This year’s appeal has already raised over £500,000. We report on an organisation supporting Indigenous communities against wealthy vested interests
José Méndez walked up the mountain behind his rural Ch’orti’ Mayan community of Corozal in eastern Guatemala. He pointed towards an abandoned home of the plantation owner who used to run this hillside. “Right outside that house they killed our three compañeros, the exact same day the county government recognised us as an Indigenous community with rights to the land.”
Further up the mountain, in the mist of corn and coffee fields, Méndez shows off a large water reservoir that irrigates the community’s crops as well as small household gardens of nutritious and medicinal herbs. “This is what we sacrificed for. To recover our land and our water to have a chance to survive here.”
