CENTRAL AMERICA

With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America, indigenous peoples and communities face the challenges that this disease brings. Faced with government neglect, the absence of social investment in their regions and the lack of access to regional or national hospitals, indigenous people have a serious disadvantage, but our own ancestral knowledge provides forms of protection.

On August 31, 2018, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, a comedian by profession, accompanied by his cabinet and the high command of the army, convened a press conference where he unilaterally announced that he would not renew the mandate of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). The CICIG no longer functions, but it has left a powerful legacy.

Honduras is collapsing. The thousands of migrants who flee every day are direct testimony to a political, economic and social crisis that the world ignores and the U. S. government seems bent on perpetuating.

A democratic crisis is deepening in Guatemala, with human rights and rule of law increasingly under assault. Forty-four Nobel laureates, alarmed by the growing and dangerous disregard for justice, issued an open statement urging Guatemalan authorities to safeguard peace and democracy in Guatemala.

Today the battle is in Congress, and the deputies who serve impunity, regardless of the violation of international treaties, are doing everything they can to approve the amendments to the National Reconciliation Law and guarantee impunity.

I have trouble responding to the Trump Wall Hoax. First because it’s almost incomprehensible that we’re even talking about a “border crisis” that has no relationship to reality (there is no “surge” or “invasion”, no increase in crime, no correlation between violence and migrants, no terrorists over the southern border, no threat to national security). Fact-checking these speeches has become a macabre shadow dance, actions that respond to illusions until the real and the projected become indistinguishable to viewers.

I feel very happy …” said Alba Lorena Rodríguez, one of the three women released on March 6 by the authorities of El Salvador after spending years in jail accused of aborting. She spoke through tears and joy, as she prepared to leave the women’s prison, just hours before International Women’s Day.