How a Tiny Colombian Village Beat the World’s Third Largest Gold Mining Company
In 2007, then-president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe announced that a gold deposit had been discovered in Tolima, a department of Colombia bordering the capital Bogota. Not just any old gold deposit. The vice-president of AngloGold Ashanti, the company which came to own the mining rights to the area, called it ‘the biggest gold discovery in the past ten years worldwide’. The La Colosa mine (meaning ‘The Colossus’) would occupy an area the size of 203 000 football pitches. And this was not any old business either – AngloGold is the world’s third largest gold mining company and won the 2011 Public Eye Award for the ‘most evil company in the world’ over allegations it polluted rivers and committed gross human rights violations in Ghana.
Local people in the village of Cajamarca decided this Goliath wasn’t for them. The region is mountainous, home to a unique páramo high moorland ecosystem. It’s also the source of much of the water of central Colombia, and most people work in agriculture. “How is in the breadbasket of the country are you going to build a mine. How are you going to eat?” were the words of one activist.
Ten years later the company has left the region following a referendum that decisively rejected the mine, and the Carnival March for Water, Life and Territory saw 120 000 people turn out in June in the department’s capital, Ibagué, which also recently became the first city in Colombia to prohibit polluting mining. This is a huge victory. Cristián Santoya recently caught up with Camila Méndez, a land and human rights defender and member of the Socio-Environmental Youth Collective of Cajamarca (COSAJUCA), one of the member organisations of the campaign, to tease out some lessons for other environmental justice campaigns.
No comments:
Post a Comment