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)