Bluestone Resources (of Canada) announced they received a permit on January 9, 2024, from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and out-going government of President Alejandro Giammattei, to operate a widely opposed, environmentally devastating, open-pit, cyanide leaching gold mine in the municipality of Asuncion Mita, Guatemala, along the El Salvador border.
One can imagine that folks at Bluestone Resources and their contacts in the out-going government and Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources rushed to get this “permit” approved days before the constitutional transfer of power to the new government, and ouster of the corrupt, reviled government of Giammattei.
Groups like Madre Selva and the Observatory of Extractive Industries have denounced for years how this mining operation will deplete and contaminate water sources used by Guatemalans and many more people in El Salvador that depend on the same watershed that this Cerro Blanco open-pit mining operation will inevitably harm.
On January 14, 2024, just after Bluestone acquired this questionable permit, President Bernardo Arevalo and VP Karin Herrera of the Semilla Party assumed office, after six months of country-wide protests, led by Guatemala’s majority Indigenous population, to resist and thwart illegal efforts to block the election results by the traditional ‘covenant of the corrupt’ elites, and prosecutors and judges loyal to Giammattei.
On January 17, 2024, as if to re-confirm years of denunciations about the systemic corruption of Guatemala’s elected politicians, government officials and judicial operators (judges, prosecutors, etc.), and economic elites and their global business partners, the U.S. State Department issued sanctions against the ousted President Giammattei and Alberto Pimentel Mata (Ministry of Energy and Mines) for receiving bribes from Swiss companies (Solway Investment Group and Telf Ag) so as to advance their mining interests in eastern Guatemala.
History of mining and systemic corruption, repression, etc.
None of this corruption (let alone repression, environmental and health harms, human rights violations and forced evictions) linked to the global mining industry should be considered surprising, as Catherine Nolin (my co-editor) and I document in the 2021 book TESTIMONIO: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala.
In the book, Sandra Cuffe summarizes the context in which mining companies and their supportive governments back home (Canada, Switzerland, U.S., etc.) claim that they are doing business in a transparent, legal and democratic manner:
“A military coup clears the way for mining interests. Exploitation licenses are granted by military rulers. A mining company is directly involved in attacks and assassinations. A mining law is written by future mining company personnel. Exploitation licenses are granted by corrupt government officials. A transnational mining executive becomes a fugitive. Company and government officials coordinate police and military action to quell dissent. People’s homes are burned to the ground. People are killed.”
“The history of mining in Guatemala over the past sixty years is one of violence, corruption, and impunity. It is a history of transnational mining companies doing whatever they need to in order to advance their interests, working with every government administration along the way, whether with genocidal military rulers or with administrations so corrupt that most top officials are now sitting in prison cells.”
No rest for the weary
