Guatemala

Articles 8 April 2024
In a letter to Guatemalan national authorities, 115 organizations from 39 countries demanded a halt to the abuses and violence that palm oil company Industria Chiquibul has been committing in indigenous and peasant communities. The organizations also called for suspension of the RSPO certification process, which they denounce as greenwashing a destructive industry.
Action alerts 28 February 2024
We call on organizations to sign this petition in support of the Mayan Q’eqchi community Santa Elena in the northern region of Guatemala. The community is asking for international and national support in the face of recent threats and growing criminalization by Industria Chiquibul, a palm company that supplies palm oil to transnational corporations such as Nestle and Unilever. Read and sign the letter below.
Other information 11 October 2022
We share the final statement where they express their demands and claims.
Bulletin articles 4 January 2022
The false idea that industrial plantations are a solution to the climate crisis is a golden opportunity for investment funds like Arbaro, which access scarce climate funding for expanding destructive monocultures.
Bulletin articles 17 December 2021
One of the main causes of deforestation in Mesoamerica is the expansion of oil palm monoculture. An exchange of experiences brought together representatives from indigenous and peasant communities to coordinate their resistance.
Declarations 12 October 2021
Only available in Spanish.
Bulletin articles 27 September 2021
The Palmas del Ixcán company has used multiple tactics to grab land, as well as a deceptive RSPO certification process and the use of “independent producers.” Despite criminalization of communities, their resistance grows ever stronger.
Other information 15 July 2019
In the Yich K’isis region of Guatemala, the construction of three hydroelectric dams has been planned: Pojom I, Pojom II and San Andrés. These dams will receive water by diverting the Negro, Pojom, Yalwitz Primavera, Varsovia and Palmira rivers. Communities are struggling to resist the imposition of these dams; this led to the death of a community member in 2017. A short video from the Avispa Midia news portal shares the voices of the women and men in the struggle to defend their territories and lives.
Bulletin articles 11 March 2019
Before, conservation organizations were focused on raising money to create protected areas in forests supposedly threatened with destruction; today, they constitute a bona fide transnational “industry” that manages and controls areas that go far beyond forests.
Bulletin articles 11 March 2019
The creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve has been legitimizing a destructive model: infrastructure and energy projects, hand-in-hand with Protected Areas “without people.” While conservation NGOs fatten their portfolios, peasant and indigenous communities are displaced, or conditioned to depend on NGOs and the market.
Bulletin articles 7 March 2018
This bulletin, on International Women's Day, is a call for direct and radical solidarity with those women who suffer, resist, organize and mobilize against the daily violence and abuse that industrial plantations cause.
Bulletin articles 7 March 2018
Contamination of water sources, deplorable working conditions, and sexual blackmail in exchange for work, are some of the kinds of violence against women living in and around oil palm plantations in Guatemala and Colombia.