By: Romi Fischer-Schmidt, New Hope Foundation Cooperant

Cooperant Update: Impunity is a Canadian issue, too: Remembering Adolfo Ich Chamán’s death for resisting a Canadian mine in Guatemala

Photo of BTS Cooperant Romi playing guitar at a commemoration event.

BTS Cooperant, Romi and Styvens Barrios perform in a cello-guitar duo at Adolfo Ich Chamán’s 15th annual commemoration at the Barrio La Union church. Among the songs performed was Vamos Compañeros, written by Adolfo Ich Chamán, himself a musician. Photo credit: Monica Raxcaco

Adolfo Ich Chamán was killed on September 27th, 2009, defending Barrio La Union. This contested land is part of a large swath of Maya Q’eqchi’ territory (near El Estor in Eastern Guatemala) that was occupied by Toronto-based International Nickel Company’s (INCO) Fénix mine starting in 1971. As Guatemala’s Internal Armed Conflict and genocides raged, local inhabitants were killed and displaced from their homes.

After many years of inactivity, 2004 saw INCO sell the mine to Skye Resources, another Toronto mining company. Next, Canadian colonizer HudBay Minerals acquired Skye in 2008. The following year, the head of Fénix mine security, Mynor Padilla, brutally killed Adolfo, slashing him to death by machete and shooting him in front of his son. This happened as he approached a group of mine security personnel who had stated they wanted to negotiate. Adolfo was the President of Barrio La Union, a respected Maya Q’eqchi’ community leader, a school teacher, musician, father and grandfather. He was outspoken about the harms caused by Canadian mining activities in his territory. His murder was yet another in a long trail of death surrounding the Fénix mine.

On September 28th, community members held a 15-year commemoration of Adolfo’s assassination. The emblematic story of his death continues to inform the movement towards justice for mining-affected communities.

Photo of Maya ceremony at commemoration event.

Commemoration event for Adolfo Ich Chamán. ¡Adolfo Ich Chamán Vive! Photo credit: Monica Raxcaco

Since the killing in 2009, human rights groups and civil society organizations have continued to advocate to bring Canadian-led crimes in Q’eqchi’ territory to light, including Adolfo’s assassination, the shooting and paralysis of German Chub as he and others fled the murder scene, as well as the rape of 11 women, and pillaging and burning of the village of Lote 8 two years earlier on January 17th, 2007.

Homes burn in Lote 8 following Skye Resources’ payment of thousands of dollars to the Guatemalan police and military in January 2007. Photo credit: RightsAction

In Guatemalan courts, Mynor Padilla, Adolfo’s killer, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 after being found guilty of the assassination; however, because he had spent four and a half years in pretrial detention, he received no further jail time. In Canadian courts, on October 7th, 2024, a “fair and reasonable settlement” was finally reached between the Mayan Q’eqchi’ plaintiffs and Hudbay Minerals in lawsuits alleging grave human rights violations at the Fénix mine.

However, in the 15 years since Adolfo’s death, daily life at the Fénix mine has not been peaceful. In 2012, three university biology students studying environmental impacts died mysteriously while on a boat on the lake adjacent to the mine. The boat driver and only survivor of the incident is a biologist and Fénix mine employee; he was acquitted of any responsibility in 2019.

On September 17, 2016, four shots were fired outside Angelica’s home while she and her two children were sleeping.

On May 27, 2017, Carlos Maaz, a member of the artisanal fishermen’s union was killed by police, during a peaceful march against the mine’s contamination of Lake Izabal.

Carlos Maaz is remembered this past May 2024. Justice is yet to be served. Photo credit: Juan Bautista

In 2020, the Guatemalan state declared a state of emergency which made way for the army to invade Q’eqchi’ lands and Barrio La Union to forcefully remove peaceful blockades against the Fénix Mine, after the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ordered a consultation and revoked the mine’s export permits. The mine remained open.

The following year in 2021 the Guatemalan army invaded again and a state of emergency was declared again, all the while a phony consultation process occurred during a state of emergency (revoking basic rights).

In November 2022, Adolfo’s son, Luis Ich Choc, suffered a broken shoulder at the hands of pro-mine vigilantes, in response to his peaceful activism in taking up his fathers’ struggle.

And earlier this year on March 6th, 2024, police raided Angelica’s home in the night.

The long list of unnecessary violence goes much deeper than the above-listed events and includes criminalization of journalists and human rights defenders as well, including Prensa Comunitaria journalist Carlos Choc, and Maria Choc (Adolfo Ich Chamán’s sister-in-law), who has various spurious criminal charges against her for her land defence work. The culmination of this accumulating oppression and impunity generates a constant state of terror, division and uncertainty for anyone who dares speak up against the Fénix mine.

In the coming months, violence is expected to escalate again even as many had hoped for change under the ostensible ‘democratic spring’ purported by newly-elected Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo, who promised to explore a national moratorium on mining during the elections. In spite of the 2020 Constitutional Court decision and the state of emergency (civil rights revoked) under which the 2021 consultation occurred, as well as a 2023 Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision against the mine, it was not until Magnitsky List sanctions were declared that the Fénix Mine effectively closed. This enforced closure by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) froze the Fénix mine’s Russian ownership (since a purchase by Solway Group in 2014) on charges of corruption; Fénix has been forced to halt operations since those US sanctions were enacted in November 2022.

Now, however, confusion reigns as a tug-of-war between Russian and US interests occurs behind closed doors over the Fénix mine’s “strategic earth mineral deposits.” The U.S. Treasury Department recently lifted sanctions in January 2024, after Solway Group fired Russian and Belarusian executives they claimed led corrupt practices. They then founded a new shell company in New York City, called Fenix Nickel Co. These changes point to new U.S. control of the mine. Fuel has been spotted arriving at the mine facilities, job postings have been shared, and on September 2nd, 2024 an export licence was renewed by the Arévalo government. When will the mine reopen? And at what cost to life?

In Canada, corporations act with impunity inside, and even more so outside, of our colonial borders. Outdated legal doctrines delegate the prosecution of mega-powerful Canadian corporations’ crimes to weak states. These same corporations partner with undemocratic elites in foreign countries to corrupt justice systems, with the ultimate aim of extracting profit without accountability. Canadian corporations around the world work against justice in this way, importing raw materials into the Canadian economy and exporting impunity. In fact, Canada actively attracts mining companies with lax regulations and diverse incentives, propping up the Canadian financial sector with 75% of the world’s mining companies. Yes, three out of four of the world’s mining companies are headquartered in Canada. Canada also hosts the world’s largest mining industry conference (PDAC) annually.

The death of Adolfo, the story of his widow Angelica’s struggle for justice, and the genocidal birth of the Fénix mine tell the story of Canadian mining imperialism from its early years (in which the Fénix mine is a significant launching point for the contemporary mining boom) until today, where global mining can almost be assumed to be made-in-Canada.

Mining is not only devastating in its heavy metal-releasing and toxic “purifying” processes, but further requires gluttonous quantities of water and outlandish amounts of energy to produce minerals. While mining of strategic metals for electric batteries is being heralded as essential for a global “green transition,” mining industries are responsible for over 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, massively contributing to climate change. Mining is also the deadliest sector for environmental defenders worldwide.

The death and memory of Adolfo Ich Chamán teaches us about the violence of Canadian mining imperialism in the 21st century. His story, and many others, inform mining justice efforts from the world’s mining capital in Canada, to some of the most sacrificed communities and their territories in Guatemala.