And as the genocide trial entered its final phase, the Public Prosecutor reminded the court in his closing arguments that the 17 months Rios Montt was in power were, at the time, classified as a "State of Siege."

Setting up for the PBS NewsHour cross-talk with Miles at the Army/police checkpoint in Casillas, the first stop in the state of siege zone, as you enter from Guatemala City. Photo and video: Esteban Castaño of Skylight Pictures.

Photo: Troops entering the region around a disputed mining site, shortly after the declaration of a State of Siege by the government of Guatemala. Photo: guatemala.gob.gt.

Photo: Carlos Andrino. "Caserío los Lopez. Santa Lucia Xalapan. Jalapa." May 2, 2013, Guatemala.

[Posted from Guatemala City]

Residents of four towns east of Guatemala's capital woke up to news that their communities had been placed under a 30-day State of Siege by the administration of President Otto Perez Molina, following anti-mining protests that turned violent. One policeman was killed, six civilians were wounded by rubber bullets, and a number of police cars were burned and overturned on roadways. Here is the government's official public announcement. Public gatherings in the area are banned for 30 days.

According to Guatemalan Defense Minister Col. Ulises Giron Anzueto Noah (shown at right, photo today by Carlos Andrino), 3,500 total personnel participated in operations to bring the "estado de sitio" (state of siege) into effect. Some soldiers entered the areas in armored personnel vehicles and tanks. Hundreds of police officers were involved, as were private security officers for the Canadian-owned Escobal mine at the center of the controversy.

Escobar (San Rafael) Mine: Fine Crushing Plant, March 2013, courtesy Tahoe Resources.

The mine at San Rafael Las Flores is known locally as the San Rafael Mine, and has been in conflict for years. It is owned by Tahoe Resources Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, and is located about 70km (or 40 miles) east of Guatemala City. The communities who live nearby, many from the Xinca ethnic group, have long argued the mining operation threatens to irreversibly contaminate their water sources. The mine is not yet operating, but the Guatemalan government has granted the permits needed to open.

Photo: Carlos Andrino. May 2, 2013, Guatemala.

During a televised press conference this morning, Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina said the State of Siege was necessary because the protesters—or organized crime groups like the Zeta drug cartel who have taken advantage of instability to operate in the area—are armed with heavy weapons and explosives.

“Investigations have found that a number of crimes have been committed, including homicide, kidnapping, and the destruction of government property,” said Molina in the press conference. He added that ten arrests had been carried out “based on arrest warrants issued days ago against suspects in killings and kidnappings.”

“There are other interests mixing with those of the civil population, ‘other interests’ that are behind this situation,” Molina told reporters today. "[The administration] maintains a neutral position regarding the mine… our goal is to ensure the peace and tranquility of Guatemala. The majority of the population of the municipalities under a state of siege are against these recent acts of delinquency.”

Guatemala's Minister of the Interior Mauricio Lopez Bonilla followed the President in the press conference, explaining that an undeclared number of police and soldiers had been dispatched to the four communities. The state of siege, he said, has "nothing to do with the mine," and any claims that the government is effectively criminalizing protests were "false."

Lopez Bonilla described the anti-mining protest groups in the area as “Merchants of Conflict,” and vowed to reveal "the criminal structures behind this recent activity" in raids to be carried out today.

President Molina heads to Costa Rica tomorrow for the two-day Presidents' Summit of the Central American Integration System, an annual conference for Central American heads of State. United States President Barack Obama will be present, and cooperation between US and Guatemalan security forces around anti-drug trafficking and anti-terrorism efforts is expected to be central to the agenda.

There is precedent for declaration of a "State of Siege" here in Guatemala: In 2010, for instance, the government of former president Alvaro Colom made the same declaration in Alta Verapaz (a "department," or county), claiming it was necessary to restore government control in an area that had been effectively taken over by the Zeta cartel.

During a "State of Siege" in Guatemala, which is more restrictive than a "State of Emergency," law enforcement has a number of broad rights outside of the normal legal framework, and the constitutional rights of affected citizens become limited.

For instance: the government has the right to seize weapons; arrest or detain citizens for unlimited periods of time without appearing before a judge and with no guarantee of an attorney to represent them during interrogation. The state can also restrict or deny access to areas or people.

All public gatherings or protests in the area around the San Rafael mine are understood to be banned, under the emergency declaration.

The mine’s owner told the Associated Press that local protesters "armed with machetes 'turned hostile' at the gate on Saturday, and security guards fired tear gas and rubber bullets to ensure the security of mine personnel."

Other protesters temporarily detained 23 police officers, seizing their firearms before releasing them. Later, in a nearby town, another officer was shot and killed in a confrontation possibly related to the mine clashes. Residents have said they fear the underground mine will dry up local springs and other water sources.

Ira Gostin, vice president of investor relations for Tahoe Resources, said complaints that the mine could affect the springs “are totally unfounded.”

It affects the communities of Jalapa, Mataquescuintla, Casillas and San Rafael Las Rosas, and lasts for one month.

• Here is the government document explaining what an "estado de sitio" means [PDF].

•Also today, US Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) visited with Guatemala's president and other government officials. The senator is on a tour of Central America to review "US counter-terrorism and narcotics efforts," and work with heads of state in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala "to improve Central American security.

• Freelance journalist Sandra Cuffe has analysis here, and a brief history of the Xinca community's efforts to protest the San Rafael (Escobal) mine:

“We fear for the lives of our leaders,” stated a message circulated online by the Xinka People’s Parliament, denouncing the mobilization of armed forces in Jutiapa with the alleged intention of arresting Xinka leaders in Santa María Xalapán, Jalapa. “We’re returning to the 1980s, with the persecution of leaders, extrajudicial execution and forced disappearance.”

• Related Boing Boing coverage today: "Rios Montt genocide trial struggles toward completion as confusion reigns in courtroom."

Escobar (San Rafael) Mine: "First Simba," courtesy Tahoe Resources.

twitter.com/DanielTzoc_eu/…

— Reportero Madrugador (@DanielTzoc_eu) May 2, 2013

En Mataquescuintla Jalapa 2 tanquetas hacen presencia. PNC informa de 9 capturas la mayoría en San Rafael Sta Rosa twitter.com/DanielTzoc_eu/…

— Reportero Madrugador (@DanielTzoc_eu) May 2, 2013

Presencia del Ejército en Casillas Sta Rosa twitter.com/DanielTzoc_eu/…

— Reportero Madrugador (@DanielTzoc_eu) May 2, 2013

Un contingente del Ejército llegó a Jalapa para contribuir con labores del estado de Sitio.(Vía: @danieltzoc_eu) twitter.com/EmisorasUnidas…

— Emisoras Unidas 89.7 (@EmisorasUnidas) May 2, 2013

Presencia de soldados tras decretarse Estado de Sitio, en Santa Rosa y Jalapa. twitter.com/Noti7Guatemala…

— Noti7 (@Noti7Guatemala) May 2, 2013

Vehículos quemados obstruyen la ruta que conduce a la mina San Rafael. twitter.com/Noti7Guatemala…

— Noti7 (@Noti7Guatemala) May 2, 2013

Above is a picture, from local news channel KSL, of a massive landslide at Bingham Canyon Mine, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Bingham is an open-pit mine—a gigantic hole in the ground. The landslide, in effect, was the collapse of one of the pit walls. (For scale, the pit is a bit less than three miles wide and a bit more than three-quarters of a mile deep, and as you can see, the collapse stretches halfway across it and all the way from top to bottom.) Kennecott Utah Copper, the subsidiary of the mining giant Rio Tinto which runs Bingham Canyon, has a spectacular Flickr set here. Check ’em out.

The landslide went off at about 9:30 in the evening on Wednesday, April 11. It was expected: like most modern mines, Bingham has redundant sensor systems (radar, laser, seismic, GPS) that measure ground movement down to the millimeter and give plenty of warning when a collapse is imminent. The mine was evacuated about 12 hours before the landslide, and nobody was hurt.

But the scale of the landslide was a surprise. Approximately 165 million tons of rock shifted, causing a highly localized earthquake measuring 5.1 Richter. It damaged or destroyed roads, power lines, and other infrastructure, and a number of the giant shovels and dump trucks that move ore and waste rock out of the pit. (For gearheads, the shovels are P&H 4100s and the trucks are Komatsu 930Es. Bingham’s fleet includes 13 of the former and 100 or so of the latter. Here’s a fun picture showing the scale of a 4100’s scoop)

The lost equipment was worth tens of millions of dollars, but much more significant is the fact that the landslide has shut Bingham Canyon down for an as-yet undetermined length of time. Much more significant because Bingham Canyon is not just another copper mine. Physically, it is the largest in the world, and it is among the most productive. Each year it supplies about 17 percent of U.S. copper consumption and 1 percent of the world’s. When a cog that big loses its teeth, the whole global economic machine goes clunk.

First to feel the effect (other than the workers at Bingham Canyon, of course, who have been asked to take unpaid leave) was Rio Tinto, Bingham’s owner. Its stock opened lower the morning after the landslide, and its analysts projected that the company’s profits would drop 7 percent for this year, with ripple effects for some years after. Bad for investors, sure. But those losses, in turn, will mean less capital for Rio’s investments in its numerous other ventures, and since Rio is the third-largest mining firm in the world—if you live in anything like an industrialized economy, you use its products every day—the ripple effects spread far beyond Rio’s shareholders. A pinch in Rio’s supply lines will push up metal prices for everyone. (And in fact last Thursday, copper prices jumped up a bit, although the landslide was not the only factor.)

After the landslide, Rio quickly invoked the force majeure protections in its insurance policies, which would allow it to cancel its futures contracts on Bingham copper and have its insurers cover the losses instead. But however those claims are resolved, there is no doubt that the insurers will soon be recalculating their actuarial tables. Landslides are a feature of pit mining (above is a picture I took from the bottom of the Bingham pit last October, looking up at one that happened a few years ago). But now it is clear that even the most advanced sensor systems can’t predict how big a slide will be. That uncertainty means insurers will have to raise their premiums. Again, the price effects will ripple through the mining (and the insurance) industry, and eventually spread out to affect all customers.

And there’s a third dimension to the ripple effects of the landslide: time. Big mines like Bingham run on schedules that extend decades into the future. I was at Bingham to report on a huge development in the operations: a shift from open-pit to underground mining. The prep work, which involves digging more than a hundred kilometers of tunnel beneath the pit, began in 2011 and was expected to continue until 2023. Meantime, a big expansion of the open pit had gotten underway, timed to expose a big batch of new ore in 2017, just as the existing exposed ore ran out. And that new ore would have run out in—you guessed it—2023, just in time for the underground mine to start up. Now all that planning is scrambled. The pit expansion is on hold until the mine reopens. And as for the move underground, Rio Tinto hasn’t released an official statement yet, but all the prep work got buried by the landslide.

The work is mostly invisible, being subterranean, but you can see the aboveground equipment at the bottom of the pit in a picture I took last year (above). Then match the distinctive, pale-grey trapezoid of rock on the pit wall above the equipment to the same trapezoid, visible center-right, in some of KSL's photos. The bowl-shaped depression, where the underground work is based, was completely filled in by rubble.

In short, the events of a few seconds on an April evening in 2013 are beginning to move through the economy, and will reverberate for at least a decade. And who will feel the vibrations, if they know what to feel for? Everyone who uses electricity, telecommunicates, gets their water from a tap, or eats food raised by Big Agriculture. Wires, pipes, and fertilizer: that’s what copper is used for.

I think we get too accustomed to abstract things, like changes in the federal interest rate or the pace of Chinese growth, shifting global markets. It’s good to be reminded that sometimes it's still the earth itself that shakes the world.

It is definitely now the future.

A new venture is joining the effort to extract mineral resources on asteroids. The announcement of plans by Deep Space Industries to exploit the rare metals present in the space rocks turns asteroid mining into a two-horse race. The other venture, Planetary Resources, went public with its proposals last year.

"My Favorite Museum Exhibit" is a series of posts aimed at giving BoingBoing readers a chance to show off their favorite exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. I'll be featuring posts in this series all week. Want to see them all? Check out the archive post. I'll update the full list there every morning.

It's a little funny to think of something that weighs 13.8 pounds being described as a "nugget", but the Fricot Nugget is, in fact, exactly that. "Nugget" in this case, refers to a naturally occurring piece of gold—a precious metal found in its natural habitat. The Fricot Nugget, at the California State Mining and Mineral Museum, is the largest remaining intact mass of crystalline gold from 19th century California. That's a lot of qualifiers, but it's still a big deal. Larger nuggets than this have been found. Heck, larger nuggets than this have been found in California. But most of them ended up melted down. Given the fact that the Fricot Nugget was found in 1865, during the Gold Rush, it's kind of a wonder, in and of itself, that the thing survived intact.

Reader Edie Howe took this photo, and sent me several other photos of the nugget, as well. In one, you can read part of the museum signage that goes with the nugget. Turns out, a big part of why the Fricot Nugget is still with us today is that it was misplaced for several decades, forgotten about in a safe-deposit box.

EcoFlight is a group that photographs ecological threats in western states from the vantage point of small airplanes. The idea is to give people a clear picture of the contrast between wilderness and the industrial sites that threaten the ecological health of that wilderness. It's an interesting idea, and certainly results in some amazing photos, such as this shot of evaporation ponds at a potash mining facility near Moab, Utah.

Potash is, essentially, a generic name for several different potassium-laden salts. It's most commonly used as an ingredient in fertilizer, as potassium (along with nitrogen and phosphorous) is one of the three key nutrients plants need to grow. The main environmental threat: How mining potash in the quantities required by the modern agricultural industry could threaten water quality and supplies, and soil quality. It's worth checking out the rest of the photos in the set, which give you a better perspective on where the evaporation ponds sit in context with the local landscape and the Colorado River.

This Potash mine is located 20 miles west of Moab. The mine began underground excavation in 1964 and was converted in 1970 to a solar evaporation system. This mine produces between 700 and 1,000 tons of potash per day.

Water is used from the nearby Colorado River in the production of Potash by a company called Intrepid Potash®. Water is pumped through injection wells into the underground mine which dissolves layers of potash more than 3,000 feet below the surface. The resulting "brine" is then brought to the surface and piped to 400 acres of shallow evaporation ponds. A blue dye is added to the ponds to assist in the evaporation process. These ponds are lined with vinyl to keep the brine from spilling back into the Colorado River. A major by-product of this process is salt. The salt is used for water softening, animal feed and oil drilling fluids as well as many other applications.