Canadian Mining Companies Leave Behind Decades of Violence in Guatemala

[Judi Lynn]

Canadian Mining Companies Leave Behind Decades of Violence in Guatemala
Friday, 15 January 2016 00:00
By Scott Price, IC Magazine | News Analysis

While much of the controversy surrounding Canada's extractive industry centers on oil and gas projects like SWN Resources' drilling plans in New Brunswick, Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline and the widely felt impact of Tar Sands extraction in Alberta, there is a significant lack of debate concerning Canada's larger and much more influential mining sector.

It's estimated that 75% of the world's mining and exploration companies are based in Canada. Collectively, they account for 42 billion dollars of Canada's gross domestic product, making mining and exploration one of Canada's most economically powerful sectors. Some 40% of global mining capital is raised on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The impact of Canada's mining sector, however, goes far beyond mere facts and figures.

Wherever Canadian mining companies operate, they have an indelible imprint on the social, political and environmental realities in which they insert themselves. In countries that are politically unstable or where a culture of impunity is permitted to thrive, that imprint can span generations with successive mining companies following in the footsteps of their predecessors. Such is the legacy of shame that the Maya Q'eqchi people in Guatemala have been forced to endure for the last half century.

For the average Canadian, the effects of mining and other forms of resource extraction are not immediately apparent; indeed, those who tend to benefit the most from such projects also tend to be shielded from the harsh realities that befall those who are affected by them, as Mi'kmaq lawyer and activist Pam Palmater told Intercontinental Cry (IC).

"People in far-away cities may enjoy oil for their cars, diamonds from their city jeweler, or minerals needed to build cities and never have to see the housing crisis and lands stripped of trees and wildlife, or see the deformed fish and contaminated water."

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34433-canadian-mining-companies-leave-behind-decades-of-violence-in-guatemala

(My emphasis.)

[forest444]

1. Barrick Gold (another Canadian mining giant) has certainly had it's share of controversies in LatAm.

Part of the problem as well are the local partners who work with these North American, European, or Japanese mining firms. Many of them (the Latin American business partners in these joint ventures), besides being greedy as all Hell, are inveterate racists who see indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants the way cattle ranchers might see prairie dogs in Colorado: as varmints to be moved or erradicated, and little more.

Of course, they'll often put their countries' need for foreign investment up as an excuse, when in reality the proceeds are, as you know, for the most part just siphoned off to any number of tax havens and money lanudries.

Even Canada usually misses out, since the profits typically end up in Luxembourg or one of the offshore laundromats the U.K. illegally maintains within E.U. boudaries (Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man).

Such is the world.