Instead, the Court urged the government to enact legislation to satisfy the requirement under international law (especially ILO Convention 169) that consultation of indigenous peoples take place before mineral exploration proceeds, implicitly rejecting assurances that adequate consultation had taken place.
The Court went further, stating that the objective of consultation is not simply to discover community feelings, but to “reach agreements or arrive at a consensus with respect to the proposed measures.” The Court stated that mining activity should “provide just compensation to the regions where the [mining] activities take place, through economic and social measures for community development.”
There has been mounting opposition to the mine in the neighbouring municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, culminating in blockades and arrests. The project is scheduled to go forward.
The Huehuetenango votes
The 2005 vote in Sipacapa led to the holding of a number of far larger votes on mining activities in other locales in Guatemala.
In July 2006, only fifty out of 28,519 voters in five communities in Huehuetenango
Department voted in favor of local mining projects. The election was subject to inspection by over two hundred national and international observers in the one hundred forty-two voting centers. It is important to note that Huehuetenango is the country’s most productive department in terms of coffee exports, and receives the highest level of remittances from residents employed in other countries.
In April 2007, residents of San Pedro Necta, another Huehuetenango municipality, voted overwhelmingly against mining projects, according to one of the organizers of the vote. Even though there were no current mines in the area, some 17,000 citizens in dozens of communities in the municipality came out against mining, apparently largely because of fears of cyanide pollution and the potential impact on local water sources. The citizens were aware of a mining catastrophe in neighboring Honduras, where an earlier cyanide spill had impacted the Lara River and poisoned thousands of fish. San Pedro Necta became the seventh community in Huehuetenango over a period of eighteen months to ban open pit mining.
On June 23, 2007, Santa Cruz de Barillas, another Huehuetenango community, voted 46,481 to 9 (sic) against mining as a development alternative. The result of the vote was delivered to the Congress and other federal institutions along with a request that the authorities respect the outcome of the vote.
