Jorge Juc, 77, was attacked with a machete by an unknown man in the municipality of Livingston, about 225 km north-east of Guatemala City, on the shores of the Caribbean, said CODECA in a statement.

« The incident occurred when he was in his cornfield very close to his home. His eight-year-old son was with him when a man came to kill him, » the statement said.

Juc presided over the directive of CODECA in the village of Paracaidista, Livingston and had been in the peasant organization for five years. There is no information available about the motives of the crime.

A few weeks earlier CODECA leaders Isidro Pérez, 89, and Melesio Ramírez, 70, had been murdered in the same town during an ambush carried out by about 15 armed men, while visiting a farm from which they had been evicted.

(Based on an original AFP report via La Prensa)