Gold Fever a sobering eye-opener about modern Vancouver conquistadors in Guatemala

GUATEMALA’S INDIGENOUS POPULATION has had to deal with a lot of misfortune over the years: Hernando Cortés’s killers and Spanish colonialism, epidemics, the United Fruit Company, and, most recently, decades of military dictatorships and outright genocide resulting from a "scorched earth" policy.

But ever since a UN-negotiated peace accord between the military and leftist guerrila groups in 1996, Guatemala has been blessed, ostensibly, with a constitutional democratic republic.

Today, though, the same substance that initially brought murderous conquistadors to their shores—gold—is still responsible for a frenzy of exploitation that is visiting environmental, health, and cultural ruin on that country’s rural Mayan population.

http://www.straight.com/movies/398176/gold-fever-sobering-eye-opener-about-modern-vancouver-conquistadors-guatemala