During the last week of August 2013, Cultural Survival's team traveled to Belize for the implementation of one of our newest community radio projects. This new project is aimed at improving integration for Indigenous communities in Central America through community radio. As a result of this project, we are expanding our Guatemalan community radio network to include a radio station in Belize and a radio station in El Salvador.
On August 21 – 23, leaders and representatives of twenty Maya Q'anjob'al communities in northern Huehuetenango and Chiapas, Mexico, gathered in San Juan Ixcoy, Huehuetenango to discuss the ongoing imposition of large-scale development projects on their territory and to continue generating strategies for unified resistance moving forward.
On August 18-19, 2013, our team at Cultural Survival started our second round of 12 exchanges between community radio stations in Guatemala. Our exchange program provides the opportunity for horizontal learning between community radio stations. They are able to share stories, experiences, strengths and weaknesses in order to help each other improve the technical, thematic and relational aspects of their radio stations.
August 9 was the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. In Guatemala, Indigenous groups and organizations around the country commemorated this event by shutting down all the major highways in the country with organized demonstrations. The demonstrations took place to demand that the rights of Indigenous communities be respected. Indigenous organizations around the country coordinated efforts so that the demands listed at each protest were the same.
On August 11, 2013, Radio Ixchel, one of the most successful community radio stations in our Guatemalan community radio network, is celebrating 10 years on the air. Radio Ixchel is located in Sumpango, Sacatepéquez, a quaint municipality located about 45 minutes from the nation’s capital, Guatemala City. The station is located at one of the highest points in this hilly village, allowing it to broadcast to the entire 45,000 inhabitants of Sumpango.
In order to resolve the conflict generated by the installation of the Spanish company Hidro Santa Cruz’s Cambalam I Hydroelectric Project in Santa Cruz Barillas, Guatemala, the organized civil society, groups related to the company, and government representatives intend to hold dialogues mediated by Catholic Bishop Álvaro Ramazzinni, a long-time supporter of communities’ rights in conflicts with foreign companies and the government.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
