Mining vs indigenous peoples

The following is an English version of an important article from Argentina on the exploitation of indigenous communities by international mining corporations, which deserves as wide a circulation as possible. With mining companies such as Rio Tinto attempting to improve their public image through association with organisations like WAC, it is useful to be reminded of what the reality usually is where the interests of global business concerns conflict with those of indigenous peoples.

Mining Business, Indigenous Sorrow
10th September 2008
By Dario Aranda and Luis Manuel Claps
Translation by David Modersbach
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8838

Endless, straight roads that disappear into the horizon. Dry climate,
permanent winds, and dust devils blowing across dirt tracks. Neither houses
nor trees nor a person in sight, only brush and fleeing guanacos. Five hours
of monotonous landscape, in the empty openness of the Chubut meseta, or
plateau, the extensive arid spaces separating the ocean from the Andes
range: The heart of Patagonia.

Victorino Cual, a Tehuelche elder, feels sick, his stomach is paining him,
blindness claims one eye and is slowly advancing in the other. “We always
said no. We always said no. Why is it so difficult for them to understand
us?” Victornio asks, seventy-five years old, born and raised in this place.
He is speaking of the opposition to the Navidad project, of the Canadian
mining firm Aquiline Resources, an operation advancing over indigenous
lands, violating the national laws and international treaties that require
any project affecting native persons and their livelihoods to have
previously informed consent. The mining deposit, reserves worth ten billion
dollars, is rejected for the negative consequences of lead – in the
environment as well as human health – and for its tremendous use of water.
But the provincial government describes the projects as a “fantastic
experience.”

Gan Gan is a town of fifteen blocks along the Provincial Route 4, located
370 kilometers from Rawson, the capital city of Chubut. The 600 residents
living here subsist mainly off of small-scale livestock raising. The Navidad
open pit operations are to be located only 40 kilometers away. The Tehuelche
family of Cual has lived in the area since 1902; official documents prove
their title to 15 leagues (couriously, no longer an official unit in any
nation) of land.

The very town of Gan Gan was constructed on parcels of land donated by the
indigenous community. One hundred years after the donation, the Cual family
lost thirteen leagues of their lands to businesspersons. Even the community
cemetery ended up appropriated by a local owner. Today, the Cual family
survives on only three of their original fifteen leagues, insufficient for
raising animals sustainably. Local political powers decided unilaterally
that the town landfill would be installed on indigenous lands. To arrive to
the community, one must skirt a mountain range, cross a mallin (wetland
reservoir with soft pasto), and avoid mountains of trash, plastic bags,
rubble and dead animals. “They robbed us of our land, they did not let us
raise our animals, and on top of that they want to take our water and poison
us with their mine. And our politicians work for them.”

The government runs two programs essential for the survival of inhabitants:
The “Plan Calor” delivers firewood twice-monthly to the families, necessary
to survive the 30 degree below zero winters, and the “Moahir Program” where
small wool producers are paid ahead of time by the government, at higher
prices than local markets. Both of these programs operate as control tools:
Those who do not obey risk losing their firewood and will have problems
selling their wool.

*Desecrating Roots and Violating Laws*

Local communities and social organizations accuse Canadian IMA Explorations
(Inversiones Mineras Argentinas IMA) of entering onto indigenous territory
and desecrating a 1200 year-old chenque, or cemetery, located in the heart
of the future open-pit mine. The “rescue” was carried out with active
participation of provincial officials and scientists of CONICET, violating
the Argentina Constitution and international laws which require indigenous
participation. These actions were fundamental for the mining project: “The
existence of ancient graves is irrefutable roof of traditional occupation
and preexisting indigenous presence. The company knew that a cemetery in the
mining operation zone would halt the activity. This why they pressured
hurriedly, maneuvering with trickery and pressure to get this potential
obstacle out of the way,” explains lawyer Eduardo Hualpa, member of the
National Pastoral Indigenous Group (ENDEPA), specialist in indigenous law.

The chenque was located off of provincial Route 4, connecting Gan Gan to
Gastre, and in terms of cultural heritage, is sacred space par excellence. A
small mound of rocks with a rectangular base signaled the existence of the
bodies within. “The interests of all parties were harmonized: The indigenous
peoples, the Secretary of Culture, the archeologists and the Company,” said
archeologist Julieta Gómez Ortero, the scientist responsible for the removal
and relocation of the ancient burial grounds, in a conference of
archeologists (the IV Reunión de Teoría Arqueológica en América del Sur)
held in Catamarca in July of 2007. She ended her presentation by saying,
“even beyond archeology lies the human significance of this experience; for
our team, this was the most important and mobilizing factor of our
professional career.

But now, a year later, Julieta Gómez Otero has other feelings. She
emphasizes that it was a very important experience in her professional life
and he acted in good faith. She explains that she did not recommend the
relocation of the graves, but the chenque was in danger and this is why she
did it. After receiving many accusations, she recognizes that it was “a
bitter situation,” and affirms that she wasn’t aware of the existence of
communities who were opposed to the relocation. “I understand how people
could think that they used us. We didn’t feel that way,” she says. However,
she rejects Aquiline Resource’s proposal to manage two other archeological
sites that today are still present in the epicenter of the mining operation.
In the foothills of the mountains there are ancient indigenous stone
paintings and an extensive site with ceramics and arrowheads.

Don Huichulef is 64 years old, has ten children, and has always lived in the
house he was born in, just like his father. The family history states that
their family arrived on the plateau in 1907. There is always firewood in the
cast iron stove, keeping the cold at bay. Piping hot yerba mate and warm
bread are the appetizers offered to visitors before the lamb is grilled over
the coals. Huichulef appears shy, but after a few minutes of talking, his
true voice appears, simple, straightforward, from the heart of the
Patagonian desert, a rebel. “Excuse my way of expression, I don’t talk so
pretty like a politician, but I say my own. I am tired of political garbage.
The elections are not for our good, they are for the politicians, they are
profiting thanks to the landowners, and they are governing for the powerful.
Those of us who work, they only give us promises and they never comply. I
don’t believe them anymore. Before, I was obedient, out of fear, I went
where they told me to go. Now, I am disobedient.”

Gastre is a twenty block town of some 700 residents, with a 30% poverty
level and a hostile climate: Temperatures bottomed out at 40 degrees below
zero in winter of 2007. According to official provincial statistics, over
30% of the Department is under concession to mining companies. With streets
with Mapuche names, well-kept houses, narrow sidewalks and fearsome winds,
Gastre made national headlines in the early 1980s: The National Commission
of Atomic Energy (CNEA) and the military dictatorship wanted to convert the
area into the world’s first global high-level nuclear waste disposal. The
resistance of the population and civil organizations over two decades was
able to halt what officials had called a “repository of highly active
radioactive wastes.” Aquiline Resources is now housed in the old CNEA
offices in Gastre.

In the same Patagonian desert, but just across the provincial border of Río
Negro, for over five years now a company has been trying to operate an
open-pit gold mine using cyanide, 80 kilometers from the town of Ingeniero
Jacobacci. One of the biggest opponents has been the Mapuche Parliament, who
have been making court presentations to try and halt the company from
continuing with the project. Several self-organized neighbor assemblies have
arisen, opposing any extractive plan. The government of Río Negro rejected
the company’s environmental impact report (necessary for initiating the
construction of the mine). In 2005, under public pressure the government
passed Law 3981, which to this day has paralyzed the Calcatreu project. But
the company remains in town, convinced that it will obtain permits from the
government and will get the go-ahead from the indigenous communities. The
mining company is Aquiline Resources, the same company behind the Navidad
project.

*For Canada to Decide*

On July 14, 2006, Canadian judge Mary Marvyn Koenigsberg ordered the
transferal of mining titles of the Navidad project (in Chubut province) to
Aquiline Resources. Their rival IMA had violated a confidentiality clause,
she argued, and only the change of title could make justice. To the Northern
Miner, the case was the fifth most important event for the mining world in
2006. In Argentine regional and national press the event merited scant
attention. Nobody managed to observe that the mining deposits in question
didn’t actually belong to either company, rather they were of “original and
eminent domain” of the people of Chubut (Article 99 of the provincial
Constitution). Despite this, the resources were awarded as compensation to
one Canadian company who had sued another. Under what authority can Canadian
justice pass over the head of Argentine sovereignty? Up to this date,
neither provincial Mining and Geology authorities nor any government
official has emitted the smallest comment over the case.

In August of 2005, almost a year earlier, the Superior Court of Justice of
Río Negro ordered the provincial government to protect the rights of the
indigenous communities who were threatened by the activities of foreign
mining companies in their lands. Luis Lutz, Victor Hugo Soderno Nievas and
Alberto Balladini, members of the Court, accepted a demand presented by the
Development Council of Indigenous Communities (CODECI) and ordered several
organizations of Río Negro to carry out a series of measures to “safeguard
the cultural and social heritage of the indigenous communities who live near
the Calcatreu Project”.

The judges affirmed that the mining project was advancing “without observing
the constitutional, legal and international norms, which exist to protect
indigenous communities, their resources and the environment; that they
should be informed, consulted, have participation in the management of their
resources and respected with regards to ethnic, social and cultural
heritage.”

Koenigsbert’s sentence, issued in Canada, and made only available in
English, was complied with immediately. Aquiline Resources now operates the
Navidad project, to the satisfaction of their stockholders. The Superior
Court of Justice of Río Negro’s order, dictated one year beforehand, did not
have any pracxtical consequences. Aquiline Resources continues to explore in
Mapuche territory, entering private lands, and utilizing water resources of
the area, tricking and intimidating the residents.

*Five Hundred Thousand Hectares*

Aquiline Resources also showed their power of persuasion with the
governments of Chubut and Río Negro. With two mining projects, and in less
than ten years, they managed to take control of some 500,000 hectares. The
Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples of both provinces have been struggling for
decades for the titles to the lands they have inhabited. They have not had
the same fortune.

The coordinator of the Water Observatory of the National University of
Patagonia, Lino Pizzolón, has studied water quality for decades, and has
traveled throughout the steppe of Río Negro and Chubut many times. “There is
not the quantity of water in the Plateau that the mega mining operations
need. For now, they will pump it from where it is, they will dry out the
wells, the mallines and wetlands where livestock range, in a huge area of
land. Mining activities will compete destructively with the
livestock-pastoral activities, increase the depopulation of the lands and
the desertification and cause large-scale relocation of people into the slum
villages around the cities in the coast,” he warns.

The manager of the Navidad project, Guillermo Salvatierra, recognizes that
Aquiline still has not carried out in-depth investigations about the
availability of underground water in the region (despite five years of work
in the area), but assures “we comply with all of the studies that the
Province requires of us. They have never objected to anything.” According to
the mining executive’s explanations, during the exploration phase, the
company will be required to present environmental studies yearly.
Salvatierra promised to send these studies to Pagina 12 but never did.

*Lead, Contamination and Illness*

This past June, a large group of organizations issued an open letter where
the negative role of lead and its form of extraction were denounced. “We ask
ourselves why, while the international community is mobilizing forces to
replace lead, restrict its use and circulation, increasing scientific
knowledge of its consequences on human health, to strictly regulate its
final disposition and compensate the affected persons, why is it in Chubut
it is proposed as a business success to extract millions of kilos of lead?”
asked the Assembly of Self-Organized Neighbors of Esquel, the Patagonian
Coordinating Assembly and ENDEPA, among others.

*Chubut Center: Auction Zone*

After the scandal of Pacific Rim and the mobilization of the Comarca Andina
communities at the Pedregoso river in 2006, and after the announcement of
Patagonia Gold, published in the Clarin newspaper, to advance with the
Huemules gold and copper project (located alongside Futalaufquen National
Park), the Chubut government suspended, for a period of three years, any
metals mining activities, including exploration, in the northeast of the
province of Chubut, an area of mountains, headwaters, national parks,
natural reserves and picture postcard landscapes.

A short time later, however, as a product of political lobbying in Comodoro
Rivadavia, the mining exclusion zone was expanded in the southern Andes
range. Why not also protect the Senger basin, or the Fontana lake,
politicians were asked. Mining activities were only excluded in these areas,
but not in the whole of the province. The Chubut meseta, poor, less
populated, thus remained at the will of transnational mining companies,
despite the fact that open pit metals mining operations were prohibited in
the entire province by Law 5001, signed months after the Esquel referendum
of 2003 and still actually in force today.

Chubut Mario Das Neves, who has already positioned himself for a run at the
presidency in 2011, did not return calls from Pagina 12, but he certainly
did speak of mining activities this past June 25, in the Canadian embassy
(the country of origin of the large part of the mining companies active in
Patagonia) in Buenos Aires. “I believe that the Navidad project is a
fantastic experience. You all have to be tranquil, knowing that in my
province we are not at all prejudiced against mining activity, that we are
careful and we want you to know that when someone invests, we are not going
to change the rules of the game,” affirmed Das Neves.

The 120 Canadian businessmen applauded and smiled with satisfaction,
according to an account written by Aquiline itself, which published a
chronicle of the cocktail event on its Website.

archaeology argentina conservation ethicsarchaeology argentina conservation ethics Published: 10.5.08 / 10am
Tags: archaeology, argentina, conservation, ethics