Your Funds at Work

We share here a summary breakdown of where your funds go when you donate to Rights Action. We recommend reviewing this summary in conjunction with reading our previous emails in this fundraising series:

Little to No Change in Guatemala 
Importance of Grassroots Funding

For more info or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch: info@rightsaction.org
As always, please continue spreading the word of our work, and donating if you can!

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As of November 15, 2024, Rights Action has sent $250,000 of your donations to community-led work and struggle confronting and resisting the cocktail of exploitation and repression, corruption and impunity that often characterize policies, actions and investments of U.S., Canadian E.U. governments, global companies, banks and investors.

GUATEMALA

Community defense struggles

• Q’eqchi’ plaintiffs seeking justice for mining-related harms

• Ancestral Council of Q’eqchi’ Peoples & GREMIAL (guild) of Q’eqchi’ fisherpeople: Land, rights and environmental defenders resisting mining operation of Swiss-based Solway Investment Group and recently incorporated U.S.-based Fenix Mining Company

• CODIDENA (Diocese Defense of Nature committee): Xinka and campesino communities resisting mining operation Canadian company Pan American Silver (formerly Tahoe Resources)

• La Puya encampment: Resisting mining interests of KCA (Kappes Cassiday & Associates) that is trying to carry out a consultation while simultaneously suing (extorting) the Guatemalan government for $400 million in “lost potential earnings”

• Asuncion Mita communities: Resisting mining interests of Canadian company Bluestone Resources

#DISRUPTPDAC (Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada)

Criminalization of Land, Rights and Environmental Defenders

• Support for community defenders criminalized and jailed on trumped criminal charges

• Support for lawyers representing the criminalized and jailed community defenders

Rabinal Maya Achi Legal Clinic

• Human rights and land defense education; legal work on Achi women’s sexual assault and slavery case, and Rancho Bejuco massacre case, that date from U.S.-backed genocides and repression, 1970s-80s

FAMDEGUA (Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared)

• Fighting cases in the corrupted legal system for crimes against humanity cases from years of U.S.-backed genocides and repression, 1970s-80s

HIJOS Guatemala

• Public education and mobilization on 25th anniversary of HIJOS, Sons and daughters for identity and justice, against forgetting and silence

Community Development Projects

• Rio Negro community museum in villagedestroyed by massacres in 1980s to make way for Chixoy hydro-electric dam project of World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank in partnership with genocidal regimes of generals Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt

• ACPC (Association of Community Production): Xesiguan watershed defense, agro-ecology project in Achi villages of Rabinal

Education

• Primary school, La Union Q’eqchi’ community, El Estor

• Middle, high school, university studies: Mini-scholarships for family members of land/ human rights/ environmental defenders Rights Action supports

Emergencies

• German Chub: health support, paralysis victim of mining linked violence

• Carlos Chen: health support, survivor of Rio Negro/Chixoy dam massacres in 1982

• Refugee support: Judge, forced into exile; children of Rio Negro massacre survivors, forced to migrate

• Neko: Support for family of murder victim (work associate of Rights Action)

• Boris: Support for family of deceased documenter of Guatemala’s genocides and repression

Truth, Memory

• Commemorations: 1982 Rio Negro/Chixoy dam massacres

• Commemorations: Deaths of land, rights and environment defenders Adolfo Ich, Elena Quib Choc, Ramiro Choc, Carlos Maaz

Investigation, Reporting

• Carlos Ernesto, Q’eqchi’ community journalist

• Aftermath of Asylum Denied: Report on aftermath of denial of refugee claims in the U.S.

HONDURAS

• Bajo Aguan land and rights defense: Support, in collaboration with HSN, for community defenders devastated by violence and corruption of African palm exporters, mining, narco-traffickers

• Berta Caceres family: Security for Berta’s mother; struggle for justice for March 2, 2016 assassination of Berta and attempted killing of Gustavo Castro

• Honduras Now/Honduras Solidarity Network: Documenting and resisting U.S. and Canadian neoliberal policies and programs

• Pro-Honduras Network: Documenting, with Karen Spring/HSN, ‘narco trial of the century’ against former U.S. and Canadian-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez

• OFRANEH (Garifuna land and rights defense): Resisting violence and corruption of tourism industry, African palm exporters; seeking justice for on-going ethnic cleansing human rights violations and killings

OTHER COUNTRIES

• Argentina: Committee to Free Milagro Sala and other political prisoners

• El Salvador: Herbert Anaya Sanabria Human Rights Collective

• Mexico: Ojala on-line news about human rights and politics in Latin America

EDUCATION

• Human rights education delegations: TESTIMONIO: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala (May trip); Mayflower UCC Congregation, Minneapolis (July trip)

• Work with media, professors and educators investigating and reporting on issues Rights Action addresses

• Participation in education/activist forums in U.S. and Canada

• Regular publishing via listserv, newsletter and social media 

Every dollar makes a difference. Please consider making a donation today, and sharing this info in your networks.