Grant name: Strengthen Territorial Governance and Revalue Ancestral Knowledge with Equality and Equity in Ch’orti’ Indigenous Communities
Local partner: Coordinator of Associations and Communities for the Development of the Maya Ch´orti´ Peoples (COMUNDICH)
Country: Guatemala (Municipalities of: Camotán, Jocotán, La Unión, Departament of Chiquimula y Zacapa)
Background and objective
Efforts to legitimize the rights of the Ch’orti’ people have made important advancements, including the recognition of identity, organizations and authority; as well as territorial and environmental restitution of ancestral rights. In spite of these advancements, the Ch’orti’ face a repressive system that persecutes and judicializes their struggle, imprisons and assassinates indigenous leaders, and stigmatizes and demonizes spiritual life and ancestral knowledge.
The project seeks to strengthen the territorial governance of the Ch’orti’ people by supporting indigenous authorities to access justice through the revalorization of ancestral knowledge. To achieve this end, the project will work on: 1) strengthening indigenous authorities using a model for exercising territorial administration with equality and gender equity; 2) reinforcing indigenous women collectives to improve access to justice and territorial and environmental rights and 3) restoration of ancestral knowledge through a group of healing grandmothers
Local partner information
The Coordinator of Associations and Communities for the Development of the Maya Ch´orti´ Peoples (COMUNDICH) works to achieve the recognition, respect and exercise of the rights of the Maya Ch’orti ‘people, based on their own ways of life and self-determination, eliminating socio-economic and cultural forms, systems, and practices that generate discrimination, inequality and exclusion, in strict observance of a multi-ethnic, pluricultural and multilingual State.
