The Guatemala Solidarity Project strongly and urgently condemns the October 26 attack against the community Paraná in Panzos, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.  The attack was carried out by Guatemalan police along with private security and was directly overseen by wealthy biofuels investor Carlos Widmann, brother in law of ex-President Oscar Berger.  All houses in the community were destroyed in the attack.

www.GuatemalaSolidarityProject.org

October 28, 2011

Please view our recent video interview with a community leader in Paraná at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9Tk0Z3oyo

The GSP also released a 2-page report in late September titled Terror and Starvation in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley.  It can be found at http://guatemalasolidarityproject.org/terrorinpolochic.htm

GSP collaborators Tristan Call and Katy Savage published a more in depth piece about increasing government repression and the food crisis in Guatemala.  It can be found at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3162-food-crisis-in-the-polochic-exacerbates-as-government-repression-continues

Families displaced from Paraná are now in a difficult struggle to survive and are in need of immediate solidarity.  The GSP is working with Paraná and other organizations to help provide emergency support, including food, clothes and medicine.

To find out more please visit www.guatemalasolidarityproject.org or make a check out to “UPAVIM Community Development Foundation” and send to UPAVIM, c/o Amanda Legare, PO Box 63, Marshfield, VT 05658 Write the word “Parana” in the notes/memo section and 100% of funds will go to support the community

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Perhaps you will remember that Panzos was the site of massacres in the 1980s:

Interview with Greg Grandin author of The Last Colonial Massacre …

While the Panzós massacre was mostly a local affair, the 1981-83 genocide was a centrally planned national campaign. Soldiers swept through the countryside, ..

Guatemala massacre | Panzos | Victoria Sanford www.globalpost.com/dispatch/the…/guatemala-massacre-panzos

Jun 3, 2010 – New book by Victoria Sanford “La Masacre de Panzos” looks at massacre in Panzos Guatemala.

ReVista – Fall 2010 | Winter 2011 – Reading La Masacre de Panzós …

www.drclas.harvard.edu/…/reading-la-masacre-de-panzós-panzós

Over the past 12 years, I have written extensively about both the Panzós massacre and the silencing of Maya women—the way in which the army makes use of …

Massacre remembered – current struggles in mind? | Guatemala …

May 29, 2010 – Exactly 32 years ago today a massacre took place in the small town of Panzos, in Alta Verapaz. A group of campesinos had gathered in the …