Locals Risk Their Lives Fighting Mining in Mexico

1 July 2013 “They bru­tal­ly repressed us. The min­ing com­pa­ny buys off people’s con­sciences, it divides the com­mu­ni­ty, but we’ll keep fight­ing it. Some peo­ple have had to flee the com­mu­ni­ty,” Ros­alin­da Dion­i­sio, a Zapote­ca indige­nous woman in the south­ern Mex­i­can state of Oax­a­ca, said, sob­bing.

Her mov­ing tes­ti­mo­ny illus­trat­ed the grow­ing con­flicts between local com­mu­ni­ties and min­ing com­pa­nies in Mex­i­co.

Dion­i­sio, 30, still walks with a limp from the leg injuries she sus­tained when she and oth­er activists from the Coor­di­nado­ra de Pueb­los Unidos del Valle de Ocotlán anti-min­ing organ­i­sa­tion sur­vived an attempt on their lives in March 2012.

The Coor­di­nado­ra is made up of local res­i­dents fight­ing the San José min­ing com­pa­ny run by the Com­pa­nia Min­era Cuz­cat­lan S.A., a sub­sidiary of For­tu­na Sil­ver Mines Inc of Cana­da, which mines for gold and sil­ver on an area of 700 hectares.

The deposits are locat­ed near San José del Pro­gre­so, one of the three poor­est towns in Oax­a­ca, which is Mexico’s sec­ond-most impov­er­ished state. Most of the 6,200 peo­ple in the town are opposed to the min­ing company’s activ­i­ties in the area because of the soil and water pol­lu­tion they cause.

But May­or Alber­to Sánchez heads a group of local res­i­dents who back the com­pa­ny. The com­mu­ni­ty is divid­ed and con­fronta­tions have occurred – like in oth­er min­ing towns in Mex­i­co.

Sto­ries like Dionisio’s abound in this Latin Amer­i­can coun­try, which is expe­ri­enc­ing a min­ing boom foment­ed by the gov­ern­ment of con­ser­v­a­tive Pres­i­dent Felipe Calderón (2006–2012).

Under the 1992 min­ing law, Mex­i­co has grant­ed around 31,000 con­ces­sions to some 300 com­pa­nies for more than 800 min­ing projects on near­ly 51 mil­lion hectares. Most of the com­pa­nies involved are Cana­di­an, accord­ing to the econ­o­my ministry’s most recent fig­ures.

ProMéx­i­co, the gov­ern­ment office ded­i­cat­ed to draw­ing in for­eign invest­ment, and the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) report that Mex­i­co is the world’s top pro­duc­er of sil­ver, in third place for bis­muth, fifth for molyb­de­num and lead, and ninth for gold.

In 2012, the min­ing indus­try gen­er­at­ed 300,000 direct jobs in Mex­i­co, account­ed for sev­en bil­lion dol­lars in invest­ment, and rep­re­sent­ed two per­cent of GDP, accord­ing to offi­cial fig­ures.

ProMéx­i­co pre­dicts that in 2014, the min­ing industry’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP will rise to four per­cent, and that in the next six years, the sec­tor will bring in 35 bil­lion dol­lars in invest­ment, in a coun­try where 70 per­cent of the ter­ri­to­ry has sig­nif­i­cant min­er­al deposits, accord­ing to offi­cial esti­mates.

But local com­mu­ni­ties have clashed with the min­ing com­pa­nies because of the defor­esta­tion, water pol­lu­tion and dump­ing of tox­ic liq­uid waste.

Since the 1970s, the peo­ple of La Mira, in the west­ern state of Michoacán, have been fight­ing the Las Truchas iron mine, owned by Siderúr­gi­ca Lázaro Cár­de­nas-Las Truchas, a sub­sidiary of India’s Arcelor­Mit­tal steel and min­ing com­pa­ny.

“They pol­lut­ed the water and the air, they dam­aged our hous­es, and they’re just tak­ing every­thing,” com­plained Melitón Iza­za­ga, a leader of the non-gov­ern­men­tal Colo­nias Unidas de La Mira, which groups res­i­dents who have been affect­ed by the near­by mine and steel­works that pro­duce 100,000 tons a month of steel.

The mine and the fac­to­ry dump waste into a reser­voir that pol­lutes near­by rivers and streams, which are the source of water for the local com­mu­ni­ties. But so far legal action aimed at curb­ing the mine’s pol­lu­tion has been unsuc­cess­ful.

San José and La Mira were among the cas­es pre­sent­ed Jun. 21–23 to the Mex­i­can sec­tion of the Per­ma­nent People’s Tri­bunal, in a pre-hear­ing on the min­ing industry’s impact on the envi­ron­ment and the rights of local peo­ple, which was attend­ed by IPS in Cuer­nava­ca, the cap­i­tal of the cen­tral state of More­los.

The Tri­bunal began its work in Mex­i­co in 2011 and will con­clude its hear­ings in 2014 with non-bind­ing rul­ings based on the evi­dence col­lect­ed under sev­en cat­e­gories: vio­lence; impuni­ty and lack of access to jus­tice; migra­tion; femi­cide and gen­der vio­lence; attacks against maize and food sov­er­eign­ty; envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion; and peo­ples’ rights.

“The new min­ing activ­i­ty is not seek­ing to devel­op any­thing, but mere­ly wants to extract gold, sil­ver, or what­ev­er. It’s a mod­el for exploita­tion, not for devel­op­ment of the com­mu­ni­ties. If we don’t fight them, we’re going to have to leave,” Fer­nan­da Cam­pa, a researcher at the Autonomous Uni­ver­si­ty of Mex­i­co City, said.

The gov­ern­ment of con­ser­v­a­tive Pres­i­dent Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1, has kept in place the guar­an­tees offered investors in the min­ing indus­try. But aca­d­e­mics and activists com­plain that there have been no guar­an­tees for the rights of local com­mu­ni­ties, and of indige­nous peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar.

Mexico’s indige­nous pop­u­la­tion is var­i­ous­ly esti­mat­ed to make up between 12 and 30 per­cent of the country’s 107 mil­lion peo­ple (the small­er, offi­cial, esti­mate is based on the num­ber of peo­ple who speak an indige­nous lan­guage).

From 2000 to 2012, min­ing con­ces­sions were grant­ed for two mil­lion hectares of the 28 mil­lion hectares that make up offi­cial­ly recog­nised ances­tral lands of native peo­ples in Mex­i­co.

Accord­ing to the Obser­va­to­ry on Min­ing Con­flicts in Latin Amer­i­ca, there are 175 socio-envi­ron­men­tal con­flicts or clash­es over nat­ur­al resource use ongo­ing in the region, involv­ing 183 min­ing projects and 246 com­mu­ni­ties. Twen­ty-one of these con­flicts are in Mex­i­co.

“We don’t want more deaths, but we pre­fer to lose our lives than go down on our knees before the state. We haven’t man­aged to get the com­pa­ny to leave; we want jus­tice,” said Dion­i­sio, who spent two months in hos­pi­tal after the attack that her organ­i­sa­tion blames on armed mili­tias hired by Cuz­catlán.

So far, four activists opposed to the mine in San José del Pro­gre­so have been killed.

Anoth­er crit­i­cism of extrac­tive indus­try poli­cies in Mex­i­co is the low lev­el of ben­e­fits that go to the state. Min­ing com­pa­nies cur­rent­ly pay between 36 cents of a dol­lar and eight dol­lars a year per hectare of their con­ces­sions for extract­ing met­als and min­er­als. The only addi­tion­al tax they pay is income tax, the amount of which is kept secret.

A “study on the extrac­tive indus­tries in Mex­i­co and the sit­u­a­tion of indige­nous peo­ples in the ter­ri­to­ries in which those indus­tries are locat­ed” doc­u­ment­ed native peo­ples’ com­plaints that their rights have not been respect­ed or pro­tect­ed.

They stressed that they have not been made par­tic­i­pants in con­sul­ta­tion and cit­i­zen input process­es, and that their free, pri­or and informed con­sent has not been sought before con­ces­sions are grant­ed to min­ing com­pa­nies in their ter­ri­to­ries – as required by Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­i­sa­tion Con­ven­tion 169 Con­cern­ing Indige­nous and Trib­al Peo­ples.

The report on extrac­tive indus­tries and the sit­u­a­tion of indige­nous peo­ples, com­mis­sioned by the Unit­ed Nations Per­ma­nent Forum on Indige­nous Issues, also cites the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of protests, the loss of nat­ur­al resources, neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts, health effects and a total lack of ben­e­fits for the local pop­u­la­tion from the min­ing industry’s activ­i­ties.

“Fed­er­al author­i­ties should ful­fil their role as pro­tec­tors of the rights of indige­nous peo­ples; mon­i­tor the assump­tion of cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty by com­pa­nies; decrim­i­nalise the hold­ing of protests by indige­nous peo­ples against min­ing com­pa­nies; and pun­ish those respon­si­ble for crimes against indige­nous lead­ers,” the report says.

“One day the hill­side is going to slide down on us and bury the town,” as a result of the min­ing activ­i­ty, Iza­za­ga said.