopped outside an empty, dirty room. Flaco tossed her to the floor and left. The pounding in her ear was all she could focus on, and then Chiqui was there again, barking like a dog.
“We want the phone numbers of your family members in the United States!”
Mariela gave them a false phone number. For a while nobody answered, as both Chiqui and Flaco tried to reach Mariela’s family. After three days, a woman answered, and she said she didn’t know Mariela, but she managed to fool them, telling them that she probably didn’t remember her very well because she wasn’t direct family. This lasted almost a week. Meanwhile, they ate once a day, their hands were tied, and they could stand only to go to the bathroom. Each day that passed, Mariela invented something that kept Chiqui and Flaco believing that they were dialing the right number. Mariela knew they would find out sooner or later, but she couldn’t let herself think about what might happen then. I’ll kill myself before I let them rape me. But how?
Flaco stepped into the room with some food; he threw it to the others, looked at Mariela, grabbed her, and dragged her to an empty room. Her worst fears were coming true. They knew. She could handle the beating, but she didn’t know if she could endure being raped. When Flaco was done with her, Chiqui came in and took his turn.
“We are going to take you to Reynosa to meet the boss. There you will give us those numbers”.
Mariela woke up because of the pain. Slowly she opened her eyes, she saw the others getting up, scared but moving. What were they doing? A sharp pain pierced her leg, it reminded her of the pain in her ear and the many bruises she now had. She moaned just a bit but was too tired to move. They had been there more than a week, with almost no food or water, confined in that room, sweating all day and night because of the unbearable heat.
She felt a hand pulling her hair.
“Move, you fucking whore, move!” said the now-familiar barking voice. Chiqui pushed her outside. After a week indoors, the sunlight was blinding. Flaco and six armed men pushed her group back into that cattle truck.
The cattle truck went fast. Sometimes it pulled over to the side of the road for 15 or 30 minutes, while the driver waited for his partner to see if the road was free from military checkpoints or to pay off any authority checking the road. Sometimes, while they waited, Chiqui and Flaco seized the moment to rape Mariela again, in plain sight of everyone else. It took two days get to their destination: Reynosa, Tamaulipas. Mariela vaguely remembered something about a boss.
By the middle of the year 2009, mass migrant kidnappings were already a national concern. The statements of victims declaring that immigration officers, federal and local police agents were accomplices of los Zetas were rising in number. The federal government mostly denied it all, like any dependent addict. Corruption is like a drug, it makes you feel invincible just when you are about to crumble. Despite the accusations made about the federal police and its connections with los Zetas, in the name of the “drug war” these same police forces were getting brand-new, powerful weapons, high-tech vehicles, and special training to fight against organized crime.
Especially troubling to human rights organizations was the deal struck between Mexico, The United States, and Central America in 2008, the Merida Initiative. According to the March 2011 Mérida Initiative factsheet from the US Department of State, this agreement provides 1.5 billion dollars to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean to fight the war on drugs in Mexico and Central America. It provides training and equipment to the Mexican armed forces to conduct counternarcotics operations.
Technically the Merida Initiative does not give weapons or cash directly to Mexico. Rather, it provides funds to buy helicopters, planes, and other high-tech military equipment from private US defense contractors. It also funds US security firms to train police forces and the Mexican military. There have been widespread and well-documented reports that this training includes the controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques” developed for the “War on Terror”.
Human rights violations by the army and police forces have more than doubled since the launch of the drug war. Many of these incidents are things like illegal searches, but the allegations also include rape and torture at the hands of authorities. This is not surprising when the police forces are so heavily linked to the organized crime groups against whom they are supposed to be fighting. A 2011 report by Human Rights Watch details the human rights abuses committed by the Mexican government in the name of fighting organized crime.
While the Merida Initiative does not officially provide arms to this conflict, most of the weaponry used by all parties in the drug war can be traced back to the US, whether obtained illegally or legally. In fact, according to the US Congressional report “Halting US Firearms Trafficking to Mexico”, some 70% of firearms found at crime scenes in Mexico came from the US.
***
In Reynosa, Mariela and the others were taken to a big house with two floors. Things moved faster here than in the other house: there were guns everywhere, people coming and going, cell phones ringing, the particular sound of the radios from the top floor. Mariela and the rest of the group were taken to a room where they were photographed, and a woman named Marleny wrote down their names. There were also two big televisions, announcing news from all over the country and the United States, and three fat guys who watched their every move.
There were women who had bandages on their hands; some of them were crying, others were silent, their eyes betraying that they were gone, absent.
“They cut their fingers off because they didn’t want to give the phone numbers”, said Marleny, with a familiar accent.
Mariela glared at her, her pain turning to rage, built up from all the beatings, the screams, the useless begging to God and then to merciless men … that accent … she is from Honduras like me… how dare she!
“Traitor!” Mariela screamed as she lunged at Marleny. She hit her as hard as she could before the three fat men grabbed her and took her out of that room. They beat her so badly she lost consciousness. Later, when she could barely open her eyes, she recalls hearing Marleny say, “Rape that whore”.
She was too weak to realize what was happening. Some men took her to a room and then more men came and raped her. She doesn’t remember how many; she lost count.
It felt like needles in her face. It was ice-cold water. She woke up, she was still there, trapped in that house. She stood up, Chiqui was barking at her again. He took her up stairs to see Echevarria, the boss.
A tall, white, skinny man with an eagle-like nose appeared at the top of the stairs.
“So first you tried to fool us, and then you tried to beat up Marleny. You are going to give us those numbers or I’m going to cut your fingers off. You see, those women really didn’t have any numbers to give. They proved it with their fingers”.
Mariela’s heart was beating fast. She started to cry. She was lost. She was broken. She gave her sister’s number.
“I’m sorry Yesenia…” she said, when her sister answered the phone.
“They got me you know…” she sobbed. Chiqui took the phone away. That would be the last time she would speak with her sister for a long time. They demanded $5000 for her. It doesn’t matter if she pays; they will never let me go.
Three days after that phone call Yesenia paid, but, once again, Mariela’s fears were warranted. They did not let her go. Mariela couldn’t remember the last time she took a shower. It could have been months.
She had lice and painful, itchy sores on her body. She decided to die, the only way she could think of. She stopped eating.
A guy from the kitchen, another man called Flaco, tried to help her. Even dirty and broken, Mariela was a beautiful woman, and perhaps because of this Flaco took pity on her.
“I’m going to help you, but you have to be able to stand up. So you have to eat”. So she did. Maybe he wanted something from her too, but she would do anything to escape this hell.
The sunset was the sign for the group gathered at the shore of the Río Bravo, that they would soon cross the border and into the desert. Mariela watched the coyote talking with the Zeta lookouts guarding the river. In all the stories she’d heard about them, she remembered someone saying, “Nobody crosses the border here without their permission, every person must be reported and the fare paid”.
“You are going with that group,” said Flaco.
She mingled with the group, crossed the river and walked for hours. She was thinking about her sister when the U.S. border patrol started to chase them. She tried to run, but she fell immediately. She was still too weak. After being apprehended, Mariela was hospitalized for seven months, slowly recovering physically from months of beatings, malnutrition, and inactivity. Once she was deemed well enough to be released, she was deported back to Honduras on March 3rd, 2010. She couldn’t quite calculate how long she had been held captive, but she knew it had been well over a year since she left.
The chatter in the bus fell silent as the Caravana participants realized they were entering Tierra Blanca. Unlike in the other cities the Caravana had passed through, there were no crowds of supporters waiting to greet the buses. There wasn’t a welcoming parish with a simple hot meal prepared for the tired travelers. There was pouring rain, a chill in the air, and a cold, damp gymnasium offering a concrete floor for people to sleep on.
Mariela was nervous. There was something powerful about hundreds of people, migrants, victims, their family members, and supporters, pulling into Tierra Blanca. But the hush that fell over the crowd came from a mix of awe and anxiousness. This was Zeta territory. The notoriety of the priests leading the Caravana and the gaggle of press following its every step had kept everyone safe until now, but Mariela knew that there are no guarantees with the Zetas.
Because of Tierra Blanca’s infamy for Zeta kidnappings, the meeting had to happen here. The special rapporteur for the rights of migrant workers and their families from the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, Felipe Gonzales, was coming to Mexico in July of 2011. He was invited in by the Mexican government, according to protocol, and his preliminary itinerary consisted of meeting with the now-famous Mexican priests who defend migrants and run shelters, heads of NGOs, and government representatives from various states. The many different organizations that make up the Caravana knew that this would not be sufficient to really understand the violence migrants face in Mexico. Gonzales had to come to Tierra Blanca and he had to hear from victims themselves. He had to hear from Mariela.
The Caravana Paso a Paso Hacia La Paz (Step by Step towards Peace) had a symbolic importance and a practical purpose. It combined public action, calling attention to the violence and injustice migrants face, with a private meeting, giving direct testimony to a representative of an important international organization. There had been marches and vigils in each city the Caravana passed through, making its way from Mexico’s southern border to Veracruz. In Tierra Blanca, though, the presence of the Caravana held more weight, bringing light to the very place where migrants travel in the shadows and the Zetas rely on the darkness to carry out their kidnappings.
For a few hours, the Caravana occupied the train tracks in Tierra Blanca, holding a press conference in the very place where migrants are kidnapped while officials look the other way. Then, those who had been victims of kidnapping or family members who had had loved-ones disappear while trying to make their way through Mexico had a private meeting with the Rapporteur. This meeting had to be strictly confidential. The organizers suspected that the Caravana had at least a few Zeta infiltrators.
As person after person described in detail to the Rapporteur the horrors suffered in Mexico, the Rapporteur and his team were sickened.
He heard a dozen testimonies, each more emotional than the last. Mothers described the heartbreak of losing their children who had left home to try and help the family financially. A young man broke down in tears as he recounted being kidnapped only a few months earlier in Tierra Blanca. Mariela shared her story.
Shell-shocked from the testimonies, the Rapporteur and his team thanked the organizers for bringing them to Tierra Blanca, for making them listen to these testimonies straight from the people who had lived them first hand.The Rapporteur has yes to issue its full report on its visit to Mexico, but its preliminary observations were released almost immediately, based largely on the testimony it heard from migrants like Mariela in Tierra Blanca.
Mariela was exhausted, depleted, but she spoke about a reality that for most people, even many migrants on top of a fright train, was unimaginable. She was proud of herself for telling the truth. Maybe if people know the truth, they will put a stop to this.
Before sunset could heighten the dangers of Tierra Blanca, the Caravana moved on, headed towards Mexico City to lobby the Mexican legislature for immigration reform, including demanding a temporary visa for the Caravana participants. For a day, at least, Tierra Blanca had not belonged to the Zetas.
Mariela is not this woman’s real name. Throughout this article we will use pseudonym.
For the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the winds of war today seem to be the same as those of previous governments. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) government has been in power just four months and the imposition of development projects, dispossession, persecution, harassment, forced disappearances, and murders continue as before.
On May 4, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, indigenous Nahuas belonging to the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ), held a meeting to coordinate actions at state and federal agencies to pressure them into meeting their social and political demands that had been rejected by the three levels of government. At the end of the meeting, at approximately 6pm, an armed group in Chilapa, Guerrero, kidnapped and later murdered José Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián, both members of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI).
On more than one occasion, members of CIPOG-EZ informed the Mexican president that they had been under “siege by criminal organizations tolerated by the three levels of government”, reported members of the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG). The indigenous groups are unequivocal in asserting that AMLO had information about the situation in these communities and therefore cannot say that “he did not know”.
For their part, in a joint statement, the CNI-CIG and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) said that the indigenous men were killed by narco-paramilitaries who receive government backing. “It is important to mention that our murdered compañeros and their communities have for years been organizing their own Community Police in order to resist the violence, extortion, and poppy cultivation imposed by two criminal groups in the area, Los Ardillos and Los Rojos. These two groups control municipal presidencies across the region and are protected by the Mexican army and the municipal and state police. At one point they even managed to get one of their leaders named president of the Guerrero State Congress”, the statement asserted.
The creation of Los Ardillos criminal group dates back to the 1980s, when it was founded by former rural police officer Celso Ortega Rosas, nicknamed La Ardilla (The Squirrel), who used to grow poppy in the area of Quechultenango, Guerrero. In 2008, he was detained for the kidnapping of a woman and for the murder of two agents of the now-defunct Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigations on Organized Crime (SEIDO). He was released in 2011.
Los Rojos criminal organization is in a territorial dispute with Los Ardillos in the municipalities of Chilapa and Chilpancingo. According to authorities in the area, Los Rojos is led by Zenén Nava Sánchez, who operates a kidnapping and extortion ring and is responsible for getting drugs into Chilpancingo prison.
Members of the CNI-CIG and EZLN blame the three levels of government for this crime, “for being complicit in the repression of the peoples’ organizing in defense of their territories. We also hold them responsible for the safety and security of our brothers and sisters of the CIPOG-EZ”.
Additionally, members of the CIPOG-EZ have 67 outstanding arrest warrants against them, including against the two who were murdered. Even so, they insist they will continue “walking from below with the indigenous peoples and against the capitalist system that dispossesses, exploits, loathes and murders us. As indigenous people, we walk with the principles that we inherited from the struggles of our people, those who walked with Vicente Guerrero and with Emiliano Zapata”.
A Continuation
From the first day of this new government, baptized by AMLO as the “Fourth Transformation”, the CNI-CIG has documented the following: increased harassment by the Navy against the autonomous process in the community of Santa María Ostula in the Aquila municipality of Michoacán; harassment of the Community Assembly of the indigenous Binniza community of Gui’ Xhi’ Ro’ in Álvaro Obregón, Oaxaca; persecution and arrest warrants against Mateo López Cruz and Juan Sánchez Torres from the community of Suclumpa in the Salto de Agua municipality in Chiapas; threats of displacement from lands reclaimed by the Chol people in 1994 in the community of San José El Bascan in the Salto de Agua municipality in Chiapas; forced disappearances of five members of the Guzmán Cruz family, P’urhépechas from Tarejero, Michoacán; disappearances and murders of members of the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) in Oaxaca, among many others.
One of the events that inaugurated this new government was the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes, a community leader from Amilcingo, Morelos, and one of the main opponents of the neoliberal Integral Project for Morelos.
“We denounce the intensification of neoliberal repression against the indigenous peoples, nations, and tribes who do not consent to these projects of death in Guerrero and in all of Mexico, nor to the violence which is used to impose these projects and to repress, kidnap, disappear, and murder those of us who have decided to sow a new world from the indigenous geographies that we are”, said the CNI-CIG.
The indigenous peoples who make up the CNI-CIG continue their organizing processes throughout the country to resist new neoliberal policies being put forward with new arguments, such as the Trans-Isthmus Corridor and the Maya Train, among others. They assert they will not recognize any kind of consultation and “we reject any form of simulation aimed at the dispossession of territories”, they said.
The counterinsurgency strategy in regions populated by first peoples supporting the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has intensified since President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador's (AMLO) administration took power in Mexico, according to human rights watch groups deployed in Chiapas.
In a report published on May 2, 2019, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center, (“Frayba") stressed that in April alone, army units conducted 14 incursions into the territory surrounding La Realidad Caraol in the Lacandón rainforest. Among the operations that were spotted, observers saw military patrols with tanks. In January, just days after the EZLN released a strong critique of AMLO's government from La Realidad, soldiers entered the community four different times and conducted another four helicopter flyovers.
According to the watch groups' report, personnel from the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena, its Spanish acryonym), dressed as civilians, had entered La Realidad to ask about the EZLN's activities.
On April 10, 2019, during the commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of Emiliano Zapata's assassination, the EZLN decried that, with the new government, "the military, police, and paramilitary presence has increased, as has that of spies, listening ears and informants. This, on top of the appearance of airplane and helicopter flyovers, "as well as armored vehicles, like in the times of Carlos Salinas de Gortari" [translator: Mexican president in office at the time of the Zapatista declaration of war.]
María de Jesús Patricio, spokeswoman of the Indigenous Government Council (Consejo Indígena de Gobierno), read the text, which was signed by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. "They show up in the communities saying that war is coming and that they're just waiting for orders from 'way up.' Some of them make themselves pass for what they're not and never will be, in order to learn the supposed 'military plans' of the EZLN. Perhaps ignoring the fact that the EZLN does what it says and says what it does... or perhaps because the plan is to set up a provocation and then blame the EZLN".
Thus they asserted that López Obrador is really just acting like his predecessors, "but now he changes the justification: today, the persecution, harassment, and attack on our communities is 'for the good of everyone' and it's done under the banner of the supposed 'Fourth Transformation". [Translator: The Fourth Transformation is AMLO’s term for supposed broad changes in Mexican politics under his leadership. The first three “transformations” were independence from Spain, the reform laws of Benito Juárez, and the Mexican Revolution].
This militarization that persists in Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s new federal government and Rutilio Escandón Cadenas’s new state government represents an assault on the lives of First Peoples' communities in Chiapas that defend their right to autonomy, self-determination, and territory.
It's worth recalling that on May 2, 2014, during the same action in which José Luis Solis López was extrajudicially executed, members of the Historic Independent Union of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos-Histórica, a campesino organization and paramilitary group) destroyed the school and the autonomous clinic, also threatening to dismantle the Madre de los Caracoles del Mar de Nuestros Sueños (Mother of the Sea of Our Dreams Caracoles, another name for La Realidad Caracol). That action was a pretext for the Sedena to intensify militarization, which the Frayba pointed out was an act of intimidation, instead of looking for justice and for civil and peaceful means to resolve the conflict.
This isn't the first time this year that the human rights group, based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, has denounced military actions against organizations against communities that defend their territories in Chiapas, in the south of Mexico. During the Women’s Rights are also Human Rights land defenders’ encuentro, which took place March 23, 2019 in the community of Lázaro Cárdenas, in Chicomuselo municipality, they denounced espionage actions against the activists and human rights defenders present at the event.
"Members of the Mexican Army's 101st Infantry Battalion carried out acts of espionage during the encuentro. Victorino Morales Morales and Alejandro Yera Reyes, soldiers dressed as civilians, surveilled and photographed the activity, which was called for by the Women's Diocese Coordination (Coordinación Diocesana de Mujeres, CODIMU), of the San Pedro and San Pablo Parish... this constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of association, as well as a risk to the personal safety and security of those who defend human rights in Chicomuselo", the organization stated to local media.
In that region of the Chiapan Sierra Madre, people are organizing against mining activity by a Canadian company called Blackfire that extracts baryte, titanium, and magnetite in several regions of Chiapas. The parish of San Pedro and San Pablo, located in the municipal capital, has questioned the investment in construction of a military base in the vicinity, which would give soldiers easy access to the municipalities of Frontera Comalapa, Chicomuselo and La Concordia. "The huge investment of public funds in the construction and maintenance of a base raises questions for us, in a time where there are no resources to give Mexicans access to basic necessities like health, education, and water", declared the campesinos who oppose the project. The project is currently suspended.
There are at least 99 mining concessions in Chiapas, spanning 15% of the state's territory. Some of them are found in buffer zones for important protected natural areas like the El Triunfo and Encrucijada reserves in the Soconusco region. Hydrocarbon extraction projects and the installation of geothermic power plants remain active in the Zoque region in the north of the state, as do mini-hydroelectric plants and wind farms in the coastal-isthmus region.
Communities demand the collective possession of their territories in the north of Petén.
Photographies Santiago Navarro y Aldo Santiago
The enactment of the Law of Protected Areas has criminalized communities that have inhabited the Maya Biosphere Reserve (RBM) for decades, communities who have rights that were in place prior to the creation of the area. At the same time, conservation NGOs, in coordination with the Guatemalan government and the United Nations, have implemented various models and programs to combat climate change. These initiatives reinforce the discourse that promotes the eviction of peasants inhabiting the lands in northern Petén.
The Destruction of Community Models
As a result of the Guatemalan State's policy to “recover governance” in areas designated for conservation projects and the sale of environmental services, numerous communities have been violently expelled from the region. This is most recently illustrated by the case of the community of Laguna Larga, who lived for almost two decades in the RBM Multiple-Use Zone.
Violent evictions of communities like La Florida, El Picudo, El Vergelito, Cruce Santa Amelia and Laguna Larga have taken place since 2007. Between 2009 and 2011 in particular, the intensity and degree of this threat led communities to denounce the clear policy of forced displacement.
Some communities, such as Pollo Solo and La Mestiza, currently have eviction orders and judicial processes underway. They are also the target of constant threats and violence, not only from RBM administrators—including the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) or the Nature Defenders Foundation—but also from public officials.
“The municipality, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education are working together in the area; there is a deliberate strategy to harass the population”, denounced community members from Laguna del Tigre National Park (PNLT). The government's actions—its checkpoints and its negligence regarding basic services—limits sustenance activities for communities living in the region.
These testimonies concur with the experience of Laura Hurtado, director of Action Aid Guatemala, who says “the State has been ineffective in fulfilling its responsibilities; there has also been corruption and the use of violence. CONAP, the environmental authority, punishes a community member who extracts firewood more severely than a rancher who cuts down hectares to set up his farm”, the researcher says. In the history of community organizational processes, the destruction of Centro Campesino-the agro-industrial cooperative-is one of the most painful experiences in the memory of communities in the PNSL. In 1976 came the peasants who would found the Yaxchilán community on the banks of the Usumacinta River. However, by 1981 they were violently displaced by the Guatemalan army in the context of counterinsurgency in the Petén.
According to a report by the North American Congress on Latin America, after the Law of Protected Areas was approved (during the final years of the internal armed conflict), the world's largest conservation organization—The Nature Conservancy—subjected Centro Campesino peasants to extraordinary pressure to sell the Yaxchilán area. For years, the peasants refused to sell this area, as they rebuilt their community on neighboring lands.
In 1998, USAID granted US $450,000 to The Nature Conservancy to complete the purchase of over 10,000 hectares in Yaxchilán. Only 36 of 198 cooperative members signed this contract, in a context of threats and intimidation by the Nature Defenders Foundation.
According to community testimonies, after ten years under the management of Nature Defenders Foundation, these lands were devastated. The inhabitants of Centro Campesino blamed CONAP's corruption, in collusion with the Nature Defenders Foundation, for allowing illegal logging in the forests. So in 2008, the community started a reforestation process. Meanwhile, the Guatemalan State manufactured a discourse to criminalize them, calling them invaders, in order to justify evicting them.
Due to the strong organization of the cooperative, which even initiated a legal battle to cancel the deed of the sale of Yaxchilán, the government resorted to illegal strategies to force their displacement.
“They found a way to insert people working for CONAP and the Nature Protection Division (DIPRONA, by its Spanish acronym). They are like police, armed and everything. They infiltrated the community as peasants looking for work, but their objective was to gather information”. So recount the testimonies collected by Avispa Midia in the areas surrounding the PNSL.
“They found it easy to introduce gunmen, and they sent them on April 22, 2013. They killed five people who were critical in the community's organization: people who coordinated in education, the church, the land issue, and the local Community Development Council (COCODES, by its Spanish acronym). At the scene of the crime, they left a document framing other community members, which sparked internal conflict within Centro Campesino. The threats and violence unleashed after the murders led to the gradual displacement of 94 families”,
REPORTED PNSL COMMUNITY MEMBERS, WHO REQUESTED TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS TO AVOID RETALIATION.
“As soon as people left they installed a military detachment. The residents of Centro Campesino had a strong organizational process through cooperatives. This was an obstacle for the development of businesses on those lands, where they want to build hydroelectric plants, extract oil and water and promote tourism and plantations”, said PNSL community members.
“We are certain that it was a strategic eviction on the part of the State. It reminds us of the 36 years of war we lived through, because they are using the same methods to kill us: Taking water away from the fish is the only way to kill the fish. It's the same idea. They take away our land, and they are taking away our right to live”, peasants say. They also expressed anxiety about the constant threats from security forces, both public and private, who patrol the area.
Conservation: A Million-Dollar Bet in Guatemala
Community forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which are based on the production of raw materials for export, are the organizational base upon which a model of reference is being built. The objective is to use this model from the lowlands of Northern Guatemala to implement the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation strategy (REDD+) throughout the Central American country.
Although the concessions were initially financed by the United States Agency for International Development through conservation NGOs, in recent years, corporations such as Ford (automobiles) and Cargill (agribusiness)—representing two of the main industries responsible for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions—have increased contributions, in order to keep the concessions operating under the umbrella organization, Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP).
Bribri, Boruca and Térraba indigenous communities maintain a fight against the implementation of REDD+ projects in Costa Rica, another Central American country with advances in the implementation of the program. Photo: Juliana Bittencourt
Since the late 1990s, Mesoamerican countries have carried out experiments in the implementation of Payment for Ecosystem Services programs (PES). Peasant and indigenous communities in the region have voiced repeated criticisms of these programs. These include: the lack of adequate opportunities for free, prior and informed consultation in the planning and implementation of projects; and the weakening of ancestral practices of forest management and governance. The latter is the result of the application of PES programs and the obstacles to native communities' territorial recognition processes—since local governments want to maintain ownership of the land in order to monopolize the eventual income derived from REDD+.
According to an October 2016 bulletin published by the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), the largest and most expensive REDD+ project in Central America is being implemented in Guatemala. It began in 2009, when the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) granted US $200,000 to start preparation of the REDD+ National Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP).
The FCPF approved the R-PP document in 2011, and disbursed $US 3.6 million to the government of Guatemala. Additionally, Guatemala received contributions from USAID and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in the amounts of US $5 and $44 million, respectively.
In April 2014, the Guatemalan government received more money by signing a technical cooperation agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), an implementing partner of the FCPF. With this agreement, the Central American country received an additional US $250 million.
The same WRM bulletin highlights that Guatemala was one of the first experimental laboratories for the implementation of PES projects. “In 1988, US energy company Applied Energy Services signed a contract with the NGO, CARE. The contract was to implement the first forestry project in the world specifically financed to offset GHG emissions. By investing in 12 hectares of eucalyptus and pine plantations in the Guatemalan highlands, the project would offset the emissions resulting from the construction of a 183-megawatt coal plant in Connecticut, United States. The program was a failure and contributed to an increase in the US's greenhouse gas emissions”.
Transformations
The enactment of Decree 4-89 in Guatemala marked the beginning of modifications in the local legal framework, which today enable the implementation of the REDD+ strategy in the RBM. This is legitimized through the Climate Change Law.
The decree establishes that CONAP, the National Forest Institute (INAB, by its Spanish acronym), the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (MAGA, by its Spanish acronym) and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN, by its Spanish acronym) will be the institutions responsible for ensuring “the conservation of forest ecosystems and the promotion of environmental services that reduce GHG emissions”.
In turn, the law establishes that MARN will manage carbon markets, for which it must create the Unit for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions and Removals Project Register. This entity's task will be to monitor REDD+ projects. The Climate Change Law is the product of years of consultation with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Rainforest Alliance—who identified and filled legal gaps in order to facilitate the implementation of REDD+.
In 2009, the Guatemalan State formalized the Climate Change Technical Unit at MARN to head development of the national strategy to reduce deforestation, which includes the REDD+ mechanism. However, the legal framework to implement the PES has transformed and been refined since enactment of the Forest Law in 1999, which promoted economic incentives for reforestation and forest management projects.
Oil palm plantations of the NAISA company in the south of Sayaxché. Despite the devastation caused by the palm monocultures, the Rainforest Alliance and INAB carry out a program of forest incentives in these territories.
Pushing Forward REDD-plus, a document prepared by The Forest Dialogue (committee of experts from Yale University), highlights a 2010 reform to the Guatemalan legal framework: the creation of the law for the Small Stakeholders Incentive Program (PINPEP, by its Spanish acronym), directed by INAB.
This program offered to grant incentives even if landowners did not have property titles. Approximately US $40 million were channeled annually through the Global Environment Facility, which was established in 1992 at the Earth Summit, through a partnership between the World bank and European cooperation.
At the same time, INAB manages the PINFOR program for protected areas. By 2017, it had established more than one million hectares of tree plantations, “forests” managed for protection and production. PINFOR continues to operate through the work of NGOs such as Rainforest Alliance—which even certifies lands with oil palm in southern Petén.
“The experience in Guatemala shows how national processes interact with market conditions. Because pilot projects implemented by civil society could choose to work mainly with voluntary markets, there is considerable pressure on the government to develop a national strategy and establish sub-national reference levels to avoid the ‘leakage’ of emission reductions to other countries”, cites the report by The Forest Dialogue.
In addition, CONAP's operational framework makes it possible to transfer the responsibilities of protected area management to private actors. It also allows the use of financial mechanisms, such as the one established by the Fund for the Conservation of Tropical Forests—a product of the debt-for-nature exchange between the governments of Guatemala and the United States. This 2006 agreement was for US $4.9 million over a period of ten years. Managed by The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, it provided vital funding for the execution of CONAP projects in four priority regions in Guatemala: the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the Western Volcanic Belt, the Cuchumatanes Region, the Motagua–Polochic system and the Caribbean Coast.
Location of REDD + projects in Guatemala
Guatemala is currently implementing three REDD+ pilot projects. However, Pushing Forward REDD-plus underscores that it is a disadvantage that these projects are not representative of the national situation. These programs, developed and implemented in coordination with NGOs, are:
1) GuateCarbon forest concessions project in the RBM, promoted by the Association of Forest Communities of Petén and Rainforest Aliance.
2) Sierra del Lacandón National Park project, promoted by the Nature Defenders Foundation, Oro Verde and Rainforest Alliance.
3) Lachuá National Park project, promoted by the Laguna Lachuá Foundation and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
GuateCarbon: Trading with Forests
The project, “Reduced Emissions from Avoided Deforestation in the Multiple Use Zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala”, was created in 2006. After going through different stages, it is currently promoted as GuateCarbon. With assistance from Rainforest Alliance, Wildlife Conservation Society, Agexport and ACOFOP, as well as funding from USAID and IDB, GuateCarbon aims to start selling carbon credits for 30 years.
The aim is to sell pollution permits generated in 721,000 hectares of the RBM multiple-use zone. In addition to community and industrial forest concessions, this area also houses the communities of Estrella del Norte, El Reloj, El Sacrificio and El Jaguar, which—like the evicted Laguna Larga community—are considered illegal.
GuateCarbon is part of the National Action Plan against Climate Change that Guatemala drew up in 2015 with the aid of IDB consultants. Ratified by the Secretariat of Planning and Programming of the Presidency in November 2016, the plan creates the conditions to reap the benefits of forest carbon—through a legal and technical framework designed to access international markets.
In this million-dollar plan to reduce contamination, Guatemala committed to reducing 12 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), more than half of which GuateCarbon will “absorb” by making 1.2 million carbon credits available.
In July 2017, one month after the community of Laguna Larga was destroyed, each carbon credit issued by GuateCarbon was valued at just over US $3. At this price, project officials calculated receiving US $3.84 million. “We hope that clients not only see carbon, but also see biodiversity, community development, forest cover. Last year, the payment for some credits was US $17 each”, announced project operators to the Guatemalan press.
For the 30-year period in which GuateCarbon will operate, from January 30, 2012 to January 29, 2042, an estimated 38 million carbon credits will be issued. With these credits, the expectation is to receive over US $122 million from the sale of pollution permits to companies throughout the world.
However, there is disagreement about tenure rights in regards to who receives the income from the sale of carbon. “What benefits will communities receive, if not direct income for their REDD+ actions? If payments for ecosystem services are made, who will receive the money—the government or communities? Forest concessions have a concession contract; they are not owners. Whoever receives the money should be the owner, but the concessions do not agree”, reflects Rosa María Chan, a former government official who highlights this still unresolved point of contention between the State and forest concessions.
“They tell us that the money also comes from Germany, that there's a fund from different countries assigned for the care and protection of these areas. But this money legally does not reach the communities, where it should go. It stays in the offices of these institutions that are in charge and does not go any further”, says Ignacio, a peasant from the community of Nueva Jersalen II in the PNSL. He has denounced the Nature Defenders Foundation's invitation to communities of the region to participate in REDD+ projects.
“They proposed an incentive to us, and it was a nice amount. They told us they would give us money, but that we had to sign a document. They are very sly; they say that with that money we can build a school, a classroom. But once received, that money takes away our right to use this beautiful forest, which we want to be communal”, shares Ignacio. He and his community protect the forest and surrounding bodies of water without any payment.
The Alternative Proposal and Government Intransigence
Launch event of the alternative proposal of northern Peten communities to remain in the territory.
On September 26, 2016, dozens of peasants gathered in the Guatemalan Congress to present the Alternative Proposal for Integral and Sustainable Development. The proposal is focused on securing tenure for the 40 communities living in the PNLT and PNSL—both on the Mexican border.
In a room packed with local and international media, government officials—including high-ranking military officers—showed a friendly attitude. This was very different from their usual treatment of peasants, for whom this moment marked the end of a process that began in 2008. It also marked the beginning of a new stage in their struggle for the recognition of their communities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.
Among the main demands in the document to the Guatemalan State, those that stand out are: to recognize, ensure and guarantee the continued residence of communities in Sierra del Lacandón and Laguna del Tigre; to recognize them as Multicultural Communities (based on the current plots that communities possess); and to commit to respecting all of their rights as guaranteed under national and international law.
Furthermore, the communities demand resettlement and reparation of damages for the displaced communities and families of Centro Uno Macabilero, Pollo Solo and Centro Campesino in Sierra del Lacandón, and El Vergelito and 47 families from La Mestiza in Laguna del Tigre.
The communities' most important demand is that they be granted collective property rights that ensure their continued residence in the protected areas. From their perspective, collective rights will allow them to prevent the individual sale of lands—and thus avoid land grabbing of large areas by actors and industries with economic and political power.
Cooperation?
In 1997, CONAP tried to regulate human presence in the RBM area. To this end, it created the Cooperation Agreements in partnership with the Nature Defenders Foundation. Communities denounce that the agreements were not mediated by dialogue processes and were decided unilaterally.
The reality is, no community that has signed a Cooperation Agreement is guaranteed permanence in the area, because—according to CONAP—the agreements “do not entail ownership, lease or concession”. Such was the case of the communities of San Miguel, Centro Uno and El Limón: despite having cooperation agreements and forest concessions, they were displaced from their lands, which are now control points for the army and CONAP.
These agreements are framed within the policy on Human Settlements. The concept of “human settlements” refers to communities in a way that confines them to live in precarious conditions, or to be displaced without state institutions having the obligation to relocate them. “In 2004, I was involved in drafting the policy on Human Settlements. We tried to coordinate activities and determine under what conditions communities could remain. But the adoption of this policy was useless, because ten years went by and the Guatemalan State ignored it. This is why we currently have a new crisis”, says Laura Hurtado.
“CONAP's agreements with communities only benefit the State. Any violation of the agreements by the communities places them at risk of expulsion. Peasants communities cannot grow food or own livestock, so their means of survival are being taken away from them”, says Luis Solano, a Guatemalan researcher who has focused his study on Petén for decades.
According to press releases from human rights defenders and community organizations in Petén, “a fair agreement between CONAP and the communities would have three objectives: First, it must be legitimate for the people involved; therefore it will be signed after a real consultation, so as to include our communities' needs and demands. Second, the agreement should represent a balance between the interests of the State and the interests of our communities. In contrast to the unequal terms that prevail in the Cooperation Agreements, points of agreement that are advantageous to both parties shall be sought. Finally, the agreement will lead to legal certainty over the land, with the aim of protecting and recovering the environment. In this recovery process, our communities will be allies, rather than being stigmatized”.
On November 4, 2016, the Presidential Dialogue Commission officially established a High-Level Round Table between the Guatemalan State and the communities of Laguna del Tigre and Sierra Lacandón. However, the government has continued its policy of accelerating evictions of communities through judicial proceedings steered by the Public Ministry and CONAP—which contradicts its official position of seeking a peaceful solution to the land conflict.
After the alternative proposal was presented, a dozen meetings were held with the objective of reaching agreement on the rules that would govern the round table for dialogue—which would be established in an agreement signed by the communities and the State.
According to spokespersons from the peasant movement, the alternative proposal was just a starting point, “which failed because the government did not have the capacity, or the will to continue with the dialogue process. On the contrary, the criminalization of communities increased. The government continued spreading unfounded accusations that we are terrorists and drug traffickers”, say spokespersons from the organized communities. Avispa Midia contacted them after a series of community protests to demand restitution of the community of Laguna Larga.
According to a community press release, on March 21, 2017 one of the last meetings took place, wherein they confirmed the Guatemalan State's lack of political will. A day later, on March 22, personnel from the Guatemalan Army, DIPRONA and CONAP entered the work area of the La Mestiza community in the PNLT, with the intention of arresting the community members present. “Security agents stated that they were there to protect US citizen, Roan Balas (director of Wildlife Conservation Society in Guatemala), who was present at the time and claims to own those lands”, informed the Guatemalan media.
“Thereafter came the state-driven eviction of Laguna Larga, and that's when the “good faith” in the negotiation broke down. They kept inviting us, but it was a strategy to wear us down; because the officials never really discussed our proposals at the round tables,”
SAY COMMUNITY MEMBERS.
“Our proposal is lawful and is in demand of our rights. It is based on human rights, environmental protection, the political constitution of our country and international treaties. The government's silence is further evidence that we must follow through with our claim against the Guatemalan State before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)”, reported community organizations, in response to the government's official position that has blocked dialogue over months.
Aggressions against community members in March of 2017. Photo: Prensa Comunitaria
In August 2017, the IACHR made a visit to the encampment of displaced persons of Laguna Larga, and in September issued precautionary measures regarding the rights to life and integrity of the evicted population.
Despite these recommendations, the Guatemalan government has been consistently denounced for not complying with its legal obligations. Officials make visits to the encampment on the border with Mexico—visits that are pointless because they go without medical personnel. There are even indications that the Land Fund is making displaced people sign individual requests for land, despite the fact that the demand is for collective restitution.
“The State is not complying with any of the precautionary measures that the IACHR granted to all inhabitants of Laguna Larga, who are surviving due to the support of their own community members and human rights organizations from Mexico and Central America”, said spokespersons for the peasant movement, who requested to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation.
Even so, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Guatemala—which is the obstacle to dialogue on the side of the State—is attempting to mediate the conflict. UNDP also finances PES conservation projects throughout the country.
“On June 27, 2018, we were summoned to meet with UNDP representatives in the capital. We have previously requested information from them, and asked them if they were financing carbon projects in Petén. The United Nations also sat down with state institutions in meetings to discuss modifications to the protocols on international standards on displacement; Guatemala has committed to complying with these protocols”.
This strategy is part of UNDP's investments in strengthening the “institutional framework for dialogue and socio-environmental conflict management in Latin America”. It is part of UNDP's actions to consolidate safeguards (measures to anticipate, minimize, mitigate or otherwise treat the adverse impacts associated with a given activity), which will allow for the implementation of more REDD+ projects in Guatemala.
“It is necessary to support the operations of institutions through the use of alternative dialogue mechanisms, with strategies based on the monitoring, prevention and analysis of complex problems. This should be done in such a way that parties can come to agreement upon the proposed demands, with the state obligations and company commitments that those entail”, said Rolando Luque, former head of the National Office of Dialogue and Sustainability in Peru. Along with officials from various Central American countries, Luque participates in United Nation workshops focused on conservation policies.
“We made a simple request to UNDP, that in the meeting with the State, nothing be done behind the communities' backs. If they are developing a protocol, we are requesting to participate, because they have an obligation to inform us of what they are doing”, claimed community organizations after recent events.
“We resist the farm, the environmental institutions and the transnational corporations that take away life”. Rocío García recalls, word for word, this phrase that she heard during her work in Izabal department—another region where plans to commodify nature are being implemented.
“...because they always dispossess peasants in the same way; they leave them without their means of livelihood and try to suppress their organizational practices and their relationship with nature. This is why communities see all these projects as another form of dispossession”, the Guatemalan anthropologist adds.
“I believe in conservation, but it must recognize the rights of communities and the possibility of their development”, says Laura Hurtado, director of Action Aid Guatemala. According to studies by her organization, “the best conserved areas are where communities are present, especially indigenous communities. Conservation has been promoted here in a completely incorrect and ineffective way. They are still in conflict with the communities, and they are not stopping the illicit activities that are plundering nature”, reflects the researcher.
The creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in 1990 (RBM, by its Spanish acronym) generated the conditions to insert this territory into sustainable development plans. In these plans, conservation policies and discourse on combating climate change enable territorial reorganization of the region.
For Rocío García, an anthropologist from the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, a key criticism of the forest conservation model adopted by the Guatemalan government is that the Protected Areas (PAs) were designed with purely technical instruments—through aerial photographs and satellite images that do not account for the people that live inside them. “As a result, communities became prisoners after the new reorganization. This system causes conflict because it imposes PAs with boundaries similar to those of the farming system—which is what peasant and indigenous communities have been fleeing since the 20th century”.
According to Rocío, the PA model is racist in its inception, because “those who dispossess have economic interests. They see a reserve of future resources in the PAs; and they prefer to believe that inhabitants have just arrived, in order to apply the territorial reorganization law”. They then use this law to justify the forced displacement of entire communities.
The objective of the new rurality is for peasants to no longer be tied to the land for subsistence farming, and instead begin to produce for the market.
The case of Guatemala, Rocío explains, is a clear example of the interrelationship between international environmental policies and the territorial planning policies of the Guatemalan government. According to the Guatemalan anthropologist, hegemonic environmental discourse originated with the 1972 publication, the Meadows Report, also known as The Limits to Growth. The report, commissioned by the Club of Rome (a private association of businesspeople, scientists and politicians), concludes that “in a finite planet, the dynamics of exponential growth (population and product per capita) are not sustainable”.
The concept of “sustainable development” was used for the first time in a 1987 United Nations (UN) report entitled Our Common Future. Five years later, the first Earth Summit was organized by the UN and held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, 178 countries adopted the term “sustainable development” as that environmental safeguard within the development process. The main focus is always on conservation, using the model of Protected Areas.
“This is in line with the territorial planning policies initiated in Guatemala during the government of Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004), called Poverty Reduction Strategies. These policies were a kind of diagnostic at the municipal level, where the aim was to identify the causes of poverty, and the economic resources available in each municipality”, explains Rocío.
The subsequent administration of Óscar Berger (2004-2008) implemented the rural territorial development policy, which was drawn up using a methodology designed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Sustainable Development Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The policy was specifically the work of two consultants, Alexander Schejtman y Julio A. Berdegué, who coined the politics of the new rurality, with the objective of inserting territories into markets using principles of demand.
The objective of the new rurality is for peasants to no longer be tied to the land for subsistence farming, and instead begin to produce for the market. It therefore incentivizes nation-states to reorganize local institutions and impose models of social organization designed to produce for the global market.The Paris Agreement
Global financial institutions, in partnership with development banks from industrialized countries, will have a leading role in implementing the Paris Agreement to combat global warming. Since the 21st Conference of the Parties in December 2015 (COP21), 193 countries have signed the Paris Agreement.
Through investment agreements between these entities and the countries, the goal is to meet carbon emissions reductions targets. Under the Paris Agreement, global warming becomes an economic opportunity, where funding for “adaptation and mitigation” for the climate crisis reduces the environmental problem to a monetary situation. The mechanism also subsidizes “ecosystem services”, creating a global market in which it is cheaper for industries to pay to contaminate than to take real action against the climate crisis.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are the entities responsible for managing the Paris Agreement's financial mechanism. They are also responsible for allocating additional monetary resources channeled toward climate funding after implementation of the agreement on November 4, 2016.
One of the focus areas with the most resources is the reconversion of global energy systems, to transition away from fossil fuel dependence toward intensive production, through “clean energy sources”. The other main portion of financial resources are earmarked to reduce emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation, and to promote “conservation, sustainable forest management and an increase in forest carbon reserves through REDD+ projects”.
Some estimates indicate that international public funding from developed countries could increase to up to US $18.8 billion per year by 2020. Before 2025, the parties to the agreement will set a new collective quantified goal of at least US $100 billion per year, with funding priority given to “developing” countries.
Latin America and the Caribbean are priority regions to implement market mechanisms for forest conservation, as they house 23.5% of the world's forest.
In 2008, the UN-REDD partnership—made up of the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Organization), UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)—launched a financial program to build capacity to implement payments for ecosystem services mechanisms at the country level.
This initiative currently includes mechanisms for the sustainable use and management of forest areas. In Latin America, funding from the World Bank (WB), Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Forest Investment Program (FIP) also support this strategy. Other influential actors include the international cooperation agencies of governments such as Norway, Germany and the United States.
Most of these resources are used in the preparatory phases for REDD+ mechanisms, as the aim is to launch an international carbon credit trading system by 2020. In the case of Latin America, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama began preparing national REDD+ mechanisms in 2012.
The Market Model
After 36 years of internal armed conflict, the Guatemalan State and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG, by its Spanish acronym—organization that grouped together the four largest guerrilla groups) discussed the possibility of implementing land reform to benefit the peasant population. These discussions occurred in the context of UN-sponsored peace negotiations.
But after the peace accords were signed, World Bank policies influenced the strategy, leading to market-assisted land reform. This imposed prohibitions on the allocation of land ownership to groups and peasant communities, despite the fact that in numerous cases they already possessed the lands—many of which had been abandoned forcibly during the war.
At the same time, the Guatemalan government reinforced the prohibition on land titling throughout the RBM. Meanwhile, with USAID funding, it created the “forest concession” model, to assign the management of areas designated for “sustainable development”.
“What they did [USAID] was place an NGO in each concession to provide advice on organization, fund management and legal registration. They provided technical assistance for people to organize, meet with lawyers and attend trainings—in other words, they provided all the training, equipment, and planning. They had to conduct an analysis of the territory to know how much potential it had for both timber and non-timber activities. That's all the information they have to work with. With this information they developed management plans to draw up the logging strategy”, says Rosa Maria Chan, a former Guatemalan official. She believes that forest concessions are community organizations that have protected the region against deforestation.
By 2001, USAID was channeling its assistance through the BIOFOR Project, implemented by Chemonics International—a private company for international cooperation with a presence in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The work of Chemonics instilled a business vision to constantly seek out new market niches and increase forest production. It also proposed a reduction in subsidies and in the number of institutions accompanying concessions—two goals that this and successive projects failed to meet.
Although official discourse talks about respect for the determination of communities operating forest concessions, a 2007 analysis by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) reveals the vertical and paternalistic formula in the relationship between NGOs and communities in Petén.
“The NGOs took on a leading role in the process; rather than accompanying or facilitating, they became service providers...the relationship between communities and NGOs was unbalanced from the start, given that the NGOs were managing and administering the funds, without promoting community building and self-management...the NGOs promoted relationships of dependency in order to justify their existence and continue receiving funding from donors” So underscores the context analysis about the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP, by its Spanish acronym), an umbrella organization for the organizations operating the community forest concessions.
“This model allows NGOs to supplant communities in decision-making spaces, thereby competing with community leadership and limiting access to key information...In some cases, as part of their approach to assistance, accompanying NGOs pressured community organizations to sign exclusivity agreements on technical assistance. Far from facilitating the capacity-building of community members, this was geared toward creating major dependence on the NGOs—which logically generated backlash and confrontation between community groups and the NGOs”.
The case of Forest Services Community Enterprise S.A., better known as FORESCOM, is an example of the imposition of organizational structures that are alien to the reality of communities. As part of the implementation of the BIOFOR project, this entity was created in 2003 to market the wood—a process controlled by NGOs until then.
However, the cost of this institutional design was hard to sustain once BIOFOR ended. So ACOFOP—an organization funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ, by its German acronym)—adjusted FORESCOM's model to preserve it as a business platform. ACOFOP has also received technical assistance from Rainforest Alliance, which places its certification seal on all of ACOFOP's products for export.
According to CIFOR's analysis, between 1989 and 2003 alone, USAID, IDB, KfW (a German development bank) and counterparts in the Guatemalan government directly invested US $92 million in projects in the Reserve. “Of this total investment, only a modest portion directly reached concessionary communities and their organizations. Therefore, the investment did not have a considerable impact on community-building and self-management processes. These resources have only deepened the dependence between forest concessions and NGOs”, the report highlights.
Where are the Forest Concessions?
The Maya Biosphere Reserve is divided into different areas. Official reports indicate that, despite the devastation caused by the oil industry, almost 70% of the reserve's forest cover are in acceptable conditions.
The core area covers 39% of the reserve, and consists of five National Parks and four Protected Biotopes—reserved exclusively for scientific research and low-impact tourism. No new settlements are allowed in this area, and logging and agriculture are prohibited.
The buffer zone is a 15-kilometer strip that extends along the southern part of the RBM and covers 23% of the reserve. Here, the sale of lands, ranching and agriculture are allowed. It is the area with the highest demographic concentration due to the road network, particularly in the part bordering Mexico. This network facilitates entry into all the core areas: Laguna del Tigre, Tikal, Zotz, Dos Lagunas, Mirador-río Azul and Sierra del Lacandón. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, this area “has received almost no investment, and the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) has had very little presence; so by default, the area has no focus on conservation nor any capacity to enforce it”.
The multiple-use zone covers 38% of the RBM and includes the community and industrial forest concessions. It is an “extractive reserve”, where land cannot be legalized, and only “sustainable” activities are allowed through concession—for which it is mandatory to be a legally established local organization.
Forest concessions are not based on ancestral forms of forest resource management; instead, they establish a contract of up to 25 years between the Guatemalan State and a community organization. The community organization is guaranteed the rights to use, access, manage and extract renewable timber and non-timber resources, as well as carry out tourism projects. The property rights in these contracts belong to the State, and they exclude the possibility of sale or transfer of concession rights.
Although 12 community concessions were initially granted in Petén, they currently only operate in nine communities. Two industrial concessions have also been granted to the logging companies, Batel Comercial Ltd. and Gibor S.A. The total concession area is 485,200 hectares.
Taxes
Based on their formation as businesses, each concession is required to pay certifications and taxes. First, they need an international certification validated by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which costs US $4,500 per year to access foreign markets and sell wood with an “environmentally responsible” seal. And every five years, concessions pay US $12,000 for a re-certification evaluation. However, certification alone does not guarantee the communities access to better markets and prices for their wood, especially in the case of the most valuable species.
Furthermore, each concession pays an average of US $16,000 for a forest license (this amount varies based on the number of species they sell). And, they invest US $46,000 annually en patrolling, control and maintenance of firebreaks. They also assume food and fuel expenses for CONAP's monitoring activities, which on average add up to US $11,000 per year.
As for taxes on use and management, each concession pays the Guatemalan government one dollar per hectare managed. Due to the high volume of goods they export, they have also become recipients of credit from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE, by its Spanish acronym)—a regional financial organization that also invests in economic and energy integration projects.
After injections of capital for over two decades, ACOFOP now controls everything—from the productive management phase of forest resources, to their sale on international markets. However, this work is sustained through ongoing technical assistance and funding from foreign NGOs. For these NGOs, the more reflective and deliberate style of community decision-making—which seeks agreement based on group consensus—is not efficient in the business world, which requires quick decisions, information, contacts and high technical capacities.
Under this logic, concessions depend on external agents to complete the cycle of selling their forest resources. In spite of analyses published by consultants to fine-tune the operational mechanisms of forest concessions, a 2016 report by European academics stresses that little has been done to modify these policies in almost ten years.
According to the document, Community Forestry Organisations and Equitable resource management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala, one of the four key issues with forest concessions in Petén “is that decisions are made by accompanying institutions, not by the communities”.
This report also indicates that there is “a lack of space for disagreement or co-production. To ensure the sustainability of community forestry, long-term and collaborative strategies are needed, rather than projects operating in isolation. A history of NGOs working to their own aims has left a short-termist, project-oriented legacy and a dependency culture”, the document states. An Uncertain Future.
Despite business sectors' publicity and praise of them, forest concessions are in danger of not having their contracts renewed after they expire in 2022. This is partly due to the oil industry's intentions since 1997 to expand its area of extraction by almost 300,000 hectares, which overlaps with the forest communities of Carmelita and Uaxactún. The oil industry considers this area to have the greatest potential in Petén, so there are always actors interested in initiating oil activities in the region as soon as the opportunity arises.
In addition to the extractive industry, forest concessions are also concerned about the implementation of the tourism megaproject on the El Mirador site.
The proposed expansion of the Cuenca Mirador Park is a project developed by the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies (FARES), with the support of the Global Heritage Fund (GHF). Its main promoter is archeologist Richard Hansen, founder of FARES, and specialist in archeology of the Preclassic Maya periods.
The proposal aims to cover 2,170 km.² in an area that includes part of the Mirador-Río Azul National Park and the Naachtún-Dos Lagunas Biotope, as well as the territories of six community forest concessions and part of the industrial concession located in La Gloria. According to Hansen, the objective of the project is to protect the territory, which would imply stopping forest concession activities.
At first, the US archeologist's project had the support of the Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage (Pacunam, made up of transnationals of the likes of Wal-Mart, Cementos Progreso, Citigroup and Samsung, among others); however, in the last five years the El Mirador project has sparked heated controversies that have prevented its implementation.
NGOs: A Relationship of Dependency
Between 2003 and 2010, forest concessions in Petén recorded cutting 163,000 m³ of wood for export, mostly mahogany and cedar. As high quality raw material, these products were mostly absorbed by the international market. This means the RBM is Guatemala's largest source of fine tropical woods—which are sent to European and US markets and fetch an average annual income of over US $13 million.
Data from Rainforest Alliance indicate that between 2007 and 2017, forest concessions generated US $55 million from the sale of wood, xate palm, pepper, Maya nut and tourism services, in addition to creating 26,000 jobs. According to information from the US organization, by the end of 2007, almost all of the hectares containing forest concessions in the RBM had been certified, which represents 60% of the land in the multiple-use zone.
These figures are part of the results of the project, Climate, Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG), which was sponsored by the USAID and ended in February of 2018. The project received an investment of US $25 million between 2013 and 2018, and is considered to be part of the preparation phase of the Guatecarbón project—the local version of the REDD+ mechanism for the Central American country.
CNCG is part of USAID's 2012-2015 Global Climate Change and Development Strategy. It was implemented by a consortium of environmental, academic and business institutions led by Rainforest Alliance, in collaboration with the following organizations: Nature Defenders Foundation (FDN by its Spanish acronym, Rainforest Alliance's local partner which co-administers the Sierra Lacandón National Park); the University of the Valley of Guatemala; the Guatemalan Exporters Association; The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund. The objective was to “improve the commercialization of forest products and services in order to strengthen the capacity of forest concessions and the production of timber and non-timber products”.
For ACOFOP, the positive results of these strategies are evident, given the millions in income obtained from the sale of forest products. However, even the RBM's current Master Plan mentions “the ever-present danger that logging activities can eliminate critical components of the habitat with a resulting loss in animal populations”. Likewise, the document mentions the “monitoring of the species, Xate Chamaedorea Elegans and C. Oblongata, whose studies show that they have suffered overexploitation with negative effects on remaining wild populations of these species”.
Despite these warnings, it should be noted that USAID's sales strategy fully matches the objectives that the Wildlife Conservation Society developed in the current RBM Master Plan, which predicts a 50% increase in the export volume of lesser-known wood species by 2021; a 25% increase in the sale of non-timber products; and sale of 25% of the wood with added value, as a result of trainings in carpentry and other trades to work the wood before exporting it.
To this end, the plan establishes that by 2021, in non-concessioned, multiple-use forest areas in the region with productive potential, “there must be some kind of forest product use in order to strengthen conservation [of the area]”. This means prioritizing, among other areas, the “Candelaria Triangle”. This is the region where the Laguna Larga community was located and where three other communities are under constant threat of eviction.
Therefore, these expectations are also in line with FAO studies that indicate that “by 2030, the global consumption of industrial roundwood will increase by 60%, reaching a demand volume of 2.4 billion m³.”
Despite the profits obtained from the concessions, an internal USAID audit published in 2016 reveals deep-seated problems in the planning and implementation of the CNCG project. According to the document, Rainforest Alliance provided erroneous information on certain line items: it inflated the number of jobs generated through “sustainable activities”, by adding almost 24,000 jobs that did not last more than a day; it also counted the same hectares for “organic and sustainably managed” products on numerous occasions, which altered the real number reported.
However, the main problem found with CNCG is that “Rainforest Alliance should have prepared a sustainability plan from the beginning, explaining how the organizations and companies that receive support from the program would be self-sustaining after the program activities have ended. However, two years after the program was implemented, there was still no plan.” Thus, the audit stresses that in the absence of optimal and early planning, “the funds used to help the Guatemalan government and other partners manage the country's natural resources to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change could be wasted.”
A 2016 memorandum from USAID Guatemala director, William Brands, argues in favor of Rainforest Alliance's management, saying that “CNCG's support in developing commercial links for sustainably produced timber and non-timber forest products should not be underestimated. Developing connections with high-value markets in the United States and Europe is a proven method to increase community income and maintain profits in natural resource management. CNCG's support in institutionalizing key national and local policies will help consolidate the project's successes and will increase the Guatemalan government's ownership of these successes”.
Meanwhile, the USAID office in Guatemala claims that Rainforest Alliance's strategy to sustain the conservation work after CNCG ends is based on training local NGOs. These NGOs will assume the management of activities so that they can contribute to Guatemala's national environmental management objectives, while increasing production; and thereby reinforce the dependency relationship between concessions and NGOs, regardless of the term or project implemented.
