In Guatemala and Honduras, regional anti-mining networks have become key players in struggles to combat extractivism and the criminalization of activists.
Giada Ferrucci and Pedro Cabezas write in NACLA on extractivism and resistance in Central America, focussing on Guatemala and Honduras. They speak of the importance of defending the right to consultation, the criminalisation of anti-mining activists, and the benefits of transnational networks and how they strengthen strategies for land resistance.
‘Water is worth more than gold’
On September 18, 2022 in Asunción Mita, a Guatemalan town near the border with El Salvador, residents lined up to vote in a referendum on mining in their territory. In response to the ballot’s question—“Do you agree with the installation and operation of metallic mining projects in any modalities that impact natural resources and the environment in the municipality?”—89 percent voted “no.” The ballot’s wording reflected the municipality’s right to safeguard the territories within its jurisdiction. However, the joy of this victory was short-lived.
The day after the consultation, the mining company Bluestone Resources, the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines, and industry groups contested the legality of the referendum. Two provisional injunctions brought by Mita Avanza, the town’s pro-mining association, and by Bluestone Resources’ Guatemalan subsidiary Elevar Resources, also contested the consultation process. Once again, the sovereignty of mining-affected communities and their right to consultation was disregarded, and private interests moved to criminalize grassroots organizing efforts at the forefront of anti-mining resistance. This is the reality faced by land defense movements and environmental defenders in Central America, a reality worsened by the legacy of the pandemic.
In Central America, in the true fashion of disaster capitalism, the pandemic presented mining companies with the opportunity to consolidate an exploitative economic model, while communities opposed to mining faced the erosion of democratic rights and increased state violence. According to Juan López, member of the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa, a network of local groups dedicated to land and environmental defense in northern Honduras, “during Covid-19, environmental defenders were jailed, we were locked in our houses, while mining companies kept working and profited from the pandemic.”
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During the 1980s and 90s, the World Bank began promoting mining as a pathway to development and solution to extreme poverty and the devastating impacts of armed conflicts. The signing of the peace agreements in Central America in the 1990s brought hope for a peaceful transition to democracy. But the young democracies began to crumble in the early 2000s under the weight of neoliberal economic reforms imposed by international financial institutions like the World Bank. Structural adjustment policies sought to facilitate the privatization of state-run industries and services, followed by opening the economy to foreign investment in the areas of communications, banking, and manufacturing. Increasingly these policies also include the concession of large extensions of territory for the extraction raw materials, energy generation, and the monopolization of agricultural commodities for global markets.
Communities affected by mining projects are organizing in opposition against the extractive model as they endure its severe socio-environmental impacts. Mining is an extremely water-intensive industry. Water is used in ore processing and suppressing dust, leading to both water scarcity and water contamination. Mining impacts local communities’ access to water for consumption, irrigation, and cattle rearing.
You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, Anti-Mining Networks Support Land Defense Movements in Central America.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Environment, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Military, Mining, Resource Extraction, Solidarity in Action, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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