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Guatemala
General Facts
- 5th largest coffee exporting nation (after Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, and Indonesia); 48% of exports go to the US, 25% to Europe, 16% to Japan
- Tectonic plates make Guatemala’s geology diverse and favors formation of various types of mineral deposits including gold, silver, copper, cadmium, antimony, nickel, lead, zinc, limestone, barite, bentonite, sulphur and marble. One of the top producers of antimony in Latin America after Bolivia and Mexico. Mining industry was somewhat challenged due to internal insurgency from 1960’s to 1990’s. Marble is exported, especially to Colombia.
- Over 30 dead sea turtles were found mutilated and suffocated on Guatemala’s southern coast (beaches of Monterrico and Sipacate). They were trapped in fishing nets and fishermen were allegedly using fish hooks in prohibited areas. The country’s laws say that fishing nets must be equipped with turtle excluder devices to allow trapped turtles to escape easily. 6 sea turtle species nest in Guatemala and all are in danger of extinction due to poaching, over-harvesting of their eggs, and pollution.
- President Colom denied former Honduran de-facto president Micheletti’s entry to Guatemala
- Violence on public transportation spiking
- Guatemalan women might become a special asylum group (Femicide = big issue)
- Guatemala is overrun with Mexican narcotraficantes and street gangs. Impunity is ridiculously rampant. Courts removed newly elected attorney general for his alleged ties to criminal groups that, among other things, sold adopted babies on the black market; four severed heads were placed in strategic places in Guatemala City with messages warning of a similar fate for the minister of the interior and director of prisons (drug gang’s way of fighting recent tightening of regulations in Guatemala’s jails); Constitutional Court approved extradition to the US of a former president accused of embezzling millions in public funds.
Oil
Perenco
President Colom renewed French company Perenco’s concession for oil drilling inside a national park. The government gave Perenco another 15-year license to develop a section of the Laguna del Tigre National Park, which is part of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the largest area of tropical forest in Central America.
- Colom said several communities in Peten will benefit from the contract extension because they will receive a portion of the taxes and revenue that Perenco pays the state as part of its concession rights.
- Groups such as Defenders of Nature and the Legal Environmental and Social Action Center are fighting contract in the Xan oil field, which is Guatemala’s largest. A representative from Defenders of Nature noted that a clause in the FTA requires the Guatemalan government to strengthen and respect environmental legislation and that by renewing the contract it is doing the opposite.
- German legislators wanted Colom to accept a plan similar to Ecuador’s initiative of committing to indefinitely refraining from exploiting oil reserves in the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon. In turn, Ecuador’s government will receive compensation equivalent to at least 50% of the revenues that it would receive if it were to exploit the reserves.
Gold
Goldcorp Inc. and Glamis Gold
Guatemala suspended Goldcorp Inc.’s Marlin mine in response to concerns raised about the company’s environmental and human rights performance. But Goldcorp denies the allegations and says the suspension process will take time and the mine is still operating. The allegations - which include drying up and contaminating water sources, negative health effects and a lack of prior consent to the mining - were brought by 18 local Mayan communities to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a branch of the OAS.
The Marlin mine, a combination of open pit and underground mining, is located in western Guatemala. In 2009 it produced 274,900 ounces of gold and 4.157 million ounces of silver.
The Cerro Blanco gold and silver mine in the southeastern Guatemalan province of Jutiapa, on the border with El Salvador, was under fire from environmentalists in both countries concerned about the threat it poses to the shared Lake Guija and rivers on either side of the border.
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