A Precedent for Indigenous Economic Rights?

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Palo Viejo Dam, Cotzal, Nebaj, GuatemalaTobias Roberts, an MCCer in Nebaj, Guatemala, has been asked by Maya-Ixhil communities to be an official observer in precedent setting negogiations between these indigenous communities and an international corporation building a hydroelectric dam in their territory. In this post, Tobias describes the situation and what’s at stake.

The Indigenous Communities of Cotzal Nebaj negotiate with the Italian Energy Corporation, ENEL 

In the last month and a half, the small Maya-Ixhil village of San Felipé Chenlá located in the forgotten highlands of Guatemala in the municipality of San Juan Cotzal, has been the center of one of the most unprecedented recent events in Guatemala.  Through an organized, non-violent resistance to the construction of a massive, privately-owned and operated hydroelectric dam, this community has compelled the Italian corporation ENEL (owner and future operator of the dam) to participate in a dialogue directly between the corporation and the indigenous communities.

 The government of Guatemala has repeatedly opened the doors to large international mining, hydroelectric, and oil companies to explore and exploit the natural resources of the country, and never before has one of these corporations been  forced to negotiate the implementation of one of their mega projects directly with the community where it is being implemented.

The decision to begin the process of dialogue comes after almost two and a half years of conflict and tension between the communities of Cotzal and ENEL because of the lack of an open and transparent consultation with the communities concerning the construction of the hydroelectric dam on their ancestral lands.

In 2005, the then mayor of Cotzal, Baltazar Toma Sambrano informed the traditional Mayan leaders from the communities of Cotzal of the possibility of the construction of a hydroelectric dam within the municipality.  The traditional leaders consulted with the population from their communities who overwhelmingly rejected the proposed project.

Nothing more was heard concerning the construction of the dam until the government of Guatemala, on January 23^rd, 2007, announced authorization for the construction of the hydroelectric dam “Palo Viejo” on the River Cotzal. The construction will cost $228 million and have the potential to produce 370 million kWh of “clean energy” according to the ENEL website.  This is a community where 70% of the population lives below the poverty line on $2 or less per day.

In 2008, ENEL began construction without any consultation with the indigenous population of Cotzal in flagrant violation of national and international law regarding the rights of indigenous peoples.

The Maya-Ixhil communities of Cotzal base their right to consultation and self-determiniation in the International Labor Organization´s agreement No. 169 which the Guatemalan government ratified in 1996.

Article 7 of ILO 169 states: “The peoples concerned shall have the right to decide their own priorities for the process of development as it affects their lives, beliefs, institutions and spiritual well-being and the lands they occupy or otherwise use, and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development. In addition, they shall participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of plans and programmes for national and regional development which may affect them directly.”

Thus the Maya-Ixhil of Cotzal petitioned the municipal government to hold a community referendum to decide the future of the hydroelectric dam in their communities. The request for a community referendum was ignored by the municipal government and ENEL, and instead, both parties began a process of offering small, temporary, material projects (tin roofing, construction of small schools, etc) under the condition that the recipients of such projects sign a statement affirming their conformity with the construction of the Palo Viejo Dam.

ILO 169 states specifically that “governments shall establish or maintain procedures through which they shall consult these peoples, with a view to ascertaining whether and to what degree their interests would be prejudiced, before undertaking or permitting any programmes for the exploration or exploitation of such resources pertaining to their lands. The peoples concerned shall wherever possible participate in the benefits of such activities, and shall receive fair compensation for any damages which they may sustain as a result of such activities.”

The communities of Cotzal, in a recent press release, state openly: “The government, alongside the corporation ENEL, have violated our indigenous rights since the very beginning of this grand business proposal because they neither informed us nor consulted with us and did not wait for our consent as national and international laws require.”

The mounting tension within the communities and the awareness of being completely ignored by the government and by ENEL, along with the precedent of the HidroXacbal Dam built in 2010 in the neighboring municipality of Chajul without any consultation of the community and without the local Ixhil community receiving any benefits or reparations, led the communities of Cotzal to take the decision in January 2011 to nonviolently protest the construction of the hydroelectric dam by blocking access of construction vehicles and ENEL employees to the construction site.

In response, on three occasions the Guatemalan government sent in large numbers (500-1000) of police and military forces with tear gas bombs and helicopters to confront the nonviolent resistance, actions that undoubtedly caused much psychological trauma to the population of Cotzal who lived through a genocide at the hands of military forces during the civil war of the 1980´s.

The reaction by ENEL was to take legal action against nine community leaders in Cotzal leading the nonviolent resistance.

In May of this year, the communities of Cotzal and the corporation ENEL agreed to a dialogue on the condition that the community open access to the dam and that ENEL drop the legal complaints against the community leaders of Cotzal.  The dialogue is centered around three demands of the communities of Cotzal:

1)      That ENEL paves a 16 km stretch of rural roads between the main town of Cotzal and outlying communities.

2)      That ENEL contributes 4 million quetzals ($500,000) annually from its profits to support community development projects managed directly by the communities of Cotzal without intermediaries.

3)      That ENEL designates 20% of the energy produced by the hydroelectric dam (of a total of 84 Mw/hour) to meet the local energy needs of the communities of Cotzal free of charge.

The negotiations are set to occur every other Saturday; June 25^th is the most recent. In addition to Tobias, there are other official observers to the process, including Guatemalan Catholic Bishop Alvaro Ramazini and a Presybeterian church leader, Vitalon Vinalocho.

The outcome of this process of dialogue will set a precedent for future negotiations of ENEL and other international extractive and energy corporations in Guatemala.   Currently, there are at least five future hydroelectric dam projects that have temporary governmental authorization to do exploratory studies in the Ixhil Region, two of which are to be run by ENEL. If the communities of Cotzal are able to unite their voices through a community referendum as well as obtain their demands from ENEL in the dialogue process, this would certainly set a standard for other communities to follow.

Tobias Roberts