Goldcorp in Guatemala: Devastating Communities

On Monday evening, the Rochester Committee on Latin America invited notable human rights advocate Grahame Russell to speak about open-pit mining in Guatemala. The Canadian lawyer, journalist, and director of Rights Action described Central America's history of widespread massacres and genocide, but emphasized our responsibility, as residents of the US and Canada, to affect change in the places where the most atrocious and exploitative policies are rooted.

On Monday evening, the Rochester Committee on Latin America invited notable human rights advocate Grahame Russell to speak about open-pit mining in Guatemala. The Canadian lawyer, journalist, and director of Rights Action described Central America's history of widespread massacres and genocide, but emphasized our responsibility, as residents of the US and Canada, to affect change in the places where the most atrocious and exploitative policies are rooted.
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Eight Mayan women are currently fighting charges of "aggravated usurpation" for defending their land from the GoldCorp mining company, which is 100% foreign owned. Without getting approval from the local community, GoldCorp, headquartered in Vancouver, received an exploitation license from the Guatemalan government in 2003 and immediately started excavation for Marlin mine in the community of San Marcos. The company acquired land for the mine from individual landowners without explaining plans for development, and without offering adequate compensation. People who owned land that the company needed were coerced and pressured to sign over rights or to sell the land outright. One woman—a mother of six—tried to get the company to remove power lines from her land, with no success. Vibrations from the mine machinery had cracked the walls of her house, so she used a rock and a wire to short-circuit the entire power system from her own property. Days later, she and seven other women who were outspoken critics of the mine faced charges for the damage.


Protesters in Guatemala have historically met fierce repression. In 2005, peasants blockaded a pedestrian overpass to keep it from being dismantled and allowing mine equipment through. The army and police attacked; two people were killed and twenty were injured. Two months later, an employee of the company that provides security for the Marlin mine shot and killed a 23-year-old opponent as he left a church concert. Eyewitnesses have identified the murderer, but no arrests have been made. Many community leaders who oppose the mine have received death threats, prompting Amnesty International to issue an Urgent Action alert, but sparking no action from local law enforcement.

Taking a step further back in history, consider the experience of previous generations of the indigenous people who inhabit this "banana republic." Central America experienced the brunt of the Cold War; battling political ideologies brought dictators and populist movements head to head on the world stage. Internationally funded paramilitary forces brutalized people for decades and devastated entire regions using scorched-earth practices to wipe out their enemies by, in some cases, killing all living things. The 1990s brought a reprieve from some of the most intense conflict within Guatemala and other countries as the USSR disintegrated. A truth commission resulted in peace accords that ended the war between the official government and insurgent fighters in 1996.

As the country focused on its own healing, and while all international attention centered on the largely symbolic step forward, international mining companies quietly rewrote the laws governing resource extraction and pushed the reforms through a congress that was, and still is, firmly in the hands of the elite. Soon afterwards, the new Central American mining boom began.

The 1996 peace accords included a convention that recognizes the right of indigenous people to be consulted wherever development projects might affect them or their lands, sacred sites, and resource use. GoldCorp (formerly Glamis Gold) never did this, yet received $45 million from the World Bank to fund the Marlin mine in San Marcos. Egregious violations of international law have gone without investigation, yet the company claims to be "committed to the highest standards of sustainable practices in all we do."

Under the recent changes in laws governing natural resources, only 1% of mine profits have to stay in Guatemala; formerly this number was 6%. Mining companies also gained unlimited access to water—and the Marlin mine uses 250,000 liters per hour—without compensating the local communities. In San Marcos, wells have dried up, and water that is still accessible has been contaminated by chemicals used to separate ore from earth. Health problems that were rare before the mine, like terrible skin rashes and hair loss, are now rampant among young children. Women have seen a dramatic increase in miscarriages, and the community has observed more animal deaths and deformities.


The mining process used in San Marcos requires forests to be clearcut and all organic material to be stripped from the earth. Mountains are taken apart chunk by chunk, ground up into fine bits, and then saturated with cyanide. Its no wonder that indigenous people in San Marcos and throughout the world are saying "No" to mines in the land. They are not asking that the process be "greener" or for their cut of the profits to be larger. Gold prices, by the way, have skyrocketed in recent years, making the industry a favorite among fund managers in the US and Canada.

In his presentation, Grahame Russell used the Marlin mine as a case study, but reminded us that similar scenarios are playing out around the globe in increasingly large numbers. GoldCorp, which operates 17 mines in seven countries, is the third largest gold mining company in the world. Just last week the company reported record gold production for the fourth quarter of 2008, and net earnings of $1.48 billion. They boast to be "North America's lowest cost and fastest growing senior gold producer."

We have a responsibility to follow the lead of Gregoria Crisanta Perez, who cut off the power supply of GoldCorp's mine in her backyard. Grahame Russell came to Rochester with a message from the people affected by gold mining in Guatemala: "clean up and go home." I pass that message along to you, adding my own opinion: they are not welcome here either. The earth is our home, and mining is devastating it, so it must stop.