The event, which was replicated in other countries suffering from these problems, was held in the department of Solola. Families of victims and groups of people affected by mining and hydroelectric megaprojects arrived from San Idelfonoso Ixtahuacan, Huehuetenango, San Miguel Ixtahuacan San Marcos and El Estor.

They reported that Guatemala is going through a new phase of exploitation and pillage of our natural goods that deepens the policies began by Alvaro Arzu’s government with the legal and political foundations of this ’fourth invasion and pillage of our territories’.

This was possible, according to local groups, thanks to the policies of promotion of national and foreign investment that ended up ’giving our territories to transnational corporations in violation of the right to self determination of native peoples, recognized under ILO’s Convention 169’.

In this Central American country, as in many others, the public institutions have been at the service of national and transnational corporations through ’legal persecution, repression, intimidation and militarization’ as strategies to ’demobilize community resistance’.

The activist remembered Guatemalan activists who were victims of this model such as Raúl Castro Bocel, Hilmer Orlando Boror, Guadalupe Chajon, Santiago Boch, Herman Antonio Curup, Juan López, Colotenango, Víctor Gálvez, Oscar Reyes, Rhilmer Boror, Adolfo Ich Chaman and Lorenzo Acabal.

The declaration read before the press says ’We cannot allow that governments and transnational corporations continue violating our fundamental rights, by taking the lives of our peoples. No more repression against the defenders of life and territories. No more murders in the world for defending life and natural goods. No more government complicity with extractive industries’.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jo5h_h/