Civil Society Opposition to Nonferrous Metals Mining in Guatemala

Mining connects Canada and Honduras not only through the proposed trade agreement and the long history

In this thesis, the authors look into the issue of indigenous resistance against large-scale mining projects in Latin America. It is based on three months of qualitative fieldwork in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, close to the Marlin Mine, Guatemala. The thesis exposes the ways in which the indigenous communities contest the dominant discourses of powerful actors: Montana Exploradora and the Guatemalan state with regard to gold mining, development, resistance, closure, and impacts of mining. It provides a unique perspective because it 1) in contrast with most literature, focuses on a long-established mine, including the subject of mine closure and 2) equally pays attention to the way Montana Exploradora and state actors shape their discourse. The authors find that in the case of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, it is impossible to speak of a discourse of the indigenous community as a whole; different groups exist that shape their discourses differently, and are not exclusively negative about mining. They conclude that the main issue that from the beginning stood in the way of an honest dialogue between the two sides, has not been environmental destruction, contamination, or the method of working of the company, but the existence of uneven power relations and the patronizing way in which the mining company approaches the indigenous population and the municipality.

AlterNative, 2016

The Canadian corporation Goldcorp's Marlin Mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán is the fi rst open-pit goldmine in Guatemala. While Goldcorp depicts Marlin as a showcase for development and good business, many Mayan women express extreme distress at the multilayered destruction caused by the corporation. Under the guidance of the indigenous women's movement Tz'ununija', in May-June 2011 and July 2012, I held in-depth interviews with fi ve Maya-Mam leaders and two workshops in San Miguel with more than 30 women opposing the mine. Analysing their visions and Goldcorp's public development discourse, I argue that the mine is decimating San Miguel's social fabric and environment. Although Goldcorp has created employment, infrastructure and injected money into the local economy, gains are short term in comparison with the long-term impacts of the mining venture on land and community. At heart, two fundamentally opposed visions are at stake: Western "development" versus tb'anil qchwinqlal, or quality of life.

Guatemala is a polarized country with a minority of European-descended elites controlling politics and economics while an indigenous majority is systematically excluded from participation in public life. Despite the existence of multicultural legislation that purports to empower indigenous peoples, they continue to be ignored in economic policy and practice. Repressive violence continues to be the norm, a practice rooted in the colonization of the region. Violence is not restricted to physical assaults against bodies but exists in the structural conditions of the world economy. This article examines why violence manifests the way it does and among whom through a world systems lens that interrogates how histories of ethno-racialized exclusion remain embedded in the Guatemalan state and market relations. I argue that the enduring legacy of state violence in Guatemala persists through economic decisions and political practices made by elites with specific attention to the extractive sector. The article begins with a discussion of indigenous–criollo relations in the Guatemalan context, proceeds to discuss the historical origins of large-scale mining in the period of the internal armed conflict, and concludes with a case study of the Marlin Mine as the first industrial mining project since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996.

American journal of public health, 2015

We investigated themes related to the health and environmental impacts of gold mining in El Salvador. Over a 1-month period in 2013, we conducted focus groups (n = 32 participants in total) and individual semistructured interviews (n = 11) with community leaders until we achieved thematic saturation. Data collection took place in 4 departments throughout the country. We used a combination of criterion-purposive and snowballing sampling techniques to identify participants. Multiple themes emerged: (1) the fallacy of economic development; (2) critique of mining activities; (3) the creation of mining-related violence, with parallels to El Salvador's civil war; and (4) solutions and alternatives to mining activity. Solutions involved the creation of cooperative microenterprises for sustainable economic growth, political empowerment within communities, and development of local participatory democracies. Gold mining in El Salvador is perceived as a significant environmental and public...

The Extractive Industries and Society, 2015

2014

Since 2002, Argentina has witnessed a growing number of mining conflicts. While national and provincial governments promote mining as a basis for development, local communities have opposed and acted to prevent it. Between 2003 and 2008, 7 out of 23 provinces banned open-pit metal mining, thus challenging the institutional framework that promotes it. These challenges, moreover, began during a period of high unemployment. Why are communities opposed to an activity that could benefit local development? This article argues that these communities are demanding recognition for local visions of development that are not compatible with mining-and that cannot be adequately accommodated by current decision-making processes.

The Extractive Industries and Society, 2018

This study characterizes ecological distribution conflicts (EDC) related to the mining industry and derives a series of political implications for Guatemala. The characterization includes a placement in the context of Central America, regional location, intensity of the EDC and the trends in social and environmental consequences, with special emphasis on the groups of social actors affected and the degree to which the institutional framework does not provide effective means of participatory environmental governance. The time period covers 2005 to 2013. In order to understand trends in actor behavior and diverse moments of high intensity we introduce the use of action and response timelines as a methodology for EDC analysis. We propose the notions of embedded conflicts to describe their relation with the structural social conditions prevailing in the country and swarms of conflicts to describe their escalation through time. We conclude that conflictivity is inherent to the unsustainable characteristics of metallic mining and is aggravated by Guatemalás history of social inequality and power concentration. The attempts to reduce "conflictivity" through CSR have been insufficient in addressing these structural conditions. EDCs may have helped create a positive environment for creative forces to seek sustainability and justice in Guatemalás development model.

Neoliberal development schemes of mining, oil extraction, and hydroelectric projects, are embraced by post-conflict Guatemala as the way forward on the path to democratization. At the same time, the Canadian government's pro-business, pro-mining stance, through its Embassy’s activities, is shaping the very nature of the “development model” for this Central American country. Neoliberal development models are often associated with human rights abuses and an unwillingness to incorporate local knowledge or allow for locally-driven, smaller-scale development. In this paper, based on fieldwork in the summer months of 2004, 2006, and 2008, we argue that large-scale resource development by Canadian mining companies and their Guatemalan subsidiaries on Maya traditional territories, lands to which they have limited rights, is negatively affecting local indigenous peoples’ lives and realities. Through a rights-based approach to our analysis of ‘development’ we highlight the silenced voices of Maya community members in opposition to what they identify as unsound development practices and President Óscar Berger’s need to “protect the investors” rather than the lives of his country’s own citizens. Keywords: Canada; development; natural resources; Guatemala; indigenous; neoliberalism; mining

Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala, 2021

What is land? A resource to be exploited? A commodity to be traded? A home to cherish? In Guatemala, a country still reeling from thirty-six years of US-backed state repression and genocides, dominant Canadian mining interests cash in on the transformation of land into “property,” while those responsible act with near-total impunity. Editors Catherine Nolin and Grahame Russell draw on over thirty years of community-based research and direct community support work in Guatemala to expose the ruthless state machinery that benefits the Canadian mining industry—a staggeringly profitable juggernaut of exploitation, sanctioned and supported every step of the way by the Canadian government. This edited collection calls on Canadians to hold our government and companies fully to account for their role in enabling and profiting from violence in Guatemala. The text stands apart in featuring a series of unflinching testimonios (testimonies) authored by Indigenous community leaders in Guatemala, as well as wide-ranging contributions from investigative journalists, scholars, lawyers, activists, and documentarians on the ground.

Since 2004, the Marlin Mine, located in North-west Guatemala, has produced conflict between Goldcorp, the Guatemalan state and the primarily indigenous Mayan communities affected by the mine. This conflict has generated local anti-mining movements that organized community consultations which, grounded in indigenous rights law and Mayan decision-making practices, allow affected communities to decide whether or not to permit mining in the region. While communities resoundingly rejected open-pit mining, and while this decision received international support, the Marlin Mine continues operations. Drawing on field research and new developments in philosophies of rights, this paper makes two related arguments. First, Mayan anti-mining resistance must be situated within a broader colonial history defined by exploitation and primitive accumulation. Second, Mayan activism challenges current conceptions of the relationship between rights, cultural identity and political agency; most significantly, Mayans do not only claim rights on the basis of identity, they enact and politicize the form in which these rights potentially take place.

2013

Since 2006, when the Canadian corporation Barrick Gold first received authorization to start exploring the Famatina hills for gold and uranium, the people have been organizing themselves to protect their livelihoods, the hills and the glacier located in the Department of Famatina, in the Argentinean Province of La Rioja. Vecinos de Famatina Autoconvocados en Defensa de la Vida (Famatina’s Self-Convened Residents in Defense of Life), Coordinadora de Asambleas Ciudadanas por la Vida de Chilecito (Chilecito’s Coordination of Citizens Assemblies for Life), Vecinos Autoconvocados de Chañarmuyo (Chañarmuyo’s Self-Convened Residents), Vecinos Autoconvocados de Pituil (Pituil’s Self-Convened Residents) and Vecinos Autoconvocados de Los Sauces (Los Sauces’ Self-Convened Residents ) – these are some of the names of the many people’s assemblies that have been organized to resist the onslaught of mining companies. Their united slogan is: El Famatina no se toca (Don’t touch Famatina). The people of one of the poorest regions of Argentina – humble, common people – have so far been able to stop large, powerful, transnational corporations, which have closely worked with national and provincial governments supported by corporative media and other powerful institutions: first Barick Gold, recently Osisko Mining Corporation. The transformation of these common people into a political force involved the construction of a new critical consensus (Dussel, 2012), the consensus of the social bloc of the oppressed (Gramsci, 1975). Such construction has been achieved in the space of horizontal autonomous organizations (the assemblies), in public demonstrations (often repressed with violence), in the meetings of the Unión de Asambleas Ciudadanas (Unions of Citizens Assemblies), as well as in the constant awareness and recognition that the struggle will last forever – the mountain will always be there, full of precious metals; therefore, its defense will last the life time of the current activists and go beyond the present generation. In this paper we will present and discuss the people’s struggle to protect Famatina against transnational mining corporations and their allies through the lens of Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation. To make our argument more understandable for those unfamiliar with the context of Latin American philosophy, we will introduce Dussel’s propositions first, and then present and discuss the case of Famatina in the light of his philosophy of ethics and politics. The data presented here was collected from documents produced by the “Argentinean communities of NO”, a designation provided by Antonelli (2011, p.7) to identify the “network of environmental and citizens’ asambleas (assemblies) as well as other actors who oppose mega-mining projects and share the same “ethical values, epistemic evaluations, and the promotion of citizens’ consciousness disseminating the discourse of NO by different means (professionals, academics, media etc.)”. We have also used data collected during a field trip in August 2012, when we visited Chilecito and the roadblock at El Carrizal, conducting in-depth interviews with a range of activists. Excerpts from these interviews are in italics, making it easy to identify them without repeating the reference. The pictures we took during the research trip will also be presented without specifying the source.

Following an extended anti-mining campaign, El Salvador became the first country to adopt a legal ban on all forms of metallic mining. This article uses process tracing to map direct, indirect and mediated linkages between the anti-mining mobilization and the formal adoption of a mining prohibition by the national legislature in 2017. It draws on 78 interviews with campaign activists, legislators, government officials, business leaders and legal teams, and combines this information with legislative documents and reports, public opinion data, legal documents from an investment dispute filed against the Salvadoran government, and blogs and website of the Mesa Nacional Frente a la Minería Metálica. This analysis gives particular attention to the spatial reach and breadth of the anti-mining networks; fissures within and situational realignment of the political elite; and the strategic use of diverse institutional openings (docking points), some of which were adapted to new purposes by movement entrepreneurs. Although major obstacles to sustainable development and environmental protection remain in El Salvador, this article identifies a set of iterative interactions between activist alliances and institutional actors that can successfully contribute to policy change.