Q’eqchi’ leaders from Chicoyogüito ask Canada for help in reclaiming their land from a Guatemalan military base

On July 15, Olivia and Domingo from the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ community of Chicoyogüito asked for help from Canada in their land back struggle.

They both spoke on this PBI-Canada webinar.

Olivia explained: “In 1968 the military base arrived and we were pushed off our land. We were displaced. Our rights were violated.”

“We need to know whether our land will be given back to us. As Indigenous people we eat on the land, we survive on the land, that’s what we want and what we need.”

Domingo added: “We have been seeking support since the signing of the Peace Accords for the lands taken from us in ’68 when we were children.”

“The Peace Accords said we were supposed to be returned to our lands. It is because of the Peace Accords that we are able to move forward in our search for justice.”

“We know Canada has provided a lot of support for [the Creompaz peacekeeping base on our land]. But where is the peace that they say they are creating? Peace doesn’t continue, the military continues. It continues to act as it always has.”

Domingo then noted: “We want to return to those lands. [But] we are not taken into account by the government because we are Indigenous people. Please in Canada we need your support to lift up our community.”

The Peace Accords

In June 1994, Guatemala signed the Agreement for the Resettlement of the Populations Uprooted by the Armed Confrontation which undertook to “promote the return of the lands to the original possessors and/or seek adequate compensatory solutions.”

That Agreement was formally incorporated into the second section of the Peace Accord that was signed on December 29, 1996.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has noted: “Indigenous peoples have a right to restitution of their ancestral lands, and when it is not materially possible due to objective and well-founded causes, they have a right to be given alternative lands of at least the same size and quality and/or to receive payment of fair and prompt compensation.”

In December 2015, the IACHR commented: “The information available suggests that years after the conclusion of the conflict there are still displaced communities who have not been able to return to their ancestral lands.”

Displacement of Q’eqchi’ community of Chicoyogüito

On July 28, 1968, the community of Chicoyogüito was displaced from their ancestral lands so that a Guatemalan military base could be built.

Olivia, whose grandparents were evicted in 1968, says: “When the armed forces arrived, they began to shoot, and people were beaten. People began to flee, and some fell into the river. Siblings were separated. Over 200 families were evicted.”

Olivia adds: “I would like us to return to this land and for the soldiers to no longer be there.”

That military base became a clandestine centre for illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and rape committed from 1978 to 1990.

At least 565 Indigenous people were disappeared at that base. Exhumations of mass graves at the military base began in 2012. The bodies identified are of Mayan Achí, Q’eqchi’, Pomochí, Ixil, and Kiché peoples.

Justice delayed

Despite the Resettlement Agreement of 1994 and the Peace Accords of 1996, the community of Chicoyogüito is still struggling for their land back.

The military base that displaced them was closed in 2004 and reopened/rebranded as Creompaz, a training base for UN peacekeepers funded by Canada and other countries.

Canada and the peace process in Guatemala

Canada supported the 1996 Peace Accords in part by sending 15 Canadian Armed Forces officers to serve in the MINUGUA mission to verify the ceasefire.

In January 2019, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland highlighted: “Canada remains committed to supporting justice and accountable governance for the Guatemalan people. We call on the Government of Guatemala to respect the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the democratic rights of the people and country.”

PBI-Canada calls on the Canadian government to support the promise of the Peace Accords to return land to Indigenous people by ending its funding relationship with Creompaz and calling on the Guatemalan government to return that land to the people of Chicoyogüito.

Domingo implores: “We want support from you all so that the land can be returned to us. This land that we dream of.”

To watch the video of the webinar, click here.

For updates, follow @CasoCreompaz on Twitter and @ElCasoCreompaz on Facebook.

“This land is ours”