2005-2017 Criminalization of and Violence against Protestors and Mining Opponents [Marlin]

Since it began, the Marlin Mine project has been associated with several incidences of violence against environmental and anti-mine protestors, as well as a general trend toward increasing criminalization by the Guatemalan state, with high incidences of protestors and mining opponents being arrested, detained, surveilled, and threatened.

One prominent example involves eight Mam Mayan women who, in 2008, were subject to arrest warrants issued against them “for charges linked to cutting off power lines leading to Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in Guatemala” (JCAP, 2016). The warrants were issued after multiple attempts by one woman to have the power lines removed from her property, which she argued were installed without consent or legal authority. These efforts included complaints to the Human Rights Ombudsperson Office and the Office of the Public Prosecutor, along with appeals to international human rights organizations (MacLeod, 2017). According to research conducted by Morna MacLeod, in one instance, “one hundred police were sent to accompany the mine’s workers to fix” structures associated with the power line. On another occasion the police were accompanied by military officers (Ibid). The company was ultimately ordered to remove their power lines from the woman’s property (JCAP, 2016). The arrest warrants were also revoked due to the legal expertise and support provided by an indigneous women’s organization, called Tz’ununija’ (Macleod, 2017).

Another significant example occured in January 2005, during a violent conflict between protestors that were blocking a highway to prevent the passage of mining equipment for the Marlin Mine project that they had previously been advised was being transported to help with the construction of a bridge. Tensions between community members and state and company officials increased over the course of a month, until more than 1,000 members of the Special Police Force and the Military were sent “to punish” those participating in the blockade (Sibrián and va der Borgh, 2014). 

More broadly, in May 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a press briefing note, expressing concern “about what appears to be a deteriorating climate for the defence of human rights in Guatemala”, noting that in the 10 days before the briefing note, “three human rights defenders working with indigenous and peasants’ rights organizations were murdered.”

For a detailed overview of the incidences of violence and criminalization associated with the Marlin Mine project, see “The ‘Canada Brand’: Violence and Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America”, prepared by the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project.