Caribbean & Central America - June 2025

In late April Guatemala’s discredited attorney general María Consuelo Porras ordered the arrest of deputy energy & mining minister Luis Pacheco, a former leader of indigenous organisation 48 Cantones de Totonicapán (48 Cantones), and 48 Cantones’ former treasurer Héctor Chaclán on charges including terrorism. Widely slammed as spurious, the charges are considered a reprisal for the crucial role played by indigenous groups in the mass protests against Porras’ unsuccessful efforts to reverse the August 2023 presidential victory of anti-corruption outsider Bernardo Arévalo. As president, Arévalo continues to wrestle with his pledge to dismantle the ‘pacto de corruptos’ network of institutional corruption, with which Porras is aligned. However, institutions such as the United Nations (UN) highlight progress in his efforts to establish dialogue with the long-marginalised indigenous sector which, at some 44% of the population, is the biggest in Central America.

On 23 April Pacheco and Chaclán were arrested on charges including illicit association, terrorism, and obstruction of justice in relation to the 2023 protests. In a 29 April statement, US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that the case was under judicial seal, which it describes as a manoeuvre “often used by prosecutors in Guatemala to avoid public scrutiny over politically motivated prosecutions”.

In their condemnation of the arrests, which occured in the context of Porras’ broader efforts to target Arévalo and his allies [SSR-25-02], HRW and institutions such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have been quick to underline the significance of the role played by the indigenous sector in defending Arévalo’s electoral victory. For instance, a 26 April IACHR statement expressing alarm regarding the “arbitrary criminalisation of indigenous authorities”, highlights that Pacheco and Chaclán “peacefully led large-scale demonstrations in 2023 to defend the popular will expressed during the presidential elections”.

Meanwhile the indigenous sector’s widespread backing for Arévalo no doubt stemmed from the fact that it discerned in a prospective Arévalo-led government its best prospect for addressing the rampant inequality which it faces. Such assumptions have not proven in vain. Indeed, in its latest annual report released on 28 April, international NGO Amnesty International (AI) notes that “for the first time in many years”, the Guatemalan government under Arévalo, who took office in January 2024, “established a direct dialogue” with several indigenous authorities and “committed to promoting a comprehensive development agenda that took their needs into account”.

Similarly, a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the human rights situation in Guatemala, released in January 2025, “welcomes the government’s commitment to the rule of law, democracy and the human rights agenda”. It cites as a key example the fact that indigenous authorities have “had the opportunity each month to engage in direct dialogue with the government and have signed several agreements at the territorial level with the president…as a means of addressing their overriding needs and concerns”.

According to the OHCHR, on 7 February 2024, less than a month after Arévalo took office, the government signed an agrarian agreement with four campesino (peasant farmer – often indigenous) organisations with the aim of “addressing agrarian conflicts, strengthening the existing institutional framework for gaining access to land through the market, drafting a proposal for a new institutional framework for the agrarian sector and strengthening the campesino economy”.

Other signs of progress noted by the OHCHR in its report include the fact that in July 2024 a working group led by the presidential commission on peace and human rights was reactivated to follow up on the 2021 judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) in the case Maya Kaqchikel Indigenous Peoples of Sumpango et al. vs. Guatemala. In 2021 the Corte-IDH had found Guatemala “internationally responsible for the violation of the rights to freedom of expression, equality before the law and participation in the cultural life of indigenous peoples” in relation to the case and ordered the State to make various reparations.

Yet the enormity of the challenge in redressing decades of inequality and neglect persists. In its latest annual report, released on 17 April, international NGO International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) notes that poverty affects 75% of indigenous and 36% of non-indigenous people in Guatemala, while chronic malnutrition affects 58% of indigenous people compared to 38% of non-indigenous people.

AI and the OHCHR also warn that in many parts of the country, indigenous leaders continue to face criminalisation for defending territory and indigenous rights. They highlight ongoing agrarian conflicts, a major issue facing indigenous groups, whose rights to ancestral land have long been violated. Meanwhile impunity persists regarding the country’s 1960-1996 civil war in which some 250,000 civilians were killed or disappeared, around 80% of whom were indigenous. Examples of these setbacks include a November 2024 court ruling acquitting eight former military officials accused over the so-called ‘Creompaz case’ [SSR-25-02] – disappearances that took place from 1981-1988 in the Zona Militar 21 de Cobán, in the northern department of Alta Verapaz, which is currently known as the Comando Regional de Operaciones de Mantenimiento de Paz.

Evictions

In its report on Guatemala, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented two evictions, two threats of eviction and two extrajudicial evictions between January and November 2024. According to the same report, the authorities requested a total of 111 eviction orders. According to information gathered by the OHCHR, the evictions and attempted evictions affected the rights of 524 families, including their rights of access to comprehensive healthcare, water, and food.