Santo Domingo, Guatemala, 2009.

Floor after community assembly. Santo Domingo, northern Huehuetenango, Guatemala. May 21, 2009.

This morning I came back from a few days in northern Huehuetenango, where new community consultations on the mining issue were taking place. In the ongoing democratic resistance against mining exploitation by foreign companies, La Consulta Comunitaria de Buena Fe continues throughout the department, this time in San Mateo Ixtatán. There was a sense of civic fiesta there, with cheerful marimba music, many people assembling outside the community hall as the results came in from the surrounding communities of the region, and ‘fireworks’ going off at an unnerving rate (bombs, why not say it). As earlier, the ‘NO’ to mining seems unanimous, although I didn’t stay for the final results.

I’ve just revisited my last photo post on the previous consulta. I posted it rather quickly and since found a lot of errors. Now I’ve spent the last hours fixing it, uploading the images in big versions, captioning it and fixing technical issues, had to do a lot of fiddling with the code and other stuff I shouldn’t be doing at 2am, nor at any other time for that matter…but: There should now be a nice set of 18 photos in a slide show, up and working. Enjoy, and let me know if you notice any issues.

I’ll post more about this week’s consulta after I’ve sorted through my photos, of which there is far too many. It’ll be at least a week of staring into the screen, but luckily there’s also a great deal of eatin’ throughout this weekend. I’m sorry to say it’s on the occation that our friend Simca is leaving to go back home to Boston, but such is life.

Now I’m getting myself hungry again at 3am. Goodnight computer. Hello bed.

Here are the photos from Caserio Canicham, the very small community I visited during their community referendum on mining, which I wrote about in the previous post. A click on an image starts a view of the entire set in full size (18 pictures).

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Click on an image to view the whole series in a large size.

San Rafael la Independencia, Guatemala, 2009. During a local community referendum against chemical mineral mining, in which the people of Canicham, a small rural community in northern Huehuetenango, voted unanimously against mining in Guatemala. Before being signed, the community statement was read to the community members.

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Click on an image to view the whole series in a large size.

San Rafael la Independencia, Guatemala, 2009. During a local community referendum against chemical mineral mining, kids play with found stuff.