Articles originally published by Inequality.org can be reproduced under a Creative Commons license, but we are grateful to Inequality.org for specific permission to reproduce here this article by Jen Moore. The original can be found at:

https://inequality.org/research/celebrating-resilient-water-defenders/

By Jen Moore, Inequality.org, March 2, 2022

Key words: Berta Caceres; Guatemala; Water Protectors; La Puya; International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID); Honduras; Guapinol Eight

An Attempted Assassination, Criminalization, And Violent Eviction In 2014 Didn’t Stop The Peaceful Resistance Of La Puya In Guatemala, Which Won Legal Action Suspending Harmful Mining Activities.

Credit: Jen Moore

In Central America, as in many other parts of the world today, communities are being thrust into life and death struggles up against powerful interests to ensure clean water and health for their future generations. This is often the case where mining companies seek to dig up gold, silver, iron ore or other metals and minerals, disrupting or destroying precious water supplies in the process, and leaving behind massive quantities of toxic waste on the land.

With national and international laws designed to privilege such harmful activities in the name of so-called development and progress, it is vital to celebrate the milestones of people fighting against all odds to protect their lives and lands from such threats.

Today, March 2 [2022], many will honour the life of Berta Cáceres and reaffirm their commitment to the fight for justice for her brutal murder in her home six years ago. Her leadership in the resistance to megaprojects in Honduras, including a hydroelectric dam and mining concessions on Indigenous Lenca territory, continues to inspire many. Today also marks ten years of inspirational, peaceful resistance to gold mining at a place known as La Puya, just north of Guatemala City. The freedom of eight water defenders in Tocoa, Honduras [the Guapinol Eight] is also being celebrated this week where there are important signs that resistance to mining is gaining traction at the national level following the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro.

A Decade Of Water Defense In Guatemala

Celebrating ten years of resistance in Guatemala, the Peaceful Resistance ‘La Puya’ began on March 2, 2012 with a 24-hour protest camp in front of the entrance to a gold mine site operated by Nevada-based mining company Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) just north of Guatemala City. This week, over fifty Guatemalan and international organisations sent their congratulations to La Puya for its tenacious and ongoing struggle.

Over the course of the past decade, as a result of their resistance, members have suffered acts of intimidation, an attempted assassination, criminalization, as well as a violent eviction in May 2014 in order to enable the mine to start operating.

According to Guatemalan courts, KCA’s operations were always illegal. The company never had local support, lacked a construction license to build the mine, and violated environmental regulations. Legal action led to the mine suspension in 2016, upheld by the Constitutional Court in 2020, until which time a consultation has been undertaken with the community.

Despite having failed to respect Guatemalan law and much less the communities’ human rights, KCA is now suing the state of Guatemala for over $400 million dollars at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under the terms of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. (DR-CAFTA). KCA’s case against the Guatemalan government is part of an increasingly common strategy used by transnational corporations to bully foreign governments into approving projects that lack community support or otherwise extract their profits through compensation.

In its arbitration defense, despite the Guatemalan government having backed the company to get the mine up and operating in 2014, it acknowledges the legitimate resistance of La Puya to protect already scarce water supplies from contamination and depletion. It also argues that the company’s environmental impact study was incomplete, failed to abide by Guatemalan standards, let alone international norms, and never should have been approved. Meanwhile, the Guatemalan government also claims that the company failed to abide by at least 50% of its environmental obligations according to national regulations.

The Guatemalan defense team even goes so far to recognize that the injustice of this case is further evidence of the injustice of the international arbitration system: “The people of Guatemala should not now be asked to pick up the tab for Claimants, if at all that they suffered any business losses. Otherwise, this Tribunal would be rewarding an imprudent investor at the expense of causing doubt on the fairness of the investor-state dispute settlement system.”

It is only the stalwart persistence of the Peaceful Resistance La Puya and their careful documentation of their struggle and the company’s violations that have kept mining out of their communities so far and brought these local and international injustices to light.

Hard Fought Freedom For Defenders In Honduras

In Honduras, late the night of February 24^th [2022], six water defenders were finally reunited with their families after being illegally held for two and a half years in pre-trial detention. Two other water defenders were released earlier in February.

Their crime? Having participated in peaceful protests against contamination of their rivers from an open-pit iron oxide project operating within a protected area upstream of the water they rely on. After two and a half years of legal work and campaigning to build support for the freedom of the water defenders, including from solidarity groups, faith, environmental and human rights organisations, as well as UN bodies, the men were finally released. They were received with fireworks, applause, and hugs from their family members, supporters and members of the Municipal Committee in Defense of the Commons and Public Goods of Tocoa, recipient of the 2019 Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights award.

Honduran company Los Pinares Investments holds two mining concessions within the Carlos Escaleras National Park, the headwaters of 34 rivers. In 2013, the limits of the central area of the park were redrawn so that the project would remain within the buffer zone in which such mining is permitted. The company, owned by Honduran elite that enjoyed a cosy relationship with the now former dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernández – recently arrested for his narcotrafficking ties – has received investment from the large US steel company Nucor. Nucor reported ending its investment in the project in 2019, but two of its executives still appear as directors of a Panamanian subsidiary that is part of the Honduran business group.

The Municipal Committee continues to challenge the illegality of the iron oxide project, which went into operation in 2021. It is possible that with the recent inauguration of Honduras’ first female President Xiomara Castro that their complaints seeking the project’s closure could gain traction.

Notably, prior to being ousted in a military backed coup in 2009, under Castro’s husband and former president Mel Zelaya, a proposed bill was awaiting debate that sought to prohibit open pit mining and put other constraints on this toxic activity. This bill came about as a result of the difficult struggles of movements and mining-affected communities in Honduras, such as in the Siria Valley where communities faced health harms from the San Martín gold mine, owned by Goldcorp (now Newmont).

In echo of this earlier proposal, on February 28, the Honduran Secretary of Energy, Natural Resources and Mines issued a communiqué stating that no further permits will be issued for extractive projects as a result of being a threat to public health, water and natural resources, declaring Honduras free of open pit mining. The statement further indicates that the authority will “proceed with the review, suspension and cancelation of environmental licenses, permits and concessions.”

While applying such measures to existing mining projects and permits in the country is sure to face a fight and require continued organising from Honduran water defenders and their allies, this declaration is potent evidence of the tremendous efforts that have already taken place by land and water defenders on the frontline.

Celebrating water defenders and their long-term struggles is part of learning from one another. While La Puya and many other communities in Guatemala continue to stave off precious metal mining, as Hondurans forge a path to be mining free, and as the Salvadoran people also fight to maintain their ban on metallic mining since March 2017, they remind us about how through collective efforts and tenacity important victories can be won for the health of people and the planet.

John Cavanagh’s article in Chapter 5 of this website (‘Is Mining Money Behind the Arrest of Salvadoran Water Defenders?’) was written in January this year. In August this year the five detained water defenders of Santa Marta and the Association of Economic and Social Development (ADES) celebrated a minor victory as they were released from jail into house arrest. This meant that they were free of the horrific conditions in the Salvadoran penitentiary system and that they were reunited with their families. The court order also required the detainees to be released into hospital for medical evaluation, but the General Directorate of Correctional Centres of El Salvador failed to comply with the order and released them directly into their homes instead.  

In June this year, before their release, Martin Mowforth received an email letter from a Salvadoran friend and a prominent member of the Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador tying together the links between the arrest of the ADES 5, the current repressive state of exception in El Salvador (reported in Chapter 10 of this website) and the threat of an end to the prohibition of metal mining in El Salvador. We are not using our friend’s name because of the high possibility of reprisals against him resulting from his information and opinions. His letter (below), translated for the TVOD website Jill Powis, is given below. (Thanks Jill.)

“Anyone who criticizes the state of emergency which has been imposed on an apparently permanent basis suffers police harassment and persecution.

A number of organisations (Institutions such as UCA, FESPAD and CRISTOSAL) have documented a range of human rights violations in El Salvador during this state of emergency. For example, they estimate that as many as 66,000 people suffered arbitrary detention without an investigation or arrest warrant, during which 170 have died.  According to personal testimony from the victims themselves, human rights abuses committed in the prisons include physical and psychological torture, beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, and malnutrition.

The Movement of Victims of the Regime in El Salvador (MOVIR) presented a letter to the offices of the Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights, Andrés Guzmán, asking him to review the cases of innocent people arrested under the state of emergency.

In public statements, the Presidential Commissioner has repeatedly claimed to be unaware of human rights violations in El Salvador and is therefore complicit in the current policy of terror. In El Salvador, people continue to be disappeared and, despite the fact that this has been reported to the authorities and a search association has even been set up in response, the State has shown itself to be indifferent to the issue.

In the case of the environmentalists [here he is referring to the water defenders, the Santa Marta 5], they have now been in arbitrary detention for seven months. On 16 May, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders requested their release, but the Salvadoran State has refused.

The Sensuntepeque Investigating Court (Juzgado de Instrucción) has twice refused to review their detention and has still not held the special hearing to review the measures handed down by the Criminal Chamber of Cojutepeque on 30 June.

Grassroots organisations have asked the Prosecutor’s Office to withdraw the charges against the environmental leaders of Santa Marta and ADES.

Their request is based on the lack of real evidence incriminating the leaders and environmentalists and on the provisions of the National Reconciliation Law of 1992. The organisations also point out that the criminalization of environmental defenders is an abuse of the judicial process motivated by plans to recommence metal mining.

If the Salvadoran government continues to ignore the calls of the Special Rapporteur, El Salvador could be considered to be in contempt of this body.

The President has now sent 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 police officers to Cabañas, further consolidating their presence in the municipality of San Isidro and the community of Santa Marta, both centres of resistance to mining companies.

This deployment of state forces, far from guaranteeing security, is instead intimidating and terrorizing the inhabitants, as innocent people are being detained, accused of being criminals.”

BY John CAVANAGH

JANUARY 26, 2023

The following article taken from inequality.org is by John Cavanagh, a Senior Advisor at the Institute for Policy Studies. We meant to include it in previous additions to The Violence of Development website, but it was missed for a variety of reasons – apologies. We are grateful to John for granting us permission to include the article in the TVOD website.

Key words: metal mining ban; El Salvador; detention of water defenders; mining-related assassinations; Association of Economic and Social Development (ADES); Pacific Rim / OceanaGold.

Protestors demanding the release of the five water defenders. Credit: Association of Economic and Social Development (ADES).

Human rights and environmental activists across the globe are mobilizing in support of five men detained in El Salvador on charges that appear aimed at silencing opposition to mining. The arrestees — Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega — were among the leaders of a campaign to block mining activities in El Salvador that would have enriched a few while endangering the nation’s water supply.

In 2017, their campaign shook the rapacious global extractives industry to its core by winning the world’s first ban on metals mining. Robin Broad and I chronicled this thrilling victory in our book, The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed [published by Beacon Press, Boston, in 2021].

But now it’s clear this David versus Goliath struggle is not over. El Salvador’s Attorney General claims the January 11 arrests are related to an alleged murder over 30 years ago during El Salvador’s brutal civil war. These charges are beyond dubious.

As more than 250 organisations from 29 countries point out in a joint statement, the government has never bothered to prosecute members of the military responsible for dozens of civil war-era human rights violations. These include a 1981 massacre that left 30 dead and 189 disappeared in the arrestees’ community in northern El Salvador.

“This further raises questions about whether the Attorney General’s true motivation is to attempt to silence these Water Defenders, especially in light of the current administration’s crusade to criminalize, persecute, and demobilize its political opponents,” reads the international statement.

Through my 14 years of collaboration with the water defenders of El Salvador, I’ve got to know one of the five men arrested — Antonio Pacheco — particularly well. His story reflects the courage, creativity, and perseverance of a movement that has inspired fellow activists around the world.

For over two decades, Pacheco has led the Association of Economic and Social Development (ADES), the organisation that anchored the fight against mining in the northern province of Cabañas.

The mining corporation that had come to Cabañas was the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim. What they wanted was to extract the rich veins of gold buried near the Lempa River, the water source for more than half of El Salvador’s 6.2 million people.

Pacheco initially thought mining might be good for this economically poor province. But then he learned about the dangers for public health and agriculture from popular educator Marcelo Rivera. They and others, including tireless community leader Vidalina Morales, began informing their impoverished, rural community about the issue. They also raised funds to bring in outside experts, including a leading international hydrologist who issued a devastating critique of the mining company’s environmental impact statement.

In time, the activists built up a National Roundtable on Metals Mining that won over a strong majority of the public and rallied the Catholic Church, farmers, small businesses, and labour and environmental groups to oppose mining.

Then the company struck back. In 2009, Pacific Rim (a Canadian firm later bought by Australia-based OceanaGold) filed a lawsuit against the government of El Salvador, eventually demanding $250 million in compensation for the loss of profits they’d expected to make from their mining project there. For the cash-strapped country, that was the equivalent of 40 percent of the national public health budget.

This legal blackmail occurred amidst an explosion of violence against anti-mining activists, including the murder of Pacheco’s fellow campaign leader Marcelo Rivera. Several people have been convicted of Rivera’s killing, but to this day the “intellectual authors” have never been held accountable.

Pacheco also faced personal death threats. In the wake of Rivera’s assassination, one note read: “The hour has come…[Pacheco] for the bomb in your own house and of your pals, now is the hour you pay for what you did…[You are] the next like Marcelo Rivera.”

Pro-mining forces also tried to buy Pacheco off through offers of prostitutes and other bribes. He didn’t blink. Instead, Pacheco focused on broadening the campaign’s base, building relationships with the right-wing ARENA party’s environment minister, conservative bishops, and other unlikely allies.

He and Morales also encouraged my organisation, the Institute for Policy Studies and MiningWatch Canada, to create International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador, a coalition that has brought outside attention to the campaign and pressure on the mining company.

In 2016, the water defenders who had paid such a high price for their resistance won their first measure of justice: a three-person tribunal ruled unanimously against the mining company. This victory emboldened efforts behind a ban on metals mining, efforts that paid off in 2017 with a stunning, unanimous vote in the Salvadoran legislature.

Now, Pacheco and others who have inspired defenders of water and democracy around the world sit in jail cells.

Why would a government imprison heroes who have saved their country by saving its rivers? El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, is an authoritarian populist who has demonized environmentalists and suspended a wide range of civil liberties, leading to widespread  arbitrary detentions.

His targeting of the water defenders could be linked to Bukele’s mismanagement of national finances, in part through his disastrous marriage of El Salvador’s currency to Bitcoin, which has created tremendous pressure to generate revenue from any source — even if it destroys the environment.

Before his arrest, Pacheco was one of several people who had reported suspicious appearances by unknown individuals offering to lease farmers’ land for exorbitant amounts of money and provide funding for municipal social programmes in the mining region of Cabañas. These appearances are just one sign that the Bukele government could be moving toward increased collaboration with transnational mining institutions and overturning the mining ban.

El Salvador-based environmentalist Pedro Cabezas and Canadian journalist Owen Schalk have also reported that two mayors from the Cabañas mining region say they met with officials of the Exports and Investment Promotion Agency of El Salvador who told them that mining will soon be reintroduced.

In their joint statement, the international organisations call on Bukele’s government to “drop the charges against the five water defenders and otherwise release them from prison to await their trial.”

Through incredible courage, backed up by strong international solidarity, these water defenders have won seemingly unwinnable battles against formidable economic and political forces. The fight must continue to gain their freedom and keep mining out of El Salvador.

Notes:

• Robin Broad and John Cavanagh’s book is the definitive story behind the run-up to and the background of El Salvador’s metals mining ban, but the subject is also widely covered in a range of articles in Chapter 5 (‘Mining’) of The Violence of Development website.
• Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, 2021, The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed, Beacon Press, Boston.

The version of this ‘Sorry History’ that was given in the book was much abridged. This version is the full version as given by Probe International.

• The campaign to stop the Chalillo dam begins in 1999.Poster against the Chalillo Dam
• Environmentalists warn that Chalillo will destroy endangered species’ habitat and major Maya archeological sites, be technically compromised, and uneconomic. Fortis perseveres nonetheless.
• Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) secretly pays AMEC, a Montreal-based engineering firm, $250,000 to prepare a feasibility study of Chalillo justifying construction. U.S. author Bruce Barcott calls the report “a masterpiece of spin and obfuscation.”
• AMEC fails to record geological faults and fractures in the project area and says bedrock at the dam site is “granite.” In fact, it is sandstones interbedded with soft shales which have poor load-bearing capacity.
• London’s Natural History Museum hired by AMEC, predicts the demise of threatened species, and advises against construction of dam. Fortis ignores the warning.
• Probe International demands that CIDA recall AMEC’s report and notify the Belize authorities that its conclusions are invalid. CIDA denies responsibility.
• Environmentalists launch lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Belize which is then appealed to the Privy Council, Belize’s highest court of appeal, and loses by a slim margin.
• Fortis completes construction of the Chalillo dam in 2005 and impoundment begins.
• Fortis fails to fully comply with its legally required environmental compliance plan. In July 2007, Belizean environmentalists sue and win court case, ordering the government to monitor water quality in the Macal River, establish an emergency warning system to protect downstream residents in the event of a dam break, monitor levels of mercury in the fish and inform the public of findings.
• Macal River water quality declines. Swimmers and bathers complain of stomach problems, itchy skin, and skin rashes.
• Authorities warn people not to eat fish from the river because of possible contamination from methyl mercury, a toxin formed through bacterial synthesis in flooded soils and vegetation, which attacks the central nervous system in humans.
• Sharon Matola, Director of the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre, reports that Scarlet Macaws still return to try and nest along the Macal River and its tributary, the Raspaculo, but their nesting trees are gone and the reservoir becomes “a big mud-hole” every dry season. Nesting boxes the government nailed to trees as a substitute are, says Ms. Matola, a “total failure.” BirdLife International predicts the Scarlet Macaw population will die out within a few years due to habitat loss and poaching by the recent influx of dam construction workers.
• Under Fortis’s monopoly, Belizeans now pay more for their electricity than consumers in other Central American countries.
• Summer 2009, shock sediment discharges begin to flow down the Macal River from the Chalillo dam, contaminating the river and marine systems downstream.
• Belize environmentalists seek an injunction in the Supreme Court of Belize to stop the release of sediments.
• September 2009, Belizean authorities discuss shutting down Chalillo’s operations to stop the sediment pollution

Written by Probe International, December 2009

www.probeinternational.org

Anyone interested in the story of the Chalillo Dam are referred to the interview with Candy Gónzalez, in the Belize set of interviews

Photos: River turbidity below the Chalillo Dam