When he was a child and they were hungry, José Bo would go to the Cahabón River with his family in search of crabs, jute (snails) or whatever he would give them to eat. When someone got sick, they went to the mountains to look for medicinal plants. Bo finds it difficult to accept that now she can only go to the market or the pharmacy.
The riverbed, sacred to the approximately 29,000 Quekchí indigenous people who live along its banks, has been flooded by several hydroelectric power plants in the past decade. Because of this, this school teacher decided to face the peaceful struggle and devote his life to defending the river. “We only think in the present tense. Today we work, tomorrow I get my payments and spend them. This is not so, we have to think about the education and health of our children and about where they can live tomorrow,” Bo summarizes the motivation that encourages him to fight despite the risks and threats to the Cahabón River of November 2022 came to Europe to make his cause known.
The department of Alta Verapaz, about 200 kilometers north of Guatemala City, stages the history of cruel colonialism. Its surface hosts minerals, oil and lots of water. Meanwhile, the residents live with the highest rates of poverty in the country. 53.6% live in extreme poverty, according to the latest data from the Guatemalan government, which stopped measuring the problem in 2014.
The situation does not appear to have improved with one in two children suffering from chronic malnutrition, according to Unicef and the Guatemalan government. As if that weren’t enough, more than 70% of families have no electricity in their homes, the UN warns. This scenario paves the way for transnational companies that saw a business opportunity in the Cahabón River.
They wanted to silence me or more importantly to intimidate me and although I have sometimes thought about leaving my family and going to another country, I am staying here until now.
“In 2011, the OXEC company built a canal for energy generation and promised to build churches, schools and sports fields, but so far there are none of these facilities,” recalls Bo, a resident of the municipality of Aldea Sepoc. The promises didn’t materialize and the only thing the population noticed was that they had less and less access to water. To defend the Holy of Holies, they have therefore organized around the Peaceful Resistance of the Cahabón River, in which Bo performs administrative and coordinating tasks.
“We have organized among community and religious leaders, elders and the mayors of 195 communities to find a strategy to meet the mega projects. Our weapons are the political constitution of the Republic, rural and local laws, International Labor Organization Convention 169 relating to Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, and the United Nations Charter.”
The litigation
The Resistance’s legal battle bore its first fruits after the success of a lawsuit alleging illegal logging of 15 hectares in January 2018. The company OXEC had to pay a fine of four million quetzales (443,000 euros). Valeria Prado, the company’s head of sustainability, said in an appearance to the press shortly after the trial that they denied having cut down the trees, “but preferred to end the process by paying the fine”. OXEC is owned by Energy Resources Capital Corp, registered in Panama, and to date its operations continue without reaching an agreement on an agreed and effective consultation.
In 2017, they managed to suspend the company’s activity for four months because prior consultation with the communities had not been carried out, as required by law. The verdict agreed with the municipalities and provided for enforcement within a year. Of course, it was decided that the company can continue its activities. In the same year, the municipalities organized a consultation. “More than 25,000 people who didn’t like the company attended and 11 who were in favor, but the community still won’t ratify it,” Bo recalls. On the other hand, the company conducted a parallel survey in which it surveyed only 11 municipalities, which they considered the only ones affected by their activity.
A group of special rapporteurs from the United Nations Human Rights Council contacted the Guatemalan government in 2018, arguing that OXEC had filed injunctions against any attempts at community consultation. The Cahabón River Peaceful Resistance also complains that the company has signed agreements with several communities, in which it has paid neighbors in exchange for their participation in the hydroelectric project and turned away those who opposed it. Bo believes that “with this agreement, divisions have arisen because other people have sold their wills.”
Companies and their obligation to ask
Not only could the social mobilization not stop OXEC, but the power plants on the river have multiplied with the expansion of the RENACE mega-project, owned by Corporación Multi Inversiones (CMI), a family company of Guatemalan origins with a presence in more than 15 countries. CMI subcontracted Spanish company Grupo Cobra to construct three of the project’s four power plants. This newspaper received no response after contacting the company. The peaceful resistance denounces that this project also requires access to the river. “We see the consequences because at first they offered it as development and there was no development in the communities, they closed the river and we ran out of water,” Bo explains agonizingly. CMI claims that it “does not divert the flow or restrict its access”.
The case reached the Spanish National Contact Point (PNC), whose role is to promote the effectiveness of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, following a complaint by the NGO Alianza por la Solidaridad. After gathering information from the parties, the agency subordinate to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism released a report in 2019 concluding that there is “a positive and a negative assessment” of RENACE’s environmental impact. The first is that “in order to preserve an ecosystem around the Cahabón River, the first private nature reserve named as part of a hydroelectric project was created to preserve the fauna and flora in the area,” he notes. “On the other hand, significant changes can be seen in some sections of the Cahabón River, revealing the changes caused in some areas of the project with potentially negative impacts on local communities.”
More information
The document reminds Cobra Group that “the contractor’s position does not absolve it from complying with the highest international standards” and “it has a duty to require the local partner to comply with them”. And she recommends the Spanish company “to ensure, with a view to future projects, that prior, free and informed consultation with the indigenous population is carried out before undertaking any project”.
Also in the case of RENACE, no prior consultation was carried out. In response to the communities’ complaint, the Guatemalan Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2019 that enforced the implementation, but without crippling the activity of the hydroelectric power plants. “The consultation was not held because the verdict was appealed and a solution is awaited. What the company really wants is to report on the project, rather than questioning whether it should go ahead or not,” clarifies Almudena Moreno, development coordinator at the NGO Alianza por la Solidaridad. When CMI is asked why it has not been consulted, it limits itself to explaining via email that “it has a good relationship with the communities in its area of operation and participates in community meetings”.
Threatened for protesting
Since the construction of the hydroelectric power stations on the Cahabón River, and especially since the beginning of the mobilization of the population, criminalization and harassment against the defenders of the river have increased. This has been documented by Alianza por la Solidaridad or Amnesty International. One of the most famous cases was that of Bernardo Caal xol, representative of the Q’eqchí’ communities in the municipality of Santa María Cahabón since 2015 in their lawsuits against the OXEC hydroelectric power station. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and charged with stealing materials and restraining workers in a trial the UN considers a “blatant attempt to silence and discredit the indigenous community’s legitimate exercise of rights.”
Bo has also received threats to make him give up the fight for the Cahabón River and his life is in serious danger. “They tried to kill me in my house, but they didn’t succeed. They wanted to silence me or, above all, intimidate me, and although I’ve sometimes thought about leaving my family and going to another country, I’ve stayed here so far,” he affirms with conviction.
Alta Verapaz stages the history of the cruellest of colonialism. Its surface hosts minerals, oil, and plenty of water, while residents live with the highest rates of poverty in the country.
To protect Bo and his companions, Peace Brigades International (PBI), an organization that accompanies people threatened for defending human rights, came to Alta Verapaz in mid-2017 -high. It gives us more security and gives us a kind of moral support in our struggles.”
Fearless of reprisals, Bo has decided to speak out and denounce the violence witnessed in Alta Verapaz on a European tour sponsored by the International Peace Brigades and International Development Cooperation Initiatives (ICID), during which she has met with political parties human rights organizations and the press. “I call on the European Union and organizations to defend water. There isn’t that much on earth and we need it to live. Before I die defending the water, dying because of the drought,” says the teacher without regard.
According to the international organization Global Witness, in 2021 an average of almost four environmentalists were killed per week worldwide. Guatemala is the fifth Latin American country with the highest number of murders, 80 between 2012 and 2021.
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