Chinebal, Guatemala – Anibal Agurtia blows into the conch shell tied to a red string around his hand, calling people to the clearing.
Already, a few dozen members of the Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ community of Chinebal have gathered to discuss an escalating land struggle in this remote area of eastern Guatemala.
Community members accuse a Guatemalan company of planting oil palm on their traditional lands, and they have built homes to reclaim the disputed tract – spurring an eviction notice, several police operations, and a day of deadly violence that remains ever-present in the memory of the settlement’s more than 500 residents.
“[Police] just killed him and took him away,” Matile Ac told Al Jazeera about her husband, Jose Chaman, who was killed last year during a police operation related to the conflict with the palm oil company, NaturAceites. “I want it to be investigated.”
Palm oil production
Guatemala’s expanding palm oil industry faces resistance from Indigenous people fighting for land rights. Oil palm plantations have nearly doubled in area over the past decade, sparking agrarian conflicts between companies and communities.
The global palm oil market is dominated by Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce more than 80 percent of the world’s supply. In Latin America, though, Guatemala is second only to Colombia – and it is the world’s sixth top producer.
Last year, Guatemala produced some 880,000 tonnes of crude palm oil. Roughly 80 percent of it is exported, mainly to Mexico, a few European countries, and other Central American nations. Palm oil and its derived ingredients are commonly found in processed foods, cosmetics, and cleaning products.
Oil palm in Guatemala is concentrated in the north, northeast, and the Pacific slope region. Plantations cover more than 1,800sq km (695sq miles), nearly 2.5 percent of the country’s arable land. In the Izabal department, which is home to Chinebal, they cover nine percent of arable land.
“The expansion of [oil] palm is dispossessing communities of their lands,” said Marcelo Sabuc, the national coordinator of CCDA, a rural development and land rights movement organisation. “It is also causing environmental destruction,” Sabuc told Al Jazeera.
There have been sporadic mass die-offs of fish in rivers downstream from palm oil company facilities in recent years, Sabuc noted.
Investigations into a 2015 mass fish die-off indicated the fish likely suffocated, and the US Environmental Protection Agency noted potential negative impacts of “unauthorized discharges of…
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