By Grahame Russell, Rights Action
In one of Guatemala’s longest, hottest dry seasons on record, with drought conditions devastating the lives of a majority of Guatemalans and all life species, the Swiss-based Solway Investment Group and US-based Fenix Nickel Company are pushing to re-initiate the Fenix mining operation on Maya Q’eqchi’ territories of eastern Guatemala.
In one of Guatemala’s longest, hottest dry seasons on record, with drought conditions devastating the lives of a majority of Guatemalans and all life species, the Swiss-based Solway Investment Group and US-based Fenix Nickel Company are pushing to re-initiate the Fenix mining operation on Maya Q’eqchi’ territories of eastern Guatemala.
On May 10, 2024, the newly incorporated Fenix Nickel Company published media information “urgently [appealing] for US support” to re-open the Fenix mining operation, claiming it will create over 1700 jobs and decrease the numbers of forced migrants.
With the first democratically-elected government since 1954 only 5 months in power, the global mining industry is pressing hard for “business as usual”. For the mining companies, there is no drought, water scarcity or looming hunger. They are throwing fuel on the fires of environmental devastation, water depletion and contamination, violent dispossession, poverty and forced migration.
The unseen violence and harms of global supply chains
As record heats and dry spells continue, an endless number of impoverished, mainly Indigenous people continue to flee home and country. They walk or catch rides out of their mining-devastated regions, and travel past vast expanses of Guatemala’s richest lands in full production mode of ‘for export’ food commodities, as they begin their journeys north through Mexico and hopefully into the US or Canada. They are desperately trying to get (“illegally”, they are told) to the same places where the mineral resources and for-export food products are (“legally”) shipped to waiting consumers.
One end of the global supply chain creates environmental devastation, water depletion and contamination, violent dispossession, poverty and forced migration. The other end provides an endless supply of consumer goods.
60 year mining nightmare on Q’eqchi’ lands
Since 2004, I have worked with Rights Action in support of the Q’eqchi’ people of El Estor. For the past two decades, the community defenders we support have courageously continued their inter-generational land, human rights and environmental defense struggles.
It usually feels like a losing battle. Most families and communities we work with have been torn asunder by violence, illegal evictions, criminalizations and jailings, poverty and forced migration. Some of this is documented here.
While this region is also besieged by the for-export production of African palm, sugar cane and bananas, and while global investors privatize rivers for hydro-electric energy production, since 1964 the greatest source of forced evictions and land theft, violence and corruption, environmental and health harms, is the global mining industry.
Fenix Mine, El Estor
Photo taken during Rights Action's May 2024 TESTIMONIO-Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala delegation when we visited four separate community defense, mining resistance struggles
Mining versus “illegal squatters”
From 1964 when it was first established, until 2004, the Fenix mine was operated by Canadian mining giant INCO (International Nickel Company) and its subsidiary EXMIBAL. From 2004-2011, INCO flipped the Fenix operation over to Skye Resources and changed the name of the subsidiary to Guatemala Nickel Company (CGN). In 2008, Skye was amalgamated into Hudbay Minerals.
From 2011-2024, the Fenix mine was owned by the Swiss company Solway Investment Group. Most recently in 2024 (see below), Solway flipped ownership of the Fenix mine to the new US-based Fenix Mining Company.
The names of the companies change. The lived reality for the Q’eqchi’ people does not.
During this entire time, Maya Q’eqchi’ communities have claimed that the companies are operating on stolen lands. During the entire time, the companies, in conjunction with military-backed governments of the day, have claimed that the Q’eqchi’ people are illegal squatters.
The two most intense waves of mining activity (1970-1981, 2004-2022) were characterized by: forced evictions and destruction of Q’eqchi’ communities, government and mining company repression (including killings, attacks leaving permanent injuries, rapes of women during forced evictions, criminalizations and jailings on trumped up charges of community defenders), water depletion and contamination, environmental and health harms, and forced migration. (60 Years of Mining in Q’eqchi’ Territories.)
Did geo-political and economic fears of China lead to backroom deals between the US government and Solway Investment Group?
In 2022, Solway was forced to suspend the Fenix mining operation by sanctions imposed by the US government. The excuse given by the US government was that corrupted Russians were involved with Solway’s operations in Guatemala.
Based on the past 20 years of mining companies operating in Guatemala, it is impossible to believe that corruption was a concern of the US government. Had it been so, the US government might well have imposed sanctions against a number of Canadian and US companies operating since 2004, as referenced in TESTIMONIO-Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala, and documented elsewhere by Rights Action, other solidarity groups and NGOs, journalists and academic investigators.
Related directly to Solway’s Fenix mine operation, the Mining Secrets investigation of the Forbidden Stories project found that leaked corporate documents revealed patterns and behaviors of bribery, pollution and human rights violations. Here, one in depth report by Sandra Cuffe in The Intercept, March 27, 2022.
What is widely suspected, and as reported in an April 2023, Newsweek Magazine article, is that the US took advantage of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022 to force the suspension of the Fenix mine, using the excuse that Russians with interests in Solway engaged in acts of corruption in Guatemala.
After over a year of backroom discussions and lobbying by top-end Washington DC insiders such as Lanny Davis & Assocs., the blacklisted Russians were removed from the company and the sanctions were lifted in early 2024. As part of the deal to lift sanctions, Solway incorporated the US-based Fenix Mining Company that becomes the new owner of the Fenix mining operation in Guatemala.
It is speculated that as part of the deal, Solway agreed to sell all or a significant amount of the nickel and other minerals to US markets. In April 2023, Newsweek Magazine reported that the reason the US imposed sanctions on Solway was that “amid increasingly intense competition with China over strategic resources such as nickel, which is key to technologies including electric cars”, the US wanted access to the extensive nickel and other mineral resources found in the Q’eqchi’ territories of eastern Guatemala.
So it goes in the sacrifice zones of the Q’eqchi’ territories of eastern Guatemala. While rich, powerful governments and global mining companies make deals and flip companies back and forth to maximize their own political and economic interests, the Q’eqchi’ people – “illegal squatters in the way of development” – have no say in the matter and get steamrolled decade after decade.\
La lucha es vida. Struggle is life
Once again, the long repressed and impoverished people of El Estor are standing up and speaking out. On May 14, 2024, the Mayan Q'eqchi' Ancestral Council of El Estor published an urgent four-point declaration, demanding:
Suspension: Immediate suspension of mining operations in the Q'eqchi' region of El Estor and Panzos.
Investigation commission: Formation of an independent commission to thoroughly investigate the real impacts of mining from 2004 to the year 2024.
Reparations: Preparation of a compensation plan for the people and communities that have suffered violence, damage and criminalization during these 20 years of mining.
Consultation process: Implementation of a legal and transparent consultation process, based on prior and fully complete information, in the ancestral Mayan language Q'eqchi'.
(Full declarations: English / Spanish)
Since 1964, the Q’eqchi’ people and territories of the El Estor region have been sacrifice zones for the global capitalist system and geo-political interests and maneuverings.
At a bare minimum, the mining companies named above and their home countries (Canada, Switzerland, US) owe reparations to the peoples of the El Estor region, before even considering the possibility of re-initiating mining operations in the region.
If the demands of the Mayan Q'eqchi' Ancestral Council of El Estor are not respected, the exploitation and impoverishment, repression, corruption and impunity, environmental devastation - and forced migration - will most likely continue.
(Grahame Russell is director of Rights Action. Thanks to Will Hanlon for some timely research.)
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Rights Action calls on organizations and people, particularly in Canada, Switzerland and the US, to initiate, or continue with your education and activism work to pressure your governments and your companies to fully comply with the urgent, just demands of the Maya Q’eqchi’ people.
Solway Investment Group
Baarerstrasse 8, 6300, Zug Switzerland
+41417400400
bd@solwaygroup.com
media@solway.ch
https://solwaygroup.com/
Fenix Mining Company
(US-based subsidiary of Solway Investment Group)
Hudbay Minerals
Suite 800 - 25 York Street
Toronto, ON M5J2V5, Canada
416.362.8181
info@hudbayminerals.com
www.hudbayminerals.com
Embajada de Suiza - Guatemala
Phone: +502 2367 5520 / +502 2 367 58 11
Email: guatemalacity@eda.admin.ch
Roberta Contreras, derechos humanos y defensores, robertha.de-beltranena@eda.admin.ch
https://m.facebook.com/EmbajadaSuizaGuatemala
Canadian Embassy in Guatemala
Ambassador Rajani Alexander
13 Calle 8-44 Zone 10, Edificio Edyma Plaza, Guatemala
http://www.guatemala.gc.ca
gtmla@international.gc.ca
+(502) 2363-4348
https://www.facebook.com/CanadaenGuatemala/
https://www.facebook.com/CanadainGuatemala
https://twitter.com/CanEmbGuatemala
https://twitter.com/EmbCanGuatemala
US Embassy in Guatemala
Boulevard Austríaco 11-51, Zona 16
Ciudad de Guatemala.
+502-2354-0000
https://twitter.com/usembassyguate
https://www.facebook.com/Embajada.EEUU.Guatemala/
https://www.instagram.com/usembassyguatemala
