Anti-Mining Blockade Evicted in Guatemala

The eviction comes a day before a presidential meeting and a year after a violent eviction against La Puya’s peaceful resistance.

June 3rd, 2015

from Telesur
The com­mu­ni­ty of La Puya in cen­tral Guatemala, resist­ing the U.S.-owned El Tam­bor gold mine project for over three years, faced evic­tion Tues­day after at least 300 secu­ri­ty forces arrived in the ear­ly morn­ing forc­ing ille­gal dis­place­ment of the block­ade, Pren­sa Libre report­ed. Accord­ing to wit­ness­es, in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing secu­ri­ty forces, includ­ing riot police, removed bar­ri­cades block­ing vehi­cle traf­fic to clear the entrance to the mine and also took down the community’s signs accom­pa­ny­ing the block­ade.

Com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives lat­er spoke with with the offi­cers, say­ing the evic­tion was ille­gal and that they await­ed a legal order for the community’s removal. The threat of evic­tion comes days after La Puya reac­ti­vat­ed its peace­ful block­ade and also coin­cides with the one year anniver­sary of vio­lent evic­tion against the com­mu­ni­ty last May.

Com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives have a meet­ing sched­uled Wednes­day with Pres­i­dent Perez Moli­na, whose res­ig­na­tion has been wide­ly called for in recent weeks by social move­ments, to reini­ti­ate a dia­logue on the community’s demands, Pren­sa Libre report­ed. Mem­bers of Guatemala’s Coun­cil for Human Rights also arrived on the scene to observe the increased police pres­ence as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure for the com­mu­ni­ty as they faced the threat of a repres­sive crack­down.
Mem­bers of the resis­tance and orga­ni­za­tions in sol­i­dar­i­ty with La Puya held a demon­stra­tion in the cap­i­tal city Tues­day after­noon to denounce the repres­sion against the peace­ful resis­tance and demand “respect for live and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.”
La Puya launched its resis­tance against the con­struc­tion of El Tam­bor gold mine in 2012. Women and indige­nous peo­ple are at the fore­front of the community’s non-vio­lent move­ment that has effec­tive­ly put a stop to the work of at least three transna­tion­al min­ing com­pa­nies.
Dur­ing the first of three years of resis­tance against the mine, La Puya caused $US3 mil­lion in loss­es for the com­pa­ny Exmin­gua, the Guatemalan sub­sidiary of Neva­da-based U.S. transna­tion­al extrac­tive cor­po­ra­tion Kappes Cas­si­day & Asso­ciates.