Media for social change

Thirty-six years of civil war in Guatemala killed about 200,000 people, most of them from indigenous nations. The peace process peaked in 1996 with the signing of peace accords. The Nuevo Horizonte Cooperative was created in the Peten region in the wake of these agreements. Most of the members of the Nuevo Horizonte community took part in the armed struggle against the Guatemalan dictatorship. When they arrived in Peten the land was barren and inhospitable. There was no water or electricity. Over the past seven years, thanks to fish-farming, agricultural, reforesting and ecotourism projects and other ideas born in schoolrooms, the cooperative has become a symbol of alternative resistance.