Since March 15, 2020, Rights Action has sent close to $30,000 (ranging from $200 to $2000 grants) to community groups, mainly in Honduras and Guatemala, that are responding to Covid19, a pandemic that is worsening the “normal” pandemics of exploitation-poverty and discrimination, land dispossession, human rights violations and repression.
While Covid19 affects people from ‘all walks of life’, it is harming and killing (directly and indirectly) more people who live in “normal” conditions of exploitation and poverty, discrimination and abandonment, violence and repression.
We are NOT “all in this together”
We should NOT work to “get back to normal”
Rights Action is concerned by the now-even-more precarious living conditions of the majority of people in Honduras and Guatemala whose military-backed governments are fully supported by the U.S. and Canadian governments, the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and IMF, and by global companies and investors operating mines and hydro-electric dams, producing ‘for-export’ coffee, sugarcane, African palm, bananas and pineapples, and operating garment ‘sweatshop’ factories and tourism businesses.
These regimes do little to support their majority populations in “normal” times, let alone when further devastated by Covid19.
Community partner groups
Mayan Q’eqchi’ communities (El Estor, eastern Guatemala) harmed by mining (Skye Resources/ Hudbay Minerals/ Solway Investment Group)
La Union community: $2,850
Gremial union fisherpeople & campesinos: $900
Political prisoner: $380
Families/ communities of 13 plaintiffs in landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits: $4,690
Family and community gardening, El Estor, Guatemala
Mayan Achi communities, Rabinal, central Guatemala, devastated by U.S.-backed genocides and World Bank/IDB’s brutal Chixoy dam
Rio Negro community: $1,300
Pacux refugee community: $3,960
Preparing basic food packages, Rabinal, Guatemala
Xinka and campesino communities, south-central Guatemala, resisting mining harms (Tahoe Resources/ Pan American Silver)
CODIDENA: $1,500
Xinka Parliament: $1,360
Community food kitchen, Guatemala City: $400
Garifuna communities, north shore of Honduras, harmed by global tourism and African palm industries
OFRANEH: $5,900
Community education, Garifuna communities, Honduras
Lenca descendant communities, western Honduras, & members of Berta Caceres’ family, resisting dam harms
CIPPH: $1,300
Berta Caceres’ family: $500
Campesino communities, western Honduras, resisting mining (Aura Minerals) harms
Azacualpa Environmental committee: $1,050
Campesino communities, central Honduras, suffering on-going health harms linked to Goldcorp’s mine
Community defender: $500
Kukama women’s federation, Iquitos, Peru: $500
Jocoaitique historical memory committee, Morazan, El Salvador: $450
Community groups use funds to
Educate about Covid19 prevention, as government and media information sources are of little use for impoverished and particularly indigenous majorities.
Educate about community monitoring, limiting the coming and going of people.
Carry out home visits, monitoring community members’ health.
Establish community locations to isolate and support community members suspected of contracting Covid19.
Buy personal protection equipment for community members leading Covid19 prevention work.
Buy basic foods for most needy community members.
Buy/ secure access to potable water (boiled if necessary) and soap.
Educate about strengthening immune systems through use of herbal teas and consumption of locally produced foods.
Prepare and plant family and community gardens, any and everywhere.
Funds are needed to continue with these activities, prioritizing
Buying basic foods for most needy members,
Buy/ secure access to potable water and soap,
Preparing and plant family and community gardens, any and everywhere,
And – courageously – continuing with community defense struggles, as the Guatemalan and Honduras regimes are permitting (as “essential industries”) or turning a blind eye to the illegal operations of large-scale economic interests, including mining, dams, tourism infra-structure building and ‘for-export’ production.
The best solution to Covid19, as with so many injustices, violence and inequalities plaguing the lives of so many humans, is people, communities and governments working together and collaborating to create societies and a global community based on mutual well-being and fundamental equality inside and between nations.
This is always the case.
This is what Rights Action, and our partner groups in Guatemala and Honduras, have long been working for.
Thank-you
Grahame Russell, Rights Action
grahame@rightsaction.org
