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Collective protection to defend territory; defense of territory to protect life

Contributions of women defenders of land and territory in Mesoamerica

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This article is based on the personal and collective experience of the defender of the territory and community feminist, Aura Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic, of the Council of K'iche 'Peoples for the Defense of Life, Mother Nature, Land and Territory (CPK), and in the reflections on protection systematized by JASS and Marusia López in the last 15 years. It presents some basic elements to understand collective protection, its relationship with the defense of land and territory, and the role of the international community to strengthen and promote strategies. [1]

By Aura Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic & Marusia López Cruz

Threats to life

In Mesoamerica, as in other parts of the world, we are living through a historical period characterized by the imposition and violence of extractivism, supported by repressive states and subjected to powerful private interests. Industries that have invaded indigenous and communal territories include mining[2], oil, large-scale monoculture, and energy and tourism mega-projects, generally export-oriented.[3] These industries, with transnational capital, are transforming the landscape and land use in our communities and causing numerous social conflicts. In Mexico, to give an idea of the extent of the phenomenon, more than 25,000 mining concessions are currently in force, covering 21 million hectares.[4] Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, stated that “extractive activities within the lands and territories of indigenous peoples, carried out without the proper consultation or consent, are the main source of violations of their human rights, including violence, criminalization and forced displacement ”.[5]

This large-scale invasion has generated resistance, often led by indigenous women. Entire communities are organizing to defend their territories from extractive capitalism and dispossession by national and transnational companies. They face attacks from companies and also from authoritarian governments and their security forces.

In Mesoamerica, still in the shadow of its colonial past, violence against movements in defense of land and territory threatens the lives and physical integrity of people, and weakens the social and organizational fabric of our territories.[6] State forces use violent forms of repression against communities that resist the imposition of the projects harm their lives and livelihoods. Companies and governments use organized crime to create fear, they criminalize leaders of social movements and communities in resistance, they launch defamation campaigns and they work to coopt members of organizations in order to to divide and weaken the movements. In 2019, of the 304 murders of human rights defenders registered by Front Line Defenders, 40% were for the defense of land, territory and human rights.[7] In Mexico, 39 attacks were registered against land and territory defenders in the same year, 15 of them murders.[8]

Entire communities are organizing to defend their territories from extractive capitalism and dispossession by national and transnational companies.

The coauthor of this text, Lolita Chávez, Maya K’iche’ is a local official and defender of land and territory. She also actively defends water, forests, communitarian history, spirituality and indigenous worldview. For this work, she has suffered six armed assassination attempts, sexual harassment, illegal searches, surveillance and tracking of her movements and those of her organization, two hate attacks, and more than 25 legal charges brought against her. Lolita has also been the target of smear campaigns. Although she was granted precautionary measures by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, she was eventually forced into exile with family members to safeguard her life.

Lolita’s story is not unique. It forms part of a strategy to weaken grassroots organizations and their struggles. The attacks against a defender affect the whole community, weakening its leadership, generating internal tensions and conflicts, and draining time and energy from advancing in the work of building collective power. In the case of the Consejo de Pueblos K’iche’ (CPK), criminalization, attacks, death threats, and the lack of response to their demands are some of the many forms of harassment that its members and supporters of the communities have faced.[9] The government and transnational companies provoke confrontation and division among the inhabitants of the communities as part of their strategy to dismantle their struggle.[10] For defenders at risk, the cost of the extreme measure of going into exile to protect themselves is very high—the family is left without a primary source of support and care, and the community and organization suffer the loss of a key leader, increasing their situation of vulnerability.

In 2018, Lolita Chávez spoke before the United Nations and related the costs of defending rights to land and territory in hostile contexts:

“Peasant and rural indigenous women are exercising the right to defend rights in hostile territories, in insecure spaces, besieged by militarization, drug activity and corporate powers. In the defense of our territories, many women defenders have fallen off along the path, because they were repressed, imprisoned, tortured, sexually raped or even murdered. In the case of many indigenous women defenders, their stories and actions are unknown—governments have intentionally generated hatred against us, and they have fomented powerful expressions of extermination and genocide in our territories, as a result of patriarchal colonializing, wars and invasions of world powers.”

We experience many forms of violence, violence that comes from machismo in the intimate, institutional and public spheres. and we face racism for being indigenous women. Women who defend rights in indigenous communities and territories have been mocked; they see us as people of lower rank who need tutelage. They blame us for not speaking Spanish—a language that was imposed on us. They blame us for not understanding Western legislation, to the point of calling us ‘rebellious Indian women’ whose husbands and fathers can’t control.” [11]

Collective protection to defend territory; defense of territory to protect life

Two opposing views of the world

Communities and organizations are waging a struggle between two opposing worldviews: One based on depredation and dispossession, that threatens the survival of the human species, other living beings and the planet. The other is based on respect for the web of life, mutual care, equality [12] and social justice.

Miriam Miranda, land defender with the National Network of Human Rights Defenders of Honduras and leader of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), speaks of the need to “counteract this vision of false development that is racist, sexist, discriminatory and colonialist. We have to fight to recompose, from our guts, what we are. To return to a culture where solidarity, complementarity and mutual aid prevail, and not the extremely brutal individualism that this predatory system instills in us.”[13]

Communities and organizations are waging a struggle between two opposing worldviews: One based on depredation and dispossession; the other based on respect for the web of life, mutual care, equality[14] and social justice.

With this vision, various communities and indigenous peoples have organized for the collective defense and protection of the community, by the community, using our own knowledge, forms of community organization and support networks that we have built up both nationally and internationally. In this historic process, women have played a fundamental role, in the defense of territory and in the implementation of collective protection strategies. As part of this work, they are also questioning the structures of discrimination and demanding the eradication of unequal power relations.

The territory understood as a web of life also connects with the body itself and its history. Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj wrote in the early days of the pandemic:

“Biodiversity, as the indigenous know well, is a complex web of life, but very delicate and fragile--as fragile as human life is now on the planet. That’s why we demand respect for the goods of the territories, because they are vital to the future of humanity.”[18]

Cucue Rivera expressed the same concept:

“I am the finger of a hand, the hand of a body, the body of a world… We are a mirror of the territory, in a cell is the reflection of the entire universe… (The) trampling of our body, tramples our territory."[19]

Our bodies, like our territories, are in dispute. Feminism has exposed how patriarchal power uses, exploits and violates women's bodies to maintain their privileges. Gender discrimination, and the violence it generates, has been a powerful instrument of social control and fear, used consistently to rob and exploit territories.

The great Honduran fighter, Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in Honduras on March 3, 2016, summarized the impact of gender-based violence against women defenders:

“It is not easy being a woman leading processes of indigenous resistance. In an incredibly patriarchal society, women are very exposed, we have to face high-risk circumstances, and sexist and misogynistic campaigns. This is one of the things that can most influence a decision to abandon the fight--not so much the transnational, but the macho aggression from all sides."[20]

The bodies of women are also marked by the violence that they experience within their families, communities and social movements. Lolita Chávez said in 2014:

“As we have forged a path forward, with time we have realized that sometimes this man we thought was a ‘compa’, a brother, a friend, assaults us, attacks us, harms us, insults us, humiliates us, defames us; he persecutes us, mocks our situation of inequality, harasses us, blackmails us, and sometimes even rapes us.”[21]

…the defense of the territory cannot be separated from the defense of the body-territory, and the strength of resistance resides in both territories.

However, women's bodies also hold the histories of resistance, the marks of the ancestors who have guided the way, personal and collective experiences of emancipation and ancestral knowledge about caring for life, seeds and sowing. For this reason, the defense of the territory cannot be separated from the defense of the body-territory, and the strength of resistance resides in both territories.

"La Puya Peaceful Resistance", Guatemala.

How Defense of Territory Protects Us

Stopping the plunder and predation of extractive companies, building communities of mutual support and care, and putting an end to sexist violence--both by powerful groups, and within our families, communities and organizational spaces--are preconditions for the full exercise of our human rights. For this reason, as human rights defenders we have to take on the task of confronting the current economic and social model.

Collective protection consists of being rooted in the territory and feeling supported by the community, which is the most effective form of protection. When there is a strong, supportive and well-organized social fabric, it is more difficult for perpetrators of violence to intimidate, divide and stop human rights work. Collective community-based protection enables the activation of a whole network of immediate support, in accordance with the culture, capacities and existing resources in the places and organizations where human rights defenders do their work.

Collective protection begins with the construction of collective power. When communities successfully carry out community consultation processes in which they declare themselves territories free of extractive companies, or when they manage to prevent the entry of workers and machinery of mining companies, the territories are protected from the damage, violence and harmful effects of the extractivism, and the capacity for personal protection is increased. La Puya Peaceful Civil Resistance in Guatemala provides and internationally known example. Miriam Pixtún, a member of the group, explains:[22]

“(La Puya Peaceful Civil Resistance) is a gesture of resistance to a culture of death means the large-scale exploitation of the natural assets of our territories… Resistance is for the protection of life.[23]

“… The organization [La Puya] established criteria: not to enter into dialogue with the company, but to demand that public institutions fulfill their functions; to ensure inclusion (women and men, people of different ages, etc.), and the development of collective processes where there is no single leader... They combine direct action, legal battles, information and training, the dispute for local power, the strengthening of identity, the building of alliances and advocacy at the international level… With the slogan of 'No to mining, Yes to life', they have won protections and suspended at least for now mining operations." [24]

The women of the affected communities have been at the forefront of experiences of resistance, which in turn increase the capacity for collective protection. In "La Puya" thousands of Mayan Kaq’chikel and mestizo women from the communities of San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc have stood up against the imposed project of the El Tambor mine, putting their bodies in the defense of their territory, and facing attacks by the army and the KCA-EXMINGUA company, which hired personnel to attack and violently dislodge the resistance.

To convert their territories into areas of protection, women defenders have also worked to build just and equal relationships within families, communities and organizations:

“In community assemblies we say that we agree to declare the territories free of transnational companies. In the same way, we want these same territories to be declared free of violence against women. So every day we are in the dispute of the recovery of our bodies--the more bodies that have the capacity of self-determination, the more women can move toward integral wellbeing.” [25]

For women defenders, the defense of the territory and personal and collective protection are linked within the framework of the worldview and community knowledge of indigenous peoples and feminist popular education. Protection goes hand in hand with the consolidation of models of coexistence and resistance that reject violence and focus on the care and protection of the entire web of life. Equality, care, democracy and solidarity are basic principles with which the social fabric is rebuilt.

Protection goes hand in hand with the consolidation of models of coexistence and resistance that reject violence and focus on the care and protection of the entire web of life.

It is no coincidence women are in the majority of those who organize to defend life and face the risks that this implies. The strength of women generates community, and the interests of the extractive industries fear that. We not only carry out struggles in our territory, but also in our lives, in our beds, in our homes and communities.

Tzk’at - Healing You, I Heal Myself

Collective protection also implies a healing process. Healing the historical processes of violence, colonization and extermination, and reconstituting the bonds destroyed by multiple oppressions and violence--in spaces considered private and public--is an imperative for strong and lasting protection. Healing is also a collective act.

“… Healing you, I heal; healing me, you heal. It is the reciprocity of healing, in that interweaving that is not individual. Not only you matter, you heal collectively and you generate healing, they support you, it is giving and receiving ... Tzk’at is reciprocity and in healing it is the reciprocity of healing.”[26]

For healing, both individual and collective, three elements have been fundamental for defenders of land and territory: spirituality, culture and safe spaces for healing among women. Ancestral spirituality and collective knowledge that recovers ancestral medicine, music, dance, the homage and invocation of ancestors and ancestors, and other community knowledge and actions, in many communities is an essential part to be able to process fears, celebrate life, strengthen ties and strengthen resistance. An example of the strength of spirituality and culture is the experience of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras and the Garífuna people. Miriam Miranda recounted how the achieved the recovery of ancestral territory from criminal groups on Radio Progreso:

“The harmonious atmosphere of the camp was interrupted on some nights by machine gun bursts that rang out for about a kilometer and a half. However, the nightly Garifuna dances that follow the song and the sound of the drums filled the atmosphere and made you forget about the sound of the bullets fired by members of organized crime[27] ...The struggle based on cultural identity is tremendously revolutionary."[28]

The construction of safe spaces for women has been very significant for women who defend land and territory. This practice lies at the very foundations of feminism. A safe space is one that allows women to come together in an open dialogue about their experiences, fears and realities, without fear of being questioned, judged or ridiculed. They are spaces of self-awareness that allow us to identify the structures of oppression and discrimination that are often normalized or underestimated, within our own experience and in shared experiences. The bonds generated in these spaces reduce the isolation that is part of the experience of many women, and provide a sense of belonging and support.[29]

Guatemala has important historical precedents for healing with and among women who were victims of sexual violence as a weapon of war during the armed conflict in the 1980s. From their own knowledge and worldview, with the accompaniment of different indigenous and feminist women's organizations, the women created safe spaces in which they could reconnect with their bodies, power and life experiences, to break the silence and strengthen their personal and collective capacities to heal the body-memory of rape and war.[30] In the words of one of the survivors:

“I healed myself, I did it myself. I bathe with the plants, I enter the chuj and I take my remedies, and just like that, I was cured. The Santo Domingo plant, the chobejón, and others are four plants that I take, like the pericón and others ... I no longer feel that I am dirty, I feel that my body is not to blame ...” [31]

She ends her testimony: “If it happens to us now or it happens to one of our daughters like this, we are not going to stand for it; we’re going to denounce those guilty of the rape. If something happens to my girl, if she tells me who the culprit is, then I have to go and report it and so does she. Before, we were afraid to go out and speak. But now we are no longer afraid ”.[32]

In 2015, the Network of Ancestral Healers of Community Feminism, Tzk’at, was founded in Guatemala. The network has accompanied indigenous women who defend their territory and who have been criminalized. In a statement September 8, 2016, they explained their concept of traditional knowledge:

“We know by inheritance from our grandmothers, mothers and ancestors, the secrets of plants, rivers, mountains, the sun and the moon. We live in dialogue with nature of which we are all a part, and with each other. When someone suffers an attack, we join forces, we accompany each other, so that the response is communal, so that there is no loneliness, and in order to create energy in defending our processes of resistance and emancipation”.[33]

Women’s Collective Power

Another fundamental aspect of collective protection is the recognition of the leadership, the narratives and the contributions of women--in families, communities and organizations. In an interview with JASS in 2015, Berta Cáceres, founder of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), said:

“It gives me great pride to see that women are involved in all aspects of these collective and individual rebellions... It gives me great satisfaction that powerful processes of defense of the dignity of the Honduran people, of indigenous peoples, of social movements are being led by women who know how to act against the aggressions of power. We have seen situations where sometimes companies go and offer bribes to men first and sometimes that can work for them, but with women it is very different, because there is a deeper understanding of what it means to have land and territories for life."[34]

Strengthening the participation and leadership of the women who defend land and territory is fundamental because we are the ones who sustain the resistance struggles, and because of the impact that the violence of extractive policies has on our bodies and our lives. We feel firsthand what it is like not to have clean water and basic food for our families. We are the ones who most strongly oppose the sale of the land, even though in many cases we do not own it, and we are the ones who face the sexual violence that is used to repress our communities. It is also necessary because granting authority to those who have been discriminated against and their wisdom and contributions ignored is an act of historical justice.

Strengthening the voice and collective power of women means undertaking major transformations in multiple arenas. It means women must have greater leadership and decision-making capacity in their movements and that they are no longer stigmatized in their communities for raising their voices and breaking with traditional roles. It also implies changing the way activism is understood, since this is often based on the logic of sacrifice and the duty of women, which puts the needs of others first at the cost of our own safety and well-being. In terms of protection, it means that we have safe spaces where we can talk about our experiences of violence, our security needs and our own strategies.

Strengthening the voice and collective power of women means undertaking major transformations in multiple arenas.

Creating conditions for the participation of women in conditions of equality implies recognizing the challenges and addressing the violence that defenders experience within our families and organizations, and being aware of the burdens of domestic work and care that many women activists continue to assume alone. Some examples of measures are to adopt pacts and internal mechanisms in organizations to address cases of sexual harassment against women activists, support activists who are experiencing family violence, and create spaces for collective childcare so that women can participate.

It is also important that men embark on their own path of transformation, a transformation that begins by recognizing and questioning the sexist practices in which they have been socialized and the ways in which they reproduce discrimination and violence against women. They will have to assume their obligations to domestic and care work and take a step back so that women can assume greater leadership.

In Mesoamerica, various training programs have been developed to strengthen collective leadership by and for women who defend land and territory, and create spaces and protection networks among women human rights defenders. The Mesoamerican Initiative of Defenders and the Alquimia Feminist Leadership School for indigenous and rural women are examples of this type of experience that has been promoted by JASS in association with other organizations.[35]

The Challenges for Protection Organizations and the International Human Rights Community

Women all over who defend land and territory are providing indispensable lessons on how to approach solidarity, accompaniment and protection in the current context.

The first fundamental task is to review the narratives and discourses used, and build a language that takes into account the seriousness and true dimensions of the current problem, as well as the urgency of moving towards systemic changes. In this sense, the paradigm of collective protection, connected to territory and body-territory, challenges some models of individualized protection. The Statement of the Session on Women Human Rights Defenders of the 2018 World Summit of Human Rights Defenders highlights:

“…we sometimes hear a mediated discourse that does not account for the seriousness of the situation, although many of those of us who are here are fighting for a paradigm shift, for a society without capitalism, without racism and without patriarchy… Even the category of defender sometimes depoliticizes our struggles and individualizes us, hiding the fact that we are movements and communities in struggle. If we have been victims of attacks, we are only seen as victims and not as builders of proposals.

“Twenty years after the Declaration [of Human Rights Defenders of the UN] we ask: how much more energy should we spend trying to get governments to listen to us and fulfill their obligations? Governments that imprison us, that use sexual violence to repress us and gender stereotypes to defame us. States that are causing extremely high levels of inequality and putting democracy and public resources at the service of corporate power, religious hierarchies or organized crime. Justice systems ailing with prejudice, corruption and impunity ”.[36]

Protests must be accompanied by the recognition of the alternative models that the communities and peoples are building, and a sharp assessment of the specific contributions of women to these new paradigms. Ours is a radical and hopeful narrative that encourages collective action and the recognition and social protection of women defenders who carry out the indispensable work of defending the territory in a world in crisis.

The second task is to strengthen collective protection processes based on the knowledge and guidance of communities and women. This requires us to review protection strategies and approaches based on individual protection. Without denying the need to react and support in a timely manner when the life and integrity of a defender are at risk, it is important to redouble efforts to build a protection approach that addresses the collective impact of violence and collective security as the basis for personal safety.

The individual approach has limitations that we must address: its impact is limited, it can generate conflicts within organizations and communities due to the prioritization of some defenders over others when accessing protection measures, sometimes it removes the defender from her organizing work and its context, and it often has presented activists as “heroines” who act individually, or has even extolled risk as a positive value and a means to access resources and visibility.

Dalila Vázquez, a Guatemalan defender of the organization Madre Tierra, states:

“… We indigenous peoples organize based on the community. So, when a single person is given importance, we are making that work and that collective effort invisible... For us that doesn’t contribute much, because our resistance has been collective ”.

Miranda also points out the way in which this model can be problematic for peoples in the defense of the territory:

“Many times, faced with a risky situation, the initial reaction is to confront it instead of trying to reduce the risks in the territories. Confronting it means keeping the risk in the place of origin, reducing the strength of the community and causing uprooting. The communities, the territories have their own form of protection ... The organizations and networks that accompany us must reflect on their practices of accompanying women defenders and work toward strengthening processes in the territories and community protection ”.

The third task is to build new alliances and strengthen existing ones, with the aim of promoting and consolidating collective protection processes. This requires that we review how we are relating, coordinating and articulating between international organizations and organizations in defense of the territory. It is necessary to build bridges between organizations of human rights, protection and defense of land and territory, and seek greater coordination of work among them. As Miriam Miranda points out:

"International and regional organizations must coordinate more and better to avoid saturating the communities and organizations with demands, duplicating initiatives and allocating resources to projects that do not strengthen our struggles nor our own forms of protection."

Finally, to respond to the needs of women activists in their territories, it is essential to support their own forms of self-protection. As defenders are constantly documenting and denouncing the violence that affects us and its impact on our communities. We are creating our own networks, safe spaces and healing processes. However, our strategies do not always receive the recognition and resources necessary to strengthen them. Sometimes, the protection of women defenders is discussed, but without recognizing the prominence that their visions, strategies and organizations should have or by imposing models that fail to recognize the contributions that women defenders have made, based on their own concepts of feminism, worldview and territory.

This implies building a much more active solidarity to point out and call out the perpetrators of violence. A solidarity that not only looks to the south with concern, but also recognizes the responsibility of the north and understands that the structural violence of the current system originates in colonial policies, extractive companies and forms of consumption that the northern countries are generating and that affect the rights, freedoms and survival of each and every one. Now with the pandemic and the crisis, it is even more urgent to develop work in northern countries directed toward investors, banks and international financial institutions, to stop financing projects that seize the lands of the peoples, cause conflicts and destroy the environment.

To overcome the crisis of violence and human rights violations perpetrated by the current system, it is imperative and the responsibility of all social movements and the human rights community, that we strengthen processes of collective protection launched by the organizations and communities that defend territory and natural goods. We must recognize and strengthen the contributions and leadership of women defenders to these processes.

It is time to listen to native peoples, who offer us a model of society based on respect and the sustainability of life. It is time to listen to women and their collective decisions to refuse to allow their bodies and their lives to hold up a system that oppresses us, violates us and excludes us.

If we want to effectively protect those who defend human rights, let's put collective protection and care for life at the center.

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Footnotes

Further reading: Taking Care of Us! Collective Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Rural Areas - Latin America, Protection International, 2020

[1] Aura Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic is a member of the Council of K’iche’ Peoples for the Defense of Life, Mother Nature, Land and Territory (CPK). Marusia López Cruz has worked on holistic feminist protection with Just Associates (JASS) and is currently co-director of the Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders. The authors thank Laura Carlsen for editing, the women of JASS-MESO and Miriam Miranda of OFRANEH for their contributions to this article and JASS and the Fund for Global Human Rights for their support.

[2] Para un amplio retrato de la destrucción causada por la minería en esta etapa, ver “La mina nos extermina”, Otros Mundos AC/Chiapas, 2013.

[3] For an analysis of the history and types of extractivism in the western hemisphere, see: Gudynas, Eduardo, Extractivismos: Ecología, economía y política de un modo de entender el desarrollo y la naturaleza, CLAES/CEDIB. 2015.

[4] President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his morning press conference, Dec. 24, 2019

[5] “Statement of Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples to the Human Rights Council 42nd Session 2019”.

[6] JASS, “Protección Colectiva: Diálogo inter-regional y taller”, 15 –17 noviembre 2017, Johannesburgo, South África.

[7] Front Line Defenders, Global Analysis 2019.

[8] “Informe sobre la situación de las personas defensoras de derechos ambientales” 2019 CEMDA.

[9] See, for example, “Comunicado Urgente del CPK”

[10] Llamado a la Unidad del Pueblo Quiché

[11] Chávez Ixcaquic, Aura Lolita. Speech at UN Headquarters. New York. 2018

[12] We use equality here to mean the conditions and rights that all human beings should have for human development and to live lives free of all forms of discrimination.

[13] Miriam Miranda: “Quieren desaparecernos para adueñarse de nuestros territorios”, Alba Sud, Dec, 6, 2016.

[14] We use equality here to mean the conditions and rights that all human beings should have for human development and to live lives free of all forms of discrimination.

[15] Convention Num. 169 of the International Labor Organization on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, 1989. Art. 13:2

[16] Abya Yala is the name given the American continents in the Guna Yala regions of Panama and Colombia before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Europeans. It means literally “land in full maturity” or “land of vital blood”. See (Spanish) “Mujeres indigenas, cuerpos y vida en común”

[17] Martinez Prado, Juan Carlos. “Indigenas de Michoacán en defensa de la madre tierra” Rebleión, Dec. 20, 2016.

[18] Velásquez, Irma Alicia, “The power of the white man and his symbols is being demystified”, Americas Program. July 21, 2020.

[19] IMD, “MEMORIA GRÁFICA--Encuentro Regional de Defensoras y Defensores de la tierra, territorio y medio ambiente”Ciudad de México, 2017.

[20] Barahona, Juan. As esinan a Berta Cáceres, líder hondureña contra la explotación medioambiental de las transnacionalesMarch 3, 2016.

[21] Chávez Ixcaquic, Aura Lolita, Mujeres Indígenas: Cuerpos, territorios y vida en común Asociaión para la Cooperación con el Sur (ACSUR) and Agencia Catalana de Cooperacio al desenvolupament. 2014.

[22] For more information on La Puya Resistance, see this video.

[23] Tomorrow’s Ancestors Speak, “Fighting For Life: Guatemalan Women Stand Up to Gold Mining”.

[24] JASS, “Ideas with Feet”, 2018.

[25] Chávez, Lolita. Ibid. "Feminista Siempre: Mujeres indigenas: cuerpos, territorios y vida en común", 2014

[26] Torrellas, Maria. "No nos han logrado exterminar los Estados que no ven con buenos ojos a los pueblos originarios". Entrevista con Lolita Chávez. Resumen Latinoamericano.

[27] Radio Progreso.

[28] Enebral, Virginia. "La lucha desde la identidad cultural es tremendamente revolucionaria: Interview with Miriam Miranda".

[29] Para más información sobre la importancia de los espacios seguros, see JASS, "Our Rights, Our Safety: Resources for Women Human Rights Defenders". 2017.

[30] For more information on the Sepur Zarco trial and related organizing, see: "Trial for Sexual Slavery During Armed Conflict Opens in Guatemala" by Luz Méndez

[31] Union Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas, “Tejidos que lleva el alma”. P.351

[32] Ibid., P.381

[33] Network of Ancestral Healers of Community Feminism, Tzk’at, Communiqué, Sept. 8, 2016. “Desde nuestros territorios, en la red de la vida, saludamos los feminismos del mundo y exigimos respeto a nuestros saberes generados en comunidad, con aportes desde lo individual y colectivo, que no son propiedad privada de nadie!"

[34] JASS, “Protecting the River”, undated.

[35] Between 2013 and 2016, JASS coordinated the Course on Strategic Leadership for Indigenous and Rural Women, designed by activists from the seven Central American countries and Mexico involved in defense of territory and natural goods, and indigenous peoples’ and women’s rights. Through a process of Feminist Popular Education, the course contributed so the participants (many of whom had been the target of threats and attacks for their work) could recognize their own power and knowledge acquired from their experience as activists. They strengthened their leadership and their capacity to carry out analyses of context and of power relations that were then integrated into the defense of territories and the defense of women’s rights. The participants’ personal and collective experience. Confronting risk, fear and exhaustion and the impact of that on their organizations and communities, was dealt with in depth during the Alquimia course to help the women move toward collective leadership and sustainable individual participation. The experience of the regional course was adapted in 2018 in the Leadership School for indigenous and rural women defenders of territory in Honduras.

[36] Declaration of the Session on Women Human Rights Defenders World Summit 2018. Marusia López (JASS), Miriam Miranda (OFRANEH), Verónica Vidal (AWID), Cynthia Rothschild, Georgina Orellano (AMMAR), with contributions from all the participants in the Session.