Angry White Kid

Resistance to the mining industry in Mexico (Part 2)

Some of the 800 federal and state police in action during the violent removal of the community's
blockade of the mine in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca in 2009. (Source: La Jornada)

Resistance to the mining industry in Mexico (Part 2)

By Andrea Caraballo*
August 15, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

“…It’s very painful to say it to you, but it’s reached the point to examine and to decide that the earth is worth giving your life for.”

These are the words of Carmen Santiago Alonso, better known as Carmelina in the towns in her area and amongst social organizations. She identifies as a Zapotec from the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico, and for fifteen years has been part of the founding team of the Flor y Canto Indigenous Rights Center, an organization that works in resistance to the mine located in the municipality of San José del Progreso, belonging to the district of Ocotlán, in the state of Oaxaca.

This is a mine that has been prospected for many years, from which gold and silver have been extracted. This began more than 40 years ago, but prospecting was started again in 2009 by the Canadian company Continuum Resources, which has thirty concessions in just this region alone.

What risks does mining in the region bring with it?

It fills us with deep concern, because we well know that these mining companies, in order to obtain purified metal, clean and ready for sale, require millions of cubic meters of water, with the result of leaving the poor farmers in the region without water, without being able to obtain water for their harvests.
What happened is that the authorities – civil as well as agricultural – got involved in this matter of mining.

How did the authorities get involved?

Through buying off their consciences, through bribing them with economic resources to gain their trust, through perks, through deception they purchased lands here; this was through bribery, deception and manipulating the authorities.

A little later on they also poured in resources in order to pave the roads, to provide attention to the housewives, to the single mothers, and through the creation of leaflets they made the community believe that what this company brings is progress and it is going to give them work.

Resistance to the mining industry in Mexico (Part 1)

Broad Opposition Front to the New Gold-San Xavier Mine (Image: Sala de Prensa UP)

Resistance to the mining industry in Mexico

Part 1
By Andrea Caraballo*
August 2, 2011
América Latina en Movimiento
Translated by Scott Campbell

     “…In Mexico they have been beating us down a lot with these mines. There are several activists who have been murdered, there is a lot of persecution; but life goes on through the communities and countries.”

    These are the words of Rurik Hernández, member of the Broad Opposition Front (F.A.O.) to the San Xavier Mine, in the municipality of Cerro de San Pedro, belonging to the state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. This is an open-pit mine extracting gold and silver, where cyanide is used as an extractor in the heap leaching process. After ten years of legal rulings, the F.A.O. has won some victories; the company doesn’t have permits, they were able to cancel the project. However, the company keeps mining.

But the F.A.O. also participates in advising groups, peoples, communities and movements who are facing off against other mining ventures.

Many are aware of the gold extraction process, but what can you tell us about the iron mines?

To understand the matter we have been investigating the iron mines; mainly here in Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca. In Santa María Zaniza, called Zaniza Project. It’s a Mexican company affiliated with the Chinese – half of the company is Chinese. The processing of iron is dangerous, principally because they are huge open-pit mines and the means of obtaining the mineral is by very finely grinding all of the earth. Then they use magnets and the iron has the ability to be attracted to this magnet; so they magnetize and pull. The dust that remains, which doesn’t have the mineral they need, is usually put in the tailings dams or piled on the land around the pit.

What risks are there to the health of those nearby?

The main risk that we’ve detected up to now in what we’ve investigated is that the rock is so finely ground it is like powdered sugar. So the wind carries it very easily and the people inhale it. This dust they remove the iron from is generally in very mineralized areas, it has different minerals, not just the ones they’re looking for: it also has lead, arsenic, heavy metals; and it is those that create health risks. The wind carries this dust, bringing it to rivers, streams, lakes; it contaminates the water sources the people drink from. It also gets in their houses; even their food, without us being aware of it.

To have contact with heavy metals in this way causes cancer and many illnesses. Here in Mexico there is the example of Lázaro Cárdenas, in Michoacán, where there is an iron mine. The dust kicked up contaminated the water. The people from that community have an elevated rate of cancer in the region and basically it is due to mining activity.

As well, the open-pit, as we have seen in many places, removes all the trees and removes everything; it has a very severe impact on the environment. They get rid of mountains and valleys over great expanses, they impact rivers, be they on the surface or underground, and where a mine arrives, that area can’t be planted due to the serious environmental destruction and the huge consumption of water.

Palestine and Israel's tent cities

Playing around on Storify, I put together this, admittedly incomplete, overview of Israel's tent cities movement and its failure to discuss the biggest issue of all: Palestine.

 

Statement from the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala regarding the massacre in Agua Fría Copala by MULT-PUP

 

Below is the statement from the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala about the killing of three of their members by paramilitaries from the Movement of Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT). One of those killed, Francisco Ramírez Merino, survived a previous assassination attempt by MULT in 2006. During that attempt, the MULT gunmen killed his six year old son. In response to Saturday's murders, today the bodies of the three men were brought to the doors of the government palace in the central plaza in the city of Oaxaca where a wake was held and Governor Gabino Cué was implicated as responsible for the continued climate of impunity in the Triqui region. (See above video)

After the remains left the zócalo to be taken back to Agua Fría Copala and buried, state police attacked those who attended the wake, in particular the displaced women from Copala who have an encampment on one side of the government palace. Women between the ages of 3 and 60 were beaten and police attempted to arrest the encampment's spokespeople. On Monday a protest will take place outside the offices of the High Commissioner of the United Nations in Mexico City.

Statement from the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala regarding the massacre in Agua Fría Copala by MULT-PUP
August 6, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translation by Scott Campbell

TO THE HONEST MEDIA
TO SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
TO THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF MEXICO
TO THE OTHER CAMPAIGN

Compañeras, compañeros – again, the blood of our people becomes the spoils of those who in their infinite greed care not about the pain of a son, of a sister, of a mother, of a wife, so long as it achieves their ambitions.

Yesterday, as with anticipation we previously denounced, another massacre was carried out in our lands, which casts a pall over and fills with pain three homes of dignified men and women who as of January 2007 decided to stop being a number in a clientelist organization, with a puppet leadership for the bad governments and the rich of this country, who care only about plundering the natural wealth of our peoples.

Because of that, and only that, MULT never forgave our movement, for having returned the word to our people so that they may decide their own destiny with dignity, which by nature we Triquis have. Many denials may be spoken with mouths full of lies, but the reality is that ever since we split from MULT and UBISORT, many of our brothers have died by their criminal hands because it is they, and only they, who have always been behind the attacks on our Autonomous project, it is they who used the name of UBISORT, together with several criminals, to attack San Juan Copala without mercy and to displace an entire town, it is they who today occupy our community and our homes, and it is they who, with the complicity of some government officials want to make it look like all is calm in San Juan Copala and one can live in peace, it is they who have taken Toño Pajaro and his group of criminals under their protection in order to clothe them with impunity.