Linking national and international campaigns helps reverting land grab

Country: Guatemala

Principal organisations: OXFAM

In March 2011, 769 families from fourteen Q’eqchi communities were evicted from the Polochic Valley, Guatemala, to allow further expansion of sugar cane plantations. Through its international CRECE (“Grow”) campaign, Oxfam supported the national organization Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC - Peasant Unity Committee) in its advocacy effort to revert the land grab. A global campaign gathered 107,000 signatures from 55 countries to support the cause. In October 2013, the President of Guatemala publicly handed back 140 land titles in the valley and promised to resolve the situation of the remaining families in the course of 2014.