River Defender Murdered in Guatemala

The march to the site of Pojom I before the march was targeted by armed paramilitaries.
The January 17 march to the site of Pojom I before the march was targeted by armed paramilitaries.
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Another anti-dam activist has been murdered in Latin America.

On Tuesday, January 17, protestors led a peaceful demonstration against a hydroelectric plant in Guatemala. But the event ended in death after paramilitaries shot and killed 72-year-old activist Sebastian Alonso.

The march had originated before dawn from the towns of the Chuj and Q'anjob'al in the municipality of Huehuetenango, located in Guatemala’s western highlands. The demonstrators were heading to Pojom I Hydroelectric Project, which is being built without the consent of local indigenous groups.

The groups have been protesting the project for five years, with little acknowledgement from government officials. Violence has dogged the dam project; in 2014, two people died in disputes over the project.

According to witnesses, paramilitaries serving either the dam developer or the state opened fire on the peaceful protest, injuring several people and killing Alonso.

The murder underscores just how dangerous it is to be an environmental defender in Latin America. Just days before Alonso’s murder, another environmental defender was murdered in Mexico: 2005 Goldman Prize winner Isidro Baldenegro López

López was fighting the unregulated logging of old-growth forests in the Sierra Madre Mountains on the ancestral land of his people, the Tarahumara. López was not the first environmental defender killed in the family: His father had been shot and killed in front of him decades earlier for leading mass protests against logging corporations. 

The site of Pojom I Hydroelectric Project.
The site of Pojom I Hydroelectric Project.
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The local indigenous organization which organized the march, Consejo de Pueblos WUXHTAJ, calls on government authorities to stop the repression against the community and bring those responsible for the murder to justice. The group also demands that the Ministry of Energy and Mines cancel the licenses of the Pojom I and Pojom II hydroelectric projects, which are being built without the consent of local people.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Corporación Interamericana para el Financiamiento de Infraestructura (CIFI) as a financier of the Pojom I and Pojom II hydropower projects. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Date: 
Tuesday, January 17, 2017