Participate in Speakers' Tours
............................................................................................

Tour Advocacy and Media Successes

Our speaking tours bring Guatemalan voices for justice and human rights to a larger audience. Meeting with these powerful Guatemalan speakers and learning about their work inspires activism in the U.S. and better informs our advocacy efforts.

Each of our tour speakers reaches thousands of people in the U.S. through interviews with the press, advocacy meetings with elected officials, and presentations in colleges, churches, and community centers.

See below for:

ADVOCACY SUCCESSES - 2008

MEDIA COVERAGE 

FUNDS RAISED FOR GRASSROOTS GROUPS

...................................................................................................................................................

ADVOCACY SUCCESSES - 2008

• Our 2008 speaker attended Goldcorp’s annual shareholders’ meeting where he provided testimony on the detrimental environmental and social effects of the Marlin mine and responded to questions from investors, many of whom expressed great concern about what they learned. 
• We connected Ixcán representatives to the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at Washington University, which now provides critical research on the involvement of international financial institutions in the Xalalá hydroelectric dam.
• The tours introduced community members to organizations like the Bank Information Center in Washington D.C., which led to a face-to-face meeting with World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and an investigation by the Ombudsman of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank Group.

...................................................................................................................................................

MEDIA COVERAGE 

The following are examples of media coverage of past tours.

Rolando Lopez Maya-Mam of the Mayan Integral Development Association AJCHMOL (ADIMA) met with various North American indigenous groups and was interviewed on indigenous resistance to mining.

See “Mining Gold, and Outrage, in Guatemala”

...............................................................................

NISGUA and the Washington Office on Latin America coordinated a number of lobbying visits for SEDEM’s director, Iduvina Hernandez, Director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in a Democracy (SEDEM), who spoke about the creation of the Commission to Investigate Illegal Groups and Clandestine Security Apparatuses (CICIACS), the importance of dismantling the institutionalized culture of impunity, the presidential candidacy of General Ríos Montt, and the 2003 elections.

Journalist Speaks on Guatemalan Politics

...............................................................................

Maria Domingo from Mama Maquin took part in anti-CAFTA activities and protests during the CAFTA negotiations, participating in a number of different media and public events.

Listen to "CAFTA: The Cost of Free Trade.

Also read "Columbus’ Legacy Debated: American Indians, Mayans Talk During Lake Worth Forum."

...............................................................................

Maria Teresa Sic de Mendoza from the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), spoke in the Southwest about the organization’s efforts to hold two former dictators – Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt – accountable for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The local Fox channel in Kansas City broadcast an interview with her, as did a CBS affiliate in Fayetteville, Arkansas, which reached an audience of 60,000-70,000. One of Maria Teresa’s live presentations was also fully recorded and replayed on the community access channel in Fayetteville, and in L.A., she gave three radio interviews to the local Pacifica station, one of which was broadcast to Venezuela.

See "Proponent of Peace Speaks,"
Reliving Atrocities: Guatemalans in Kansas City Asking for Help," and
"We Raise Our Voice. . . We Cannot Remain Silent! The Women Speak Out Tour Comes to Fayetteville."  

...................................................................................................................................................

FUNDS RAISED FOR GRASSROOTS GROUPS

NISGUA tours also raise money for Guatemalan grassroots groups, which do not always have many sources of funding for their important work. In recent years, funds raised from tours have helped organizations in a variety of ways.

• LESBIRADAS, the only lesbian organization in Guatemala, recently used tour proceeds to overcome financial difficulties and make some emergency bill payments.
• The Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in a Democracy (SEDEM) used tour money to help cover the expenses of a consultant who worked with the organization Detained and Disappeared of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA) for six months to develop more reliable security measures for their offices, which had suffered a series of break-ins, kidnappings, and ongoing surveillance.
  Mama Maquin, a grassroots indigenous women’s organization, used NISGUA’s tour donation to hold talks on community organizing, institutional strengthening, and how to strengthen the organization’s strategic vision and lines of work..
• The Agrarian Platform is a coalition of 15 peasant, human rights, academic, and religious organizations that seeks to construct a broad-based movement in favor of structural change in the countryside that favors rural development for the marginalized, rural poor. They spent NISGUA tour monies to bring people to Guatemala City on April 28, 2004, to make public demands on the Berger administration regarding land issues. The coalition estimates that 30,000 Platform members participated in this action.
• The Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) was formed by a group of genocide survivors who lived through massacres during the years 1981 and 1982 and decided to charge two former Guatemalan dictators – Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt – with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The AJR used money raised from NISGUA’s 2003 tour to help cover the costs of AJR board members’ monthly meetings, during which these representatives gather from around the country to organize collective strategies around the cases and deal with related issues, such as reparations for victims.