The Dominion - Mexico

A Call to Fight Feminicide, in Juarez and Beyond

Tim McSorley — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:27:27 +0000

Laval author puts a structural lens on the killings of women and girls

MONTREAL—Ciudad Juarez. The name conjures up images of violence, maquiladoras, drug traffickers, kidnappings, military interventions, and dead women—too many dead women—in the city's streets.

In her book, Féminicides et impunité: Le cas de Ciudad Juarez (Feminicide and Impunity: The case of Ciudad Juarez, Les Éditions Écosociété: 2012), Marie France Labrecque explores in detail how (and why) women have been special targets, going beyond the usual explanations (organized crime, battles for turf among narco-traffickers, the documented inhumane conditions of maquiladora work, etc.) to relate these deaths to what she calls “feminicides” (féminicides).

Feminicide refers to a system of violence that results from state policies that create social, cultural, economic, and political inequalities and inequities for women and girls. It encompasses more than does the word femicide, the killing, rape, and violence against women and girls because they are women. Making this distinction lets Marie France Labrecque clarify how the ongoing murders of women are embedded in multiple structures of patriarchy found in the family, in society, and in state policies.

Labrecque, a professor emeritus at the University of Laval specializing in Mexico and political economy, argues convincingly that without a deep understanding of feminicide, the political changes needed to end the killings in Ciudad Juarez—and elsewhere—won't be possible. She supports her arguments with quantitative and qualitative data, all horrific and sometimes too much to digest in a single reading.

These details give insights into what needs to be changed to end the murders, punish those who are responsible, and begin to build a more just and equitable society. But they also suggest that making change will not be easy. In fact, women’s rights activists who traveled to Mexico in January 2012 actually found a continuing overall increase in deaths of women and girls since 2006, especially in the border state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juarez is located, with this happening despite special agencies and programs set up by the Mexican government allegedly to address violence against women.

During the spring presidential election campaign in Mexico, students and others demonstrated against the complicity of the government and its contributions to crime and corruption. Their protests continue, and it is to be hoped that Enrique Peña Nieto, the newly-elected president who begins his term this winter, will listen to their calls and establish the conditions in which full human rights are guaranteed for women and all citizens.

However, it already seems more likely that Peña Nieto's administration will only perpetuate the practices of past governments and do little to end the violence and murders of women. Fears are that he will continue past policies and privilege the militarization of the fight against drug cartels, fail to stop and punish the corruption within the army and police, and do nothing substantive to end the killings of women and girls.

If that is the case, women will remain oppressed and all that Labrecque relates in her powerful book will continue—including the complicity of the USA and Canadian governments in these practices. Therefore, it's important for feminists and others to keep pressing for change and an end to impunity, not only in Ciudad Juarez, but also here in Quebec and Canada where there is need for more and strengthened solidarity with Indigenous women whose lives and rights have not been protected by past and current governments.

The conditions underlying femicide and feminicide are not just over “there”: they are impediments to full justice for all women and girls here, too.

Abby Lippman is a community activist/feminist/researcher-writer in Montreal. An abridged version of this review, translated to French, has been published in aBabord magazine (October/November issue).

Feminicide and Impunity cover

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

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

Climate Call

Martin Lukacs — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:07:05 +0000

Shifting focus from UN to grassroots organizing in lead-up to Cancun meetings

MONTREAL—Battle lines are being drawn as governments, environmental organizations and grassroots organizers are gearing up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Cancun, Mexico.

On one side, nations from the Global North—including Canada—are setting up to push the agenda of the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement that emerged from last winter’s UN conference in Denmark—one that failed to establish any binding terms for carbon emissions reductions.

On the other side, many nations from the Global South have rallied around the Cochabamba Accord, the end result of April’s World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. The final text includes calls for a global referendum on climate change, the establishment of an international climate justice tribunal and the recognition of a declaration on the rights of Mother Earth.

Civil society organizations in the North have also begun to lend support to the Cochabamba proposals. A statement from this summer’s United States Social Forum in Detroit issued a call for “all governments engaged in the United Nations (UN) to incorporate proposals from the Cochabamba Protocol and to adopt and implement the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.”

“After significant efforts on the part of the Bolivian government and social movements, text from the Cochabamba Accord, or People's Agreement is included in the negotiating text for Cancun negotiations,” said Andrea Harden, Climate Campaigner for the Council of Canadians. “While some commentators have framed this as a step backwards...it is finally putting goals reflective of social movement demands and the gravity of the crisis we face on the table.”

Indeed, Bolivia and its allies have faced resistance from the governments of many wealthy, highly polluting nations in getting the Cochabamba text recognized for consideration at the Cancun round of talks.

The Canadian Government has been one of those opponents.

“Canada welcomes all input into the UNFCCC process; however, Canada remains committed to the Copenhagen Accord as the basis for a new global climate change regime,” Henry Lau, a representative of Environment Canada, told The Dominion.

Harden points out that governments from the Global North called the Copenhagen text an accord even though it wasn't approved by the consensual process usually required to grant the "accord" label—an indication of their lack of respect for the UNFCCC process.

Lau declined to answer questions about the Athabasca tar sands and its expansion projects—such as the Keystone XL pipeline—which were a focus of protests during the Copenhagen talks. Instead, he focused on draft regulations for personal vehicle tailpipe emissions and reductions in coal-fired power generation to “help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve air quality for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.” According to a 2008 report from the National Energy Board, around 13 per cent of Canada’s total power generation capacity comes from burning coal.

These commitments are part of the Canadian and US strategy of setting "economy-wide emissions targets," a move that may have influenced the selection of Canada’s new chief climate negotiator, Guy Saint-Jacques. A seasoned diplomat, he is also a vocal promoter of Canada-US economic interdependency. At a speech on free trade to US Chamber of Commerce in 2008 he noted that “as the new US administration defines its energy policy, it is important to keep in mind that America’s largest supplier of energy is your neighbour to the north.”

The Canadian government has pledged “$400 million in new and additional climate change financing,” a promise that many believe has a darker side.

Organizers point to these proposals as false solutions which fail to deal with climate change, and which have the potential to exacerbate existing economic, social and environmental problems. “This amount still pales in comparison to what the Global South is asking for,” Harden said. “There is also a lot of concern as to where this money is coming from...such as the REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), carbon offsets and using other market based mechanisms to meet nation’s climate debt.”

During inter-sessional negotiations in Bonn, Germany, in August, proponents of the Copenhagen Accord announced that access to financing coming from the Global North would be contingent on support for the Accord.

As Cancun draws nearer the United Nations is introducing stricter rules for civil society participation. Bright red text in the UNFCCC Information Note on Cancun warns that they hold “the authority to take any action necessary to maintain [their] security.” Civil society representatives are barred from holding “unauthorized demonstrations." Limits have been placed on the distribution of materials or displaying posters at the discretion of UN officials.

Many civil society delegates were excluded from the Copenhagen conference after participating in the Reclaim Power action—where organizers inside and outside the summit attempted to create a People's Assembly inside the Copenhagen talks—a precedent that has many organizers worried these rules are meant to stifle political dissent.

But Cancun is not the only place where organizers are looking to mobilize. In late July, La Via Campesina, the international peasant network, issued a call for "thousands of Cancuns...[to] unite the force and resistance of peasant peoples of the world, who are already cooling the planet." Their call is for people around the globe to take action in support of grassroots solutions such as those articulated in the Cochabamba Accord.

This call represents shifting values within parts of what is being called the global climate justice movement. Many grassroots climate activists are seeing this summit as an opportunity to shift focus away from UN meetings towards local, grassroots community organizing.

"I don't plan to attend Cancun because it is not my place," said Dave Vasey, a Toronto-based climate justice organizer who was in Copenhagen last winter. "But it is important to respond to the vision and wisdom [of local organizers].”

Vasey, along with many other organizers will be staying home this time. Instead, they plan on bringing the message of "System Change, Not Climate Change" to communities across Canada, and taking action against the root causes of a changing climate.

Cameron Fenton is a former intern and Membership Coordinator with The Dominion and a community organizer in Montreal.

Playing deaf on climate change

Water to Mine

Moira Peters — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 05:07:19 +0000

Goldcorp’s Penasquito project in Mexico robs semi-desert region of precious resource

ZACATECAS, MEXICO—Five years ago a new neighbour arrived in Mazapil, Mexico, promising employment, medical services and general development for the local peasant communities as it hoped to develop one of the world’s largest gold mines. The newcomer—Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc—built its mine but has yet to honour its promises to the thousands of people of Mazapil. Particularly for the residents of Cedros, Las Palmas and El Vergel—communities adjacent to the massive industrial complex—hope for a brighter future has dimmed.

In fact, Goldcorp’s Penasquito Mine has turned out to be a troublesome addition to the community, guzzling the municipality's scarce water sources, while its most significant contribution has been contamination and social division.

“Even though it has been a mining town by tradition, [Mazapil] has never been prosperous. Its population has managed to survive off agriculture and the raising of livestock,” according to an April 2010 article in the local paper, El Diario de Coahuila. The ejido system still prevails in this part of the country. It consists of community members, known as the ejidatarios, sharing a common landholding, both for agriculture and residence.

"We have had a very hard life and struggled enormously to upkeep this ejido," says Hernandez Herrera. "We have already suffered so much, and now, this monster comes to devastate our territories. What will we do once the water runs out? And it is clear that it will run out! Because in every place where a mine establishes itself, the water eventually runs out."

James Rodriguez is an independent documentary photographer based in Guatemala. He authors mimundo.org, where a version of this photo essay was originally published.

Penasquito.Flowers

Penasquito.Doll

Penasquito.Farmer

Penasquito.Kitchen

Penasquito.Sign

Penasquito.Irrigation

Penasquito.Armando

Penasquito.Dudes

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Penasquito.Mine Truck

COP16 already Changing the Climate in Mexico

Moira Peters — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:55:07 +0000

An interview with Gustavo Castro Soto on environmentalism in Mexico, popular education, and the futility of profit-driven solutions

In November 2010, Mexico will play host to a Copenhagen Climate Summit follow-up. Activists around the country are already preparing for the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) summit, in Cancun.

I spoke with Gustavo Castro Soto, an activist, agitator and organizer based in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. Castro is a founding member of Otros Mundos, an NGO that works on popular education and developing alternatives to capitalism, as well as with the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA). He is one of many who plan to be in the streets of Cancun in November, so I caught up with him to ask him about how he sees climate organizing playing out in Mexico over the next eight months.

Gustav Castro Soto, on the potential of COP16 in Cancun

"We are convinced that after 16 sessions of COP, things are not going to change. Governments and corporations have done everything possible to not make commitments. Rather, they’ve looked for a way to sort out all of the demands and difficulties, and begun incorporating new legislation and new ideas to continue doing the same thing, including making a business out of the climate change they’re generating.

"I think the opportunity for us is to generate political awareness in the population, and this is our big chance. We know there is going to be this conference, we want to be there, and this mobilization creates awareness. I think this is the biggest benefit we’re going to get; the fact that it’s here in Mexico obliges us to understand, to educate ourselves, to learn and reflect.

"The meeting itself requires us to put on the accelerator, so we can have an active presence there, a presence with a knowledge and understanding of why we’re there. If it wasn’t here in Mexico, in reality, I think this process would be much slower."

On awareness about climate change in Mexico

"There is not much information, not even among NGOs, with the exception of environmental NGOs, official and business NGOs, of what a Clean Development Mechanism is, what the Kyoto Protocol is, even what climate change means.

"I think there is, little by little, a developing interest in learning what [climate change] means. As we learn about what climate change is, we can see the links between these diverse projects, how they contribute to climate change.

"We as an organization, Otros Mundos, in workshops over the last six months, have been insisting on [making] the links not just between mining projects and climate change, but also with the other projects the government is implementing, such as dams, mines, bio-fuels and monocultures such as the African palm. All of these things are linked to climate change.

"Little by little, in the last workshops we’ve done, there have been 300 to 500 peasants and Indigenous people from many communities, and we have other workshops planned over the next weeks, where we will emphasize climate change."

"The people are demanding to know, 'What is this, and how does it work?

"This implies a long and sometimes complicated process of formation and education, to understand in a simple way what [climate change] is, and what it implies. The next step is people deciding, "We’re going to organize, we’re going to do something, we’re going to stop this," and the next step, an even bigger step, is, [people asking], 'What is the alternative?'"

On market solutions to climate change

"Our political position is very clear: clean development mechanisms don’t work.

"With them, the appropriation of Indigenous and peasant territories is justified, deforestation is justified, and as well, the very projects transnational companies are carrying out for profits are justified.

"These projects include eco-tourism, highways, forest plantations, bio-fuels, hydroelectric dams and mining. They just keep looking for justifications, and not just legal justifications through free trade agreements, but justification related to climate change [legislation].

"Our position is very clear. Bio-fuels, large monoculture plantations, dams, and mines don’t fight climate change. They significantly accelerate it.

"Here in the state [of Chiapas] we’re seeing how peasants and Indigenous people are getting in the way, and so they are being displaced by these megaprojects. The state of Chiapas has created a bio-fuels division; they call it the reconversion of production, which means peasant farmers and Indigenous peoples shouldn’t plant corn because it’s not profitable in economic terms.

"Instead, they are invited in a multitude of ways, including being convinced through trickery, to accept projects that benefit transnational companies."

On working with environmental organizations who accept market solutions to climate change

"It’s very difficult to work with them, and it’s actually quite a strong confrontation. We’ve been invited to have a dialogue about these mechanisms, and, for example, about environmental services.

"But we think accepting this dialogue implies accepting a discussion about, for example, whether or not they will pay Indigenous people and peasants well to render an environmental service, and if they pay them poorly, [they'll say] maybe they can pay them a little more. That’s not the root problem. We’d fall in a trap if we discussed these things.

"At the root, their framing and their mechanisms are false. They are false solutions to climate change. Quite simply they should not be used.

"We don’t want to discuss if they’ll give us more or less, or if, by way of example, they’ll pay producers of African palm well for their product or for their work. That’s not the main theme. It’s the mechanism itself that’s a false mechanism of clean development.

"That puts us up against some organizations that are implementing these mechanisms and the push for them, including some universities here. Even ECOSUR, Conservation International, Pronatura and Greenpeace are in favor of these mechanisms, and they’re also seeing how to implement them together with the state government. They know there is lots of money behind this. They know that this means administering resources and funds, and playing the investment game with the big transnational companies."

On Mexican organizing in the lead-up to COP16

"I think it’s going to be a big accomplishment to try to coordinate ourselves as a Mexican platform, to offer coordination to many networks coming from all over the world that have among them fundamentally contradictory positions.

"It seems there is an initial willingness, a political willingness, to coordinate ourselves and create a Mexican platform that helps and facilitates the arrival of many delegations from around the world, that facilitates coordination.

"But, it’s probable that as time goes on, these political differences will become more obvious, and there could even be splits, as there has been on other occasions, and that each group will define their position and their activities on their own.

"Hopefully it doesn’t end up that way, in the sense that we hope we could, given the sometimes radical political differences, offer a collective, coordinated space to receive the distinct positions that exist."

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist.

A version of this article was previously published on Upside Down World.

Dawn COP16

Murders in Mining Country

hillarybain — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:24:46 +0000

Canadian mining companies at the scene of the crimes

San Cristobal de Las Casas, MEXICO—The mood was celebratory the weekend of August 29, 2009.

Activist and community leader Mariano Abarca Roblero had just been released after eight days in jail for alleged anti-mining activity.

In the town of Chicomuselo, near the Guatemalan border, people gathered for a weekend conference organized by the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) to discuss the effects of mining and how best to oppose local projects. Besides helping organize the event, Mariano—who had been fighting against a barite mine near his home operated by Canadian company Blackfire Exploration Ltd.—was treated like the guest of honour.

As the weekend came to a close, Mariano’s four adult children and his wife gathered around him as people attending the conference asked to have their photos taken with him. He was a hero for having survived several days in jail for his anti-mining stance. On top of everything, he said he was as determined as ever to keep fighting.

But less than three months later, Mariano was dead, shot in the neck and chest outside his home in Chicomuselo.

Three people arrested in connection with the murder all have ties to Blackfire as current or former employees. Blackfire has said they had nothing to do with the killing and they have no control over their employees outside of work hours.

Mariano’s death came after he had reported death threats by Blackfire employees to the police.

“A few weeks after my father made a report against [two Blackfire employees] one of them came to the house and said he was going kill my father,” Mariano’s son Jose Luis said.

“They completed their objective. At 8 p.m. that same day I got the news that my father was dead.”

Sadly, Mariano’s death is but one in a spate of recent killings in Mexico and Central America that have targeted locals who were known for their opposition to mining projects in their communities.

As Bill C-300—proposed legislation that would hold Canadian mining companies more accountable for their activities in developing countries—is debated back home, the practices of Canadian mining companies are yet again being questioned.

“The image that the [Mexican] population has of Canadian mines is that they’re murderers, and that’s throughout the region,” said Gustavo Castro, a close friend and colleague of Mariano’s who works for Chiapas NGO Otros Mundos.

“People have seen lives lost, dead livestock, waterways contaminated—that’s what they’ve seen of Canadian mining… And there’s a resistance movement that’s getting stronger all the time.”

It’s not that Canadian mines are necessarily worse than the mines of other countries—it’s that there are so many more of them.

“The Americans and the Brits and the Chinese and the Australians are no better, and if anything some are worse,” said Jamie Kneen, Communications Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada. “But because Canada is so dominant in the industry the odds are that if there’s a problem it’s going to be a Canadian one.”

There’s no doubt Canada is a global leader when it comes to the mining industry. According to an article written by Michel Bourassa, coordinator of the Global Mining Group at law firm Fasken Martineau, “As of 2008, over three quarters of the world’s exploration and mining companies called Canada home.” Extractive industries account for five per cent of Canada’s GDP.

A recent report released by the Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflicts stated there are currently 118 mining conflicts in 15 countries in Latin America. By my own count, a total of 33, or 28 per cent, involve Canadian mining companies.

Kneen believes the increased violence is partly due to the mining industry's push into "more remote and sensitive areas."

“The more they have to go off into new places the more they are running into conflict, and the conflict turns deadly sometimes.”

El Salvador has seen the worst death toll with three activists killed. Each was opposed to Pacific Rim’s proposed El Dorado mine.

In an October interview, Pacific Rim CEO Tom Shrake denied the company had anything to do with anti-mining activist Marcelo Rivera’s murder in June. In a follow-up email interview in January, he said the same with regards to anti-mining activists Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto’s murders, accusing the media of pointing to the mining issue with no factual basis.

“These most recent murders are in the area of our now inactive Santa Rita Project, not El Dorado,” Shrake said. “They have been reported by the police to be related to a family feud. We have no presence in the area and have not since 2008. There are no mining or exploration activities in the area. Hooded armed gunmen who—according to the locals in the area—came from another town ran us off the site. Certain outlets continue to point to the mining issue as the motivation for the murders, without factual basis. We would hope they are not purposely using this feud as a tool to generate opposition and worse yet, violence.”

However activists on the ground say the violence is being generated by Pacific Rim’s presence.

“We think there’s a link between the company and the violence in our country associated with this struggle [against mining]” Roberto Calles of the Mesa Nacional frente a la Mineria Metálica said.

“The company had pitted communities and people against one another,” Calles said, noting deep divisions exist between family members who are for and against the mine. Calles said local politicians have received benefits from mining companies in exchange for their support and have been known to turn against their anti-mining constituents, generating more conflict.

“Even if the company is not directly killing people, the result is related to them and their actions,” he said.

In Guatemala, a country that has a long history of struggle against Canadian mines, two lives were lost in mining related violence in September 2009. Kneen said he’s heard of travellers in Guatemala being warned not to identify themselves as Canadian for fear of being attacked.

According to Uriel Abarca Roblero, brother of murdered Mexican anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca Roblero, Canadians are getting a tarnished reputation in Chiapas as well.

“The people of Chicomuselo [near where the mine is], the newspapers, the family… all say Canadians—not the company—are the murderers because they came from another country and killed us,” he said. “That’s what everyone thinks. I know it’s not true but people really feel that way.”

Blackfire admitted they paid off the mayor to control opposition in Chicomuselo. These recent admissions of corruption have done nothing to quell people’s anger.

The government authorities in Chiapas shut down the Blackfire mine near Chicomuselo in early December, citing environmental concerns. Mariano’s son Jose Luis wants the company gone altogether.

“We don’t want that company in our town, in Chiapas, or in our country. They have divided us, threatened us, damaged the environment and brought nothing but tragedy to our community.”

* Anti-Mining Activists Murdered

The following is a list of people who have died in mining related conflict in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador since June 2009.

· Marcelo Rivera—El Salvador—opposed the El Dorado mining project headed by Canadian firm Pacific Rim. Tortured and killed. Disappeared June 18, 2009, body was found 12 days later.

· Adolfo Ich—Guatemala—opposed HudBay nickel mining project. Allegedly shot by security guards hired by the mine on September 27, 2009.

· Martin Choc—Guatemala—shot and killed when men opened fire on a minivan he was traveling in September 28, 2009.

· Mariano Abarca Roblero—Mexico—opposed mine operated by Canadian firm Blackfire. Shot outside his home on November 27, 2009.

· Ramiro Rivera Gomez—El Salvador—opposed the El Dorado mining project. Despite 24 hour police protection shot and killed when the car he was driving in was ambushed, December 20, 2009.

· Dora Alicia Sorto Recinos—El Salvador—opposed El Dorado and was the wife of a man who had lost two fingers due to opposition to the mine. Murdered while eight months pregnant, December 26, 2009.

** Bill C-300, the Conservatives and Corporate Responsibility

Liberal MP John McKay introduced Bill C-300, also known as An Act Respecting Corporate Accountability for Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries, to the House of Commons in February 2009.

The Bill seeks to “promote responsible environmental practices and international human rights standards on the part of Canadian mining, oil and gas corporations in developing countries.” It proposes to do this by withholding taxpayer and political support and creating a complaints mechanism with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Companies that have received investment from government pension funds could see that funding withdrawn if it is proven they are violating international standards for corporate accountability.

Bill C-300 would not affect all mining companies. Blackfire Mining Exploration—the firm implicated in the murder of Mariano Abarca Roblero—would likely not be affected because it is private. But public companies like Goldcorp, which has stakes in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras “would have a lot to lose politically and financially,” according to MiningWatch’s Jamie Kneen.

While Bill C-300 has received widespread support from Canadian NGOs, the mining industry has predictably denounced the Bill. The Conservative government is also against the Bill, with Minister Peter Kent calling it a “poorly written piece of legislation which addresses some issues that are already part and parcel of our government’s policies abroad.”

Bill C-300 has been on shaky ground since it was first introduced and getting it through the Conservative-heavy Senate will be extremely difficult. The Bill barely made it to 2nd reading in April 2009, squeaking through with a vote of 137 to 133. It had most recently been debated in Committee hearings, with various interest groups presenting briefs before the Christmas break.

Surprisingly, according to John McKay, Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament may actually prove to be an advantage for the Bill.

“With proroguing we have an extra 60 days to study the Bill,” he said, adding that he’s not “overly fussed” about having the extra time.

A Facebook group for supporters of Bill C-300 has been created and McKay suggests those who support the Bill contact local Conservative MPs to express their support.

“Just make the lives of Conservative MPs as hard as possible. That seems to be about the only thing that works,” he said.

Dominique Jarry-Shore is a freelance journalist based in Chiapas, Mexico. This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Center in Ottawa.

Gustavo Castro

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Anti-Mining Activist Mariano Abarca Assassinated in Chiapas

dawn — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:44:55 +0000

Picture 16.png

Mariano Abarca, a community activist known for his opposition to mining was assassinated last night in Chicomuselo, a town in Chiapas, Mexico.

Abarca was shot in the head and chest by a man on a motorcycle. He had been abducted in August, and again received death threats in the week prior to his death.

In a November 28 email to supporters, Gustavo Castro, an organizer with Otros Mundos AC in Chiapas, wrote:

[Mariano was] a dear friend, admired for his struggle against the Canadian mining company Blackfire, and a member of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA-Chiapas). Yesterday we spoke to him on the phone and he told us he had filed a complaint against the company. Today he's dead.

It is with great sadness that I write these words. I will continue to update here as more news becomes available.

Update: Here is the English translation of an article about the assassination from La Jornada.

Disappeared Activist is Back Fighting

dawn — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:41:29 +0000

Anti-mining campaigner Mariano Abarca goes on the record

CHICOMUSELO, MEXICO—On August 17, 2009, masked men carrying high caliber rifles forced anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca, 52, into an unmarked car as he was leaving the primary school in his hometown of Chicomuselo, Chiapas.

Held without contact to his family, it was feared he had been kidnapped. But although the detention had all the hallmarks of a kidnapping, it turned out to be a state sanctioned arrest.

For the next eight days Abarca, a father of four, was held on charges that included “criminal association and organized criminal activity.” The detention was based on accusations made by Mexican employees of Calgary-based mining company Blackfire Exploration Ltd, and supported by vice-president Brad Willis’ statement to police.

Blackfire has been operating a barite mine in the town of Grecia, in the municipality of Chicomuselo, for approximately two years. In Mexico, Blackfire operates through its subsidiary Blackfire Exploration Mexico S de RL de CV.

According to an investigation by the Human Rights Center Oralia Morales, people in nearby Nuevo Morelia are unable to use a river for water due to mining activity and report skin irritation if they bathe in the water.

Abarca has been the leader of an anti-mining movement in the area that initiated a largely symbolic road blockade in June. He was also one of the main organizers of a weekend conference held on August 29 and 30 in Chicomuselo and sponsored by the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA).

Local activists interpreted Abarca’s detention as an act of intimidation for those planning to attend the conference. But more than 240 people from as far away as Canada and Guatemala participated, and, if anything, the detention strengthened the resolve of Mariano and his compañeros, who say they are as ready as ever to keep fighting.

Journalist Dominique Jarry-Shore spoke with Mariano Abarca during the REMA conference. She also recorded a short video of the interview, which is accessible through the Media Co-op.

Dominique Jarry-Shore: Why are you fighting against mining in Chicomuselo?

Mariano Abarca: What they’re doing to our municipality is basically looting the land. But apart from that, the government hasn’t taken us into account in their decisions and the company executives (Blackfire Exploration Ltd.) have never made themselves available to the people of the community.

How is this project going to benefit and affect us? We have no idea. That’s one of the things we’re unhappy about. We’d been asking the state and federal government to explain what the project is really about and how we will benefit and be affected, but we had no explanation so we had to make a decision.

We decided to close a road here in town that the company uses to get to and from the mine. Thanks to the support of our neighbors and people in our organization we were able to block the road. The company’s not happy with it because they say they’re losing money. But really, what we’re asking is that they leave Chicomuselo altogether.

We don’t want to have people here who treat our people—labourers and people of modest means—with the toe of their boots. They threaten us. And the worst of it is that they’re part of our community because some people from our town work for the company. That’s created divisions between us.

Has Blackfire made promises to the community?

Yes, they offered a road, a health center, doctors and training so that people would have the skills to work for the company—all that was offered to the people in the town where the mine is located. Other things were offered as well—about 20 different things—like drinking water.

Either they haven’t delivered on their promises or what they have done has been of very poor quality. The tanks they built for drinking water are full of leaks and are no good. And as I said before, the worst part is the social problem within the communities. Some say the company is good; others say it’s bad. That situation worries us a lot. Even in my own home some workers threatened to kill me and then of course there was my detention for defending the people.

Were you mistreated while you were detained?

Fortunately, no, I wasn’t mistreated. The worst of it was not being able to contact my family and my colleagues (on the first day), and the threat of being put in prison.

What message do you have for Canadians?

Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t do to your own people. I think the government of Canada should be more careful with these companies who come to Mexico and treat us badly. I call on the Canadian government to do something because we’re the same as any other citizen. We have rights too.

What do they mine here?

From what we can understand, it’s a material called barite. It comes with antimony. And there’s also gold and silver and another mineral I can’t remember the name of. But from what we know it’s a big mine. They’ve been extracting for two years and already there are big problems so imagine if they’re here for 40 or 50 years. Chicomuselo could disappear. We have a duty to do something.

Were you surprised by the international reaction to your detention?

Yes, but I was in seclusion. I didn’t know what was happening outside. When I was released people told me that my detention had served a purpose and we feel it did a lot for our cause. We were surprised by the support from all over the world and I’m very thankful and encouraged to keep up the fight.

Dominique Jarry-Shore is a freelance journalist based in Chiapas, Mexico. This interview was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Center in Ottawa.

Mariano Abarca Cropped

REMA Participants

Activist Accused of Affecting Canadian Company Freed in Chiapas

Sandra — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:16:29 +0000

by Isain Mandujano, published on Proceso.com.mx

Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, August 26th. - After eight days of detention, the State Judicial system's Attorney General's Office (PGJE, for its Spanish acronym) freed activist Mariano Abarca Roblero, who was accused by Canadian corporation Blackfire Exploration Ltd of affecting the company's economic interests, due to the highway blockades led by Abarca Roblero.

According to the court document #033/FS10/2009 in the case taken up by the State Attorney for Relevant Issues of the PGJE, Abarca Roblero was accused of attacks against public roadways, criminal association, organized criminal activity, offences against the peace and the physical and public integrity of the collective and of the State.

Mariano Abarca was detained on August 17th by state police agents when he was leaving a primary school, where he left a letter requesting permission for the school premises to be used this weekend for the second national gathering of the Mexican Network of those Affected by Mining (Red Mexicana de Afectados por la Mineria, REMA).

According to his lawyer, Miguel Angel de los Santos Cruz, the police were supposedly in possession of an "order to appear," which they never revealed.

"In theory, this order does not imply detention. However, when he was taken to the State Attorney's office and gave his declaration, his detention was ordered immediately thereafter. Because detention only permits the judicial system to hold someone for 48 hours, the order was requested for 30 days," he said.

De los Santos added that Abarca was detained for eight days in the PGJE detention center.

[DETAINED] : Mariano Abarca, Mexican Community Leader organizing against Canadian Mining

Sandra — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:51:46 +0000

Mariano Abarca.jpg

Photo: Landholder Mariano Abarca speaking about an ongoing blockade in his community in Chiapas against Canadian mining corporation Blackfire. Abarca, a well-known opponent of Canadian mining corporations in his municipality, was [detained] on August 17, 2009. REMA.

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UPDATE POSTED AUGUST 19th by MiningWatch.ca:

Update (August 19, 2009): Mariano Abarca is safe and sound. Thank you to all who responded to the urgent action.

According to the latest reports, Mariano Abarca is being held by the Public Ministry in Tuxtla Gutiérrez; the armed men who abducted him seem to have been undercover police. He was not injured and is reportedly being held on charges of disturbing the peace, blocking public roads, organized crime, criminal association, and 200,000 pesos in damages, all relating to a blockade that Abarca and other residents have maintained against Blackfire Resources' mining operations since June of this year.

According to the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA), Mariano's abduction and arrest, and the overblown charges, are clear attempts to criminalise legitimate protest, intimidate local people, and disrupt the group's planned August 29-30 meeting in Chicomuselo. REMA spokespeople say they are working to secure Abarca's release, and that the meeting will go ahead regardless.

Clearly the immediate local and international response have been very helpful in assuring Abarca's security. We are awaiting word from REMA as to what further actions are needed.

[update posted by MiningWatch Canada @ http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/blackfire/ua_mariano_abarca]

# # # # #

ORIGINAL DOMINION BLOG RE-POST:

# # # # #

Reposting of a REMA (Mexican Network of Communities Affected by Mining) urgent action:

Anti-mining group to stage 36 hour sit-in at Canadian Embassy in Mexico City

Sandra — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:50:25 +0000

Press Release

- For immediate release -

ANTI-MINING GROUP TO STAGE 36 HOUR SIT-IN AT CANADIAN EMBASSY IN MEXICO CITY

Frente Amplio Opositor (FAO) marks Global Day of Action Against Open-Pit Mining in opposition to New Gold Inc.’s Cerro de San Pedro mine in Mexico

Mexico City, July 21, 2009 – Anti-mining activists are marking the first ever Global Day of Action Against Open-Pit mining with a 36-hour sit-in outside the Canadian Embassy building in Mexico City.

The action is being planned by the Frente Amplio Opositor (FAO), a coalition opposed to Canadian corporation New Gold’s Cerro de San Pedro open-pit gold and silver mine in Central Mexico. New Gold Inc. is based in British Columbia.

“The sit-in is a nonviolent protest to demand that the Canadian government intervene in the case of New Gold’s Cerro de San Pedro mine”, said FAO member Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara. “The mine is still operating despite having lost its environmental permit in a recent court ruling. We are reminding the embassy that we will continue to raise our voices against corruption, human rights abuses and environmental destruction”.

Mexican Secretary of the Economy figures reveal that more than 70% of all mining exploration, development and production projects in Mexico are owned by Canadian corporations. Canadian mining companies have benefited from legal reforms that the Mexican government adopted in order to accommodate NAFTA and draw foreign investment.

Open-pit mines, such as Cerro de San Pedro, have generated controversy due to their devastating environmental and social impacts.

Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine

dawn — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:01:20 +0000

Oaxacan civilians blockade road, occupy mine to keep Fortuna off their land

SAN JOSÉ DEL PROGRESO, OAXACA–Early on the morning of May 6, a helicopter was spotted flying low near the Canadian-owned Trinidad Mine in San José del Progreso, Mexico. In the hours following, approximately 150 trucks filled with between 740 and 2,500 police arrived at the mine site.

The silver mine has been peacefully blockaded by community members since March 16.

Fear of environmental contamination and dwindling water resources are motivating the nearly two-month-long permanent civilian occupation of the mine and all its installations. Neither the Mexican government nor Fortuna Silver, the mine's operator, was able to reach an agreement with protesters, so police were sent in to clear the blockade.

An urgent action issued yesterday by Comité de Defensa de Los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEP) describes how "twenty-five hundred members of the federal police, AFI, judicial police, and the bomb corps entered the mine with a wealth of weapons: using tear gas, shots from various types of firearms, police dogs, savagely beating the people, and searching the homes of the people who were peacefully guarding access to the mine."

Eye-witnesses estimate that there were 150 people from the community blocking the mine when the police arrived.

During the raid, police began arbitrarily entering and searching homes, as well as confiscating personal possessions in the community of Magdalena, and in the municipality San José del Progreso. They were also arresting people randomly on the streets.

At least 23 people—possibly as many as 28—were detained. Two people, and likely several more, are missing. As of May 7, the state had released 19 people, while at least four remain incarcerated.

“We are struggling for our lives and we are defending our territory; the territory where we were born, raised, lived and will probably die," said one resident from the community of Magdalena, Ocotlán. "We sometimes forget that we poor people have the right to life; that we poor people can also defend all that we have.”

Environmental concerns are at the forefront of the protests led by Indigenous Zapotec people against Fortuna.

Independent laboratory tests by Sanica, a clinical analysis laboratory, confirmed the presence of cyanide, mercury, arsenic and lead contamination in regional water supplies stemming from activities at Trinidad and other local mines.

Reports of the deaths of at least 20 head of cattle in the last three months have provoked outrage among residents.

They are also concerned with the mine’s massive water demands.

“All the water that is at the bottom is water that the company moved down to be able to work at the lowest levels of the mine," said one local farmer. "Now all the water is contaminated with different heavy metals and it’s coming up to contaminate soil on the surface."

During the first stage of exploration, the water table had already dropped noticeably.

The primary mine shaft, which has been mined since colonial times, is estimated to be a few kilometres deep. Rising water levels inside the mine currently only permit access to 960 metres.

In response to the environmental effects that are starting to manifest after only three years of exploration, the residents of San José del Progreso held a community assembly on March 14. There, the community decided they wanted the mining company to leave.

According to Ríos Cruz, a resident of nearby Ocotlán and a member of CODEP: “Our objective is the cancellation of the project and the outright refusal from every one of the communities: a 'No' to mining." Cruz has since been disappeared, according to his family.

"All the authorities—state, federal and some municipal—are delivering our homeland, our soil, our land to the companies, but we can’t give the land away. It is our children’s and we are simply taking care of it for the moment,” said Cruz.

Local authorities, most notably Mayor Venancio Oscar Martínez Rivera, Quintín Vásquez Rosario and the head of the commission that administers the ejido, stood opposed to the decision of the people, going as far as to threaten them if they dared take action against the mine.

Residents who attended a meeting with authorities on March 24 allege that the mayor used a gun to threaten members of the Co-ordination in Defense of the Natural Resources and Our Mother Earth, a group formed earlier in the year to organize resistance to the mine.

El Imparcial, a local newspaper, reported that the local officials are being paid by the company to maintain their support and that the mining company has armed paramilitary groups to intimidate people who oppose the project.

Regardless of these tactics, people decided to blockade the mine site. Days after the closing of the mine, several trucks filled with soldiers arrived at the mine site.

When the people refused to give entry to the army, soldiers began to provoke and threaten them. When the army did gain access to the site, they proceeded to remove more than 30 tons of explosive material from the tunnels. This shocked local residents and generated more questions about the safety and environmental impacts of that quantity of explosives.

A month into the occupation of the mine, the members of San José del Progreso and neighbouring communities Maguey Largo and Magdalena, among several others, decided to shut down a federal highway between the capital city of Oaxaca and the coastal town of Puerto Ángel.

They entered the highway in the early hours of April 20 and declared that they would not lift the blockade until the authorities responded to their demands.

The following day, at least nine trucks of riot police and one truck of soldiers arrived to oust blockaders. An agreement was reached to end the road blockades in exchange for negotiations with the state government, which have thus far not borne fruit.

Prior to the May 6 raid on the mine site, there were reports of harassment and threats by police against people resisting the mine. Cruz was among those threatened by police.

****

Fortuna Silver has responded with demands that the government protect their nearly $30-million worth of investments in the mine.

The company, through its fully owned subsidiary Cuzcatlán, holds dozens of concessions that cover tens of thousands of hectares of land. (The average farmer in Ocotlán owns less than 5 hectares.)

Simon Ridgway, a Canadian citizen and the chairperson of Fortuna Silver, has also worked for Glamis Gold and Radius Gold. Ridgway left Honduras in 2000 after the Special Prosecutor’s Office on the Environment issued a warrant for his arrest, related to Glamis Gold's charges for crimes that included water usurpation, aggravated damages, forest crimes and disobedience to authority. The warrant against Ridgway was never executed.

In a press conference in late April, Canadian trade and environmental officials Paul Connors and Paula Caldwell St. Onge said the Canadian government embraces corporate social responsibility and that Canadian companies in Mexico respect that position. They also indicated that Trinidad Mine could be in production within a year.

At the same press conference, Mexican government officials went on to deny reports that the water around Trinidad is contaminated or that any animals have died as a result.

Protests that shut down the mine were dismissed as "a media stunt by people that are certainly trying to obtain benefits," according to Joaquín Rodríguez Palacios, sub-secretary to Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the controversial Governor of Oaxaca. "It's a small group, we all know it, who have a protagonistic attitude."

When this article went to press, Trinidad Mine was still occupied by police forces and had yet to recommence operations.

Click here for videos and updates about the repression in Ocotlán.

Komala Ramachandra is a law student at Harvard who has been working in Oaxaca for the last seven months.

Highway Blockades

Fuera Minas Asesinas!

Canada's Deadly Trade Deals

dawn — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:30:15 +0000

An interview with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center

MONTREAL–One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first major foreign visits after being elected in 2006 to his first minority government was to Latin America and the Caribbean. The trip aimed to promote a Canadian foreign policy focused on establishing "new partnerships in the Americas."

Canada has aggressively pushed to establish trade agreements in the Americas, and in pursuit of this signed bilateral trade deals with Peru and Colombia in 2009. Concurrent with the push towards more trade pacts in the Americas, Canada has cut the number of nations receiving bilateral aid through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Today's Canadian foreign aid policy sees a smaller number of countries being targeted for aid through the Conservatives' "countries of concentration" policy, which limits aid to 20 nations. The policy focus centres on trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, while aid to African nations, including Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda, has been cut.

These shifts in policy are seemingly influenced by Canadian corporations that hold significant sway over government economic policy, such as mining, oil and gas corporations.

Bilateral agreements in the Americas signal this important shift. Canada’s trade agreement with Colombia has been the subject of intense criticism from labour unions in both Colombia and Canada.

The current Colombian government is embroiled in political scandals over ties to right-wing paramilitary groups that target and assassinate labour activists, Indigenous people, and members of popular and community movements. Human rights activists argue that a bilateral agreement with Canada lends international legitimacy to Alvaro Uribe's government in the face of such gross breaches of human rights.

"As for labour rights and the freedom of association, the FTA [with Canada] is a shameful reward for government and managers when it comes to violating these rights, forgetting more than 2,700 murdered unionists and letting their killers go unpunished,” outlined a February 2009 declaration to the Canadian government from Colombia’s major trade union federations.

Canada’s bilateral negotiations with Colombia come at a time when a similar US-Colombia trade accord has been halted in the United States by Congress due to concerns expressed by US law makers about human rights violations in Colombia and its government's connection with such activity.

US trade policy in the Americas was a major topic in the recent US elections. During the final campaign debate, Barack Obama slammed attempts by the Bush administration to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Colombia:

“Labour leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis [in Colombia] and there have not been prosecutions,” he said.

Despite the open concerns south of the border, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pushed forward the Canada-Colombia deal.

Canada’s accord with Colombia is rooted in the same free market economic policies enshrined in NAFTA, which have been the subject of opposition from labour unions and peasant associations across Mexico, the US and Canada for over a decade.

Resistance by social movements successfully halted the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, which would have seen a single trade zone throughout the hemisphere.

The governments of Canada and the US have since shifted their focus to creating bilateral and regional trade deals in the Americas, spelling out a new policy battleground for the upcoming years that will undoubtedly be fought out both on the streets and within the halls of power.

In the interview that follows, Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center based in Mexico City, outlines some specific economic and social impacts of existing free trade agreements on Mexico and throughout the Americas.

Stefan Christoff: First, can you outline the social and economic impacts of NAFTA as related to migration from Mexico to the US, and also within the contemporary context of the push by the US towards bilateral agreements?

Laura Carlsen: NAFTA marked the first time that there was a major trade agreement between two developed countries, including the largest economic power in the world and Mexico, a developing country, which presents major challenges in negotiating a free trade agreement.

Despite the inequality between the economies of Mexico and the US in regards to size and productive capabilities, the agreement basically delivered tremendous privileges to transnational corporations in the US to the detriment of Mexico.

Since NAFTA has been in effect we have seen serious damage done by the accord on Mexican society. There have been serious impacts on people in the countryside and also to small-to-medium size industries throughout the country, leading to growing rates of unemployment and a doubling of the rate of migration from Mexico to the US. The economic impacts of NAFTA have created serious internal displacement and forced migration.

Christoff: Similar trade policies to NAFTA in Latin America have played a major role in forced migration. Could you address, for example, how the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has impacted migration?

Carlsen: The CAFTA agreement is also going to lead towards increased outward migration. All the Central American countries have been going through an economic restructuring along the lines of these free trade agreements, leading to free trade zones where assembly workers are dealing with [working] conditions that are very bad and wages that are very low.

People are displaced from the rural areas in large numbers due to foreign imports upsetting local market values, creating the conditions for forced migration.

Essentially these [trade] agreements lock in an export-oriented model of development, a model which according to other experiences in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, benefits a very small group of people while causing serious dislocation for many social sectors.

Along the Guatemala-Mexico border a couple of years ago, most of the people waiting to cross into Mexico were then going to move on to the US: farmers who had been displaced by imports, or by growing corporate control over prices of commodities such as coffee; farmers who could not make a basic living from harvesting their crops.

CAFTA will only increase this process of displacement, as the foreign businesses that move in work on an export-oriented farming production model, not employing a huge amount of local people, while the economic benefits are directed towards a very small social sector.

Often it is claimed that such agreements bring in foreign investment, however the lived experience is that foreign investment doesn’t come pouring in the minute you sign an agreement. On the contrary, the economic impact is generally negative. In the majority of Latin American countries subject to such trade agreements, we are seeing a net outflow of capital.

Christoff: In your time within regions impacted by NAFTA, can you outline how this agreement has impacted people, specifically small farmers and peasants?

Carlsen: It is best to examine a specific town; for example, a village within the Mixteca Indigenous region in Oaxaca, in the mountains where many families live [through] a combination between subsistence farming and selling corn on the regional market.

As NAFTA came into effect, we began to see large amounts of subsidized, cheap agricultural imports, specifically corn, coming in from the US, causing domestic prices in Mexico to dive.

For local farmers who rely on selling small amounts of corn to survive this was a devastating shift in the local and regional markets in Mexico, which undermined their ability as family farmers to survive.

Given the US corn imports, the Mixteca region in Oaxaca has become one of the major out-migration regions in Mexico, with townships that are showing negative population growth, specifically due to out-migration to the US.

Many local farmers in Mexico who used traditional farming methods, working often without mechanized equipment, without fertilizing chemicals, were displaced by NAFTA, given cheap US imports.

It was clear that such farmers would face displacement even before the agreement was signed. A US trade representative outlined at the time of NAFTA’s signing that US trade analysts were expecting around three million local farmers in Mexico to be displaced by the agreement. It was argued that these farmers would move into more modern and competitive industries, particularly the industrial corridors that were being constructed in the countryside, often by foreign corporations.

However, in reality, the massive displacement happened, in the millions, but the new jobs never arrived to Mexico, so people were left with nothing. Today, many local farmers are simply growing corn to survive. Often women are left on the farms with the family to survive while the men travel to the US to work. Major rural displacement caused by NAFTA has been very clear.

In villages within Oaxaca and throughout the country, many, many people are migrating to work in the US due to trade policies that have made survival at home impossible. Traditionally, there were always regions in Mexico where workers would travel to work in New York City or LA—this was a labour circuit—however, traditionally, this was a much smaller migration and most often the migration wasn’t permanent.

Mexican workers would travel to the US to work during the harvests and then travel back to Mexico to work, however given that the border has been so hardened and militarized today, the migration to the US tends to be much more permanent. [This was] exactly the opposite result to the expressed intentions from US officials on why the border with Mexico was hardened.

Displacement has spread throughout Mexico, as the inability to make a decent living is now impacting multiple regions as a result of such trade policies.

Christoff: In examining the impacts of free trade on peasant communities in Latin America, do you have reflections on the reactions from social movements in Peru and Colombia to the US push for bilateral accords with these two nations? Do you think that bilateral deals with the US will have similar results to regional trade accords in Latin America?

Carlsen: Many of the general tendencies that we see in NAFTA basically hold to bilateral agreements; there have been few substantial modifications.

Democrats in the US claim that the Peru agreement is a new model for trade agreements, given there are a couple of clauses concerning labour rights and public health. However, the agreement is still based on the same trade model.

Essentially this agreement—like NAFTA—is based on a forum of development in which a developing country opens up markets completely, while granting a whole series of privileges to foreign investors and [hoping] that economic development trickles down to weaker social sectors.

However, this economic model ensures that there is no trickle down, while a country loses the ability to maintain national development policies that also support the weakest in society.

Peru’s bilateral agreement with the US includes clauses for the privatization of social services, despite the fact that throughout Latin America, in other countries, privatization policies often lead to cutting off access to basic social services for the poorest.

So the key point is that these ‘free trade’ policies, in Central America, in Peru, in Mexico, equal increased inequality. Essentially, such trade agreements drive the gap between the rich and poor to grow.

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer. This interview was originally produced in audio format for the Fighting FTAs project, an international project that provides a global picture of free trade agreements (FTAs), and insight into struggles being waged by social movements fighting back.

Oaxacans stand up and fight back