PBI-Guatemala accompanies San Francisco Quezaltepeque Indigenous Community at hearing of criminalized ancestral authority

Published by Brent Patterson on September 20, 2024

On September 13, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“Yesterday, #PBI accompanies the San Francisco Quezaltepeque Indigenous Community to the third public and oral debate hearing of an ancestral authority of San José Cubiletas criminalised for his work in defence of the territory.

The prosecuted facts occurred on 27 August 2021 when personnel linked to the municipality of Quezaltepeque tried to extract balastre from the San José Cubiletas community without the authorisation of the ancestral authorities.

The hearing took place in the Criminal Sentencing and Drug Trafficking Court of Chiquimula.”

Canadian mining company

PBI-Guatemala has previously also noted: “The indigenous community of San Francisco Quezaltepeque is resisting a mining company working in the municipality: Minerales Sierra Pacifico S.A. This company has five exploration licenses for gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc. The Ch’orti’ people are concerned about the negative impacts of these mining activities and also about the contamination of the water of the Rio Grande by the honey water from coffee production, which could be worsened by the mining activity.”

As noted on page 10 of this report, Minerales Sierra Pacifico S.A. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vancouver-based Radius Gold.

You can find the Comunidad Indígena San Francisco Quezaltepeque on Facebook here.