On March 2, 2012, area residents, who had not been consulted about this mine, set up a 24-hour a day blockade at the entrance to the mine site. Within weeks, on May 8, 2012, the women of the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya laid on the ground, sang and prayed to stop bulldozers from entering the mine.
PBI-Canada posted a piece about a visit that they carried out, along with PBI-Guatemala, with the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya (La Resistencia Pacifica La Puya). They do so in the context of an upcoming ICSID ruling regarding the mine.
On Sunday May 7, PBI-Canada and PBI-Guatemala visited with the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya at a roadside site that it has maintained for more than ten years at the entrance to the “El Tambor” Progreso VII Derivada gold mine.
During our visit to the site a short drive outside Guatemala City, Felisa Muralles, better known as Doña Licha, told us that a ruling on the mining company’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) challenge against the state of Guatemala could come in June.
Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) is suing Guatemala for more than USD $400 million (in estimated lost future profits) via the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a branch of the World Bank, in Washington, DC.
You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, Peaceful Resistance of La Puya expects ICSID ruling in June as consultation process on El Tambor mine set to start this summer.
GSN has featured La Resistencia Pacifica in the past and you can view those pieces here, La Resistencia Pacifica La Puya.
Categories: Accompaniment, Corruption, Criminalisation, Environment, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Mining, Poverty, Racism, Resource Extraction, Solidarity in Action, Solidarity in Action/Guatemala, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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