History, violence, and the emergence of Guatemala’s mining sector

Abstract

Guatemala is a polarized country with a minority of European-descended elites controlling politics and economics while an indigenous majority is systematically excluded from participation in public life. Despite the existence of multicultural legislation that purports to empower indigenous peoples, they continue to be ignored in economic policy and practice. Repressive violence continues to be the norm, a practice rooted in the colonization of the region. Violence is not restricted to physical assaults against bodies but exists in the structural conditions of the world economy. This article examines why violence manifests the way it does and among whom through a world systems lens that interrogates how histories of ethno-racialized exclusion remain embedded in the Guatemalan state and market relations. I argue that the enduring legacy of state violence in Guatemala persists through economic decisions and political practices made by elites with specific attention to the extractive sector. The article begins with a discussion of indigenous–criollo relations in the Guatemalan context, proceeds to discuss the historical origins of large-scale mining in the period of the internal armed conflict, and concludes with a case study of the Marlin Mine as the first industrial mining project since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996.