On Feb. 1, Gregoria Crisanta, an opponent of the local Marlin gold mine [2], was detained by police in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos department, Guatemala. She was presented before a local magistrate, and arrest orders related to vandalism at the mine were apparently issued retroactively, a legal irregularity. As she was being transfered to San Marcos town, the regional capital, the police vehicle was stopped by a roadblock erected by the local populace, and Crisanta was liberated. There was no violence.
Crisanta is a leading member of the Association for Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacán (ADISMI), an organization made up of local Mam Maya campesinos who oppose cyanide pollution from the huge open-pit mine owned by the Canadian Goldcorp. (Rights Action [3], Feb. 4)
See our last posts on Guatemala [4] and the mineral cartel in Latin America [5].
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