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I recently learnt a lesson in basic capitalism from two hawkers on the streets of Antigua, Guatemala.

The first hawker
approached me, selling wooden flutes that I had no particular interest
in. He urged me to part with US$25 for one. For a moment, I thought of
my youngest son who has a passion for playing the flute and the
trumpet.

The hawker’s basic
commercial English would tickle your ears. But then, my Spanish is not
enough to get anywhere beyond basic greetings. I offered to pay US$5,
and the guy lowered his price to 15. Eventually, I dished out $10 to
this guy who took the cash and promptly moved to search for another
‘tourist.’

The flute under my
armpit, I swaggered with friends for dinner in a beautiful restaurant.
Not too long after, another hawker caught up with me. Guess what? He
had flutes to sell and without any bargaining, he announced they went
for $1 apiece. That was the end of lesson one: never rush the
celebration of a bargain.

Some evenings
later, my friends and I decided to sample the culinary delights of
Antigua again. A young girl soon made an approach with a collection of
pendants and scarves for sale. I was not ready to be sucked in a second
time.

When she pushed her
pendants at me I showed her one I had bought earlier in the day
dangling from my neck. Next, she brought a scarf. Too bad, I already
had one around my neck to ward off the cold. She looked at me for a
while and asked in impeccable English, “Why don’t you want to spend
money?” Taken aback, my response was laughter. Then she fired a second
salvo: “open the other wallet!”

She taught me a
sound lesson in basic capitalism. First, you must spend money. Is that
not the logic about how to stimulate recovery from the financial crisis
the world has been plunged into? More money into the hands of private
sector operators is expected to bring efficiency over profligacy
caskets.

Open the other
wallet? It was later on it dawned on me that some tourists probably
always carried two wallets: one with the local currency and another
with dollars or some similar currencies, but I had only one wallet.

With the
reflections from Antigua hawkers, it was time for us to visit San Juan
Sacatepéquez, a municipality in Guatemala whose local people engage
mainly in agriculture and production of flowers. The visit to a region
of 12 communities with a population of 75,000 revealed an iconic
struggle between local peoples on the one side, and combined teams of
governments and industry on the other.

After listening to
the people at a community meeting and then to the minister of energy
and mines of the country, I saw similarities with community struggles
in Nigeria. A major source of conflict has often been the peoples
demand for dialogue.

Shattered peace

The people recalled
that peace was shattered in 2006 when Cementos Progreso moved in to
commence exploratory activities for mineral exploitation for cement
production. Cementos Progresso is embarking on this project in
partnership with Holcin, the world’s second largest multinational
cement company, which is raising environmental dusts in other
countries, including South Africa.

The people insisted
they were not consulted and that an Environmental Impact Assessment
(EIA) prepared for the project was not participatory. Also, when they
asked for consultative meetings with the company and the government,
they were rebuffed. At a point, a state of emergency was declared in
the area and initial works on the project took off under that cover.

Community people
insist that this denial of consultation violates their rights, as
established under International Labour Organisation’s convention 169,
which requires that affected communities be consulted on projects that
will affect their territories. Guatemalan constitutional court ruled in
December 2009 that licences issued by the ministry of energy and mines
for the recognition, exploration, and mining and hydropower licences
without consultation, is unlawful and arbitrary and violates the
constitutional right of consultation.

With official
rejection of dialogue, the people went ahead and voted against the
project. The official response was repression, heavy-handed attacks,
deaths, and also imprisonment of three local people.

The people believe
their territory has over 34 different solid minerals and that the
cement company’s move is a ploy to open the area to mining of these
other minerals. They fear that the dust from cement operations would
damage their flower production and cripple the local economy.

Moreover, they
believe a road the company plans to build will only benefit the company
by providing it a link to the inter-America highway and would ignore
the community’s earth road that is in sore need for upgrading and
repairs.

When the issues
were tabled before the minister, the answers were telling. Of course,
they had the best intentions. They needed to fight poverty. Poverty
causes environmental degradation. An EIA was conducted and approved by
the relevant ministry.

A United Nations
agency also reviewed the EIA and cited the potential for heavy dusts as
an impact that needed action. Then he added that there was a
constitutional gap with regard to consultations. There is no clarity
about the meaning of popular consultations and who would be involved
and what the scope of such consultations should be. The ILO Convention
169 does not confer the power of veto to any consultative forum that
may be set up.

At the moment, the
project is stalled and there is an uneasy calm in the communities. The
government said mining works would commence only when a “friendly”
agreement is reached with the community.

This reminded me of
the lesson I got from the hawker about the approach of governments to
mining and other projects: open the other wallet – exploit anything
that can be exploited, whether you need it or not.

Lesson over!