The Last Walk of Adolfo Ich

Adolfo Ich Chamán was the chairman of the Community Committee for Development (COCODE) of Barrio La Unión and a primary schoolteacher. On 28 September 2009 he was abducted and murdered by security forces of Canadian-owned Guatemalan Nickel Company.

Photo by James Rodríguez, mimundo.org

• Retracing The Last Walk of Adolfo Ich
• Trevor Schwellnus (bio)

Abstract

Trevor Schwellnus provides a brief introduction to The Last Walk of Adolfo Ich, a script by Marion de Vries, commissioned by Aluna Theatre for a reading at the panamerican ROUTES/RUTAS panamericanas international multiarts festival on human rights in 2012.

This piece is not about Cory Wanless, but he is its muse. I met Cory while I was directing Aluna Theatre’s Nohayquiensepa (No one knows). He had agreed to speak at a post-show talkback about mining exploration and the problems of policing transnational companies which operate in conflict zones where the rule of law is poorly applied.

The subject of The Last Walk of Adolfo Ich is the lawsuit Cory is fighting as part of the Klippensteins legal team in the name of Adolfo Ich, a community leader from El Estor, Izabal, Guatemala. Ich was murdered by security guards while protesting evictions being carried out in order to reopen the Fenix mine, which at the time was owned (through local shell companies) by Canadian Skye Resources—a Canadian company that has since renamed itself Hudbay Minerals. The case is being moved by Ich’s courageous wife, Angelica Choc.

Cory’s on-the-ground experience of gathering statements from the townspeople who witnessed Adolfo’s last hour encapsulated into one story a brilliant introduction to the broader issues that concerned us in our work. We asked to dramatize his story in a verbatim piece built on the testimonies he had gathered, if the people concerned were willing and the legal proceedings allowed it. We commissioned playwright/director/performer Marion de Vries to put the material together, and the result was read as an introduction to a panel discussion on the issue at our 2012 panamerican ROUTES/RUTAS panamericanas international multiarts festival on human rights. The script was well received, and panelists from Mining Watch and Amnesty International later brought us to Ottawa to read it at their annual general meetings.

In 2013 Amnesty International Canada asked to use the script with up to five hundred high school and university groups across the country. Having heard ordinary people, spread about a room, reading the words of witnesses made me understand anew how theatre works—to speak these words aloud, in the presence of listeners, creates a moment of identification with a voice that can transform the reader’s understanding.

What makes the Adolfo Ich lawsuit so important is the unprecedented step of bringing a suit against a Canadian company for something that happened (1) to a foreign national and (2) in another country. Normally this would be a matter for the courts in Guatemala. But in 2013 the Canadian courts allowed the case to proceed. One hopes that this might inspire transnational companies to engage in real consultation and good-faith bargaining with local populations affected by what they do—or, at least, that they will prevent the killing that is done in their own interests. In regards to this case, unfortunately, the latest legal advice from experts to the exploration companies who list on the Toronto Stock Exchange is, as Wanless puts it, “make sure you do a better job of separating your parent corporation from your associating corporation.” The case against Hudbay Minerals will likely take years.

For the indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ of El Estor, these lawsuits will not solve their real problem: the question of land rights. This is the same situation we see in Canada: First Nations peoples are the strongest voices against irresponsible overdevelopment, and their struggles, bound up in interpretations of treaty rights and unceded territories, are also struggles over...