Participate in a solidarity delegation to Honduras

Deadline: April 24: Last Call: Join La Voz de los de Abajo in Honduras for the International Week of the Disappeared (Semana Internacional de los Desaparecidos) May 23 – May 31, 2015. 

As I write this last call for our May delegation I am looking at a photo of Donatilo Giménez, trade union leader and LIBRE party activist in La Ceiba on the northern coast of Honduras. Donatilo was disappeared from his workplace at the National Autonomous University Atlantida Center on April 8th and has not been found yet. This Spring has also seen the death of 4 student activists in Tegucigalpa, one of whom was a 14 year old girl and a death threat by a government official against a human rights defender accompanying the students.

Human rights defenders are asking for international solidarity and accompaniment as harassment and threats and a campaign to discredit them is increasing in the context of their work against the continuing serious human rights violations in Honduras. We are invited by the Committee of the Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) to accompany their work and other human rights defenders for the International Week of the Disappeared. 

 

Forced disappearances by death squads and security forces are a global problem that has reappeared  in Honduras since the June 2009 coup. This year’s week to commemorate the disappeared occurs as we see the number of desparecidos and desaparecidas increasing alarmingly in Central America and in Mexico; there is an urgent need to understand what is happening and to build solidarity and resistance together across borders.  

 

We will also meet with campesino communities, students and others at risk during our visit. 

 

Please contact me with any questions or interest in the delegation by April 25th. 

 

saludos solidarios

Victoria Cervantes

La Voz de los de Abajo Chicago

lavozchicago@yahoo.com

Rest in Power, Eduardo Galeano

Dedicated to The Nobodies
The nobodies: the sons of no one, the owners of nothing.
Who don’t speak languages, but rather dialects.
Who don’t follow religions, but rather superstitions.
Who don’t make art, but rather crafts.
Who don’t practice culture, but rather folklore.
Who are not human, but rather human resources.
Who have no face but have arms.
Who have no name, but rather a number.
Who don’t appear in the universal history books,
but rather in the police pages of the local press.
The nobodies,
the ones who are worth less than the bullet that kills them.

Los Nadies, by Eduardo Galeano

Salvadoran General Deported from U.S. for Command Role in Human Rights Crimes During El Salvador Civil War

UNREDACTED

General Vides Casanova. Photo Credit: Latin America News Dispatch.

Violations Cited in Justice Department Ruling Include Torture of Salvadoran Citizens, Murder of Four American Churchwomen, Among Others

By Alexandra Smith

Thursday, April 9, 2015—Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former chief of El Salvador’s National Guard and then Minister of Defense from 1979-89, was deported from Florida yesterday as a result of a precedent-setting decision by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, following 16 years of legal efforts by human rights groups against him.

In 1999, The Center for Justice and Accountability filed a case against Vides Casanova and another former defense minister, Gen. José Guillermo García, charging them with liability for the torture of three Salvadoran civilians under the “command responsibility” doctrine illustrating intellectual authorship. The case, Romagoza et al. v. Generals Garcia and Vides Casanova, cemented the legal authority of the command responsibility doctrine with a verdict demanding…

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José Ángel Navarrete González

Jan Nimmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está José Ángel Navarrete González. Digital Collage: Jan Nimmo ©

Emiliano Navarrete Victoriano was working away in the US when his son, José Ángel Navarrete González was born. He remembers the phone call from his wife back in Mexico. He describes the birth of his son as the best day of his life.

José Ángel, or “Pepe” likes playing football but his dad instilled in him that it was important to study too. His parents didn’t have money to send him to a private school so their only option was to get him a place in a Normalista School so he went to study in Ayotzinapa.

His father recalls an exchange with his son, two days before he disappeared, “I gave him a big hug and told him that I loved him. I said – I’m so proud of you son, I like the way you conduct yourself. Wherever you are I will always…

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