2022-10-07
IXQUISIS - In Latin America, defending natural resources such as water is a deadly pursuit. According to the latest Global Witness report, 1.773 environmentalists were murdered in the last 10 years. Sebastián Alonzo, a 68 years old subsistence farmer from the Ixquisis micro-region in Guatemala, was murdered while demonstrating against the hydroelectric company that would divert the river and affect the crops which his family and community depended upon.
The Chuj and Kanjobal people inhabiting the area denounced having been promised much needed roads and electricity by the company Energía y Renovación, but were not provided. Despite the threats, the violences and the fears that the opponents of the project suffered since the beginning of the constructions, their fight succeeded for the first time in history to cause the withdrawal of the Inter-American Development Bank Invest (IDB Invest)’s fundings to the project. Yet the company has not given up its project, the murder hasn’t been solved and peace between the communities have been severely compromised.
This is the first chapter of a series of ‘Water Guardians’ carried out by Nicola Zolin and Paloma Dupont de Dinechin which investigate three environmental murders related to water in Latin America.
© Nicola Zolin
Supported
€20.000 allocated on 23/02/2022ID
ENV1/2022/054Grant
ONLINE
- Ningú em tornarà al meu pare. Ningú hauria de morir per l’aigua, Diario Ari, 07/10/2022
- Au Guatemala, Sebastian Alonzo, militant écologiste, mort pour l’eau, Le Monde, 11/10/2022
- Guatemala: de bescherming van water is een strijd op leven en dood’, Knack, 11/10/2022
- In Guatemala, environmental activist Sebastian Alonzo died for water, Le Monde, 22/10/2022
- Guatemala: Anger over environmental activist's murder and botched police investigation, Le Monde, 23/10/2022
- Au Guatemala, une enquête de police sur le meurtre d’un militant écologiste bâclée, Le Monde, 11/11/2022
- 希望與淚水之河 瓜地馬拉的水脈保衛戰, Rhythms Monthly, 20/20/2023
- Au Brésil, le combat pour l’eau d’Haroldo Betcel, mort pour s’être opposé aux propriétaires terriens, Le Monde, 26/03/2023
- Diaz pour l’eau sacrée des Wixarika, Le Monde, 01/07/2023
- Morir en el nombre del agua, El País, 24/12/2023
- Murder, drought and peyote: the deadly struggle for Mexico’s water, The Guardian, 16/01/2024
- ‘He had a machete in his cheek’: how Guatemala’s hydropower dream turned deadly, The Guardian, 22/01/2024
- We cannot be cowards’: the Brazilian village fighting for the right to have water, The Guardian, 24/01/2024
PRINT:
- Au Guatemala, une enquête de police sur le meurtre d'un militant écologiste bâclée, Le Monde, 11/10/2022
- ‘We worden nog steeds bedrogen’, Knack, 11/10/2022
- Guatemala. Gli ultimi Maya in difesa dei territori, Terra Nuova, 01/12/2022
COUNTRIES
- Brazil
- Guatemala
- Mexico
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