September 2026 Newsletter
Your funds at work in Guatemala and Honduras
Supporting community-led land, environment, human rights and justice struggles, in blatant times of U.S.-led, Western-supported interventions across Latin America and Middle East
Just since January 2025, the U.S. has planned and carried out:
military drone murders of hundreds of unidentified people in small boats in the Caribbean
the complete blockade and strangulation of the Cuban economy, forced hunger and health harms of the Cuban people
the murderous invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores
the trashing of Honduras’ November 2025 electoral process and pardoning of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drugs and weapons smuggling cartel leader
aggressive interventions in and corrupting of electoral processes in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, etc., with Brazil’s October elections now targeted
Photo: Bria Benjamin
Charade of Western liberal democracy
Each of these destructive and deadly interventions has been openly supported, or quietly acquiesced to by Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, etc. And all of this on top of the on-going, U.S.-led, Western-supported genocide in Palestine, and bombing of and aggression against Iran.
“For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more — always more — even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the ‘haves.’” (Pablo Freire)
Referring to the genocide in Palestine, Arundhati Roy said: “the whole charade of Western liberal democracy is as much of a corpse under the rubble as the tens of thousands of Palestinians” (Democracy Now, Dec.26, 2025).
This charade is equally on display today as the U.S. intervenes and invades across the Americas.
Honduras and Guatemala
The work and struggles Rights Action supports in Guatemala and Honduras have long played themselves out in the context of U.S.-led, Western-supported military and political interventionism and imposition of global corporate, banking and investor interests.
In Honduras, similar to the aftermath of the U.S. and Canadian-backed coup in 2009, the country has again been thrown off the cliff by the U.S. and complicity of Western allies. Eight months into the U.S.-imposed government of Nasra Asfury, the situation could not be much worse for the majority population.
In Guatemala, hopes that many had for the government of President Arevalo (that came to power in January 2024) have been mostly eroded by the continuing corruption, repression and impunity of the traditional elites known as the Pact of the Corrupt. Guatemalans we work with fear the country will be taken, in the 2027 elections, ever more in the corrupt and repressive “open for global business” direction that U.S. and Western-backed governments are taking across the region.
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.
It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn
Your donations and grants at work
In this context, Rights Action chips away with our long-time work,
directly funding community-based groups and organizations leading their own land, environment, human rights and justice struggles, understanding that these are local-to-global struggles by definition, and
supporting educational and political work, and activism in the U.S. and Canada to keep on trying to hold our governments, companies, banks and investors accountable for policies and actions that contribute directly to rights violations, violence, environmental harms and forced dispossession that our partner groups and communities suffer from and resist.
As of September 1, Rights Action has sent $225,000, in mainly small amounts, to the following organizations, people and community projects:
GUATEMALA
Maya Achi people of Rabinal
Since 1994, Rights Action has supported work for truth, memory and justice, and for community re-building, led by Achi survivors (and their children, grand-children) of the U.S. and Western-backed genocide in the 1980s.
Rabinal Popular Legal Clinic:
Achi women’s sexual assault and slavery crimes against humanity legal case;
Rancho Bejuco massacre crimes against humanity legal case.
Building a monument and gathering site to honor and remember the victims of the Los Encuentros massacre, one of four committed in 1982, leaving over 450 Rio Negro villagers slaughtered, to make way for the Chixoy dam project of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
Annual community commemorations of the Chixoy dam massacres: Xococ, February 13; Rio Negro, March 13; Los Encuentros, May 14; Agua Fria, September 14.
Community center/museum, and agro-ecology projects in the village of Rio Negro.
Xesiguan project to honor and remember victims of the 1982 massacre.
ACPC (Association of Community Production): Agro-ecology cooperative active in 19 villages of the Xesiguan river watershed region.
Rio Negro survivors, children and grand-children recovering the traditional Baile del Costeno dance of their ancestors.
Photo: Rights Action delegation, to annual March 13 commemoration of 1982 Chixoy Dam massacre in Rio Negro
60-year mining nightmare in Maya Q’eqchi’ lands north of Lake Izabal
Solway Investment Group (Switzerland) and Fenix Nickel Company (U.S.) successfully (not surprisingly) pressured the Guatemala government to again green-light the still illegal Fenix mine that, since 1964 (INCO, Skye Resources and Hudbay Minerals, prior to Solway), has repetitively caused loss of home and land, repression, gang-rapes and killings, health and environmental harms.
Ancestral Council of Q’eqchi’ Peoples: Land and rights defenders resisting harms and violence linked to African palm production and illegal mining in the Lake Izabal, El Estor region.
54 communities of Cerro 1019: Resistance to Montreal-based Central America Nickel company, including support for families of three land defenders killed in suspicious, unresolved ways.
Other mining resistance struggles
Xinka and campesino communities resisting (since 2011) the rejected mining interests of Canadian company Pan American Silver (formerly Tahoe Resources).
La Puya encampment: Quiche, Xinka and campesino communities resisting (since 2011) the rejected mining interests of KCA (Kappes Cassiday & Associates), still trying to force through a “community consultation” after unsuccessfully trying extort the Guatemalan government for $400 million in “lost potential earnings” via the so-called “international dispute resolution tribunal” of the World Bank.
Crimes against humanity trials
Even after decades, human rights groups and family members of the victims continue to support the exhumation of mass graves and search for the disappeared, and to fight exemplary legal cases in Guatemala’s corrupted legal system for crimes against humanity committed during worst years of U.S. and Western-backed genocides and repression.
FAMDEGUA (Family Members of Detained and Disappeared).
Guatemala Human Rights Clinic (Bufete de Derechos Humanos).
The legal cases include: Military Diary (Diario Militar), CREOMPAZ (mass graves found on military base of the same name), Spanish Embassy massacre, Genocide of Maya Ixil people, Panzós massacre, Chinautla environmental conflict, La Puya mining resistance, Molina Theissen, Luz Leticia Hernandez, and more.
Emergencies, other individual supports
Family safety needs of Raul Najera, human rights and justice defender receiving death threats. Raul is a member of H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters of State Repression Victims, Working for Identity and Justice, Against Forgetting and Silence), and of the Archbishop’s Human Rights Office’s legal team.
Rosalina Tuyuc, a founding member of CONAVIGUA (National Coordinator of Widows of the State Repression), working since late 1980s for truth, memory and justice.
Family of Luis Barillas, journalist forced to seek refugee status in Canada.
Children of Rio Negro massacre victims, forced to migrate.
Juan Martin, long-time colleague, driver and support person for Rights Action’s educational delegations.
Health-family needs of Jesus Tecu Osorio, Achi justice and community defender from Rio Negro.
Health-family needs of ‘Mama Maquin’, Maya Q’eqchi’ land defender and grand-mother, and grand-daughter herself of the original Mama Maquin, one of hundreds of victims of the May 28, 1978 Panzos Massacre linked to then-Canadian mining giant INCO (International Nickel Company).
Lawfare, criminalizations, political prisoners, exile
Rafael Maldonado, lawyer working on malicious criminalization cases.
Ramon Cadena, criminalized and jailed internationally-respected human rights lawyer.
Family of former prosecutor with Attorney General’s office, receiving death threats and forced into exile.
Luis Pacheco and Hector Chaclan, criminalized political prisoners. Luis was Deputy Minister of Sustainable Development (in current government); both are Mayan leaders from Totonicapan.
Yuri Melini, rights and environmental defender, victim of assassination attempt in 2008, still seeking justice.
Investigation, reporting, teaching
Carlos Ernesto, Maya Q’eqchi’ community journalist.
Waxaqib’ B’atz’ Indigenous Elder Exchange with Indigenous leaders from Costa Rica and Guatemala, for sharing of ancestral knowledge, spirituality, ceremonies and living teachings of their peoples.
HONDURAS
Land theft, dispossession and ethnocide against Garifuna people
Along Honduras’ north Caribbean shore, the global tourism industry, for-export African palm plantations, organized crime rings and privatized “model cities” are corruptly and violently taking over ever more pieces of Garifuna lands and territory.
General support funds for OFRANEH (Fraternal Organization of Black Hondurans), leading a wide-range of work and struggle in defense of lands and rights of the afro-descendant Garifuna indigenous people.
Screenshot: NJOI website
Berta Caceres family: Support for health and well-being of Berta’s mother.
COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras)
Co-founded by Berta Caceres, COPINH works in defense of land and rights of Lenca descendant communities, continues to seek justice for “intellectual” authors of Berta’s March 2, 2016 assassination, participates in grassroots anti-imperialist spaces, resisting the corruption and repression of the U.S.-imposed “open for global business” regime in power.
OTHER COUNTRIES
Argentina: Committee to Free Milagro Sala.
Mexico: Ojala news service about human rights and politics in Latin America.
El Salvador: Herbert Anaya Human Rights Collective, working in opposition to corruption, repression and rights violations of U.S. and Western-backed government of President Bukele.
Canada: Support for criminalized international human rights and justice defenders.
EDUCATION
Creekside United Church of Christ, Minneapolis / Rights Action human rights delegation to Guatemala, August 1-9, 2026
Publication of 13 BRAVE GIANTS: How We Won the Landmark Hudbay Minerals Lawsuits in Canada, the Mynor Padilla Criminal Trial in Guatemala, and at What Cost!
Travel of, reporting by North American activist to March 2, 2026 commemoration of killing of Berta Caceres.
Work with media, professors, educators, and participation in education/activist forums.
Regular publishing via listserv, newsletter and social media.
Photo @ Rights Action delegation. The Creekside UCC-Minneapolis group meeting with ten of Hudbay Minerals lawsuits plaintiffs in El Estor, August 7. They are holding copies of the 13 BRAVE GIANTS report (https://rightsaction.org/hudbay-minerals-lawsuits).
Thank-you. Keep on sending your questions, comments and concerns to us.
Grahame Russell, grahame@rightsaction.org
Camila Rich, camila@rightsaction.org