In Defense of Our Ancestral Territories: Resistance and Criminalization of Maya Q’eqchi’ Women in Guatemala

Lesbia Artola Teyul is the regional coordinator of the Comité Campesino de Desarrollo del Altiplano (CCDA), an organization that defends the rights of Indigenous communities in Guatemala. As a result of her activism in defense of land and environmental rights, Artola Teyul has been criminalized by the State and landowners who accuse her of promoting land occupations and participating in organized crime. In this webinar, she will discuss the ways that transnational extractive projects in the Alta Verapaz region have increased land dispossession, extreme poverty, environmental destruction, forced migration and displacement for Maya communities. She will also address the varied ways in which women have contributed to resistance movements in defense of their ancestral territories.