By The Women’s Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu
What can only be described as an act of defiance against the State of Siege imposed by the Chilean State was carried out this morning (December 31st), against the Chilean occupation and its Capitalist plunder in the province of Malleco.
The events took place nearby the town of Angol, a small distance away from a police station. It involved the complete arson of a helicopter belonging to Mininco Forestry Inc, and the partial damage of another.
The events also included the alleged assault of a police officer, who was subdued by the “assailants,” according to various media reports.
We should remember that the Chilean government had ordered more police presence to Mapuche territory, in which several reinforcements were brought from various parts of the country. This also included the use of surveillance planes, or drones, with infrared cameras and heat detectors, in order to control and monitor the movement in the area, especially at night.
Nothing worked; the permanent police presence used to prevent unidentified people from entering site proved to be a dismal failure. A private contractor is used to maintain planes and other equipment for Mininco Forestry Inc, where the two planes were set on fire, destroying one and damaging the other.
Second Helicopter Attack in the Area
This is the second time that Forestry planes have been targeted in the area of Malleco. An earlier incident included a helicopter that was shot in a rural area of Ercilla.
Forestry Companies: The Ugliest Face of Capitalism in Wallmapu
The forestry companies represent the worst aspect that Capitalism has shown to Mapuche community members in Wallmapu. Their extreme extractive activities have only generated disaster for communities, including toxic fumes, the disappearance of rivers, brooks and streams, as well as the extinction of the natural flora and fauna of the area which serve as food and medicine for the Mapuche People. These are the main effects, among others, of the industry financed by the Chilean State through Law 701.
Moreover, the enormous extensions of land currently held by the Forestry companies lie on stolen land from Mapuche communities. These corporate properties are directly related to the territorial plunder of the Mapuche People.
Three Families against a People
This business not only is targeted against the Mapuche People; it also excludes the thousands of Chileans that have maintained this industry through subsidized taxes for the last 20 years. The property concentrated by the forestry industry lies in the hands of only three families: Angelini, Matte and Carey, whom own companies such as Bosques Arauco, CMPC and Masisa respectively.
Bosques Arauco alone encompasses almost 1.2 million hectares, with Mininco Forestry Inc at 700,000 hectares, which does not include the many uncertified estates in the area.
According to an official report, the forestry companies posses almost three million hectares in southern Chile – in other words – Wallmapu. This accounts to almost 30% of our traditional Mapuche Territory [south of the Bio Bio River], in comparison with only 700,000 hectares held by Mapuche communities, accounting for only 7% of traditional territory.
Electrical supply problems at a National Security Agency data centre have delayed its opening by a year, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Power surges at the giant Utah centre had ruined equipment costing almost a million dollars, it said.
The technical problems had also led to lengthy investigations that had meant its opening date had been pushed back.
The Utah plant is one of three the NSA is building to boost its data gathering and surveillance capabilities.
Over the past 13 months, 10 separate electrical surges have occurred at the data centre in Bluffdale, Utah, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which is reported to have cost $1.4bn (£872m) to build.
Each surge had burnt out and wrecked about $100,000 worth of computers and other equipment, it said.
The Bluffdale facility is more than one million sq ft (93,000 sq m) in size and its power costs are expected to top $1m (£622,000) a month, according to the WSJ.
The NSA had been supposed to start using the data storage and analysis centre in October 2012, it said, but this had been delayed by the damage caused by the power surges and a six-month investigation into their cause.
The WSJ added it had seen technical documents indicating experts called in to find out the cause had rowed over whether the problem had been fixed.
It said civil contractors were confident the problem had been solved but a special US Army engineer investigation team had said the cause was “not yet sufficiently understood” to be sure that it would not happen again.
The amount of surveillance that the NSA carries out has come under scrutiny in recent months thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden.
He leaked documents allegedly detailing its activities including the Prism programme that garners data from web firms including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo.
In addition, the NSA has been found to be gathering data on phone calls made by US citizens.
Rafael Pagan — who died in 1993 — was not invited to be a part of his former associate’s new firm, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. His tactic of conquering and dividing activist movements and isolating the “fanatic activist leaders” lived on, though, through his former business partner, Jack Mongoven.
Mongoven teamed up with Alvin Biscoe and Ronald Duchin to create MBD in 1988. While “Biscoe appears to have been a largely silent partner at MBD,” according to the Center for Media and Democracy, Mongoven and Duchin played public-facing starring roles for the firm.
Duchin, like Pagan, had a military background. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College and “one of the original members of [Army] DELTA” — part of the broader Joint Special Operations Command that killed Osama Bin Laden — Duchin had jobs as a special assistant to the secretary of defense and as spokesman for Veterans for Foreign Wars prior to coming to Pagan.
Duchin served as head of the Pentagon’s news division during “Operation Eagle Claw,” President Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 mission to use special forces to capture the hostages held in Iran.
Referred to by The Atlantic as the “Desert One Debacle” in a story Duchin served as a key confidential source for — as revealed in an email in the “Global Intelligence Files” announcing Duchin’s 2010 death — “Eagle Claw” ended with eight U.S. troops dying, four wounded, one helicopter destroyed, and President Carter’s reputation in the tank. The failed and lethal mission served as the impetus for the creation of the U.S. Special Operations.
Largely avoiding the limelight while working as Pagan’s vice president for Issue management and strategy — the brains of the operation — Duchin became a notorious figure among dedicated critical observers of the public relations industry while co-heading MBD. During MBD’s 15 years of existence, its clients included Big Tobacco, the chemical industry, Big Agriculture and probably many other industries never identified due to MBD’s secretive nature.
MBD worked on behalf of Big Tobacco to fend off any and all regulatory efforts aimed in its direction. Philip Morris paid Jack Mongoven $85,000 for his intelligence-gathering prowess in 1993.
“Get Government Off Our Back,” an RJ Reynolds front group created in 1994 by MBD for the price of $14,000 per month, serves as a case in point of the type of work MBD was hired to do by Big Tobacco.
“The firm has developed initiatives for RJ Reynolds that advocate pro-tobacco goals through outside organizations; among other projects, the firm organized veterans organizations to oppose the workplace smoking regulation proposed by OSHA,” explains a 2007 study appearing in the American Journal of Public Health. “[It] was created to combat increasing numbers of proposed federal and state regulations on the use and sale of tobacco products.”
Paralleling the Koch Family Foundations-funded Americans for Prosperity groups of today, “Get Government Off Our Back” held rallies nationwide in March 1995 as part of “Regulatory Revolt Month.”
“Get Government Off Our Back” dovetailed perfectly with the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America” that froze new federal regulations. The text of the “Contract” matched “Get Government Off Our Back” “nearly verbatim,” according to the American Journal of Public Health study.
‘Radicals, Idealists, Realists, Opportunists’
While its client work was noteworthy, the formula Duchin created to divide and conquer activist movements — a regurgitation of what he learned while working under the mentorship of Rafael Pagan — has stood the test of time. It is still employed to this day by Stratfor.
Duchin replaced Pagan’s “fanatic activist leaders” with “radicals” and created a three-step formula to divide and conquer activists by breaking them up into four subtypes, as described in a 1991 speech delivered to the National Cattleman’s Association titled, “Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?”
The subtypes: “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists.”
Radical activists “want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives’ and see multinational corporations as ‘inherently evil,’” explained Duchin. “These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment.”
The “idealist” is easier to deal with, according to Duchin’s analysis.
“Idealists…want a perfect world…Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, … [they] have a vulnerable point,” he told the audience. “If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position.”
The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the “realists” and the “opportunists.” By definition, an “opportunist” takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for “visibility, power [and] followers.”
The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin.
“[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue.”
Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.
“If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.
Bringing the ‘Duchin Formula’ to Stratfor
Alvin Biscoe passed away in 1998 and Jack Mongoven passed away in 2000. Just a few years later, MBD — now only Ronald Duchin and Jack’s son, Bartholomew or “Bart” — merged with Stratfor in 2003.
A book by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton — “Trust Us, We’re Experts!” — explains that MBD promotional literature boasted that the firm kept “extensive files [on] forces for change [which] can often include activist and public interest groups, churches, unions and/or academia.”
“A typical dossier includes an organization’s historical background, biographical information on key personnel, funding sources, organizational structure and affiliations, and a ‘characterization’ of the organization aimed at identifying potential ways to co-opt or marginalize the organization’s impact on public policy debates,” the authors proceeded to explain.
MBD’s “extensive files” on “forces for change” soon would morph into Stratfor’s “Global Intelligence Files” after the merger.
What’s clear in sifting through the “Global Intelligence Files” documents, which were obtained by WikiLeaks as a result of Jeremy Hammond’s December 2011 hack of Stratfor, is that it was a marriage made in heaven for MBD and Stratfor.
The “Duchin formula” has become a Stratfor mainstay, carried on by Bart Mongoven. Duchin passed away in 2010.
In a December 2010 PowerPoint presentation to the oil company Suncor on how best to “deal with” anti-Alberta tar sands activists, Bart Mongoven explains how to do so explicitly utilizing the “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists” framework. In that presentation, he places the various environmental groups fighting against the tar sands in each category and concludes the presentation by explaining how Suncor can win the war against them.
Bart Mongoven described the American Petroleum Institute as his “biggest client” in a January 2010 email exchange, lending explanation to his interest in environmental and energy issues.
Mongoven also appears to have realized something was off about Chesapeake Energy’s financial support for the Sierra Club, judging by November 2009 email exchanges. It took “idealists” in the environmental movement a full 2 ½ years to realize the same thing, after Time magazine wrote a major investigation revealing the fiduciary relationship between one of the biggest shale gas “fracking” companies in the U.S. and one of the country’s biggest environmental groups.
“The clearest evidence of a financial relationship is the note in the Sierra Club 2008 annual report that American Clean Skies Foundation was a financial supporter that year,” wrote Mongoven in an email to the National Manufacturing Association’s vice president of communications, Luke Popovich. “According to McClendon, American Clean Skies Foundation was created by Chesapeake and others in 2007.”
Bart Mongoven also used the “realist/idealist” paradigm to discuss climate change legislation’s chances for passage in a 2007 article on Stratfor’s website.
“Realists who support a strong federal regime are drawn to the idea that with most in industry calling for action on climate change, there is no time like the present,” Mongoven wrote. “Idealists, on the other hand, argue that with momentum on their side, there is little that industry could do in the face of a Democratic president and Congress, and therefore time is on the environmentalists’ side. The idealists argue that they have not gone this far only to pass a half-measure, particularly one that does not contain a hard carbon cap.”
And how best to deal with “radicals” like Julian Assange, founder and executive director of WikiLeaks, and whistleblower Bradley Manning, who gave WikiLeaks the U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the “Collateral Murder” video? Bart Mongoven has a simple solution to “isolate” them, as suggested by Duchin’s formula.
“I’m in favor of using whatever trumped up charge is available to get [Assange] and his servers off the streets. And I’d feed that shit head soldier [Bradley Manning] to the first pack of wild dogs I could find,” Mongoven wrote in one email exchange revealed by the “Global Intelligence Files.” “Or perhaps just do to him whatever the Iranians are doing to our sources there.”
Indeed, the use of “trumped up charges” is often a way the U.S. government deals with radical activists, as demonstrated clearly during the days of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program during the 1960s, as well as in modern-day Occupy movement-related cases in Cleveland and Chicago.
‘Information economy’s equivalent of guns’
Just days after the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, The Austin Chronicle published an article on Stratfor that posed the rhetorical question as its title, “Is Knowledge Power?”
The answer, simply put: yes.
“What Stratfor produces is the information economy’s equivalent of guns: knowledge about the world that can change the world, quickly and irrevocably,” wrote Michael Erard for The Chronicle. “So if Stratfor succeeds, it’s because more individuals and corporations want access to information that helps them dissect an unstable world — and are willing to pay steady bucks for it.”
When it comes down to it, Stauber concurs with the “guns” metaphor and Duchin’s “war” metaphors.
“Corporations wage war upon activists to ensure that corporate activities, power, profits and control are not diminished or significantly reformed,” said Stauber. “The burden is on the activists to make fundamental social change in a political environment where the corporate interests dominate both politically and through the corporate media.”
Stauber also believes activists have a steep learning curve and are currently being left in the dust by Pagan, MBD, Stratfor and others.
“The Pagan/MBD/Stratfor operatives are much more sophisticated about social change than the activists they oppose, they have limitless resources at their disposal, and their goal is relatively simple: make sure that ultimately the activists fail to win fundamental reforms,” he said. “Duchin and Mongoven were ruthless, and I think they were often amused by the naivete, egotism, antics and failures of activists they routinely fooled and defeated. Ultimately, this is war, and the best warriors will win.”
One thing’s for certain: Duchin’s legacy lives on through his “formula.”
“The 4-step formula is brilliant and has certainly proven itself effective in preventing the democratic reforms we need,” Stauber remarked, bringing us back to where we started in 1982 with Rafael Pagan’s remarks about isolating the “fanatic activist leaders.”
Heavily-armed, masked paramilitary forces descended upon the Gogebic Taconite mining site in Wisconsin over the weekend, much to the chagrin of local residents and elected officials.
“I’m appalled,” state Sen. Bob Jauch (D) told The Wisconsin State Journal on Monday. “There is no evidence to justify their presence.”
Jaunch sent a letter to Gogebic President Bill Williams on Monday demanding the company remove the guards, which he called “common in third world countries,” but stressed that “they don’t belong in Northern Wisconsin.”
The company brought in the paramilitary forces after being confronted by a group of about 15 protesters in June. At least one of the demonstrators, a young woman, was hit with misdemeanor charges for trying to take a camera away from one of the company’s geologists. Gogebic claims they’ve since caught several people illegally camping on their property and did not want to take any chances.
The company hired by Gogebic is Arizona-based Bulletproof Securities, which boasts that many of their employees are ex-military and many of their clients are celebrities and government officials. They certainly look the part, too: photos of Bulletproof guards at the Gegebic site published by the Wisconsin progressive blog Blue Cheddar show men who look very much like special forces soldiers, complete with assault rifles and black masks.
“Do they have the authority to use those weapons? If so, on who?” Jauch asked the Journal. “I don’t know if there’s a hunting season right now except maybe for rabbit, but you shoot a rabbit with that, all you’ll end up with is fur. What would you use those weapons for except to hurt somebody?”
The mining site they’re protecting in the Penokee Mountains is highly controversial and critics say in violation of a treaty with Native Americans.
Video shot by Wisconsin-based website Indian Country TV over the weekend featured at least one of the paramilitaries wearing full camoflage and a military-style net over his face — an image that would have been completed by an assault rifle, if he hadn’t left it sitting on the passenger’s seat of his vehicle, right next to a cameraman.
“What happened to your fancy guns?” the cameraman asked. “Look at that. Very close by. Who are you going to shoot?”
“It’s a security protocol,” the guard replied, refusing to provide his name or his employer’s name.
“You’re being caught up in a national phenomenon,” the cameraman informed the guard. “We’ve got reporters calling from all over the country wondering about the occupation of Penokee Mountains Heritage Park by people who’ve got automatic weapons. And the question is, ‘Why?’”
A spokesperson for Gogebic told The Cap Times on Tuesday that they’re considering restricting their drilling sites from public access, which wouldn’t be an option until December when the state begins accepting applications.
This video is from Indian Country TV, published July 7, 2013.
It’s often said that where there is oppression and brutalization, there is resistance; that resistance is fertile, and that it inevitably takes root in the cracks between the building blocks of exploitation and injustice. Even as industrial civilization drives indigenous peoples from their homelands and destroys what little remains of the living world, there is resistance. Even as men abuse and violate women, there is resistance. Even as whites oppress and exploit people of color, there is resistance. We continue to find determined resistance in the places we would think it least likely to survive in.
But there is another truth, a corollary to the undeniable will of resistance; where there is resistance, there is repression. Whenever and wherever people fight back, those in power—those higher on the social hierarchy—go to whatever lengths they deem necessary to protect their power and privilege. If resistance is inevitable, so is repression. Those of us determined to see justice need to be prepared for it, and use it to our advantage as much as possible.
This is becoming all the more immediately relevant as resistance against industrial extraction begins to enter a new phase of confrontation and action against those who would dismember the planet for profit. Across North America (and around the world), activists are increasingly turning to nonviolent direction action, having tired of the failures of legislative & administrative strategies. While this certainly represents a step in the right direction—that of physically confronting and stopping atrocity—it is also beginning to shed light on the way that power operates, and the means it will use to prevent dissent and resistance.
You may have heard about the anti-forest defense bills which are currently on the table in the Oregon State legislature. House Bill 2595 makes it a mandatory misdemeanor for the first charge of disrupting government forest practices, and a mandatory felony and minimum 13 months imprisonment for a second offense. House Bill 2596 essentially makes it easier for private entities to file suit against forest defenders. The laws come in response to direct action protests—including sit-ins, tree-sits, and blockades—by forest defense groups, including Cascadia Forest Defenders and Cascadia Earth First!, which stymied attempts to log the Elliot State Forest. Both bills have already been passed in the House and are now moving onto the senate.
Obviously, these bills are a blatant attempt to intimidate those who would act to defend the forests they love. It’s telling as well that the phrase “eco-terrorism” has been central in dialogue around the bill; labeling peaceful protesters using nonviolent tactics as “terrorists” is clearly an attempt to justify their political repression.
This sort of rhetoric and political repression extends far beyond the battle for forests in the Pacific Northwest. In Oklahoma and Texas, TransCanada—the corporation behind the Keystone XL pipeline—has filed lawsuits against individuals and organizations to stop them protesting and using nonviolent direct action to stop construction of the pipeline. It’s a blatant attempt to stamp out any interference or meaningful opposition to the pipeline.
In Canada, state security forces—including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service—have begun viewing and approaching nonviolent protests, especially against the oil and gas industries, as “forms of attack” and “national security threats”.
Of course, this isn’t by any means a new or recent phenomenon, nor are these repressive measures outstandingly horrific. Take for example, the Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) conducted by the FBI against indigenous, Black, Chicano, and other radical movements in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which aimed to discredit, disrupt and destroy those social movements and political organizations. COINTELPRO used infiltration, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and illegal state violence (among other tactics) to tear apart movements and render them ineffective.
While it certainly succeeded in its diabolical mission in many regards, COINTELPRO and other forms of intense repression were a key factor and motivation in driving many revolutionaries into underground and militant action and organizations. As Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues in his study Repression Breeds Resistance, when aboveground factions of the Black liberation movement came under increasingly heavy political repression, they turned to underground militancy to more effectively carry on the struggle. In his words, “Due to the intense repression against the BPP [Black Panther Party] and the Black liberation movement, it was necessary to go underground and resist from clandestinity.”
The potential of repression to fuel the formation and growth of underground resistance is also a trend to which Robert Taber speaks, in his 1965 study of guerrilla warfare, War of the Flea. In his survey of different guerrilla movements, Taber identified several prerequisite conditions that must be met for militant guerrilla struggle to be effective, among them the presence of “an oppressive government, with which no political compromise is possible.”
Political repression is a terrible thing; it has destroyed countless lives, families, communities, and movements, and continues to do so today. It is of course undeniable that repression hurts movements—and usually aims to destroy them, but it is also true that it can push them into new and much needed directions. One unintended effect of measures such as the Oregon House bills or TransCanada’s lawsuits may be to bolster support for and acceptance of militant & underground resistance. Certainly, we should not be surprised if this is the case, and rather than lament the means to which people resort in defense of the land, we should celebrate such action.
It should be clear that when nonviolent and aboveground means of fighting for justice & sustainability are criminalized, those who would otherwise limit themselves to legal means are motivated to take up more militant forms of action. It should be clear to anyone paying attention that political repression is going to get worse, the reins on acceptable political action continuously tightened, and the list of legally allowed responses to atrocity to be constantly shrinking. But this may very well (and very likely, if history is anything to go by) encourage and facilitate more serious and determined militant and underground action.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
This article was originally published by Upside Down World on May 2, 2013, and is republished here with permission from the author.
With the world’s attention focused on the on-again off-again genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and his head of military intelligence in Guatemala City, there has been little international reporting on other events in the Central American nation. Meanwhile, as the trial continues, conflicts involving rural communities and Canadian mining companies are escalating, to the point that a State of Siege was declared last night.
Fifty miles southeast of the capital, private security guards working for Vancouver-based mining firm Tahoe Resources shot and wounded several local residents on Saturday in San Rafael Las Flores, on the road in front of Tahoe’s El Escobal silver mine. The mining company’s head of security was arrested while attempting to flee the country. A police officer and a campesino were killed during conflicts earlier this week. Through it all, demonstrations against the mining project have continued amid conflicting reports and government misinformation.
Following a Cabinet meeting late last night, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina declared a 30-day State of Siege in four municipalities around the El Escobal mining project: San Rafael Las Flores and Casillas in the department of Santa Rosa, and Jalapa and Mataquescuintla in the department of Jalapa. The measure is in effect as of today. Initial reports indicated that the constitutional rights suspended include freedom of movement, freedom of assembly and protest, and certain rights of detainees and prisoners.
Even before the measure was declared, communities were denouncing army mobilization in the region last night. When he announced the State of Siege, Pérez Molina stated that security forces reported for duty at three military bases last night and that operatives would begin early this morning.
“We fear for the lives of our leaders,” stated a message circulated online by the Xinka People’s Parliament, denouncing the mobilization of armed forces in Jutiapa with the alleged intention of arresting Xinka leaders in Santa María Xalapán, Jalapa. “We’re returning to the 1980s, with the persecution of leaders, extrajudicial execution and forced disappearance.”
Two weeks ago, Guatemalan Minister of the Interior Mauricio López Bonilla announced that executive and judicial officials were analyzing the possibility of declaring a State of Emergency in at least 30 municipalities throughout the country, due to violence. The government, according to the April 16 announcement, had anticipated finalizing the details of its evaluation of “red zones” within two weeks and implementing the measures suspending constitutional rights, possibly within three weeks to a month. At the time, mining was not mentioned.
The suspension of constitutional rights did not come as a surprise to Moisés Divas, Coordinator of the Diocesan Commission in Defense of Nature (CODIDENA) in Santa Rosa.
“The extent of the reaction from both the company and the State has completely violated people’s constitutional right to protest,” Divas told Upside Down World in a telephone interview on Monday. At the time, he was in Guatemala City accompanying some of the wounded San Rafael Las Flores residents at the Office of the Public Prosecutor, where they were being seen by a medical examiner.
“They no longer even respect human life. The government officials who should be at the service of the population have now turned against the population to defend a transnational project,” said Divas.
Tahoe Resources owns the El Escobal mine, but Vancouver-based mining giant Goldcorp retained a 40 percent ownership interest in Tahoe when it sold the project in 2010. Still under construction, El Escobal was granted an exploitation license by the Guatemalan government on April 3 amid widespread protest and threats against opponents. Five days later, the community-based movement against mining in San Rafael Las Flores began an ongoing resistance camp on privately owned land less than 200 feet from the mine’s front gate. Despite a violent eviction on April 11, when 26 people were arrested and held for four days before being released without charges, the resistance maintained its presence at the camp.
On Saturday, April 27, a group of local residents left the resistance camp along the road that passes directly in front of the mine, heading towards the community of El Volcancito. When they passed the front gate, security guards opened fire on them from the other side.
“The mining company ordered the shooting against people there, injuring more than 10 people with gunshot wounds,” said Divas. “Six of them were taken to get medical assistance in Cuilapa and two to the Roosevelt Hospital in the capital, because they found evidence of serious injury.”
Wilmer Pérez, 17, Antonio Humberto Castillo, 48, Noé Aguilar Castillo, 27, and Érick Fernando Castillo, 27, were all released after medical treatment in Cuilapa. Adolfo García, 57, and his son Luis García, 18, were taken to Guatemala City. Adolfo García was later released, but his son Luis remained in hospital care. The 18-year-old was shot in the face, suffered extensive damage to his jaw, lip, and teeth, and requires maxillofacial surgery.
Alberto Rotondo, Tahoe’s Chilean head of security, was overheard giving the order to shoot, among other comments and insults, while some of the injured have stated that they saw him draw and fire a weapon as well. According to a Prensa Comunitaria article posted that same night, local witnesses said that Rotondo “ordered [the security guards] to shoot, saying that they are fed up with all this garbage, referring to our people. They insulted them, and then they loaded their rifles and began to shoot at them.”
Rotondo was later arrested at the airport attempting to flee the country on Tuesday morning, accused of attempted homicide for his role in the April 27 shooting. After his case was transferred from the capital to Santa Rosa, he was sent to the maximum security prison in Cuilapa. According to Prensa Libre coverage, a judge in Guatemala City also issued arrest warrants for three other individuals with regards to Saturday’s shooting.
On Monday morning, Minister of the Interior Mauricio López confirmed that El Escobal mine security guards had shot at local residents. But despite all evidence to the contrary, he also said that the residents had been attempting to forcibly enter the mine site at the time and stated that only rubber bullets were used.
Oscar Morales García, a member of the Committee in Defense of Life in San Rafael Las Flores that has been mobilizing against the mining project and organizing community consultations, says the statements are simply untrue.
“There are people who were shot with real bullets. One has a bullet lodged in his body and it was decided that it’s better if it stays there instead of taking it out. And the other youth, the son, whose face was disfigured when he was shot. Those aren’t rubber bullets,” he told Upside Down World in a telephone interview on Monday.
Morales García also says that there may have been less evidence had it not been for the actions of local community residents on Saturday.
“After the attack against those six people, the national police force and the mine guards came out, intending to remove evidence, to drive their vehicles over the crime scene, and to pick up the bullet casings. But some of the people who were there didn’t let that happen. They told the police to get back and then protected the crime scene,” he said. “After six, eight hours of waiting for representatives from the Office of the Public Prosecutor to arrive, yes, they found evidence. The evidence was there. The crime scene had been protected by civilians.”
López Bonilla’s assertion that rubber bullets were used wasn’t the only government statement to be called into question on Monday. Presiding over the signing of a new royalty agreement between Tahoe Resources and the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said that there is community support for the mine.
According to the new voluntary contribution agreement, Tahoe will pay five percent in royalties instead of the one percent required by the country’s mining legislation. The additional funds will be distributed to several different municipal governments in the departments of Santa Rosa and Jalapa. The mayor of San Rafael Las Flores was present at the signing ceremony in the capital along with several other elected municipal leaders.
“I saw the statements made by President of the Republic Otto Pérez Molina, saying that the population of San Rafael supports the mining company,” said CODIDENA Coordinator Moisés Divas. That same day, he said, San Rafael Las Flores residents were out in the streets in huge numbers to protest the agreement. “I don’t know what argument or foundation he used to say that people support the mining company.”
Community consultations are underway in San Rafael Las Flores. Eight have been carried out in as many communities. More than 1,200 people have said no to mining and only eight individuals have voted in favor of mining, said both Divas and Morales García. The overwhelming majority of the thousands of people who participated in municipal-level consultations in other municipalities in Santa Rosa – Casillas, Nueva Santa Rosa and Vieja Santa Rosa – and Mataquescuintla in neighboring Jalapa have also rejected mining.
Morales García also rejected the allegation of local support. “The government just announced [on Monday] that we’re merely two or three people who don’t want mining in San Rafael, that everyone else agrees with it,” he said. Beyond just marginalizing the resistance, said Morales García, the government was acting in concert with the Minera San Rafael, Tahoe Resources’ Guatemalan subsidiary.
“What actually happens is one thing, and the version managed by the government and the mining company is something else. The best Minera San Rafael spokesperson here is Minister López Bonilla,” he added.
In 1982, then Second Lieutenant Mauricio López Bonilla was part of the “La Juntita” Young Officers Advisory Group working for the military junta led by Ríos Montt. He retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1997, shortly after the Peace Accords officially ended four decades of conflict in 1996. He later became the electoral campaign manager for current President Otto Pérez Molina, whose role in the brutal counterinsurgency campaign of the early 1980s in the Ixil region has again come into question during the genocide trial. López Bonillla was sworn into his Cabinet position when Pérez Molina began his term in January 2012.
A whole new set of statements made by López Bonilla came under fire on Tuesday, after a police officer was shot and killed in San Rafael Las Flores. The Minister of the Interior publicly accused Xinka leaders of orchestrating an operation to take 23 police officers hostage in Jalapa.
Community and regional leaders representing the non-Mayan Indigenous Xinka population in southeastern Guatemala have been outspoken opponents of El Escobal and mining in the region. Four Xinka community leaders were abducted by armed masked men on March 17 while on their way home to the neighboring department of Jalapa after observing the community consultation process in El Volcancito, San Rafael las Flores.
Rigoberto Aguilar and Roberto López, both local leaders of the Indigenous Xinka Community of Santa María Xalapán, managed to escape. Roberto González Ucelo, President of the Indigenous Xinka Community of Santa María Xalapán and of the Xinka Parliament, survived after a police operative was sent in. But Exaltación Marcos Ucelo, Secretary of the Xinka Parliament, was found dead. Now six weeks later, the Xinka Parliament has denounced that no progress has been made to bring those responsible to justice.
In an atmosphere of heightened tension after Saturday’s shooting by El Escobal security forces, communities mobilized in San Rafael Las Flores and Jalapa against the mining project on Monday, denouncing the agreement being signed in the capital between Tahoe and the government and the presence of municipal authorities at the event. Conflicts involving the national police force ensued in both locations. In San Rafael Las Flores, a police officer was shot and killed on Tuesday morning when police attempted to evict the community resistance. In Jalapa, 23 police officers were taken hostage and disarmed on Monday afternoon at a blockade between the town of Jalapa and Mataquescuintla. A massive police response involving some 2,000 officers was sent to rescue the first group. In the process, on Tuesday morning, several police officers were wounded and a campesino was killed. Police vehicles were also torched and destroyed in both locations.
On Tuesday, Vice Minister of the Interior Edy Juárez publicly stated that community leader Rudy Pivaral was responsible for inciting violence in San Rafael Las Flores, leading to the death of police officer Eduardo Demetrio Camacho Orozco. Minister of the Interior López Bonilla publicly accused Xinka leaders Roberto González Ucelo and Rigoberto Ucelo of orchestrating the conflict in Jalapa and said he would hold them responsible for any acts carried out with the weapons taken from the police officers when they were held hostage.
“They hold me responsible for all the problems that occurred,” Xinka leader Roberto González Ucelo told the Independent Media Center (CMI) on Wednesday. “I have proof that I went to Cuilapa, I was in Cuilapa, so I didn’t organize [anything] because I was on my way to Cuilapa.” There was evidence of the trip, he said, from various receipts and the registration of his visit in the municipal office in Cuilapa.
An outpouring of support for the Xinka Parliament, community leaders and the local resistance to mining came from Indigenous, campesino and human rights organizations following the government accusations.
“The atmosphere is really tense here,” González Ucelo said of Santa María Xalapán. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
On Wednesday, the Office of the Public Prosecutor requested the arrest of 18 people on charges related to the conflicts earlier this week in San Rafael Las Flores and Jalapa. However, the suspension of constitutional rights regarding legal detention and interrogation under the State of Siege leaves community leaders and outspoken mining opponents in the region vulnerable to unchecked repression.
Largely silent throughout most of the recent developments, Tahoe Resources issued a statement on Wednesday, May 1, “to clarify inaccurate media reports about violent incidents that have broken out in recent days.” In line with the company’s response after the murder of Xinka leader Exaltación Marcos Ucelo, Tahoe claimed the incident in Jalapa had nothing whatsoever to do with the mine.
Regarding protests against the mining project, Tahoe Resources CEO Kevin McArthur stated that, “while many of these activities have been peaceful and respectful, violence from outside influences has escalated in the past weeks since we received our operating permit,” according to the statement.
“Tahoe’s Guatemala security manager was detained by authorities on Tuesday,” the company confirmed, but alleges the arrest was simply “due to the highly charged atmosphere and inaccurate press reports about Saturday’s events.”
Tahoe is also sticking to López Bonilla’s initial claim that only rubber bullets were used, adding that the Escobal security force acted to repel a hostile protest of some “20 people armed with machetes” at the mine gate. “We regret any injuries caused by rubber bullets, but we take the protection of our employees and the mine seriously,” said McArthur, according to the statement.
“As a result of the incidents in recent days, work at the mine has slowed and construction and development is expected to return to normal by Thursday,” according to the company statement.
But if the past couple months are any indication, there is no real normal when it comes to El Escobal. Normal has been ongoing community-based resistance in the face of violent repression, which will likely escalate under the State of Siege.
For Oscar Morales García, the “violence from outside influences” has come from Tahoe Resources. “The truth here is that the social peace was shattered when the mining company came to San Rafael,” he told Upside Down World.
Morales García knows that Annual General Meetings are coming up this month for Goldcorp (today, May 2, in Toronto) and Tahoe (May 9 in Vancouver), and he has a message for the shareholders of both companies.
“Tahoe’s silver, minerals and gold in San Rafael are now stained with blood. It may be true that the government authorized an exploitation license, but what would be called a social license for Minera San Rafael doesn’t exist here. It doesn’t exist and it never will,” said Morales García.
“The message for the shareholders is loud and strong,” he continued. “You don’t have a social license. The resistance is just beginning. And we’re in it for the long haul.”
