by Roger Annis and Kim Ives
People
and governments across Latin America are rising up against
foreign mining companies in a wave of revolt that is generating
alarm among investors and their political operatives in the
imperialist governments.
In Haiti, U.S.
and Canadian gold mining companies are rubbing their hands over
the riches that they believe await them. A recent study
by Haiti Grassroots Watch
estimates up to $20 billion, at gold’s current price of $1,600
an ounce, lies in the ground.
So it’s no coincidence that
Washington has used its proxy, the Organization of American
States (OAS), to illegally install a compliant regime – that of
President Michel Martelly – whose operative watchword is: “Haiti
is open for business.” Washington and Ottawa, which represent
most of the international mining firms in the Americas, are
adopting an increasingly interventionist response throughout the
continent.
Nationalizations grow
“From expropriations in Venezuela, Bolivia,
and Argentina to violent opposition in traditionally
mining-friendly jurisdictions such as Peru and Chile, the rising
political tensions pose a risk to a decade-long bonanza mining
companies have enjoyed,” reports the Canadian national daily
Globe and Mail on
Jul. 11.
The previous day, Bolivian
President Evo Morales announced his government would expropriate
the Vancouver-based South American Silver Corp. According to the
company, its claim in Bolivia’s Mallku Khota region contains one
of the world's largest undeveloped silver, indium, and gallium
deposits.
In May, Bolivia nationalized a
Spanish-owned electrical generation company. That followed by
several weeks a highly-publicized nationalization of a Spanish
oil company’s operations in Argentina, the largest oil company
in the country. Then in June, the Morales government
nationalized the Colquiri tin and zinc mine owned by the Swiss
global mining giant Glencore International PLC.
The mine nationalizations were
prompted by inter-Bolivian conflicts that the Bolvian government
accuses the companies of stoking. Tensions have arisen at mining
sites between employees of the operations of large companies,
artisanal miners who have a long tradition of working through
cooperatives, and local Indigenous residents. The stakes are
further fueled by sky-rocketing prices for minerals in
international markets.
As well, nationalization of
resource industries has been a key demand on the government by
social movements in Bolivia, though this demand had apparently
not been a large factor in Mallku Khota.
"Unfortunately, the so-called
transnational companies…pit brothers, in-laws, cousins,
neighbors, brothers from the same ayllu (community)
against one another,” said President Evo Morales about the
decision to nationalize South American Silver.
Some Latin American populations
are standing up to the mining transnationals without their
government’s backing. That’s increasingly the case in Peru. Five
people were killed by police during the first week of July at
protests against the multi-billion dollar
Conga gold and copper project,
which would be the largest mine in Peru’s history if it goes
ahead. The project’s owner is the U.S.-based Newmont Mining
Group.
Area residents do not want the
Conga mine, saying it will damage local water supplies. A string
of protests against mining projects have occurred in Peru in
recent years.
In Chile, similar concerns over
water supply and quality as well as the effects of mining on
electrical supply are driving protests. The Council of Canadians
released a
detailed report in March 2012
looking at recent developments and concerns in Chile’s Patagonia
region.
“If social movements in
opposition to mining are now part of the landscape, and if
mining is creating increasing intense competition for water and
energy, the real question now is how, institutionally,
politically, and legally Chile will accommodate the citizen
voice in mineral development,” wrote the U.S.-based Sustainable
Development Strategies Group in a 2010
study on mining in the
country.
Interventionist responses
According to the Vancouver Sun,
Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast wrote to his Bolivian
counterpart on Jul. 11 expressing "deep concern" with reports
that Bolivia was preparing to nationalize South American Silver.
Fast's spokesman Rudy Husny said the minister has instructed
officials to "intensify their engagement with the Bolivian
government to order to protect and defend Canadian interests and
seek a productive resolution of this matter."
The paper reported that
Canadian officials were expected to meet with the Bolivian
government and with Bolivia's ambassador to Canada.
President and Chief Executive
Officer of the South American Silver Corporation, Greg Johnson,
appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Radio One’s
The Current on July 12
and argued that his company has been wronged. He reported, with
satisfaction, that the Canadian government is pressuring the
Bolivian government to reverse its decision.
The CBC host of the program
sounded like a public relations spokesperson for the company. In
an accompanying interview, he hectored Bolivia’s ambassador to
the U.S., asking if South American Silver would be compensated.
He also took offense at Evo Morales’ statements accusing foreign
mining companies of “looting” Latin America’s wealth for
generations.
Evidently, the radio host has
not read The Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo
Galeano’s classic history of the continent. Galeano describes
how Latin America became “a huge mine.” The book details the
unbelievable human toll and suffering and the environmental
destruction perpetrated over the centuries starting with Spanish
conquistadors until today’s European and North American mining
companies.
"The metals taken from the new
colonial dominions not only stimulated Europe's economic
development; one may say that they made it possible," Galeano
writes. The book is appropriately sub-titled, "Five centuries of
the pillage of a continent."
The Prospectors and Developers
Association of Canada estimates there are 20 Canadian mining
companies operating in Bolivia.
A recent
series of articles
translated into French and published by the Belgium-based
Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) examines
the role of the British-Australia aluminum mining giant
Rio-Tinto in the parliamentary coup d’etat against Paraguay’s
President Fernando Lugo on Jun. 22.
The company had been lobbying
heavily for a long-term agreement for cheap electricity prices
as an incentive for it to establish aluminum smelting
operations. Paraguay shares several very large hydro-electric
dams with Brazil and Argentina. It has substantial installed
electrical generation capacity, approximately equal to 5% of all
of Canada’s. In 2007, Rio Tinto acquired the Canadian-owned
Alcan and its large aluminum operations in Quebec and British
Columbia.
The coup has returned to power
Paraguay’s traditional economic elite, who, not coincidentally,
are amenable to making a long-term deal with Rio Tinto. Among
the few countries to recognize Paraguay’s coup government is
Canada, which, with the U.S., was also quick to recognize the
Honduras coup d’etat in June 2009.
In the weeks ahead, Washington
and Ottawa will inevitably heighten sharpen their rhetoric
against the Morales government as they contemplate how to
further intervene in Bolivia.
Haiti’s situation
In February 2004, Washington and Ottawa
worked with Paris to carry out a coup d’etat against the elected
and socially progressive government of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. As Wikileaked diplomatic cables released last year by
Haïti Liberté showed, those three governments worked hard
to
keep Aristide in exile in South Africa for seven long years.
During his triumphant return to
Haiti on Mar. 18, 2011, Aristide gave a speech to the nation at
the airport. “To honor [Haiti’s founding father] Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, we come to bring you our little bit of help,”
Aristide said in his metaphor-laden Kreyòl. “With the little
ball of education centered in the court of dignity, we will kick
exclusion off the field and this way, the new generation will
begin to benefit from the wealth that slumbers deep within
Haiti: gold, copper, uranium, bauxite, silver...
“The calcium carbonate to be
found in Miragoâne is valued at more than U.S. $23 billion. The
petroleum reserves are no doubt larger than estimated.”
This thinly-veiled nationalist
message is precisely why U.S. and Canadian governments backed
Aristide’s ouster and maintain the ensuing UN military
occupation of Haiti to this day. In his place, Washington and
Ottawa have placed Martelly’s “Open for business” regime.
Newmont Mining is partnered
with the Canadian Eurasian Minerals in seeking to open gold
mining operations in Haiti’s three northern departments. The
Haiti Grassroots Watch study, “Gold
rush in Haiti: Who will get rich?,” published in May,
examines how Haitian law has already been circumvented by the
gold-mining companies as they forge ahead with exploration. HGW
Co-Director Jane Regan spoke to
Democracy Now on June 1
about the study. Among its findings are:
● Haiti’s former Minister of the Economy
and Finances is now a paid consultant for Newmont.
● Two Haitian ministers recently signed a “Memorandum of
Understanding” with Newmont and Eurasian that says – in
violation of Haitian law – the companies can begin drilling at
one of their exploration sites. Haitian legislation states no
drilling can occur without a mining convention.
● Nobody appears to be telling the communities in Haiti’s north
what is going on, and what deals have been made behind closed
doors.
● Haiti has the lowest mining royalties
(production taxes) in the hemisphere.
The UN military occupation of Haiti is what
the imperialists hope will ensure that Haiti’s mineral wealth
can again be plundered like in the days of the conquistadors.
Eduardo Galeano
spoke last September at an
event at Uruguay’s National Library discussing Haiti’s current
plight and its place in Latin America. “The military occupation
of Haiti is costing the UN more than $800 million yearly,” he
said. “If the United Nations dedicated those funds to technical
cooperation and social solidarity, Haiti could receive a good
boost to its creative energy. Then they would be saved from
their armed saviors who have a certain tendency to violate,
kill, and deliver fatal illnesses.”
“Haiti doesn't need anyone to
come and multiply its misfortunes,” Galeano concluded. “But
Haiti does need solidarity, doctors, schools, hospitals, and a
true collaboration that makes possible the rebirth of its
alimentary sovereignty, killed by the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, and other philanthropic societies.”
If the transnational mining companies get their way
in Haiti, that will surely “multiply its misfortunes.” |