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By: Nancy Sabas

Marlin Mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. Photo taken by Matthew Kok

A few weeks ago, I organized a learning tour for North American participants to discuss the mining industry in Guatemala,On the tour, we visited the department of San Marcos and surrounding communities that deal withthis problem. 

Mining operations in Guatemala are not a recent issue. In 1998, two years after the signing ofthe peace agreement following a harsh civil war,the Foreign Investment Law removed the restrictions on trade with Guatemala, which attracted transnational companies to enter the country. Among the various companies, Goldcorp, a Canadianextractive company with high interest in exploiting gold, stands out.  

After a license granted by the Guatemalan government, the Marlin mine, operated by Montana Exploradora,a subsidiary of Goldcorp, began its operations in the community ofSan Miguel in western Guatemala. This was done without prior community consultation, even though it isan obligatory requirement of various international and national laws. In 2009, Goldcorp stopped appearing in the Canadian JantziSocial Index forethical investment due to the controversial use of cyanidein their operations. Currently the Marlin mine is considered the most lucrative minethat Goldcorp owns worldwide.

During our trip, we visited the community and interviewed community members to hear their side of the story.

MCC Thrift store group listening to Crisanta´s story about resistance. Photo taken by Matthew Kok.

I met Crisanta Pérez, a Mayan Mam woman with 6 children who lives withdetermination her philosophy of caring for Mother Earth and defending her territory. Crisanta resists and denounces Goldcorp’s environmental and community violations.. Despite facing intimidation, 14 arrest warrants andcriminalizations  for her work in defense of her territory and human rights, Crisanta stands firm. When we asked a how the resistance movement inSan Miguel was born, she explained, ”There are many men who work as miners in the company. Our community is divided in opinions, and although some of the men disagreewith the mining operationsin the community, they do not takea position because they are workingthere. It is for this reason that the resistance movement in San Miguel against mining started from the women.¨

As an indigenous woman, Crisanta facesvarious levels of oppression., however, she resists the roles imposedby a patriarchal hegemonic system, and has become a public figure,with a voice, empowered with knowledge about her rights and equipped to assertively demand the vindication of environmentallysustainable traditional practices, in line with the Mayan worldview. In addition, Crisanta tirelessly denounces the massive exploitation of resources.

 

Crisanta Pérez and her daughter. Photo taken by Matthew Kok.

¨Transnational companies are destroying the most valuable thing we have, Mother Earth.¨ Crisanta explained during our visit.

With her focus from the periphery, Crisanta defies the ruling capitalist logic that sacrifices the sacred elements (Mother Earth) and whose goal is the strictaccumulation of wealth. The positionof inequality that Crisanta has, alongwith other Mam women, enables her to integrate a more holistic perspective in line with her worldview and allows her to critique the mining operations from  a Maya Mam light. These women, based on their condition of oppression, have the ability to see with clarity from the base. This viewpoint enables them to understand the world from their ancestral worldview, as well as the reality of the mestizo (the Guatemalan State), and the dominant white (Goldcorp).This understanding contrasts the power groups’ viewpoint who understandand legitimize their knowledge as the only valid form of knowing. The women have become privileged epistemic subjects, for not being ¨contaminated¨with only one way of knowledge that comes from an advantageous socialposition.

 

The case of mining in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, its environmental impact and the criminalization of women activists, can be understand from an ecofeminist perspective. As Vandana Shiva, in her book Stolen Harvest states: ¨For more than two centuries, patriarchal, eurocentric, and anthropocentric scientific discourse has treated women, other cultures, and other species as objects. Experts have been treated as the only legitimate knowers. For more than two decades, feminist movements, Third World and indigenous people’s movements, and ecological and animal-rights movements have questioned this objectification and denial of subjecthood.¨ The Guatemalan state and the mining company, driven by their focus on production, consumption and accumulation of wealth fail to respect the sovereignty and spirituality of indigenous peoples. The Mayan worldview is trampled by a mercantilist system that does not recognize the land as sacred, positioning  man/production over woman /nature. 

Crisanta and the anti–mining resistance group of SanMiguel are reluctant to embrace the imposition of a clearly western and patriarchal “development” that despiseslife and legitimizes abuse from its position of power. On the contrary, the women demand ¨the good life¨, which according to their worldview and ancestral knowledge, consists in the search for harmony and balance with Mother Earth and all forms of existence. This philosophy of living naturally disapproves all forms of accumulation and exploitation that would alter the harmonious coexistenceand quality of life of other beings.

In 2008, the Pastoral Commission of Peace and Ecology (COPAE) of San Marcos along with other organizations doing independent studies presented their detections of  arsenic, aluminum, copper, manganese, and other metals in some water sources near the Marlin mine. The poor management of the mine waste and their presence in natural sources of water is a good explanation for the increase in gastrointestinal and skin diseases among the neighbors of the nearby communities.

MCC Thrift store group with members of the Catholic Parish of San Miguel Ixtahuacán. Photo taken by Matthew Kok.

During my visit, as we were interviewing members of the Parish of the San Miguel community, we talked about how racism was politically used to justify these atrocities. A Parishioner tearfully explained, abuse is legitimizedunder the premise that ¨the Indians are dirty and unhygienic¨. The hierarchyof race or gender is illogical and cannot be interpreted if it does not fall within a base structurewith political interest. This is a clear example, where the discrediting and discrimination of a population is aligned with neoliberalist interest. 

¨On the threshold of the third millennium, liberation strategies must ensure that human freedom is not achieved at the expense of other species, that freedom of one race or gender is not based onthe increasing subjugation of other races and genders. In each of these struggles for freedom, the challenge is to include the other¨. Vandana Shiva.


Crisanta signing for me her book ¨The struggle of Ms. Crisanta against Goldcorp¨. Photo taken by Matthew Kok.

For me, Crisanta´s resistance isa miracle born froman oppressed community. The same system that abused and excluded Mam women, now is the same that caused the conditions for them to become creatorsof new knowledge outside of a dominant perspective . The heart and unbreakable spirit of these women defending their territory and returning to their ancestral knowledge, translates their struggles against the violationof the land to their female bodies and vice versa. They are women who cling to their indigenous philosophy of the ¨Good Life¨, seeking harmony and sustainable living between people and nature peacefully. Underthat view, Crisanta and the women ofSan Miguel Ixtahuacánrethink, deconstruct and reconstruct themselves.


Father Erick from the Parish of San Miguel Ixtahuacán. Photo taken by: Matthew Kok

Photo taken by Matthew Kok

Photo taken by: Matthew Kok

Maudilia López from the San Miguel Ixtahuacán parish. Photo taken by: Matthew Kok

Crisanta, member of the Parish. Photo taken by : Matthew Kok







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