"Development" and Mining in Guatemala

Hereis the story of the Marlin Mine.

Goldcorp, the Canadian company that owns it, spends about $207 per ounce of gold in production costs, meaning all the costs associated with this particular mine in Guatemala. The price of gold on the world market right now is $665 per ounce. They are producing over a million ounces a year. You do the math.

They call it a development project for the local community. However, they employ about 800 local people, and about 500 more from the outside. Local people receive as a salary on average 2,500 Quetzales per month,or about $300. This will not bring them out of poverty. Compare that wage to the profit the company is making. And the company is leaving a giant hole in the ground and an environmental disaster in its wake, once the mine ceases to be productive, in about 10 years.

The World Bank funded this project to the tune of $45 million, because it would bring "development" to Guatemala. Yet I have read several reports showing that the World Bank violated it own policies in funding this project, because it does not actually benefit the local community. Also, the World Bank´s own documents show that Goldcorp did not need the loan. They only wanted it to give the project more prestige, as a so-called development project. The United States is a major funderand major controller of the World Bank.

Here is some more interesting information. The area where I am, and where the mine is located, is economically poor, campesino, and indigenous. Most people have small plots of land which they farm in order to feed themselves, but they do not plant enough to sell on the open market. The reason for this is that it is more expensive to grow the crops than the money they receive for them. The reason market prices are so low is because United States agricultural policies subsidize US farmers so that they grow too much and flood the market. So the campesinos are living on their land, but not living on the crops.

How are they living? Almost everyone from Guatemala has a relative in the United States, and these relatives send back "remesas", or monthly payments to their families. This is what people here are living on. And their relatives in the US had to make the dangerous trip through the desert, only to arrive in the US as "illegals", taking whatever low-paying jobs that are available. But the Guatemalans are leaving in the first place because US policies essentially force them out. In other words, our agricultural policies favor our own farmers but cause poverty elsewhere, and so-called development projects enrich big companies that do not need the money while paying low salaries to local people. Then we penalize those who flee searching for a better life by making them illegal and forcing them into low-paying jobs.

Outraged yet?

The Guatemalan miltary and the private security forces from the mine maintain a strong presence in San Miguel in order to prevent civil unrest over this injustice. The US military also maintains a presence here, and most people think this is why. The dispute that people fear could turn violent is over who has control over the land: big companies with the backing of big government, or poor campesinos who have lived here for countless generations.

I have noticed that it is the same in every underdeveloped country: the land remains in the hands of a few rich people, and US policies favor that. An interesting side note is that the US helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 because the new government had promised--and was carrying out--land reform and redistribution. Calling it communism, the US helped arrange a military coup that lead to more than 30 years of civil war, fought over the issue of land.

My friends in Colombia will recognize this story as very similar to what has been going on there. The wars are over who has control over the land and its resources, with the backing of big money from the United States, because it seems to me that in the end, we are determined to control the resources of these countries in order to maintain our own very high standard of living. The people making the money from the Goldcorp mine are employees and investors in the United States and Canada. Colombia is one of the largest recipients of United States foreign military assistance.