What change has TESTIMONIO provoked in Canadian society? →

By Grahame Russell, May 2, 2023

Last year, TESTIMONIO-Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala was a finalist for the “Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes”.

As part of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes, the “Jim Deva Prize” is awarded for “writing that challenges or provokes the ideas and forces that shape what society can become.”
 
TESTIMONIO - that I co-wrote and co-edited with Professor Catherine Nolin (UNBC) - is based on 16 years of funding and support for mainly Indigenous communities in Guatemala harmed by mainly Canadian mining operations; 16 years of leading film-makers, journalists and Canadian/U.S. citizens on fact-finding trips to visit mining harmed communities in Guatemala (including nine ‘field courses’ that Professor Nolin coordinated with Rights Action, starting in 2004 and continuing today); 16 years of organizing speaking tours in Canada with community defenders from the mining harmed communities; 16 years of support for shareholder activism and lawsuits in Canada aimed at holding our companies (even minimally) accountable for (even a small part of) the harms and violence they have caused.
 
‘Provocative book’?
TESTIMONIO should not be considered a ‘provocative book’. It is fact-based reporting about the harms and violence caused by the Canadian-led mining industry in Guatemala, about the corruption and impunity with which the companies operate.
 
Were the mainstream media and Canadian and U.S. governments to investigate and report properly about the harms and violence that global companies – including the mining industry – cause in Guatemala (let alone around the world), a book like TESTIMONIO would not be necessary.
 
“The media has a huge responsibility because they’re the ones who inform Canadians on an ongoing basis about these things and if they don’t do their job people won’t know. […] The Canadian government is not doing anything about this. What is needed in Canada is for more people to become indignant about what’s going on here, then unify forces so we can work together to address them.”
Angelica Choc, wife of assassinated land defender Adolfo Ich, and one of 13 plaintiffs in landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
 
Given the lack of proper reporting on these issues, and given the complicit role of the Canadian and U.S. governments, TESTIMONIO might provoke strong reactions in readers, who might “become indignant about what’s going on”, as Angelica Choc said.
 
“In the aftermath of genocides”
The fact that the Canadian-led mining industry aggressively pushed back into Guatemala in the 1990s, “in the aftermath of the genocides”, has provoked little media and no government oversight attention. I find this astounding, and not surprising.
 
“You can’t say the mining companies are responsible for the Ríos Montt slaugh­ter but they are benefiting from the structures that were left in place after those many years of savagery and violence and repression.”
Noam Chomsky, quoted in TESTIMONIO, taken from interview in documentary film Gold Fever that did a deep dive into the harms and violences caused by Goldcorp Inc.’s “Marlin mine” in the territories of the Mayan Mam people, western Guatemala
 
What ought to provoke a reaction is that the Canadian and U.S. governments and our mining companies maintain full political and economic relations with many of the Guatemalan politicians, economic elites and military who were directly involved in decades of State repression and the genocides.
 
“American funding, training, support, and facilitation is a well-documented reality of the genocide of the early 1980s. Here with this edited work, we are shining a light on the Canadians’ willingness to cash in on the aftermath. The predatory actions of Canadian, and other, mining companies are the children of genocide.”
Nolin and Russell
 
“Canadian problems”
What hopefully will provoke serious consideration, one day, is how TESTIMONIO frames the mining harms, violence, corruption and impunity not as “Guatemalan problems”, but primarily as “Canadian problems” occurring in Guatemala where the minerals that companies, investors and consumers covet, are located under other people’s lands and communities.
 
“That the harms, evictions and violence caused by Canadian companies are occurring in Guatemala and elsewhere does not make these issues any less ‘Canadian’. Once defined as significantly ‘Canadian’ problems, it becomes clearer what needs to be done, and where.”
- Nolin and Russell
 
More harms and violence to come
In November 2022, Rights Action coordinated a delegation of U.S. and Canadians, including Catherine Nolin and Grahame Russell. Over the course of a week, we visited three of the four community defense/mining resistance struggles documented in TESTIMONIO.

New kids (predatory company) on the block: Bluestone Resources
As if to prove TESTIMONIO has provoked little change in the Canadian society, our delegation also visited with community defenders in Asuncion Mita, near the El Salvador border. Here, yet another Canadian mining company –Bluestone Resources– is defying the expressed will of the population, and trying to push ahead with open-pit, cyanide-leaching gold mine.

No end in sight: U.S. government and Canadian company plot nickel mine takeover
Most recently, Newsweek Magazine reported (April 2023) that Quebec-based Central America Nickel has been plotting with the U.S. government to take back Canadian-control over a 60-year nickel mining operation that, since 2011, has been owned by the Swiss-based Solway Investment Group.

Obviously, a lot more provoking will be needed, over many years, to re-shape the mining industry and the predominant role they play in the Canadian society, let alone put an end to the harms and violence they cause in Guatemala and around the world.

Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala
(Between the Lines, 2021)

 
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