Guatemala has the greatest inequity in land distribution and the largest proportion of indigenous people (60 percent) in the Mesoamerican region.  Consider these statistics:

• One percent of the landowners hold 75 percent of the best agricultural land. 
•  Over 50 percent of Guatemalans rely on agriculture as their primary means of survival.   

Guatemala is home to an historic and ongoing struggle for land reform, lead largely by indigenous small farmer organizations.

The 1996 peace accords ended 36 years of civil war and violent repression of indigenous and campesíno movements working for an equitable sharing of Guatemala’s resources.

These carefully negotiated peace accords included special agreements on land reform, indigenous culture and rights and resettlement of displaced peoples.

In a recent national congress of small farmer organizations, Rafael Gonzalez of the Committee for Peasant Unity (CUC) said, “It’s been ten years since the Peace Accords, but these Peace Accords have been tossed in the trash by the governments that have followed them. Now, instead we have CAFTA, Plan Puebla Panama, the Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

In the past year a renewed wave of violent repression has been unleashed in Guatemala. The violence is fueled by the Plan Maya Jaguar, a U.S.-funded “war on drugs” program. The plan uses U.S. military support to occupy indigenous territory and fumigate fields suspected of growing opium poppies with glyphosate (Monsanto’s “Round-Up” herbicide). The same chemical is used to fumigate coca plantations in Colombia under Plan Colombia.

Grassroots International supports Guatemalan small farmer and indigenous organizations building a movement to:

• Defend land and water rights, and advance comprehensive agrarian reform and food sovereignty
• Push for indigenous self-determination and cultural and territorial rights
• Challenge U.S.-led free trade agreements and corporate-led mega development projects.