The treasurer of the Izabal Banana Plantation Workers’ Union (SITRABI) in Guatemala, Idar Joel Hernández Godoy, was killed by unidentified gunmen as he left the Nuevo Campo plantation in the community of Los Amates this week.
Eyewitnesses waiting for a bus said that two men on a motorbike shot at Hernández Godoy as he was driving the union vehicle back towards the office in Morales. The vehicle lost control and crashed with a lorry, while the gunmen fled, according to a Banana Link report.
This is the second killing of a SITRABI official this year. Oscar Humberto Gonzales Vásquez, a local committee member and worker at Bandegua, was killed on 11 April. His body was found with 35 bullets in it.
“Enough of all this impunity and corruption that means the truth about these bloody events afflicting Guatemalan families is never found out,” SITRABI said.
The US embassy issued a press release denouncing the killing and expressing its concern about the violence and intimidation facing organised workers in the country.
In calling on the Guatemalan government to do all in its power to bring those responsible for the murder of Hernandez to justice, the embassy added: “When a trade union leader is violently attacked in total impunity, the impact of the crime can reach beyond the individual targeted and cast a shadow of fear over others, weakening the right to free association and collective bargaining.”
In a 2009 report, the US government had cited the killing of Marco Tulio Ramirez, another SITRABI leader, in September 2007, as evidence of the “lack of compliance with labour laws” that prevails in the country. Nobody has been charged for any of the killings.
