I feel dumb saying this but it's just to get me going for a little bit since I have access to the internet for un rato; Guatemala is a hugely diverse country. Hugely. That may not be a word but it is the only thing I can use to describe the range of everything that I've seen. Woah. After 'graduating' from the mountain school which was really sad because I grew to love it so much, me and two friends, Shira and Ramsey (previous blog), went to the beach. We went to a beach that is closer to our school, Tilapita (in case you're into Google Earth), instead of the more popular vacation beach, Champerico, that is further away by several hours. That was the weekend of March 13th. We then went back to Xela for a couple days and me and Shira hit the road again on Wednesday the 18th and went to the lake (Lago Atitlan) to meet up with some other people and to scope out the scene there. In this short span of time I saw a huge range of geographic and social diversity.
We left the Mountain School on Friday afternoon on a bus headed for Coatepeque, the commercial heart of the Boca de la Costa where alot of tropical harvests pass through on their way to larger markets. Within minutes of arriving in that town we jumped on a bus to the coastal town on Tilapa. This bus was really amazing as we came down from the hills into the coastal plains and the real, live tropics. The Boca de la Costa as I've said before is the transition area between the dry, mountainous highlands and the tropics. As we left Coatepeque we entered the tropics and of course I was blown away. Fields of palms, of bananas, plantains, mangos, papaya and other things I couldn't identify whirled by us. There were also fields of nothing , fields cleared for purposes we couldn't identify just by the looks of things. The buildings changed also. As we neared the coast more and more thatched homes appeared. Groups of these thatched buildings were scattered around and once in a while a big mansion with extensively landscaped grounds popped up; the dueños' homes stood out as ostentatious symbols of power and wealth, taunting contrasts to the thatched communties that clustered safe distances away. The communities are located far enough away from the owner's mansions so as not to be nusanes and reminders to the owners but close enough so that the people who live there can get to work easy enough and, in my opinion, be more easily controlled.
In the late afternoon glow, and it was glowing pink and orange and yellow, wqe arrived at the town of Tilapa and made our way to the lancha docks to get to the beach community of Tilapita. We got on our boat and road through a trash-filled estuary for about ten minutes. Still no sign of the actual big ocean. I should mention that we were tensly anticipating the first sight of the beach because this was going to be Ramsey's first time ever at the ocean's edge. It is hard to believe because he grew up in Texas but really it made our trip all the more exciting. So after a little while of cruising through trash and brackish water our little boat entered into something that I wasn't ecpecting: a mangrove forest! Wow it was so cool to be cruising throuhgh the mangroves at twilight. I felt lost and comforted at the same time in the massive adventious root system. They were huge trees and when we saw them, the survival of the coastal towns made a little more sense to us. I thought about Hurricane Stan that ripped a lot of the country apart in 2005 including towns in the interior around Lake Atitlan. Although the hurricane for all I know might not have effected the Pacific coast, seeing those mangroves still made it evident how important they are to the overall structural integrity of a coast line.
We unloaded at the edge of the forest and our piloto gave us a vague point supposedly in the direction of the town and the one hostel on the beach. I don't think anything could have prepared us for where we landed. We walked to what apparently was the street, a wide walkway made of the black sand of the beach. There was a small stroe to our right so we began walking in that direction. A group of people were standing and sitting around in near silence in fromt of a house or store and as we didn't really have a clue as to where we going we asked them and after a couple of minutes they set us straight. We walked back the way we came and then hitched a right down another sandy street. Meanwhile, the sun was doing fabulous things with color and sky and clouds as it set and as we trudged our city legs through the lusciously deep sand. At this point our sense was that we had landed in a small and relatively isolated community on a beach. It felt desolate and dark. There was no music blasting as it usually does in the towns we are accostomed to visiting around Xela. We knew we were in Guatemala but at least I felt far far away from anything I had until then known Guatemala to be.
After a bouple of minutes down the 'street' we asaw a sign for the hotel, Hotel Mar Pacific. We knew the name of the place from our guide book and across the way was a sign for the tortoise rescue organization I had also read about while reading about the beach. The sign was a attached to an empty hut made of some sticks and some wire mesh and thatch. We entered the grounds of the hostel and were greeted by three people on hammocks. The conversation went something like this: 'Hi, we would like a place to stay tonight. Do you all have rooms here?' Without getting up from the hammock, the larger of the three replied 'Yes we do.' 'Uh can stay here? We would like to stay for two nights.' 'Fine'. At this point it was confirmed to us that we had arrioved at a beach and things were going to move at the pace of a beach. After a couple more moments the larger got out of the hammock and began walking toward what we thought would be the rooms. We followed wiothout being asked. 'Ok. Here is what we have'. For the cheaper rate we decided to take a room that had two beds and a bathroom. The sun had gone all the way down and we were going our best to see everything through the dim. We tried to turn on a light but the man in charge said that there might be light at ten, for now there was no electricity. He dissapeared for a minute and then returned with a candle. We set our stuff adown and asked about dinner. There wasn't much on offer so we decided to, in the total darkness, go search out other possibilities. We didn't get to far before I got scared (many of you know I am scared of the dark) and before a young man came running up behind us. He was the son of the man who showed us our room and he asked us where we thought we were going. We replied that we were going to find food and did he know of a comedor or anything nearby. He did know of one but it was really far away and it was dark and well, it was really far away. Good enough for me, I started to head back and took the other guys with me. Beans and eggs and beans it would be for dinner and we were going to like it. While we ate by candle light on big picnic tables in the sand at the empty hostel the electricity would randomly come on. Lights, TV and music, for moments at a time. It was weird. After dinner and listening to the waves crashing on the shore in the not so distant distance we headed in to the room. It had been a long day for all but especially for Shira who had been hiking through the mud at 5am to get from a finca to Columba to meet us to go to the beach. And her intestines weren't treating her so well, she had picked up a bug of some kind at the finca. And there was no door to the bathroom in our room, a wall that didn't make it all the way to the ceiling but no door. The electricity came on a some point and we turned on the fan which provided a night of relief from the heat. But Shira, my spooning buddy, was shivering from fever and the fan didn't help her. At some point in the night we covered her a little more and just hoped she would sleep some. She did but we woke up early anyway.
We got up antsy to get to the beach but also hungry so we went to the front and asked about breakfast, huevos y frijoles. We sensed a pattern in the food options but we ate happily and took a good couple of hours sitting around the table before we finally got dressed for beach time. We wandered sdown to the shore and just kind of stood there in awe of how big the waves looked from our position on the beach. Ramsey was excited to go in but me and Shira warned him not to go to far away from us because, as we were the only people on the beach we would be the ones to have to save him if the riptide proved to be stronger than us and lifesaving was never a skill I picked up and Shira doesn't even like the water as I found out later (another story about our time at the lake...). Anyway we jumped in. We let the waves rattled our bones and tried not to get too far out. We body surfed and dove under the big ones. We lot ourselves be shocked by the force of the tide; we were at its mercy and that morning we obeyed the will of the waves. Me and Shira had the useless goal of getting tan. We dutifully lathered ourselves with high powered sunblock and proceeded to lie in the sun hoping for a healthy increase in melanin production. Really it was just more ironic hilarity, I tell ya it just didn't quit that whole trip. After hours of this lying and swimming and floating and playing (including one us' regular ameoba-induced bathroom breaks) we headed in for lunch, our fave egg and bean combo and Ramsey's complex just-bean combo (note-Ramsey has a very sensitive diet that requires him to eat like a vegan who has an intense allergy to sugar and can therefor only eat beans. That's only partly a joke...). After lunch we opted for a tour around the town with a mission for fresh fruit. We walked down the beach a ways and passed a group of about 15 people digging a large hole. curious but we didn't stick around lond enough to figure it out. We found the only signs of life that we were to see on the beach, dead sand dollars and made our way through the hot sand and into the town. We passed super weird plants that made us feel like we landed on another planet. Has anyone out there ever read Atwood's Oryx and Crake? I like that book and while we were in Tilapita I was constantly reminded of the imagery I saw while reading it. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a dystopic futuristic novel and if you just read the opening scene you will get a sense of how it felt to be at this beach. We even saw crabs later. I bring it up now because that was how our walk around the town felt. There were people around and the ones we came across were very sweet and friendly but there weren't many and they were also a little reserved with us for probably many reasons.
Something that amazing about this area were the cashew trees. We saw real cashews growing on trees. You should look them up on the web if you have a minute because it is a little hard to describe the fruit that is cashew. The tree is beautiful and gets really big. The fruit is red on the outside and bright yellow on the inside. The flesh is squishy and has a sweet, bitter, tangy taste that kind of sticks with you after you're done sucking out the juice which is kind of all you can do because it isn't really something you want to chew. And of course there are no seeds inside of it because the seed is the nut and it grows on the outside of the fruit, on the other side of the fruit than the branch that it grows on.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew That ought to make it easier...
This was just the beginning of our discovery walk. We spent a couple more hours wandering and looking at the plants and the big pigs that were owned by families but left to their own devices and wandered relatively freely through the town. The homes were thatched of course, some with concrete foundations and other with palm-frond walls. None of the little tiendas sold fresh fruit which was highly curious to us, but they did sell 'manis japones', 'Japanese' peanuts which are sugar coated peanuts that hit the spot after being a little dehydrated. We saw some people come from their boats with fish, a good sign I guess that there is at least some life off that coast. We planted ourselves after a while longer on the shore infront of our hostel and just hung out until the sun set. I found an empty bottle and resolved to put a message in it, so I thought about that. Someone behind us set the beach on fire. That was weird. We looked back toward the homes and there were two big fires going; garbage removal. It was cloudy at this point and we were anticipating a no-show sunset. After sitting there though an enormous swollen, glowing-red ball dipped down from under the clouds and began entering the sea. The clouds provided enough of a shield for our eyes so we could watch the whole process face on. It only took about twenty minutes for the earth to move its face away from the sun before we knew it would be really dark soon. We snapped lots of photos and laughed about the strangeness of our trip to the beach and generally chisme-ed about stuff. It was awesome and I will leave you with this and add more later because I am giong to where ther is no electricity until tuesday...
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Diary #1
For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to write. There may not seem to be any sequence to what I am about to put down but I haven't been writing with enough frequency to actually 'catch up' at this point so I'm just going to tell a few stories and hope that there are enough clues for you to chain the links together.
The past three weeks have been a blur, a super fun colorful blur of events and movement and friends. I am feeling really lucky to have met some really amazing people and these past three weeks I have felt more comfortable due to their presence than I have felt since I've been down here. It has been awesome to spend so much time with so many good people. There's Shira, my spooning buddy for when the hostel gets too full and when we're at the beach and there is no sense in spending more on an extra bed. She's a midwestern gone New York and we chisme and laugh ALOT. It's to the point I think where we can actually communicate effectively through inside jokes and references, pretty annoying probably to the outside world. She has eyelashes like the angelitos that float around in our chocolate. There is Ramsey who has been a partner in crime for the past two months, we've managed to have nearly the exact same scholastic itinerary. He's a super-musician-vegan with a well balanced sociopolitical perspective from the generally confused state of Texas. Like a diamond in the rough that one. Esteban, or eh-Steve is the misplaced Chicagoan who unfortunately for us went back to LA last week. Kicking ass at ajedrez and at quite a few tunes on the guee-tar, he kept me alive with his compasion and pee-in-pants sarcasm. I hope he is throwing wads and wads of toilet paper into toilets for us back home. My teacher and confidant Eunice, which is a prettier name pronounced in spanish, has been like a light for me down here too. Even though technically she was my spanish teacher we got along like friends; we are exactly the same age with only countries and cultures separating us. She has two amazing kids who love her like crazy and amazing ideas and energy for her country. It was so inspiring to spend time with her and to talk about the state of the world with her. Her perspective is so refreshing and hopeful that now I have someone to go to when I lose morale for helping the planet.
Last Friday I technically 'graduated' from spanish class, which just means that I finished my scheduled time here at the school. It has been two unbelievable months and of course I can't believe that they are over. Finishing my time here has put me, duh, into a reflective place and I really do need some time to process everything that has happened over this last little bit of my life. I will say that as frustrating as this country can be with the corruption and machismo and lack of social infrastructure I have definitely fallen in love. There have been a few times on the bus from somewhere to another somewhere when I have felt the love most completely. I sometimes get waves of it when I am on a bus in Vancouver as well and the feeling is without a doubt love. Love that comes after the illusions have faded and the eyes see for the first time completely what is there to be loved. The streets, the buildings, the random people doing their random things, the sidewalks, the signs, the plants; all out there. At least three times I've been struck like that here and the feeling is good, like I'm seeing a familiar place with open eyes, ready to accept without judgement and unconditionally. Xela, San Juan, Concepcion Chiquirichapa, San Martin Sacatepequez (Chile Verde), Columba, Nuevo San Jose, Fatima, Coatepeque, Tilapa, Tilapita, San Marcos, San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Zunil, San Fransisco Ixteac; all these places are in like thirty miles of each other and represent a fraction of the country in terms of human experience. It's only slightly overwhelming...
The past three weeks have been a blur, a super fun colorful blur of events and movement and friends. I am feeling really lucky to have met some really amazing people and these past three weeks I have felt more comfortable due to their presence than I have felt since I've been down here. It has been awesome to spend so much time with so many good people. There's Shira, my spooning buddy for when the hostel gets too full and when we're at the beach and there is no sense in spending more on an extra bed. She's a midwestern gone New York and we chisme and laugh ALOT. It's to the point I think where we can actually communicate effectively through inside jokes and references, pretty annoying probably to the outside world. She has eyelashes like the angelitos that float around in our chocolate. There is Ramsey who has been a partner in crime for the past two months, we've managed to have nearly the exact same scholastic itinerary. He's a super-musician-vegan with a well balanced sociopolitical perspective from the generally confused state of Texas. Like a diamond in the rough that one. Esteban, or eh-Steve is the misplaced Chicagoan who unfortunately for us went back to LA last week. Kicking ass at ajedrez and at quite a few tunes on the guee-tar, he kept me alive with his compasion and pee-in-pants sarcasm. I hope he is throwing wads and wads of toilet paper into toilets for us back home. My teacher and confidant Eunice, which is a prettier name pronounced in spanish, has been like a light for me down here too. Even though technically she was my spanish teacher we got along like friends; we are exactly the same age with only countries and cultures separating us. She has two amazing kids who love her like crazy and amazing ideas and energy for her country. It was so inspiring to spend time with her and to talk about the state of the world with her. Her perspective is so refreshing and hopeful that now I have someone to go to when I lose morale for helping the planet.
Last Friday I technically 'graduated' from spanish class, which just means that I finished my scheduled time here at the school. It has been two unbelievable months and of course I can't believe that they are over. Finishing my time here has put me, duh, into a reflective place and I really do need some time to process everything that has happened over this last little bit of my life. I will say that as frustrating as this country can be with the corruption and machismo and lack of social infrastructure I have definitely fallen in love. There have been a few times on the bus from somewhere to another somewhere when I have felt the love most completely. I sometimes get waves of it when I am on a bus in Vancouver as well and the feeling is without a doubt love. Love that comes after the illusions have faded and the eyes see for the first time completely what is there to be loved. The streets, the buildings, the random people doing their random things, the sidewalks, the signs, the plants; all out there. At least three times I've been struck like that here and the feeling is good, like I'm seeing a familiar place with open eyes, ready to accept without judgement and unconditionally. Xela, San Juan, Concepcion Chiquirichapa, San Martin Sacatepequez (Chile Verde), Columba, Nuevo San Jose, Fatima, Coatepeque, Tilapa, Tilapita, San Marcos, San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Zunil, San Fransisco Ixteac; all these places are in like thirty miles of each other and represent a fraction of the country in terms of human experience. It's only slightly overwhelming...
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Mine
Well I know that it has been a long time since I have written anything here and that is una lastima (a shame) because I have so much that I want to say but I don't have the patience to sit here at the computer and that has a been the main thing that has kept me from writing lately. There is so much that I want to write about right now but what is most pressing for me to get down on this here site is something about the experience I had on a trip we took with the school the weekend before last.
Two fridays ago the coordinator at the mountain school told us about a trip that the school in the city was planning to a community in a nearby department that is in the process of resisting a mining project. The trip would be long but it sounded like my one opportunity to see a Canadian mining project in action in another country.
The trip began at 5:30 am on saturday morning and as 22 of us students and 5 teachers and staff boarded our microbuses there was apprehension in the air. The organizer of the trip was very nervous about what we were undertaking as she told us it was the first time that the school had gone to this community and the first time that the school was taking a weekend trip to support a community in opposition to a mining project that is still active. We crammed in and prepared outselves for a long journey but it turned out to be even more adventurous thn I think any of us expected. And to be honest I don't think that this journey will ever end...
after driving for about 2 hours we reached the heart of the department (province) of San Marcos and were on the outskirts of the major city with still several hours of driving ahead of us when we pulled over to wait for the other bus to catch up with us. As soon as we pulled over a police truck came up and stopped behind us. They demanded that our driver get out of the car to talk with them and to verify his license. This is when things got tense. Our teacher in the car with us was not hiding here worry and her fear for what might happen. Pretty soon our driver came back to us and told us that they were insisting on following us to our destination which wisely still hadn't been made clear to them. They insisted on following us on the pretense of protecting us fro all of the narcotrafficking in the area. During one of my classes after the trip one of my teachers made the observation that perhaps they were protecting themselves by preventing us from seeing things they are being paid off to keep quiet, like marijuana and poppy farms.
While we waited for the other van the worries floated around the car and some thought we should just call the other van and tell them not to stop while we led the cops back to Xela so they could go to the community without having to drag the cops there too. We ended up just going and everytime we crossed from one district to another we had to wait for the patrols to switch off. We called ahead to the community to tell them our situation and to ask if they still wanted us to come. The contacts we had in the community told us there was nothing to worry about and that it should be fine. OK, so began the police intimidation.
We continued toward the community and as we did the dust became worse. We were inside the cars and still having to cover our nose and mouth so as not breathe in too much dust. The area is high in altitude and very dry.
We finally arrived at the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, police units and all. Before we peeled out of the vans at about 10:30 hungry and dusty, a cop came up to our driver and would let us get out until he knew where we were all from. Our driver tried to say we were from a language school in Xela but he insisted on knowing each country we were from particularly if there were any students from Canada (!). Eventually we just said we were from all over and they let us out. Our first stop after a little 'breakfast' (in the end we told the cops we were in the community to see examples of traditional dress and wanted to eat in the homes of real 'guatemalans) was to a home that was structurally suffering as a result of the explosion from the mine which was maybe 2 kilometers away. We walked into the simple home and on several walls were very large cracks in the cement blocks. We went ni to a back room and we could see outside through one particularly huge crack. The cracks were obviously not the effects of poor construction, they didn't follow the spaces between the cinder blocks, they went right through them. We visited a few other houses with similar problems. We then took a walk to one of the eight water sources that historically provided water to the community allowing them indepence from surrounding communities but have dried up in the three years that the mine has been around.
Sorry, a little back ground info on the mine and the project. The mine is a gold and silver mine and of the mountain-top removal sort. Cyanide and water are used in the extraction process though I am not totally sure how or why. The company responsible is Montana Exploradora which is a Guatemalan subsidiary of Goldcorp, a Canadian company based in Vancouver. Excuse my language in advance: FUCK. The specific project that we visited is called the 'Marlin Project' and has been in opperation for four years. The people of the community who hosted us for the day are a group of very special women who represent about 8 out of fifty families who live in the community and are affected in some way by the mine. Eight. That's all. Eight out of fifty families are brave enough to resist the mine. The others are intimidated by acts of extreme violence that have occured in the area since the opening of the mine and others work for the company or have family who do.
So as I mentioned water is used in the extraction process and we went to see a dried up source before taking an excursion to the actual mine site. It was evident by the increase in vegetation in the small area that surrounded the extinguished spring compared to the dry, scrubby southern Arizona-type vegetation that characterized the rest of the area that there should hae been more water nearby and that in the not o distant past there was. This scene was made all the more potent when we got back into the vans to go see the mine itself. Apart for from the expected dry treeless earth that was being moved around by enormous trucks was a huge neon green lake. A lake of a normal color would have looked alien in this environment but the absurdness of its color made us feel like we were in a true apocalytic nightmare (and that night I did have nightmares of the apocalyptic sort).
We talked some with the community and observed more of the conditions they face. There are no paved roads in the area and as a result they live in a dust cloud. You can't believe the dust; it is fine and finds its way into every pore possible. Trees that are used for fire wood wçare stunted in their growth because they are covered in dust; people are dusty, homes are dusty, it's constant and unavoidable. And it's made worse by the enormous earth-movers that go in and out of the community on their way to and from the mine. We were there for five hours and I wanted so much to go back to the smoggy city just to get out of the dust. After driving as close as we could to the mine site we collected money amongst ourselves to donate to a man who had developed cancer in the past two years and then we began the five hour journey back to Xela. We got home at 10pm totally exhuasted and disheartened.
We all met at the school on Tuesday to talk about our trip and what we could possible do to help the community and what we still needed to learn and just to share our experiences of the trip. It was a long meeting but generally fruitful because we were able to organize at least a little and decide what might be possible and within our realm as students at a language school in Xela. This is at least some of what came out of it and if you are interested let me know if you want to know more:
http://proyecto.intodit.com/page/home
The trip had a really deep impact on me and I am dedicated to resisting these mining projects and the companies responsible for a long time to come. A lot of them have offices in downtown Vancouver so I think it shouldn't be too hard to go speak out. Anyone in for some protesting?
My paranoid self hopes that the feds aren't reading this, I know I'm not that great of a writer anyway but this time I left out alot of details intentionally...
OK dudes, more later hopefully.... (ojalá that the next one will not be so depressing)
Two fridays ago the coordinator at the mountain school told us about a trip that the school in the city was planning to a community in a nearby department that is in the process of resisting a mining project. The trip would be long but it sounded like my one opportunity to see a Canadian mining project in action in another country.
The trip began at 5:30 am on saturday morning and as 22 of us students and 5 teachers and staff boarded our microbuses there was apprehension in the air. The organizer of the trip was very nervous about what we were undertaking as she told us it was the first time that the school had gone to this community and the first time that the school was taking a weekend trip to support a community in opposition to a mining project that is still active. We crammed in and prepared outselves for a long journey but it turned out to be even more adventurous thn I think any of us expected. And to be honest I don't think that this journey will ever end...
after driving for about 2 hours we reached the heart of the department (province) of San Marcos and were on the outskirts of the major city with still several hours of driving ahead of us when we pulled over to wait for the other bus to catch up with us. As soon as we pulled over a police truck came up and stopped behind us. They demanded that our driver get out of the car to talk with them and to verify his license. This is when things got tense. Our teacher in the car with us was not hiding here worry and her fear for what might happen. Pretty soon our driver came back to us and told us that they were insisting on following us to our destination which wisely still hadn't been made clear to them. They insisted on following us on the pretense of protecting us fro all of the narcotrafficking in the area. During one of my classes after the trip one of my teachers made the observation that perhaps they were protecting themselves by preventing us from seeing things they are being paid off to keep quiet, like marijuana and poppy farms.
While we waited for the other van the worries floated around the car and some thought we should just call the other van and tell them not to stop while we led the cops back to Xela so they could go to the community without having to drag the cops there too. We ended up just going and everytime we crossed from one district to another we had to wait for the patrols to switch off. We called ahead to the community to tell them our situation and to ask if they still wanted us to come. The contacts we had in the community told us there was nothing to worry about and that it should be fine. OK, so began the police intimidation.
We continued toward the community and as we did the dust became worse. We were inside the cars and still having to cover our nose and mouth so as not breathe in too much dust. The area is high in altitude and very dry.
We finally arrived at the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, police units and all. Before we peeled out of the vans at about 10:30 hungry and dusty, a cop came up to our driver and would let us get out until he knew where we were all from. Our driver tried to say we were from a language school in Xela but he insisted on knowing each country we were from particularly if there were any students from Canada (!). Eventually we just said we were from all over and they let us out. Our first stop after a little 'breakfast' (in the end we told the cops we were in the community to see examples of traditional dress and wanted to eat in the homes of real 'guatemalans) was to a home that was structurally suffering as a result of the explosion from the mine which was maybe 2 kilometers away. We walked into the simple home and on several walls were very large cracks in the cement blocks. We went ni to a back room and we could see outside through one particularly huge crack. The cracks were obviously not the effects of poor construction, they didn't follow the spaces between the cinder blocks, they went right through them. We visited a few other houses with similar problems. We then took a walk to one of the eight water sources that historically provided water to the community allowing them indepence from surrounding communities but have dried up in the three years that the mine has been around.
Sorry, a little back ground info on the mine and the project. The mine is a gold and silver mine and of the mountain-top removal sort. Cyanide and water are used in the extraction process though I am not totally sure how or why. The company responsible is Montana Exploradora which is a Guatemalan subsidiary of Goldcorp, a Canadian company based in Vancouver. Excuse my language in advance: FUCK. The specific project that we visited is called the 'Marlin Project' and has been in opperation for four years. The people of the community who hosted us for the day are a group of very special women who represent about 8 out of fifty families who live in the community and are affected in some way by the mine. Eight. That's all. Eight out of fifty families are brave enough to resist the mine. The others are intimidated by acts of extreme violence that have occured in the area since the opening of the mine and others work for the company or have family who do.
So as I mentioned water is used in the extraction process and we went to see a dried up source before taking an excursion to the actual mine site. It was evident by the increase in vegetation in the small area that surrounded the extinguished spring compared to the dry, scrubby southern Arizona-type vegetation that characterized the rest of the area that there should hae been more water nearby and that in the not o distant past there was. This scene was made all the more potent when we got back into the vans to go see the mine itself. Apart for from the expected dry treeless earth that was being moved around by enormous trucks was a huge neon green lake. A lake of a normal color would have looked alien in this environment but the absurdness of its color made us feel like we were in a true apocalytic nightmare (and that night I did have nightmares of the apocalyptic sort).
We talked some with the community and observed more of the conditions they face. There are no paved roads in the area and as a result they live in a dust cloud. You can't believe the dust; it is fine and finds its way into every pore possible. Trees that are used for fire wood wçare stunted in their growth because they are covered in dust; people are dusty, homes are dusty, it's constant and unavoidable. And it's made worse by the enormous earth-movers that go in and out of the community on their way to and from the mine. We were there for five hours and I wanted so much to go back to the smoggy city just to get out of the dust. After driving as close as we could to the mine site we collected money amongst ourselves to donate to a man who had developed cancer in the past two years and then we began the five hour journey back to Xela. We got home at 10pm totally exhuasted and disheartened.
We all met at the school on Tuesday to talk about our trip and what we could possible do to help the community and what we still needed to learn and just to share our experiences of the trip. It was a long meeting but generally fruitful because we were able to organize at least a little and decide what might be possible and within our realm as students at a language school in Xela. This is at least some of what came out of it and if you are interested let me know if you want to know more:
http://proyecto.intodit.com/page/home
The trip had a really deep impact on me and I am dedicated to resisting these mining projects and the companies responsible for a long time to come. A lot of them have offices in downtown Vancouver so I think it shouldn't be too hard to go speak out. Anyone in for some protesting?
My paranoid self hopes that the feds aren't reading this, I know I'm not that great of a writer anyway but this time I left out alot of details intentionally...
OK dudes, more later hopefully.... (ojalá that the next one will not be so depressing)
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