Attacks against indigenous groups in Central America
The attacks against indigenous communities in Honduras and Nicaragua overlap with environmental issues and demonstrate the lack of rule of law.
Among the many interesting articles published in recent weeks on indigenous issues in Latin America, I wanted to highlight two of them from Central America’s Caribbean coast.
The Guardian published an article on the Guapinol community in northern Honduras and the abuses that have occurred stemming from their opposition to a local mining company.
UN Dark covers threats and attacks against the Miskito community in Nicaragua caused by an overlap of government repression and pressure from developers who are also engaged in deforestation.
Above: Map of deforestation in Nicaraguan indigenous communities. Interactive map available here.
I encourage you to read both of those articles. I wanted to offer a few ways those issues in Honduras and Nicaragua mirror the broader indigenous rights issues throughout Latin America.
Attacks on indigenous groups overlap with protests against environmental destruction. Latin America is the most dangerous region of the world to be an environmental activist. Indigenous groups often lead the way with environmental protests as various business interests try to access land and resources on indigenous territory. Many of the attacks against indigenous groups that have occurred in recent years have been linked to protests about environmental and development issues, most notably the murder of Berta Caceres. On the environmental issue, I also recommend the recent report by the World Resources Institute about how gold mining has impacted indigenous communities in the Amazon.
Crimes go unpunished, demonstrating a lack of rule of law. The attacks that occur are rarely fully investigated and the perpetrators are almost never prosecuted. The impunity is often due to the connections of the interests that engaged in the attacks. The failure to prosecute crimes encourages further attacks.
High profile attacks against indigenous leaders have increased, even in countries where security has improved. The levels of impunity mentioned in the previous paragraph also apply to many criminal issues in Latin America. However, attacks against indigenous communities have increased in many countries in Latin America even as security statistics related to violent crime have improved in other areas of the country. Governments sometimes try to paper over the violence against indigenous groups by pointing at improvements in overall security statistics. Instead, they should see the discrepancy between overall security and security of specific vulnerable groups as a challenge they must address.
The targeting of indigenous groups signals a weakening democracy. The reason I chose to highlight Honduras and Nicaragua is that this issue doesn’t fit nicely on the left-right political spectrum that is often used to divide the region. Instead, the targeting of indigenous communities reflects a lack of democratic values and rule of law. Both Honduras and Nicaragua have seen an increase in attacks against indigenous groups as their democracies have been dismantled by the ruling regimes. Increasing attacks and decreasing prosecution of attacks is a signal of a larger problem with a country’s democracy.
Thanks for reading
Here are two more articles worth reading on this issue. Bloomberg covers the role the Mapuche may play in Chile’s constitutional rewrite. Sergio Guzman writes about President Duque’s poor relationship with Colombia’s indigenous communities.
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