The cosmovision of Mayas in Guatemala sees the nature as manifestation of the builder-creator, based on Mayas own heritage and its way of thinking.

Mayas see the Earth like a mother because it gives us to eat, it protects us just as a mother to its children.We can not concession or sell our mother. People cannot live without the Earth, we depend on her, we must work, live, grow and develop within the most perfect balance that can be reached with the natural surroundings. Maya communities vote that we should not destroy or harm the Earth by wide extractive industries of the corporations.

The Mayan calendar, very exact in marking the rotation of the Earth, marks also the days to ask the builder-creator for the rain, to bless the seeds, to hurl a tree, to fulfill our destiny depending on the date in which we are born. But mining, extraction of fuel, construction of dams by the transnational companies and governmental authorities threaten the land, forest, water, biodiversity and livelihoods of the Maya communities by continuing the colonial violation and pollution of the Earth. There prevails high inequality of land ownership and people are repressed by human rights violations. On 7th of August, a peasant leader from the Tixel Village in Huehuetenango, was gunned down after having received death threats.

To defend their territory and mother nature is the task left for Mayas still after 500 years of invasion and oppression. Guatemalan Peace Agreements recognized that there are 4 Indigenous People, with their traditions, customs, laws, languages, forms of organization, recognition of authorities. Mayas can now try to rescue what has allowed them to survive peacefully with what surrounds them. They can work to vindicate back their customs, language, the sacred places, their ways to think, to present them to their children according to their cosmovision.

Indigenous and peasant communities of Guatemala arrange their referendums to decide whether mining companies, like GoldCorp, should enter their territories to extract gold or other minerals. Mayas gather together in their communities to defend their lands and forests to be protected as their commons, reflecting the unity of the environment and local communities.

In community after community, people are voting NO to the entry of mining companies. Maya communities oppose the mining and other industries to protect their ancestral lands, forests and territories, taking peaceful action to stop them and help to denounce the repression that they are facing. The corporations have responded with misinformation campaigns and, along with the military and police forces, violent repression.

Mayas' defence of the community and its environment is symbolised by a Ceiba tree, which is sacred for the Maya who believed that a great Ceiba tree stood at the center of the earth, connecting the terrestrial world to the spirit-world above. The long thick vines hanging down from its spreading limbs provided a connection to the heavens for the souls that ascended them. The boles of Ceiba trees are often tinted green by chlorophyll pigments that allow the tree's trunk to photosynthesize.

There is a tradition of growing one Ceiba tree in the center of the community. As time goes by, the Ceiba grows and under its shadow and sheltering branches people gather in friendship to discuss community issues and share news, hopes, dreams and worries. The Ceiba tree represents thus what Friends of the Earth Guatemala and Costa Rica try to support - the meeting and exchange of ideas within the indigenous local communities, respect for traditions and integration with nature.

To extract gold and silver by corporations is not development for Maya communities who have different concepts for development related to agriculture, sustenance of forests and livelihoods governed by the Maya communities themselves. Mayas know from their ancestors that not only by selling gold and silver do they obtain food, as the agricultural production of the ancestral times produced corn and beans for the same amount of people that today live in the area.

Mining has already proven to damage the communities, breaking the walls of their houses, causing a lack of water in the nearby springs, and exposing local people to a high risk of pollution with cyanide as a result of open pit gold exploitation. Each gram of gold requires the removal of 14 tonnes of rock and earth, 250 000 liter water and produces 4 tonnes of toxic waste. According to the ILO agreement 169, any activity or project that the state wants to impel in indigenous territory will have to be consulted with the population. This legal autonomy of the free determination by Indigenous Mayan communities, on their territories' development, food sovereignity, health, culture and human rights, would be violated by the extractive corporate industries.