We Have Always Been Here: Xinka Resistance in the Face of Extractivist Projects

Abstract

On October 22, 2017, a peaceful Xinka community protest against the Escobal extractivist mining project was met with brutal repression by the Guatemalan state, revealing enduring patterns of colonial governance and Indigenous dispossession. This article examines Indigenous Xinka resistance to extractivist megaprojects in the southeastern region of Guatemala as an expression of cosmological continuance, rather than merely a reaction to external violence. Drawing on Xinka creation narratives, ancestral governance practices, and relational approaches to knowledge, the analysis traces how encroachments, processes of invisibility, and racialized state violence have shaped Xinka marginalization from the Spanish invasion through the Guatemalan Civil War and into the contemporary extractivist era. Through historical and relational analysis, the article demonstrates that Xinka resistance is rooted in reciprocal relationships with Ixiwá—the manifestation of life—and in ancestral obligations to steward Nana Naru—Earth Mother. Contemporary opposition to the Escobal mine is situated within a long genealogy of territorial continuance that challenges settler-colonial logics that render land and bodies as extractable resources. By centering Xinka cosmology and land-based epistemologies, this article contributes to Indigenous scholarship by reframing extractivism as a struggle over the maintenance of Indigenous life.