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Weekly Report - 19 June 2014 (WR-14-24)

GUATEMALA: A rocky road ahead for Pérez Molina

President Otto Pérez Molina recently hailed the inauguration of the Fénix mining project in El Estor in Izabal, one of the biggest nickel mining projects in Central America and one of six major mining projects to have caused unrest locally in recent years. The project’s inauguration came less than a week after the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) condemned violence which took place at another of these projects – the ‘El Tambor’ gold mine near Guatemala City where operations have been held up since March 2012 by protesters who claim it will pollute local water supplies. Efforts by the right-wing Partido Patriota (PP) government to press ahead with these and other controversial projects could well point to further social unrest in the latter stages of Pérez Molina’s four-year term.

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