Guatemala Women Standing Against Environmental Violence

Source: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

A woman in Lote Ocho, Guatemala are filing negligence claims (in Canada) against a Canadian mining company whose employees that forcibly removed a women from her home, raped her and then burned her home to the ground. She is joined in her suit by 10 other women from her village, who were also gang-raped on the same day.

However, she is filing her suit, Caal v. Hudbay Mineral Inc., in Canada, and there it is “sending shivers through the oil, gas and mining industry”. Of all the publicly listed mining and exploration companies in the world, more than half had headquarters in Canada in 2013.

Canadian companies, accounting for 50 percent to 70 percent of the mining in Latin America, were often associated with extensive damage to the environment, from erosion and sedimentation to groundwater and river contamination. Of particular note, it said, was that the industry “demonstrated a disregard for registered nature reserves and protected zones.”

You can read the entirety of the New York Times article here.