The lasting violence of a Canadian mining giant in Guatemala
A 20-minute drive from the centre of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, in the western highlands of Guatemala, sits an open wound.
Giant holes scar the earth where two open-air mines, owned by the Canadian company Goldcorp, lay. What we can’t see is some additional 147 kilometres of tunnels snaking beneath the ground. In the distance is the processing plant, where the company sifted through millions of tons of earth to extract the gold that lay under the Indigenous Maya Mam and Maya Sipakapense communities of the department of San Marcos. Now, as the company is in the process of closing the mine, the plant remains a hub of activity.
“Twenty years ago, this was a mountain,” Humberto Velásquez, a Maya Mam resident of San Miguel Ixtahuacán and member of the resistance to the Marlin mine, tells me as we stand over one of the pits. The pieces of construction equipment down below look like tiny toys. Nearby, a truck from the Guatemalan National Police sits empty as four officers stand in the brush on the other side of the road.
Velásquez comments, “It is amazing, even after the mine closes, the police are still protecting the company.”
This story is from the September/October 2018 edition of Briarpatch.
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This story is from the September/October 2018 edition of Briarpatch.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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