Three Displaced Laguna Larga Residents Detained: Take Action!

On Friday, April 21, Guatemalan security forces arbitrarily arrested three displaced members of the Laguna Larga community in northern Petén as they were peacefully tending to their crops. Agents from the Nature Protection Division (DIPRONA), National Civil Police (PNC), National Council for Protected Areas, and the Guatemalan Military apprehended a 26-year-old man, a 31-year-old woman, and an eleven-year-old boy. Community members report that a PNC agent hung the child upside down during the attack and shook the child violently. 

The security agents transported the two men and the boy to San Andrés, Petén, to bring them before a judge. Their initial hearing–which according to Guatemalan law, must be held within 24 hours of arrest–has not been held yet. Without knowing the charges against them, the three have been forced to await the initial hearing from the local jail. Human rights groups denounced this as arbitrary detention and in violation of their rights to due process.   

The three detained individuals are from the community of Laguna Larga, a Maya Q’eqchi and Chuj community in the Petén that was violently evicted in 2017. (For more information, read our blog!) With their homes, crops, and community infrastructure destroyed, more than 100 families resettled on a strip of land near the Mexican border, attempting to survive while searching for a solution. Despite receiving precautionary measures from the IACHR to guarantee the rights of the residents and a ruling from the Constitutional Court to find land for the community, the Guatemalan government has yet to find a durable solution. Instead, these community members have been arbitrarily detained for growing food near their temporary settlement.  

We are sending letters to the embassy to share our concerns with the lack of due process and arbitrary detention. We just need some information from you. To send your letter, please fill out the form below.