For the second time in the last three months members of the Center of Investigations into Investment and Commerce (CEICOM), an active member of the National Roundtable against Mineral Mining, have been kidnapped, robbed and left at an abandoned farm while traveling in Guatemala. In both instances the anti-mining activists were traveling to events in Guatemala related to the Cerro Blanco mine.

The Cerro Blanco mine, owned and to be operated by a Guatemalan subsidiary of Gold Corp, is located less than 10 miles from the Salvadoran border in the Guatemalan municipality of Jutiapa. If the project is allowed to continue it poses the risk of contaminated the Guija Lake which is one of the main sources of the Lempa River. The Lempa River supplies water to 65% of El Salvador.

CEICOM has been a leader in forming relationships with local resistance to the mine in Guatemala. During the most recent case they were accompanied by two journalists from the Salvadoran TV station Channel 10.

For more information see:

Is Gold Corp Responsible? (English Version)

¿Es Gold Corp Responsible? (Spanish Version)

CEICOM Website

El Salvador Lodges Complaint with the Guatemalan Government About Attack on Environmental Activists

Written by Angélica Cárcamo — Translated by USESSC Staff
SAN SALVADOR – Three Salvadoran environmentalists from Center of Investigations into Investment and Commerce (CEICOM) and two journalist from Channel 10 were kidnapped and later left on an abandoned farm on October 28th, while they were traveling to the capital of Guatemala.

According to the CEICOM representative, Edgardo Mira, they were traveling to the watch the questioning of current officials in the Alvaro Colom government about the mining project Cerro Blanco owned by the company Entremares in Guatemala, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Gold Corp.

Mira mentioned that the environmentalists, along with the journalists, were stopped around 7 pm at kilometer 43 of the highway to Guatemala City where they were intercepted by a group of individuals dressed as police officers who took their belongings and then after searching them left them in a nearby farm, with their hands tied and having been threatened that they shouldn’t go to the police.

“We believe that the government should act immediately and watch over the dignity and security of the Salvadorans that travel in the sister republic of Guatemala,” said the CEICOM representative.

This is not the first time that environmentalists have been victims of violations to their freedoms. On June 30th, a group from CEICOM was traveling to Guatemala when hooded suspects stole their belongings, tied them up and left them on another farm.

“It is clear to us that this is directly related to the first case” added Mira.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations will send a diplomatic letter to Guatemala

For his part, the Minister of Foreign Relations from El Salvador, Hugo Martínez, committed on Wednesday afternoon to sending a diplomatic letter to the Guatemalan government so that the case is investigated.

“Today in the afternoon we are sending a diplomatic letter to the government of Guatemala, by means of their Ministry of Foreign Relations, asking an expedited investigation into the cases,” mentioned the Minister.

Martinez added that this is “a second case that could be part of a pattern of actions,” and for this reason he offered security to members of CEICOM when they decided to travel to Guatemala again.

The official also said that he will set up a meeting in the upcoming days with the National Roundtable against Mineral Mining to listen to their opinions with respect to the case of the Cerro Blanco mine in Guatemala.

For CEICOM the acts of violence against their representatives are related to the work they do against the Cerro Blanco project.

Gold Corp is currently executing the Cerro Blanco project, located in the municipality of Asunción Mita (Guatemala) and according to environmentalists like CEICOM and the National Roundtable against Mineral Mining, the mining project in this region would contaminate the Ostua River and the Guija Lake, both bodies of water shared by El Salvador and Guatemala.

Picture Credit: Diario Colatino

http://www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=353&Itemid=65

A coalition of Milwaukee and national organizations called on Commerce Group, a Milwaukee-based mining corporation to drop its controversial $100 million legal case against the government of El Salvador. 58 organizations from across the country signed a statement demanding that the case not only be dropped, but that there be cleanup of environmental damages caused by the mine and compensation to victims of mine pollution. In 2006 the Salvadoran government revoked the company’s mining permits, following evidence that its operations were dumping highly toxic poisons into local water. In retaliation, Commerce Group filed a demand before a World Bank trade court (the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID) demanding not only payment for its investments but also for tens of millions of dollars in what it claims are “lost profits.” The demand is being filed under the foreign investor “protections” of the U.S.-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). The first hearing in the case will take place on November 15 in Washington, D.C.

Miguel Rivera, an environmental organizer with the Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES) in El Salvador, warned that the case and the international trade rules that allow it “limit the government’s ability to defend the lives of the residents” and “put economic rights above the people’s right to life.”

Commerce Group’s mining activity in El Salvador over the past 40 years has resulted in severe environmental and public health problems in the municipality of Santa Rosa de Lima, where the mine is located. The Salvadoran government revoked Commerce Group’s mining permit on September 13, 2006, citing devastating environmental damage that can’t be prevented with any existing modern technology.

A 2006 study by Dr. Flaviano Bianchini found that the San Sebastian River, which runs through the town contains 100,000 times more acid than uncontaminated bodies of water in the same region. The study also found levels of poisonous cyanide more than 10 times higher than the maximum allowed by the World Health Organization. The Investment and Trade Research Center in El Salvador has recently filed a lawsuit against Commerce Group with the Salvadoran Attorney General to investigate the connection between mining activities and disproportionate rates of death due to kidney failure in nearby communities, likely related to elevated levels of heavy metals in the San Sebastian River.

According to Al Gedicks, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and author of Resource Rebels, commenting on the case, said “If anything, it is Commerce Group who should be paying for the toxic legacy they have left behind.” Gedicks is one of several scholars who have joined an international coalition of environmental organizations, policy advocates and churches to halt the lawsuit and stop metallic mining in El Salvador. The group, the Midwest Coalition Against Lethal Mining (MCALM), includes several national organizations such as Sister Cities and CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador.

According to Babette Grunow of MCALM, “This lawsuit is a cynical attempt by an unsuccessful company to exploit international trade agreements to make money that they have been unable to make by legitimate means.” Grunow points to Commerce Group’s own filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which shows no earnings since 2002, four years before their permit was revoked. “This lawsuit is nothing but a dishonest ‘get rich quick’ scheme at the expense of an entire nation,” said Grunow.

Chapter 11 of DR-CAFTA, under which Commerce Group has filed its suit, remains one of the most controversial aspects of U.S. trade policy. The equivalent chapter in NAFTA, Chapter 10, has come under fire in recent years, including from President Obama. During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to “strictly limit” foreign investor protections in a renegotiation of NAFTA and to fully exempt any regulation protecting public safety.

A copy of the letter signed by coalition members can be found here. I previously wrote about the environmental concerns and theCommerce Group arbitration claim at this link.

The November 15, 2010 hearing in Washington, D.C. will be broadcast live over the internet, beginning at 9:30AM, EST. The hearing can be watched at this link. The written briefs the parties submitted to the arbitration panel can be found here.

from http://luterano.blogspot.com/

Members of a Salvadoran environmental organization travelling to meet with the Guatemalan government, to protest a new [Goldcorp Inc.] gold mine, were kidnapped and robbed by men wearing Guatemalan police uniforms. They are members of the Center of Investigations into Investment and Commerce (CEICOM) and were travelling with journalists from Salvadoran TV Channel 10.

They had been driving to Guatemala City to discuss the risks to bodies of water shared by Guatemala and El Salvador if a proposed [Goldcorp Inc] gold mine is developed. After their cameras and computers were taken from them, the activists and journalists were left on an abandoned farm. The proposed mine is the Cerro Blanco mine in the department of Jutiapa, near the municipality of Asuncion Mita. The Cerro Blanco project is being developed by the Canadian mining company Goldcorp.

Goldcorp’s mining activities in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America have been the subject of numerous protests by environmental and civil society organizations. This was the second time members of CEICOM were kidnapped on their way to a meeting in Guatemala regarding the Cerro Blanco mine. On July 30 of this year, the same thing happened as they drove in Guatemala to a meeting with that country’s Human Rights Ombudsman. CEICOM delivered a letter to El Salvador’s foreign minister, demanding that the Salvadoran government spur a complete investigation into these events.

The foreign ministry has agreed to send a diplomatic request to its counterparts in Guatemala urging a thorough investigation. The concerns of environmental activists about Cerro Blanco were described in this IPS news story earlier this year: GOLDCORP MINING PROJECT IN GUATEMALA FACES CROSS BORDER OPPOSITION Written by Danilo Valladares, Tuesday, 06 April 2010, (IPS) The Cerro Blanco gold and silver mine in the southeastern Guatemalan province of Jutiapa, on the border with El Salvador, is under fire from environmentalists in both countries concerned about the threat it poses to the shared Lake Güija and rivers on either side of the border.

“Toxic waste water from the mine will be discharged into the Ostúa river in Guatemala, and will flow into the 45 square kilometres of Lake Güija, and on into the Lempa river, the main river basin in El Salvador,” David Pereira, a Salvadoran activist with the non-governmental Research Centre on Investment and Trade (CEICOM), told IPS. In his view, the mine should be shut down because it will cause irreparable damage to water sources, soil, animals and plants and human settlements in the vicinity. The main risk is to the Lempa river, which supplies more than three million Salvadorans, with activities like agriculture, livestock raising and hydroelectric power plants depending on it.

Pereira’s conclusions are based on a study by Dina Larios, professor of geochemistry and hydrogeology at Ohio University in the United States, which contains serious warnings about waste water from the mine. Dumping water with high concentrations of fluorine, arsenic and boron in the Ostúa river at a temperature of 35 degrees would endanger its biodiversity and cause thermal pollution, affecting fishing which is the livelihood of hundreds of families in the area, Pereira quoted the study as saying.

The Cerro Blanco mining project, approved by the government of former Guatemalan president Óscar Berger (2000-2004), is now under construction and is expected to start producing gold and silver later this year. The Salvadoran Catholic Church has also expressed its concern about the mine, and asked El Salvador’s leftwing President Mauricio Funes to intervene. “Pollution of Lake Güija and the Guajoyo and Lempa rivers would be inevitable, and so we ask our government to use its good offices with the authorities of our sister Republic of Guatemala to stop the exploitation of this mine,” the archbishop of San Salvador, José Escobar, said in March.

Social organisations in El Salvador and Guatemala trying to stop mining operations at Cerro Blanco met Mar. 16 with Guatemalan lawmakers and the Guatemalan deputy ministers of Environment Luis Zurita, Foreign Affairs Lars Pira, and Energy and Mines Alfredo Pokus. However, according to Héctor Nuila, a lawmaker for the leftwing Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity party who attended the meeting, no agreement was reached. “The Foreign Ministry has no idea of the international relations problems that could be caused by this project; the Environment Ministry takes an environmental view, but a very feeble one; and the Ministry of Energy and Mines takes a purely market point of view,” the lawmaker complained. Nuila said the mine would cause serious environmental harm on the Guatemalan side of the border, but El Salvador would suffer even more. “The main concern is that this government has not approved permits for exploration and exploitation, but is allowing all this to go ahead in spite of serious weaknesses in the environmental impact assessments,” he said. The mine, located in the Asunción Mita municipality in Jutiapa, is operated by the Entre Mares company, a subsidiary of Canada’s Goldcorp.

Another Goldcorp subsidiary is operating the Marlin gold and silver mine in the Guatemalan province of San Marcos, on the border with Mexico, in the face of strong local opposition. Guatemalan organisations and community activists have also protested against the Cerro Blanco mining project.

Fray Armando González, a Catholic priest who has led several marches in protest against the Cerro Blanco mine, told IPS that the project will only bring pollution, greater poverty, violence, prostitution and divisions between communities on the borders of El Salvador and Guatemala, which he regards as reason enough to call off the project. González is also concerned because Entre Mares has offered to build a geothermal energy plant in the area, which is not included in the environmental impact assessment.

Guatemalan environmentalist Julio González, of the Madreselva environmental group, told IPS that mineral extraction at the Cerro Blanco mine will be via a tunnel, from which hot water will be removed and dumped in the Ostúa river that flows into Lake Güija. “When hot water is poured into a river, biodiversity is destroyed, apart from the fact that the water itself may contain highly toxic substances,” he said. According to González, the problem with mining in Guatemala is that the country has been “too permissive” with its permits, without regard for the serious damage being done to the environment.

“Environmental impact studies are carried out to suit the companies, because they pay for the consultants, and naturally the assessments are favourable to the company, while the people are left in the dark about the impacts and the devastation of biodiversity that will ensue,” he said. The assault on the CEICOM members is likely to increase the visibility of Salvadoran concerns about this proposed mine in neighboring Guatemala and any potential threats to El Salvador’s most important watershed.

Anti-mining groups in El Salvador are already planning their next round of actions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HONDURAS:  Goldcorp Inc. Faces Criminal Charges … Even As It Aims to Re-open Its Controversial “San Martin” Mine
August 16, 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 16, 2010

HONDURAS:  GOLDCORP INC. FACES CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS & RELATED HEALTH HARMS, AS IT TRIES TO RE-OPEN ITS GOLD MINE IN HONDURAS

RIGHTS ACTION Commentary:

Over the past few years, Rights Action has supported and worked closely with the Siria Valley Environmental Defense Committee, reporting on a wide range of environmental and health harms, and other human rights violations, caused by Goldcorp Inc’s “San Martin” open-pit, cyanide leaching mine.

The Siria Valley Environmental Defense Committee, Rights Action and other groups have denounced the range of harms and violations inside Honduras, and to the Canadian government, the company itself, and many investors (such as the Canada Pension Plan) that are profiting greatly from their investments in Goldcorp, given the record high prices of gold.

These denunciations have fallen on deaf ears in Canada – including in the Canadian media that rarely investigates or reports on these issues, enabling Goldcorp to continue to operate with impunity and immunity from any effective accountability.

Goldcorp Inc. denies any wrong doing, harms or violations whatsoever, despite the growing list of well-documented harms and violations.

BELOW: News release from CAFOD (Catholic Overseas Development Agency, http://www.cafod.org.uk/) – that criminal charges have been filed against Goldcorp Inc (via its wholly owned subsidiary Entremares) for pollution and environmental harms.

RE-OPENING THE CLOSED MINE

Not only does Goldcorp Inc. (Entremares) deny any wrong doing, harms or violations, but with the Honduran Congress controlled by politicians that supported the 2009 bloody military coup against the elected government of President Zelaya, Goldcorp Inc. now aims to re-open its controversial “San Martin” mine.

Goldcorp has been in direct communication with mayors in four municipalities in the Siria Valley, where Goldcorp operates the “San Martin” mine, encouraging them to write letters to Honduras members of congress (of the post military coup regime) to say that the mayors of the Siria Valley do not want the company to leave, that they want Goldcorp to re-open their open-pit, cyanide leaching mine.  Goldcorp (Entremares) is applying for extensions to its mining licenses so that it can re-open its “San Martin” mine.

HONDURAN GOVERNMENT RETURNS 80 MILLION LEMPIRAS TO GOLDCORP!

Meanwhile, at the same time that criminal charges have been laid against Goldcorp Inc. (Entremares) for environmental harms and related health harms, the (post-military coup) government of Hondurans is returning to Goldcorp (Entremares) 80 million lempiras (over $4,000,000) for a tax paying error!

“More than being worried, I am indignant, because [this "tax repayment" is happening] even as the government acknowledges the environmental harms and health harms to the Siria Valley population that have been caused by Entremares [Goldcorp].” (Dolores Valenzuela, coordinator of the Asociación Hondureña de Periodistas Ambientalistas y Agroforestales, elHeraldo newspaper, August 9, 2010. redaccion@elheraldo.hn)

* Please redistribute and publish this article, all around

MORE INFORMATION

Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448, Annie Bird, annie@rightsaction.org, 202-680-3002. www.rightsaction.org

* * * * * * *

GOLDCORP STAFF FACE CRIMINAL CHARGES OVER MINE POLLUTION AFTER CAFOD INVESTIGATION

For immediate release, August 16, 2010

Authorities in Honduras last week filed criminal charges against senior officials of Entremares – a wholly-owned subsidiary of mining giant Goldcorp – based on evidence from aid agency CAFOD of severe water contamination.

The data gathered at the San Martin gold mine in the Siria Valley area of Honduras revealed dangerously high acidity and metal concentrations in water flowing into a local stream. The information uncovered by CAFOD was part of an official water monitoring report at the mine but was not disclosed or acted upon by the Honduran Government’s department for mineral resources or Goldcorp.

CAFOD Policy Analyst Sonya Maldar said: “We welcome the news that action has finally been taken against Goldcorp on the basis of CAFOD’s evidence and local community concerns. Given that Entremares is applying for new mining permits in Honduras, it is essential to get to the bottom of events at San Martin and ensure that the people of Honduras don’t pay the price of pollution in the long term.”

Charges have been filed against two executives from Entremares for contaminating water and damage to the environment. The accusations against Christian Pineda and Renan Santamaria are that their actions contravened Article 181 of the Honduran criminal code, and if convicted, they could face imprisonment of up to six years.

Gustavo Adolfo Torres Garay, a former senior official within DEFOMIN (the Honduran Department for the Administration of Mineral Resources) has been charged with breach of official duties for failing to act on evidence of pollution. This is in contravention of Article 349 of the Honduran criminal code with a punishment of up to three years and disqualification from office.

Goldcorp is one of the world’s largest gold mining companies and has consistently denied that the San Martin mine has caused environmental damage. On top of the undisclosed water monitoring report, Newcastle University experts also gathered visual evidence of acid mine drainage close to the mine site.

The Newcastle study was carried out in 2009 in response to a request for technical support from the Honduran authorities.  During a visit to Honduras in November 2008, Paul Younger, Professor of Hydrogeochemical Engineering at Newcastle University and a renowned expert on mine water management, noted signs of acidic mine drainage close to the mine site.

Professor Paul Younger said: “Goldcorp’s denial of pollution at San Martin has done the company no favours. If Goldcorp had been open about the problems, they could have avoided this action by the Honduran Environmental Prosecutor. The effects of acid mine drainage can continue for long after a mine has closed so the company must publicly commit to long term monitoring and maintenance at the site to prevent a recurrence of such pollution in the future.”

During a subsequent visit, Dr Adam Jarvis and Dr Jaime Amezaga, also of Newcastle University, saw unequivocal evidence that highly acidic and metal-rich water had discharged from one part of the mine (the Tajo Palo Alto) to a local stream, on at least one occasion. This evidence was in the form of an analytical report of water samples collected by DEFOMIN (the Honduran Department for the Administration of Mineral Resources), the government body responsible for promoting mining in Honduras, granting concessions and monitoring environmental impact.

Drs Jarvis and Amezaga’s report of their visit, which was released by CAFOD in December 2009, reveals acidity of the water at two sites reached levels of a pH between 2.5 and 3, which is typically very damaging to stream biology. (Distilled water has a pH of 7, vinegar 3 and lemon juice 2). As well as high levels of cadmium, copper and iron.

This is consistent with a complaint presented by a local community group, the Siria Valley Environmental Committee, to Honduras’ Environmental Prosecutor about discolouration of the water flowing from streams originating from within the mine’s perimeter on 24 September 2008. Community members reported that the water was a “reddish colour (…) and emanated a strong smell of sulphur”. This indicates that contaminated water from the mine’s perimeter had entered streams used by people in the Siria Valley for domestic and agricultural purposes.

Pedro Landa of the Honduran Centre for Community Promotion and Development said: “The case against Entremares (Goldcorp) finally acknowledges the damage caused by this company which has had such a profound effect on the local population and the whole country. It is disappointing that an international company like Goldcorp refuses to take responsibility for its actions. We will stay vigilant so that the authorities apply the full weight of the law and do not allow Entremares to abandon the mine without taking responsibility for the damage it has caused to the local community and environment.”

San Martin was the largest open cast mine in Central America before it ceased production in 2008. Since then, Canadian mining company Goldcorp has been carrying out the final stages of mine closure, which it is expected to complete by the end of 2010. The mine has caused controversy from the start, with local people claiming they were not fully consulted about the project.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

· In 2007, the Honduran Secretariat of Natural Resources and Environment (SERNA) fined Goldcorp one million lempiras, equivalent in value to about £26,000 (at the time) for pollution and damage to the environment. The company has consistently disputed these tests and has appealed against the fine.

· In 2007, the Latin America Water Tribunal ruled on a complaint filed by members of the Siria Valley communities, finding Goldcorp accountable for damage to the environment and unreasonable use of water in the Siria Valley.

· Acid mine drainage is a process whereby sulphides in the rock are exposed to oxygen and water and react to produce sulphuric acid. It can have devastating impacts on the environment, contaminating groundwater with toxic heavy metals and killing plants and animals for years after the mine has closed.  Professor Younger’s observations included unequivocal signs of discoloration of streams indicating that metal-rich, and likely acidic, waters have discharged from the mine perimeter.

· Communities in the Siria Valley have also complained of health problems, including respiratory, skin and gastro-intestinal diseases, which they believe are a result of drinking water polluted by the mine. A study carried out by the Honduran Department for the Environment in 2008, found high levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic, lead and mercury in blood samples taken from villagers living close to the mine. The study has yet to be published by the government. Goldcorp denies that the health problems are a result of their operations.

· CAFOD has attempted to raise concerns about pollution at the San Martin mine with Goldcorp on numerous occasions via letter and in person for several years. The Newcastle University report was presented to Goldcorp’s senior management in 2009 but the company has still refused to admit that the site had ever caused water contamination. Without open disclosure of how serious the water contamination was, it is difficult for independent specialists to be sure that the remedial measures now proposed by the mine will be sufficient to protect the communities from long term environmental hazards.

· For further information and copies of the reports submitted by CAFOD as evidence, please contact Pascale Palmer, ppalmer@cafod.org.uk, +44 7785 950 585

* * * * * * *

MORE INFORMATION

Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448, Annie Bird, annie@rightsaction.org, 202-680-3002. www.rightsaction.org

WHAT TO DO?

FALL 2010 SPEAKERS:  Contact us to plan educational presentations in your community, school, place of worship, home (info@rightsaction.org)

EDUCATIONAL DELEGATIONS TO CENTRAL AMERICA:  Form your own group and/ or join one of our educational delegation-seminars to learn first hand about community development, human rights and environmental struggles (info@rightsaction.org)

TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS

for indigenous and campesino communities carrying out their own environmental, community development and human rights projects, defending their communities and families against the harms caused by “mega-development” businesses (such as gold mining) make check payable to “Rights Action” and mail to:

UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887

CANADA:  552 – 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8

CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm

* JOIN our listserv. Click: http://www.rightsaction.org

* JOIN our newsletter mail list. Send name and address to: info@rightsaction.org

* CREATE YOUR OWN email and mail lists and re-distribute our information

* RECOMMENDED DAILY NEWS: www.democracynow.org / www.upsidedownworld.org / www.dominionpaper.ca

* RECOMMENDED BOOKS: Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America”; Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”; Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”; Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”; Dr Seuss’s “Horton Hears A Who”

RIGHTS ACTION IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION, with tax charitable status in Canada and the USA, that funds and works to eliminate poverty and the underlying causes of poverty, supporting community-based development, environmental, disaster relief and human rights projects and organizations in Guatemala and Honduras, as well as in Chiapas [Mexico], El Salvador and Haiti.  Rights Action educates about and is involved in other worked aimed at poverty eradication and critically understanding the related north-south, global development, environmental and human rights issues.

Crucitas is located North of the country, in a fragile area of high rainfall, within the biological corridor San Juan-La Selva, which puts together the Costa Rican forests to the great Mesoamerican corridor. This is one of the country‘s largest biodiversity hot spots, with about 130 tree species per hectare. Thousands of trees are under threat. Also, the most threatened bird species in the country, the green macaw, lives in this area and is equally endangered.

The pollution will remain in Costa Rica, while the gold will go abroad. Besides the forests, the Crucitas mining project jeopardises the water resources on which hundreds of communities depend. The cyanide pollution of underground and superficial surface waters of a large part of the San Juan river basin, bordering Nicaragua, is of great concern to over more than 90% of the population. In order to extract 700,000 ounces of gold, 16 million tons of soil will be crushed and dipped in cyanide.

In contrast, the European Parliament recently issued a striking resolution about the general prohibition of cyanide-based mining technologies within the European Union. Such resolution takes root in three important reasons: first the high toxicity of the cyanide used in gold mining, second the need to preserve human health, the environment and biodiversity and lastly the concern over dangerous technologies used in mining activities that carry possible trans-border consequences. It points also that the benefits do not compensate the risks and that the only guarantee to protect rivers and ecosystems is to forbid the use of cyanide. The situation in Costa Rica is similar to that in Europe with the aggravating facts that the country is more vulnerable to tropical storms, has one of the highest biodiversity rates in the world and is subject to high rainfall.

Write a letter to the new Costa Rican president, asking her to use her powers and veto the presidential decree 34801-MINAET, with which the Crucitas Mining Project would come to a halt and also the destruction of the primeval forest.

“We can live without gold, but not without water.”

take action here

PUBLIC LETTER TO:  The Canadian government & parlamentarians, the Canada Pension Plan and other investors, the media
FROM: Grahame Russell, Rights Action co-director, info@rightsaction.org

GUATEMALA:  TEODORA ANTONIA HERNANDEZ CINTO (“DONA MARIA”) SHOT IN HEAD

A Mayan-Mam woman in resistance to the harms & violations caused by Goldcorp Inc’s gold mine, was shot in the head.  Her health status is critical.

To Whom It May Concern:

We write to bring to your attention yet one more serious case of aggression and human rights violation that is most probably linked to the operation of Goldcorp Inc.’s open-pit, cyanide leaching gold mine in Mayan territories of western Guatemala.

On July 5, a Rights Action delegation led by co-director Grahame Russell (with the Mayflower congregation of Minneapolis/ St. Paul) completed a two day visit to the mine affected communities of San Miguel Ixtahuacan (department of San Marcos).  We spent our time with ADISMI, the Association for the Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, visiting homes and speaking with local villagers whose communities and lives have been seriously harmed by the mining operation.  In one of our meetings, we met with Juan Mendez and Gregoria Crisanta Perez, cited in ADISMI’s urgent action below.

On previous trips to the region, Rights Action staff and delegations have often met with Teodora Antonia Hernandez Cinto, known as “Dona Maria”, the woman shot in her right eye at 7pm, July 7.  The bullet exited her skull by her right ear, leaving her in a critical state.

SUSPENSION ORDER IGNORED
As set out in ADISMI’s urgent action, and previous Rights Action emailings, this shooting and other recent attacks and threats are happening in a state of heightened tension in the region near Goldcorp’s mine, given that the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights has ordered the Government of Guatemala to suspend Goldcorp’s mining operation due to the serious and on-going allegations of environmental and health harms and human and indigenous rights violations caused by the mine.

The mining operation has not been suspended.  The Government of Guatemala is not complying with the suspension order.

Goldcorp is doing and will seemingly continue to do everything possible to not stop mining.  With the price of gold near $1100/ ounce, they are making close to 8 times the profits from this mine that they initially conceived, based on their original economic feasibility studies.

= = = = = = =
ADISMI – URGENT ACTION
(July 7, 2010, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos, Guatemala)

At 7pm, July 7, 2010, in the neighborhood of San José Nueva Esperanza, village of Ágel, San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Señora Teodora Antonia Hernández Cinto was shot in the head.  She is known as “Dona Maria”.

Two men, unknown to her, young and tall, entered her home asking her for a cup of coffee.  Then, as Dona Maria was preparing coffee, they shot her in the right eye and then ran off towards the neighboring village of San José Ixcaniche.

Doña María was taken to the health clinic in the town (and municipal center of) San Miguel Ixtahuacán.  As of now, the on-going state of her health is critical.  She will be moved to a hospital, as soon as possible.

Doña Maria (Teodora Antonia Hernández Cinto) is part of the Resistance Movement in San Miguel IOxtahuacan, in defense of human and indigenous rights, against the violations of human rights committed by the Montana Exploradora mining company, subsidiary of Canadian mining giant Goldcorp Inc.

Dona Maria has received numerous threats for her participation in the Resistance Movement.  In June 2009, she was involved in the defense of water in the neighborhood of Sacmuj, when Goldcorp/ Montana (always trying to expand) wanted to get control of some land in Sacmuj and their natural spring water sources that supply local families with water.

On July 7, at 11:30pm, as community members gathered by the house of Dona Maria, in solidarity with her family, they heard gunshots fired off near by.

OTHER RECENT INCIDENTS
On July 2, Juan Mendez was walking along the main road, up the mountain.  At 4:45am, a Goldcorp/ Montana truck was coming down the road, carrying workers to the mine.  The truck belonged to the Transportes Pérez company.  This truck (that says “Especial” on it) is owned by Fernando Pérez of the Caserío San José Nueva Esperanza.  When the truck got close to Juan Mendez, the vehicle crossed over to the other side of the road, straight at Juan Mendez, who was forced to scramble quickly up the side of the embankment.  Juan is well known in this region, for his opposition to the harms and violations caused by the mine.

On July 5, two daughters of Gregoria Crisanta Pérez were walking on the same road, at 6:30pm, in the village of Agel.  The same thing happened.  A car – green – coming from the opposite direction, crossed over the road divider and aimed at them, forcing them to run off the road.  They believe the car belongs to Goldcorp/ Montana.

Given this attempted killing of Teodora Antonia Hernández Cinto and other recent acts of aggressión against people in opposition to the harms and violations caused by the mine, ADISMI demands of the Guatemala government:

That it guarantee the life and security of those people who demand respect for their rights as related to the mining-harms and violations;
That it comply with the precautionary measures ordered by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and suspend the mining operation;

ADISMI holds Goldcorp/ Montana responsible for these acts of physical aggressión and threats, given that the majority of threats and attacks come from workers in the mine.

From the national and international communities, we request more human rights accompaniment and more investigations into these and other abuses;

ADISMI, PARROQUIA SAN MIGUEL, FEBIMI and ADIM
(All members of FREDEMI, the Miguelense Defense Front)
= = = = = = =

DONA MARIA MOVED TO HOSPITAL IN GUATEMALA CITY
On July 10, Grahame Russell met with family members of Teodora Antonia Hernández Cinto, who were trying to visit her in the Roosevelt Hospital.  She had been moved there to undergo a risky operation.

EYE-WITNESS SPEAKS
One of Dona Maria’s family members was an eye-witness to the attempted killing.  On the night of July 7, two unidentified men approached their isolated rural home (on the mountain side near Goldcorp’s mine) from the dark side of the hut – they did not come forward by the light in front of their home.

They called in to say they missed their ride and needed a bed for the night.  When Dona Maria and her family member responded that there was no room, they asked to buy a cup of coffee.

A few minutes later, the family member (eye-witness) came outside toward the men walking in front of Dona Maria who was carrying the cups of coffee.  The family member was carrying a flashlight, as they walked towards the men, semi-blocked by some bushes.

All of a sudden, one of the men leaned around the family member (eye-witness) and shot Dona Maria in the head.  The men ran off into the night, as the family member started screaming for the neighbors, and caring for Dona Maria.

THIS WAS NO “ATTEMPTED ROBBERY”
Assuredly, the government and mining company will deny this was an assassination attempt against a Mayan-Mam woman and community member who had regularly spoken out with dignity, criticizing the harms and violations caused by Goldcorp’s mine.

For anyone who honestly follows Guatemala political and human rights issues, in the past and on-going today, there is little to no doubt that this attempted killing was linked to Dona Maria’s peaceful, clear-spoken opposition to the mine.

As of the writing of this, Dona Maria’s life hangs in the balance.

DEMANDS OF THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT, POLITICIANS & INVESTORS
The multiple environment and health harms and human and indigenous rights violations caused directly or indirectly by Goldcorp’s mine are endemic, unending.

At a bare minimum, we respectfully demand that Canada publicly support the suspension of the mine in Guatemala, as ordered by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

From there, we demand a public, Canadian/ international inquiry into the harms and violations caused by Goldcorp’s mining in Guatemala.

Based on a complete and transparent investigation, we demand full compensation and reparations for Mayan communities harmed by gold mining.

In Canada, we demand the passing of comprehensive criminal and civil law reform in Canada, so as to be able to hold Canadian companies and investors legally accountable for environmental and health harms and human rights violations caused by their operations in other countries.

The situation is hard, and getting harder.

Grahame Russell, co-director, Rights Action
July 10, 2010, Guatemala City

* * *
FOR MORE INFORMATION & QUESTIONS:  Grahame Russell in Guatemala: 011-502-4955-3634, info@rightsaction.org; Annie Bird begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, 1-202-680-3002, annie@rightsaction.org.  www.rightsaction.org
* * *

EMERGENCY RELIEF FUNDS NEEDED
Rights Action has channeled initial emergency funds to the family of Dona Maria, who are now incurring multiple expenses (transportation, food, lodging, medical) as they travel to Guatemala City to keep close to Dona Maria.

Over the past two years alone, Rights Action has provided emergency relief funds to family-victims of: military repression in Honduras; of State and mining company repression in El Estor, Guatemala (due to the nickel mining related struggles there); State and company related repression and harms in San Miguel Ixtahuacan (due to the gold mining related struggles there); company related harms in Siria Valley, Honduras (due to the gold mining related struggles there); etc.

TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS for emergency relief funds for indigenous and campesino communities resisting the harms and violations of Goldcorp’s gold mine, make check payable to “Rights Action” and mail to:

UNITED STATES: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
CANADA: 552 – 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A0in8

CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm

* * *

WRITE YOUR OWN LETTER OF COMPLAINT AND DENUNCIATION
Please write letters to the offices and persons listed below, with a copy of this urgent action, denouncing the attempted killing of Dona Maria (Teodora Antonia Hernández Cinto) and other recent threats and attacks against Mayan Mam and campesino villagers in San Miguel Ixtahuacan who are in resistance to the harms and violations caused by the Goldcorp mine.  In your letters, respectfully demand a response from who you write to, and demand:

1- that the Canadian government, politicians and investors publicly support the suspension of the mine in Guatemala, as ordered by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights
2- a public, comprehensive Canadian/ international inquiry into the harms and violations caused by Goldcorp’s mining in Guatemala
3- compensation and reparations for Mayan communities and people harmed by gold mining
4- the passing of comprehensive criminal and civil law reform in Canada, so as to be able to hold Canadian companies and investors fully accountable for environmental and health harms and human rights violations

CONTACT YOUR MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Menu=HOC

CANADIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean
Rideau Hall, 1 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1A-0A1
info@gg.ca, (613) 993-8200, 800 465-6890
Duncan Mousseau, Director, Policy, Planning and Correspondence
Office of the Secretary to the Governor General
DMousseau@GG.CA

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
harpes@parl.gc.ca

Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda
509-S Centre Block, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6
Oda.B@parl.gc.ca

Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon
509-S Centre Block, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6
cannol@parl.gc.ca

Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas) Peter Kent
125 Sussex Dr, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G2
613) 992-0253, kent.p@parl.gc.ca

Gilles Duceppe, leader, Bloc Quebecois
1200 Papineau Av, #350, Montreal, QC, H2K 4R5
ducepg@parl.gc.ca

Jack Layton, leader, New Democratic Party
221 Broadview Ave, Suite 100, Toronto, ON, MM 2G3
laytoj@parl.gc.ca

Elizabeth May, leader, Green Party
Saanich Gulf Islands EDA, PO Box 20076, Sidney, BC, V8L 5C9
emaytowin@greenparty.ca

Michael Ignatieff, leader, Liberal Party
656 The Queensway, Etobicoke, ON, M8Y 1K7
ignatm@parl.gc.ca

Bob Rae, liberal, Foreign Affairs Critic, (613) 992-5234, RaeB@parl.gc.ca

Francine Lalonde, Bloc Quebecois, Foreign Affairs Critic, (613) 995-6327, LalonF@parl.gc.ca

Paul Dewar, NDP, Foreign Affairs Critic, (613) 996-5322, DewarP@parl.gc.ca

Larry Bagnell, liberal, bagnell.l@parl.gc.ca

Stockwell Day, conservative, days@parl.gc.ca, 613-995-1702

Peter Julian & Henri Sader, NDP International Trade Critic, Rm 178, Confederation Bldg., Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6, julian.p@parl.gc.ca

John McKay, liberal, Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, (613) 992-1447, MckayJ@parl.gc.ca, 613-947-4609

Kevin Sorenson, Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Room 518, Justice Building, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6, (613) 947-4608, SorenK@parl.gc.ca, 613-992-2971

Dean Allison, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairperson, 4994 King Street, Beamsville, Ontario, L0R 1B0, allison.d@parl.gc.ca, 905-995-2772

Paul Dewar, NDP, Foreign Affairs Critic, 1306 Wellington St. W, Ottawa, Ontario, K1Y 3B2, dewarp@parl.gc.ca, 613-946-8682

Alexandre Leveque, DFAIT, Caribbean, Central America & Regional Policy,
125 Sussex Dr, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G2, 613-992-2971, alexandre.leveque@dfait-maeci.gc.ca

GLOBAL CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY COMMISSIONER
Marketa Evans, Marketa.Evans@international.gc.ca

CIDA
Barbara Curran, CIDA Director, 200 Promenade du Portage, Gatineau, K1A 0G4, 819-994-4092, barbara.curran@acdi-cida.gc.ca; Kate Stefanuk (kate.stefanuk@acdi-cida.gc.ca) will serve as Acting Director (& responsible for Honduras); Johanne Dupont (johanne.dupont@acdi-cida.gc.ca), Country Program Manager for Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Cuba

CANADIAN EMBASSY IN GUATEMALA

Ambassador Leeann McKechnie
leeann.mckechnie@international.gc.ca
Karin Reinecke, Assistant to the Ambassador
karin.reinecke@international.gc.ca
13 Calle 8-44 Zone 10, Edificio Edyma Plaza, Ciudad de Guatemala
(502) 2363-4348, 2365-1201, gtmla@international.gc.ca

CPP – CANADA PENSION PLAN

The CPP has $349,000,000 of shares in Goldcorp.  One Queen St. East, Suite 2600, Toronto ON, M5C-2W5; CPP Investment Board: csr@cppib.ca, 416-868-4075, 1-866-557-9510; Lisa A. Baiton, VP, Stakeholder & Government Relations, CPPIB, 416) 868-6612, lbaiton@cppib.ca

* * *

FOR MORE INFORMATION & QUESTIONS:  Grahame Russell in Guatemala: 011-502-4955-3634, info@rightsaction.org; Annie Bird begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, 1-202-680-3002, annie@rightsaction.org.  www.rightsaction.org

Una delegación de jóvenes salvadoreños residentes en EE.UU., en representacion de CISPES, presentan una pieza de correspondencia dirigida a Romeo Barahona, Fiscal General de la República. Foto Diario Co Latino/Eugenio Castro

Daniel Trujillo
Redacción Diario Co Latino

La comunidad de salvadoreños residentes en Estados Unidos (EE.UU.), exigieron al Fiscal General de la República, Romeo Barahona, una investigación “profunda” del asesinato de los activistas contra la explotación minera en Cabañas.

Jóvenes del Comité en Solidaridad con el Pueblo de El Salvador (CISPES) aseguraron que a un año de la muerte de Marcelo Rivera, las verdaderas razones de su asesinato aún no salen a la luz pública.

Con 200 postales firmadas los salvadoreños y salvadoreñas residentes en varios estados de la Nación norteamericana exigieron a Barahona dar con los autores intelectuales de los asesinatos de Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera y Dora Alicia Sorto, esta última embarazada.

En junio de 2009, Marcelo, férreo opositor a la actividad minera de Pacific Rim en Cabañas, desapareció de manera inexplicable.

Tras 15 días de intensa búsqueda por habitantes del municipio de San Isidro y la Policía, Marcelo fue encontrado en un pozo con evidentes signos de tortura.

Sesenta días después, Ramiro fue asesinado y el temor de la comunidad de la zona volvió.
En diciembre de 2010, Dora Alicia fue asesinada mientras regresaba del río de la localidad.
El CISPES pidió desde hace un mes y medio cita con el Fiscal General, sin embargo, no se la concedió.

Eso no fue impedimento para que el grupo de jóvenes salvadoreños residentes en EE.UU. entregaran las postales. Héctor Burgos, quien está a cargo de la correspondencia al Fiscal, recibió las postales y dijo que las hará llegar al funcionario.

Burgos indicó que las misivas se suman a varias existentes en torno al caso, y el Fiscal las tratará a la prontitud posible.

Nicola Chávez, de la comitiva del CISPES, aseguró que la muerte de los activistas de Cabañas trascendió El Salvador y la sociedad estadounidense está al tanto de los acontecimientos en Cabañas.

Al punto que en varias ciudades estadounidenses se han realizado protestas exigiendo la salida de Pacific Rim del país.

“Exigimos también que se investiguen las amenazas contra las personas que se oponen a la minería en la zona”, agregó Chávez.

No sólo estos jóvenes exigieron a la Fiscalía trabajar con seriedad y prontitud este caso, también se manifestó al respecto el congresista demócrata estadounidense, James McGovern, en su visita al país a finales del año pasado.

La comitiva del CISPES exigió también al Presidente de la República, Mauricio Funes, mantener su postura en negar permisos de explotación minera.

Además, reclamaron al Estado salvadoreño implementar una ley que prohíba definitivamente la extracción de metales en la República.

from Monthly Review

“Ultimately,” said Miguel Rivera, a soft-spoken man in his late twenties, “we are a family that has dedicated ourselves to helping the people with their needs and defending their rights. But in the process of denouncing the consequences of mining especially, I think there are people that will be your enemies.”

Rivera, a director of the Asociación de Amigos de San Isidro Cabañas (ASIC), a human rights-based community organization in San Isidro, El Salvador, spoke from personal experience. Last June, his brother, and colleague, Marcelo went missing after a series of death threats linked to his opposition to gold mining in the region. A few weeks later, his body was found in a well, stripped of its fingernails, scalp, nose, and mouth.

Despite repeated calls for justice, police never investigated the crime, and Marcelo turned out to be the first in a series of activists attacked that year. His murder was followed by two more assassination attempts in coming months, and then by the killing of two more anti-mining activists during the last week of December 2009.

Ramiro Rivera Gómez, who survived an attempt on his life in August, was shot in his car on December 20, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto was gunned down six days later, as she returned from washing clothes at the river. Several other activists have narrowly escaped similar assassination attempts; even more have been moved into safe houses; and a few dozen have received personal death threats via e-mails and text messages throughout the year. All, so far, with relative impunity. While the authorities have yet to identify who planned the crimes, friends and colleagues of the victims roughly know who is behind the intimidation.

“There is a company, Pacific Rim, interested in starting a mineral exploitation of gold and silver at El Dorado,” said Chico Montes, director of the local human rights organization, la Asociación de Desarrollo Económico Social (ADES), referring to a site in the municipality of San Isidro in the northern Cabañas district. “The ministry has given them an exploration permit. And imagine the interest of those people who want to appropriate the wealth. So the explanation of the threats comes from there.”

The Canadian-owned Pacific Rim Mining Company has attempted to exploit a gold mine at El Dorado for the better part of a decade, and has been repeatedly thwarted in its efforts—not least due to the resistance of organizations like ASIC and ADES. Now, apparently, the company’s local allies have taken a more violent approach to removing that opposition.

“I believe it’s a campaign of intimidation, and of course the same people are implicated in all of it,” said Rivera. “They want to destroy the entire resistance.”

Allegedly, Marcelo’s murder was carried out by four gang members who were reputedly paid $100,000 each for the job. As an activist in San Salvador pointed out bluntly, “You don’t need half a brain to know who has that much money around here. It’s the company.”

E-mail threats sent out late last year came from an address whose alias was “exterminio pacificrim.”

“To me, if you connect the dots from Marcelo to Don Ramiro, it’s very clear,” said another activist, who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution. “Those are two of the people who have had the most violence carried out against them, and they’re both in key mining areas. So why has Pacific Rim not said anything? Why are they not calling for investigations into these murders and attacks?”

Pacific Rim, for its part, did not answer phone calls asking that question.
El Dorado

The mining story starts in the 1990s, when the Salvadoran government bowed to World Bank pressure and reformed its tax code to encourage foreign investment. El Salvador had never been a mining capital, but as strains of gold and silver were discovered throughout the region, companies began entering the country. In 2002, Pacific Rim acquired a project in San Isidro, known as El Dorado, and received an exploration permit to determine the mine’s potential. Findings revealed an incredibly valuable mine—estimated to be worth $3.3 billion in 2007, when gold prices were under two-thirds their current price. In 2004, Pacific Rim filed for a permit to exploit the mine.

Metal mining throughout El Salvador, however, came under increasing criticism from nonprofit groups throughout the country, which argued that the mining activity would lead to widespread contamination of the surrounding environment and water supply, as it had in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras. Pacific Rim and the other mining companies denied these claims, but political sentiment quickly swung against the foreign corporations. Increasing numbers of community organizations came out against mining; eventually the Catholic Church followed suit. The government dragged its feet on the permit, spurred on by a February 2007 letter signed by several NGOs and forty-one U.S. Congresspeople. In March 2009, even the country’s right-wing president Elías Antonio Saca González came out against the mines. Several other mining companies became discouraged and left the country. Pacific Rim followed suit, at least temporarily, in July 2008.

Five months later, however, Pacific Rim filed a notice of intent to sue the government of El Salvador for failing to provide the exploitation license and comply with the terms of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). (Because Canada is not a signatory to the treaty, Pacific Rim brought litigation through a U.S. subsidiary.) The suit, which calls for damages of $600 million and is scheduled for a hearing in early June 2010, will ultimately determine whether El Salvador can legally prevent mining within its own borders.

In the meantime, however, the debate over mining is being carried out in an entirely separate—and much more local—arena. Pacific Rim has spent the last several years trying to achieve what its company literature refers to as its “social license” in the country: “earning the respect and approval of local stakeholders.” To that end, the company invested in a range of social programs in Cabañas, spending $1 million, in 2007 alone, on community social initiatives.

But to many in Cabañas, “social initiatives” is not an accurate description of these projects, which are often administered independently by local mayors.

“The group in power in our department is the right. So, Pacific Rim supported some politicians with money for projects,” said Oscar Beltrán, a producer for the community radio station Radio Victoria, which often broadcasts anti-mining messages. “It is a way for the company to control the mayors.

“If I give you two million dollars for you to invest in the projects you want, and tomorrow I ask you to do something, you’re going to do it,” he explained frankly. “This is the role currently being played by several mayors in the department of Cabañas.”

It is not just the current largesse of the mining company that has won over some mayors in the region. Because Salvadoran law taxes corporate profit 1 percent at the local level and 1 percent at the federal level, the municipality of San Isidro would see its budget increase tenfold—to $1 million—if the project went through. The resulting proponents, say community leaders, are a unified front of local right-wing politicians and Pacific Rim.

“Why does someone go looking for a post as mayor?” asked Miguel Rivera. “It’s a way of making money. Around here, the mayors are more than mayors, they are activists for the mining company,” he added.

It would hardly be the first indiscretion on the part of Cabañas mayors. Last January, several NGOs uncovered evidence that politicians were committing widespread electoral fraud. On election day, Marcelo Rivera and ASIC found a number of Hondurans (Cabañas is on the border) who said they had been paid $100 to cross into San Isidro and vote for thirteen-year mayor José Ignacio Bautista. Similarly, Radio Victoria reporters came across a group of Hondurans waiting to get DUIs (identification cards that allow Salvadoran citizens to vote) in Sensuntepeque, another city in the region.

According to Miguel, ASIC was preparing a campaign to reveal the truth when their office was raided and their direct evidence was lost. Unsurprisingly, the local government did not investigate the robbery.

Because of ASIC’s actions, many in the area suspect that Bautista was the one who directly ordered Marcelo’s murder. But Bautista is not the only implicated mayor. “Here, at least four mayors from ARENA [Alianza Republicana Nacionalista] are related to this sort of thing,” said Montes, referring to the right-wing party that is one of the country’s two major parties.

And mayors are not the only figures who were wooed with corporate money; according to Beltrán, some local churches even started taking money from Pacific Rim. Eventually, however, the Catholic Church came out nationally against mining, and the priests cut off ties with the company. Indeed, national political sentiment has almost unanimously turned against mining. But, as the assassinations and intimidations suggest, Pacific Rim has not given up the battle for local influence. “Pacific Rim has invested more than $28 million in this country,” said Beltrán. “They’re not going to want to give it up that easily.”
Orwellian Justice

Luis Quintanilla, an outspoken leftist priest, very nearly became the second person killed in relation to this struggle in 2009, as he returned home on July 27 from his weekly radio program on Radio Victoria.

“Monday, the 27, I came to the radio at night,” said Quintanilla, a youthful man with a thick beard. He explained that he was cut off on the road back to Sensuntepeque by a car that had been following him. With the road blocked, Quintanilla stopped his car.

“Then they opened the door,” he explained.

They told me to turn off my lights and leave the keys in the car. When I got out, I closed the door and locked it. They carried me towards their car. There were two of them—one on each side—and another stayed by my car, and another was driving, so they were four. All dressed in black, hooded, and armed. And one, that was next to me, was saying “leave him to me here,” and I understood that they were going to kill me. But the other said “no, we’re supposed to take him with us.” They couldn’t agree if they would do it there or if they would bring me somewhere else.

And then in my car, the alarm went off. The one that was on one side of me went over to the car, and the group went to see what was going on, and I dove away. There was a ravine there—I didn’t know there was a ravine there, I just jumped.

Quintanilla landed on his hands and knees and then ran until he was sure the men were not following him. He called friends, and soon paramedics and police arrived at the scene. The investigation that followed, however, was far from encouraging.

“That same night, the police arrived,” he continued,

and they said, “Well, did they hit you?” And I said, “no.” They looked over the car, and they asked, “Did they steal from you?” And I said, “no.” “And this dent on the car that you have here—you already had it?” “I already had it.” “Well, then,” they said, “they didn’t hit you, they didn’t hit your car, and didn’t steal from you? Then nothing happened. If you want, you can bring charges. If not, nothing happened.” And I said, “How is it that nothing happened? They were about to kill me.” But they said no.

Quintanilla, who has been involved in social projects since his student days in the 1980s, began producing radio programs when he was suspended by the Church in 2002 for his political views. He began attracting the ire of conservative forces in the country, he said, when he got his job back through the courts in 2004. A couple of years later, he received an anonymous message that said: “Since you like to talk so much about Monseñor Romero and Father Rutilio Grande, we will make sure you go and keep them company.” (Romero and Rutilio were outspoken populist priests who were assassinated in the years before the Salvadoran civil war.)

The day after the attempted kidnapping, Quintanilla went to the district attorney’s office where, due to those threats, there was already a case open on his behalf. But the attorney refused to connect the previous night’s incident to that case.

“The attorney said to me, ‘given that since the noted date nothing has happened’—which is to say, that they haven’t killed me—‘we’re going to close the case,’” said Quintanilla. “I said ‘no, on the contrary, I want you to continue, since things are still going on.’ He told me ‘Fine, but that would be a new claim.’”

Quintanilla’s was not the only case of Orwellian justice during the year. When Radio Victoria, after repeated death threats, asked the local police for officers to protect the station and its members, it was informed that there were not enough police officers available. (The national police ultimately supplied one officer for each of the six or seven people directly threatened, leading a national newspaper to report hyperbolically that an army of sixty officers was protecting the radio.) Earlier in July, police stated that Rivera had been murdered when a fight broke out between him and a group of gangsters he was drinking with—despite the evident signs of torture on his body and the fact that Rivera did not drink.

El Salvador has been controlled by an often corrupt right wing for over three decades, despite a twelve-year civil war, beginning in 1980. Last March, Mauricio Funes, a candidate from the left-wing FMLN (the party established by the guerillas in the 1992 peace treaty), finally won the presidency, bringing hope to the long-disenfranchised left-wing resistance that the government might finally be accountable to its people.

In Cabañas, however, the political switch has gone in the opposite direction: for the first time in years, all nine municipalities in the region are controlled by ARENA. And the control of the municipalities, naturally, carries over into the justice system. “Of course, the district attorney doesn’t investigate anything because the district attorney has blood on his hands,” said Montes. “They are interested in justifying. They’re not interested in investigating.”

Edward Lara, a manager for Radio Victoria, who received a series of personal threats via text message throughout July, explained “There has been a change in the government, but at the base, here in the department, there has been no change. It’s still like the time when the right was in the government.”

Radio correspondent Isabel Gámez likened the situation to the overtly violent days before and during the civil war—a war in which many of the older activists fought as guerillas. “These are things of the past—the persecution, the assassinations of people who are in positions of power in the organization,” said Gámez. “It’s like going back in time. We’re regressing.”

Since the murder of Ramiro and Santoro in December, there were signs that the status quo could change. President Funes himself made a public declaration, connecting the latest murders to the events of the summer, and promised a full investigation.

Whether Funes can navigate a national police force and justice department riddled with corruption, however, remains to be seen. “I’m somewhat hopeful, but at the same time I’m afraid,” said Quintanilla. “Not afraid for what might happen to me—afraid that we might fall into the same game, the same system that we have had for twenty years and even more.”
No to Mining, Yes to Life

“Marcelo was a person whose life was dedicated to two things,” said Miguel Rivera, speaking of his brother. “One was the work of social organization, and the other, perhaps, was being a political leader. And that is essentially what he did.”

Marcelo and Miguel—who had “always been a team,” as Miguel put it, began their organizing work when Marcelo was eighteen and Miguel twelve. As students, they recognized that there was no good way to gather information in San Isidro. “You would need money to go to Sensunte or Ilobasco, because there was not a cultural center, or any place to inform yourself,” said Miguel, referring to two cities, roughly half an hour away. “We created a San Isidro foundation for culture and art. It was a group of around twelve young people from twelve to eighteen years that wanted a space to get information, and also an organization for cultural and artistic work in the municipality.”

“Marcelo was a person who liked art very much,” said Montes. “I remember that we contracted him, as [an] ADES [member], so that he could conduct theater workshops with the youth in Santa Marta. And later, we realized that he had political sympathies too.”

Marcelo and Miguel eventually moved their work to ASIC, an organization Miguel described as “dedicated to supporting youth, and asserting the rights of the population.” The organization also addresses “issues of health, wells, people’s access to water,” he said.

In this capacity, organizations such as ASIC have come to oppose the project of Pacific Rim. Extracting gold requires enormous amounts of cyanide, and El Dorado is located near the Río Lempa, which provides water for much of Cabañas and for San Salvador. Activists fear that the mining project will end in a catastrophic contamination of the water supply—and they point to a precedent in Honduras, where mining indeed caused cyanide contamination, not to mention massive deforestation. Their widespread slogan—seen on stickers, posters, and pamphlets—reads “no a la minería, sí a la vida” (“no to mining, yes to life”).

Pacific Rim, which promises to meet or even exceed stringent environmental regulations in all its mining projects, denies these allegations. Their executives say they will be so carefully monitoring the water the mine discharges that the local streams may well be cleaner after the company begins operations at El Dorado. Also, they counter, the toxic mines in Honduras were open-pit mines, unlike the underground mining that the company would employ at El Dorado.

Unfortunately, there has been no independent assessment of the environmental impact of mining at El Dorado, leaving the actual debate largely in the realm of speculation. Allegedly, various government ministers began working towards producing independent assessments in 2007 and 2008, but, as of today, nothing has come of them.

Objective depictions of Salvadoran public opinion on mining have been equally hard to come by. Pacific Rim cites a January 2008 poll that showed 67 percent of respondents supported mining in some capacity, and only 30 percent were entirely opposed. In contrast, a survey conducted a few months earlier by the University of Central America found that 62.5 percent of respondents were opposed to mining in El Salvador.

Pacific Rim also argues that the department of Cabañas will greatly benefit from the creation of hundreds of sustainable jobs—no small benefit in an underdeveloped region. It is unclear, though, how long-term jobs could be connected to a mine that will not operate for more than a decade. The debate itself has not been rooted in much more than rhetoric. With the conflict headed for international legal resolution, empirical answers to the social and environmental impacts are needed before the question can be rationally addressed.
Radio Victoria

Radio Victoria, a roughly thirty-person operation run largely by youth from the area, is based in a plain, two-story cement building on the main street of Victoria, a quiet city on a hilltop. In the entry room, photo collages commemorating each of the radio’s seventeen years hang on the walls, along with a photo of Monseñor Romero doing a radio broadcast. (One radio member laughed that “a whole bunch of people” asked if Romero had been on Radio Victoria, which was founded over a decade after his assassination.)

“It was the end of the war, it was a time of transition, and it was very important for the community to have its own communication,” said Cristina Starr, a U.S. expatriate and one of the radio’s founders, thinking back on the radio’s origins. “And it’s appropriate technology because you don’t have to be able to read, and you can listen to the radio while you’re doing anything. It accompanies you.”

While the radio has no professed ideology or political persuasion, its accountability to the community has made it a central forum for anti-mining messages for several years—and a target for the mining company and its allies. As early as 2006, several members of the radio’s news team received death threats. In 2007, Pacific Rim attempted to buy out the radio station, themselves.

“We were having problems constructing our house. We were partway done, and Pacific Rim said, ‘Look, we can finish constructing your building easily. And it’d be better if you’d like us to. And on top of that, we can give you another $8,000 a month.’ So that we’d give them publicity,” said Beltrán. “And we said, ‘Better that the house remain unfinished, that we never finish constructing it.’”

In mid-summer 2009, the radio found itself at the center of a storm of threats and sabotage. By mid-July, three community correspondents for the station were put in safe houses after repeated threats left in voicemails and letters. Within the next two weeks, five members of the radio’s news and production teams received direct personal threats, and the entire organization received a long e-mail that named several more threats. The radio’s transmitter was sabotaged or stolen on several occasions, leaving the radio off the air for days at a time.

“There were two straight days of threats and more threats,” said Gámez, who was one of the most directly affected. One day in early August, as she was alone at the radio office, preparing for a 4:00 p.m. news dispatch, she received a phone call from a man who claimed to have been at her house the previous night, and who said he was now waiting for her outside. After a frantic series of phone calls to friends, other organizations, and the police, Gámez escaped the building, and she and her family were taken to a safe house.

“It felt like things were getting out of control,” said Starr, “and you really felt like there were these dark forces there that were descending.” While some of the threats lightened up after a few weeks, fears reignited after Ramiro’s assassination, when several members of the radio received an e-mail from “exterminio pacificrim.”

“Well, we sent two into a hole, the question is, who will be the third,” read the message. “We prefer that the third death be a radio announcer or a correspondent or whoever from this damn radio, the most secure target is an on-the-air announcer, be careful, we are not playing.”

Several days later, six armed and masked men appeared outside Gámez’s house; ultimately, nothing happened, but only because Gámez was not at home. Despite the fear, Starr thought there was a silver lining in the threats. “It means that the radio really is carrying out its role,” she said. “I think that the important thing is to see it in the context of the social movement in Cabañas, which of course is connected to the larger social movement in El Salvador.”

Quintanilla, too, connected the intimidation to a bigger picture. “The threatened ones are not just the individuals themselves. We see this situation as an attempt to decapitate the social movement,” he said. “What they do is cut off the head. Yes, we are the focus, but it’s not just against us; rather, it’s against all the people with us.”
Born to Defend the People

On a Friday afternoon last August in Santa Marta, a village of three thousand people, half an hour from Victoria, a group of teenagers was collecting near the main plaza. Having finished classes for the week, they were waiting for a truck that would carry them to Victoria, where they would spend the night, keeping watch over the Radio Victoria building, which faced threats of arson.

“At the same time that it’s been scary, it’s been so moving to see how people from Santa Marta have responded,” said Starr. The delegations, usually consisting of ten to twelve people, came to the radio every night for nearly four months. In that way and many others, the threats at the radio have revealed the strength of the organizing spirit in Cabañas.

“I’ve talked to some of the youth like Oscar and Jaime and I go ‘are you scared?’” Starr continued. “And they say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m scared.’ They say things like, ‘Well, you’ve got to die sometime, you know?’ It almost sounds flippant but they’re actually really sincere. They’re actually really saying, if we’re going to die at some point and we have to die for something. That’s how they see it, that’s the level of commitment and dedication. It’s not just a radio; it’s part of this whole movement.”

Asked about the future of the radio, none of the members hesitated. “To close the radio, or to abandon the work that we have done up to this point would be to comply with the objectives of the people that are threatening us,” said Beltrán.

“We exist and we were born to defend the rights of the people, and that’s how we’re going to continue,” said Lara. “And if that involves risking ourselves, we only hope that the population supports us, and helps us to protect ourselves. Really, the fear is very great—as much personal as familial. Sometimes you’re here doing the work, and you’re thinking about your family, and that, any moment, something will have happened. But the thing is to continue, not hesitate in this, because it is a project that has greatly served the social, economic, and human development of the communities, the community organizations, and the empowerment of the people.”

“One must recognize that this project of protecting human rights is a project that some groups don’t like, one must recognize that,” said Montes. “And these economic and political groups will act, and they will try to shut up the voices of dissent. In the department, we are very cognizant of this—but we’re not going to stop. We’re going to keep doing our work, defending human rights, and denouncing the violence.”
Gabriel Zucker (gabriel.zucker@yale.edu) is an undergraduate at Yale University, where he is double majoring in ethics, politics, and economics (EP&E) and music, and is co-director of the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, the school’s second-largest public service group. He has travelled twice to El Salvador to work with local NGOs. Research for this article was conducted primarily during the summer of 2009 in the Department of Cabañas, with the support of a Yale fellowship. Additional reporting by David Lee.

from Znet

In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, several villages rest on a man-made island literally surrounded by an open pit gold mine and its expanding waste dumps. As the waste dumps have grown, they’ve devoured homes, schools, and most of the areas once used for gardening, making the indigenous population rely on money to acquire food while crowding them into increasingly squashed living quarters. At the same time, these same communities – the original landowners of the mine site – are criminalized for what the company calls “illegal mining,” a practice of panning for gold that the local community considers its birthright.

Despite evidence that land privatization leads to land consolidation and increased social stratification, the lead advocate of these policies, Hernando de Soto, is hailed as the “Poor Man’s Capitalist.” De Soto argues that land titles pave the way out of poverty for poor people, as it gives them access to capital through loans. His stated analysis fails to recognize that this process also leads to land-loss, because the capital accessed through property titles necessarily puts land ownership at risk, especially when domestic markets are opened to cheap imports.
De Soto’s simplistic analysis and dangerous oversight seem disingenuous when viewed in combination with his former post as the president of the Executive Committee of the Intergovernmental Council of Copper Exporting Countries. Additionally, his ideas are promoted by mining industry magnates such as Peter Munk, the chairman and founder of Barrick Gold, who benefit from policies that facilitate privatization and dispossession. In particular, Barrick’s claim to land on and near the Pascua Lama project on the border of Chile and Argentina relies on a series of fraudulent land claims to collectively held- Diaguita Huascoaltinos land. Additionally, Barrick’s manipulation of Native Title at their Lake Cowal mine in New South Wales, Australia has led to the desecration of a Wiradjuri Sacred site and important wetland.

While large-scale mining operations directly displace people from their land and livelihoods all over the world, the environmental havoc caused by mining operations further pollute and deplete soil and water sources, robbing the land of its ability to sustain life. Approvals for such projects typically occur on a national level, with minimal consultation of impacted communities and minimal infrastructure provided to combat the negative social and environmental impacts that these operations bring.

Canada’s Dirty Secret is only a Secret to Canadians

In reaction to this dismal response to calls for corporate accountability, Liberal John McKay has introduced private members bill C300 to introduce consequences to corporations that abuse human rights abroad. This bill – while a positive step forward in holding corporations to account – exposes the degree to which the Canadian government supports and promotes its mining industry abroad. This is because this bill merely withholds governments funds and diplomatic support for companies found – following a government investigation – to be abusing human rights. Government support (including billions worth in CPP investments) accounts for a large force in financing and promoting mining projects abroad, and the mining companies are fighting hard to maintain this relationship. But as awareness of these projects continues to grow, so does the awareness of Canada as a player in a global system of exploitation, displacement, and long-term environmental devastation.

These combined insights challenge us to abandon the charitable posturing that often accompanies debates around immigration, as they force us to recognize our own part in these systems of exploitation. In order to really address the impacts of global poverty, we must remove our support for the mechanisms which create it.
* Between April and July 2009, police officers in Papua New Guinea – based on situation reports presented by Barrick Gold – illegally and forcibly evicted people from their homes and then proceeded to burn down a hillside of homes. When the villagers – original landowners from that area – rebuilt their homes, the police burnt them down again in June and then again in July. Locals allege that the company burnt down the homes to make way for mine expansion.

** This figure is according to estimates from the Porgera Landowners Association, who only surveyed the adults in the area.

*** This figure includes displaced people from non-World Bank funded projects. The Sourcebook was authored by Robert Goodland, who served the WBG as chief environmental adviser in Washington, D.C. for twenty-five years, during which time he wrote – and persuaded the WBG to adopt – most of its social and environmental safeguard policies.

• Cyanide Mining Ban Clears Last Hurdle
• Montana Voters Nix Use of Cyanide Poison in Mining

Similar battles are being fought in South Dakota, where the Sioux tribe is currently suing Homestake mining company for waste from gold mining operations; in Nevada where the Western Shoshone tribe has brought a number of complaints against companies for dumping cyanide waste; and in Washington state where the Colville tribe is trying to prevent the arrival of a gold mining company.

The most expensive clean-up of cyanide pollution in United States history has been the 150 million dollar clean-up of the Alamosa river in Colorado below the Summitville mine after Galactic Resources, the Canadian owners, declared bankruptcy in 1992. And the clean-ups in this country pale into insignificance compared to some of the cyanide-related disasters in other countries.

Environmental Impacts at Fort Belknap from Gold Mining

The Zortman-Landusky gold mine is a case study of the environmental risks of cyanide heap-leach gold mining (more info) and the impacts that these operations can have on communities, water and cultural resources. The Zortman-Landusky mine illustrates how modern mine operations continue to impact landscapes and leave behind massive environmental problems and liabilities. The mine experienced many problems, such as cyanide spills, and surface and groundwater contamination from acid mine drainage. This was one of the first massive cyanide heap-leach operations to open, as well as one of the first to close, leaving behind significant pollution and cleanup problems.

This is a clip taken from a documentary produced at MCAT public access television in Missoula Montana in 1993.  The footage and interviews were captured on location at the Ft. Belknap Indian Reservation.  Since that time the Zortman Landusky Gold Mine operation closed when the Pegasus Gold Corporation filed for Bankrupsy leaving Montana with yet another massive Superfund Site and dangerous ground water pollution problem.

The Pegasus Gold Corporation (a Canadian Company) obtained the land without royalty through the use of the 1872 mining law and left the US tax payers footing the bill for a massive cleanup which will never end. To see part of the current massive water treatment system that is part of the Superfund Cleanup download this PDF