Complejizando los conflictos ambientales en el altiplano guatemalteco

Abstract

Over the past ten years, changes in the patterns of mining investment in Latin America have generated a spike in environmental conflicts between peasant communities and transnational corporations. In Guatemala, this resistance has assumed the form of municipal referenda known as consultas comunitarias. Drawing from survey and open-ended interviews carried out in the municipality of Tectitán, Huehuetenango, this study aims to deepen our understanding of the factors that drive these conflicts on the part of indigenous peasant communities. I use the ecological distribution conflicts theory to frame this analysis, concluding that the explanatory power of this framework could be extended by explicitly incorporating political-cultural dimensions of these conflicts.