Resource Extraction and Community Autonomy: The Marlin Gold Mine in San Marcos, Guatemala

This Spring, NISGUA will host Fausto Valiente Roberto de Leon of COPAE (Pastoral Commission for Peace and Ecology) to speak about community struggles against gold and silver extraction in San Marcos, Guatemala.

COPAE is an organization that has accompanied communities throughout their processes of community consultations in Sipakapa and other forms of resistance in San Miguel Ixtahuacan. COPAE works to monitor the health, social, and environmental affects of the Marlin Mine and supports community efforts to exert their right to autonomy against transnational corporations and create locally determined economic alternatives for development.

Fausto Valiente will speak about COPAE's work and the struggles around the Marlin Mine in the context of mining and resource extraction in greater Guatemala. In addition to discussing the devastating affects of mining on rural communities, Fausto will address how the international system and the neoliberal model facilitate the entry of Northern mining companies in Guatemala.

Fausto Valiente will be speaking on May 14th at:

• The Timberland Regional Library in Olympia at 2:00pm - and -
• The Olympia Unitarian Universalist Church at 7:00pm