Guatemala’s National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples and Campesinos (CONIC), was established to promote sustainable livelihoods and community-led development for indigenous peoples across Guatemala.

Working with 200,000 members organized in local community groups in 16 of Guatemala’s 22 departments, CONIC’s priorities are:

• Building grassroots power to win rights to land, water and food for the indigenous people of Guatemala, including redistributing excessive land holdings and returning communal lands to their traditional owners
• Launching a model of rural development and land reform based on the Maya cosmology
• Promoting citizen participation and local power in the countryside
• Holding the government accountable for fulfilling the nation’s land reform laws and the promises of the 1994-1996 peace agreements following the long civil war

This grassroots organizing and advocacy work has put the members and leaders of CONIC in direct conflict with powerful interests in Guatemala. In April, 2006, Antonio Ixbalan Cali, President of CONIC member organization, the Agriculturalists Association of Santiago Atitlán, and his wife, Maria Petzey Coo, were murdered in their home. The attack occurred just hours after CONIC called for a national mobilization to protest the government’s failure to resolve the serious land tenure conflicts that persist in Guatemala.

Despite violent repression, CONIC insists that Guatemalan indigenous people ought to be able to live in peace, with their basic human rights and livelihoods protected.

Through the Presente Fund Grassroots funded the CONIC in 2006 to support leadership development and training.