SOURCE: LA VANGUARDIA

An indigenous activist of the Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (Codeca) of Guatemala was killed Monday 26 November 2019, in the department of Izabal, in the northeast of the country.

The peasant organization, founded in 1992, to defend the right to the land, reported that the indigenous activist q’eqchi ‘Ángel Leonel Guzmán Morales was killed at the entrance of Cayuga village, in the municipality of Morales. Without offering more details, CODECA mentioned that Guzmán Matías consistently struggled to recover his territory in the Navajoa estate.

The organization explained that this murder « adds to the policy of repression of the conservative economic and political power sectors, in complicity with the ruling government. » The murder of Guzmán Matías is just the latest killing of a member of CODECA.  14 other leaders of the organization have been murdered since mid 2018.

The organization, whose membership formed the basis of the political party, Movement of Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), which came fourth in the presidential elections of June 2019, demanded that the Prosecutor’s Office conduct an « immediate and exhaustive » investigation in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.