Beyond the Bubble: Death Squad Dossier in Guatemala, Mexico's War Against Migrants, Barrick's Bloody Gold in Tanzania, Climate Reparations Now! & Remembering the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

I feel like I have been mentally trapped inside the U.S. election bubble over the last few months. Time to reengage with the rest of the world. Five articles for some weekend reading!

The Death Squad Dossier

By Peter Canby, The New York Review of Books

Decades after Guatemala’s long civil war, a chronicle of government kidnapping and disappearance is bringing former officials to trial. Will there be justice for the victims?

The Death Squad Dossier is one of the few physical records of the mass disappearances that were a significant part of Guatemala’s civil war. The fact that it is only now, twenty-three years after it became public, resulting in the prosecution of over a dozen military and police officials reflects the country’s long struggle to come to grips with its past and transform itself into a law-abiding democracy…[In the Death Squad Dossier] they also found training manuals going back to the US’s School of the Americas, which was used to train Latin American officers—first in Panama and then at Fort Benning, Georgia—in counterinsurgency techniques. These manuals described the US National Security Doctrine, which was the basis for Guatemala’s concept of “internal enemies,” used as a justification for the disappearances.

READ MORE: https://archive.ph/ntf3i

Mexico’s War Against Migrants

Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned on a promise to humanize migrant policy in Mexico and Central America. What happened?

By Dawn Paley (@dawn_), TruthDig

The migrant enforcement regime in Mexico today is defined by an unprecedented level of militarization, especially along the northern and southern borders.

This militarization, sold as necessary to combat organized crime and keep criminals out, has done little to keep Mexicans or migrants safe. What it has done, at least temporarily, is placated Washington, raised smugglers fees and shifted Mexico’s  migration containment machinery into overdrive.

READ MORE: https://tinyurl.com/6jfn9pcu

Barrick’s Tanzania gold mine one of the deadliest in Africa

Violence against Indigenous residents intensifies with rising numbers of killings, assaults and torture by police assigned to the North Mara mine, bringing the death toll to at least 77 and 304 wounded

By RAID (@raidukorg)

Community members say the violence against them has increased over the past 12 months. They say “mine police” (a term used by local residents to refer to police the mine engages to provide security) regularly conduct mine-related operations in residential areas, force their way into homes without a warrant, arbitrarily arrest and beat residents, and fire teargas and ammunition indiscriminately, including near children. In what may be a new tactic, RAID also found that these police tortured Kurya residents in mine-related operations to, among other things, extract confessions that they had trespassed onto the mine or been involved in theft from the mine, or force them to identify others allegedly involved in such activities.

READ MORE: https://tinyurl.com/4hyanwxa

“Loss and damage” is not enough: Why we need climate reparations

By Autumn Burton, Global Witness

As the impacts of the climate crisis become more severe, world leaders must ensure that those most responsible for the crisis provide financial support to help the communities most impacted by it – the communities who are least responsible for global carbon emissions.

Climate reparations are an attempt to right historical injustices as well as to prevent them from occurring again in the future. This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explicitly acknowledged the connection between colonialism and climate change.

READ MORE: https://tinyurl.com/3arwhaj9

The Forgotten Fight Against Fascism

By William Loren Katz, Zinn Education Project

The brave young men and women of the Lincoln and other International Brigades slowed but did not stop fascism.

In the United States some 2,800 young men and women of different races and backgrounds formed the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” Seamen and students, farmers and professors, they hoped that their bravery could turn the tide, or at last alert the world to the fascist drive for world domination.

READ MORE: https://tinyurl.com/5n6c4uj6

Thanks for reading! I look forward to your feedback and suggestions. And most importantly, keep organizing!