State Of Emergency In Cajamarca Follows Four Deaths in Mine Protests

6th July ’12

A state of emer­gency has been declared in three provinces in the Andean depart­ment of Caja­mar­ca, locat­ed in north­ern Peru, fol­low­ing the deaths of four peo­ple dur­ing protests against the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar Con­ga gold project.

6th July ’12

A state of emer­gency has been declared in three provinces in the Andean depart­ment of Caja­mar­ca, locat­ed in north­ern Peru, fol­low­ing the deaths of four peo­ple dur­ing protests against the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar Con­ga gold project.

Peru’s Exec­u­tive branch approved the mea­sure, which cur­tails civ­il lib­er­ties, in the provinces of Caja­mar­ca, Celendin and Hual­gay­oc. The state of emer­gency came into force on Wednes­day and will be valid for 30 days, the gov­ern­ment said.

The mea­sure fol­lows the death in Celendin of three peo­ple and more than 30 injured on Tues­day, dur­ing clash­es between police and demon­stra­tors.  One of the per­sons killed was 17 years old.  More than 15 peo­ple were arrest­ed.  On the same day, a man was killed dur­ing protests in Bam­ba­mar­ca, cap­i­tal of the province of Hual­gay­oc.

This week’s protests, with Minas Con­ga still in focus, are against the may­ors of 65 dis­tricts who last week were in Lima with Pres­i­dent Humala at the Gov­ern­ment Palace to accept gov­ern­ment invest­ment in a series of infra­struc­ture projects in their provinces.   

It is the sec­ond time since last Decem­ber that Peru has declared a state of emer­gency in Caja­mar­ca to con­trol esca­lat­ing protests against the $4.8 bil­lion Minas Con­ga project, which is being devel­oped by gold min­ing com­pa­ny Yana­cocha.

Yana­cocha is major­i­ty con­trolled by US-based New­mont Min­ing (51%), with Peru’s Minas Bue­naven­tu­ra own­ing 49%.

Protests late last year against Minas Con­ga, over wor­ries that it would harm the water sup­ply to farm­ers, result­ed in the sus­pen­sion of the project. 

At the same time, the delay in reach­ing an agree­ment with pro­test­ers pushed Pres­i­dent Humala to make a major cab­i­net shuf­fle late last year, appoint­ing for­mer Inte­ri­or min­is­ter Oscar Valdes as his new pre­mier to apply a stronger hand in quelling the protests.  Those against the min­ing project have only become more entrenched.

Inde­pen­dent con­sul­tants hired by the gov­ern­ment have reviewed the Minas Con­ga envi­ron­men­tal impact study, and the gov­ern­ment said recent­ly that the com­pa­ny could restart work if it made some changes like build­ing water reser­voirs before start­ing con­struc­tion of the mine.

How­ev­er, oppo­si­tion has remained strong despite attempts by Peru’s gov­ern­ment to resolve the dis­pute. One of the main oppo­nents of the project is the region­al gov­ern­ment of Caja­mar­ca, led by far-left gov­er­nor Gre­go­rio San­tos.

San­tos reject­ed the state of emer­gency and called on the gov­ern­ment to lift the mea­sure.

Minas Con­ga is the lat­est in a num­ber of min­ing projects that have been tar­get­ed by com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion, large­ly over envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. Ana­lysts say some $50 bil­lion in min­ing invest­ments are at risk due to the social con­flicts in Peru, a coun­try where min­ing has been the lynch­pin of eco­nom­ic growth.