April 2026 Highlighted E-newsletters & Articles
We share these highlighted e-newsletters from 2026 (and some previous ones) that relate to the work and struggles we fund and support in Guatemala and Honduras.
April 13, 2026
EcoJustice Radio interview with Grahame Russell
Jack Eidt speaks with Grahame about human rights and justice, land and environmental defense struggles in Central America, particularly in Honduras, covering: the U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup (June 2009); 13 years (2009-2022) of the U.S./ Canadian-backed “open for global business”, drug-trafficking government of the National Party and President Juan Orlando; reform efforts of the elected government of President Xiomara Castro (2022-2026); U.S. trashing of the November 2025 elections, bringing the National Party back to power while pardoning the convicted drug trafficker, former President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Grahame and Jack focus particular attention on the land, rights and cultural defense struggles of the Garifuna people, suffering and resisting the onslaught of the global (mainly U.S. and Canadian) tourism industry on Roatan, nearby islands and the north Caribbean shore of Honduras, including: who is the Canadian “porn king” Randy Jorgensen and his mini-empire of tourism investments enabled by alleged land theft, corruption and violence; what is the Prospera “model city” spear-headed by U.S. billionaire Peter Thiele on ill-gotten lands of Roatan; the January 1, 2022 kidnapping and sale into sexual slavery of Angie Pena carried out by the “Delta Team” organized crime ring of U.S. citizens on Roatan, dealing in human trafficking for sexual exploitation, child pornography, criminal conspiracy, arms trafficking and drug trafficking.
April 9, 2026
Ontario Courts rule in favor of impunity for Barrick Mining company
Press release from plaintiffs’ lawyers Joe Fiorante and Cory WanlessCommunique from Mining Watch CanadaThe Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that a lawsuit against the Canadian corporate giant Barrick Mining for mining-linked killings, maimings and torture at its North Mara mining operation in in Tanzania cannot and should not be heard in Canada. This is a clear step backwards. For 15 years, Rights Action worked closely with Cory Wanless (and his co-counsel Murray Klippenstein) on the landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits, that Hudbay was finally forced to settle in 2024. As part of that very difficult legal battle, the Ontario Superior Court ruled in 2013 that the Hudbay lawsuits can and should be heard in Canada.
April 7, 2026
Podcast: Honduras and Guatemala join Trump’s “Shield of Americas” military alliance
Under The Shadow podcast: Donroe Coalition: Trump’s new right-wing military alliance
Common Dreams article: Hegseth Says Trump Has Vision of ‘Greater North America’
In early March 2026, President Trump met at one of his golf courses in Miami with right-wing leaders or defense ministers from 17 Latin American countries: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaica, and Peru, to announce the formation of the “Shield of Americas” alliance.
April 6, 2026
Exhumation of mass grave at El Cabro military base
FAMDEGUA & Guatemalans refuse to give up search for the disappeared
40 years later, survivors and family members of victims of the U.S. and Western-backed genocides and State repression against Guatemalan civil society (with its majority Mayan population) push forward exhuming mass graves, telling the truth, and fighting for justice.
April 2, 2026
Case not solved: Angie Peña kidnapped by “Delta Team” network of American pedophiles in Roatan, Honduras
In-depth report by Hector Silva Avalos about the case of Angie Peña, kidnapped on January 1, 2022 by the Delta Team crime ring operating on Roatan, that deals in human trafficking for sexual exploitation, child pornography, criminal conspiracy, arms trafficking and drug trafficking.
March 12, 2026
'I Am Ashamed of How Gutless, Spineless Our Government Has Been'
In a speech at the Kamani Auditorium, in Gurgaon, India, March 9, 2026, Arundhati Roy reflects on the “bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission.”
March 11, 2026
OFRANEH & Garifuna people struggle for land & territory against voracious global tourism industry
Summary of four decisions of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in favor of the ancestral rights of the Garifuna people to their lands and territories along Honduras’ north Caribbean coast. These rulings apply any and all investors and business operators who –somehow!!– have taken control, over the past decades, of extensive Garifuna lands.
March 23, 2026
Podcast: Mallory Memo (1960) to today: U.S. has tried to overthrow Cuban government through violence, hunger, hardship, desperation
This Under the Shadow podcast addresses 66 years of violent, illegal U.S. aggression. On April 6, 1960, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory published a memo, titled “The Decline and Fall of Castro”, that says:
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” “[The goal is] to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.”
March 13, 2026
44th anniversary of genocidal World Bank & IDB Chixoy dam project
Massacring over 450 Maya Achi villagers in Rio Negro, Guatemala, By Grahame Russell, March 13, 2026
March 6, 2026
The battle for Guatemala
Updates on: Head of the Guatemalan AG’s office Consuelo Porras, and her participation in the forced adoptions of kidnapped infants; Judge Miguel Angel Galvez who might be set to make a return from exile; Journalist Ruben Zamora, finally freed after 3 years a political prisoner.
“We need to refound Guatemala - build a viable Guatemala that stops being captured by organized crime and other de facto powers, by military powers, by the high command, by (economic) groups.” - Ruben Zamora
March 2, 2026
Honoring Berta Caceres, 10 years later
In these times of extreme U.S.-led, Western violence and aggression, By Grahame Russell
February 27, 2026
Peter Thiel Is Unleashing a Neocolonial Billionaire Fantasy in Honduras
Follow the money: U.S., Western-backed regime change interventions are always good for business
Public statement: “In Defense of Sovereignty and Collective Rights in Honduras”. Prepared by Jen Moore and Karen Spring, and signed by many groups, it exposes the greed-driven interests of the U.S., the West and global capital in bringing the National Party and its new leader, President Nasry Asfura, back to power.
In-depth article by Edith Romero: “Peter Thiel Is Unleashing a Neocolonial Billionaire Fantasy in Honduras. Tech billionaires want to create their own city-states. Hondurans pay the price.”
February 18, 2026
‘Memory battles’ in Guatemala, and in the U.S. and the West
A NACLA article about Guatemala’s ongoing memory battles related to the country-wide massacres and disappearances, and genocides in four particular Maya regions, that were at their worst in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since 2016, these battles have become all the more difficult again as the traditional economic, military and political elites – known as the Pact of Corrupt – have pushed back violently and corruptly.
February 11, 2026
Controversial Aura Minerals pushing to open rejected gold mine in Guatemala
As “Pact of Corrupt” continues with strangle hold on the economy, legal and political systems
February 4, 2026
Major report on financing & planning of March 2016 assassination of Berta Caceres in Honduras
Rights Action supports the conclusions and recommendations of an investigation by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) into the decision-making, financing and carrying out of the March 2, 2026 assassination of Berta Caceres. The GIEI was established based on an agreement between the government of then President Xiomara Castro and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
January 27, 2025
Killing of a second Q’eqchi’ land defender related to mining interests of Quebec-based Central America Nickel
“Our crime was to get the 10 mining exploration and exploitation licenses [of Rio Niquel / Central America Nickel] canceled. The owners may be angry because they may have paid a lot of money and now they want to take our lives”
January 15, 2026
La Puya and Escobal Mining resistance struggles in Guatemala
Updates about two mining resistance struggles Rights Action has supported since 2012, that are addressed TESTIMONIO-Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala.
January 8, 2026
U.S. invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President and his wife, now political prisoners
This illegal aggression welcomed by government of the 51st State, By Grahame Russell
Image by Rachel K. Lim
December 19, 2025
Remembering the U.S. regime change invasion of Panama
… as the U.S. beats drums of regime change in Venezuela, enabled by a deafening and complicit silence from Canada and European allies
By Grahame Russell
Dec. 3, 2025
U.S. stomps on Honduran elections and pardons former drug-trafficking President of Honduras
“We are devastated at Rights Action, though not surprised, by the U.S.’s crushing of Honduras’ fragile democratic process and pardon of the drug-trafficking former President, all of which will make life worse again for the majority poor population.”
Fundamental Inter-Connectedness: Local-to-national-to-global / Past-to-present
In our view, all efforts to build communities and societies based on real equality and balance with all life forms and the environment, from Central America to Palestine, from Venezuela and South America to Africa, are local-to-national-to-global struggles at the same time, that play themselves out, almost always, in the context of economic and military imperialisms of the past and present.
EARTH, A PALE BLUE DOT
by Carl Sagan
