A U.S. mining company is suing Guatemala over a shuttered project. The state relied on affected communities to mount a legal defense, but now it’s trying to bypass them to open the mine.
Ana Sandoval writes in Foreign Policy In Focus about the latest attempt to shut down the peaceful resistance of La Puya. Ana is a member of that Resistance – La Resistencia Pacífica la Puya.
A Nevada-based mining firm is suing Guatemala for more than $400 million, the first suit of its kind for the impoverished Central American country.
The company complains that the Guatemalan government didn’t do enough to protect its investments in the country. But that’s news to my community and others who faced violent police repression when we nonviolently demonstrated to keep these mining operations from poisoning our health and water.
The firm, Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA), filed its case at a little-known branch of the World Bank called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
The Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, which Guatemala entered into with the United States in 2006, enables U.S. corporations to sue governments in this forum not only for the alleged loss of company investments, but also for the loss of supposed future profits. Some 80 percent of the $400 million KCA claims to have lost is based on estimates of future earnings from exploration activities that it never carried out.
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Our movement at La Puya has presented extensive evidence over the years of how KCA’s gold project would lead to water depletion and contamination putting our health at risk. From the outset, the mine faced stiff opposition from our communities living near the project just north of Guatemala City. Since then, our communities have maintained a round-the-clock protest camp in front of the road to the mine site for over 10 years.
As a result, we have faced threats, targeted violence, legal persecution, police repression, and acts of intimidation. In fact, the project was only able to operate after harsh police repression against the movement cleared the way for equipment on several occasions, even injuring people. However, the gold mine only operated for two years, until the courts suspended the project in late 2015 over failure to adequately consult with us.
You can read the full article, with links and photos, here, A Mining Lawsuit In Guatemala Shows How Trade Courts Put Locals Last.
The report, in Spanish, referred to can be read on the website of El Observador, here, El Arbitraje Internacional como mecanismo de presión y chantaje de KCA en el caso del proyecto minero El Tambor (1)
In GSN, we have featured La Puya many times and you can read more about the struggle here, ‘La Puya’: Ten Years Of Resistance, The Rhythm Continues.
Categories: Corruption, Environment, Evictions, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Military, Mining, Poverty, Report, Resource Extraction, Solidarity in Action, Solidarity in Action/Guatemala, Violence
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