Growing Latin American Humanitarian Emergency Invisible to the World Daniela Pastrana - Inter Press Service
go to original May 20, 2016

The Juarez Valley on the Mexico-Texas border, a forty mile stretch of cotton fields and ghost towns, is so dangerous that even the police don't dare to enter. (MailOnline/MavesiusVidos)

This article forms part of an IPS series on the occasion of the World Humanitarian Summit, to take place May 23-24 in Istanbul.

“This is a humanitarian crisis,” said Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, referring to the generalised violence in Mexico and in Honduras and other countries of Central America, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and is a product of transnational crime, but is invisible to the international community.

Zúñiga Cáceres, the daughter of indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres, who was murdered on Mar. 2, is in Mexico after visiting several European cities to ask for help clarifying her mother’s murder and to call for a cancellation of the financing for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, to which the Lenca indigenous people are opposed.

In an interview with IPS she admitted that despite the death threats and the murders of other activists, she didn’t believe they would dare kill her mother, who was so well-known at an international level.

She herself and her siblings had fled to Mexico due to the threats against members of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), which was founded by Cáceres 23 years ago. She had been studying in Mexico for a month when her mother was killed.

Now she wants to tell the world about communities that are displaced and forced off their land because of a “neoliberal, racist and patriarchal” system.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service | En español

Related: 'Land Not a Commodity': Indigenous Mexicans Fight Mining Act (teleSUR)

Related: Will Canada Recognize Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Developing Countries Too? (Inter Press Service)

IPS is an international communication institution with a global news agency at its core, raising the voices of the South and civil society on issues of development, globalisation, human rights and the environment. Check out the website at IPSNews.net

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!