Guatemala Accompaniment Project (GAP)
Providing a dissuasive presence at the request of Guatemalan organizers who are under threat for their work
What is accompaniment?
NISGUA is one of many organizations worldwide using international accompaniment as a strategy to stand with activists in their struggle for social, racial, and environmental justice. Organizations, communities, and activists under threat request an international presence as a security measure to dissuade attacks and create a safer space for them to carry out their struggle for defense of life and territory and justice for crimes of the past.
How does accompaniment work?
In Guatemala, state, corporate, and parallel clandestine actors exert power through threats, criminalization, and violence. Accompaniers’ monitoring and reporting serve to dissuade violence and to alert the international community when violence does occur. Our nationwide network takes action, putting pressure on the Guatemalan and U.S. governments, transnational corporations, and other actors. This helps ensure that activists have the political space necessary to safely organize in defense of their rights.
Who do we accompany?
We provide accompaniment to organizations and individuals involved in legal cases for justice and accountability for crimes committed during the Guatemalan Internal Armed Conflict. This includes the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), our longest-standing partner. A courageous group of survivors, the AJR has pursued legal prosecution of genocide and crimes against humanity while focusing deeply on community healing and promoting historical memory outside of the courtroom. They, and many other organizations, strive to remember the crimes committed against them, under the conviction that historical memory and collective reckoning is an important first step in ensuring that those crimes never happen again.
Following the signing of the Peace Accords, international investment in large-scale mega-development projects, like mines and hydroelectric dams, increased. So, too, did attacks against Indigenous and campesino community leaders and organizations defending life and territory. Accompaniers also work with individuals and organizations under threat for defending their resources, communities, culture, and self-determination.
Image: Rene Ann Goodrich speaks about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis at a NISGUA screening of 500 Years, a documentary about the struggle for justice after the Maya genocides. GAP Internacionalista will continue to connect movements across borders.
Sponsoring Communities
Our Sponsoring Community partnerships provide the resources, energy, and political action necessary to ensure ongoing international accompaniment in Guatemala. Their long-term commitment to human rights and solidarity is an essential component of the longevity and sustainability of GAP. Sponsoring Communities provide financial support to individual accompaniers and are key members of NISGUA’s organizer network.
When GAP accompanied the return of displaced peoples, many Sponsoring Communities developed deep relationships with sister Guatemalan communities, many of which continue to this day. Today, Sponsoring Communities provide critical funds to support individual accompaniers and program work.
Sponsoring Communities are also key organizers in NISGUA’s grassroots initiatives to amplify the voices of our Guatemala partners and connect struggles for justice between Guatemala and the U.S. Responding to accompanier alerts, they organize their members to take action in the face of violence against activists.
GAP is always looking to create new Sponsoring Communities; if you are interested in forming a Sponsoring Community, please contact sarasuadi@nisgua.org.
Current Sponsoring Communities
Contact person Connie Vanderhyden can be reached at connie.vanderhyden@gmail.com.
You can be in touch with LAGOS through Kay Yanisch at kyanisch@yahoo.com.
For more information, contact Dale Sorenson at and learn more at www.mitfamericas.org.
Chris Hansen is the primary contact person and can be reached at marcuschristian@hotmail.com.
For more information, write to Brenda Metzler at bmetzler7@verizon.net or visit www.needhamcongregational.org.
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington (UUCA) became a NISGUA Sponsoring Community in 2007. Their congregation is engaged in an array of local activities, including solidarity work with a local immigrant community and community organizing through VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement). Their commitment to social justice has deepened their work with NISGUA in recent year, resulting in a yearly ALIANZAS-specific delegation to Guatemala and ongoing organizational support to NISGUA. Through ALIANZAS, UUCA currently provides support for two accompaniers. ALIANZAS publishes information regularly in a newsletter and organizes local speaking tours with the accompaniers they sponsor.
For more information, contact the project coordinators, Chris and John Sutton, at: jds42cps44@verizon.net.
Barbara Fuchsman is the contact person for SEPA. She can be reached at bafuchsman@oberlin.net.
Ready to apply?
We believe international solidarity requires the participation of communities who are similarly impacted by the same global systems that violate human rights and threaten those working for true self-determination and justice in Guatemala, as well as their allies. Applications from people of color, Indigenous/Indigenous descent, poor/working class, women, LGBTQI people, and candidates with strong anti-racism/ally experience will be prioritized; all are encouraged to apply.
We are not currently accepting applications for our 2020 accompanier cohort. Please check back soon!
If you would like to apply, please fill out the application form (found to the right), send a 1-2 page resume highlighting relevant experience to gap@nisgua.org, and ask two contacts to fill out the reference form (found to the right) prior to the deadline.
Requirements include:
- The ability to document and analyze events and conditions in order to produce quality written reports and educational materials.
- Cultural sensitivity; excellent judgment skills; ability to work flexibly in dynamic, changing situations; resourcefulness in self-care and relational dynamics.
- A high level of verbal and written Spanish or the ability to develop it with six weeks of intensive study.
- A familiarity with the history of Central America/U.S. relations, the current situation in Guatemala, and a basic understanding of human rights/accompaniment.
- Previous experience in Latin America (especially rural areas) strongly preferred.
- Awareness of security issues, willingness to work in a situation which might involve risk, interest in individual and team analysis.
- Familiarity with or willingness to learn strategies for grassroots fundraising and education in the US.
- A minimum six month commitment.
- A U.S. passport and a strong connection to a U.S. community.
Benefits include:
- Lodging provided at our main office in Guatemala City.
- A small monthly stipend to cover health insurance and most in-country travel expense (individual fundraising also required).
- Immersion in the Guatemalan social, cultural, political, and linguistic context.
- One week training on accompaniment and organizing in Berkeley, CA.
- Ongoing check-ins, trainings, and support from Guatemala City staff on well-being, political analysis, organizing, and professional development.
- Access to a grassroots networks of nearly four decades of NISGUA organizers and activists.
- Opportunity to work and live in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural office and living space with fellow volunteers from all over the world.
If you have additional program questions, please email gap[at]nisgua.org.
The Power of Presence
Reflections from more than 20 years providing international accompaniment to threatened human rights and environmental defenders in Guatemala.
GAP Brochure
“The work is ours. It is our country and is for us to do. But you help open the space for us to do that work. Your presence is important.” – Genocide case witness from the Ixcán. Read more about the history of GAP and who we accompany.
Accompanier Perspectives: Connecting — Zapatistas, Feminist Teachings, and Neocolonialism in Guatemala
[Christina Reyes, NISGUA Internacionalista, wrote and sent this letter in early January 2020. It now includes modifications they made in early March 2020 for International Women’s Day] Hello loved ones, I hope this message [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: What is happening at the border?
Nicole Estrada (she/her) wrote this blog while volunteering as an international accompanier in our GAP Internacionalista program. Her blog is here both as a text and an illustrated booklet -- check it out! [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Our struggles are connected and so is our liberation
Welcome to this second Friends and Family letter, I hope you are staying warm and cozy this winter days! I wish you a festive, joyous and reflective time. Below you’ll read about my reflections [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: climate change and Indigenous organizing
Accompanier Olivia Pandolfi (they/she or elle/ella) writes about climate change and indigenous resistance in Quiché, Guatemala. In the text you'll read about extractivism, linguistics, and a multiple-hour Google Earth tour of Guatemala's river systems. ————— [...]
Invest in Racial Justice: Christina Reyes launches GAP Scholarship Fund
A seed of transformation and liberation was planted two years ago, when we shared NISGUA’s vision for solidarity and our commitment to an organization-wide racial justice framework. We committed to increasing participation of People [...]
Accompanier Zine: Militarization & Resistance at the Mexico/Guatemala Border
Former NISGUA accompanier Olivia Pandolfi (they/them or she/her) created this zine about militarization and resistance as a Friends and Family Letter to their community. To read the zine as a PDF, click [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Political prisoners return home
Dear Friends and Family, As I reflect on the past year since joining Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) and officially finishing my first period in Guatemala Accompaniment Program, I hold [...]
Accompanier Zine: An Introduction to Community Consultations in Guatemala
Current NISGUA accompanier Olivia Pandolfi (they/them or she/her) created this zine about community consultations as a Friends and Family Letter to their community. To read the zine as a PDF, click [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Women Seek Justice in Maya Achí Sexual Violence Case
Maya Achi women demanding justice for sexual violence enter the court for a trial date in the case's intermediate phase. Photo credit: ACOGUATE Current accompanier, Tal Netter-Sweet, shares their experience [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Connecting Struggles for Justice Across Borders
Current NISGUA accompanier Meredith Wilkinson shares the journey that brought her to accompaniment and the lessons she'll take away. She invites others to join NISGUA's cross-border work for justice through the Guatemala Accompaniment Program. [...]
Displacement in Guatemala and How Transnational Solidarity Must Impact our Local Organizing for Housing and Land Rights
Washington, D.C. local, Clara Lincoln is a recent NISGUA accompanier through the Guatemala Accompaniment Program. She spent ten months accompanying land and human rights defenders in Guatemala. Since returning, she has collaborated with ONE [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Extraction, Destruction, and Immigration – In Honor of Claudia Patricia Gómez González
Accompanier Claire Bransky dedicates this article to Claudia Patricia Gómez González and the many other victims of the United States' imperialism and racialized violence. The US's funding and training of genocidal dictators and its imposition [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: land, genocide, and gentrification in Guatemala and the US
In her final letter as a human rights accompanier in Guatemala, Clara Lincoln draws connections between the US and Guatemalan governments' violence against indigenous peoples and people of color, through genocide, sexual violence, state brutality, [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Guatemalan History – The coup, the conflict, and the consequences
In her first letter from Guatemala, Claire Bransky provides a brief history of Guatemala and how its people have been affected by forces of racism, exploitation, and the US's imperialism. As a volunteer with [...]
Sponsoring Communities: Needham’s Guatemala Partnership celebrates 30 years of solidarity
NISGUA's Sponsoring Community partnerships provide the resources, energy and political action required to ensure ongoing international accompaniment in Guatemala. Their long-term commitment to human rights and solidarity is an essential component of the longevity [...]
La Resistencia a las Represas Hidroeléctricas en Guatemala: Una Cuestión de Vida y Muerte
Foto: Nómada El siguiente artículo fue escrito por Zia Kandler y publicado en inglés en la revista electrónica, Upside Down World. Fue traducida a español por la autora y publicado aquí con permiso de la [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: From Huehuetenango to Omaha, NE
The Maya Q’anjob’al Nation takes their defense of land and life in Huehuetenango transnational through community organizing in both Guatemala and the U.S. Caya Simonsen worked for 6 months as a NISGUA accompanier in Huehuetenango [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: 2017 Political Crisis in Guatemala
Guatemala plunged into a political crisis this month as President Jimmy Morales attempted to circumvent a criminal investigation into his campaign finances by declaring the head of the UN-sponsored Commision (CICIG) persona non grata, [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Ixil
While international accompaniment is at its core a response to the requests of Guatemalan communities and a tool for the protection of human rights, it is also a radical practice of showing up in solidarity and [...]
Step into the House of Memory
Earlier this year, the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) inaugurated the permanent installation of the Casa de la Memoria, an art exhibit that empowers youth to reconstruct their historical memory through the [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Huehuetenango
Dear Family and Friends, Thanks to those of you who’ve responded to my recent call for action in solidarity with political prisoners in Huehuetenango and for financial support in NISGUA’s successful May Match campaign! [...]
Accompanier Perspectives: Ixcán
Since the mid-1990s, members of the NISGUA network have provided a physical international presence to threatened human rights defenders and communities in the Ixcán. We invite you to read the following reflection piece from one [...]
Disappeared but Not Forgotten: A Guatemalan Community Achieves a Landmark Verdict
The following was written by Amanda Kistler, an international accompanier from 2008 - 2009 with NISGUA. She was based out of Guatemala City and accompanied the plaintiffs in the Choatalúm trial. This article originally [...]
Guatemala: Forced Disappearance and the Search for Justice in El Jute
The following was written by Josh McLeod, an international accompanier with NISGUA who accompanied the plaintiffs in El Jute. This article originally appeared on UpsideDown World. Original article can be found here. "We are fighting [...]