I met with CONAVIGUA today, an indigenous widows organization that began in 1988. All of their members of widows as a result of the US-backed counterinsurgency war. I spoke with Emilia Pana who is with the leasdership committee. She said that in the past year CONAVIGUA has spent a great deal of time on clandestine cemetary exhumations in the regions of Chimaltenango and Quiche. The most recent exhumation had the remains of roughly 200 people masacred in the 1980s.

The other area of work has been with capacity building for women. Every 2 months they do a lengthy training for women to become human rights promoters, with an emphasis on indigenous rights and women´s rights. CONAVIGUA is also working closely with CONIC against CAFTA. Emilia was recently in San Salvador for a regional meeting on resisting the proposed CAFTA plan. She said ¨CAFTA will be a great threat to the Mayan people, economically, with particular concerns for us on the importation of genetically modified corn.¨ Despite all the local news hype claiming that CAFTA will make things better, she said there is a great deal of education and resistance.

Rachel, Tony and Tom all left for Chiapas this morning to be part of a Mexico Solidarity Network facilitated tour of the Zapatista communities. Matt went to the rainforest area of Guatemala known as the Peten to investigate a proposed damn site near the Mexican border. Many fear that this damn would have the same negative impact as the one that the World Bank funded in Chixoy in 1982.