Delegation: Mining in the aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala

Gerry and I just got to El Salvador on our way to Guatemala for a 8- day delegation,  "Mining in the aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala".

Here's a report:

Guatemala Delegation 2024

The delegation

May 2024 joined a delegation based on the book, “Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala”.  The book is a collection of essays by people who have witnessed genocides of the 36-year “war” in Guatemala and the devastation that Canadian and US mining companies do and have done to the rural Mayan population in pursuit of profits from gold and other minerals.  It is also about Mayan resistance to mining and the severe consequences many individuals and communities suffer when they resist.  The book was edited by our delegation leaders, Grahame Russell of Rights Action and Catherine Nolan of University of Northern British Columbia.  The third delegation leader was Camila Rich, also of Rights Action.  There were 15 of us, from Canada, Germany, Israel and the US.

 

Resistance to dictatorship brought coups and genocide

Beginning in 1931 Jorge Ubico ruled Guatemala as a dictator who admired Hitler’s tactics and had his own secret police force.  He was the most recent of Guatemalan dictators whose main purpose was to assure profits from the export of coffee and tropical fruit.  The practices of United Fruit Company displaced many indigenous people from their ancestral, communal lands.  Ubico had installed harsh labor laws and a police state.

In 1944 El Salvadorans overthrew their own dictator, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in El Salvador.  This inspired teachers and new political parties to call for social justice, an end to government terrorism, and an end to the rule of Jorge Ubico.

Ubico called on the police and military to attack innocent people in the streets of Guatemala City.  Hundreds of people were tear-gassed, arrested, beaten, and shot.  Women gathered to mourn the dead and were attacked.  In response, all of Guatemala City went on strike.  Within three weeks of the start of the uprising, Ubico was forced to resign.   He turned the government over to a military junta led by Federico Ponce, who would not hold elections.  Ponce was deposed three months later during a military coup led by Jacobo Árbenz.  In early 1945, a new constitution was adopted and free elections were held.

1945: Dr.Juan José Arévalo, a progressive professor of philosophy who had become the face of the popular movement. Thus began representative democracy in Guatemala and the Ten Years of Spring (Revolution).  It brought about social, political, and agrarian reforms that helped all of Latin America.

Arévalo implemented a moderate program of social reform, including a widely successful literacy campaign and a largely free election process, although illiterate women were not given the vote and communist parties were banned.

1951: Jacobo Árbenz was elected President in 1951 and began an ambitious land-reform program.  United Fruit and others were forced to sell large tracts of unused land to the government, who redistributed it to 500,000 poverty-stricken agricultural indigenous laborers.

United Fruit lobbied the US government for the overthrow of Árbenz, and the US State Department engineered the coup of 1954 under the pretext that Árbenz was a communist.  Carlos Castillo Armas took power at the head of a military junta, provoking the Guatemalan Civil War. The war lasted from 1960 to 1996, and saw the military commit genocide against the indigenous Maya peoples and widespread human rights violations against civilians.  A succession of US-backed military governments brutally massacred unarmed Mayan people.

Visiting with families of the “disappeared”

Our delegation visited Famdegua (Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala), where Alejandra Cabrera, Miriam and Carolina Villatoro talked about work and struggle for Truth, Memory and Justice with respect to crimes against humanity committed in the 1970s and 1980s.  

The three women described their search for the truth about their relatives - the hope that they may be alive.  But for these women, the discovery of a military diary with the names of 183 people who were captured and forcibly disappeared between 1983 and 1985 gave them the truth.   Their family members were captured and murdered by the US-backed Guatemalan military.

The US provided equipment and trained Guatemalan military in capture, torture, and counterinsurgency tactics at the School of the Americas.  The CIA and State Department closely followed the process.  President Reagan named Henry Kissinger chairman of his Commission on Central America, who traveled to Guatemala and gave support to dictator Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores.  Activists for political and ideological change were particularly targeted.  The mass murders broke the social fabric of the cities and villages.

Rosalina Tuyuc, Conavigua (Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala), “Widows of the Disappeared”.

We continued our exploration of genocide when Rosalina Tuyuc visited and talked about widows left behind after their husbands had been forcibly disappeared.

In 1979 the Army started kidnapping people.  The women then took on activism to find their men, but the Army terrorized the women on a vast scale, including sexual violence.  The gangs raping women numbered from a few to a dozen, and raped girls as young as six, many of whom died.  They raped grandmothers and pregnant women, too, and often in front of husbands and children.  And then they would kidnap the husband.  Many caught diseases and still suffer from mental illness, diabetes, learned helplessness, stress.  Some are so scarred that they are unable to have partners.  The abuse continued into the 1980s.

“The war” destroyed all community development and cooperatives.  The Army would kidnap and kill people, and they would steal everything of value and burn the village buildings.

The people were well organized and worked collectively, but that was “communism”, so survivors pulled away because it was dangerous.

The army targeted activists, leaders and teachers.  Some went into hiding.  The community fabric was destroyed.

“In Comalapa there were no armed guerrillas.  We were just organized, so they targeted us.  There was a lack of education.  People were able to go to school from 1 to 4 years.  When we became organized, that was a threat.”

Rosalina said, “We’re starting to get back to community work / collective work, like home building.  Communities are still struggling to survive.  The point was to exterminate the communal way of life.  They succeeded.  In the 1980s and 90s, they finally ended the worst of the war.  

Conavigua was founded in 1983-85 and they came out publicly in 1988.  It was one of the first groups to demand an end to rape.  They carried out campaigns against forced recruitment of youth, but if you refused to join, they would kill you.  They presented a bill to Congress to regulate military recruitment.  After 17 years, they provided civil service alternatives.  

Another campaign of Conavigua was to get rid of  civil defense patrols - which were counterinsurgency state terrorism - people were forced to join.  They were the eyes and ears of the military and spied on their own people.  60,000 people were forcefully recruited.

The campaign made some progress towards reparations, but the government of Otto Perez Molina eliminated that program.  They hope the newly elected President can turn this back around.

“From the 1996 Peace Accords, not much has changed.  There’s no funding for Conavigua.  We are funded by churches and NGOs.  We educate in agricultural sovereignty and want full control of our land and territory.  We work for good mental health and we can see the result, re-empowerment.

So much of our work is to help the women overcome the trauma - the shame of having been raped and the guilt people feel for not saving their community or family.

There is a legal case, from 32 victims of rape, going forward.  These are women who were re-empowered.  There is lots of corruption, but some of the material authors of the crimes were convicted - but the officers and generals were not.”

Another part of what happened was forced international adoption.  After birth, the baby was taken and adopted out and the mother had no idea what happened to her baby.  One member of our delegation was a Guatemalan-born adoptee into a Canadian family.

FAFG Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team, https://fafg.org/en/

Our final visit regarding genocides was to the Guatemalan Forensic Antropology Team.  They are involved with locating mass graves, carefully excavating and documenting them, listening to the circumstances of death from the remaining members of the family or community, and trying to match bones found with relatives looking for bodies of their loved ones.  “We’ve found 220 bodies from 85 graves, mostly people who were forcefully disappeared. We have reburied 172 unidentified victims but have ID’d 40 victims so far.”

What impressed me is that the work is all done by trained Guatemalans, not outsiders.

The building has a memorial site for ceremony.

The crime of “disappearing” is increasing worldwide, so FAFG is sharing information and training people from Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia, Bangaladesh (Rohinga), Rwanda and Syria.  Our Forensic Academy has trained 94 students from 24 countries.

Resistance to Canadian and US Mining Companies

All of this genocide and suppression of the indigenous people beat them down and empowered mining companies to use the corrupt government, military and police to displace communities and murder or threaten those that resist.   The recent government gave hundreds of mining leases to foreign countries.  We visited four communities in resistance to the mines.

The Stephen Harper government (Canada) had “Extractavist development”.  Foreign aid was used to benefit Canadian companies.  In around 2000, the mining companies moved in without consultation with the indigenous peoples.

 

La Puya

Gerry and I were in La Puya, about an hour drive from Guatemala City, in 2012, not long after the communities of San Pedro Ayumpac and San Jose del Golfo came together to blockade the road into this mine.    There were dozens of people occupying the site, taking turns, in a permanent encampment.  

There was a serious repression on May 23, 2014.  It was very violent and they had to move a little bit further down the road.  Because of that, the mining company was able to start tunnel mining.  Then from 2014-16 they did open pit mining for silver and gold.

The people succeed in Guatemalan court - indigenous consultations required

First, motions were filed claiming that there was a lack of consultation with indigenous peoples.  Then there was a lack of a valid permit.  This mine was illegal from the beginning.  The resistance won both cases.  The court ordered the mining to stop, but they didn’t.  They were relentless.

They brought in materials and took out gold by helicopter!  Finally, from 2016 to the present, there is no mining taking place and they are at a stalemate in court.  

In 2021 the Constitutional Court ruled the mining company must have a consultation.  

But the mining company filed for an international tribunal to extort $400 million from the Guatemala government under a free trade agreement.  The consultation may go forward.  The tribunal may come down this year with a ruling for $400 million to go to KCA.  The consultation is not started.  It’s a long, drawn-out process.  They must come to agreement in a pre-consultation to decide the consultation process.  Right now, with a new government in place, the government employees are turning over, including in the energy and mining ministry, so this will slow the process further.  One BIG problem is that the ruling in 2021 said that once the consultation is done, the ministry of mines gets to decide whether or not the mine can open - the people don’t get to decide.

The people are on constant watch for the mining company to sneak equipment and begin mining again.  The encampment buildings still stand, but are not usually occupied.

Criminalizing the resisters is another tactic - throw them in jail and fine them.

People want all of the mining licenses canceled and have a little bit of hope with the new government.

Water

A recurring theme in this part of Guatemala is not only the usual lack of water, but now due to climate change the rains come late and are insufficient to grow crops.  Mining operations add to the problem by removing unlimited amounts of water from the aquifers and dumping contaminated water back onto the land.

Further, water shortages affect both wild animals and herds that people raise for food.

There’s natural arsenic in the water and mining makes it worse.  Explosions release more heavy metals, into the air and water.

Nonviolence: Protection International helped teach us, like Gandhi, nonviolent techniques.  There were infiltrators who would suggest violence.  We had friends who were mine workers who would tell us of rumors of violence or preparation for violence from the resistance.

The company would basically dare us to shoot down a helicopter so they could call in military intervention.  The resistance watched non-violent videos, and always agreed on nonviolence.  One tactic was to put the women in front.

The military tried lies and insults.  The women didn’t respond.  

Since colonization to now, the violence always comes from the invaders, not the indigenous.  Some few who fought back lost, were captured and made an example of.

Fenix nickel mine in the El Estor region

In this region (El Estor), foreign companies have planted bananas and African palm, put in hydroelectric power, and pulverized the river.  This resulted in extreme poverty, famine, destruction of the social fabric, and migration.  This is a nearly 100% Mayan population.

In the early 1960s there were assasinations in the city of people opposed to the new mining law.

The Fenix nickel resource was first developed in 1960 by the Canadian mining company Inco. The mine was explored by Guatemalan subsidiary Eximbal, and in 1965 the Guatemalan government granted the firm a 40-year lease to operate an open pit mine on 385 square kilometers.”  

(Grahame:) They actually collaborated with the Guatemala MILITARY, who massacred people to make room for the mine!

Early into the Guatemala Civil War (1960–1996), the Canadian International Nickel Company (INCO) created a domestic Guatemala subsidiary and negotiated with the Guatemalan government for creation and control of El Estor nickel mine.

In order to secure the mining site as required by INCO’s contract, the Guatemalan military forcibly evicted indigenous peoples from the region, during which 3,000 to 6,000 indigenous individuals were killed.

In 1997, Guatemala passed the Mining Law, drafted with the assistance of INCO executives, which opened Guatemala to foreign mining companies without substantial protections for indigenous peoples or their environment.  Currently, Canadian mining companies are involved in 50–70% of mining activities in the region.

Hope: Guatemalans can sue Canadian Mining Companies in Canada

In July 2013 an Ontario court has cleared the way for a group of Guatemalans to sue mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. in Canadian courts over alleged shootings and gang rapes at a mining project.

The ruling means that the claims of 13 Mayan Guatemalans can proceed to trial in Canadian courts, according to a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The Guatemalans are attempting to sue over gang rapes by security personnel and military personnel at the Fenix project nickel mine near El Estor, Guatemala  in 2007 and 2009. The indigenous group have also alleged a shooting at the same mine paralyzed one victim, while a local community leader who voiced opposition to the mine was beaten and killed.