A visit to the ancestral authorities from the Maya Ch’orti’ Indigenous Council of Olopa
The Maya Ch’orti’ Indigenous Council of Olopa, Chiquimula, composed of 14 communities, filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the State of Guatemala in March of this year for violations of their rights as an Indigenous People. They also denounced 18 other illegalities that the mining company Cantera Las Manantiales has committed by carrying out operations in their territory without free, prior, and informed consultation.
“We have legally exhausted the justice system in Guatemala in our attempts to stop and suspend the license for the Las Mananitales quarry.” 1 Following a long legal process, the Constitutional Court concluded in September of last year, that the state of Guatemala had violated the rights of the Ch’orti’ People by not consulting them. Yet the court allowed the mine to continue operating. The members of the Council reacted indignantly: “What does this leave us with? What happens to the resistance? What happens to the authorities? What happens to our work? What about our comrades who have been criminalized? The people who were murdered? The diseases? For us, this resolution is a mockery. And the CC has said nothing about the other 18 illegalities that the company has committed.”
At the moment there are only rumors about the restart of operations. And the resistance is now more organized, well known and recognized than in 2016 when the company Cantera Las Manantiales began open-pit mining to extract antimony, although the initial license also included gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc, among others. In 2018 it had to terminate operations because the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) issued an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) certifying that the mine did not comply with environmental nor legal requirements. It also requested the official suspension of the operating license. To ensure the closure of the mine, the Resistance declared a permanent assembly and set up two peaceful sit-ins at the two entrances to the mine. They also filed an injunction before the Supreme Court of Justice in 2019 to denounce the violation of their right to free, prior and informed consultation as an Indigenous People.
Over these years, the members of the Council and the Resistance have faced a diversity of aggressions such as threats, surveillance, more than 30 criminalization processes and two murders of comrades Elisandro Perez and Medardo Alonso . “We have filed complaints about the aggressions committed by members of the company’s security, but the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) has dismissed them all.” Instead of investigating these reports, the MP has dedicated itself to criminalizing more than 30 members of the resistance in different processes; last year five people who had been accused of the crime of illegal detention, were declared free by the court of first instance, but the MP decided to appeal. The corresponding hearings are expected in the coming months.
“We are convinced that we are going to do everything we can to contribute to defending our land, our territory. We are going to learn all we can. We have recently learned about all the other mining, renewable energies, the energy transition and all that. It has taken us years to understand the exploitation, the system of extractivism that is now changing. And that is very shocking, that means that the desire to continue exploiting our territories is there; there are more than 30 exploration licenses; in Olopa alone there are three. But all this is part of our commitment to defend our territory and here we are. ”
We gathered with eight members in a church hall, who share their feelings about the CC resolution and the complaint to the IACHR. Doña Carmelita, an ancestral authority, member of the Resistance since its beginnings and a well known fighter among her compañeros and compañeras, shares her frustration with us: “Now they are talking about consultation. But how this happen if they have already entered our house and now they are asking for a consultation to carry out the same damage again? I am totally convinced that whoever comes to exploit us, we are going to have the same problems, the same illnesses, the same draught. There is nothing left. So if we are going to give them the permission they want, what are we going to stay? If there is already a desert. It is not going to bring us development or wellbeing. It’s all lies. We were born here, we grew up here and we are defending ourselves here; they are the ones who have to leave, not us. When they entered our territory they violated our rights. And now they want permission because they have already abused us, they have already harmed us; they have already taken one of our arms and they are going to put it back on us again. We are tired of so many lies. They are new faces but the same actors.”
When the ancestral authorities became aware of the pollution, only a few months after the company began its activities, they alerted their neighbors in the communities near the mine. “The people, the same neighbors in favor of the company, asked us what do you know? They told us you are not doctors who can do studies, or know what is killing the animals, what is causing the diseases, what causes the spots on the children’s skin? We told them that it was the pollution in the water, air and dust. In 2018 a doctor from the capital who came to live here. His animals died that they drank water from the river. And he recognized that there is a connection with the mine. From that moment on, yes, they believed us. They changed their attitude towards the resistance.”
MARN’s 2018 EIA confirmed the contamination of air, water and land. This occurred because the company committed several violations of the licensing conditions: it did not have a license to use dynamite at the mining site, nor to process the extracted products. Consequently, it did not have to present a plan for processing the toxic waste. However, it did all of this and dumped the waste in the streets, on the riverbanks and even on the soccer field.
The health of the population and all life in the territory was strongly affected. “The fish in the creek died, the animals in the countryside died and we got diseases from walking in the streets, from breathing the air, drinking the water from the springs, from eating our crops. There is no longer health, only diseases.”
There has only been one health post to treat these diseases in recent years and it is located in the community La Prensa. “But if you go there they don’t give you medicine and there is only one nurse. She has recognized the symptoms, which she had seen in other regions with mining, and that is why we know that the disease is from the mine. We don’t need any more illnesses, we have enough with what they left us the first time. That is why we don’t want a dialogue, why are we going to have a dialogue if they have already left us the disease and the pollution, what is the point? They are going to tell us that this and that, but we were already deceived, they are not going to tell us that development will come, that health will come. No! They are the ones who take the welfare, because they take all the wealth from our land, and our corn and bean crops no longer produce good crops. There is no longer a healthy harvest, because the soil is contaminated. But we are going to consume it, if not, what are we going to consume? We don’t want any more exploiters in our territory, let them go, let them go, we don’t want them anymore! They have damaged us very, very much. My daughter died two years ago because the disease reached her lungs. Her children have become orphans, how are they going to replace her?
“There used to be a large forest, springs and water wells where the mine is. There is nothing since they started mining with dynamite. The water now comes from a community above, where we bought [the rights to] a spring. But it is not much anymore. The springs above are being consumed and if they continue being exploited, we are going to end up in a desert.