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Development Or Devastation?: Epistemologies of Mayan Women's DEVELOPMENT OR DEVASTATION? Epistemologies of Mayan women’s resistance to an open-pit goldmine in Guatemala Morna Macleod* Abstract The Canadian corporation Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán is the fi rst open- pit goldmine in Guatemala. While Goldcorp depicts Marlin as a showcase for development and good business, many Mayan women express extreme distress at the multilayered destruction caused by the corporation. Under the guidance of the indigenous women’s movement Tz’ununija’, in May–June 2011 and July 2012, I held in- depth interviews with fi ve Maya- Mam leaders and two workshops in San Miguel with more than 30 women opposing the mine. Analysing their visions and Goldcorp’s public development discourse, I argue that the mine is decimating San Miguel’s social fabric and environment. Although Goldcorp has created employment, infrastructure and injected money into the local economy, gains are short term in comparison with the long- term impacts of the mining venture on land and community. At heart, two fundamentally opposed visions are at stake: Western “development” versus tb’anil qchwinqlal, or quality of life. Keywords Mayan women, goldmining, development, indigenous worldviews, Guatemala * Lecturer and researcher, Postgraduate Programme, Social Science, Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM), Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico. Email: [email protected] DOI: 10.20507/AlterNative.2016.12.1.7 COPYRIGHT © 2016 NGÄ PAE O TE MÄRAMATANGA DEVELOPMENT OR DEVASTATION? 87 Introduction by the extractive industries based on profi t and Mayan women opponents who celebrate life. What has the mine brought us? Complete I decided to study Mayan women’s resistance disruption. to the Marlin Mine after long discussions with This wasn’t the case before, we lived peacefully. my close Mam friends, an extended family who fl ed San Miguel during the armed confl ict but Of course, there was poverty. Material return frequently, bringing back updated news poverty, about the devastating effects the mine is having But there wasn’t poverty in terms of land, on environment and community. Accompanying trees, water . Tz’ununija’ (a national Mayan women’s move- ment I had worked with before), I participated (Luz, a Maya- Mam woman in her fi fties, inter- in their activities with women resisting the view, June 2012) mine in San Miguel. They helped me to identify key activists in Ágel (where eight women had Open- pit gold mining has become a conten- arrest warrants issued against them) and in the tious issue across the globe, creating vast profi ts Catholic parish. After explaining the purpose for corporations and causing environmental, of my research and gaining their consent, I social and cultural destruction at the local level. held in- depth interviews with fi ve of the local Emblematic of today’s neoliberal capitalism Maya- Mam women leaders in May–June 2011 and extractive industries, the Marlin Mine has and July 2012, organized a day-long work- received substantial attention from scholars, shop together with the Catholic parish Sister development practitioners and social activists Mariana with the parish women’s group (about in relation to the complex issues surrounding 25 women) and a workshop with the group the open- pit goldmine and its environmental, Women Fighting for a New Dawn (founded by social and health impacts. This article explores the women with arrest warrants issued against the ways indigenous women who oppose the them). I continued to have in- depth conversa- mine understand its damage and impact. tions with my Miguelense friends no longer First, I briefl y set out some assumptions and living in San Miguel, recording one woman in criticisms about “development” as economic particular various times over three years. I co- growth and progress. Indigenous intellectuals authored a life history with a leader who had in Latin America in recent years have written two arrest warrants issued against her (Macleod extensively about what constitutes the “quality & Pérez Bámaca, 2013), and organized a week- of life” (buen vivir in Spanish or tb’anil qch- long tour with her in Mexico to disseminate winqlal in Mam). I contrast these with Western information about the book and the impact understandings of development and briefly the goldmine is having on San Miguel. I have contextualize the issue of mining in indigenous maintained close contact with three Maya- communities. I describe San Miguel Ixtahuacán Mam women in this article. My participation as well as the arrival of the mining corporation in an ethical health tribunal (http://health and opposition to the mine, and explore some tribunal.org/) in July 2012 allowed me to scru- Mayan women’s understandings of the impact tinize testimonies from local men and women the mine is having on land and community. and contribute to condemning Goldcorp mining Then I analyse Goldcorp’s discourse on devel- operations and their effects on the commu- opment and mining operations in indigenous nity in Guerrero in Mexico, Valle de Siria in peoples’ communities. I end the article by high- Honduras and San Miguel and neighbouring lighting the incommensurability between the Sipacapa in Guatemala. different development paradigms put forward ALTERNATIVE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1, ARTICLE 7, 2016 88 M. MACLEOD Development in the new millennium of development and are advancing ideas of and mining buen vivir. Starting in Ecuador and Bolivia, ideas of sumak kawsay (quality or plenitude In recent decades, there has been growing criti- of life in the Kichwa indigenous language) and cism of the dominant concept of development suma qamaña (quality or plenitude of life in the understood as modernization, progress and Aymara indigenous language) respectively have economic growth that gained traction in the travelled through the continent. Other indig- mid- twentieth century, in particular, as Shanin enous peoples’ movements and intellectuals (2003) puts it, the arrogant—and misleading— share and add to these theorizations, creating view promoted in Western Europe and North a pan- indigenous corpus of ideas that counter America that “all societies are advancing natu- modern premises of development, advancing rally and consistently ‘up’, on a route from a paradigm shift. Shared principles and values poverty, barbarism, despotism and ignorance include reciprocity, service to the community, to riches, civilization, democracy and rational- the interconnected relationship between nature ity, the highest expression of which is science” and human beings, respect, and respect for (p. 65). the spoken word, amongst others (Hidalgo Although this linear idea of progress and Capitán, Guillén García, & Deleg Guazha, development was partially questioned in the 2014; Salazar Tetzagüic & Telón Sajcabún, 1960s by dependency theorists (Cardoso & 2001). Faletto, 1979) who argued that third world The process of documenting the notion of countries were actively being “undeveloped” buen vivir involves recuperating and theoriz- by the fi rst world, through their gleaning of ing indigenous epistemologies, and resignifying resources and cheap labour force, the domi- concepts and values to adapt to present realities. nant notion has remained remarkably robust. It also means digging for meanings embedded This anti- capitalist criticism was limited to the in indigenous languages (López Intzín, 2013) skewed distribution of wealth and exploitation and fl eshing out these understandings. Maya- of labour, and did not question the premises of Tseltal López Intzín (2013) records the words modernity. This was to come later, through the of a Tseltal woman: linking of modernity to colonialism and patri- archy. Nandy (2003) thus comprehensively I don’t know what’s happening with me, I criticizes don’t know what I’m doing, but my loom doesn’t want to walk (move forward). Maybe a world-view which believes in the absolute it hears that my heart isn’t feeling even a tiny superiority of the human over the non- human bit of the abundant bounty of the universe- and the sub- human, the masculine over the earth, I am not living well, my life is unwell, I feminine, the adult over the child, the histori- don’t feel plenitude or goodness. (p. 84) cal over the ahistorical, and the modern or progressive over the traditional or the savage. The Maya- Tseltal woman has lost her harmoni- (p. 169) ous connection to the universe; as a result, her weaving ceases to fl ow. Others have been less inclusive, questioning Open- pit goldmining epitomizes the criticism patriarchy but not modernity, or colonialism of modernist development by indigenous— and dominating nature but not patriarchy. and other—organizations in Latin America. In Latin America, indigenous intellectu- In Ecuador, the president of the Kichwa indig- als and movements in this new millennium enous organization Ecuador Runakunapak have increasingly questioned Western ideas Rikcharimuy (Confederation of Peoples of ALTERNATIVE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1, ARTICLE 7, 2016 DEVELOPMENT OR DEVASTATION? 89 Kichwa Nationality, ECUARUNARI) succinctly registered in husbands’ names, is often sold to states that with “open-pit mining, mountains the mine without women’s consent. are destroyed . destabilising peoples, nation- Despite adversity, Jenkins and Rondón alities; this does not constitute happiness” (2015) and Caxaj, Berman, Restoule, & Varcoe (Cholango, 2010, p. 242). While indigenous (2014) highlight indigenous women’s (and communities in Australia and Canada have men’s) resistance to mining ventures. The for- more leverage to negotiate
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