Paloma de Dinechin wrote in The Guardian recently about the struggle that small and isolated Maya communities are facing in Ixquisis, a remote area close to the Mexican border. A struggle against global capital and led, in the main, by local Indigenous women. An example of where women are leading the struggle against environmental collapse and climate change.

Every morning, Juan Alonzo, a 35-year-old Indigenous farmer, accompanies his eldest son to work in the cardamom and corn fields along the Pojom River. Until 2017, Alonzo’s father also made the journey. But on 17 January that year, Sebastián Alonzo, 68, was killed in a demonstration against a hydroelectric project in the Ixquisis valley, an oasis of rivers and plantations in north-west Guatemala.

Since the tragedy, Juan has developed a stammer. Two of his four daughters sit on his lap as he visits his father’s grave, remembering his prominence in the Maya-Chuj Indigenous community: “My dad was very involved in the struggle for natural resources.” Juan believes it is the reason Sebastián was killed.

In Yulchén Frontera, one of the eight villages that make up the valley, a few miles from the Mexican border, subsistence farmers live in extreme poverty, without electricity and other modern amenities, which drives young people to emigrate to the US.

Yet this region is very rich in one resource: water. Three rivers – Río Pojom, Río Negro and Río Yolhuitz – are the lifeblood of these Indigenous Maya communities. The area can only be reached via pickup trucks that navigate the winding and hazardous mountain roads.

This wealth of resources caught the eye of one Guatemalan company. Previously known as Promoción y Desarrollos Hídricos, Sociedad Anónima (PDH, SA) and since renamed Energía y Renovación, the company’s arrival in 2010 marked the beginning of a long conflict over natural resources in the valley that continues to this day.

In 2012, Energía y Renovación called the eight villages of the Ixquisis valley to a meeting, during which villagers say it outlined the benefits the project would bring: the construction of schools and health centres, improved access to drinking water and, above all, the long-awaited arrival of electricity to the community – although the company denies that power was promised. At first, most of the inhabitants were enthusiastic.

You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, ‘He had a machete in his cheek’: how Guatemala’s hydropower dream turned deadly.

We featured the murder of Sebastian Alonso Juan, back in 2017, and other pieces about the struggle in Ixquisis. You can read the former piece, here, Human Rights violations in Ixquisis end in the murder of Sebastian Alonso Juan, and other pieces about Ixquisis, here, Ixquisis.

Categories: Accompaniment, Corruption, Criminalisation, Environment, Guatemala, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Legal, Resource Extraction, Violence

Tags: Hydropower, Ixquisis, Maya Chuj, Maya Qʼanjobʼal, Paloma de Dinechin, The Guardian