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Guatemala Radio Project Volunteer: Noe Navarro

Noe Navarro is from an Indigenous Maya Mam community in the north-western part of Guatemala, called San Miguel Ixtahuacan, San Marcos. He has been involved in social activism over the past ten years, helping to organize the community's struggle against the infamous Marlin gold mine, which has been operating in San Miguel since 2005, and has been environmentally as well as socially damaging for his community. Noe got involved with community radio movement after his organization, ADISMI, decided to launch their own radio station, ‘Voz del Pueblo.' After receiving training from Cultural Survival staff, Noe became co-director of the station, along with two other volunteers. His mission is to inform listeners about the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the laws that relate to those rights, to speak about topics important to the vitality of the community, as well to share information about negative impacts of mining. Noe and the radio station are currently facing some troubles, as the transmitter at the station has been failing over the last few months.