Church in the World

Guatemala mines policy under attack

Americas

GUATEMALA'S BISHOPS are locked in acrimonious dispute with the government over development policy in general, and open-cast gold mining in particular.

While the conservative administration of President Oscar Berger has been encouraging foreign investment in mining, the population of the rural San Marcos region, in south-western Guatemala, complain that their interests have not been taken into account. Most of them are poor, ethnic Mayan farmers, who fear the mining will poison their water and destroy their farms and forests. Prominent among their supporters is Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of San Marcos.

Matters came to a head on 11 January, when one person was killed and more than 20 injured in clashes with riot police after protesters set up a roadblock to prevent heavy equipment reaching a Canadian-owned mining concession. The government was incensed that Bishop Ramazzini did not try to dissuade the protesters, and the president accused the bishop of being a rabble-rouser and inciting the demonstrators - which Bishop Ramazzini denied.

On Monday, President Berger and Bishop Ramazzini met and reached an understanding the president agreed to revise the terms of future mining concessions, and both committed themselves to working together on the issue in future. However, a protest march against the mining projects was still due to take place in San Marcos on Thursday.

Mining was a prominent issue at the Guatemalan bishops' annual assembly, which opened on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toru?o, Archbishop of Guatemala. The cardinal said that the government's failure to take account of the possible impact of large-scale, open-cast mining on the environment and people's lives was irresponsible. This view has brought the Church into unusual alliance with organised labour Jos? Pinz?n, general secretary of the country's largest trade union organisation, CGTG, said last week that the government's mining policy was "against the interests of the vast majority of Guatemalans" and would benefit only foreign companies.

Underlying the Church-State confrontation are radically differing views of the meaning of economic development. The government argues that foreign investment is essential to exploit Guatemala's natural resources and to create jobs for the indigenous majority of the 12 million population - who, since colonial times, have been poor, downtrodden and excluded.

President Berger, a successful businessman whose goodwill is recognised even by his most implacable critics, cannot understand why the local people fail to see this. Hence his suspicions that people such as Bishop Ramazzini are bent on manipulating them in order to hold back development.

The Church's view is that open-cast mining cannot be the key to sustainable development for a country like Guatemala, which should instead be looking to activities such as forestry and eco-tourism. Aside from the environmental issues, the bishops argue that most of the jobs created by mining developments will be temporary. The mineral processing will use so much water and harmful chemicals that the long-term damage to settlements and farms, from which most local people must still derive their living, will far outweigh any short-term benefits.
Colin Harding|snip!|Bush backs pro-life demonstrators. THREE CARDINALS, a dozen bishops, 200 priests and 18,000 others this week marched through Washington DC to protest on the anniversary of the decriminalisation of abortion in the United States 32 years ago.

The march came two days after the inauguration of an intensely anti-abortion administration, re-elected partly through anti-abortion Catholic votes. At a Mass attended by 8,000 at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Cardinal William Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore, called for people to rededicate themselves to reversing "the tragic miscarriage of justice that was 'Roe versus Wade' ".

The National March for Life is an annual fixture, commemorating the US Supreme Court's decision in January 1973 in the case of Roe versus Wade, that abortion did not contravene the constitution. That decision will stand until overturned by an amendment to the constitution, or, more probably, a reversal by the Supreme Court itself. Such a reversal seems more likely in the next four years than ever before.

The American president, George W. Bush, spoke to the demonstrators by telephone from his Camp David retreat. He conceded an America "where every child is welcome may still be some way away", but he pointed to the accomplishments of the anti-abortion majority in Congress over the past few years in outlawing partial-birth abortion, protecting children who survive an abortion and in guaranteeing the rights of nurses and doctors who refuse to take part in terminations. This whittling away at abortion is likely to continue in the next few years, parallel to a larger fight in the Supreme Court.

Mr Bush will almost certainly be faced with vacancies on the nine-member Supreme Court, and although he has promised not to make opposition to abortion a litmus test for his nominations, with a solid Republican majority in the Senate likely to accept his choices, he might well be able to produce an anti-abortion Supreme Court before his term ends in January 2009.

The first test of whether the Senate will confirm an anti-abortion justice is likely to come soon. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a strong opponent of abortion, is dying of thyroid cancer. In any case, only one of the nine justices is younger than 65, and several strong pro-abortion justices are likely to step down soon enough for the complexion of the court to be changed.

Defenders of legal abortion know themselves to be on the defensive, and at a pro-abortion rally in New York State to mark the anniversary, Senator Hillary Clinton went out of her way to extol abortion's enemies, praising their moral conviction, affirming their stress on religiously inspired celibacy for teenagers, and seeking "common ground".

Meanwhile, the Sacred Heart of Mary Catholic church in Boulder, Colorado, has sparked a national outcry after it announced it has been holding burial services for the cremated ashes of aborted foetuses without the knowledge of the mothers or the abortion clinic involved. The church buried the ashes of 500 foetuses last Sunday. A handful of protesters gathered nearby holding signs that read "This church is a grave-robber". Since 1998, the church has interred the remains of 5,500 foetuses, obtaining most from a mortuary hired by the Boulder Abortion Clinic to dispose of them.
Richard Major, New York