AGAINST THE IMPERIALISM AND NEOCOLONIALISM OF MINING COMPANIES, THE CURRENT BATTLE OF THE PEOPLES
A New Store for Zapatista Women’s Cooperative
** Organization is required to win, NGO’s from several countries point out in Puebla
** Emissaries from Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador expose abuses of transnationals
By: Rosa Rojas
Tlamanca, Puebla, March 15, 2014
The struggle against extractive mining “it’s not only for our life,
but also an anti-imperialist struggle and against neo-colonialism that
is imposed on the peoples with the servile attitude of the neoliberal
governments and the agreements on free trade and on protection for
foreign investment,” according to what was made clear here today after
the exposure of particular cases of problems with mining companies that
communities from different states of the country confront, as well as
those in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
It was also clear that to make a front against this “fourth
colonization,” organization of the peoples is necessary, their taking of
consciousness about what environmental destruction means, which is at
the same time the basis for sustaining their life; and mobilization and
unity in local, regional, national and international action, because
we’re battling “against a monster” multi-formed, transnational, which
when it suffers a defeat in any place changes for social reasons, even
its nationality –a Mexican mining company sells its concession to a
Canadian one, which in turn transfers it to an Australian one– without
changing its essence: the rapacity of capital.
The Encuentro of Peoples Against the Extractive Mining Model was
organized by the Communities in defense of land and life, the Tiyat
Tlalli Council, the Mexican Network of Those Affected by Mining, the
Mesoamerican Movement Against the Extractive Mining Model, the Center of
Studies for Rural Development (Cesder, its initials in Spanish) and the
School of Economics of the Autonomous University of Puebla. This
Saturday, representatives of the organizations and nations cited above,
environmentalists, indigenous peoples and campesinos from Morelos,
Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Guanajuato, and Guerrero and of the Wirrarika
(Huichol) people of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango, Zacatecas and San Luis
Potosí (that are only one people, despite the state borders) paraded to
the podium.
In some cases, like in Carrizalillo, Guerrero –in the High Mountains
of that state–, the battle has already lasted for eight years and the
damages to the population’s health and to the environment caused by the
Canadian mining company Gold Corporation are manifested in skin and
bronchial diseases, congenital deformities, premature births that spill
over into the death of 68 percent of those born prematurely, destruction
of 11 of the town’s natural springs due to the explosions that the
mining company carries out, use and contamination of millions of liters
of water per day, and all of that topped of with the cherry of the
Federal Prosecutor for Environmental Protection’s (Profepa) “clean
industry” certification to the mining company.
In other cases, one of the participants explained, like in El
Huizache, in the sierra of Lobos, Guanajuato, the fight is barely
beginning; although the exploration work has been advancing, contracting
some of the zone’s small property owners that are happy to have work in
a place where agriculture is not prodigious, but they have become
alarmed because of what they see coming if the concession delivered for
an open slash deposit is put into effect. There is a mining tradition in
the state –but underground–, thus many people don’t understand the
alarm that the new type of industrial mining that approaches has
awakened.
Omayra Silvera, of the Coordinator for the Defense of Natural
Resources from the Comarca Ngäbe Buglé, of Panama, reported that she
comes from an indigenous people that “have made the government tremble”
with their mobilizations of more than 6,000 people, including the
Inter-American Highway blockage, from border to border, from February 1
to 5, 2012, whose government repression left two dead, hundreds injured,
prisoners, and women raped, but the support from international
organizations of women, churches and university members “obliged the
government to sit down at the negotiating table.”
Said dialogue, she said, resulted in winning the expediting of a
special law on the part of the Panamanian Congreso, on March 26, 2012,
which cancelled 25 mining concessions and 147 hydroelectric dams that
had been granted on indigenous territory of the Ngäbe Buglé, which
encompasses 6,968 square kilometers. But the struggle isn’t going to end
there, “we are still at the brink of war because they published that a
company is going to enter to exploit the Cerro Colorado (Red Hill),”
which is one of the largest copper deposits in the world, “because if we
remain with our arms crossed, who is going to listen to us?” Omayra
asked, in the midst of an ovation from the attendees.
Hermila Navarrete, from El Salvador, related that since 2005 they
have not let the Canadian mining company Pacific Ring enter, and that
the struggle of the Association of Friends of San Isidro Cabañas led to
the government of Mauricio Funes, of the Farabundo Martí National
Liberation Front, to expedite a decree that promises that there will be
no mining concessions in its administration, which has accepted a
complaint before the International Center for Settlement of Differences
Relative to Investments for more than 300 million dollars, and the
threat of the United States government no to deliver part of the
Millennium Funds.
The mine in question, El Dorado, Navarrete indicated, is for gold,
silver and uranium. The capital is no longer Canadian, but rather
Australian, since Oceana Gold bought the concession.
The representative of the Maya people of Guatemala mentioned that in
this “fourth colonization” that our peoples confront, “Guatemala, like
Mexico and Central America, is conceded” to transnationals, and that his
organization has given birth to “a peaceful struggle of prevention,”
promoting more than 80 consultations with the peoples, with many other
municipalities; in other words, close to a million people have been
consulted that have said “no to mining.”
He also pointed out that as part of the resistance struggle town
councils have been constituted in all of western Guatemala, and there
are more than 3,000 centers of resistance and struggle in the country,
which has cost them “legal cases, criminalization, political prisoners,
deaths…” He reported that a few days ago the Chuj, Acateco, Cojtí
Plurinational Government was constituted, and on a national scale they
have the Council of Huitzilense Peoples and they are part of the
Mesoamerican Movement Against Extractive Mining.
Juan Almendarez, from the Mother Earth Movement of Honduras,
emphasized that the struggle against extractive mining is
anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and geostrategic, because in his
country “mining has never been separated from the Army and police.”
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Sunday, March 16, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment