By Wendy Anders

Hidro Santa Cruz, a subsidiary of the Spanish transnational Ecoener-Hidralia, announced it will not continue in Guatemala after eight years of indigenous resistance to the hydroelectric company’s plans, reported Spain’s daily El Diario.

In an official statement, the company announced its waiver of the rights associated with the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Cambalam River in the Guatemalan municipality of Santa Cruz de Barillas. The decision was adopted months ago but was finally officially announced after analyzing the “social impact and requests of non government organizations,”

Opposition by the indigenous communities of Santa Cruz de Barillas to the hydroelectric plant has kept the project paralyzed since 2009, said Spain’s El Diario

“The Cambalam project, as a result of the studies carried out, the sustainability standards, and the technical and economic requirements involved, has shown that it is not viable,” the company acknowledged.

“It’s great news,” celebrates Almudena Moreno, coordinator of Sustainable Local Development in Alliance for Solidarity, in a conversation with Eldiario.es. Last November, this non-profit, along with Friends of the Earth and Women of Guatemala, delivered more than 20,000 signatures to the Guatemalan ambassador to Spain, Fernando Molina Girón, to demand Ecoener-Hidralia’s withdrawal from the country.

According to a report by the Alliance for Solidarity, the project consisted in taking advantage of a natural waterfall in the Canbalam River to install a mini hydroelectric power plant with a power of 4.96 megawatts. However, this area is traditionally used by the indigenous population, who comprise the majority of residents in Santa Cruz de Barillas, as a ceremonial and recreational center. The appropriation of the Cambalam’s resources by the company presented a conflict with the local inhabitants’ traditional use of its waters.

“After years of struggle, it is a great victory. This shows that mobilization changes things,” says the Alliance representative. In total there have been eight years of resistance by the Q’anjobal, Chuj, Akatexo and Popti’ communities that inhabit the municipality. The company itself admits that the project “has not acquired the acceptance of a significant part of the inhabitants of the territory.”

But there’s still a lot to do. According to the group, the conflict involving Ecoener-Hidralia in the area brought about “human rights violations, including murders, kidnappings, threats, attacks on women, imprisonment of community leaders, and a serious deterioration of the social fabric.”

One of the most important challenges in the wake of the company’s withdrawal is, in Moreno’s opinion, the reconstruction of relationships and restoring the community’s social fabric that damaged by divisions created by the project. “It is a community with a great deal of fragility rooted in the conflict of the 1980s. The conflict with the company opened old wounds,” he explained.

The other challenge is to achieve moral reparations for the damages caused. Moreno mentioned an important first step was ​​that Ecoener-Hidralia withdrew accusations against 30 community leaders imprisoned “for crimes they did not commit.” The defendants were released without charge last August.