“The repression is permanent” says the FNL representative. He has had to “pick up the bodies from the street of over 60 comrades in the past five years.

The organization has reported that eight grassroots leaders linked with the struggle against Spanish corporation Union Fenosa, were murdered in the past six months.

Nearly two thousand military and police officers were deployed by the Guatemalan state to enforce 250 arrest warrants, including one against Madriz.

“There is a crackdown against the people to favor the interests of the corporation, where public force and drug trafficking paramilitary groups have absolute impunity”.

Madriz claims that the links of Union Fenosa with the local mafias are “hard to prove, even though they are vox populi”. “They open their offices on the same venue where the drug trafficking ring leader operates in the border with Mexico and the hit-men who work for that criminal, constantly harass the population. They go from town to town telling them that if they don’t pay the electricity bills they will kill them, so the complicity of Union Fenosa with drug trafficking is evident”.

Not even the state, which is usually in complicity with the transnational corporations, has linked these eight murders with common crimes. However, there are not open proceedings or suspects of committing those crimes.

Madriz said that leader Victor Galvez was murdered when he was coming back from a meeting to organize a campaign against Union Fenosa.
The FNL leader believes the social rage and the risk of riots are imminent and mentioned the example of an incident that took place in May of this year.

The community of Las Brisas, in San Marcos department, is refusing to pay as a protest measure to the bad services provided by Union Fenosa. In response, the Spanish corporation ordered the removal of the power transformers that supply the town.

When the people was out of electricity they took to the streets and captured thirteen paramilitaries and Union Fenosa officers who were planning to uninstall the equipment. “They disarmed the army with machetes, sticks, knives and stones”, said Madriz. The three residents of
Las Brisas confronted the security forces and one of the local leaders was killed as a result, although the responsible for the incidents were not found yet.

“These could happen in other places and it could go out of control. A blood bath is not something we want for anyone”, concluded the Guatemalan leader.

Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/syckklam/