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The Fenix nickel project, also known as El Estor mine, is an integrated mountain-top nickel mine and processing facility near El Estor in the Izabal Department of eastern Guatemala, situated on the ancestral lands of the Maya Q'eqchi' people. The project consists of a cluster of several deposits wit
h reserves amounting to 36.1 million tonnes of ore grading 1.86% nickel. The project is currently owned by Solway Group, a Switzerland-headquartered company with Russian ownership, through its Guatemalan subsidiaries CGN (formerly Eximbal) and Pronico. The mine has contributed to over six decades of documented conflict, dispossession, and violence against Maya Q'eqchi' communities. Initial mining rights were granted following the US-backed 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, without the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples. During the ensuing Guatemalan civil war, Eximbal mine security was implicated in violence against Mayan people in 1978. Canadian mining companies Inco, and later Skye Resources and Hudbay Minerals, failed to obtain consent from or acknowledge the land claims of Maya Q'eqchi' communities throughout their periods of operation. In 2006, the International Labour...
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