On the ninth anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, a woman who fought for the defense of the people and Mother Earth, the Lenca people made an offering in a ritual with flowers, songs, incense and with the participation of the boys and girls who represent the reason for which they fight.

Lolita Chávez traveled from her town in Guatemala, Santa Cruz Quiche de Santa Cruz to animate the ceremony. Her words were of a spirituality of great richness for the time we live in today. It is good that we let Lolita tell us some ideas of Mayan spirituality.

What are the elements that stood out the most in the Lenca-Maya ritual?

Guatemala in the Quiche language is called Ixim Ulew, which means land of corn, because we are, according to the Mayan book of Popol Vuh, people of corn.

The important characteristic of our spirituality is that we have a sacred bond with Mother Earth, our common home, as we call it in our movements; but another characteristic is the defense of our land, the defense of the network of life, the defense of Abya Yala, wrongly called America, because we call it Abya Yala. It is the blood that runs free because we do not want imperialism, we do not want invaders, we do not want death dealing companies that generate ecocide. That is what our grandfathers and grandmothers, healers of the territories, have taught us. For the defense of that freedom, we have martyrs who have fought against the imperialists who have imposed wars upon us because of their greed of money.

Lolita talks about her history and the historical memory of her people. The indigenous peoples, she says, have had a millennial experience, and one of the recommendations for the people of this time is to return to the land, to embrace the land, to life.

Regarding the spirituality of Christians, she suggests that they not only have to embrace humanity, but they also must embrace biodiversity, embrace trees, rivers and water. Our spirituality must be linked to that profound weaving of the fabric of the passage of time.

In spirituality, Lolita speaks of an important theme. Christianity must not forget the memory, the history, nor the blood of the martyrs. They have fought and given their lives for the great home that is Mother Earth: there must be redistribution of the land and reciprocity, embracing the center that is life. There cannot be a spiritual fulfilment if there is no respect for the fact that there are people who suffer from hunger, who do not see the people who are walking, who are migrants, that does not take into account the rituals of the people who are on the farms suffering many injustices; a person cannot call himself a Christian if he or she does not feel the pain of impoverishment due to racism and world powers.

People of goodwill need to have a commitment to their faith because, as our grandparents told us, we have four bodies: the physical, the mental, the spiritual and the energetic. The people of this time need to embrace their soul and their horizon to know where they come from and to know how to weave together the strands of memory into altars of conscious memory.

The spirituality that the indigenous peoples offer us is how the vehicle that leads to building a present and a future where the center is not money or power, but life, especially the life of the most suffering and mistreated.

#HondurasDelegation
#SHARE2025

By Teresa

The crucial importance of sharing these stories with the American public is that the Trump Administration seems poised to exacerbate these human rights atrocities through mass deportation. Socorro Juridico representatives shared three examples of cases in which those who had recently been deported from the United States to El Salvador were immediately picked up by the security state and brought to one of the penal centers under the state of exception. The alleged criminal charge was that, if someone has been deported, they are inherently a criminal.
 
Amidst this backdrop, the U.S. president-elect has made serious threats of mass deportations, and the Trump and Bukele regimes appear likely to develop increasingly close and friendly relationships. In the coming years, it’s entirely likely that there could be a direct line of deportation from the United States to the brutal Salvadorian penal centers.
 
Salvadorans make up a large percentage of those with precarious immigration status in the United States, and they are frightened. In particular danger are undocumented immigrants and the 200,000+ Salvadoreans in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status, which the first Trump administration already began the process of cancelling.
 
Temporary protected status will come up for review in March of 2025, and the Trump administration is likely to claim that El Salvador is safe for return, despite evidence to the contrary. The state department currently warns US citizens against traveling to El Salvador on the grounds that they may be picked up under the state of exception.We must expect that the danger will be far greater for those who might be deported.
 
Given the massive scale of human rights violations taking place in El Salvador under the state of exception, our current administration must take urgent action to prevent future U.S. complicity.
 
The Biden administration and the State Department should review El Salvador’s TPS authorization now and renew it prior to the U.S. presidential inauguration in January, 2025. We still have a small window left to call out human rights violations and work to secure the safety of our Salvadoran community here in the United States. But we must act now.

The crucial importance of sharing these stories with the American public is that the Trump Administration seems poised to exacerbate these human rights atrocities through mass deportation. Socorro Juridico representatives shared three examples of cases in which those who had recently been deported from the United States to El Salvador were immediately picked up by the security state and brought to one of the penal centers under the state of exception. The alleged criminal charge was that, if someone has been deported, they are inherently a criminal.

Amidst this backdrop, the U.S. president-elect has made serious threats of mass deportations, and the Trump and Bukele regimes appear likely to develop increasingly close and friendly relationships. In the coming years, it’s entirely likely that there could be a direct line of deportation from the United States to the brutal Salvadorian penal centers.

Salvadorans make up a large percentage of those with precarious immigration status in the United States, and they are frightened. In particular danger are undocumented immigrants and the 200,000+ Salvadoreans in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status, which the first Trump administration already began the process of cancelling.

Temporary protected status will come up for review in March of 2025, and the Trump administration is likely to claim that El Salvador is safe for return, despite evidence to the contrary. The state department currently warns US citizens against traveling to El Salvador on the grounds that they may be picked up under the state of exception.We must expect that the danger will be far greater for those who might be deported.
 
Given the massive scale of human rights violations taking place in El Salvador under the state of exception, our current administration must take urgent action to prevent future U.S. complicity.
 
The Biden administration and the State Department should review El Salvador’s TPS authorization now and renew it prior to the U.S. presidential inauguration in January, 2025. We still have a small window left to call out human rights violations and work to secure the safety of our Salvadoran community here in the United States. But we must act now.

Washington, Ottawa, San Salvador – On behalf of the hundreds of organizations from over two dozen countries that support the International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador, we condemn the November 26 ruling by Santiago Alvarado Ponce and José María Zepeda Grande, Magistrates of the Cojutepeque Appeals Chamber, that ordered a retrial for the ADES Santa Marta Five Water Defenders.

The November 26 decision overturns a unanimous and principled verdict handed down by the Sentencing Tribunal in Sensuntepeque after a trial that dismissed the Salvadoran Attorney General’s office prosecution case based on a lack of evidence linking the five Water Defenders to the alleged crime. The Tribunal determined that the prosecution’s case did not meet the definition of 1) a crime against humanity; or 2) a war crime, as established in the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions, respectively. According to the legal defense team, the subsequent appeal lodged from the Attorney General’s office has no legal basis, and the Cojutepeque Appeals Chamber’s annulment of the trial ruling is a political decision that acquiesced to this appeal. Their decision presents further evidence of the deterioration of independence within El Salvador’s judicial system, and its politicization to punish and weaken the struggle to uphold the Law of Prohibition of Metals Mining of 2017.

The objectivity of the Sensuntepeque trial and its accompanying decision were affirmed by an international observer mission who have published their report on the proceedings. In reference to the retrial of the five Water Defenders, Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders, and the Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, have expressed publicly their concerns about the persecution of environmental defenders by the government in El Salvador.

It is worth noting that the 2023 arrest of the ADES Santa Marta Five Water Defenders took place as they and other activists voiced concerns that the Nayib Bukele government was considering reestablishing metals mining in El Salvador, pointing to 1) the Administration’s May 2021 decision to join the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, and 2) other legal reforms that led to the current moment. Chillingly, on the very day that dozens of social organizations held a press conference to denounce the retrial order, Bukele communicated on X, in reference to gold, that “God has placed a giant treasure beneath our feet,” called the mining ban “absurd,” and claimed, against all evidence, that gold can be mined sustainably. He further stated in a press conference that El Salvador has “trillions of dollars” worth of mineral resources and that they should be exploited in order to develop the country.

El Salvador’s 2017 prohibition against metallic mining is a widely popular measure and overturning it would be a death sentence for the small and densely-populated country with its scarce water sources, many of which are already contaminated. The historic ban, passed in a unanimous 70-0 vote by El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly in 2017, was the result of a decade-long campaign to value life over transnational mining corporations’ pursuit of profits. The campaign was ultimately supported by a wide coalition of civil society organizations, educational institutions, some business sectors, legislators and Ministers from across the political spectrum, as well as two Archbishops.  They were all persuaded by substantial evidence of gold mining’s destructive effects, and the deleterious impacts of cyanide used in gold mining. The struggle also cost the lives of several beloved water defender activists who stood up to the mining companies in Cabañas: Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, student Juan Francisco Durán Ayala, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, who was eight months pregnant when murdered, and whose two-year old child witnessed and was wounded in the attack.

In light of these troubling developments, we affirm our steadfast commitment to support the ADES Santa Marta FIve Water Defenders and the broader movement to resist metallic mining in El Salvador. We call on the San Vicente Sentencing Court to exercise the same objectivity that already resulted in a verdict acquitting the Water Defenders. The eyes of the world remain on El Salvador and on this politicized, unwarranted trial.

Press contacts:

• Christie Neufelt, United Church of Canada, [email protected]
• Olivia Alperstein, Institute for Policy Studies, +1 (202) 704-9011, [email protected]
• John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, [email protected]
• Manuel Perez Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies, [email protected]
• Jorge Cuellar, Darmouth University, [email protected]
• Pedro Cabezas, Central American Alliance on Mining (ACAFREMIN) and International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador, [email protected]
  
  
  

Washington, Ottawa, San Salvador –  En nombre de los cientos de organizaciones de más de dos docenas de países que apoyan los Aliados Internacionales Contra la Minería en El Salvador, condenamos la sentencia del pasado 26 de noviembre emitida por  Santiago Alvarado Ponce y José María Zepeda Grande, Magistrados de la Cámara de lo Penal de Cojutepeque, la cual ordena un nuevo juicio para los Cinco Defensores del Agua de la Asociación de Desarrollo Económico y Social de Santa Marta (ADES) Santa Marta. 

La decisión del 26 de noviembre revoca un veredicto unánime emitido por el Tribunal de Sentencia de Sensuntepeque tras un juicio que desestimó la acusación de la Fiscalía General de la República basándose en la falta de pruebas que vincularan a los cinco Defensores del Agua con un presunto delito. El Tribunal determinó que el caso de la fiscalía no se ajustaba a la definición de 1) crimen de lesa humanidad; o 2) crimen de guerra, según lo establecido en el Estatuto de Roma y los Convenios de Ginebra, respectivamente. Según el equipo de defensa legal, el posterior recurso interpuesto desde la Fiscalía carece de fundamento legal, y la anulación de la sentencia de primera instancia por parte de la Cámara de lo Penal de Cojutepeque es una decisión política que accede a este recurso. Su decisión es una prueba más del deterioro de la independencia del sistema judicial salvadoreño y de su politización para castigar y debilitar la lucha en defensa de la Ley de Prohibición de la Minería Metálica de 2017.

La objetividad del juicio de Sensuntepeque y la decisión que lo acompañó fueron afirmadas por una misión internacional de observadores que ha publicado su informe sobre los procedimientos. En referencia al nuevo juicio de los Cinco Defensores del Agua, Mary Lawlor, Relatora Especial de la ONU para los Defensores de los Derechos Humanos, y el Arzobispo de San Salvador, Monseñor José Luis Escobar Alas, han expresado públicamente su preocupación por la persecución de los defensores del medio ambiente por parte del gobierno Salvadoreño. 

Cabe señalar que la detención en 2023 de los Cinco Defensores Ambientales de ADES y Santa Marta tuvo lugar cuando estos, junto con otros y otras activistas, expresaron su preocupación de que el gobierno de Nayib Bukele consideraba restablecer la minería de metales en El Salvador, advirtiendo sobre 1) la decisión del gobierno, en mayo de 2021, de unirse al Foro Intergubernamental sobre Minería, Minerales, Metales y Desarrollo Sostenible, y 2) otras reformas legales que condujeron al momento actual. De forma escalofriante, el mismo día en que decenas de organizaciones sociales convocaron una conferencia de prensa para denunciar la orden contra los defensores ambientales de ADES, Bukele emitió una publicación en X, en referencia al oro, que “Dios colocó un gigantesco tesoro puesto bajo nuestros pies”, calificó de «absurda» la prohibición de la minería y afirmó, contra toda evidencia, que el oro puede extraerse de forma “sostenible”. Además, afirmó en una rueda de prensa que El Salvador tiene recursos minerales con un valor de “trillones de dólares” (sic) que deberían explotarse para desarrollar el país.

La Ley de Prohibición de la Minería Metálica en El Salvador de 2017 es una medida ampliamente popular y anularla sería una sentencia de muerte para el pequeño y densamente poblado país cuyas escasas fuentes de agua ya están en su mayoría contaminadas. La histórica prohibición, aprobada por una votación unánime de 70-0 por la Asamblea Legislativa de El Salvador en 2017, fue el resultado de una campaña mas de una década para resaltar el valor de la vida por encima del afán de lucro de las empresas mineras transnacionales. La campaña contó en última instancia con el apoyo de una amplia coalición de organizaciones de la sociedad civil, instituciones educativas, algunos sectores empresariales, minstros de gobierno y legisladores de todo el espectro político, así como dos arzobispos.  Todos ellos estaban convencidos de la evidencia irrefutable de los efectos destructivos de la minería del oro y de los efectos nocivos del cianuro utilizado en su extracción. La lucha también costó la vida a varios reconocidos activistas defensores del agua que se enfrentaron a las empresas mineras en Cabañas: Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, el estudiante Juan Francisco Durán Ayala y Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, quien tenía ocho meses de embarazo cuando fue asesinada, y cuyo hijo de dos años fue testigo y resultó herido en el ataque.

A la luz de estos preocupantes acontecimientos, reafirmamos nuestro compromiso de apoyar a los Defensores del Agua de ADES Santa Marta y al movimiento más amplio de resistencia a la minería metálica en El Salvador. Hacemos un llamado al Tribunal de Sentencia de San Vicente para que ejerza la misma objetividad que ya dio lugar a un veredicto de absolución de los Defensores del Agua. Los ojos del mundo siguen puestos en El Salvador y en este politizado e injustificado juicio.

Contactos de prensa:

• Christie Neufelt, United Church of Canada, [email protected]
  
• Olivia Alperstein, Institute for Policy Studies, +1 (202) 704-9011, [email protected]
  
• John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, [email protected]
  
• Manuel Perez Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies, [email protected]
  
• Jorge Cuellar, Darmouth University, [email protected]
  
• Pedro Cabezas, Alianza Centro Americana Frente a la Mineria (ACAFREMIN) y Aliados Internacionales contra la Minería en El Salvador,   [email protected]