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Pollution of the Motagua River in Guatemala: The Poqomam Maya people’s quest for environmental justice
The Motagua River basin—Guatemala’s largest and most important river—is severely polluted with wastewater, solid waste, and other types of debris.
This is a cross-border issue because the Motagua’s polluted waters flow into the Caribbean Sea, reach the coast of Honduras, and threaten the Mesoamerican Reef System.
For decades, this has violated the rights to health, water, development, and a healthy environment of all the people living in the river basin.
In June 2025, the Poqomam Maya community of Santa Cruz Chinautla—supported by AIDA, the Indigenous Peoples’ Law Firm, and allied organizations—achieved an unprecedented legal victory to halt degradation in the basin. In response to the lawsuit it filed, a Guatemalan court ordered the municipality of Chinautla to comply with a series of obligations to curb the pollution of the area’s rivers and soil.
The government's response to the ruling has so far been limited to technical working group meetings. Meanwhile, the community continues to work toward the proper implementation of the ruling and to take other actions to defend its territory and its rights.
Background
The Motagua River, which is 486 km long, flows through 96 municipalities and 14 departments in Guatemala. It originates in Quiché, a department located in the northwest, and empties into the Caribbean Sea.
Polluting activities occur throughout the entire basin, including sub-basins and micro-basins. The largest volume of pollution comes from Guatemala City, the country’s capital, and is carried by the waters of the Las Vacas River, which in turn receives a large amount of waste from the Chinautla River.
The Chinautla River, which flows through the municipality of the same name, carries solid waste from a landfill located in Zone 3 of the capital—where trash from at least 14 municipalities in the department of Guatemala is dumped—as well as sewage generated by some 500,000 people living in the northern part of the capital, which undergoes no prior treatment.
Other sources of pollution include the numerous illegal dumps in the municipality of Chinautla, the waste that private vehicles and garbage trucks dump along the banks of its rivers, as well as the sand-mining companies—which began setting up operations in the area between 1996 and 1997—whose activities weaken the rivers' basins, causing solid waste to be more easily carried away by the river currents.
Photo: Mayela Sánchez García.
The situation extends beyond national borders. Every year, the Motagua River discharges some 20,000 metric tons of plastic into the Caribbean Sea, making it one of the rivers that contributes the most plastic pollution to the ocean worldwide, according to estimates contained in a 2025 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The river flows into the Mesoamerican Reef at its mouth, so pollution also threatens to degrade one of the largest and most biodiverse transboundary reefs on the planet, which spans the territorial waters of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
In addition, the contaminated water reaches the coast of Honduras and spreads into Amatique Bay, located along the eastern coast of Guatemala, affecting the Caribbean Sea.
The roots of this chronic, cross-border problem are structural. Data from the Integrated Environmental Management of the Motagua River Basin project, funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), show that in Guatemala, 66% of municipal solid waste is not collected, and there is no guarantee that the remaining 34% is disposed of properly. Furthermore, of all landfills nationwide, 88.32% are illegal or lack municipal authorization.
In other words, the core issues that need to be addressed are the mismanagement of solid waste and water resources in Guatemala; noncompliance with existing regulations on wastewater discharge and the disposal and treatment of solid waste and residues; and the lack of a water law.
The Poqomam Maya people's quest for justice
The rivers of Santa Cruz Chinautla, a community of the Poqomam Maya people located just twelve kilometers from Guatemala City, have become conduits of pollution that are degrading the Motagua River.
For decades, the local population has seen its health and livelihoods—including pottery, one of the main economic activities and a source of identity—damaged due to the lack of waste management in the municipality of Chinautla and the urban area of the country’s capital, as well as the activities of sand-mining companies.
Photo: Mario Winter.
Voices for the Motagua River: Olga Vázquez.
Voices for the Motagua River: Nazario Pascual.
In early 2000, the Maya community organized to stop sand mining on their territory. At that time, the companies held mining permits that remained valid through 2021 and 2022. And although the permits expired, some companies continued to operate after requesting extensions. In June 2022, the indigenous authorities of the Poqomam people began a sit-in protest in front of the Piedrinera San Luis company, which they maintained for four years.
In July 2024, the Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights of the IACHR visited Santa Cruz Chinautla. During his visit, traditional authorities and community members spoke about the environmental, water-related, health, economic, and cultural impacts of the pollution in their rivers.
That same year, in October, the community—with support from AIDA, the Indigenous Peoples’ Law Firm, and partner organizations—filed a lawsuit (petition for amparo) against the municipality of Chinautla over its failure to take measures to address the contamination of its rivers and soil caused by improper solid waste management and the existence of illegal landfills.
AIDA’s scientific team, together with local residents and community authorities, collected key information on illegal landfills in the area. This community science initiative supported the litigation by highlighting the severity of the pollution, demonstrating the ongoing use of such practices, and providing evidence of the municipal authorities’ failure to fulfill their legal obligations regarding waste management.
Learn more about this community science initiative.
In June 2025, the Poqomam community won the support of the Guatemalan justice system when a constitutional court ordered the municipality of Chinautla to effectively address the claims in the lawsuit aimed at stopping the pollution of the rivers and soil in Santa Cruz Chinautla.
This is the first time a Guatemalan court has recognized a community's right to a healthy environment and its central role in finding solutions.
Find out the details of the legal victory.
Current situation
Since the ruling was issued, the municipality of Chinautla has held a series of “technical working groups” with representatives from the central government, civil society, and the community. A smaller group of technical experts was later created to develop a work plan with clear goals. Several months have passed without the municipality convening these working groups.
Furthermore, in December 2025, the IACHR noted in its report Human Rights Situation in Guatemala that the Motagua River basin is facing a severe pollution crisis that has had profound impacts on biodiversity and has resulted in systematic violations of the human rights of local communities, including the Maya Poqomam people.
And in May 2026, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources revoked the license of the sand mining company Piedrinera San Luis for "failure to comply with environmental commitments."
AIDA continues to monitor the implementation of the court ruling to ensure the right to a healthy environment for the Poqomam Maya community and all those living in the Motagua River basin. Meanwhile, the residents of Santa Cruz Chinautla remain organized and mobilized to improve their environment and defend their rights.
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Call for a paradigm shift in EU Raw Materials Policies from a Latin American perspective
The growing global demand for transition minerals—including lithium, copper, and nickel—driven by the current energy transition model, but also by the expansion of the digital economy, data infrastructure, and the military and aerospace industries, is causing irreversible ecological damage and violating fundamental human rights across the territories of the Global South. Latin America is the most biodiverse region on the planet and one of the richest regions in cultural diversity. It is home to numerous indigenous peoples who inhabit and safeguard these territories. At the same time, it contains significant mineral deposits, creating an intersection between the growing global interest in mineral extraction and fragile ecosystems and territories of traditional and indigenous communities, such as the Amazon and the Andean wetlands. This scenario exacerbates climate vulnerability and creates the conditions for the emergence of socio-environmental conflicts, compromising the ecological and cultural integrity of these territories. The push for scaling up extraction contradicts multilateral frameworks as well as climate and biodiversity commitments that the EU has subscribed to. This tendency bears the risk of reproducing the same patterns of global inequality and climate damage these policies claim to overcome. The Alliance for Andean Wetlands calls on the European Union to adopt measures for a paradigm shift towards Raw Materials Policies that do not perpetuate inequalities and harm people and ecosystems, by: 1. Ensuring full compliance with its binding international human rights obligations and maintaining its high standards of human rights and environmental due diligence. The current debates on deregulation raise concerns about the EU's seriousness in implementing human rights and environmental safeguards along minerals value chains and in global gateway projects. In this context, the EU should not support: (i) the weakening of the provisions of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), an essential lever for holding EU companies accountable for their activities within and outside the region; and (ii) the privatisation of the implementation of international human rights and environmental standards. All forms of corporate self-regulation, such as multi-stakeholder initiatives, industry schemes, or third-party audits, are insufficient to demonstrate compliance with these standards and may undermine states' and companies' obligations. In this regard, legal frameworks should be sufficient to guarantee that corporations are held liable throughout the supply chain of critical minerals according to EU directives. This is a particularly sensitive question as it also challenges the existing regional human rights system, represented by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has produced valuable precedents and jurisprudence on the matter for the past 45 years. 2. Guaranteeing maximum transparency, access to information, and inclusive participation of affected communities and civil society in the Global South. Ensuring early and effective involvement of civil society and indigenous and local communities affected by strategic projects, strategic partnerships, global gateway, and other initiatives. This involves guaranteeing the right to self-determination; to free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous peoples, and the respect for their right to say ‘no’ (RTSN). Undermining the voices from local communities and civil society increases social, ecological, and operational risks, especially mining projects likely to entail cumulative or long-term environmental impacts, particularly those involving extraction methods with potentially significant adverse effects on water, such as direct lithium extraction (DLE) or evaporation techniques. In contrast, including them is not only ethical but also essential for a just transition, the long-term viability of projects, and for preventing companies from facing future legal liabilities. 3. Challenging the projections of transition raw materials demand and rapidly adopting policies to reduce the production and consumption of primary minerals in the EU. The EU should set binding, ambitious, and measurable targets on energy and material reduction, taking into account planetary boundaries. In addition, conducting a prior, comprehensive, and independent strategic assessment of minerals needs and of alternatives to their extraction is essential to uphold the principle of proportionality, achieve climate objectives through less harmful means, and avoid irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems. Moreover, the EU should also foster more comprehensive circular economy strategies that take into account local economies and the biophysical limits of the ecosystems. Download the document
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