Americas

"Within our indigenous community of Xoxocotla, we continue to hold the ancestral values we inherited. It never crosses our mind to leave them behind. Because in daily life we are always in contact with nature, with our lands, with our water, with our air. We live in harmony with nature because we don't like the way that modernity is advancing, destroying our territory and our environment." - Saúl Atanasio Roque Morales, a Xoxocotla indigenous man from Morelos, Mexico

Half a century ago, on the spurious grounds that extreme sacrifices were required in the battle to prevent a communist takeover of the world, the US government decided to use the citizens of Nevada as nuclear guinea pigs.

"Honduras has been known for two things only: being a military base for the [contra] attacks on the Nicaraguan revolution, and Hurricane Mitch." - Berta Caceres, co-founder and general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras.

"We live on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. We are a mix of African descendants and indigenous peoples who came about more than 200 years ago in the island of San Vicente. Without our land, we cease to be a people. Our lands and identities are critical to our lives, our waters, our forests, our culture, our global commons, our territories." - Miriam Miranda of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization

"Those before you were strong. Now they're all dead. Stop what you are doing, or the same will happen to you." Those were the words delivered to Frena Florvilus, Director of Education and Advocacy of the Haitian human rights organization Defenders of the Oppressed (DOP), early on the morning of August 11 by one of four unidentified men who attempted to enter DOP's office.

Bajo Aguán, a fertile agricultural region in the north of Honduras, might at first glance look like a bucolic paradise. In fact, it is part of a historic land struggle. It is also the site of a war - a strange war, undeclared and largely invisible, where only one side has arms.