NPR

Killings Of Guatemala's Indigenous Activists Raise Specter Of Human Rights Crisis

Indigenous groups and human rights activists worry that the violence that raged through their communities in the 1970s and 1980s is making a comeback.
Storekeepers from La Terminal market march in support of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales in Guatemala City this month.

For three days last week, thousands of Guatemalans blocked roads and major highways to protest the Central American country's slide toward a constitutional crisis. The protest organizers included groups that have long demanded justice: indigenous communities and campesinos, as rural and farm workers are called.

Indigenous citizens, many dressed in colorful traditional clothing, came out partly to protest the Guatemalan president's recent expulsion of a United Nations-backed commission investigating corruption in the country. Since 2007, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish initials CICIG and

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