The Dominion - James Rodríguez

As Firm as a Tree

dawn — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 05:48:51 +0000

Portraits of Diodora Henandez, a woman in resistance against Canadian mining

SAN MIGUEL IXTAHUACAN, GUATEMALA—On July 7, 2010, Diodora Hernandez, a staunch anti-mining activist, was shot point-blank in the right eye.

The incident took place outside her home in the small community of San Jose Nueva Esperanza, in the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, only a few metres from a fence that delimits Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine.

Hernandez, who lost her right eye as a result of the attack, lives with her daughter Maria and granddaughter Olga. One year after her miraculous recovery, Hernandez’s anti-mining stance and activism remains as steadfast as ever.

“They tried to kill me because I do not want to sell my plot of land,” she said while being interviewed on the local radio station, The Voice of the People.

“People around here do not think about the future or their children, but only on the present, the money they can get for the present.”

James Rodriguez is an independent documentary photographer based in Guatemala. He publishes at mimundo.org.

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Water to Mine

Moira Peters — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 05:07:19 +0000

Goldcorp’s Penasquito project in Mexico robs semi-desert region of precious resource

ZACATECAS, MEXICO—Five years ago a new neighbour arrived in Mazapil, Mexico, promising employment, medical services and general development for the local peasant communities as it hoped to develop one of the world’s largest gold mines. The newcomer—Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc—built its mine but has yet to honour its promises to the thousands of people of Mazapil. Particularly for the residents of Cedros, Las Palmas and El Vergel—communities adjacent to the massive industrial complex—hope for a brighter future has dimmed.

In fact, Goldcorp’s Penasquito Mine has turned out to be a troublesome addition to the community, guzzling the municipality's scarce water sources, while its most significant contribution has been contamination and social division.

“Even though it has been a mining town by tradition, [Mazapil] has never been prosperous. Its population has managed to survive off agriculture and the raising of livestock,” according to an April 2010 article in the local paper, El Diario de Coahuila. The ejido system still prevails in this part of the country. It consists of community members, known as the ejidatarios, sharing a common landholding, both for agriculture and residence.

"We have had a very hard life and struggled enormously to upkeep this ejido," says Hernandez Herrera. "We have already suffered so much, and now, this monster comes to devastate our territories. What will we do once the water runs out? And it is clear that it will run out! Because in every place where a mine establishes itself, the water eventually runs out."

James Rodriguez is an independent documentary photographer based in Guatemala. He authors mimundo.org, where a version of this photo essay was originally published.

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Tragedy at Toncontín

Moira Peters — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:09:31 +0000

Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, was removed from the country during a military coup on June 28. Major demonstrations have been calling for his return, but the corporate media has virtually ignored them. Transcribed below is an interview from the Real News Network with Dominion correspondent Sandra Cuffe, who was at the Tegucigalpa airport on July 5, awaiting Zelaya’s return.

“When the march was approaching the airport—and at first there was the roadblock set up by soldiers one kilometre away from the airport [to] stop it from getting to the airport, and there were other roadblocks set up on the way to the march, so that people who hadn’t joined the march from the very beginning, this morning at the Tegucigalpa University, and were heading to the airport or to meet up with the march, couldn’t even get that far. So I had gotten through one of the roadblocks and made it to the airport. I was there when the march finally arrived. And the march—which was probably two, three times the size it had been in the past couple of days, so we’re talking, like, literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people—managed to get to the airport, because they actually kept advancing peacefully, slowly, and steadily, and pushing back soldiers and the police all the way back to the airport.

Everybody who’s participating is against the coup, they’re against a rupture of democracy, and therefore [are demanding] the return of the elected president. That’s pretty much clear across the board.”

“The army has shot at a completely unarmed civil population. For more than five hours the people were respectful of the army and of the police. [...] The people were not bringing sticks, were not bringing weapons. [...] There was no need to shoot. Many were trying to remove the mesh [to enter the landing strip], it is not possible to deny that. But it was not necessary to shoot the people with bullets.”
–César Omar Silva, television journalist, Channel 8

James Rodríguez is an independent photo-documentarian currently based in Guatemala. To contact, and for more of his work, please visit www.mimundo.org.

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Good As Gold?

hillarybain — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:13:24 +0000

"There is nothing to negotiate!" Guatemalan community wants Canadian mining company out.

Three years into its existence, the Marlin Gold Mine has produced a long list of social problems for the local communities in the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacán. The mining project belongs to Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, a subsidiary of Canadian-based Goldcorp Inc. According to members of the Association for the Integral Development of San Miguel (ADISMI), “all the damages which the experts warned us of before the arrival of the mining project have come true: the deforestation, extreme dust, the contamination of water sources, dry wells, the competition for water usage and the accumulation of dangerous waste products from the mine.”

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