Promoting Peaceful Solutions

Decades of civil war, an inequitable colonial legacy and economic downturns have driven rural Guatemalan families further into poverty.

Wilma Noemi Li, 21, bought three pigs with a microloan from Mercy Corps. She's already sold two, and with the profits was able to pay off her loan, buy two more pigs of a higher breed, purchase a grinding mill and help her family build her house. She has one four-year-old daughter and doesn't want any more. "We should have more children than we can take care of." Photo: Nathan Golon for Mercy Corps

The 36-year-long war that ravaged Guatemala was largely fueled by widespread conflicts over land tenure and abuse by the ruling class and businesses. Indigenous peoples, many of them descendants of the Maya ethnic groups, were denied land ownership or forced from tribal lands. At one point, over 65% of Guatemala's arable land was controlled by just 2.5% of the country's population.

In Guatemala's mountainous Alta Verapaz department, about 90% of the population is indigenous and over 85% are rural. More than half are illiterate and 63% live in poverty. These dire characteristics resulted in a wide number of families living and working on seasonal coffee farms with no real land or homes to call their own. They have been, in many ways, survivors of economic and land systems that conspired to keep them down.

When the worldwide coffee crisis struck Guatemala - and all other coffee-producing countries around the world - beginning in 2000, rural families' meager livelihoods were destroyed almost overnight. The price of coffee on the world market fell by more than half, forcing coffee farms into bankruptcy and leaving indigenous families like Olivia's with no source of income - and no land.

Disillusioned and hungry, poor families have turned to civil disobedience and protests to make their voices heard. Sometimes, these protests have escalated into violent confrontations and forcible occupations of farms, making an already combustible situation even more volatile.

Mercy Corps is working with disgruntled families, landowners, local organizations and the Guatemalan government to help defuse this crisis. A cooperative, coordinated strategy between all stakeholders, involving extensive negotiation and mediation, is leading to peaceful resolution of conflicts and long-term solutions.

Mercy Corps' land conflict resolution uses a two-part approach: directly mediating local land conflicts and then training local organizations to be able to resolve conflicts in the future. Currently, mediation activities take place at ten regional Mediation Centers, located throughout Alta Verapaz. These centers are managed by Mercy Corps' primary local partner, the Association of Lawyers for Legal Development (JADE).

The mediation process is, for the most part, driven by the families themselves. Mercy Corps encourages local people to find solutions that best benefit their communities. One of the main aims of the land conflict project is to put families in touch with resources, including local organizations, that will help them achieve peaceful resolution of their grievances.

There's still a lot of work to be done - but Mercy Corps and its local partners are proving that positive, peaceful change can happen at a grassroots level.