The Dominion - Dawn Paley

Turning Around Turcot

Tim McSorley — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:44:52 +0000

New hope for highways on a human scale in Montreal

MONTREAL—After months of protests that captured the imagination of the world, things have quieted down on Montreal streets. But the impacts of the mobilizations, which began as a college-student-led rejection of proposed tuition increases and grew into a social strike, are still echoing throughout the city and the province. Environmentalists, anti-highway activists and community associations are but a few of the groups whose organizing is currently riding the upshot of a new government forced to take positions by ongoing neighbourhood organizing in Montreal and beyond.

"The Liberals had a reign of about nine years and we've seen pretty much the worst things that we’ve seen environment wise," said Bruno Massé, the coordinator of the Réseau Québécois des Groups Écologistes, a Quebec-wide network comprising 60 grassroots environmental groups. "Since the [Parti Québécois] took power, there's been a lot of optimism, but mostly people holding their breath," he said.

By the time the government of Jean Charest called elections on August 1, his government was left with little legitimacy in the eyes of a mobilized public. And while the September 4 election distracted from the popular agenda being set in assemblies in colleges and neighborhoods around Montreal and Quebec, it also marked what student associations called a victory when the incoming Parti Québécois cancelled the proposed fee hike.

Massé said that two big victories are on the horizon for environmental organizers: he expects the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant to be shut down, and a moratorium to be achieved on fracking to extract shale gas.

The Plan Nord, one of Charest's most controversial policy pieces, is progressing as if nothing is changing, said Massé, though it could still be scrapped or changed since the enabling legislation has not been passed. The Plan Nord proposes the opening up of Quebec's northern territories to increased investment in the energy, mining, forest and wildlife sectors, as well as new transportation and communications infrastructure.

But another victory could be on its way, this time resulting from years of community organizing against freeway expansion. Late last week, Montreal's city council issued a surprise request to the PQ government to go back to the drawing board and re-design the Turcot Interchange so that it is on a human scale and prioritizes public transit.

The Turcot Interchange highway complex is Montreal's (and perhaps Canada’s) most famous spaghetti junction, made up of three separate interchanges that tower above cyclists and pedestrians in the streets below. A steady stream of cars and trucks roll up, around, and back down onto the roadways below. Cranes hover underneath the concrete structures, evidence of construction and maintenance work on the decaying elevated highway system.

The Turcot Interchange was unveiled on April 25, 1967, just in time for the World Exposition in Montreal. Once a stately showpiece of modernity and car culture, today the crumbling Turcot is at the centre of a debate about sustainability, transportation and the future of Montreal. The recent announcement by the City of Montreal follows years of community organizing against a new mega-interchange complex, as proposed by the Charest Liberals.

"Part of the idea of building this interchange was that people would be transporting themselves by car in the city, so it's to provide better car transport infrastructure," said Shannon Franssen, an organizer with Solidarité St. Henri and spokesperson for Mobilisation Turcot, a group formed to organize for transit and against highway expansion. "In the 60s that made sense as a vision...Nowadays we know that's not an efficient way to move around the city," she said.

The Quebec government's proposal would see the Ville-Marie highway enlarged, the Turcot expanded, and Highway 20 moved north onto one of the city's last remaining wetlands, at a price tag of $3 billion. But with the exception of a few new busses, the government plan doesn’t include any public transit.

"We have this opportunity here to make this smaller, more efficient highway interchange that has alternatives," said Franssen in an interview in Montreal. An estimated 70 per cent of the 290,000 vehicles that travel on the interchange every day are commuters. "There are way better ways to transport folks from the West Island to downtown, and most people that are in their cars, going through the interchange, don't want to be in their car."

Opponents of the expansion say its not that the interchange needs to disappear, but that there are alternatives to spending $3 billion to expand the towering highway system, which include an emphasis on rail and other public transit. "We're arguing with very precise proposals for a dedicated bus corridor [for commuters], plus accelerating the investment for the train in the West Island...and review the design to reduce the capacity of the highway," said Dr. Pierre Gauthier, a professor in geography at Concordia University.

Montreal has already demolished one urban interchange, which was on Parc Avenue leading into downtown, with great success. "The old one was this crazy thing and they decided that it was more than what was necessary in the city and so they they kind of dismantled that interchange, there's no tunnels there, and it is a good example of how we could be building things better, and how it has happened before in Montreal," said Franssen.

St. Henri, where Franssen works, is a traditionally working class, Québécois neighbourhood that has been impacted by the mega-highway for decades. It isn't only the daily nuisances of traffic jams and noise. There is, of course, the climate change impacts of the estimated 290,000 vehicles that travel through what are in fact three interchanges commonly known as the Turcot interchange every day. But there are also very real health impacts.

"The public health department has identified it as a risk to one's health to live within 200 metres of a highway where there are so many cars going through," said Franssen. "We hear stories about parents bringing their newborns into the hospital and saying, 'well they're having breathing problems' and this kind of thing, and the hospital, when [the hospital workers] find out that they live where they live, basically say 'well, this is an effect of living there, so that's just the way it is.'"

Public hearings about the highway received over 400 submissions from locals and concerned groups. According to Franssen, 95 per cent of them were against the Quebec government's proposal to rebuild the interchange. These petitions for a smaller interchange and for more public transit were largely ignored by the Quebec government until the city’s announcement last week.

In the face of government indifference, local organizers conducted various campaigns, articulating their own vision for the highway, handing out information, holding occupations and marching in the streets in solidarity with students and against austerity. These constant mobilizations, together with an increasing awareness even among the political class that highway expansion is a road to nowhere, may result in another important victory in the struggle for liveable cities and a healthy planet.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist based between Montreal and Mexico. This piece was written with support from Stop the Pave and was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Turcot

Stefan Christoff on Duets for Abdelrazik

dawn — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:36:52 +0000

Subhead:

Montreal-based musician, activist and writer explores musical solidarity

Cover Image:

Stefan Christoff smaller.jpg

MP3:

http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/download/62296/69332/82666/?url=http://www.radio4all.net/files/dawnpaley@gmail.com/3632-1-stefan_christoff_DUETS.mp3

Body:

Stefan Christoff, an activist, writer, composer and musician, talks about his recently released disc, Duets for Abdelrazik. This recording, made in Montreal in August 2012, includes three short clips of music from the disc.

Image: Stefan Christoff playing at l'Envers, photo by Elsa Jabre.

This piece was originally published on the Media Co-op. Dawn Paley is a journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Canada's Punishment Agenda

dawn — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Omnibus crime bill will mean more prisons and more prisoners

MONTREAL—If you grow pot at home for personal use, here’s a tip: keep it to five plants or fewer.

Come November, getting caught growing between six and 200 marijuana plants deemed to have been produced for the purpose of trafficking will trigger a mandatory minimum of six months in jail. The maximum sentence for growing upwards of five plants will also double, to 14 years in prison.

These are just a couple of examples from a gamut of changes to Canada’s Criminal Code under Bill C-10, which the feds have dubbed the “Safe Streets and Communities Act,” commonly known as the Omnibus Crime Bill.

“Bill C-10 will require new prisons; mandate incarceration for minor, non-violent offences; justify poor treatment of inmates and make their reintegration into society more difficult,” reads a critique of the legislation prepared by the Canadian Bar Association, which represents more than 37,000 jurists in Canada. “Texas and California, among other jurisdictions, have already started down this road before changing course, realizing it cost too much and made their justice system worse.”

Bill C-10, which the lawyers' group says will change Canada’s entire approach to crime at every stage of the justice system, was approved in March. From policing to wait periods between parole applications, changes linked to C-10 are being phased in through to the end of 2012. The bill also gives border guards discretion in the granting of work permits to migrants they deem to be "vulnerable to abuse or exploitation."

“The government keeps talking about how this is an agenda to address victimization,” said Justin Piche, an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the University of Ottawa. “In my view this is a punishment agenda, and should be viewed accordingly."

Piche’s research focuses on prisons and prison construction in Canada, and he predicts C-10 could trigger a new wave of prison construction in Canada.

“In the Canadian context, the provinces and territories have built or are in the process of building 22 new prisons and 17 additions to existing facilities since 2008 that added over 6,000 new prison beds at a construction cost of nearly $3 billion,” Piche told The Dominion. “These prisons were built in a context where provincial and territorial governments were trying to largely address the remand demand, the surge in the proportion of remand prisoners that they were housing in the last decade and a half.”

The majority of the 24,000 adults who are in prison on a given day in Canada are remanded prisoners, meaning that even though they haven't been convicted, the courts have ordered that they be held in jail while awaiting a court appearance. The number of adults in remand has been steadily climbing since the 1980s. “In 2009/2010, adults in remand accounted for 58 per cent of the custodial population while those in sentenced custody comprised the remaining 42 per cent. Ten years ago, the proportions were reversed, at 40 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively,” reads a document prepared last year by Statistics Canada.

The rise in people held under remand is connected to the current wave of prison construction and expansion, but new moves to implement mandatory minimums could lead to filling up the very provincial and territorial prisons built supposedly to prevent overcrowding because of remanding.

“What we’re seeing in terms of the mandatory minimums, more of them being introduced, particularly in C-10, [is that] a lot of them are going to have an impact on the provincial and territorial prisons, which may trigger a new subsequent wave of prison construction,” said Piche.

Mandatory minimum sentences for narcotics possession is one of the most controversial elements of the Conservatives’ Crime Bill, because it copies similar legislation in some US states that has been shown to increase the amount of prisoners without decreasing the supply of drugs.

“Bill C-10 is solidifying trends over the past decades with CSC [Correctional Services Canada], and will result in more people being imprisoned for more time,” according to Marie Dennis*, a prisoner solidarity activist based out of Montreal. “At the end of the day Bill C-10 doesn’t change that much for people in terms of people who are already inside, especially with life sentences, but what it does is solidify into law certain practices that have already been in place, which makes it harder for those practices to change at all if you have a slightly liberal warden or something like that.”

However, there are still a few important ways C-10 will impact people who are currently imprisoned, as well as those who are on parole. Waiting periods for people denied parole to re-apply will jump from six months to one year, ensuring more people will spend a longer time in jail.

“One thing that does change that hasn’t been in the law before is that now if you are on parole, the government can put electronic bracelet on you, in terms of tracking where you’re going and trying to figure out exactly where you’ve been,” Dennis told The Dominion. “That wasn’t something they were able to do before, [something] that has been written into Bill C-10, that a lot of people don’t know about.”

*Marie's name has been changed at her request. Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Prison Print

Canada's International Cop Out

dawn — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:28:20 +0000

Former head of Ontario Provincial Police named Minister of International Co-operation

MONTREAL—On July 4, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Julian Fantino, the former head of the Ontario Provincial Police, as his new Minister of International Cooperation. The arrival of an ex-cop at the top of Canada's international development portfolio seems like a fitting symbol for the overall direction of Canadian foreign policy during the Harper government's reign.

A policeman for more than 40 years, Fantino rose steadily through the ranks, serving first as chief of police in London, Ontario, then the former York Region, and later Toronto, before being named as the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner in 2006. Fantino's career then went political, and he was elected the Member of Parliament for Vaughn in November, 2010, and was re-elected in May, 2011.

Throughout his career, Fantino has been involved in a considerable number of controversies. Perhaps most famously, Fantino oversaw the harsh repression of Toronto residents and anti-G20 protesters in the Ontario capital city in June of 2010.

Enzo DiMatteo, associate news editor at Now Magazine, covered Fantino's career for over more than 20 years, and coined the term "the OPP's top dick" to describe the province's former head cop.

"When you think of Julian Fantino you have to understand that there wasn't a microphone that he didn't like. He was constantly in the spotlight," DiMatteo told The Dominion. "He was very much his own man, very much did his own thing, very much didn't really care about civilian oversight… He was viewed as a bit of a cop's cop, but I think he was just a stubborn fellow who really didn't have much time for anybody's point of view, other than his own, quite frankly."

The new International Cooperation minister hasn't always placed cooperation at the forefront, especially when it pertains to cops killing civilians. Fantino's name is on the docket of a case expected to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013, regarding how police take notes at crime scenes. The families of Levi Shaeffer and Douglas Minty, both of whom were killed by officers during Fantino's days as top dick at the OPP, have used the courts to try and prevent police from having their crime scene notes vetted by lawyers before they're written.

Rachelle Sauve, from the Coalition Justice for Levi campaign, agrees with DiMatteo's description.

"The modus operandi of a man who is very much a police officer, and who...has gotten very comfortable with a certain level of impunity that he still gets to act out [in] moving away from that old role, leaves me in a very uncomfortable feeling position regarding what sort of aid and development we are going to bring through CIDA while he is in office," Sauve told The Dominion.

Nation-to-nation relations have not been Fantino's strongest suit. Fantino's fame as a bully exploded with the release of wiretapped conversations between himself and Mohawk activist Shawn Brant in 2007.

In the spring and summer of that year, when Mohawks at Tyendinaga repeatedly blocked CN Rail lines, Fantino called Brant to let him know what his future would hold if he continued to work with his community to defend the land.

"And you know what I don’t wanna I don’t wanna get on your bad side but you’re gonna force me to do everything I can within your community and everywhere else to destroy your reputation," Fantino told Brant in a phone conversation which was illegally recorded by the OPP. Fantino later claimed he was unaware the line was tapped. Their conversation, which was later published by the CBC, continued:

Julian Fantino: You know if you pull this off I’m liable to say that your your issues are are are are critical and they’re important and and I’ll speak to that but uh if you don’t then I’m gonna go the other way and I’m gonna say that you’re just destroying and you’re abusing you’re using the people and you’re you’re actually being a mercenary about it using the suicide of children and all those those legitimate uh issues and you don’t want that because I think I can I can I can play the media routine like you do

Shawn Brant: Hey Mister Fantino uh

Julian Fantino: Right

Shawn Brant: I I put two of my own babies in the ground um

Julian Fantino: I’m sorry

Far from his checkered past of politicized police raids in poor communities, and threats of ruining the reputation of activists, Fantino's first statement as Minister of International Cooperation aimed for a kinder, gentler message.

"I look forward to continuing the good work already done by CIDA around the world," said the newly-appointed minister. "In particular the efforts to save the lives of mothers, children, and newborns as part of Canada's Muskoka Initiative."

The first male to hold the position since Don Boudria left his post in 1997, Fantino will oversee an international cooperation ministry with a growing emphasis on policing and police training.

"Maybe it's fitting that we have a police officer—a former police officer—running the aid agency now, kind of playing the good cop to the military's bad cop as far as global order is concerned," said Nik Barry-Shaw, who co-authored a recent book on Canadian non-governmental organizations titled Paved with Good Intentions. "One of the kind of rough titles that we had for the book was...Good Cops of Global Capitalism. That's kind of the role, putting the human face on things that are fundamentally pretty ugly."

Canada is deeply involved with police training around the world, but it is the RCMP's ongoing role in training Haitian police forces has come under perhaps the most intense public scrutiny.

"A large part of what was...listed as aid to Haiti was in fact funding for police training in Haiti, and that was done with RCMP officers who were down there to train their Haitian counterparts in the arts of close quarter combats," Barry-Shaw told The Dominion.

RCMP training of Haitian police was happening at a time when there were regular raids of neighbourhoods that supported deposed president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Some of these raids ended in civilian massacres carried out by police. More recently, the RCMP have become involved in training Mexican police.

Fantino's appointment followed the announcement of former Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda's resignation. Oda will leave her post as MP of Durham, Ontario, on July 31.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @dawn_.

Fantino

Express Coup Rattles Paraguay

dawn — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:14:05 +0000

Transnational corporations including Canada's Rio Tinto Alcan undeterred by political turmoil

TORONTO—A coup snuck up on South America last month, taking people around the world by surprise. The June 22 ouster of President Fernando Lugo Mendez and his replacement by Federico Franco, head of the right-wing Paraguayan Liberal Party, took place without heavy police or military repression.

The Economist called the coup a "constitutional impeachment." There is no doubt that when he left office on June 22, Lugo bowed to the pressure of the Paraguayan Senate.

While several governments in South America indicated they would not recognize the coup government, Canada and the US immediately acknowledged the incoming regime. "Canada notes that Fernando Lugo has accepted the decision of the Paraguayan Senate to impeach him and that a new president, Federico Franco, has been sworn in," Diane Ablonczy, Canada's Minister of State of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement following the coup.

Lugo's final statement as president indicated he would submit to the request of the Senate and step down. Initially, he did not call for his supporters to take to the streets, and in fact through his words demobilized the Paraguayan people.

Following the coup, however, Lugo stated that what happened was indeed a coup, and that he had been removed from office in the same style as Manuel Zelaya was removed in Honduras.

"Here, there was a rupture of the democratic order, here there was a political trial without any reason, and a parliamentary coup was carried out. There are various names: an express coup, Cristina Kirchner [president of Argentina] mentioned that it was a soft coup," Lugo said during a radio interview a week after the coup. "The laboratory for all of this was three years ago in Honduras, and here in Paraguay it was perfected."

Unlike in the case of Zelaya, who was removed from Honduras to Costa Rica by Honduran soldiers, Lugo continues to reside in Asuncion, Paraguay's capital. Now in the thick of winter, Asuncion is cold, rainy and grey, and the level of mobilization is far lower than it was following Zelaya's ouster in Honduras.

Even before the coup took place in Paraguay, tensions were mounting. Lugo's removal as president came after calls for his resignation on the heels of a massacre in the Curuguaty region east of the capital, in which at least 17 people were killed, including six police officers and 11 peasants. It was the first peasant massacre in Paraguay since the country's return to democracy in 1989.

The campesino (peasant) movements in Paraguay are the most important social movements in the country, which is a little larger in size than the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, with a population of just over 6.5 million. The context of struggles around land, and in particular the events in Curuguaty in June of this year, are of great importance in order to properly understand the coup.

"In Paraguay there are between nine and 11 million hectares of land that we call 'wrongly-granted land' (tierras malhabidas), which are lands that were granted in a fraudulent manner during the Strossner dictatorship, from 1954 to 1989, to children of the dictator, relatives of the dictator, business people from the region, even to other dictators like Somoza, and to members of the Uruguayan military," said Abel Enrique Irala, a researcher with the Paraguay Peace and Justice Service (Serapaj) who spoke to The Dominion from Asuncion, Paraguay.

The June 15 massacre took place at Yvy Pyta, an area that is classified as having been mis-granted during the dictatorship and where the peasant movement had organized occupations at least four times. But at the time of the massacre, those who were occupying the lands were not connected to the larger peasant movement; they were called to participate by supporters of the Liberal party, of which Federico Franco is part. Following the massacre, press reports indicated that the police were killed by sharpshooters, but according to Irala, the only weapons found in the peasant camp at Yvy Pyta were machetes and homemade shotguns.

"This occupation was not carried out in the framework of the peasant movement, or with the knowledge of support of any Paraguayan national or regional peasant organization," said Irala. The day after the massacre, Irala traveled with a delegation of activists and journalists to Curuguaty, where he said local Liberal Party bosses were already calling for Lugo's resignation and the promotion of Franco to the presidency.

"The next day when we did the evaluation of what we saw, one of the things that really caught our attention was the relation between the [political] parties in that area, and the calls specifically for Lugo to resign and be replaced by Federico Franco," said Irala. "What we didn't imagine is that those speeches, made 170 kilometres from Asuncion, coming from what seemed like local party members...We would end up hearing seven days later, with the political trial of Lugo and with Federico Franco staying on as president."

Since Franco took power, the commission entrusted to investigate the events at Yvy Pyta has been cancelled.

In Paraguay, there have been actions to protest the coup, including a week-long occupation of a state-owned TV station by its workers, demonstrations in the capital, and international protests along with supporters in Paraguay's border areas with Brazil and Argentina. However, the overall level of social mobilization since the coup has been low.

Paraguay was the last country in the region to break with a two-party system, with the election of Lugo, considered a progressive President, in 2008. "Since 2008, a sector of the best [social movement] leaders transformed into bureaucrats and took up residence in the capital, convinced that this was the path to gain more force," wrote Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist and analyst, following the coup. "Today, with some exceptions, the movements are the weakest they have been in decades."

Though considered progressive, Lugo's government passed anti-terrorist legislation and declared a state of emergency across a number of departments (provinces) with a high level of peasant organization, once in 2010 and again in 2011. His government used repression to discourage peasant organizing and land occupations, and has maintained close relationships—especially with regards to intelligence sharing—with the US government under the umbrella of anti-narcotics initiatives.

Paraguayan analysts and writers have also commented on the appearance of a "ghost" guerrilla movement, the Paraguayan Peoples Army (EPP), which they say has been used by the government to justify increasingly repressive tactics, including the use of Colombian-trained special forces, against the peasant movement.

"The fall of Lugo, as in every political crisis, exposes the changes that are being produced in the region since Barack Obama defined the [United States'] new defence strategy," wrote Zibechi.

Since Franco was named president, he has agreed to re-initiate negotiations with Montreal-based Rio Tinto Alcan, and has sat down to meet with various local, national and international representatives of transnational capital. "One can deduce that [Franco] has already met with regional, national and international business people, who represent transnational power," said Irala. While Rio Tinto Alcan represents the biggest Canadian interest in Paraguay, it is far from the only one.

Bilateral merchandise trade between Canada and Paraguay last year was valued at more than $25 million. "Canadian companies looking into the Paraguayan marketplace may find opportunities in oil and gas, mining, and infrastructure sectors," according to the Government of Canada. Paraguay is also a participant in Canadian military training through the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

An article focused on the coup government's resumption of negotiations with Rio Tinto Alcan was published by the Media Co-op on Friday.

Anti-Coup protestors in Paraguay

Canada Boosts Police Power in Mexico

Tim McSorley — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:45:35 +0000

Ottawa's role in the permanent war against the people of Mexico

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO—The music is loud and the bar is well stocked. I sit timidly with a can of beer, eyes on the entrance. This was a happening nightclub before Juarez was transformed into a war zone. My companion, Julian Cardona, who used to shoot photos for the society pages of a local newspaper, describes what it used to be like here: Hummers triple-parked on the sidewalk, hundred-dollar tips, well-dressed Texans waiting behind velvet ropes to get in. Not anymore. The night I visited, the place was near empty, waitresses busy with their iPhones, a wandering cigarette vendor calling out to make a sale.

It was Cardona's idea to go to the nightclub; he said it would help me understand the city better. His career has taken an unexpected turn because of the violence: these days, instead of shooting for the society pages, he shoots crime scenes in one of the world’s most violent cities.

Ciudad Juarez, a city that boomed with the introduction of maquiladoras, has long been a city with high levels of violence. The murders of women through the 1990s gained international attention. For each dead woman, there were nine murdered men.

But when Juarez transformed into the focal point of Mexico’s war against drug traffickers, things in the city began to change beyond recognition. President Felipe Calderon launched a militarized war on drug traffickers at the beginning of his term in December 2006. At the end of March 2008, thousands of soldiers and federal police officers arrived in Ciudad Juarez as part of a surge against drug traffickers. After the police and troops arrived, the murder rate skyrocketed, violence increased, and kidnappings spiked. Ciudad Juarez became synonymous with everything that is wrong in Mexico.

But what’s happening in Mexico and in Juarez isn’t happening in isolation. On the one hand, drug consumption in Canada and the US fuels much of the demand that keeps the cartels in business. On the other, Canada and the US have increased their support for the Mexican police and army, even as their role in cities like Juarez is coming under intense criticism. This relationship was highlighted in March when defence ministers from all three countries held trilateral meetings for the first time.

"What we've seen here in [Ciudad Juarez] is that the city was militarized on the last day of March of 2008, when federal forces arrived here, thousands of troops from the army and the federal police," said Carlos Yeffim Fong, an activist and student who lives in Ciudad Juarez. At the peak of the militarization of Juarez, between 2009 and 2010, 5,000 federal police and 5,000 soldiers were in the city.

"Generally, before the soldiers came, there was an average of two murders a day, and when the soldiers arrived, that number began to rise, to five, and later to 10," recounted Fong on a cool November afternoon at the campus of the state-funded Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). "We've seen various cases where the army and federal police killed minors, as well as police and soldiers directly involved in robbery."

Locals also link federal police, known in Mexico as Federales, to kidnapping.

"When the wave of kidnappings grew, it was because of the arrival of the federal police," said Leobardo Alvarado, who runs the alternative news outlet JuarezDialoga. "Of course, it hasn't been proven that it has to do with that, but yes there are many documented cases where there were people linked to the federal police who committed these crimes."

The involvement of police in illegal activities is nothing new. "Mexican police, indeed, are widely reported to be involved in the trade of drugs, actively through assistance or passively through corruption," wrote Mathieu Deflem, a professor at the University of South Carolina, in 2001. But over the past ten years, the level of police involvement in the drug trade has deepened.

"There's always been a really close line, or, well, they're the same," said Cardona, who has lived in Juarez for over 30 years. "The police and the entire state apparatus, all of the institutions of the state, have always been the guarantors of the drug trade."

I interviewed Cardona on the patio of a Starbucks, the only establishment in Juarez that still dares to open its outdoor seating area. Our table faced a Wal-Mart, built over top of what was once a bullfighting arena. Every so often, we'd see a police car make a slow loop through the parking lot, lights flashing.

Police involvement in the drug trade intensified with the growth of Mexico's internal drug market, whose expansion has to do in part with increased border controls introduced after September 11, 2001. "Just 10 years ago, there was a lot of narcotrafico in Mexico but Mexicans themselves weren’t consuming the drugs," said Dr William I Robinson, professor and author of A Theory of Global Capitalism. "Now there’s millions of Mexicans that are addicted to drugs, and that are consumers of drugs also, and that’s because of those changes at the border and the changes in the velocity of drugs moving through Mexico."

As local drug markets grew, according to Cardona, police began to move drugs themselves, to execute people and even to move bodies in patrol cars, all of which meant they earned more money. Instead of wiping out these behaviors, the militarization of the city seems to have exacerbated them. "What happens is that when the Federales arrive in Juarez, and the army, is that they basically displace local state or municipal police from their markets," said Cardona.

Not everyone agrees on what exactly pushed Ciudad Juarez onto the map as a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world. The mainstream media claimed the violence stemmed from a turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel and La Linea, the armed wing of the Juarez Cartel, which they claim police and soldiers helped to quell. Upon careful examination, this narrative is constructed in the media using official sources such as unnamed officials and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The residents of Juarez I spoke to, however, place the blame squarely at the hands of the police and the army.

According to Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University who tracks the violence in Mexico, close to 95,000 people have been murdered in the country since the beginning of Calderon's term. In Juarez alone, more than 10,000 people have been murdered since 2008. Officials often state the dead were involved in the drug trade, but murders are rarely investigated.

"Most of the killings are between people, well, the people who died were unarmed," said Dr. Hector Padilla, a professor at the UACJ, with a dry chuckle. "The majority are people who were in transit, or who were working, or in their homes and someone arrives and pluck," he said, making a gun with his fingers and pulling the trigger.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre puts the number of internally displaced people at 160,000, though other studies show the number could be much higher. In addition, more than 5,000 people have been disappeared since 2006, and the number of federal prisoners has quintupled to more than 18,000, 40 per cent of whom are in pre-trial detention.

Images of gun-fighting, seized drugs and arrests are regularly reported on the evening news, while blogs disseminate torture-kill videos and grisly images of massacres and corpses cut into pieces.

Since the war on drugs was declared, police and policing have been a key component of the Merida Initiative, a US-Mexico strategy that aims to disrupt drug traffickers. In 2010, there were an estimated 409,536 police in Mexico, according to Insyde, a non-profit organization involved in US-funded police training. Federal police, of which there are more than 30,000, all receive in-country military training.

Before the US announced the Merida Initiative in 2007, Canada had already begun to increase security co-operation with Mexico.

Under the rubric of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, then-Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and his Mexican counterpart agreed to create a working group focused on bilateral security co-operation in early 2007. Two years later, RCMP officers were training Mexican Federal police.

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, along with trainers from the United States and other international partners, are providing basic training to Mexican Federal Police recruits," said Stephen Harper during a stop in Guadalajara in 2009. In addition to training 1,500 low-level Federales, the RCMP trained 300 mid-level Mexican officers, and 32 Mexican police commanders received training at the Canadian Police College.

There is no transparency from the RCMP regarding which Mexican officers have attended training in Canada, and thus far no way to verify whether or not Canadian-trained officers have been directly involved in criminal acts. "For security reasons we cannot give you the names of the Officials that attended training at our Canadian Police College," wrote RCMP media liaison Greg Cox in an email to The Dominion.

By late 2011, US funding had been used to "train over 55,000 law enforcement and justice sector officials, including 7,200 Federal police officers," according to the US State Department.

The New York Times reported that this training involved "conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects."

Regardless of the stated efforts of international police forces, corruption among Mexican police has not diminished. "We do not want to overstate this finding: We see no evidence that police corruption is actually falling," reads a 2011 report prepared by the right-wing Rand Corporation.

RCMP and US training of Mexican police is taking place alongside officers from Israel, Colombia, France, Spain, El Salvador, Holland, and the Czech Republic. Maribel Cervantes Guerrero, the highest ranking federal police officer in Mexico, was trained in the US, Israel and Spain.

International co-operation in matters of security creates spaces where "bureaucrats and military elites actively study and borrow each other’s techniques and advise one another on effective ruling practices," according to Laleh Khalili, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of London.

Renewed international interest on the part of Canada, the US and others in training Mexican police comes despite the fact that there is no proof that such training improves security or democracy.

"There is no evidence that almost a century of US assistance to foreign police has improved either the security of the people in recipient countries or the democratic practices of their police and security forces," points out Dr Martha Huggins, who has written extensively on US training of Latin American police. Instead, she says, "the outcome of such training may suggest that the training of Latin American police has deliberately been used to increase US control over recipient countries and those governments' undemocratic control over their populations."

But this isn't just about the US training Mexican cops. The RCMP’s training of Mexico’s police indicates that Ottawa is interested in developing a stronger influence over Mexico’s internal security matters.

In addition to police training, Canada and Mexico hold annual political, military and inter-army talks, and work together with the US and other nations through the Florida-based, anti-drugs Joint Interagency Task Force South. Mexico is also a member state of Canada's Directorate of Military Training and Co-operation, an organization the Department of National Defence says is designed to "enhance bilateral defence relationships with countries of strategic interest to Canada."

From March 26 to 27, 2012, defence ministers from Canada, the US and Mexico held their first trilateral meeting, promising to increase defence co-operation in the fight against drug cartels, as well as protecting trade. "By virtue of our geography, our peoples, and our trading relationship, our three nations share many defence interests,” reads a joint statement by defence ministers.

With bilateral merchandise trade at $21.3 billion and Canadian foreign direct investment at $4.9 billion in 2009, the government of Canada considers Mexico "one of Canada’s most important trading partners in the world."

By 2011 there were more than 2,500 Canadian companies operating in Mexico. Canada's presence is especially strong in the mining and aerospace sector; Goldcorp and Bombardier have made major investments over the past two years.

Canada's growing corporate presence in Mexico may in part explain the increasingly close military and police co-operation. "If it’s a problem for Mexico, it’s a problem for Canada," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay in a statement to the media after the March meeting.

The fact that policing is the central focus of Canada’s security engagement with Mexico is in line with current military strategy, which advocates local police taking a key role over the long term.

"In the simplest of terms, the aim of military intervention is to restore the situation to the point at which the host nation police and security forces are able to maintain law and order," reads Canada's Counterinsurgency Operations Manual.

Indeed, getting the army off the streets of Juarez and the rest of Mexico is also a stated goal of the US State Department. "The Ambassador emphasized that the Mexican military needed an exit strategy," reads a State Department cable released by Wikileaks. "Mexico must build up its civil police and prosecutorial forces to fill much of the space currently occupied by the military."

Though homicide rates have begun to drop in Ciudad Juarez, there continues to be far more murders in the city than there were prior to 2008. Federal police still patrol Juarez, usually masked, often in the back of a pick-up truck with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles across their chests. Residents indicate that simply being out on the street is enough to provoke search and detention by police, likening the situation to an unofficial curfew under which the poorest are regular targets for police abuse.

Far from improving security for residents of Mexican cities and towns, the replacement of soldiers with an expanded, internationally trained, militarized police force is tantamount to the extension of war, by another name.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Mexico outlines

Chilean Supreme Court Red Lights Goldcorp Mine

Tim McSorley — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:50:58 +0000

Indigenous community leader celebrates ruling, promises continued opposition

MEXICO—On Friday, the Chilean Supreme Court ratified a lower court ruling that rendered Goldcorp's environmental assessment for the El Morro mine null, due to irregularities including the company's failure to properly consult with the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community, whose lands would be destroyed if the mine is built.

Following the lower court ruling, Goldcorp stated that they would not stop working until they received an order declaring the Resolution of Environmental Quality, a kind of environmental permit, to be without effect. "This is the order, and there is no appeal," said Sergio Campusano Villches, President of the Diaguita Huascualtino community.

The Chilean press is reporting that the Supreme Court decision was unanimous, and that the company must respond to the ruling before taking further steps towards opening the mine.

The judgement in their favour was a surprise, according to Campusano, who was already preparing to take the legal battle international.

"We were afraid because three of the five judges in the Chilean Supreme Court have been accused of being bought off," Campusano told the Vancouver Media Co-op. "We were actually even preparing to go to the Inter American Commission, since we know there's a lot of money at play here."

The decision has raised the question of whether Goldcorp actually would prefer to deal with this case inside of Chile rather than in international courts, says Campusano. But, he says, his people will continue to oppose proposed copper mine, which requires an almost $4 billion investment by co-owners Goldcorp (70 per cent) and New Gold (30 per cent). Both companies are based in Vancouver.

"These days the ideas of 'consultation' and 'consent' have been manipulated by consulting and human resources firms that work for the government, local governments also stick their noses in there without knowing what they're doing," said Campusano. "All we did was play the game that they want us to play, and 'the illusion' has ended."

The Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community have already taken a case against Barrick Gold to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Campusano will be in Vancouver in early June to speak at the Shout Out Against Mining Injustice event, organized by the Council of Canadians.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op. This piece was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community

Goldcorp Base Camp El Morro

Oil, Gas and Banks Head South

Miles — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:56:15 +0000

Mining companies are only part of Canada's corporate presence in Latin America

LOS CABOS, MEXICO—The hard fought battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was slated to carry tar sands crude across Canada and the United States to port in Texas, kicked struggles against Canadian-owned oil and gas companies up to a new level. Resistance dominated headlines in Canada, while rural folk, Indigenous people, celebrities, and climate activists in the US took direct action to block Calgary-based TransCanada’s plans. In northern BC, Indigenous-led resistance to the proposed Enbridge pipeline, along with a host of other US-owned infrastructure projects, have become front and centre issues for environmentalists and activists across Canada.

The role of Canadian oil, gas and pipeline companies in other parts of the world is, however, less discussed. Many activists have focused on the behavior of the Canadian mining sector, a natural choice given the size of that sector compared to the oil and gas industries in Canada. “In Canada, a major difference between the oil and gas and mining sectors is that while many of Canada’s largest companies are oil and gas producers, some with integrated operations, they are not particularly prominent in the global arena just now,” reads a 2008 report by the Economic Commission on Latin America.

It’s been four years since that report was released, and it might be time to revisit the idea that the Canadian oil and gas sector hasn’t gained prominence on a global scale. Take the case of Latin America, where a host of oil and gas companies based in Calgary and Toronto have been increasing their holdings throughout the hemisphere, taking advantage of the same lax legal standards Canadian mining companies enjoy.

A study by Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP found that in 2010, Canadian oil and gas companies made over $35 billion in mergers and acquisitions in Central and Latin America, and the region is the second most attractive place (after the United States) for Canadian oil companies to invest outside of Canada. Colombia in particular has quickly become a favourite destination for this new surge of Canadian oil and gas investment.

At the same time as the Canadian Senate approved a free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia in June of 2010, a government-hosted bidding fair on oil and gas properties was taking place in Cartagena, Colombia. "I have some good news for our Canadian friends. The Senate has just approved a free trade agreement...so that opens the way for a lot of opportunities and our government is very happy about that,” said then-Colombian Energy and Mining Minister Hernan Martinez to corporate representatives bidding on oil and gas concessions in Cartagena that day.

Canadian oil companies were among the chief supporters of the agreement, which was roundly criticized because of the continued killings, kidnapping and displacement of Indigenous people, trade unionists, peasants, dissenters and the poor in Colombia. A free trade agreement with Peru was approved by the Canadian Senate a little later, on the heels of a massacre in the Amazon province of Bagua where an estimated 100 people were killed during protests in defense of their lands.

A preliminary list of Canadian oil companies active in Latin America

CALGARY
Gran Tierra Energy Incorporated: Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru
Parex Resources Incorporated: Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago
Canacol Energy Limited: Colombia, Guyana, Brazil
Talisman Energy Incorporated: Colombia, Peru
Nexen Incorporated: Colombia
Petrominerales: Colombia, Peru
Quattro Exploration and Production: Guatemala
Quetzal Energy Limited: Colombia

VANCOUVER
Petro Vista Energy Corporation: Colombia, Brazil
TrueStar Petroleum Corporation: Guatemala

TORONTO
Pacific Rubiales Energy: Colombia, Peru, Guatemala

Pacific Rubiales and Talisman, two of the most important Canadian oil companies in Colombia, have already come under intense criticism linked to the high environmental and social cost of their operations.

A class action lawsuit brought against Talisman in 2002, which was later dismissed, alleged that the company was involved in funding war in southern Sudan. “Talisman Energy finances and directs the Government of Sudan’s ethnic cleansing campaign and must be stopped before all of our villages are destroyed and all of the people are killed,” said Taban Deng, a former government official, in 2002, from what is today Southern Sudan.

In some ways, it seems that little has changed in the 10 years since Talisman was active in Sudan. In December of last year, Amazon Watch released testimony from a priest who traveled into northern Peruvian Indigenous communities near Talisman’s operations. “The presence of Talisman is generating conflict between those who accept and those who don't accept the company, and a conflict like this here in the jungle runs the risk costing many lives,” said Father Diego Clavijo. “What they are doing here [in the Pastaza river basin] with some ex-leaders is also dividing people, and it is going to cause death and destruction,” he said. “We are on the verge of genocide, genocide between peoples, due to infighting over the presence of the company here.”

Talisman made inroads in conflict-ridden Colombia in 2010, when they bought 49 per cent of BP’s oil and gas projects in Colombia, including more than 2,000 kilometres of pipelines.

Pacific Rubiales, for its part, operates the largest oil project in Colombia. The company, which at one point had a military base with 600 soldiers stationed on its property, has been subject to ongoing strikes by the United Workers Union (USO). Numerous incursions by riot police to break up strikes have resulted in serious injuries among workers. Pacific Rubiales is working hard on public relations, having recently sponsored a prestigious golf tournament in Colombia, inaugurated with a celebrity swing by Bill Clinton.

Along with Nexen, another Calgary-based company, Pacific Rubiales has announced that it has discovered natural gas reserves within its Colombian concessions. A number of other Canadian companies have recently displayed renewed interest in the vast jungle regions of northern Guatemala, which is populated by communities primarily of Mayan descent. Increasing conflict in the region, exemplified by a horrific massacre of 27 peasants in San Benito, Peten, last year, has not been linked directly with oil and gas interests, instead being linked to the activity of drug cartels.

Tracing the fault lines of Canadian oil and gas companies in Latin America and the Caribbean also requires looking at Canada’s role in the banking sector throughout the region. RBC and Scotiabank are both major players, with banks and ATMs popping up throughout countries with heavy mining and oil and gas investment.

"Today, RBC has bought off every single aspect of the [Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago], and now financially dominates the landscape," said Macdonald Stainsby, an activist and writer who returned from the island nation earlier this year. “[RBC has] openly called for financing of new oil plays, in particular they’ve brought up tar sands,” he said. Stainsby, who runs the website oilsandstruth.org, increasingly devotes time to making links with communities organizing against tar sands in countries like Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

Building these links of solidarity and continuing to raise awareness about the impacts of oil and gas projects on local communities, while at the same time organizing against war and repression that so often accompany these projects, is work that must continue if we are to have any chance of collective survival on this planet.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op. A version of this article was published in the March/April print edition of Watershed Sentinel.

Oil Death Jeans Improved

Canadian-owned Mine Fuels Violence in Mexico

stephlaw — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:29:17 +0000

Residents of San José del Progreso are deeply divided over the mine

SAN JOSE DEL PROGRESO, MEXICO—It's been almost three years since hundreds of people took direct action to temporarily shut down Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver's gold and silver mine near Oaxaca City, Mexico. Since then, the neighbouring community of San Jose del Progreso has been deeply divided and residents have faced a series of difficult and sometimes deadly confrontations.

Three people have been killed so far, most recently, Bernardo Mendez Vasquez, who was shot seven times on January 18, 2012 by a municipal police officer. Locals say municipal authorities ordered the police to attack residents who were refusing to allow a new water system to be installed on their land because they feared it would be used to supply the mine with water.

Mine operation came to a two-month halt in 2009 when Zapotec community members from San Jose del Progreso and surrounding villages held it for nearly two months. The blockade ended with a massive police raid, during which demonstrators were beaten and 23 people were jailed, some for up to three months.

Fortuna has thus far avoided being linked to the violence by playing up the fact that people in San Jose are fighting with each other. CEO Jorge Ganoza has repeatedly referred to it as “senseless” violence.

"It is in no way related to our activities or involves company personnel, and we really hope that the people of San Jose, with the assistance of the state authorities, will find a long-term solution to this senseless violence,” Ganoza told the National Post regarding the recent killing.

The mine, known locally by the name of its subsidiary, Minera Cuzcatlan, went into production in late September 2011. Its opponents maintain that Fortuna Silver’s mine is the root of social problems that plague the once peaceful region.

In a press conference following the police shooting of Vasquez, mine opponents made it clear that they see a direct link between Fortuna Silver and the violence.

“The social and political conflicts that have ended the lives of three people are due to the appearance of the mining company, without the consent of the people, and not [due] to the control and power over the municipality as expressed by various authorities in the state government,” reads a statement signed by over a dozen Oaxacan organizations.

The existence of the mining project is something that residents of San Jose del Progreso cannot ignore. The main access road into the town passes directly in front of Fortuna’s massive operations, complete with the company's own power station, offices and a huge stockpile of ore, all surrounded by high chain link fence.

“In one year [the company] managed to cut the town in half, to divide the people, and the dispute became present in all spaces: in the primary school, in the secondary school, in the kindergarten, in the health centre, in city hall, in all of these situations,” said Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez, who lives in San Jose and works with the Co-ordinating Committee of the United Villages of the Ocotlan Valley.

In the centre of the village, which is home to about 1,200 people, Sanchez pointed out that there are two different taxi stands, one used by people in favour of the mine, and another by those who are opposed.

City hall has effectively been shut down since January, when municipal authorities and municipal police fled after the murder of Vasquez.

“Basically the entire town is divided in two parts, one part that has a mayor, and another part that does not have a mayor,” said Sanchez, who has worked with other community members to formally requested the dissolution of powers of the municipal government.

Sanchez and others are worried the project might eventually become an open pit mine, further threatening the region’s already fragile water system. Given Fortuna’s track record, there is reason to be worried: Simon Ridgway, chair of Fortuna’s board of directors, was subject to two arrest warrants in Honduras because of environmental contamination from an open pit mine now owned by Goldcorp Inc.

Father Martin Garcia Ortiz, a priest in San Jose del Progreso, was beaten and kidnapped by people in favour of the project in 2010. He was later jailed and then released without charge and subsequently decided to leave the parish.

According to sources in Oaxaca City and San Jose del Progreso, a group started by the mining company, called “San Jose in Defense of our Rights,” has taken on a paramilitary role in the community, intimidating opponents of the project.

“Things are so broken that there’s no other way out, the only way, I think, is that the company leaves,” said Father Ortiz.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

A longer version of this story was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Fortuna Silver's mine

Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez

Militarized Mining in Mexico

dawn — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:31:06 +0000

Canadian mining company makes good off the "drug war"

MADERA, MEXICO—On an August afternoon in 2008, Dante Valdez Jimenez was giving a teacher training class in an elementary school in Madera, a small town in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. But before he got through his lecture, he was interrupted by a group of 30 men, some of them armed.

In the minutes that followed, Valdez was savagely beaten in front of his students. While they beat him, his attackers yelled that he should keep his nose out of other people's business. Valdez was lucky to escape with his life.

Five days later, Amnesty International put out an alert expressing concern for the safety of Valdez, as well as members of a nearby community. The attack was political: Valdez is known for his work against Minefinders, a Vancouver-based company that operates an open-pit gold mine near Madera. Amnesty indicated that among the attackers were employees of the mining company.

“There isn’t a single authority in any of the three levels of government that is looking out for the people who are displaced, for people who have been mistreated or beaten,” said Valdez, his voice quiet and low. He pointed out that there was a classroom full of witnesses to the incident, but there was never an investigation.

The attack on Valdez wasn’t an isolated event, but a brazen reminder of the repression meted out to those who organized against Minefinders, which began operating in Mexico in 1994 on the heels of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The company started construction on a low-grade, cyanide-leaching gold and silver mine near Madera in 2007.

Madera, which means “wood” in Spanish, is situated high in the Sierra Madre mountain range and possesses the rugged air of a logging town. But the area is anything but tranquil: throughout the Sierra Madre, the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug cartel, is said to be battling with La Linea, the armed wing of the Juarez Cartel.

According to the official story, at stake are trafficking routes, as well as vast fields where marijuana and opium poppies are cultivated by peasant and Indigenous farmers.

The war in Mexico, often called a “war on drugs,” launched in late 2006, resulting in increased violence and militarization that has spread to municipalities and rural areas all over the country. The northern state of Chihuahua has been particularly hard hit. Since 2008, more than 9,000 people have been murdered in the city of Juarez alone, and massacres against unarmed civilians have taken place across the state.

But in some areas, like Madera, it appears the militarization that’s taken place on the pretext of the drug war has worked in favour of the extractive industries.

Before construction of the Minefinders mine could begin, the historic town of Dolores was relocated to make way for the project, affecting more than 60 families. Locals were not ardently anti-mining, but many felt that Ejido Huizopa, the body which represents communal landholders in the area, was not getting a fair shake.

By 2008, as construction gave way to gold production, tensions between the company and members of Ejido reached a breaking point. That May, after coming to a majority decision in an assembly, members of the Ejido erected a blockade at the mine access route, demanding meaningful negotiations and a better agreement with the company. People working for the mining company were prevented from passing, but soldiers were allowed through the barricades.

Minefinders soon found a way around the protesters, one which didn’t involve sitting at a negotiating table.

“At the blockade, there was always, permanently, soldiers travelling in the company trucks, dressed like civilians, [and] as many as eight company trucks watching the demonstrations, the blockade,” said Valdez. Not only were blockaders intimidated by the presence of soldiers, but the company continued to access the mine, passing through the blockade because they had soldiers in their trucks.

During and immediately following an attack by armed commandos that year on civilians in Creel, a neighbouring village, soldiers and police maintained a continuous presence at the blockade.

“There was an attack on the community of Creel, and 14 people were killed,” explained David de la Rosa, an environmentalist and peasant organizer based in Madera. “The authorities took three days to get to Creel, and the army was here accompanying a peaceful blockade, backing up a company, just two hours away from where this took place.”

The blockade lasted one year and five months, during which time residents say Minefinders co-opted members of Ejido Huizopa through financial incentives and intimidation.

“When the mining company saw that we had a majority of [communal land owners] supporting us, they began to manipulate in a certain way, using the same people from the Ejido to manipulate other companeros, to ensure that we didn’t have a majority in decision-making,” said Luis Pena Amaya, a member of Ejido Huizopa who helped organize the blockade.

As on the blockades, the militarization of the region factored into Minefinders’ ability to win support for their open-pit mine.

“The Federal Police had a presence and intimidated people on many occasions. In the decisive assembly, they took control and surrounded the inside of the salon where we held our assembly,” said Pena Amaya. The intrusion of police into communal decision-making is unconstitutional in Mexico. “When things turned against the other group, which was the group preferred by the mining company, [Federal Police] intervened to ensure that we didn’t exercise our rights.”

Eventually, the Ejido signed an agreement with Minefinders, but problems remain. Last year, a tear in the liner of a heap leach pad, which has yet to be fully repaired, caused leakage of contaminants near the mine site. Environmentalists and human rights organizations in the area confirmed that they fear travelling to the mine site, because the road to the mine is under the control of organized crime groups.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Mining In Mexico

Community Reels after Resident Falls to her Death in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

dawn — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:00:24 +0000

Life "more harsh" for women living in single room occupancy suites

VANCOUVER—James Mickleson has lived in a small room on the fourth floor of the Regent Hotel for the past seven years. In that time he says he has seen 17 dead bodies in and around his building, lying in front of his door or in the alley near his home.

On Friday, Mickleson witnessed something he won't forget for a long time. He saw Verna Simard fly out of a sixth floor window and hit the sidewalk in front of the Regent, head first.

"It wasn't just seeing it, it was the noise," he said. "She screamed and then it went silent."

By the time I met with Mickleson, he hadn't slept for over 24 hours, the vision of Simard’s violent death cycling in his mind.

"It took me an hour to get the contents of her head off my shoes," he said.

Mickleson first met Simard two years ago when she moved into the hotel, renting one of the notoriously rough Single Room Occupancy (SRO) suites in the building.

"I'm going to miss Verna, cause she always knew when I got mad, when somebody was pissed off, she intervened," he said. "She always told me I should move out of here, cause I didn't fit in."

As we spoke, Mickleson sat upright in his wheelchair, tense and alert. His mood captured the sombre atmosphere on Hastings Street, during what was originally billed as a block party. As Mickelson wheeled up to a small vigil set up for Simard in front of the hotel, candles flickered, and mourners and friends laid down cigarettes and flowers.

While it isn’t known exactly what happened to Simard, who was a 50 year old Indigenous woman, many theories floated around the streets as residents participated in the fifth annual Women’s Housing March.

The only certainty seemed to be that Simard‘s death wasn’t an isolated event, but something that could only be understood in the context of extreme violence and ongoing murders of women, which have haunted the neighborhood since convicted mass murderer Robert Pickton roamed the streets.

“Nothing’s changed, if anything it seems to have gotten more harsh for the women living in SROs,” said Carol Martin, a community based victim services worker with the Downtown East Side Women’s Centre. Martin was down the street at the Carnegie Centre when Simard was killed, and Saturday afternoon she was still reeling from what she had seen when she went to the Regent after hearing of Simard's death.

People were “freaked right out,” said Martin, sitting down under a small tent beside the main stage on Hastings Street, where scheduled events continued into the evening. “I was in shock, I couldn’t walk away.”

One year and one day before Martin saw Simard's body lying beside the Regent , she witnessed 22 year old Ashley Machiskinic, who was also Indigenous, fall to her death in the alley behind the same hotel.

“I witnessed her breathing her last breath,” Martin said. “A life is a life is a life, it doesn’t matter what colour you are or where you’re from. But in reality, it does.”

A disproportionate amount of missing and murdered women across Canada, including in BC and Vancouver are Indigenous women, said Martin, who also helps organize the February 14th Women's Memorial March. And every year, she says, the list gets longer.

Like many others still stunned by Simard’s death, Martin made the time to come out to the march and events on Saturday.

“They need to build housing,” said Martin. “You can’t just do a band-aid solution to problems that have roots right down to violence, death, homelessness, residential schools, child apprehension and police brutality."

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist. This article was originally published on the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Vigil for Verna Simard

SFU Student Government Moves to Displace Progressive Groups

Tim McSorley — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:06:22 +0000

PIRG faces eviction, lockout targets campus orgs, union workers

BURNABY—Midway through the summer, life got turned upside down for campus and community groups on SFU's Burnaby Campus.

On July 7, the members of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3338 were given notice that after two years of contract negotiations they would be locked out of their offices. The move by the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) impacts 15 permanent staff and five student employees who work for the society. The lockout took effect Sunday, July 10, and picket lines went up in front of the SFU Women's Centre and Out on Campus (OoC) spaces Monday morning where some of the locked-out employees work. At the time of print, the lock-out was ongoing.

The day after the Student Society walked away from contract talks, its Space Oversight Committee recommended terminating the lease of the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group's (SFPIRG) space in the Rotunda, an area popular with students. SFPIRG has been in the Rotunda for 30 years, but the recommendation, which still needs approval before it goes into force, came as a complete surprise to SFPIRG members.

Following the lock-out, there was a flurry of activity on campus as supporters of the Women's Centre, Out on Campus, and SFPIRG held a demonstration and march against the Student Society's actions. Later, they got to work making buttons, preparing leaflets and exchanging notes on resisting what many are calling a targeted political attack on campus organizations that don't fit the "old boys' club" mold.

SFSS student board members are currently staffing Out on Campus and the Women's Centre. Posters all over campus put up by the SFSS student board declare, "Funding! Food! Spaces! Come in, we're open!" and claim CUPE workers' wages are too high.

"I'm operating as if I'm at work," said Samonte Cruz, the coordinator of Out on Campus and a CUPE 3338 member. Out on Campus runs a library and a lounge where staff and volunteers work hard to create an inclusive, accessible environment for queer students, faculty, staff and their allies. But in a strange role reversal, since the start of the lock-out Cruz and other OoC volunteers have been asking students not to enter the student lounge. "As far as I'm concerned, the lounge is outside right now," said Cruz, as he bit into a sandwich and tried to make himself comfortable on a hard plastic chair surrounded by picket signs.

"The problem with the SFSS board saying the space is open is that it's not open in the same capacity it was established to be open as," said Darren Ho, a second-year linguistics student and Out on Campus volunteer. Ho was busy pressing buttons in support of SFSS staff. Referring to the SFSS student board members who have been operating the space, he said, "It is a trespass of safe space, in that we don't know if they even know what safe space means."

Ho expressed concern that community members who call or email for advice or referrals might not know that the qualified staff has been replaced by untrained SFSS board members.

The Women's Centre lounge is open 24 hours as a safe space for self-identified women, providing, for example, a place to rest for someone who misses the last bus home, or a shelf to refrigerate breast milk for a new mom rushing between classes. The centre also offers peer support, referrals, a work experience program, a library, and a comfortable environment for folks who might not otherwise find a space on campus where they feel at home.

"Their rhetoric is that it is just a space—that no staff hours are needed," said Nadine Chambers, who serves as the coordinator of the Women's Centre. "But every day we have teaching opportunities around the complexity of gender."

Chambers was walking me through the multitude of ways the Women's Centre supports students and community members when Jeff McCann, President of the SFSS, walked into the SFPIRG office. With the air of an impatient manager, he interrupted our interview, demanding to know when the Women's Centre collective was to meet.

McCann is a business student and former football player who previously served as SFSS treasurer. He was elected president in March, and began his term in May, promising to "increase efficiencies." He has since led the SFSS into what CUPE 3338 calls an "ideological move against the union" and put the Student Society on a collision course with SFPIRG.

At the afternoon rally, there was no shortage of people whose university experience has been enriched by the resource groups in the Rotunda. "I felt that these spaces, the people here, and the staff in particular, helped me get through my economics degree," said Amber Louie, the Student Convocation Speaker of the class of 2003. Louie made the trip up Burnaby Mountain specifically to show solidarity with the locked-out workers. "They really supported me in getting to where I am today," she explained.

This isn't the first time the SFSS has tried to undermine the work of progressive groups on campus.

"In 2006, the rhetorical justification was fiduciary responsibility to the society," wrote Joel Block, chief steward of SFU's Teaching Support Staff Union. "This summer, it’s financial responsibility to the student members."

The other poster posted by the SFSS student board this week claims that $748,911 paid out to SFSS staff is inflated compared to the $115,908 transferred to clubs and student union funding. The SFSS directors' Twitter account is replete with claims of how much the Student Union is saving by locking out its staff. Not mentioned is the $831,000 the SFSS spent last year renovating the pub. Then again, that is where the old boys are more likely to hang out.

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist.

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In BC, Pipes Spell Double Trouble

Moira Peters — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:01:27 +0000

KSL gas pipeline is low profile, high threat

VANCOUVER—The struggle against the proposed Enbridge pipeline, which has galvanized First Nations throughout northern BC and earned popular support from people across the country, has become one of the highest profile Indigenous and environmental issues in Canada. Concerns are mounting that in Enbridge's shadow, other energy projects are slipping under the radar—with potentially explosive consequences.

The Kitimat Summit Lake (KSL) gas pipeline, also called the Pacific Trails Pipeline, is of emerging concern to Wet'suwet'en land defenders and local residents. If built, this pipeline would connect to an existing Westcoast Energy Pipeline at Summit Lake, near the geographical centre of BC, and cut west to Kitimat.

“The general location of the pipeline was the first phase of BC’s new and controversial Energy Corridor discussions; other phases...included the Enbridge oil pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, which many First Nations strongly opposed in early 2011,” reads a recent report prepared by the BC Tap Water Alliance about the KSL pipeline proposal.

At the western end of the proposed pipeline would sit a brand new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) port, which is being built by a handful of former Duke Energy insiders on Haisla reserve land at Bish Cove, an area described in media reports as pristine beachfront. First planned as a pipeline to supply the tar sands with natural gas, the project has since been modified to provide an export channel for the emerging shale gas bonanza in northeastern BC and Alberta.

“In 2004, for all of the energy processes in North America, we didn’t have enough gas,” said Will Koop of the BC Tap Water Alliance. “Now they want to export this gas, they want to change the direction of the import gas proposal from Kitimat to the tar sands and reverse it,” Koop told The Dominion.

The proposed KSL pipeline would be almost 500 kilometres in length and 91 centimetres in diameter; it would also be flanked by an 18-metre right-of-way on each side. The project has quietly received approval from both the federal and provincial governments, and is awaiting the final nod from the National Energy Board, the federal agency that oversees oil and gas projects in Canada.

“Nobody showed up for the first open house in Houston—three people I think—so they cancelled all the other open houses. There was never another open house on the KSL pipeline,” said Glenda Ferris, a long time environmentalist who lives in the Buck Creek Valley near Houston BC. “There was never even a news article about this pipeline in the local papers...They did this all under the table,” she said.

In February 2011, Vancouver-based Pacific Northern Gas sold its stake in the KSL project to the Houston-based Apache Corporation and EOG Resources (formerly Enron).

Ferris is not alone in feeling left in the dark about the plans to build the KSL pipeline.

In early April 2011, Freda Huson, a spokesperson for the Unist'hot'en Clan of the Wet'suwet'en, received a letter from Pacific Trails Pipeline, indicating that the company planned to put drilling pads on the site of her family’s camp. A week later, Huson visited the location, the company having neglected to seek permission or prior consent from her clan as traditional land owners.

On the site, Huson noted fluorescent ribbons inscribed with the words “Pacific Trails Pipelines” hanging from tree branches, marking the path the pipeline would follow. Enraged, Huson took down the ribbons, and returned the next day with members of her family to build a makeshift fence around the area.

These days, Huson is entertaining the idea of moving into a cabin on-site so that she can keep a closer eye on what is happening on the land she says her family has depended on for trapping and fishing for hundreds of years.

“I received a telephone call and they said they were wanting to meet with us, because we told them they were not coming in, and we would block them,” said Huson, referring to her last interaction with one of the pipeline companies.

Unlike in the case of the Enbridge pipeline, elected officials from the 14 First Nations along the KSL pipeline path have already agreed to the project. Some have received incentives, including employment for band members, for agreeing to the project. The Haisla Nation did not respond to a request for an interview before press time.

The cumulative impacts of the infrastructure connected to the KSL pipeline will be enormous, and range from LNG terminal and storage areas near the coast to the massive shale gas projects in northeastern BC, which are slated to use a significant portion of the energy generated by the proposed Site-C dam. A recent study from Cornell University indicates that natural gas extracted from shale through a process known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) may actually release more carbon emissions in the long run than coal or oil.

Oil and gas pipelines running side by side also make a dangerous combination.

East of the Morice River, lying to the west of the town of Smithers, BC, a significant distance separates the proposed route of the Enbridge oil pipeline and that of KSL. However, closer to the river as well as to the west, the proposed pipelines would run side by side.

“When they go up the Morice and through the coast mountains to Kitimat, they’re right on top of each other,” said Ferris. “The basic probability of failure is an explosion, why would you ever allow an oil pipeline to be built next to the KSL pipeline?"

“I’ve never seen Enbridge acknowledge the KSL pipeline,” she said, “and what hazard the KSL pipeline is going to pose to an oil pipeline.”

Enbridge did not return this reporter’s request for an interview before press time.

Dawn Paley is a journalist in Vancouver.

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REDD Light!

Moira Peters — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:37:55 +0000

Indigenous say offset plan threatens traditional title

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO—The carbon market was the hottest issue at last year’s Conference of the Parties (COP)-16 summit in Cancun. Inside the meeting, delegates approved the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Conservation program (REDD+). However, outside the official meeting, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Indigenous-led organizations clashed over its merits.

Opponents of REDD+ (or simply “REDD”), say the mechanism is a false solution to the climate crisis which will intensify a pattern of land grabs by the private sector throughout the Third World. The final Cancun text on REDD does little to address these concerns, as it does not contain wording that would prevent conservation projects from encroaching on the rights and title of Indigenous peoples living in forest-rich lands.

Deforestation is responsible for at least 18 per cent of global carbon emissions—more than aviation and global transport combined—according to a report by carbon management company Carbon Planet. REDD is a mechanism by which forests in developing countries are “sustainably managed” or designated as carbon sinks in order to mitigate climate change. Though REDD primarily emerged from the COP-13 in Bali in 2007, the idea germinated during Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997.

In Cancun, a clear anti-REDD message unified many Mexican Indigenous, environmental and peasant groups, but NGOs such as Greenpeace International, the World Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Conservation International promoted the REDD agreement.

No REDD projects have yet been implemented in Chiapas, which, as a state with heavy forest cover, is a target region for the program. According to Gustavo Castro Soto, an organizer with Otros Mundos (“Other Worlds,” a social and environmental justice organization) in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, the mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness and impact of REDD programs have yet to be designed.

Already, precursors to the implementation of REDD have people like Castro worried. Barring people’s access to forests on ejidos (communally-held lands) is the first necessary step in putting these forested areas on the carbon market.

“This is how the government will ensure that there is a forest in each ejido, and this will obviously be sold as an Environmental Service [a UN-defined category of the carbon market], for which the government will receive a quantity of money, of which the community will receive a fraction,” said Castro.

“This is what they call sustainable community forest management,” he said dryly.

Decisions about how exactly to finance REDD have been postponed to COP-17 in Durban.

“If REDD is going to be financed through the carbon market, it won’t be a real solution to climate change,” Mariana Porras of Friends of the Earth Costa Rica told The Dominion in a phone interview from San Jose. “We’ve denounced this, but government groups don’t see it the same way,” she said.

Market-based financing for REDD will likely complement the ongoing privatization of forest reserves, which moves ownership and access rights of forests currently owned communally by Indigenous or peasant communities into the hands of individuals.

In Costa Rica, as in Mexico, the government is in the early phases of implementing REDD, which means engaging in public consultations. “If you see who gets invited to the meetings about REDD—to the consultations—it’s rare that you’ll see a peasant community, or peasant organizations,” said Porras. “Mostly, you’ll see people who own private lands, or people from private organizations.”

In Cancun, the Indigenous Environmental Network stood in opposition to the discourse of many other NGOs. In a final statement from Cancun, they berated COP-16 as the “World Trade Organization of the sky,” and harshly criticized the REDD plan. “The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies and land grabs—anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions,” reads their final release.

In the streets of Cancun, Greenpeace International brought delegates from around the world to show support for popular movements, but the organization’s language fell short of grassroots solidarity. Days before the final agreement was reached, Executive Director Kumi Naidoo released a statement saying that “a good REDD deal would benefit biodiversity, people and the climate.”

Greenpeace was steadfast in its support for the outcome of the climate negotiations in Mexico, and after COP-16 wound down, Naidoo posed for a photo with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and praised the president’s leadership in reaching a global climate agreement.

Resistance to the REDD program did not end with COP-16. Activists say that the COP-17 meeting in Durban at the end of the year will be decisive as to the future of REDD, and the carbon market is sure to be a key issue in the months preceding the conference.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver.

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BC Hydro-St'at'imc Authority Agreement Creates a Wave of Opposition

Moira Peters — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:17:30 +0000

Deal opens territory to hydro in new ways, say critics

VANCOUVER—A new agreement between BC Hydro, the province of British Columbia and the St'at'imc Chiefs Council was approved in a nation-wide vote last weekend, but a group of St'at'imc community members say they're still determined to stop the deal.

The six-volume agreement is said to have a net-worth of $210 million. It is payable over the next 99 years through a nation-wide trust and individual one-time payouts for each of the 11 St’at’imc communities.

Confidential talks between St'at'imc negotiators and BC Hydro took place over the last 17 years, and the contents of the agreement were released to St'at'imc people in January 2011. It went to a vote on April 9, 2011. An estimated 45 per cent of St’at’imc people participated, 72 per cent of whom voted in favour of the deal.

"The majority of our people didn't even know about [the agreement]," said Roger Adolph, who was chief of the Xaxli'p band for 21 years. “It was initialed off by the Chiefs in December of 2010, then they started having information sessions in January, February and March,” he said.

Mike Leach, Chair of the St’at’imc Chiefs Council, was one of the key negotiators of the agreement.

“It is definitely a good deal, because we're only dealing with one issue—we're dealing with only the impacts of hydro on the territory,” Leach said. “There is no extinguishment of St’at’imc rights to our lands.”

But the agreement does provide BC Hydro with certainty of access and possession to transmission lines and all their facilities on St’at’imc territory, which lies northwest of the Fraser Valley. St'at'imc territory, which has never been surrendered or ceded, is already home to three dams, two reservoirs and four generating stations, as well as 15 transmission circuits that make up 850 kilometres of transmission lines. In addition, BC Hydro has built 160 kilometres of access roads and four recreation facilities in St'at'imc lands.

“The agreement will provide BC Hydro and the Province of BC with operational certainty for BC Hydro’s existing facilities into the future,” reads a press release put out by the company last week.

“As I read it, Aboriginal title has not been extinguished, but it has been limited,” said Adolph, who is a vocal critic of the agreement, and says the recent agreement will change the parameters of struggle against future BC Hydro projects in St’at’imc territory.

"The Chiefs have agreed that if any individual, group or community that advances a title and right issue [against BC Hydro] through direct action, the Chiefs will come down on those people to stop them,” said Adolph.“It's right in the agreement, in the certainty agreement. I call it a gag order.”

A gag order has already been put into effect at the local level: on April 6, 2011, the publisher of the St’at’imc Runner was locked out of the office where she’s worked for the last five years. The reason given was that the monthly community newspaper ran a four-page ad, paid for by individuals, pushing for a “no” vote on April 9. This came just after BC Hydro provided St’at’imc Nation Hydro with a $500,000 “interim payment," upon the Chiefs’ initialing the agreement on December 17. These funds were used to promote and carry out its ratification.

Spokespeople for BC Hydro and the provincial Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation refused to comment on the agreement.

This is the first time that the St’at’imc people have, as a nation, made any kind of agreement with the province. This raises additional considerations: they now must officially form a nation-level government.

“In order to manage this agreement we will have to put into place a St’at’imc government,” said Leach, who at the moment is interim chair of the St’at’imc Chiefs Council. “Once we've agreed on a format for that government, which we're working on now just to be able to manage this agreement, cause there's a lot involved, there will be an election for a chair once that is done.”

“So if I decided to run, I become the chair, right?” he said, pausing for a moment before adding, “or maybe somebody else.”

But for some, signing an agreement before a structure with a mandate to represent the nation exists is putting the chicken before the egg.

“It's 11 chiefs getting together called the St’at’imc Chiefs Council, now they're calling themselves the St’at’imc Authority, and they don't have a mandate from the people to be there,” said Adolph. “The only mandate they have is for their individual communities, where they've been elected by their people under the Indian Act to run Department of Indian Affairs programs.”

As per the new agreement, a new St'at'imc Authority will be formally constituted with recognition by British Columbia, rather than through a St’at’imc process.

“There is no organization, there's no governance structure, there's no bylaws,” said Adolph in reference to the St’at’imc Authority. “They don’t even have an office, and yet the province and BC Hydro recognize the St’at’imc Authority as having the legal power.”

Adolph and others have promised that they will continue to fight the agreement. “There's a group of us and the group is growing,” said Adolph. “This agreement is more than just past grievances [about existing hydro projects],” he said. “BC Hydro got their wish.”

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

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