33 Indigenous Rights Defenders Murdered in Latin America

On a daily basis, Indigenous communities live in relationship with and protect Mother Earth. Too often, this work is required to take the form of defending lands, territories, and communities against attacks by corporations and governments and resisting extractive projects that contaminate lakes, rivers, and entire ecosystems, contributing to climate change. Indigenous communities defend the planet for all Peoples. In return for this labor, their individual and collective rights are regularly violated through land theft, displacement, cultural repression, contamination, and physical attacks.

Violence against Indigenous environmental and human rights defenders is rampant worldwide. As part of Cultural Survival (CS) advocacy program, CS tracks violence against Indigenous defenders in an effort to draw connections amongst these cases and demonstrate that this crisis, rather than being a set of unconnected attacks on individual people, is systemic. It exemplifies a dominant culture in which Indigenous rights are ignored, crimes against Indigenous Peoples are not taken seriously by governments, and perpetrators of violence against Indigenous Peoples are not held accountable. In some cases, government involvement surpasses negligence or indifference and suggests active complicity with the crimes. Frontline Defenders’ Executive Director Andrew Anderson explained, “One of the reasons that attacks, and killings of Indigenous human rights defenders is so prevalent is that perpetrators enjoy almost total impunity.”

CS’s advocacy work is targeted: they work alongside community partners in various capacities through on-the-ground capacity building, grantmaking, and legal and policy advocacy at the national and international levels. Related to human rights defenders, their role has been to draw attention, illuminate patterns, and denounce violence to international human rights mechanisms. They do this work in order to build awareness of these crimes at the global level. They encourage questioning by investors in development projects as to the practices of companies on the ground in Indigenous communities, and support calls from communities that the murders of Indigenous defenders do not get swept under the rug but be recognized so that perpetrators may be held accountable.

As a result of structural violence against Indigenous Peoples, many crimes against them are not highly publicized. Cultural Survival tracks all cases of violence against Indigenous defenders they become aware of in the languages that our staff members speak; the majority of these tend to be in Abya Yala (Central and South America).

Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, has called this trend a “global crisis.” Frontline Defenders reported that at least 331 human rights defenders were killed in 2020, 69 percent of whom were specifically defending Indigenous, land, or environmental rights and 26 percent of whom focused on Indigenous Peoples’ rights in particular. Of the total of 331 that Frontline Defenders tracked, 247 defenders, or 75 percent, were killed in Central and South America. In the three years prior to October 2020, over 25 percent of rights defenders who were killed were Indigenous, vastly disproportionately higher than Indigenous Peoples’ proportion of the global population, which is roughly six percent. Global Witness reported that from 2015 to 2019, over one-third of defenders killed were Indigenous.

In some cases, several articles have been published online about a particular Indigenous defender who was murdered with substantial institutional support for community calls for justice. Other times, there may be just one or two local articles published online, or even just a press release passed to us by a partner on the ground. Finally, there are cases that we learn of through social media posts or by word of mouth, with minimal information about the attack or the life of the person who was attacked. The people involved in little-publicized cases are as important to CS as the well-known ones. CS say they are just as committed to making their names and legacies known. Every individual was a beloved person, a community and family member, and someone who is mourned for not only the work they did but for who they were.

CS remember and mourn 33 Indigenous people who were killed in 2021. They also recognize and condemn attacks on seven Indigenous defenders, threats against one, disappearance of one, and the criminalization of four. CS acknowledge that their scope is limited and that violence against Indigenous Peoples and against particular defenders of human rights and the environment far surpasses the data they able to collect.

CS states, “We commit to continuing to work towards justice for Indigenous land and rights defenders alongside the affected communities to the extent that we are able.”

Defenders are listed by country in alphabetical order, then chronologically by date of the incident.

Colombia

María Bernarda Juajibioy and her granddaughter Jazzlín Camila Luna Figueroa (Kamentsá).

Rafael Domicó Carupia (Embera Eyábida)

Sandra Liliana Peña (Nasa)

Argenis Yatacué and Marcelino Yatacué Ipia (Nasa)

Efrén Antonio Bailarín Carupia (Emberá)

Honduras

Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante (Lenca)

México

Vicente Guzmán Reyes, Ambrosio Guzmán Reyes, and José Luis Chávez Mondragón (Purépecha)

Fidel Heras Cruz (Chatino)

Raymundo Robles Riaño (Chatino)

Noé Robles Cruz and Gerardo Mendoza Reyes (Chatino)

Jaime Jiménez Ruiz (Chatino)

Agustín Valdez (Yaqui)

Tomás Rojo Valencia (Yaqui)

Luis Urbano Domínguez Mendoza (Yaqui)

Simón Pedro Pérez López (Tzotzil)

Nicaragua

Eleven people (Mayagna + Miskito), including, among others, Victor Manuel Matamoros Morales, Armando Suárez Matamoros, Borlan Gutiérrex Empra, Armando Pérez Medina, Albert Jairo Hernández Palacios, Sixto Gutiérrez Empra, Kedelin Jarguín Gutiérrez, Ody James Waldan Salgado.

Perú

Estela Casanto Mauricio (Ashánika)

Mario Marcos López Huanca (Asháninka)

For complete profiles of each defender go to https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/memoriam-33-indigenous-rights-defenders-murdered-2021-latin-america