[Photo: Chiquibul Forest Reserve near Guatemalan border: top showing significant illegal clear cuts. while the bottom shows the beginnings of cutting. Credit: Tony Rath.]

=By= Jeff Abott

Across Guatemala, indigenous communities are organizing to challenge logging in the country’s vast forests. These communities are concerned with the impact that both legal and illegal logging will have on their watersheds and on the environment.

On June 15, concerned residents from the highland Ixil Maya municipality of Nebaj, Quiche staged a protest outside the municipal building to express their concern with the steady increase in trucks leaving town loaded with lumber.

The action was organized by residents and members of the Indigenous Authority of Nebaj in order to pressure the state authorities to strip the nine companies of their licenses to exploit timber on private lands. Residents raised concern over the fact that the deforestation affects everyone in the area.

Following the protest, concerned residents in the neighboring Ixil municipality of Chajul blocked and detained several trucks transporting lumber from the region for a number of hours. They demanded that the National Institute of Forests, or INAB, and the Division for the Protection of the Environment cease their operations and described the amount of lumber being taken from the local forests as “excessive.”

The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj also issued a statement to INAB asking them to take action. But the government body declined to act and issued a statement that they are planting new trees for every one that is cut down. But this response did not satisfy concerned residents. “We went to the government bodies and issued statements asking to cease extending licenses for the exploitation of forests,” said Caty Terraza, the communications representative for the Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj. “They told us that they are sowing new trees, but how long will it take for those trees to grow to the same size as the trees that were there before?”

The companies involved in logging operations responded to the protests by significantly reducing the number of trucks transporting lumber from mountains. According to residents, however, it is unclear if this will continue into the future.

The mobilization of communities organizing to challenge logging operations in the highlands of Guatemala represent a growing concern over the destruction of the environment by companies. This challenge to logging companies reflects the understanding of communities of the vital part forests play in the protection of the water sources.

“The trees serve us and the animals,” Terraza said. “The loss of trees is drying up the aquifers. As a youth and as human, I must think of my future, and what I’m leaving my children.” Other communities held similar protests following the actions taken in the Ixil region. On June 26, a similar action was held in Santa Cruz del Quiche, the department’s largest city. Once again protesters were demanding that authorities stop issuing licenses for the exploitation of forests.

Increase in Logging across Guatemala

Guatemala is home to vast forests and jungles, but these regions have increasingly come under threat to deforestation. Critics blame uneducated campesinos clearing land for agriculture as one of the prime culprits. This does represent a threat, but there are other bigger threats, including lumber companies, and organized crime. The protest over logging industry activity in indigenous regions occurs at a time in Guatemala of increased concern over deforestation, and comes after the historic march for water in April 2016. Community representatives, nongovernmental organizations, and activists see a connection between forests and water. The Guatemalan government, too, maintains a campaign of reforestation, but this has not stopped companies from cutting down forests for the valuable woods, or the razing of forests by narco-traffickers in the northern department of Petén to build landing strips.

The Guatemalan Ministry of the Economy actively promotes the investment of companies interested in exploiting the country’s nearly 2 million acres of forests. Logging companies and lumber traders have taken an interest in the vast forests of the highlands of Guatemala, where they can find rare hard and soft woods, such as teak, mahogany, oak and the more common pine. These resources can fetch hefty prices at market.

The exportation of lumber and products produced from wood from Guatemala has increased significantly. From 2013 to 2014, lumber exports increased 8 percent, from $6.7 million dollars to $8.6 million. This continues the long trend of the increase in the exportation of lumber and wood products, such as furniture.

But this increase in export of lumber brings the companies into conflict with indigenous communities. According to research by Guatemalan environmentalist and researcher, Juan Skinner, the indigenous regions of the country on average contain more forest cover than the non-indigenous regions of the country.

A 2005 report that Skinner authored highlights that municipalities that are less than 25 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 12 percent. Whereas regions where the population is more than 75 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 35 percent. Guatemala’s Mayan communities are not alone in their concern with the destruction of forests. The southern Xinca community of Quesada, Jutiapa has long taken steps to protect the forests that make up their communal territory. The Xinca people are one of the many ethnicities that make up Guatemala. The rural community in the southern department of Jutiapa has held their forest as communal lands since the 1850s, with subsequent generations continuing to protect the mountain and the forests. Today the forests represent 80 percent of the more than 13,500 acres of land, with the remainder utilized for crops, such as coffee and maize. “Our ancestors left us the land and a group to protect our mountain,” said Jak Mardogueo Ogorio, a representative of the communities’ Directive Council. “All this was passed down through the generations, and we continue this today. In order to cut a tree down, you first must receive permission from the council.” The community leaders have also barred any large-scale logging operations. “We don’t permit companies to operate in our forests,” Ogorio said. “In past epochs companies tried to negotiate for access to the forests, but they always wanted more. How many years for a new tree to grow? Up on the mountain there are trees that you cannot encircle with three people. This is what we are protecting.”

Ogorio and the other 13 members of the community council work directly with the residents to build awareness of the importance of the forests through regular meetings, trainings and a campaign to build alternative cooking stoves that utilize less firewood. In August and September 2016, the council implemented the insulation of 400 cooking stoves in conjuncture with Utz Che, a Guatemalan non-governmental organization.

“This project allows us to slow deforestation because the stoves use less firewood, and there is no need for more and more wood,” Ogorio said. “These stoves allow us to protect our forests.”

Community leaders of Quesada maintain vigilance over the threat of forest fires on communal lands for which they receive funding from INAB. This has generated work opportunity in a region where there are not many options.

The community of La Bendición in the southern department of Esquitla is one of the few regions on Guatemala’s southern coast not dominated by sugar and African oil palm plantations. Residents of the small community were displaced by the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict. At the end of the war they negotiated the purchase of a 5,500-acre coffee farm through the Land Fund in 2000 for about $1 million, far more than the value of the land.

When the families already burdened by debt arrived in 2001, they were shocked to learn that the land was not in the state that the Land Fund had promised. There were no rivers, as they were promised there would be, and the high winds meant that their crops were damaged, and there was no paved road. But there was a forest that contained an aquifer. Disappointed residents quickly left the community, leaving just 53 families of the original 170.

Residents continued to be burdened by debt, despite the rich forests. In 2002, the Land Fund proposed a solution: sell the forest. “The same Land Fund that assisted us in purchasing our land was pressuring us to sell the forests in order to resolve the debt,” said Veronica Hernandez, a 47-year-old community leader. “But we refused because if we would have sold our forests, we would have been left without water, or with contaminated water.” Since refusing to sell the land to logging interest, the community has organized to maintain the forests, and protect them from illegal logging and from forest fires. The residents also hold regular community-wide meetings to work to train everyone on the importance of the forests, and to guarantee that no one goes up into the mountain to cut down the precious trees.

Residents have also worked to develop projects like those being implemented in Quesada in order to decrease their impact on the forests. These stoves and solar projects are received across the community to great success. The residents’ resolve to protect their forest was further strengthened following the April 2016 water march, when thousands of campesinos marched to demand the protection of Guatemala’s water sources.

“The April march was important for us and other communities along Guatemala’s coast,” Hernandez said. “It has strengthened our drive to protect the forests and the mangroves along the coast.”

Despite the fact that the community was able to hold off the lumber interests following the purchase of the land, Hernandez and the other residents maintain vigilance to guarantee that no company comes to exploit their land and forests. “These companies always come into our communities to rob from us,” Hernandez said. “They then leave us with all the costs.”

Back in Nebaj, the Indigenous Authority is working to replicate the awareness in La Benedición and Quesada over the importance of forests.

“We are trying to inform community members of the impacts of deforestation,” Terraza said. This sharing of information is strengthened through the local Ixil University, which works to build awareness, and bring higher education to the region.

“But we have to do more,” Terraza added. “We must struggle to guarantee that people know what the impacts are.”

The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj stated that they are considering other actions, including the continuation of pressure on the state bodies, including INAB, the continuation of protests, and the direct action of blocking trucks transporting lumber.

“[INAB] is an institution of the state,” Terraza said. “If we have all these trees, then it is because we have protected the forests for some time; our ancestors also protected these forests. It should not be so easy for them to arrive and issue licenses to companies to exploit the forests.”

Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist based in Guatemala

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Murray Polner
Past in Present Tense

In 2003 I published an article  in The Nation about Toni Smith, a senior captain of a Division III women’s basketball team at Manhattanville College, located –according to its website — in “a safe and scenic community” in Westchester County, some thirty minutes from Manhattan. What she dared do from her suburban haven was refuse to salute the American flag. Afterwards, she told me, “For some time now, the inequalities that are embedded into the American system have bothered me. I can no longer, in good conscience, salute the flag.” The [Iraq] war we will soon be entering has reinforced my beliefs.”

Her silent, solitary, nonviolent protest resulted in a mountain of denunciations in the press and sports talk radio. She also received a large number of critical hits on Manhattanville’s website.  Some critics said that while they respected freedom of speech her protest was out of place on a college basketball court and, perhaps as well, unpatriotic. Still, for her defiance of conventional patriotism,  she was condemned by  our unforgiving super-patriots, the kind who chant  USA/USA from the safety of their stadium seats and most recently at the 2016 Democratic Party convention, when Bernie’s Oregon supporters were shouted down by those ubiquitous USA/USA chants because they were raining on Hillary’s coronation. At Kings Point, N.Y., some merchant marine students, recipients of a free college education, showed up at one of her games shouting “leave our country,” somehow neglecting to mention that Smith, part-Jewish, part African American, had some of her ancestors dragged here against their will from Africa. Toni Smith, gutsy and principled, reminded us of Muhammad Ali’s famous refusal, as well as Craig Hodges of the Chicago Bulls during the Gulf War and later Carlos Delgado of the NY Mets also spoke out as did Tommie Smith and John Carlos who raised their clenched fists at the 1968 0lympics in Mexico City.

Filip Bondy, then a New York Daily News sportswriter, came up with this beauty: “If sports events are inappropriate forums for political statements, then what exactly is ‘The Star Spangled Banner’?”

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]uring a recent “Salute the Military” night for a 49er game in no-questions asked pro-military San Diego, QB Colin Kaepernick was, as expected, roundly booed along with teammate safety, Eric Reid, who also dropped to a knee when the anthem was played. All the same, Kaepernick’s  act (First Amendment, anyone?) has surprisingly made a serious dent in the NFL-USA monopoly of patriotism, which masks forever our many wars and defeats, quagmires and military provocations in endless search for global hegemony.

For African American protestors it’s about repeated murders of black men, women and children by police. Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Chris Paul and Dwayne Wade have now spoken out publicly and Rajon Rondo has been on ESPN condemning the racial split. Even Michael Jordan has offered critical views, as did three Philadelphia Eagles who recently refused to stand for the anthem before a game with the Chicago Bears. And while Kaepernick and his detractors may be miles apart, it’s his country too. In the meantime, his jersey is currently outselling everyone else’s in NFL stores.

So, as some of the new generation of sportswriters have suggested, at last there’s a hole in the “say-nothing” dike, which for me resembles Curt Flood’s valiant refusal to be traded without his permission, a daring act which eventually opened the door to baseball’s free agency.

Here’s Kaepernick, like Smith, half-black, half white, refusing to cave before critics telling reporters, “There is police brutality–people of color have been targeted by police. You can become a cop in six months and don’t have to have the same amount of training as a cosmetologist. That’s insane. Someone that’s holding a curling iron has more education and more training than people that have a gun and are going out on the streets to protect us.”

And then there’s Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. 0n the eve of the opening of 0liver Stone’s film “Snowden,” a House Intelligence Committee unanimously — Democrats and Republicans–issued a three-page summary condemning Snowden, while refusing to release its larger findings. The Washington Post then editorially opposed a pardon, a stance criticized by Barton Gellman, its crack investigative journalist who broke the story of Snowden’s revelations and NSA’s spying.

So much for Washington’s sycophants. In New York, Oliver Stone’s film was praised by A.O. Scott, the Times’ lead reviewer who in the good old days would have been tarred as a Commiesymp for writing this review. A pro-pardon 0pEd column in the paper was soon accompanied by the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty urging President Obama to pardon Snowden.

Few Blacks can top Obama these days for the dishonor of being called an Uncle Tom.

But they have the wrong President in mind. The much- denigrated Warren Harding pardoned Debs and then had the backbone to invite him to breakfast in the White House. Not Obama, whose administration has prosecuted and punished more government whistleblowers than every other presidency combined, relying on Woodrow Wilson’s flawed and infamous Espionage Act of 1917.  Obama essentially pardoned Bush 43 and his crew who invaded Iraq, causing chaos and mass deaths throughout the Greater Middle East. Bush’s CIA tortured prisoners and renditioned others to America’s still-secret friends who must have delighted in applying electrical batons to male genitals and raping women, while  allowing our putative war criminals to enjoy their post-VIP life, except for a few low level soldiers in Abu Ghraib.

And then there’s  Chelsea Manning, whose release of hundreds of documents included one showing a U.S. Apache helicopter killing Iraqi civilians and two Reuters correspondents.  He was severely punished during  two years in solitary  and then put away for 35 years in Leavenworth, a bit harsher and longer penalty than handed David Petraeus for his crimes.

Journalists who cover the White House often have few kind words for the Obama administration, if we are to believe the Society of Professional Journalist’s Paul Fletcher, who complained in the Times on September 17th of “0fficials’ blocking requests by reporters to talk to specific staff people;” “refusing to give reporters what should be public information unless they agree not to say who is speaking;” “Federal agencies’ blackballing of reporters who write critically of them, and “Lack of meaningful visual access to the president by an independent press pool.

Not be outdone, the Obama Administration, which came into office pledging a policy of sunshine and transparency, was taken to task in 2013 by the Committee to Protect Journalists in a report written by Leonard Downie, Jr., who once ran the Washington Post. He quoted David Sanger, the Times’ chief Washington correspondent, who charged the Obama White House is “the most closed control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.” To Americans who distrust, even despise, journalists challenging and questioning governmental secrets, Downey rightfully concluded, “The professional secret-keepers are phenomenally bad at distinguishing between the threat of terror and their terror at being threatened — or worse … at being humiliated.”

And the Insider Threat Program, which demands that federal employees observe, and if need be, report on their colleagues’ suspicious behavior. Not even Bush 43, for all his sins, went that far. Michael Hayden, who ran the NSA and the CIA for 43, told Downie that the ITP “is designed to chill any conversation whatsoever.” Exactly.

On his final day in office Bill Clinton, no paragon of morality and ethics, pardoned the fugitive crook Marc Rich. It was an outrageous and highly suspicious act but wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise if Obama had the audacity to do the same for the much more deserving Snowden and Manning.

Murray Polner

Wrote “No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran“; “When Can I Come Home,” about draft evaders during the Vietnam era; co-authored with Jim O’Grady, “Disarmed and Dangerous,” a dual biography of Dan and Phil Berrigan; and most recently, with Thomas Woods,Jr., ” We Who Dared to Say No to War.” He is the senior book review editor for the History News Network.

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Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

At the Energy Transfer barricade in N Dakota. [Credit: Blue Mass Group]

Thousands of Native Americans resurrected the fighting spirit of their forefathers as they stood in unprecedented unity to contest an oil company’s desecration of their sacred land in North Dakota. Considering its burdened historical context, this has been one of the most moving events in recent memory.

The standoff, involving 5,000-strong Native American protesters, including representatives of 200 tribes and environmental groups, has been largely reduced in news reports as being a matter of technical detail – concerning issues of permits and legal proceedings.

At best, both the tribes and the oil company are treated as if they are equal parties in a purportedly proportionate tussle.

“’Dakota’ means ‘friendly’ and yet, it seems, neither side has been too friendly to each other,” wrote Mark Albert in the website of the American broadcasting television network, CBS.

The Dakota Nation is justifiably alarmed by the prospect that its water supplies will be polluted by the massive pipeline, which will extend across four states and stretching over 1,100 miles. 

The ‘other side’ is the company, Energy Transfer Partners, whose construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline at the cost of $3.7 billion is infringing upon the territorial rights of Native American tribes, destroying sacred burial grounds and threatening to pollute the main water sources of large communities of Native Americans.

Fear over future spills under the Missouri River is hardly a hype. The US is struggling with ongoing water crises, partly because of dilapidating infrastructure, but also because of numerous oil spills and natural gas leaks.

The recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the BP oil spill earlier in the Gulf of Mexico – both resulting in massive humanitarian and environmental crises – are only two recent cases in point.

But the problem is far deeper and constantly worsening.

Data obtained by the news network, CNBC from the government’s Environmental Protection Agency showed that “only nine U.S. states are reporting safe levels of lead in their water supply. These include Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Tennessee.”

As if that is not worrying enough, the massive crude oil pipeline will be going across several of these states, likely shortening the list of these states even further.

Discussion about the potential risks of the construction of the pipeline has been rife for years. The issue, however, received national and international coverage when Native American tribes mobilized to protect their land and water resources.

The mobilization of the tribes has been met with state violence. Instead of appreciating the serious grievances of the tribes, particularly those in the Standing Rock Reservation – which is located only one mile away, south of the pipeline – the state governor summoned all law enforcement agencies and activated the National Guard. Mace was used on protesters; they were beaten, arrested and chased out by armed men in uniform.

In the United States, when the people stand up to corporations, it seems that, more often than not, state violence is galvanized against unarmed people to protect the big businesses.

But missing from this story is an essential component: the mobilization and unity among Native American tribes has been the most awe-inspiring in many decades. As chiefs and representatives of tribes from all across the United States kept arriving at the encampment grounds, the collective spirit of Native American nations was being vigorously revived.

In fact, the ongoing mobilization of Native American tribes is far greater than the struggle against a money-hungry Corporation, backed by an aggressive state apparatus. It is about the spirit of the Native people of this land, who have suffered a prolonged genocide aimed at their complete eradication.

To see them standing once more, along with their families, riding their feather-draped horses and fighting for their very identity is a cause for celebration. It brings hope to oppressed people all across the world that the human spirit will never be destroyed.  

The genocide of the Native Americans, similar to the ongoing destruction of the Palestinian Nation, is one of the lowest points of human morality. It is particularly disheartening that there are yet to be serious attempts at addressing that grave injustice.

For 500 years, Native Americans witnessed every attempt at erasing them from the face of the planet. Their numbers dwindled from ten million prior to the arrival of Europeans to North America to less than three hundred thousand at the turn of the 20^th century. They were exterminated by colonial wars and ravaged by foreign diseases.

Calls to destroy Native Americans were hardly implicit but, rather, clearly-articulated. For example, Spencer Phips, Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Province issued this statement in 1755 on behalf of King George II:  “His Majesty’s subjects to embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians.”

The price list for the scalp of murdered Natives were as follows: “50 pounds for adult male scalps; 25 for adult female scalps; and 20 for scalps of boys and girls under age 12.”

The genocidal approach to Native Americans continued, unabated.

A century later, in 1851, California Governor Peter H. Burnett made this declaration: “A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.

Methods of extermination differed, from outright murder to disease-infected blankets, to, as of today’s standoff, threatening their most viable resource: water.

Yet, somehow, the spirit of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and numerous brave chiefs and warriors still roam the plains, urging their people to stand up and carry on with an overdue fight for justice and rights.

Palestinians have always felt that the legacy of the Native Americans is similar to their own.

birds that soar higher than a gun.

don’t gallop your flaming horses across the open plains.”

These were a few of the verses in Palestinian poet’s Mahmoud Darwish’s seminal poem “Speech of the Red Indian.”

I recall the day that magnificent piece of Arabic literature was first published in full in Palestine’s ‘Al-Quds’ newspaper. At the time, I was a teenager in a refugee camp in Gaza. I read it with much trepidation and giddiness – carefully, slowly, and repeatedly.

Those who could read, recited it out loud to those who could not.

Many tears were shed on that day, mostly because we all knew too well that we, in fact, were the ‘Red Indians.’ They were us.  

Long before feminist critical theory coined the term ‘intersectionality’ – which contends that oppression is interconnected and one oppressive institution cannot be examined in isolation from others, Palestinians – as other victims of genocidal colonization – fully comprehended and held such a belief.

Palestinians are losing their lives, land and olive trees as they stand up to Israeli tanks and bulldozers. Their reality is a replay of similar experiences faced – and still being confronted – by Native Americans. Well into the 21st century, the Native American-Palestinian struggle remains one and the same.

“Our pastures are sacred, our spirits inspired,
The stars are luminous words where our fable
is legible from beginning to end..”

Wrote Mahmoud Darwish, of the Native Americans. Of the Palestinians.

Ramzy Baroud, PhD

Has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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