Fighting for Water Means Fighting Corruption
Ramiro Gomez has lived in San Miguel Siguilá, a town in the highlands of Guatemala, his whole life. He is the representative of the Transparency and Probity Commission in the municipality. His neighbors chose him to lead because of his spirit of resistance and his desire to fight against corruption.
“I am motivated to fight corruption because it is unbearable and unacceptable. We realized that there is too much corruption here,» says Ramiro. «My main motivation is to fight to denounce the people doing illegal things affecting us all.”
On a Cristosal visit in 2023, Ramiro walked around an unfinished construction site he pointed out broken and dilapidated pipes. The project Ramiro is talking about was planned to supply drinking water to more than 700 families in the area, but it never did. The community of Ramiro is still without running water.
The fight against corruption has been at the heart of the indigenous resistance in Guatemala for decades. There have been many attempts to combat it, reaching a pinnacle of national and international support with the creation and work of the International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG) in 2006. The ruling elite in Guatemala held enough power to eventually shut down the Commission in 2019 and quickly tried to reverse the gains made.
“We will continue to be at the forefront of these struggles so that our rights are protected and that indigenous people and the poor be respected”.
Ramiro and other committee members have spent the last two years gathering evidence needed to investigate cases of corruption and other injustices in their community including the water project that never worked. This is where Cristosal’s Anti-corruption and Justice team can help. With the community’s knowledge and Crisotsal’s tools, they brought their evidence to the government offices of prosecution and auditors. The prosecutor’s offices have been sent to investigate the site and the file has been re-opened showing that at least 180 fictitious positions were assigned to people who never worked there.
At Cristosal we understand that citizen and community participation are key to the fight against corruption. This is how people stand up for their human rights. Our professional teams accompany communities to build evidence for their cases. Empowerment means the collective effort in which every voice counts in these communities that have been marginalized for too long.