Maude Barlow and Diodora Hernandez in Guatemala, September 2011.
Violence against women is a reality of prime minister Stephen Harper’s promotion of Canadian mining interests in Latin America. Activists Patricia Ardón and Orfe Castillo write that a national meeting titled ‘Women in Defense of Water, Life and Territory’ was held in Guatemala in mid-September that, “enabled indigenous women to talk about experiences of resistance, the acts they carry out in their communities and in their daily lives.” Their article highlights, “A participant (at the meeting) pointed out, ‘The megaprojects represent a clash with our vision of the world, the natural resources are interconnected elements of life, we are part of it. They attack us for not giving in, they threaten us with prison, they don’t respect the consultation processes that are binding. For women, all this implies a heavier workload, persecution, facing militarization that revives the horrors of the war–we see soldiers and it generates terror because we know what happened to our mothers, our aunts.'” Echoing this, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow wrote of her trip to the community near the Goldcorp Marlin mine in Guatemala last September, “There we met Diodora Hernandez, whose only crime was refusal to sell her small property so the mine could expand. On July 7, 2010, a man hiding behind a tree on her property shot her in the face and left her for dead. The local police refused to take her to hospital so her daughter (and screaming granddaughter) had to take her in a taxi, Miraculously she has survived but recently, the water on her property has dried up, forcing her to buy from a private vendor.” Ardón and Castillo also note, “The gathering also served to present the report of the Nobel Women’s Initiative/Just Associates delegation, led by Nobel Laureates Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú. The delegation visited Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico in January of this year to examine violence against women.” This past March, Williams wrote in the Ottawa Citizen, “Increasingly, private security firms being hired by mining companies, mega projects and the business elite in Honduras are also behind the extreme violence against women.” Williams adds, “A proposed law would accelerate the licensing process for new mines in Honduras, including open-pit mines, and simplify the rules for mining companies planning to operate in Honduras. It would also reduce environmental standards and privilege water use by mining companies. In creating this new law, the Honduran government has bent over backwards to meet the needs of Canadian and other mining companies, but has carried out almost no consultations with Honduran civil society and community organizations.” And as Barlow highlighted at the ‘Shout Out Against Mining Injustice’ conference this past June, “The biggest and worst mining operations in the world are Canadian. And do they ever have a friend in Stephen Harper, who refuses to put any leash whatsoever on their practices. Canadian mining companies are notorious for refusing to cooperate in investigations in Latin America that involve violence against local anti-mining activists, knowing they face no penalty back in Canada at all. Harper and his government defeated a private member’s bill that would have given the government limited authority to at least withhold funding from some companies charged with violations by local communities in the global South.” Ardón and Castillo conclude, “The organizations that called the event agreed on the importance of strengthening access to timely, specialized and accurate information on the impact of megaprojects on societies and on women, and of broadening networks and alliances from the local to the international level, drawing in all actors who can contribute to prevent the death and looting of the peoples.” Maude Barlow’s blog on her experiences in Guatemala can be read at http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10419. The op-ed by Jody Williams is at http://canadians.org/blog/?p=13904. The article by Patricia Ardón and Orfe Castillo in Upside Down World is at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3888-guatemala-womens-gathering-in-defense-of-water-life-and-territory.
