Goldcorp update

27 August 2010

Last month saw a strange twist in the campaign against Goldcorp, the Canadian mining giant accused of causing grave environmental damage around the Marlin mine in Guatemala. Community leaders waging the fight against Goldcorp have sued Guatemalan Supreme Court Chief Justice Erick Alvarez for having illegally acquired the land where the mine is located over nine years ago. At the time Alvarez was working for Peridot, a company linked to a GoldCorp subsidiary.

It’s not yet clear if the lawsuit will be allowed to proceed, but the charges are alarming, to say the least. The very fact that Alvaraz once represented a mining company raises a red flag about the connections between mining interests and political decision-makers.