by Todd Gordon
are varied; they extend well beyond a single episode; and they frequently go unresolved for months or years. The spike in their number is largely a result of the public reaction to the activities of mining companies and other extractive industries in environmentally sensitive areas. In fact, in 2011, these “socioenvironmental” disputes represented well over half of all conflicts, and they continue to roil national politics.796
International mining companies, including Canadian investors, were closely observing this upturn in social protest in the extractive sectors of the Peruvian economy. One expression of this worry can be discerned in the annual reports of the conservative Canadian think-tank, the Fraser Institute, on metal mining and exploration companies. These reports attempt to assess natural mineral wealth, and public policy, taxation, and regulation in mining sectors across different countries and regions of the world. The surveys include two indexes based on the information they collect, a Policy Potential Index (PPI) and a Mineral Potential Index (MPI). As the sociologist Moisés Arce points out:
These indexes serve as a report card to governments on how attractive their polices are from the point of view of an exploration manager. In the 2005–6 survey, for instance, the MPI index placed Peru at the top of the sample of 64 countries, suggesting that the sheer potential of the country’s mineral resources was extremely high. In contrast, the PPI index—which takes into account, among other things, the presence of political stability and societal conflicts—has consistently dropped since 2003.797
Even if such protests never reached a comparable scale to parallel social movements in nearby Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador over the same period, anti-mining activism was undoubtedly making its presence felt in Peru.798
CANADIAN MINING CONFLICTS: THE CASES OF TAMBOGRANDE AND ANCASH
Canadian capital has been at the forefront of the mining drive since the 1990s under Fujimori, and it is therefore not surprising that Canadian mining giants ran up against the new dynamic of expanding socio-ecological activism in the newly democratic context of the early 2000s.799 Indeed, new anti-mining struggles pitted directly against Canadian capital were widespread by the early 2000s, stretching from the peasant communities of Vicco, Tintaya-Marquiri, and Yauli, to the district of San Marcos in the Andean department of Ancash.800 The conflict in Tambogrande, beginning in earnest in 2001, was representative of many others in the country.
Tambogrande is located in the northern region of Piura, 1,050 kilometres from Lima. The Canadian corporation, Manhattan Minerals Corp., began surveying the Tambogrande reserve when it won an exploration concession in 1999.801 At the time, Manhattan Minerals estimated the value of gold, silver, copper, and zinc deposits in their concession to be approximately US$1.6 billion.802 A number of concerns about the Tambogrande project made it a highly unpopular venture in the affected community.
There were concerns about the large scale displacement of residents—projected to be between eight thousand and twenty thousand—due to the fact that parts of the concession were based inside the town centre.803 Manhattan Minerals had initiated exploration drilling soon after the company won the concession. They had established plans to develop an opencast mine three kilometers in diameter, within an urban area. As a result, they made it clear that their intention was to relocate at least eight thousand people into a nearby area, in a town which they planned to build.804
Fears were widespread that water scarcity and contamination, as well as other deleterious environmental effects from mining, would negatively impact the 226,000 hectares of mango, lemon, and other fruit trees which are harvested for export in the area, and which provide employment for 26,000 people and US$105 million annually to the local economy.805 The San Lorenzo valley in which Tambogrande is located suffers from acute water scarcity. The utilization of water resources for mining interests was expected to have devastating consequences for local consumption and agricultural activities. The opponents of the mining development were also concerned with company plans to divert the Piura River in order to access ore bodies currently under water.806 Based on their long historical memory of earlier colonial and republican mining activities in Peru, anti-mining activists in Tambogrande believed that the vast profits expected to come from the concession would, by and large, fall into the pockets of foreign capital, while only the devastation wrought on the community and the environment would be left in its wake.
In the 1970s and 1980s the principal actor in the popular struggle in the mines was the National Federation of Mining, Metallurgical, Iron and Steel Workers of Peru, established in 1969. The miners of this federation were a driving force of the Peruvian labour movement as a whole. They developed a powerful ideology of resistance rooted in anti-imperialism and workers’ rights.807 With the rapid expansion of mining activities into new rural areas during the 1990s, however, the principal axis of contention in mining zones shifted from miners struggling for their rights in existing mines, to peasant, indigenous, and community resistance to new mining expansion. A major turning point in this shift was the foundation of CONACAMI in 1999, following a series of meetings between forty different communities in six different regions of the country beginning in 1998.808 The conflict in Tambogrande was part of this new wave of struggle beginning in the late-1990s, which then expanded fairly dramatically over the course of the next decade and a half.
A coalition of “small- and medium-sized farmers, smallholders and day-labourers, teachers, traders, the Catholic Church, and in general the various social sectors of the locality and the region,” resisted Manhattan Minerals through the formation of the Tambogrande Defence Front, which was, in turn, part of the national CONACAMI coalition.809 The front utilized a series of tactics to resist Manhattan’s goals in the area, including strikes, occupations, and a referendum on mining activities. In a strike in late February 2001, “some 5,000 local residents stormed the company’s premises on February 28, burning machinery.”810 According to a witness report from Francisco Ojeda Riofrío—the Human Rights Secretary of CONACAMI, President of the Tambogrande Defence Front, and mayor of the Municipal Government of Tambogrande—the strike happened
because the people were frustrated, indignant, because nobody was paying attention to them. The company hired 700 police, and the people from Tambogrande confronted them. When violence broke out, they said that we had hired terrorists to come to Tambogrande. Halfway through that strike they killed our main leader, our big brother, Godofredo García Baca, and to this day his killer has not been captured, although it is widely known that he is a former air force sergeant.811
Despite the fact that García Baca was president of a local agricultural association and a central leader in the opposition movement, Manhattan Minerals claimed his murder was apolitical, the tragic consequence of a robbery gone awry.812 According to Ojeda Riofrío, however, infiltration and recording of popular meetings by company informants was a common occurrence. Even more seriously, three months after the strike in which García Baca was murdered, “seven armed thugs abducted [my] daughter from the university, and dumped her in the main street of Piura. The next day we had a public debate scheduled with the mining company—I don’t know if they were the ones behind my daughter’s abduction, but it was someone who wanted to scare me.”813 Death threats against Ojeda Riofrío and his family continued.
In 2002, the Tambogrande Defence Front held an unbinding popular referendum on whether or not the Manhattan mining projects should proceed. Indeed, this was Latin America’s first self-organized popular referendum of this type, a tactic that, following on the successes of Tambogrande, became a common feature of the repertoires of collective action employed by anti-mining activists from Argentina to Mexico in the coming years.814 Of 37,000 eligible voters, over 27,000 participated. Ninety-four percent of votes cast were opposed to the mining project.815 The company denied the credibility of the referendum, and apparently later conducted a poll of its own—but failed to publish the results wh
en they reaffirmed those of the earlier referendum.816 Over the next three years, the anti-mining movement of Tambogrande persisted vigilantly in their multifaceted efforts. Another three-day explosive protest took place in November 2003, for example. Such activism on various levels continued until Manhattan Minerals finally abandoned their concession in 2005, under pressure by the Peruvian government, but also citing the ongoing protests as standing in the way of the financial feasibility of the project.817 As the Norwegian sociologists Håvard Haarstad and Arnt Fløysand point out:
Under intense national and international pressure, the Peruvian government revoked the operating license of Manhattan Minerals in Tambogrande, effectively putting a stop to the project. In a country traditionally dominated by mining and the interests of the elite, a rural community had halted a large, foreign-controlled mining project through what can be said to be significant political empowerment by drawing on their network of national and international organizations.818
A similar rhythm to conflict in the mining sector continued under the administration of Alan García, and, once again, Canadian mining firms found themselves at the centre of numerous popular anti-mining campaigns. During his successful 2006 presidential campaign, García made a promise to review mining contracts, because the extraordinary profits being expatriated by foreign multinationals was becoming well-known and widely repudiated in the Peruvian body politic, and the calls for a windfall tax were becoming louder. However, once in office García’s windfall tax was watered down to a voluntary commitment on the part of mining firms. If that was not enough on its own, under García, the Ministry of Energy and Mines continued to be simultaneously responsible for the entirely contradictory roles of attracting new foreign mining investment, granting mining concessions to private capital, and reviewing and implementing environmental impact assessments required before beginning any new exploration or extraction activity in the country.819
One of the exemplary social conflicts involving a Canadian mining company under García became a flashpoint only a month after the April 2006 general elections in Peru. The conflict in question pivoted on the Pierina gold mine in the region of Ancash. The deposit had been discovered back in the mid-1990s by a Vancouver-based exploration company, but that company was then acquired by Barrick Gold in 1996. Soon thereafter, Barrick began a land acquisition program to obtain approximately 2,300 hectares of surface area in order to develop the mining concession. The bulk of the area was positioned in the headwaters of three valleys, in which small-scale farmers used grasslands as commons for their cattle and sheep ranching.820
Residents eventually agreed to sell their land to the company after they were promised social development and jobs in the new mine. “In the years since,” writes geographer Matthew Himley, drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic research in the area, “permanent employment at Pierina has been unavailable for most area residents: though many of my 46 interviewees in these two communities expressed interest in steady work at Pierina, none had been hired full time.”821 In early May 2006, frustrated with the lack of job prospects and Barrick’s unfulfilled pledges for social development, men and women from seventeen communities blocked two of the mine’s main access roads at midnight. On the second day of the road blockade, a special-operations police unit was sent in to clear away protestors. In the ensuing conflict, one protestor was killed, and at least ten were seriously injured. Nine police officers were also injured that day.822 According to Himley, again drawing on lengthy discussions he carried out with interviewees in the area between 2006 and 2012:
Residents’ positive depictions of local history were often embedded within broader narratives regarding the unfavorable socio-environmental consequences of large-scale mining. Along with references to the adverse impacts of mining on resource availability and social life, these narratives often included mention of the inadequate social-development support that communities received from Barrick.823
The protests against Barrick continue in Ancash, as residents in the area defy state repression carried out on behalf of Barrick’s operations in the area.
VIOLENCE AND ECO-DESTRUCTION BEYOND TAMBOGRANDE AND ANCASH
The cases of Tambogrande and Ancash are symptomatic of the conflict that has accompanied Canadian investment in Peru. The Canadian government has actively supported Canadian economic interests and, in the process, made allies of local political leaders willing to use whatever means necessary, including repression, to defend Canadian investors. Alain García, for instance, proved a useful asset to Canada, bending over backwards for foreign investors. In a speech delivered in Ecuador to the Canada-Peru Chamber of Commerce, Helena Guergis, Canadian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, ignored Peru’s poor human rights record under García, counting him instead as a foreign-investor friendly ally. “Under the leadership of President Alan García,” she intoned, “Peru is showing a new determination to…develop stronger governance mechanisms; and encourage more openness to trade and investment.”824 Both of those aspects of García’s leadership were in ample display for Canadian and foreign capital. An eager supporter of Canadian foreign investors, García signed a free trade agreement (FTA) in 2008, intensifying the process of opening up wide swaths of the country to foreign investors—as noted, between 2006 and 2010 the area of the country covered by mining concessions almost doubled, extending to 16.7 percent of the national territory. In 2010 alone, as García opened up the country, Peru received 7,000 requests for exploration permits from 150 junior companies.825
García, ever willing to please the Canadians, also continued his predecessors’ policies of allowing no charge of royalties or a windfall tax on mining investments. As noted, García instead established a voluntary windfall payment. The outcome of García’s financial generosity to foreign investors was entirely predictable and demonstrates the absurdity of the mining industry’s rote public relations claims to being an important contributor to development in poor countries. Despite the global commodities boom, the voluntary tax netted a meager US$638 million from mining companies by the end of 2010, while the total net global earnings of the five biggest foreign miners in the country from 2005 to June 2010 (including Barrick) was US$20 billion. Over that same period, only 12 percent of the mining industry’s profits in Peru went to taxes and royalties. The absurdity of the neoliberal fantasies of García and his Canadian supporters is captured in the fact that in the region of Cajamarca, one of the biggest destinations for mining investment in the country in the late 2000s, poverty increased over this period.826
Adding to his esteem in the eyes of the Canadian government, García did not hesitate to crush opposition to natural resource development. In perhaps the most ignominious episode of his presidency, he sent security forces on June 2, 2009 to smash an indigenous blockade in its second month near Bagua in northern Peru close to the Ecuadorian border. The blockade was set up in opposition to government decrees issued following the signing of the FTA, which permitted mining, oil, and logging development in 70 percent of Peru’s Amazon rainforest without requiring the prior consent of indigenous inhabitants. Security forces shot and killed a number of protesters and injured over two hundred; a number of police were also killed during the conflagration. As journalist David Hill reports:
The conflict broke out in northern Peru after mainly indigenous Awajúns and Wampis had been peacefully protesting a series of new laws which were supposed emitted to comply with a trade agreement between Peru and the U.S. and which made it easier, among other things, for extractive industries to exploit natural resources in their territories. Following a blockade of a highway near a town called Bagua—and an agreement that the protestors would break up and go home, reached the day before—early on 5 June the police moved to clear it and started shooting. In the ensuing conflict, 10 police officers, five indigenous people and five non-indigenous civilians were killed, more than 200 injured—at least 80 of whom were shot—and, elsewhere
in the Bagua region, a further 11 police officers were killed after being taken hostage.827
Canada’s FTA with Peru was actually passed into law by the Harper government just a few days after this massacre, with no mention of the violent repression in Peru.828 But the shooting of dozens of indigenous protesters pales in importance compared to a new FTA that will, in the words of Minister of Trade, Stockwell Day, “open new doors in key sectors such as extractive industries, manufacturing, agriculture and financial services.”829
The following August, Awajún and Wampis indigenous communities issued statements demanding Vancouver-based Dorato Resources leave their ancestral territories. Dorato received its concession in the Awajún and Wampis territories and approval for its environmental permit even though it did not consult with the indigenous communities. But the Awajún and Wampis are not only fighting Dorato. IAMGOLD is also operating in their territories without consulting them, and in fact without initially being given permission from the Peruvian government, which in 2009 reported that the company had not even asked for a permit and that its operations there were “illegal.”830
In the spring of 2010 poor artisanal miners in Chala in southern Peru, led by the National Federation of Artisanal Miners of Peru, set up blockades in opposition to the government’s decision to open large tracts of their land to foreign investors. The blockade was met with the heavy hand of the state: police fired on the protesters, killing five.831 Peru’s security forces would launch another assault on artisanal miners in the twilight days of García’s presidency, in February 2011. Nineteen river dredges were blown up, sparking country-wide protests by fifteen thousand poor miners that precipitated the end of the assault and the creation of a new registry for them.832