Guatemalan indigenous leader Pascual Bernabe Velasquez declared, “When one community is contaminated in Guatemala or Central America, the whole world is contaminated,” to an audience of 70 packed into Sunrise Restaurant on Feb. 25.
He was speaking at a panel discussion on resistance to mining in Latin America, hosted by the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Indigeous-rights activists Nestor Castillo and Flavio Santi were also on hand to detail mining resistance efforts in El Salvador and Ecuador.
Velasquez visited the Bay Area from February 22 to February 25 as part of a three-week NISGUA-sponsored tour of the Western United States, which included stops at Albuquerque, Tucson and Los Angeles. The purpose of the tour was to meet with local organizations in each city and raise awareness about mining in Guatemala.
“We are … in the US to speak about solidarity, to look for solutions; to speak the truth in order to escape from slavery, not just in Central America but in the whole world,” he told the audience at the Sunrise.
“My personal story is about a struggle: of family and later in civil society,” he said. Velasquez, a Mayan Q’anjob’al from Pie de la Cuesta in Guatemala, represents the Assembly in Defense of the Nonrenewable Resources of Huehuetenango.
He explained that this organization was created, “because of the mining issue…in order to accompany the people in the organization of their referendums, and to follow up…to look at the legal aspect of these referendums.”
These referendums, or consultas, are an indigenous response to the Guatemalan government’s decision to grant almost 400 licenses to transnational coal, gold, silver, nickel and zinc mining companies over the past several years, according to Velasquez and NISGUA. The NISGUA web site reported that this spike in mining concessions followed a series of neoliberal economic reforms the Guatemalan government passed after the 1996 peace accords “under the pretext of jumpstarting the national economy after decades of war.”
The laws and treaties that came out of these reforms—the national mining law, foreign investment law and ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)—“have all but eliminated the possibility for locally-driven economic solutions in favor of ‘trickle-down’ foreign investment,” stated an information sheet on NISGUA’s Web site.
Velasquez said that the Mayan people of Huehuetenango oppose corporate mining because it produces little income for the community, while negatively affecting the health of the local population and ecosystem.
“We speak specifically about indigenous peoples because they are the most vulnerable, suffer most at the hands of the state,” he said before the audience at the Sunrise.
Velasquez explained in an interview to El Tecolote that mining in Guatemala operates alongside discrimination and racism because, “In general, mining affects the most marginalized communities and marginalized places.”
He stated that due to racial discrimination, indigenous peoples have historically been driven to isolated and infertile areas. Today, when mining corporations discover the hidden riches of this barren land, “they come wanting to exploit these mines without consulting the owners, the peoples of these lands … in part, it’s because the governments think that the mestizo or ladino people are more knowledgeable about the law, so they respect them more.”
Velasquez reported that beginning in 2006, 28 of the 32 municipalities in Huehuetenango have passed referendums to ban mining companies from entering their communities. He added that referendums have already been organized and “the dates are set” in the remaining four municipalities. However, the Guatemalan government has so far refused to accept the results of these referendums as binding, which would require authorities to actively prevent mining in each of these communities.
“After this process, since the government hasn’t validated the communities, the communities take it one step further and declare their territories as ‘mining-free zones,’” Velasquez said during the panel discussion.
He stated that on Jan. 28, the indigenous people comprising nine municipalities in Huehuetenango publicly declared their regions to be “mining-free zones” before Congress, the President, the human-rights ombudsman and the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
“They are still waiting for the government’s response,” he said.
Velasquez clarified, “When we speak about confronting problems with the government, we’re not attacking them, but holding our own votes and asking the government to respect that.”
“Our purpose is not just to protest, to say no to mining,” stated Velasquez, listing community education, health and sustainable production as other priorities. “They [the indigenous communities in Guatemala] weren’t organized just because of mining; they’ve been organizing for a number of years because it is part of the culture and customs and procedures of the local indigenous peoples.”
Guatemala is not the only country in Central America where the people have organized to deny mining companies access to their communities, said Nestor Castillo, the Bay Area Chapter Coordinator for CISPES, citing the resistance movement in El Salvador as an example.
According to Castillo, the resistance in El Salvador focused on the Canadian gold mining company Pacific Rim. In 2002, the mining company acquired an inactive mine in El Dorado, which was built in the 1940s, in the northern department of Cabañas.
“The biggest opposition to Pacific Rim’s gold mine is due to concerns about severe environmental damage, specifically the risk of cyanide contamination and the massive amounts of water that would be used during the extraction, estimated at 10 liters/second,” said CISPES director Alexis Stoumbelis, in an interview posted on the organization’s Web site.
Last April, the government of El Salvador denied an extraction permit for Pacific Rim, citing the potential for environmental damage. However, the company has challenged this decision by filing for capital remuneration under Chapter 10 of CAFTA. The case is still pending.
While the Cabañas community has been successful in garnering federal support, they have paid a price for their resistance. Three anti-mining activists were murdered in Cabañas in the past year. Marcelo Rivera disappeared last June, and his body was found 11 days later at the bottom of a well, showing clear signs of torture, according to Castillo.
In December, Ramiro Rivera Gomez and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, both prominent members of the Cabañas Environment Committee, were shot and killed in broad daylight. Castillo stated that Gomez was under police protection at the time of his murder.
The National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining, which has led El Salvador’s resistance movement, blamed Pacific Rim for the escalating violence in the region around the gold mine, asserting in a press statement that “Cabañas,despite its high level of poverty and exclusion,was one of the least violent departments of the country, but this changed with the presence of the extractive company in question.
CISPES continues to support the activists in El Salvador by raising awareness here in the US.
“We’re working on getting this information out to the community, especially the El Salvadorian community here,” Castillo said. “Right now we’re doing a lot of education, and also putting pressure on the company as well as our Congress representatives.”
For El Salvador and its Central American neighbors, CAFTA is a major factor because it provides an avenue for transnational corporations such as Pacific Rim to override national governments’ decisions.
“In his campaign, Obama said that if trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA weren’t working, the (US) government would find another way of doing business. So we’re trying to use his sound bite to put pressure on the government,” Castillo explained.
Flavio Santi, an indigenous activist and natural healer from Puyo, Ecuador, spoke briefly on the multifaceted wealth of the jungle and the danger of destroying this through resource extraction. “The jungle for us is a supermarket, a natural pharmacy, a natural university where our grandparents taught us about development between humans and nature. But this richness is under threat from the mining companies” he said.
Santi concluded, “My grandfather taught me that we are guardians of the Earth, not its owners. I’m thankful to all of my brothers and sisters in the US who join in solidarity to help with this fight.”