We drove under this large banner at the entrance to San Jose Del Golfo. The message is quite clear, No Mining!
The community has been resisting the development of Canada's Radius Gold's gold and silver mine since 2010. On March 2 of this year, one woman took matters into her own hands after the community's repeated attempts to meet with local officials and representatives of Radius failed. She drove her pickup truck across the road which enters the mine site. Although she did not stop traffic for long, the community embraced the idea of a blockade and have been refusing entry to the site since that day.
I was excited to see upwards of 250 people, many vehicles and temporary shelters including a bathroom and kitchen set up along the road. Approximately two thirds of the people were women, many appeared to be seniors. Banners demanding an end to mining hung from the trees and fence along the road. Many of the banners were hand made, others from NGOs such as the Comite de Unidad Campesina (CUC), and Madres Selva who have instrumental in accessing information such as the environmental impact assessment report Radius submitted in order to receive their exploration license.
Jorge Lopez welcomed us on behalf of the crowd, and he and Antonio Reyes Romaro explained why the citizens of San Jose Del Golfo and the surrounding communities are committed to maintaining the blockade.
In 2010, lands on the site now known as Progresso 7 where rented under the auspices of improving local agriculture and a pineapple field. However, once the citizens began seeing truck loads full of rock and earth being removed, they realised what was actually happening and began researching the process for precious metal mining and the claim on this site in particular.
Radius Gold, through their Guatemalan subsidiary, Exmingua, have received an extraction license for a 20 square kilometre site which spreads into three municipalities. San Jose Del Golfo is the closest community, however, there are 4 smaller villages in the valley below which would be more immediately impacted by mining activities occurring above them.
The citizens are demanding a consultation be performed which would include all of the communities around the site. To date they have had to piece together information gathered by NGOs and the occasional propaganda leaflet circulated by the company. Lopez explained that details in the environmental impact assessment is either incorrect or too vague to fully understand.
Communities from other parts of Guatemala who are also currently resisting mining operations have been in consulted and supported the San Jose Del Golfo members but pressure to end the blockade has been steadily mounting. On July 13, a woman was driving home from the blockade when a motorcycle with two men pulled alongside her truck and shot at her four times. One bullet struck her but she is expected to recover from the injury. Other women reported being threatened and a 'black campaign' has been launched against them, seeing rumours spread that they are working at the blockade in order to have illicit affairs with men. These smears have even been forwarded to some women's husbands working out of state.
The group's message to us was for the people of Canada to pressure our government to pressure the Guatemalan government to retract the mining license. They said, they do not care if Canada cuts aid programs as a tool for said pressure, because the money does not get to the needy anyway.
After a lunch of tortilla, beans and pasta, we parted ways, leaving the citizens working the blockade to endure not only Guatemala's rainy season, but its political corruption and impunity which allow the country's laws to be good on paper, but infrequently enacted.
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