In 2026, NISGUA celebrates 45 years of solidarity with communities in Guatemala defending land, life, and dignity. Rooted in grassroots organizing and cross-border solidarity, this work has been shaped by the leadership and resistance of Indigenous Peoples, survivors, and social movements. As we mark this anniversary, we celebrate the collective struggles, [...]
In January 2026, the community of Copal AA La Esperanza celebrated 30 years since its founding by refugees—primarily Mam and Q’anjob’al Maya—who returned from exile in Mexico after the Peace Accords. Since then, the community has remained organized in defense of its territory, successfully opposing the Xalalá hydroelectric project and [...]
In 2025, NISGUA organized a speaking tour across North Carolina with Sheny Lemus, a Xinka representative from CODIDENA (Diocesan Commission in Defense of Nature). Through events in universities, churches, and community spaces, the tour shared the ongoing struggle of the Xinka people to defend their territory and water from the Escobal [...]
In May 2025, Indigenous Authorities from the Parliament of the Xinka People (PAPXIGUA) delivered the results of the community consultation on the Escobal mining project to the Guatemalan government, following a seven-year process ordered by the Constitutional Court. After more than 15 years of resistance, Xinka communities from Santa Rosa, [...]
In 2024, struggles for transitional justice in Guatemala continued amid both setbacks and international solidarity. After 99 hearings and testimony from more than 150 witnesses, an appeals court annulled the genocide case against former general Benedicto Lucas García, forcing the trial process to restart and underscoring the persistent obstacles faced [...]
In October 2023, Indigenous Authorities across Guatemala called for a National Strike to defend democracy and the will of the people following attempts to undermine the electoral results. For 106 days, Indigenous leaders, communities, and allies organized peaceful road blockades, gatherings, and permanent protests across the country, including in Guatemala [...]
The Trans-Territorial Table, organized by NISGUA in 2022 and 2023, created a virtual space for connection and collaboration between organizers, activists, artists, and grassroots organizations in Guatemala and the organized Guatemalan diaspora in the United States. Participants exchanged experiences, strategies, and visions to strengthen collective struggles in defense of life, land, [...]
In 2022, NISGUA organized a transnational delegation of U.S. Congress members to Honduras and Guatemala to examine the root causes of forced migration. Delegates met with survivor organizations, Indigenous Authorities, and communities resisting extractive projects, learning about state violence, impunity, and neoliberal resource extraction. Through these exchanges, they learned about [...]
In that celebration, we paused to honor those who walked with us and those who came before us. We lifted up the legacy of everyone who shaped this path, and remembered all who, over 40 years, transitioned to become ancestors. You can revisit the 40th anniversary kick-off event by watching [...]
On February 5, 2021, the government of Guatemala announced the cancellation of their Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA) with the U.S. For over a year, NISGUA had coordinated with 40+ Central and North American organizations in a campaign to end these inhumane and illegal agreements. While we celebrated this enormous win [...]
We re-launched our Guatemala Accompaniment Program (GAP) with the following goals: organize to link campaigns led by Guatemalan social justice movements with their counterparts in the U.S. and expand opportunities for volunteers to organize; strengthen relationships in communities, deepen existing partnerships, and maintain historic principles of accompaniment; and generate horizontal [...]
Delegations have been a part of NISGUA's organizing model for years. We were thrilled to build on this legacy while fully centering Indigenous comrades by coordinating two Indigenous Exchange delegations in 2019. Read more about the New Mexico State University (NMSU) Indigenous Environmental Leadership Exchange here, and the Indigenous Environmental [...]
On September 26, a panel of three judges ruled that Guatemala committed genocide against the Maya Ixil people in 1982-1983. In their acknowledgement, the court specifically named Ríos Montt and his high command in what was essentially a postmortem conviction of the former dictator. The ruling marks the second time [...]
This historic ruling upheld a lower court's June 2017 order that the then mine owner, Tahoe Resources, halt all construction. It furthermore ordered the mine to remain closed until the Ministry of Energy and Mines conducted a consultation with the Indigenous Xinka people. From the original ruling in 2017 until [...]
This conviction was the first in the world to find an ex-head of state guilty of genocide in the national court system of the country in which the crimes took place. This marked the culmination of 12 years of dedicated work by the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), and [...]
On March 10 of 2005, the Guatemalan Congress ratified the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), an agreement between Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States. This marked the spreading of neoliberalism in Guatemala and served as another tool to continue the unequal [...]
Between 2005-2010, over 80 consultations took place in 11 of the 22 departments of Guatemala. Community consultations continue to be a powerful organizing tool in Guatemalan social movements. Resistances continue to organize them when necessary, and also commemorate past community consultations as a way to maintain unity in the struggle [...]
After a phase of local organizing, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) filed charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against former dictators Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt and their respective military high commands. The AJR and their lawyers at the Center for Human Rights Legal Action [...]
In 2001, NISGUA joined other international organizations to coordinate international accompaniment as a tool to dissuade threats against human rights defenders and open political space for them to continue their work. Our GAP volunteer program is implemented with the support of Sponsoring Communities, who are a living testimony of intergenerational [...]
On April 26, 1998, two days after publicly presenting the Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (REMHI), the interdiocesan truth commission report detailing human rights abuses committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera was brutally assassinated in the garage of his home. Along with our Guatemalan partners [...]
In June 1997, NISGUA convened a broad national conference in Washington D.C. to reaffirm the importance of continuing U.S.-based solidarity work following the Peace Accords and to develop a direction for future program work post-conflict. More than 300 Guatemala activists and academics from across the U.S. gathered to hear from [...]
On December 29, 1996, the Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace was signed, formally ending Guatemala’s armed conflict, which began in 1960 following the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz and the end of the ten-year democratic period (1944–1954). Peace negotiations initially took place outside Guatemala [...]
Working with the Guatemala News & Information Bureau (GNIB) and Global Exchange, NISGUA helped organize a delegation of around 40 people from the U.S. to observe the 1995 national election, the first in decades in which a wide spectrum of Guatemalan political sectors participated, including Indigenous and human rights organizations. [...]
During the Internal Armed Conflict in Guatemala, thousands of families fled to the mountains and forests to escape military persecution and genocide. In 1993, the Communities of Population in Resistance (CPRs) organized a historic "walk-in." 200 people, including NISGUA members, journalists, and religious leaders, hiked into the CPR's concealed communities [...]
In the 1980s, some 200,000 Guatemalans fled to Guatemala to escape the scorched earth practices enacted by the Guatemalan military, trained by the U.S. government. After a decade in refugee camps, many yearned to return to their ancestral lands. In 1992, refugee leaders signed an agreement with the Guatemalan government [...]
This campaign united Indigenous and popular resistances across Abiayala (the Americas, in colonial terms). NISGUA centered demands regarding land distribution, ethnic identity and rights, the debt crisis, labor conditions, and human rights in the campaign. 📸 Poster from the regional conference. Poster reads: Second continental conference. 500 years of Indigenous [...]
The women-to-women tour was one of our first speaking tours. We continue to facilitate annual speaking tours in which representatives of our partner organizations visit the U.S. to connect with communities about their resistances, challenges, and successes. Read more about our more recent speaking tours here. 📸 Poster from the [...]
Beginning in 1982, NISGUA produced the semi-monthly newsletter "Guatemala Network News" to provide information and analysis on Guatemalan current events to network members. It was merged in 1986 with the quarterly magazine, "Guatemala!", produced by the network's Northern CA affiliate, Guatemala News & Information Bureau (GNIB), and renamed, "Report on [...]
After a founding conference in 1980, existing local solidarity communities that had sprung up across the U.S. to shelter Guatemalans fleeing violence and to organize policy change came together to form the NISGUA national network to increase their political leverage and focus their advocacy potential through joint campaigns. 📸 1. [...]