The first thing you notice in Esperancita del Rio — a tiny farming village in northern Guatemala’s lush Alta Verapaz region — is the quiet. The gentle bubbling of the nearby San Roman river, the whinnying of a family of horses… and that’s about it. But every 15 minutes, a massive truck roars down the village’s single dirt road, shattering the calm.
The trucks are a constant reminder that this village of Indigenous Q’eqchi Maya people is fighting for its very existence against a corporate giant — Industria Chiquibul, a Guatemalan palm oil company that has unjustly plagued and polluted Esperancita’s land and water for more than a decade. Just upriver from the village’s tin-roofed community center, a pipeline from Industria Chiquibul’s palm oil processing plant dumps industrial waste into the San Roman River day and night.
Today, their water is undrinkable; their fish are dead; and bathing in the San Roman can cause severe skin irritations.
Through it all, AJWS grantee CONGCOOP — a national Guatemalan organization devoted to accompanying Indigenous communities in their struggles to protect their land and natural resources — has supported the villagers of Esperancita. Currently, thanks to CONGCOOP and another AJWS grantee, Bufete de Pueblos Indigenas (the Indigenous Law Firm), Esperancita and several other villages are involved in a class action lawsuit against Industria Chiquibul filed with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.
The story of Esperancita del Rio isn’t unique in Guatemala — it’s a painfully common tale of corporate corruption and injustice against Guatemala’s Indigenous Peoples. And few people have seen this story play out as vividly as 62-year-old Santiago Caal.
Like so many Indigenous Guatemalans, Santiago’s parents were indentured laborers on a plantation — never earning enough to dream of owning land. In 1980, a young Santiago heard about an initiative of Guatemala’s Institute for Agrarian Transformation offering rural families small plots of land. It was the heat of Guatemala’s internal armed conflict, and Santiago knew a move could be dangerous. But he dreamt of breaking free of the grueling poverty his family endured. Along with 28 other Indigenous families, Santiago and his wife trekked through the jungle and cleared the land that became Esperancita del Rio with their own hands.
“According to Q’eqchi Maya belief, our earth is sacred. She is our mother, providing us with food and water, with everything we need to grow and survive. And in return, we must respect, value and honor her,” he says. “What we built here was all we needed; the river filled with fish, the land fresh and fertile.”
The families of Esperancita del Rio formed a tight-knit community devoted to upholding these traditional Mayan values. In the mid-2000’s, as neighboring villages began selling parcels of land to Industria Chiquibul — under the promise of jobs and prosperity — Santiago and other founders of Esperancita vowed to hold onto their invaluable patch of Mother Earth. By 2012, Chiquibul had established its palm oil plantation — a massive patchwork quilt of connected plots of land — and begun polluting the San Roman River. By 2017, the river’s fish were dead, and children were getting boils after bathing.
Santiago filed a complaint with local police, but he was summarily dismissed — he held no clout compared with the industrial giant. He knew he needed to take action. With the support of CONGCOOP, in 2020 Santiago founded Movimiento de Comunidades en Defensa del Agua Qana’ch’och’ (Movement of Communities in Defense of Water, Mother Earth), a true grassroots movement of Indigenous Guatemalans suffering the same fate as him and his family. The notion of Indigenous solidarity caught on quickly through Alta Verapaz — Qana’ch’och’ counts its members across five different municipalities.
“In the Q’eqchi language, Qana’ch’och’ literally means ‘Mother Earth.’ And when her land is sold and polluted and hurt — we know she is in pain,” says Santiago. “We must defend her and her resources that keep us alive. Not just for us, but for our children, and their children.”
While CONGCOOP is a national organization with well-established connections to the halls of power and experience advocating for policy, Qana’ch’och’ is its grassroots, community-based counterpart.
“When we brought forward complaints or lawsuits individually, we were swatted away like flies. Our complaints were filed away in a drawer, never to be seen again. But now, as Qana’ch’och’, we speak in one voice,” says Santiago. “We came together under one central idea: Water is the most vital liquid to life. To all life. And it must be protected.”
In February, 2025, Qana’ch’och’ celebrated its fifth anniversary with a two-day gathering. Thanks to AJWS funding, hundreds of villagers from all five municipalities traveled to Tezulutlan II, a small village downriver from Esperancita del Rio, to strategize, plan and fortify themselves for the ongoing fight. Tezulutlan II villagers contributed grain, vegetables and other food; many opened their homes to the visitors. Government officials attended, as well as representatives of Indigenous communities fighting similar battles over land and water around the country. The lawyers of Bufete de Pueblos Indigenas arrived to discuss the current class action lawsuit, filed with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights on behalf of Qana’ch’och’ and three local villages. CONGCOOP is advocating for the case to be brought to trial this year.
In the evening, Santiago was smiling — the heaviness of the day replaced by the joy of being together with his brothers and sisters in the struggle. As a marimba band played into the night, Santiago spoke with resolve about his eight children and reminisced about the land he cleared decades ago to provide them with a future.
“I keep fighting because the moment you quit — injustice will take your place. Maybe we can’t return our Mother Earth exactly to how she was but, until my time to leave this world, I will keep struggling so things don’t get any worse.”