Just Cause - Just Cause Summary

"Just Cause," hosted by Colombian human rights advocate Piedad Córdoba, offers a series of documentaries on Latin American economic, political and social realities. Today we recall some of the most notable scenes from recent programs, beginning with “Guatemala: Murder by Hunger.” Our host comments that the saddest thing for her was to visit a hospital where children were dying of hunger in a land where voracious multinationals have unleashed a war against the people in a country supposedly in peace. “Policarpio Is Hurting” is a look back at the attack on indigenous peasant farmers by students and other residents of Sucre with the backing of the authorities on May 24, 2008. The most moving scene was when Policarpio burst into tears and said he didn’t want his children to have to experience what he had gone through. “Red Earth” documents the struggles of landless Paraguayan peasant farmers and the Curuguaty massacre, in which a confrontation between peasants and police on June 15, 2012 left 17 dead. In “Thirst for Power / the Guarani Aquifer” we learn that Paraguay is rich in water, but unscrupulous extraction methods, pollution, corporate voracity and the thirst for political power are placing the vital liquid at risk. “Sacred Rivers” takes us to the lands of the Lenca people in Honduras who are engaged in a struggle against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project that aims to put the sacred Gualcarque River in private hands. “Black Earth” looks at the situation of the Garifunas, descendants of Carib, Arawak, and West African peoples in Honduras who have resisted for more than 215 years and are now fighting to preserve their land and their way of life against attempts to expel them. In “Quelling Dissent in Colombia,” poets, students, activists and political prisoners talk to us about how they have faced government attempts to silence them and put an end to their protests. In the most recent program covered in this summary, “Campesinos Resist Extermination in Colombia,” we meet peasant farmers whose marches and protests were instrumental in sparking a national agrarian strike. Although agribusiness and large multinational energy companies prefer a countryside without them, these campesinos continue to resist and find ways to live in harmony with the earth and other people. teleSUR