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"In an important precedent-setting development for the accountability of Canadian mining companies for alleged overseas human rights abuses, victims of rape and murder at a Guatemalan mine are now able to sue a Canadian mining company in Canadian courts.

Guatemalan Mayan villagers who are suing Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals for the alleged gang-rapes of eleven women, the killing of community leader Adolfo Ich and the shooting and paralyzing of German Chub at HudBay's former mining project in Guatemala recently learned that HudBay has abruptly abandoned its legal argument that the lawsuit should not be heard in Canada, just before an Ontario court was set to determine the issue. As a result, and for the first time, a lawsuit against a Canadian mining company over alleged human rights abuses abroad will be heard in Canadian courts."

More here from Rights Action on this important development.

As mentioned here previously, community members of San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc, 45 minutes outside of Guatemala City, have been legally and peacefully engaging in an encampment and, for nearly a year now, have maintained a human roadblock to the mine, preventing machinery and mining employees from entering the site. They fear the mine will endanger their well being and contaminate their already scarce water supply. All this at great personal cost.

In the first week of December, hundreds of police and anti-riot troops, along with mining company personnel, arrived to evict the community members. At least three community members needed medical attention due to breathing in the tear-gas after the aggression by the armed forces. During the attack, the community members held their ground, peacefully, and sang songs. For the time being, the police and other armed forces have again backed down. The encampment continues legally and peacefully.

The fear that the community have was confirmed by US engineer and mining expert Rob Robinson, who analyzed the 900-page Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the El Tambor gold mine and travelled to Guatemala to present his findings to the Guatemalan government, the press, and affected communities.

“The analysis is so bad that it can’t help us predict or prevent the negative effects of the mine,” explained Mr. Robinson. “It gives no confidence that the mining company will protect the environment or the health of the communities.”

Grahame Russell writes here in rabble.ca about the police attack and the article also contains good background material as well as a video and the text of a letter from the new owners of the mine, KCA. More on the environmental impact report can be found here on the Mining Justice Alliance website (from GHRC).

Paul N. Avakian writes in the Foreign Policy Journal, “against a long history of impunity, a Guatemalan high judge last month sent to trial a lingering genocide case against a popular former dictator who presided over the most brutal phase of repression during the country’s 36-year civil war.”

The article goes on to state that, “Ríos Montt’s defense for what he has called “excesses” committed during his reign has always been that he was an uninformed and uninvolved leader trying to bring peace to a country under siege, that soldiers had acted on their own in the atrocities. “His intention was only to restore order and cooperation among the Mayan-Ixil,” Ríos Montt’s lawyer has said of his client. “He did not determine the level of force that the Army used.”

But a packet of documents that surfaced in 2009, entitled “Operación Sofia”, that details the Army’s 1982 Ixil operations, says otherwise, according to experts. The packet consists of 359 pages of plans, orders, maps, telegrams and hand-written reports. “These records show chain of command communications up and down the line, and coincide with witness testimony,” said Kate Doyle, the forensic archivist who was given the documents by Guatemalan sources. “They provide firsthand evidence of Ríos Montt’s deliberate policy of repression and terror against the Ixil Mayans. But it should be emphasized that they became available to prosecutors not from the Guatemalan government but through leaks and accidental discoveries.””

You can read the full article here.

The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. It recently published a report into the killings at Totonicapán featured here previously. The report, ‘Totonicapán: Tension in Guatemala’s Indigenous Hinterland’, includes the following recommendations:

President Pérez Molina should commit his government to a timetable and benchmarks for police reform – including the training and equipping of units specialised in crowd control – so that the military can be withdrawn from crime fighting and other public security functions

Security forces should work closely with protest organisers (and vice versa) to guarantee that demonstrations can proceed peacefully with as little harm to economic activity and commuters as possible.

Congress should create legal means of addressing the legitimate concerns of communities about environmental degradation and the social and economic impact of hydroelectric and mining projects; and seek input from local indigenous leaders on legislation to establish the “good faith” consultations required under International Labour Organization Convention no. 169.

The National System of Permanent Dialogue (SNDP) should promote a comprehensive review of extractive best practices, in close consultation with investors, environmental groups and indigenous organisations, in order to devise joint strategies aimed at protecting local interests.

Investors should perform environmental and human rights due diligence that takes carefully into account the special needs and challenges faced by indigenous communities; and also conduct base line studies and ongoing assessments through credible mechanisms in collaboration with the community.

You can read more here.

“Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez ended a four-hour hearing today in the genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt by accepting all of the witnesses, experts and documents submitted as evidence by the prosecution. The defense, by contrast, failed in its bid to incorporate experts and documentary evidence on behalf of their client, although the judge approved several defense witnesses.”

More on the genocide case against Ríos Montt from Kate Doyle can be found here.

Meanwhile, the latest is that the case is to move into the debate phase, set for August 14th, 2013.

The news that Efraín Ríos Montt was to stand trial on charges of genocide was widely greeted.

Kirsten Weld, in the New York Times, in recognising the bravery of the Guatemalan judge stated, “In greenlighting a public trial for the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide, the judge, Miguel Ángel Gálvez, made his country the first in the Americas to prosecute a former head of state, in its own domestic courts, for the ultimate crime”.

This was the latest stage in this particular, and extraordinary, judicial process. Amy Ross, in Al Jazeera, noted, “His arrest in January 2012 - the judge ordered the former army general confined to his home - represented an extraordinary break with impunity in the Central American country; the decision to proceed with the trial, despite attempts to have the charges dropped, is of even greater significance. No ranking officer has been held responsible for the violence in which some 200,000 people, almost all civilians, lost their lives”.

Mike Allison, also in Al Jazeera, stated that the case may also cast a light on President Otto Pérez Molina’s role in the massacres that took place in the Ixil region during Ríos Montt’s de facto presidency.

You can read Kirsten’s piece here, Amy’s here, and Mike’s piece here.

Great news in from Guatemala today – this from Associated Press.

“A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war will stand trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Monday.

Human rights advocates have said that the prosecution of Jose Efrain Rios Montt would be an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.

He is the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.”

You can read the full article here and you can read this, in Spanish, from Prensa Libre.

Adam Isacson notes on the ‘Just the Facts’ website, "“For the first time in more than 25 years, an American Soldier has graduated from the Guatemalan special operations Kaibil School, in Poptún, Guatemala,” announces a December news release from U.S. Special Operations Command South".

"The Kaibil School is considered one of the most prestigious, vigorous, arduous military courses in Central America,” the release continues. “Their motto: ‘If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.’”"

Guatemala’s elite Kaibil Special Forces unit is famous for more than just rigorous training and a medieval motto”".

He goes on to document some facts that don’t appear in the SOCSOUTH release. You can read the article here.

In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Guatemalan state in three cases: the 1982 Río Negro massacres, the 1984 forced disappearance of union and student activist Fernando García, and 28 disappearances between 1983-1985 documented in the military intelligence dossier known as the “Military Diary”. The Court’s sentences demanded that the government of Guatemala pay reparations to family members of the victims, conduct full investigations and sanction those found to have committed violations, and carry out other acts of commemoration and recognition of the state’s responsibility.

Under cover of holiday and year’s end festivities, the government of Otto Pérez Molina made an unambiguous move to defend the architects of state terror from accountability under international law.

This, and other notices regarding impunity in Guatemala were posted by Cascadia Solidaria on Upside Down World.

You can read the article here.

Genocide cases

Four ex-generals had been bound to proceedings for genocide and crimes against humanity. Nevertheless, on the 15th January 2012, the judge provisionally suspended criminal prosecution against Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores because of his state of health and ordered that periodic medical evaluations are carried out. The lawyers of Héctor Mario López Fuentes have also argued that his own weak state of health means he should not be prosecuted. Besides these means, others have been presented. Challenges have been filed against the two judges in charge of the investigation, Carol Patricia Flores y Miguel Ángel Gálvez. More here.

In another case, which has its origins in the internal armed conflict, on the 20th March 2012, a sentence of 7,710 years was handed down against a former military commissioner and four ex-members of the Civil Defence Patrols for their participation in the massacre of Plan de Sanchez. The sentence was a recognition of each of the 256 assassinated victims. In addition, through the judgement, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education were required to put together an educational documentary about the massacre so as to vindicate the historical memory of the victims. The Public Prosecutor was required to continue its investigations into other perpetrators of the massacre. On the 26th September, the public defence appealed the sentence, arguing that those sentenced had been obliged and under threat and that the intellectual authors of the massacre should be investigated.

Following on from the previous blog entry, this from Renata Avila on Global Voices.

“Guatemala, the heart of Mayan culture, has started their festivities for the 13 Baktun - the last cycle of the Mayan calendar, due to end on Friday, December 21, 2012. But sadly the celebrations were dominated by staged government shows which were neither led nor shared by indigenous communities or spiritual leaders.

On stage, non-indigenous peoples were wearing indigenous clothes in a folklore show while non-indigenous attendees from the Guatemalan elites were in the most important ceremonial Mayan center, Tikal, waiting for the new era to arrive. Indigenous peoples were left outside, were they were demonstrating, playing the traditional instrument marimba.

The Guatemalan Federations of Mayan Radios reported early in the morning of December 20 that authorities from the Mam - Mayan council were not allowed to enter the central plaza of the National Park Tikal, one of the places for 13 Baktun celebrations. Authorities from the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism denied them access, arguing that the area of ceremonies was cut off for the stage show.”

You can read the full article here.

“It is shameful on the part of the Guatemalan government to make the international community believe it is promoting the Mayan culture, when it continues to develop an aggressive policy of appropriation of our natural resources. This manifests itself in hundreds of concessions and imposed mining projects, hydroelectric dams, oil extraction, monoculture crops for transnational companies, all in the name of false development as a method of domination and racism in Guatemala,” states Aniceto Morales, above (courtesy of MiMundo).

Much has been written about the recent end of the world, even among so-called serious media. At least, for them, it does constitute a useful distraction from the more serious issues confronting an increasinlgy fractious Guatemala. I’ve no doubt that it was a useful for the Guatemala Tourist Board in finding ways to bring visitors to the country. I hope those that did treated the locals with respect and found themselves wanting to help support social justice in Guatemala.

James Rodríguez has just published his latest photo-essay on MiMundo and it tells the story of the celebrations of the ending of the Oxlajuj Baktun in Zaculeu. Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

The piece is interestingly sub-headed ‘End of an Era, More of the Same’ and you can see the full article here.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Guatemala’s people lived through one of the most brutal periods of the twentieth century - a government-run terror campaign that turned the country into horror film.

Recent research by Jubilee Debt Campaign has found that International Financial Institutions like the World Bank played a key role in financially backing the ‘terror governments’ of this period.

One particular project stands out - the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam. Funded mostly by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, the preparation and construction of this dam was a major factor in the massacre of 400 people, mass displacement, torture, rape and starvation. Despite these horrific events, the World Bank gave further support to the project seven years later.

It has been accepted by those who funded the Chixoy Dam that affected communities must receive reparations. But despite a long negotiation, they have yet to receive any compensation.

Guatemala remains a highly impoverished and unequal country, its people subject to high levels of violence, discrimination and human rights abuses. Much of the blame for this can be laid at the door of those Western governments and institutions that undermined democracy and plundered the country’s resources for decades.

As Guatemala is increasingly opened up to mining through a series of mega-projects, we must hold the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to account for its activities in the country - and say Guatemala needs a very different form of development to that propounded by the Banks.

You can find out more and read the report, ‘Generating Terror’, from Jubilee Debt Campaign here.

“They lied to us, the gold man and the ministry of energy and mines lied to us about the project. They said we were crazy, that nothing was going to happen but we just found out about one year and a half ago that they would come here, what is more that there are 14 other projects going ahead too."

So states Milton Carrera in an interview with Lyda Fernanda Forero published on the TNI website.

The communities of San José del Golfo and San Pedro de Ayanpuc realised that the company was planning to drill on their territories and started to demand answers from the company and government.

You can find more about the mining issue here and you can read the TNI article here.

We gave a short explanation of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán previously which you can read here. In brief it is the autonomous government of Totonicapán, which is an ancestral structure of the K'iche Maya that has endured for hundreds of years, coordinating the indigenous mayorships of 48 communities, exercising self-governance in matters including environmental management and security, and mediating local conflicts.

We here reproduce a letter from the 48 Cantons to the President of Guatemala which was kindly translated into English by Christina Hewitt. We found the original on albedrío here.

Letter to the President of Guatemala from 48 Cantons

by the Association of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán - Guatemala, 31 October 2012

“Uchuq’ab’ Tinimit Chwimeq’ena’ arè ri K’ax k’ol ” (The Power of the Totonicapán People is in Action)

MR PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF GUATEMALA.

THE ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY LEADERS AND THE COUNCIL OF LEADERS OF THE 48 CANTONS OF TOTONICAPÁN, IN REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF TOTONICAPÁN, COMMUNICATE TO YOU THROUGH THIS LETTER: