On December 24, 2025, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted on social media: “We congratulate the members of the La Puya Peaceful Resistance for their tireless and successful struggle.”
Then on December 30, 2025, PBI-Guatemala also posted: “We congratulate the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya for defending its territory against the mining company KCA. To learn more about the context of their fight, the demand of the company and the arbitration process, we recommend reading our article: International Arbitration against the State of Guatemala: Mina el Tambor Case, published in July 2020.”
Now, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) also reports: “Water defenders from the Peaceful Resistance La Puya, just north of Guatemala City, celebrated an important victory over the holidays.”
IPS further explains: “On December 23, an arbitration panel at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled against Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday, and Associates (KCA) in its nearly half a billion-dollar arbitration claim against Guatemala.”
Following the arbitration panel decision, the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya has commented: “KCA lost its wager to make millions of dollars through this international arbitration process, which it initiated knowing that it would never win the consent of communities that have always said no to its unviable project. This project is so bad that the company couldn’t even defend it in an arbitration system designed to protect the investments of transnational corporations.”
The video their media conference on December 28, 2025, can be seen here.
Peace Brigades International began accompanying the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya in November 2012.
Vancouver-based Radius Gold
The story of the Peaceful Resistance begins with the Vancouver, Canada-based mining company Radius Gold securing an exploitation licence from the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines in 2011.
On March 2, 2012, area residents, who had not been consulted about this mine, set up a 24-hour a day blockade at the entrance to the mine site. Within weeks, on May 8, 2012, the women of the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya laid on the ground, sang and prayed to stop bulldozers from entering the mine.
A few months later, in August 2012, Radius Gold sold the mine to KCA.
Violent eviction of blockade
On May 23, 2014, two PBI-Guatemala field volunteers witnessed 300+ riot police carry out the violent eviction of the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya blockade of the El Tambor mine.
Video of police attack.
In February 2016, the Peaceful Resistance won a Guatemalan Supreme Court ruling to provisionally suspend the mine. By that point, the mine had already operated for almost two years.
In December 2018, Kappes, Cassiday & Associates filed a $300 million claim with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank arbitration mechanism, claiming its investor rights under the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) had been violated.
On May 21, 2021, the court lifted that suspension, but the authorization for the mine to begin operation was not granted.
July 16, 2021: “#PBI accompanies the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya in dialogue with State institutions in the framework of the international arbitration process driven by the company KCA.”
PBI-Canada visits La Puya
On Sunday May 7, 2023, PBI-Canada and PBI-Guatemala visited with Doña Licha and the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya at a roadside site that it has maintained at the entrance to the “El Tambor” Progreso VII Derivada gold mine.
Further reading
Peaceful Resistance of La Puya expects ICSID ruling in June as consultation process on El Tambor mine set to start this summer (PBI-Canada, May 16, 2023)
International Arbitration against the Guatemalan State: The El Tambor Mine Case (PBI-Guatemala, pages 10-13 in Bulletin No. 43, August 2020).
