Working for Indigenous Rights

As promised, over the coming months we will be highlighting a few of the service workers that make up the MCC Guatemala/El Salvador team. Tobias Roberts and Yasmin Mendez recently moved from El Salvador to start a position with MCC's partner, Q'anil, in the area of Nebaj, Guatemala. Toby worked with MCC in El Salvador for a number of years where he met Yasmin. They are both very talented and creative individuals and we're excited to have them in Guatemala! In addition to the work they are doing with youth in the outer lying communities of Nebaj, Toby has also been asked by the local communities to be an official observer in the negotiations between these indigenous communities and an international corporation building a hydroelectric dam in the area. We often talk about the mining situation in San Marcos, but think it is equally important to be aware of similar issues happening in other areas of Guatemala that may not get as much attention. We hope you will take the time to read Toby's article about this situation here: A Precedent for Indigenous Economic Rights?


"Yasmin and Tobias are living in the Mayan Highland community of Nebaj where they are working with different groups of youth on small scale economic development projects to try and create options other than migration into the cities, coastal farms and to the United States and Canada. They are also supporting indigenous communities in Nebaj and Cotzal who are resisting the construction of hydroelectric dams by foreign companies on their ancestral lands."