Photo of Lucía Ixchíu from Latin America Bureau by Eliana Lafone.
Lucía Ixchíu describes herself as: “K’iche, tree of the Forest, anti-patriarchal, cultural manager, journalist and Indigenous storyteller, architect (Mayan in exile).”
In this interview with Linda Etchart for Latin America Bureau, “Lucía explains that Guatemalan Indigenous peoples continue to be intimidated, threatened, and attacked by the agents of the extractive industries operating in her homeland. She reports that the expansion of mining and logging has brought about a ‘fourth invasion’ of the region by multinational companies, whose activities have displaced communities and caused serious damage to the local and regional ecosystems.”
When Lucia is asked about “the trajectory of your political activism”, she replies: “This goes back more than 10 years to when I decided to become a journalist and an activist, leading the defense of our territory. This was following the massacre of my people on October 4, 2012, when seven people died and 40 were seriously injured. I am from a [Maya K’iché] community, organised into what are known as the ‘48 cantons of Totonicapán’, which collectively defend Indigenous territory and protect the forest. We are the owners of land which is one of the most important sources of water for Central America. The rivers that originate here flow to Mexico and to Honduras. The area is important for biodiversity, but it has been impoverished, ravaged, besieged by colonizers.”
She adds: “It was after the massacre of 2012 that we began to understand the links between the army, narco-traffickers and the extractive industries: they are almost one entity, different elements of a cohabitation.”
On the transnational corporations operating on Indigenous territories, Ixchíu specifies: “There are US and Canadian companies, such as Goldcorp [which closed the controversial Marlin mine in 2017], companies financed by European capital, such as the Cobra Group in which Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, is invested. They control much of the hydroelectric capacity of the north of the country that borders Mexico. Other foreign companies include Hidro Santa Cruz, Hidro San Luis, Perenco [an Anglo-French oil and gas company], CGN [Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel] and Pronico.”
Ixchíu left Guatemala for Spain at the start of the pandemic in 2020, then left Spain for Mexico because “I feel that Europe, and particularly Spain, as the imperial power, is not ready to engage with radical Indians like me.”
When asked about solidarity groups in the context of advocacy in Europe, Ixchíu notes: “There was the Collectif Guatemalain France, a group founded by a Guatemalan exile in the 1980s. They understand the Guatemalan context and were able to help us to organize our European tours. There was also PBI [Peace Brigades International] in Berlin and in Hamburg, who paid for our transport.”
And significantly, she highlights: “In December 2023, we pressured the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to apply sanctions on officials of the dictatorship, and we succeeded. Two weeks after our visit, the French government announced sanctions against Guatemalan individuals, which was important [and contributed to President Bernardo Arévalo being sworn into office in January 2024].”
The full interview by Linda Etchart can be read at Honouring Indigenous resistance in Totonicapán: interview with Maya K’iché exile Lucía Ixchíu (Latin America Bureau, August 8, 2024).
To hear more from Lucia, see this Democracy Now! interview from January 16, 2024, following the delayed swearing-in of Bernardo Arevalo.
Published by Brent Patterson on