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GOLD IN GUATEMALA: CAN'T LIVE WITH IT, CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT.

Article Excerpt
An immense gold-mining operation in the San Marcos department of Guatemala has pitted the Catholic Church against a government sorely in need of money and a private sector eager to get in on expected wealth. At the pivot point is an indigenous population in need of jobs but firmly against the environmental destruction the mine will bring. Despite local opposition, the operation is thought by even its strongest opponents to have gone too far to stop. Now the question is how to keep it from being a permanent disaster, a disaster that will outlive the single decade the mine will be productive.

In September 2005 President Oscar Berger came to San Marcos to officiate at the start of construction of a road to link San Miguel Ixtahacan with Concepcion Tutuapa. The road is financed by the mining company. Berger told locals that the mine would be an "exemplary project" and that, if it failed, there would be no more mining in the country, rich in metals, minerals, and oil. Berger is looking forward to the moment when royalties begin to roll in to the treasury when the mine, now 95% complete, starts up, probably before the end of the year. Expectations are that the operation will extract 4,500 tons of silver and gold during its lifetime. Investment in the mine is said to top US$157 million.

World Bank finances environmental disaster

Much of this investment is World...