GUATEMALA 18/6/2004 16:27 WHOLE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM THEIR ANCESTRAL LANDS Peace/Justice, Standard æhousands of families are living on the edge, without a home, food, clothes or land to work. Eight years have passed since the end of the civil conflict, but the mood is one of war,?said a humanitarian source working in the region of Alta Verapaz (centre-north), where the local police are carrying out a violent eviction campaign. Asking to remain anonymous for safety reasons, the source told MISNA that whole communities have been forcibly displaced, the elderly, women and children intoxicated with tear gas, simple wooden and bamboo huts torched, animals killed and schools destroyed. In this way, over the last few months Alta Verapaz has become the scene of an open confrontation waged by the local æerratenientes?(real or presumed land owners) against the native ethnic qæqchi?community, which is still battling for the recognition of its land rights and right to dignity. æere there are many who see in the situation the final years of a long and devastating civil war,?explains the source contacted by MISNA. æhat I have seen with my own eyes is that the comparisons with the policy of genocide against the indigenous population carried out in the 1980s, sadly known as æierra arrasada? are not all that far off the mark. In this department, indigenous people are forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty and illiteracy, without any access to education or health care and especially without land. After independence, the liberal governments gave the land, which belonged to the qæqchi?prior to the Spanish invasion, to local and foreign landowners, while the indigenous population was forced to live in slavery, with just a tiny plot of land not large enough even for their subsistence, and obliged to work in the æincas?(farms) as farm labourers for a minimum wave,?adds the interviewee. æhere had been slight improvements over the last ten years, and the various communities had managed to obtain the legal recognition of their ancestral lands, thanks to the work of peasant farmers?associations. However, todayæ scenario is of grave concern: since Oscar Berger took office as President six months ago, 20 evictions have been carried out against the indigenous farmers in the region. It seems that for the Guatemalan State, the right of a minority to private property is unfortunately much more important than the fundamental rights of the majority of the population,?or two thirds of the 13 million people in the country. æhat is astounding is that the judiciary seems to be signing evacuation orders without even stopping to check who is the legitimate owner of the land, whether it is private property or an abandoned state-owned plot, and failing to give the peasants living on the land advance warning. The police do not give people time even to gather up their few personal belongings and leave the land peacefully, thereby fuelling clashes with the æampesinos? who always fare worst: at the end of each æesalojo?(eviction) there are dozens of injured people, as tear gas is fired at eye level and there is hand-to-hand fighting.?Our source ends by stressing bitterly that æhere are also communities nearby, who have sold themselves to the landowners for a small sum, who participate actively in the evictions, when instead they should be supporting their indigenous brothers who are similarly oppressed and exploited.?(Translation of an interview conducted by Francesca Belloni)[LC]
