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<h1><b>Resisting the New
Conquistadors</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue39/article1497.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.narconews.com/Issue39/article1497.html<br><br>
</a></font><h2><b>Salvadorans Mobilize Against Gold Mining<br><br>
<br><br>
</b></h2><h3><b>By Sean Donahue<br>
Special to The Narco News Bulletin</b></h3><font size=3>December 1,
2005<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>Special thanks to Meredith DeFrancesco of WERU Community Radio in
Blue Hill, Maine, who taped and transcribed many of the meetings and
interviews cited in this report. Her radio documentary on mining in El
Salvador can be found at
<a href="http://radioactive.libsyn.com">http://radioactive.libsyn.com</a>
.<br><br>
</i>
</dl>In the fields above Carasque, you can still find shrapnel from bombs
the Salvadoran Air Force dropped on the village in the 1980s. Early this
fall, signs of a new threat began appearing on the mountainside – survey
tags left by a Canadian mining company searching for gold.<br><br>
Benigno Orellana, the community’s representative to the Municipal Council
in Nueva Trinidad, says, “Right now, the permission is for exploration,
later it will be for exploitation.” He’s worried:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“If the mining companies come in, it will be worse than the twelve
years of war. This is a project of death for our communities and a
project of wealth for those who exploit us. They will leave behind a
desert where we can’t sustain our crops, can’t feed our animals, and
can’t get water to drink.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>That’s a fate people in Carasque aren’t willing to accept – after
surviving decades of violence and repression, they are not about to allow
a mining company to force them off their land.<br><br>
Earlier this year, the Salvadoran government granted two Canadian
companies – Au Martinique Silver and Intrepid Minerals – licenses for
gold exploration in the department of Chalatenango, near the Honduran
border. <a href="http://www.aumartinique.ca/El%20Salvador.pdf">Au
Martinique’s website</a> promises investors that “El Salvador has the
lowest risk profile for investment in all of Central America.” But what
they haven’t taken into account is the region’s strong history of
community organizing, and the lengths its people are willing to go to
defend their land and their livelihood.<br><br>
<br>
<h5><b>A Project of Death</b></h5><font size=3>According to
<a href="http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/no_dirty_gold/background">
Oxfam America</a>, “Gold mining is one of the most destructive activities
in the world. The production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of
waste.” Cyanide, used to separate gold from ore, can be deadly in small
doses. It leaches into groundwater and soil where it can persist for
years.<br><br>
Most people in Chalatenango are subsistence farmers, growing what they
can in poor soil, and supplementing their meager earnings with money sent
by relatives living and working in the U.S. Debt has already driven many
families off the land, and with cheap imports from subsidized farms in
the U.S. driving crop prices down, many more will have to leave the land
in the years to come. Water and soil contamination from gold mining could
deal the final blow to communities like Carasque that are already
struggling to survive.<br><br>
Community leaders don’t believe the mining companies’ promises of jobs
and prosperity.
<a href="http://jeffbogdan.net/usessc/archives/1000-women-for-peace/">
Esperanza Ortega</a>, a legendary organizer from the town of Arcatao,
says:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“They tell us they are going to bring employment to our community,
but based on the investigation we’ve done on the experiences of other
communities around, they say that, they give employment to a few people
for awhile, and then when they decide it’s time to bring machinery in,
it’s just the specialists, the people that can run the machinery, and
they kick all the other workers out.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Though life in the countryside is hard, rural poverty has advantages
over urban poverty – people have food to eat and a close-knit community.
Maximino, the legal secretary for the Carasque’s community council,
says:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“If the mining were to happen on our hillside, we would be forced to
move to other parts of the country. After living in this community, and
having our land to work, relocating to huts, one next to another, would
be very hard.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Reports from neighboring countries confirm the fears that people
from Carasque express. Another Canadian company, Greenstone Resources
Limited, carried out mining operations in Honduras in the 1990s. In a
<a href="http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/6_03/2.html">
recent report published by the human rights group Project
Underground</a>, Honduran activist Miguel Miranda describes his
community’s experience:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“Our community has existed on this land for nearly 200 years. When
the company Greenstone came they offered us employment and promised to
leave our road, the cemetery and surrounding lands intact. But we were
fooled. The company’s explosions shake our homes and their open pit is
swallowing our homes, causing landslides and cracks in our walls and
foundations. They close our road so we have no access to our homes and
their heavy equipment put our children’s lives at risk. When we complain,
the Mining Department says that we have to understand that this is for
the good of the country…”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Mayan communities in
<a href="http://www.rightsaction.org/Reports/Cuffe%20mining%20report%202005-03.htm">
Guatemala</a> are facing similar struggles. The conflict over Glamis
Gold’s mining project in the San Marcos highlands turned violent in
January when the military and police deployed to the region to suppress
protests and help a Canadian company move new equipment into an
indigenous community. Security forces killed at least one man.<br><br>
Benigno Orellana forsees a similar situation in Chalatanango, “Besides
facilitating the miners with whatever permits they need, the government
will give them security through the military and police.” But the people
of the region are no strangers to confrontation, and won’t back
down.<br><br>
<br>
</font><h5><b>A History of Resistance</b></h5><font size=3>Chalatenango
was and still is a stronghold of the FMLN, the former guerrilla movement
that has now become El Salvador’s main opposition political party. In her
book Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador</i>, New
York University political science professor Elizabeth Jean Wood writes
that during the war:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“…in Chalatenango, guerrilla leaders encouraged residents to
participate in local organizations called </i>poder popular local (local
popular power). The purpose of these organizations was to provide food
and health to local residents as well as guerilla forces, typically
through cooperative buying of seeds and fertilizers and marketing of
surplus as well as the cultivation of some land for cooperative
consumption.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>At the height of the war the FMLN blew up the main bridge over the
Rio Sumpul leading into Chalatenango to prevent the military from
attacking these organized communities.<br><br>
Wood notes that “their infrastructure was destroyed and participants
widely dispersed during the intensifying bombing campaign that began in
1984.” In the summer of 1984, a group of displaced people in San Salvador
formed
<a href="http://perso.wanadoo.es/gbajolempa/cripdes.htm">CRIPDES</a>
(then called the Christian Community for the Displaced of El Salvador,
now the Association for the Development of Rural Communities of El
Salvador) and began helping refugees return from camps in Honduras and
Nicaragua to
<a href="http://www.jeffbogdan.net/usessc/timemachine/cripdes.html">
repopulate their communities</a> and reconstitute the community councils
the FMLN had established. Those who returned faced severe violence and
repression from the Salvadoran military, but persevered with the help of
solidarity movements in El Salvador and the U.S. The community councils –
which include representatives of the church, the health sector, women’s
groups, youth groups, the schools, and the agricultural cooperatives –
continue to form the basis of local government in Chalatenango today. The
Association of Communities for the Development of Chalatenango (CCR in
its Spanish initials) pulls together representatives of these community
councils to work together on common challenges.<br><br>
In the fifteen-odd years since the end of the war, the CCR has helped
communities resist threats ranging from the government’s attempt to shut
down Rio Sumpul, the community radio station, to a campaign visit from
presidential candidate of the ruling ARENA party, which has strong links
to the death squads that murdered thousands of Salvadoran civilians in
the 1980’s. Santiago Serrano of the CCR says:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“In Chalatenango, we’ve always tried to defend what is ours. They
tried to take away our community radio station, before it was a legal
station. The police came to try and take away our equipment and take away
our station. In the community we all came out, and we occupied the
station and we didn’t let them take it. They tried to arrest community
leaders, the community came out and defended them, and they weren’t able
to take them away. The ARENA presidential candidate came into our
communities trying to cover us all with lies, in the last presidential
campaign, we got him out with rocks and bees, and we even got him all out
of the whole province of Chalatenango. So we even got a candidate out of
here. Now the mining companies come in and we hope that everyone together
will kick them out too. They had to airlift the presidential candidate
out of there, because people were so angry.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Echoing Serrano’s words, Esperanza Ortega says that the mining
companies need to know that<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“If they come into this zone they are going to have a lot of
problems, because remember we are dealing with people from these
communities who survived the war, and there some us, when we lose
control, we don’t even know what we can do.”<br><br>
<br>
</i></font>
</dl><h5><b>Organizing Against Mining</b></h5><font size=3>People in
Chalatenango have been organizing against the mining companies since the
first prospecting teams began to arrive in the region earlier this year.
Serrano explains:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“First they came into the municipality of San Jose Las Flores, and
met with community council and the mayor’s office to say that they wanted
to explore the area. And so the community leaders said, let’s talk to the
entire community, and all the population and then we’ll tell you. And
they came back again. And they got their answer, that ‘No means no.’ But
then they kept coming into the community, this time without permission
from anybody and started doing some explorations.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Farmers began removing the concrete markers and metal tags the
mining companies left on their land. And as the miners moved into new
communities, resistance began to spread. 15 mayors and virtually all the
parish priests in Chalatenango have come out against the mining
projects.<br><br>
At the national level, social movement organizations are working with
attorneys and legislators to mount a legal challenge to the mining
licenses. They have also pulled together key organizers to study the
example of the
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue39//Issue34/article1049.html">
popular movement in Cochabamba, Bolivia</a> that succeeded in defeating
water privatization in 2000 in order to develop new strategies for road
blockades and mass demonstrations.<br><br>
The CCR has now mobilized people in 100 communities to oppose the mining.
Serrano says:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“Throughout the whole northeast region of Chalatenango, people are
getting to know about the impacts of the mining projects and all of the
owners say they are not going to sell. This is a historical province of
the country, lots of people died on these lands and the owners are not
about to sell them.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>And in October, Au Martinique Silver and Intrepid Minerals saw for
the first time the lengths to which Chalaticos</i> are willing to go to
defend their land.<br><br>
<br>
</font><h5><b>Confronatation on the Highway</b></h5><font size=3>On the
morning of October 15 a team of workers from Au Martinique Silver drove
up the Northern Highway toward San Jose Las Flores and Guarjila. When
members of the CCR spotted the miners, they rang the church bells in the
two communities, and, in Serrano’s words, “people came running like
ants.”<br><br>
Before long, several hundred people had gathered and were completely
blocking the road. Ortega reports that:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“There were people who were so excited and so angry that they got
their matches out and wanted to start and set fire to the cars. We said
‘No, wait. This is the first time they’ve come.’ Then one of the war
wounded got up on the cab of the truck, stood on the cab of the truck,
and said, ‘Listen, Sirs, I am a survivor of the war…,’ and his hand,
he’s missing his arm ‘I am a survivor of this war, and I know these
lands very well. I know them step by step, and I am going to defend them.
We need a society that’s uncontaminated. We need a society that’s safe
for our children, for our grandchildren. And I struggled and gave my life
to these lands and this struggle. And so I’m not going to let you take
then now.’”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>After about an hour, people pulled together all the cars and trucks
in the two communities and formed a caravan to follow the miners back to
the departmental capital, the city of Chalatenango, and make sure they
didn’t return.<br><br>
A month later, on November 16, the anniversary of the 1989 murder of six
Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran
military, the MPR-12 (October 12 Popular Resistance Movement), a
coalition of labor unions, farming cooperatives, and community groups
that came together to oppose the
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/24/145554/061">
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)</a> organized coordinated
demonstrations around the country, and thousands turned out in
Chalatenango to block the main highway again. The MPR-12 sees the mining
project as part of the same corporate agenda that drove the trade
agreement, and the demonstration in Chalatenango focussed largely on the
mining issue and on the construction of hydroelectric dams being built to
generate electricity for factories in Honduras and Nicaragua.<br><br>
Jesse Kates-Chinoy, a solidarity activist from Maine, reported
that:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“In Chalatenango, approximately 2,000 people gathered under the
intense sun to occupy all four lanes of the Northern Highway, stopping
traffic for a full two hours. The Northern Highway is used heavily for
land transportation of products from the U.S. and Mexico to points south,
and for the two hours that the protesters had the road closed, the line
of tractor-trailer trucks grew in both directions… <br><br>
<dd>“Perhaps the issue which ignited people the most was that of the
proposed open-pit mineral mining in the Chalatenango province. Canadian
mining companies have come into communities throughout the northeastern
region of Chalatenango, and begun to conduct explorations, preliminary
excavations, and lay markers for mines from which they say they plan to
extract gold, silver, and other valuable minerals. The communities,
however, are adamant that they will not let the companies into their
communities to exploit their lands, and they will defend their rights at
all costs. ‘Mineral mining by foreign companies in our lands is foreign
intervention in our communities’ declared Lisandro Monje, historic leader
from the community of San José Las Flores, one of the communities in the
sights of the mining companies. Mineral mining in Central America has a
dark history, and the organized communities of Chalatenango are familiar
with the process of bribery, pressure, threats, violence and displacement
that the mining projects have brought to other communities. The
Chalatenango communities are determined to not let it happen to them.
‘The moment that these Canadian gentlemen try to come into our
communities, we are going to show them the true strength of the organized
Salvadoran people,’ Lisandro continued, ‘and if it becomes necessary to
take the measures that nobody wants to take in order to defend our
communities, then we will have to do so.’ Coming from communities of
people who despite 12 years in a war zone under the Scorched Earth
military strategy came to reclaim their lands, and coming from Lisandro,
who led the early stages of organizing the armed resistance movement to
defend their families, these are strong words.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>The mining issue has mobilized people in an area with a long history
of fierce struggle, creating a sense of urgency not seen since the end of
the war. Word is spreading to other parts of the country affected by
mining. Ortega says, “People from Calaienes, people from Cuzcatlan, who
are also facing mining projects have said, if you start the struggle,
we’re going to join it, and we’re going to continue it.”<br><br>
Au Martinique Silver and Intrepid Minerals are already beginning to see
that gold mining in El Salvador may not be the safe business prospect
they expected – and the struggle has just begun.<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Read more of Sean Donahue</b>’s work at
<a href="http://www.seandonahue.org">www.seandonahue.org</a>.<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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