Mexico: campesinos occupy Chihuahua gold mine

On May 24, campesinos from Eji­do Huizopa, Madera munic­i­pal­i­ty, in the north­ern Mex­i­can state of Chi­huahua, launched a protest occu­pa­tion of the Min­era Dolores com­pa­ny’s giant open-pit gold mine, which they say has been ille­gal­ly estab­lished on their lands.

On May 24, campesinos from Eji­do Huizopa, Madera munic­i­pal­i­ty, in the north­ern Mex­i­can state of Chi­huahua, launched a protest occu­pa­tion of the Min­era Dolores com­pa­ny’s giant open-pit gold mine, which they say has been ille­gal­ly estab­lished on their lands. The deci­sion to launch the block­ade was tak­en after two eji­do lead­ers, Enrique Tor­res González and José Arman­do González, were arrest­ed by Fed­er­al Pre­ven­ta­tive Police, lat­er released with­out charge. The local com­pa­ny direc­tor Car­los Gar­cía Droguett said the occu­pa­tion places at risk a $200 mil­lion invest­ment in the zone. (Excel­siór, May 29) Min­era Dolores is owned by the Minefind­ers Cor­po­ra­tion of Van­cou­ver. (GeoMex.com)

A state­ment from Eji­do Huizopa says Min­era Dolores used “tricks” to gain title to the land from “cor­rupt lead­ers” of the ejido—but nonethe­less received a per­mit from the Mex­i­can envi­ron­men­tal sec­re­tari­at, SEMARNAT. The state­ment says anoth­er of their lead­ers, Sal­vador Gai­tan, was the tar­get of an assas­si­na­tion attempt ear­li­er this year. Gait­ian, a direc­tor of the eji­do, is a vet­er­an of the 1960s gueril­la insur­gency in Chi­huahua led by Arturo Gámiz. (Received via e‑mail, May 30)

See our last posts on Mex­i­co, Chi­huahua and the min­er­al car­tel in Latin Amer­i­ca.

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Min­era Dolores block­ade lift­ed

From CNN Mon­ey, June 9. Note repeat­ed and gra­tu­itous use of the word “ille­gal” to refer to the blockade—contrasting lack of any men­tion of campesino claims that the mine itself is ille­gal.

Minefind­ers Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd. (the “Com­pa­ny”) (TSX: MFL)(AMEX: MFN) reports ini­tial pro­duc­tion esti­mates for its Dolores gold and sil­ver mine in Chi­huahua, Mex­i­co, where the first gold and sil­ver pour is now sched­uled for mid July, 2008.

Man­age­ment expects gold pro­duc­tion from Dolores will be approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 ounces in 2008, 128,000 ounces in 2009 and 129,000 ounces in 2010. Sil­ver pro­duc­tion is expect­ed to be 1.0 mil­lion ounces in 2008, 3.0 mil­lion ounces in 2009, and 4.0 mil­lion ounces in 2010… Min­ing at Dolores is approach­ing a sus­tained rate of approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 tonnes per day with over 7 mil­lion tonnes of ore and waste mate­r­i­al mined at Dolores to date…

In late May an ille­gal block­ade was estab­lished on an access road to the Dolores Mine site. The major­i­ty of the indi­vid­u­als involved are believed to be from out­side of the region and include only a small fringe group from with­in the local 221-mem­ber Eji­do com­mu­ni­ty.

While Minefind­ers was on tar­get to achieve the first gold and sil­ver pour from Dolores in late June 2008, for safe­ty rea­sons the Com­pa­ny decid­ed to sus­pend con­struc­tion activ­i­ties and oper­a­tions until Mex­i­can author­i­ties safe­ly removed the ille­gal block­ade. On June 5, in response to meet­ings held with gov­ern­ment offi­cials, the block­aders re-opened the road and min­ing and pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions have recom­menced. The Com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments and with the indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for the block­ade to come to a defin­i­tive long-term res­o­lu­tion. As a result of the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of oper­a­tions due to the ille­gal block­ade, the first gold and sil­ver pour is now expect­ed in mid-July.

“Despite the delay of the first gold and sil­ver pour due to the ille­gal block­ade, the com­mis­sion­ing at Dolores is pro­gress­ing well with con­struc­tion and oper­at­ing costs con­sis­tent with those report­ed in the Com­pa­ny’s Feb­ru­ary 14, 2008, eco­nom­ic fore­cast and reserve update,” said Mark Bai­ley, Minefind­ers’ Pres­i­dent and CEO. “We remain ful­ly fund­ed to com­plete devel­op­ment and com­mis­sion­ing of the Dolores Mine and con­tin­ue the Dolores mill pre­lim­i­nary fea­si­bil­i­ty study and 2008 explo­ration pro­grams at Dolores and else­where.”

CNN also seems not to know that “Eji­do com­mu­ni­ty” is redun­dant and does not tell the read­er the name of the com­mu­ni­ty, as “eji­do” means agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty. The name of the eji­do in ques­tion is Huizopa.