News , | 11/10/2025 : Land of Resisters: Destructive Dams in Guatemala

The defenders of the Cahabón and Oxec rivers in Guatemala have transformed their methods of resistance. After one of their main leaders, Bernardo Caal XolXol, was prosecuted and imprisoned for five years, the Q’eqchi’ Maya people are now fighting for self-determination at the ballot box. They are preparing to influence elections and participate in public decisions on issues affecting them, including with respect to the rivers.

30 June 2022

María Josefina Caal Xol crosses a river that is not her own. This Q’eqchi’ Maya woman is returning from giving a workshop on indigenous women’s participation in politics to a group of women in Sepur Zarco, Panzós, in the department of Alta Verapaz. The rainy season has just begun, and the river’s flow is not yet deep. The water rises only a few centimetres above her ankles, and to cross, she lifts her corte, the traditional long, loose skirt of the Q’eqchi’ people. “My brother asked me what I was doing here because this isn’t my territory”, says Caal Xol, as she collects two long, flat stones from the river that she will later use to decorate her spiritual offering altar.

Caal Xol’s territory is three and a half hours away from where she gathered those stones, also in Alta Verapaz, 200 kilometres north of Guatemala’s capital. It lies beyond a valley covered with hundreds of hectares of African palm and mountains scarred by machines that extract red earth in search of nickel.

At the end of that journey, inside her territory, the Q’eqchi’ Maya woman points towards the mountainside. “There’s the river. Look what they’ve done to it.” The dense vegetation covering the slope and the mist rising from the heat and rain make Caal Xol’s expression hard to discern, but ten minutes later, the meaning of her words becomes clear. The wide, greenish river is motionless; its natural flow has been halted by a dam, and the little water that trickles through the concrete wall is all that remains of the Cahabón River. Until about nine years ago, part of the Oxec River, a tributary of the Cahabón, also ran through here, but now it is only a dry channel, its waters diverted into pipes. 

The Oxec River is home to the Oxec S.A. and Oxec II hydroelectric plants, two names that began echoing in the ears of the communities in this northeastern region of Guatemala in early 2012. A year later, in 2013, Oxec S.A. was the first of the two projects to obtain a license from the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), despite not having conducted a prior community consultation as required by international agreements that Guatemala has signed onto.

As a result, it was able to begin operations in November 2015. Both projects are owned by Energy Resources Capital Corp, a Panamanian company linked to other hydroelectric firms, which, in turn, are tied to Spanish businessman Florentino Pérez.

He has been famous for twenty years, primarily for serving two terms as president of Real Madrid, one of the world’s most renowned football clubs and home to some of the sport’s biggest stars. Under his leadership and his famous policy of signing “galactic” players, the club has won six Spanish titles and six European championships. Just a month ago, they claimed their fourteenth continental title by defeating Liverpool in the final.

Over 8,000 kilometres from the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, where Pérez’ Real Madrid also won the Spanish league a few weeks ago, the consequences of the irregularities surrounding Oxec S.A.’s operations seven years ago still linger. The hydroelectric projects linked to the Spanish businessman sparked protests and legal actions by the Santa María Cahabón communities, which tried to have the 2013 Ministry of Energy and Mines license that allowed the company to begin operations in 2015 declared unconstitutional. The Cahabón community also filed complaints over illegal logging and the criminalization of community leaders who opposed the project.

They called this series of legal actions “resistance” to defend the rivers running through their territory. This organization of the Q’eqchi’ indigenous communities of Santa María Cahabón, led by teacher Bernardo Caal XolXol, prompted the owners of Oxec S.A. and Oxec II S.A., along with the business chambers that make up the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF), to launch media campaigns over the last decade. Through press conferences and statements, they urged the Constitutional Court to rule in their favour on the legal challenges that Bernardo Caal XolXol, filed on behalf of the resistance. In 2017, these kinds of actions were constant, and they continually demanded that the high court resolve them.

I was there when they arrested my brother. I accompanied him to the court in Cobán, Alta Verapaz.

That is how María Josefina Caal Xol recalls the moment she decided to become more active in politics and the defence of the Cahabón and Oxec rivers. Her brother is Bernardo Caal Xol, the main leader and driving force behind the Q’eqchi’ Indigenous communities’ resistance in defence of the Cahabón River.

Caal Xol speaks of 30 January 2018, when the structure and vision of the community organization defending the rivers was also transformed. On that day, Caal Xol was detained for an incident that allegedly took place on 15 October 2015, during the first protests organized by the Q’eqchi’ communities against the start of Oxec S.A.’s operations.

On that 30 January in Cobán, the departmental capital of Alta Verapaz, Caal Xol was facing charges of alleged fraud. The Ministry of Public Education claimed he had collected a salary for 20 months as a teacher without showing up to work. That day, he went from defending himself in a fraud hearing to being arrested and transferred to a duty court, where he was informed of other criminal charges. A cable service company called Netzone S.A. reported him for theft and illegal detention of its workers.

María Josefina, 33, is the youngest of eight siblings. Like her brother Bernardo Caal Xol, she is also a teacher. In 2018, when her older brother was imprisoned, the board of the community resistance group had to make changes to its membership structure, as Caal Xol was the main leader. That’s when María Caal Xol joined the board, appointed as spokesperson I.

That was also the first time that women were included in the decision-making process of the resistance in defence of the Cahabón and Oxec rivers.

The Start of the Q’eqchi’ Communities’ Organization

In 2012, three years before Oxec S.A. began operations, the company signed an agreement with 11 communities near the hydroelectric facilities. The company used that agreement to argue before the Ministry of Energy and Mines that it had consulted with the communities, allowing it to acquire its operating license in 2013. Under the agreement, the hydroelectric company pledged aid to eleven villages in exchange for their agreement not to oppose the development of the Oxec S.A. and Oxec II S.A. hydroelectric plants.

Four years later, in 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that this agreement did not constitute a community consultation as outlined in the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169. The Constitutional Court granted Bernardo Caal Xol an injunction for the unconstitutionality action he filed, affirming that the Ministry of Energy and Mines had issued Oxec S.A.’s operating license without conducting a community consultation under international standards for protecting indigenous peoples and their territories. In this type of consultation, members of an indigenous population decide in a free and orderly way whether they agree to external economic activities within their territories. The hydroelectric company’s agreement, however, involved representatives from only 11 of Santa María Cahabón’s communities, who decided on behalf of the rest. Following this ruling, the hydroelectric project’s construction was halted in February 2017. But in May of that year, the Constitutional Court allowed it to continue after a second legal challenge by the project’s business owners.

The agreement with the 11 communities, annulled by the Constitutional Court for failing to meet consultation requirements, opened a new opportunity for the companies. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court mandated Congress to create a community consultation law and the Ministry of Energy and Mines to establish regulations for it, while also outlining how such regulations should work. The Constitutional Court limited who could be consulted and specified that it should only be communities in the “area of influence”, namely the villages closest to Oxec S.A.’s infrastructure and not others along the course of the rivers whose water supply would be cut off. This means that only the 11 villages whose leaders signed the agreement would be included and not the 195 that make up Santa María Cahabón, which asked to be included because they border the Cahabón and Oxec rivers and also feared that their water supply would be affected. 

Thus, in 2017, two parallel consultations were finally held. One was conducted by the companies based on the Constitutional Court ruling, and the other was held by the communities in resistance and backed by the right to consultation established in the Municipal Code. Oxec S.A. claims its consultation with the Q’eqchi’ population in the area of influence was in keeping with the Constitutional Court’s ruling, resulting in a document titled “Agreements for Peace and Sustainable Development of the Communities in the Area of Influence of the Oxec and Oxec II Hydroelectric Projects”. Signed in Santa María Cahabón on 24 November 2017, this agreement allowed Oxec S.A. to meet the construction requirements and continue operations, while Oxec II began building its hydroelectric plant. According to Ana Valeria Prado, Director of Sustainability at Oxec S.A. and Oxec II, the companies have already complied with this consultation process required by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which is why both projects are operating normally without restrictions from regulatory authorities today.

Meanwhile, the opposing communities held their own consultation on 27 August 2017 under the auspices of Article 60 of the Municipal Code, which allows residents to hold consultations on decisions impacting their territory. The electoral board of this consultation recorded 26,537 votes, including 8,700 from children. Only 11 votes supported the hydroelectric projects, with the rest rejecting Oxec S.A. and Oxec II. However, the Santa María Cahabón Municipal Council never considered this result to be binding.

They remain at an impasse. After that, the criminalization of their leaders began. Bernardo Caal Xol was detained on 30 January 2018, five months after the community consultation. The actions that the cable service company accused him of allegedly took place outside the Oxec S.A. facilities.

“They accuse my brother of robbing and detaining people here in the hydroelectric plant’s security zone, but that’s not true. My brother never came this far. He stayed at La Cuchilla,” Caal Xol says, asserting that she saw him personally during the first protest against Oxec S.A.’s operations in 2015. La Cuchilla is a meeting point 15 minutes past Oxec S.A.’s entrance gates. According to his sister, Caal Xol remained at that intersection, which also leads to Sepos Semococh, the village the Caal Xol family comes from and where he lived at the time. 

During a nighttime journey through the mountains of Santa María Cahabón, Caal Xol elaborates on the division confronting the communities along the route, which are near the hydroelectric facilities and among the 11 that signed the agreement with the project’s promoters. Many people who live there work for those companies, she says, while trying not to be seen through the vehicle’s windows.

A Change in Strategy 

The impasse caused by the conflicting consultations, coupled with Bernardo Caal Xol’s imprisonment for alleged crimes during protests against the hydroelectric project, led the communities defending the Cahabón and Oxec rivers to decide to go further.

In the 2019 general elections, they ran for positions in the Santa María Cahabón municipal government and Alta Verapaz’s delegation to the national Congress.

María Josefina Caal Xol calls this process the “free self-determination of indigenous peoples”.

“After my brother was prosecuted, children and women became more involved in the resistance. In the first demonstrations calling for Bernardo’s release, Q’eqchi’ women carried upside-down water jugs on their heads, and children showed up with empty containers, which symbolized that we were being left without water. There was more participation from the communities and better organization, which also led to visits to support Bernardo in prison,” she recounts.

The youngest of the Caal Xol siblings took this change — or, in her words, the “new strength” of the communities — as an opportunity to introduce changes in the strategy of the opposition. Today she is not only part of the board of resistance but, since 2020, has also been councillor IV of the Municipal Council of Santa María Cahabón.

This decision was made during assemblies held in 2019, aimed at increasing influence over municipal decisions and to approve the consultation they carried out in 2017 rejecting the two hydroelectric projects.

We want to have our local self-determination because the communities are tired of being deceived every four years

says Guadalupe Choc about participating in the 2019 elections. She is a 41-year-old Q’eqchi’ indigenous teacher and was the resistance’s candidate for Congress. She also leads training workshops for other women in the community so that they are informed about the causes championed by the organization defending the Cahabón and Oxec rivers.

The initial plan was to form a civic committee to run for mayor of the municipality. However, a split within the resistance delayed these plans. The Movimiento para la Liberación de los Pueblos (MLP), a political party that emerged from the Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (Codeca), began talks with other resistance leaders without prior consultation with the full assembly. They nominated Francisco Tec, a resistance board member, as the MLP’s mayoral candidate. 

This sparked debate and frustration within the community organization. Disagreements over the MLP’s actions pushed them past the deadline to form a civic committee. By the time they decided to proceed with electoral participation, the registration deadlines had expired. They then joined Convergencia, a political party whose candidates also came from various social struggles but that was later dissolved for failing to get any representatives into Congress. 

The resistance assembly’s mayoral candidate was Raúl Caal, who had chaired the 2017 community consultation’s electoral board. However, like Caal Xol, he was also subjected to an arrest warrant for alleged aggravated usurpation for farm invasions together with the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC). He was arrested and then released two days later after paying bail. 

The Tribunal Electoral Supremo (TSE) delegation then rejected his registration as a mayoral candidate, however Convergencia had already put its municipal assembly slate together and decided to continue with its approved list of candidates. María Josefina Caal Xol, who was not originally the top candidate, gained prominence within the organization as the candidate for first councillor. Given the refusal to register the candidate for mayor, she would be the one to represent them if they won the mayoralty.

In 2019, they came in third in the municipal elections with 2,012 votes, according to the Alta Verapaz TSE Electoral Board’s records, which was enough to join the Municipal Council.

María Josefina Caal Xol, Bernardo’s sister and the first woman on the resistance’s board, also became a municipal councillor.

Bernardo Caal Xol has been out of prison since 25 March 2022. He regained his freedom after being sentenced to seven years for theft and illegal detention of persons, which he allegedly committed during protests against the Oxec and Oxec II hydroelectric projects.

But Caal is still on shaky ground; his freedom remains uncertain. 

Edgar Pérez, director of Bufete Jurídico de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Legal Office), which is in charge of the Q’eqchi’ leader’s defence, says that, “because he had served half of his sentence and the penalty was conditionally suspended, meaning the remainder of his sentence is suspended provided that he commits no further crimes, he has to be careful not to be accused of another crime. But there’s no guarantee, because he has been a victim of criminalization.”

Since his release, Caal Xol has had little rest. The community defender is juggling health check-ups and preparing to defend himself before the Ministry of Education, although he plans to return to Santa María Cahabón soon. Isabel Matzir, his life partner and fellow activist, explains that he plans to take his testimony to the communities in resistance and thus continue inspiring and strengthening the struggle of the Q’eqchi’ population defending the Cahabón and Oxec rivers. The family supports the idea of the resistance participating in the elections.

It is important to remember that many indigenous peoples have recognized that struggles are fought both in the streets and at the ballot box

says Isabel Matzir. ‘‘It is crucial to bear this in mind, and in this case, it will be the communities themselves who decide whether or not to participate, as part of the peoples’ right to self-determination”, adds the primary school teacher. She is convinced this is the path forward, although Caal Xol does not yet appear to be a political option.

***

On the banks of the Cahabón River, Caal Xol and Choc reflect on what this achievement has meant for the resistance.

They have now been active for a decade; Bernardo Caal Xol has been in detention for five of those years. “When my brother was imprisoned, the communities organized to visit him and bring him food. It was a way to show he wasn’t alone… I also saw participation increase, for example I think more women joined during the upside-down water jug protest,” Caal Xol says. According to the youngest Caal sibling, the Q’eqchi’ women’s march with the upside-down jugs was one of the demonstrations denouncing Caal Xol’s criminalization and signalling that the hydroelectric project “was killing them”, because placing the jar upside down signifies that “they are leaving us without water”.

However, their position on the municipal council is still insufficient as they do not have a majority, and Caal Xol is often at a disadvantage when she has to make decisions. On a personal level, Caal Xol and Choc agree that the resistance must participate in Guatemala’s 2023 general elections again.

Along the Santa María Cahabón nature trail, a dirt path that follows the Cahabón River until it meets the asphalt road, there is a revelry of sounds, where the singing of birds mingles with the noise of the river’s current and the conversation of Q’eqchi’ women who sit there while discussing who should be the candidate to lead the municipality of Santa María Cahabón. Caal Xol assures us that it will not be her, but she would like a woman to represent them again. They prefer not to say the names of their candidates. One reason for not revealing this information openly is to avoid division, as the decision must be made in assembly. The other reason is security.

They say naming a candidate puts that person in the spotlight and could lead to them being criminalized. They avoid detailing their political moves and don’t mention the names of the political parties they’ve spoken with. They are unsure whether they will try to form a civic committee again. 

***

Ana Paredes Marín is a researcher at the Universidad Rafael Landívar (ICESH) and well aware of the reasons behind the resistance movement’s participation in the electoral process to defend the Cahabón and Oxec rivers. The political sociologist has documented how community resistance organizations in Guatemala, formed over the past twenty years to defend the environment and indigenous territories, have chosen to compete at the ballot box. She argues that this is another valid form of resistance and not unique to Guatemala, but rather has been part of the history of resistance and social movements throughout history. 

“Protest actions, blockades, or providing information to institutions will not have any impact if there is no one within the institution who is your ally and understands why you are opposing them”, says the social researcher, author of Industria minera y represión en Guatemala (The Mining Industry and Repression in Guatemala). “There’s a negative perception of participation in these (political) spaces because they’ve been exploited for corrupt purposes. But social movements and organizations need institutional allies in order to change or transform them, and that’s challenging because it’s like facing Goliath.”

That is how she explains what is driving these organized groups to take a step toward “institutional politics”. According to her research, the resistance of La Puya, a community that opposes a mining exploration project to find and extract gold in San José del Golfo, near Guatemala’s capital, decided to participate in elections, and that enabled them to win positions in the municipal council, giving them oversight over the extractive project and allowing them to discover that it did not have a licence.

She also cites the case of San Miguel Ixtahuacán in San Marcos, where the Marlin mine operated. In that municipality near the Mexican border, members of the community opposition to the gold mining project also participated in the municipal elections and won positions, but in this case, they used that victory to manage the conflict between the communities and the mine. The sociologist notes that this case cannot be generalized, as not everyone agrees with these kinds of measures.

“The performance of these acts of resistance and organizations within institutions must be analyzed individually, because that is one of the ways that we can observe the grey areas, since not everything is black and white. Not all cases are success or failure,” says Paredes Marín. In her analysis, social organizations’ failed political projects tend to receive more attention than those that stay true to their initial ideals.

For her, this focus ignores successful cases and only considers it an “achievement” if the organizations or resistances that obtain institutional positions manage to halt extractive projects, which is “almost impossible” in Guatemala and shouldn’t be the sole measure of success. She believes assessments of institutional political participation should also consider other criteria, such as oversight work or the legal or decision-making weight of their votes in central and municipal governments.

While María Josefina Caal Xol rests on a rock along the nature trail by the Cahabón River, Guadalupe Choc does the same on the riverbank’s sand. There, the women, experts on the river, point to the whirlpool formed by the current in front of them.

“They know the best way to cross the river isn’t in a straight line but diagonally. Sometimes people think a straight line is faster, but it’s not, because you don’t avoid the strong currents and deep spots,” Caal Xol explains. Her hand points to where she would cross and traces the path she would take.

Her metaphor applies equally to their political strategy.

Land of Resisters

Translated by Diego Otero and Joseph Keady for Gegensatz Translation Collective