Katesh — After a fifty-year struggle against land grabbing by foreign agribusiness corporations, nomadic pastoralists in the Hanang District of Eastern Tanzania have finally won Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy pursuant to the 1999 Land Act No. 5. With legal assistance from The Ujamaa Community Resource Team, The Barabaig and Masai in the villages of Mureru, Mogitu, Dirma, Gehandu and Miyng’enyi now have much needed access to approximately 5,500 hectares of grazing land for their cattle.
While several villages have benefited from the decision to enforce the 1990 Land Act No. 5, the Barabaig of the Basuto Plains have not been recognized in the latest issuance of Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy. The Barabaig have been engaged in a fifty-year struggle to maintain their cultural integrity against the jurisprudent land policies of privatization and villagization, which have systematically suspended their constitutional rights and legal protections. The powerful infiltration of neoliberal forces culminating in land and resource grabbing has fashioned a geographical landscape of displaced indigenous peoples struggling to restructure their lives in uninhabitable terrain that supports relatively few life forms. While recording mythohistories amongst the Barabaig women, I have had the opportunity to witness first hand how the Barabaig have resisted globalizing forces that have pushed them to the farthest regions of the Basuto Plains.
Barabaig drinking from what remains of sole water source
Land Policy
The restructuring of socio-geographic areas in the interest of globalization has been most visible in the legal system in regards to land policy jurisprudence and administration, demonstrating how global discourse circulates in such a powerful system as to suspend constitutional rights and protections of the Barabaig Peoples. For many years, first President of the United Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere’s philosophy on land holdings has shaped Tanzanian land policy. Rejecting the commoditization of land, Nyerere believed land was God’s gift to humanity and therefore could not be privatized. In his discussion of land holdings, he argues:
This land is not mine, but the efforts made by me in clearing that land enable me to lay claim of ownership over the cleared piece of ground. But it is not really the land itself that belongs to me but only the cleared ground, which will remain mine as long as I continue to work on it. By clearing that ground I have actually added to its value and have enabled it to be used to satisfy a human need. Whoever then takes this piece of ground must pay me for adding value to it through clearing it by my own labour. (Nyerere 1966)
This philosophy treats land as a fundamental right of human needs and not as commodity. This sentiment is further expressed in “The Nyerere Doctrine of Land Value” in the case of Attorney- General v. Lohay Akonaay and Another (Sabine 1964). [i] Accordingly, it is the public who possess land rights and an individual has a right to occupancy to use the common land belonging to the public. The duration of the Right to Occupancy can last from anywhere between 33 to 99 years depending on location and usage. The 1923 Land Ordinance of 1923 to 1999 referred to this title as a Deemed Right of Occupancy, based on occupation to confer ownership. “The majority of the people living in the rural areas—and who form more that 80% of the population of Tanzania hold their land under this system” (Peter 2007).
Today, President John Magufuli is the trustee of Tanzanian public lands and it is Magufuli who has the power and authority to decide what is in the public’s interest in terms of land decisions. Magufuli holds the power to “repossess land on behalf of the public for construction of roads, schools, hospitals etc.” (Peter 2007). Land can and has been taken from indigenous peoples without compensation for the land. In return the occupier is compensated for unexhausted improvements to the land, including houses, structures, crops; however, the occupier is not compensated for the land itself.
Legal Decisions Support Agribusiness Ventures
The implementation of the commoditization of land and resources can be seen in the 1960 decision to cultivate wheat in the Arusha Region of Hanang District. The United Republic of Tanzania along with the Canadian Food Aid Programme launched the Basotu Wheat Complex securing ten thousand acres of Barabaig land for wheat farming. In 1970, the National Agriculture and Food Corporation (NAFCO) expanded the project developing several large scale wheat farms securing 120,000 hectares of Barabaig pasture land, including homesteads, water sources, sacred burial grounds, and wild life.
Sadly, many Barabaig were unaware of the legal maneuvering for their land and first found out about it when tractors ploughed through their homesteads. According to reports and interviews, NAFCO failed to give due process to people living on their land at the time and were deemed to be trespassers on their own property. Chief Daniel recalls how he was jostled from sleep and ordered to leave. “We were forced off our own land by gunpoint,” he said.
A girgwagedgademga (council of women) with Chief Daniel
In the 1981 Case of National Agricultural and Food Corporation v. Mulbadaw Village Council and Others, the Barabaig sought legal protection and sued the National Agricultural and Food Corporation (NAFCO) for trespass on their land at the High Court of Tanzania in Arusha. While the High Court of Tanzania (D`Souza, Ag. J.) ruled in favor of the Barabaig Plaintiffs, stating that the Barabaig occupied land under customary title, the Court of Appeal of Tanzania overturned the decision and ruled in favor of NAFCO stating that, “The Plaintiffs/Respondents – Mulbadaw Village Council did not own the land in dispute or part of it because they did not produce any evidence to the effect of any allocation of the said land in dispute by the District Development Council as required by the Villages and Ujamaa Villages Act of 1975” (Peter 2007). In effect, the Village Council had trespassed by entering their own traditional lands, the Court of Appeals ruling that the villagers failed to meet the burden of proof that they were natives within the meaning of the law.
Legal analysis of case precedence is evidence that the Tanzanian government discounted Barabaig collective customary rights, discounted Barabaig tripartite land holding practices, ignored detrimental ecological effects derived from alienation of pastoral lands, and moreover privileged the privatization and commodification of land and foreign and national interests over local indigenous rights. Political power backed by powerful interest groups proved in this case study that power is not the same as law and that in the world of nation-states, placelessness and dispossession is a political byproduct of globalization.
In 1987, Tanzania, submitting to pressure to follow “global norms of behaviour,” decreed the Extinction of Customary Land Right Order. This extinguished land occupation under customary law, precluding Barabaig from exercising customary land rights protection (Larson and Aminzade 2009). Subsequently, when the Barabaig migrated during dry seasons, they left their lands with little evidence of occupancy, resulting in encroachment by external forces. The government began the process of Villagization, whereby the Barabaig were given portions of unused land deemed unsuitable for commercial purposes with little water resources. The Barabaig were subsequently settled (land-locked) in villages. The Villagization of the Barabaig drastically interfered with customary land practices, nomadic land use patterns, and livestock herding traditions.
According to Shivjii Chairman of the Presidential Commission of Enquiry into Land Matters, the movement of people into villages was achieved with “little regard to existing land tenure systems and the culture and custom in which they are rooted” (2007). The Barabaig surrendered their traditional migratory herding strategies and were forced to graze their cattle in a migratory cycle marked by a restricted one-day distance from their homestead. The concentration of livestock on this pattern of limited grazing has adversely impacted its ecosystems resulting in a “decline of levels of pastoral production and welfare” (Peter 2007).
Mama Paulina and widow
The Land Tenure reform is based on the premise that indigenous land tenure systems act as an obstruction to development and that more formal registered land title will encourage rural land users to make investments to improve their land investments through the provision of credit. The Tanzanian administrative structure grants each village a statutory title to land and further argues that granting titles and providing credit for land improvements will thwart encroachment by external forces; however, under the Customary Land Ordinance this has led to the holding of double titles leading to further complications of legality of ownership. The Barabaig case provides contrary evidence demonstrating that both objectives have failed to ward off encroachment by outsiders to enclose land for crop cultivation.
In addition, Land Use Appropriation by Foreign interests have interfered with traditional migratory patterns to water sources, denying Barabaig access to water during the dry seasons. Traditionally, Barabaig herders migrated eastward out of the village in the dry season to gain access to permanent water sources on the shores of Lake Balangda Lelu. The land allocation plans fail to recognize the indigenous needs of water sources; moreover, these allocations do not take into account the complexity of the traditional land use patterns in and beyond village boundaries. Because the Barabaig follow an animistic belief system that recognizes the interdependency and reverence of all life forms, displacement from their land and ancestral gravesites disrupts their sacred patterns of worship and traditional ways of being and living in the world.
The Barabaig were unaware of the Land Use Planning Provisions at the time and hence did not object to them because they did not realize how it would limit their migratory grazing patterns and obstruct their traditional livelihoods. According to Barabaig Chief Leader Daniel, plans were purposefully “ambiguous” and unclear with little account taken of their pastoral economy. Facing starvation, many pastoralists experienced a sense of cultural, spiritual and economic placelessness, and have been forced to give up their livelihood and migrate to squatter settlement areas in Arusha or Dar es Salam. “They fill the perio-urban shanties to eke out a living as best they can in the informal economy or become burdens of the state as the industrial and commercial sectors have no capacity to absorb more workers” (Lane 1990).
The issuance of Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy provides a temporary legal tourniquet against the inhumane assault on indigenous livelihoods. According to Attorney Edward Ole Lekaita from The Ujamaa Community Resource Team in the Arusha District, efforts have begun once again to take up the legal gamut to secure customary title deeds for the Barabaig of the Basuto plains.
About the author: An interdisciplinary ethnographer, Mary Louisa Cappelli is a graduate of USC, UCLA, and Loyola Law School whose research focuses on how indigenous peoples of the global South struggle to hold onto their cultural traditions and ways of life amidst encroaching capital and globalizing forces. She previously taught in the Interdisciplinary Program at Emerson College and is the director of Globalmother.org, a Tanzanian WNGO, which engages in participatory action research and legislative advocacy in Africa and Central America.
References:
Aminzade, R. and Larson, E. “Nation-building in post-colonial nation-states: the cases of Tanzania and Fiji.” International Social Science Journal Vl. 59: (2009):1468-2451.
Lane, R. Charles. “Barabaig Natural Resource Management: Sustainable Land use under Threat of Destruction.” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Discussion. Discussion Paper (1990): No 12.
Nyerere, J. K. Freedom and Unity: A Selection from Writings and Speeches
1952-1965. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Peter, Maina, Chris. “Human Rights of Indigenous Minorities in Tanzania and the Court of Law.” Journal of Group and Minority Rights, 2007.
Sabine, G. H. A History of Political Theory, London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, (1964): 527-528.
Featured Image: A view of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where self-styled “militia men” are declaring a takeover of refuge headquarters.Claudio Del Luongo/Shutterstock
Some of the same armed “militia” involved in the Cliven Bundy affair in Nevada have occupied federal land in Oregon formerly reserved for the Northern Paiute. Ironically, the “legal” basis for starting a fight with the federal government is that sovereignty “really” belongs to Oregon rather than the Paiutes, who have seen their federal trust land shrink from over one and a half million acres to a tiny remnant of 760 acres in Burns, Oregon, where this current armed standoff began.
Cliven Bundy is a Nevada rancher who engaged in an armed standoff with the federal government in 2014 when some of his cattle were seized over 20 years of unpaid grazing fees. “Militia members” and “patriots” from all the western states and phototropic politicians from as far away as Arizona joined Bundy. Video at the time showed “militiamen” taking aim at federal officers, and the authorities decided a bloodbath over grazing fees was not sensible. When the federal agents stood down, the militias declared a major victory.
This Saturday, January 2, the war over federal authority continued when an unknown number of militia members seized a building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Ammon Bundy—Cliven Bundy’s son—released a video urging like thinking people to arm themselves and come to Oregon, declaring, “We’re going to be staying for several years.”
The “militiamen” claimed the occupation of the empty building was accomplished by 150 armed men. The armed occupation of Malheur Wildlife Refuge grew out of demonstrations over the impending deadline for Steven Hammond, 46, and his father Dwight Hammond, Jr., 73, to report to federal custody to begin serving five years in prison each for arson on public lands.
At the Hammonds’ trial, the government argued that the fires were set to cover up evidence of poaching activities. The Hammonds did not deny setting the fires but claimed their purpose was to destroy invasive species.
In the 2014 standoff, Cliven Bundy claimed that federal agents had no authority in Nevada. He now claims the same of Oregon, stating Saturday, “United States Justice Department has NO jurisdiction or authority within the State of Oregon.”
If anything is clear-cut about Indians in the Constitution, it is that relations with Indian nations are a federal responsibility. Carrying out that responsibility in Oregon, President U.S. Grant established the Malheur Indian Reservation for the Northern Paiute in 1872. It is no coincidence that the historical reservation shares a name with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, site of the current armed standoff.
White settlement nibbled at the Malheur Indian Reservation until the Bannock War in 1878, which ended with surrendered Paiutes and Bannocks on the reservation being removed, officially to the Yakama Reservation in Washington Territory. Unofficially, Paiutes had scattered all over the Western States that comprised their aboriginal lands. The Burns Paiute Reservation is the remains of the Malheur Reservation and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge is an alternative use for the federal land, for those who believe the federal government exists.
As in Nevada, the Bundys claim the only lawful authority in the area is the Harney County Sheriff David Ward, who they have petitioned to take the Hammonds into “protective custody” from the U.S. Marshal.
Jon Ritzheimer made a farewell video for his family before heading out to fight with the “oppressive, tyrannical” federal government and posted it on YouTube. If he were not promising to “die a free man,” his rant about the Constitution would be humorous. While he would fail my constitutional law course, his, ahem, unusual reading of the document loses some humor value when he offers it as a reason to “lay my life down to fight against tyranny,” tyranny put in place by “kids who never got their hands dirty who went off to college” and came back thinking they know as much about land management as farmers.
Ammon Bundy claims on video to be doing God’s work and says of the 2014 standoff, “because people came, we are free.” He also claims that the U.S. Attorney threatened to get the Hammonds assigned to “a less desirable prison” if they kept consulting with the militia and that would be “a death sentence.” Urging people to join in, he referred to the occupation of the Wildlife Refuge as, “This wonderful thing that the Lord is about to accomplish.”
The Oregonian reported that one of the occupiers is Ryan Payne, an army veteran who claimed to have organized snipers to target federal agents during the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch in Nevada.
Another veteran of the Bundy standoff, Blaine Cooper, told The Oregonian, “I went there to defend Cliven with my life.”
Oregonian coverage was up to date as of early January 3, and included this statement on the situation from Harney County Sheriff David Ward:
After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, the Hammonds are not as quick to advocate shooting at federal officers as Cliven Bundy. The AP quoted a letter from the Hammond family lawyer, W. Alan Schroeder, to Sheriff Ward: “Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family.” Dwight Hammond himself told the AP that he and his father intend to turn themselves in on January 4 as ordered. “We gave our word that’s what we would do, and we intend to act on it.”
While state and federal law enforcement agencies discussed how to end the occupation without bloodshed, Cliven Bundy from his Nevada ranch and the occupiers in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge used social media to call for supporters to come to Oregon. And come armed.
Featured image: Francisco Tiul Tut mourns the burning and destruction of his home in Barrio La Revolucion. On January 8th and 9th, 2007, the Guatemalan Nickel Company, local subsidiary of Canadian Skye Resources, ordered the forced eviction of five Q’eqchi’ Mayan communities around Lake Izabal in El Estor and Panzos, Guatemala (Photo: James Rodríguez/mimundo.org)
While much of the controversy surrounding Canada’s extractive industry centers on oil and gas projects like SWN Resources’ drilling plans in New Brunswick, Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline and the widely felt impact of Tar Sands extraction in Alberta, there is a significant lack of debate concerning Canada’s larger and much more influential mining sector.
It’s estimated that 75% of the world’s mining and exploration companies are based in Canada. Collectively, they account for 42 billion dollars of Canada’s gross domestic product, making mining and exploration one of Canada’s most economically powerful sectors. Some 40% of global mining capital is raised on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The impact of Canada’s mining sector, however, goes far beyond mere facts and figures.
Wherever Canadian mining companies operate, they have an indelible imprint on the social, political and environmental realities in which they insert themselves. In countries that are politically unstable or where a culture of impunity is permitted to thrive, that imprint can span generations with successive mining companies following in the footsteps of their predecessors. Such is the legacy of shame that the Maya Q’eqchi people in Guatemala have been forced to endure for the last half century.
The “Fenix” Mining Project in El Estor, Guatemala. Established in 1965 as the EXMIBAL nickel mine owned by Canadian mining firm INCO, the project was transferred to the Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN) in 2005 after the expiration of the original 40-year license. CGN was the local subsidiary of Canadian Skye Resources, a junior mining company comprised of former INCO directors. Skye was bought by HudBay in 2008, and the project sold to the Russian-based Solway group in 2011. (Photo: James Rodríguez/mimundo.org)
For the average Canadian, the effects of mining and other forms of resource extraction are not immediately apparent; indeed, those who tend to benefit the most from such projects also tend to be shielded from the harsh realities that befall those who are affected by them, as Mi’kmaq lawyer and activist Pam Palmater toldIntercontinental Cry (IC).
“People in far-away cities may enjoy oil for their cars, diamonds from their city jeweler, or minerals needed to build cities and never have to see the housing crisis and lands stripped of trees and wildlife, or see the deformed fish and contaminated water.”
“The people who benefit are separated from the people who pay the social and environmental price,” she added.
For more than two years, Palmater, who leads the Centre for Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, worked closely with Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (MCCN) Chief Arlen Dumas, who, in 2013, served two Stop Work Orders to Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Ltd (Hudbay) in connection to the Lalor mine project in Northern Manitoba. According to Chief Dumas, Hudbay failed to obtain MCCN consent to operate its proposed mine, situated on unceded MCCN lands. Soon after the Stop Work Orders were delivered, Hudbay sought out and obtained a court injunction against Palmater and Chief Dumas, restraining them and others from interfering with access to the company’s property.
A long line of Canadian mining companies have adopted a similar modus operandi, avoiding their constitutional obligation to consult, accommodate or even inform First Nations before seeking approval of mining projects that could adversely affect their indigenous rights.
Far more companies have been under fire for human rights abuses and other transgressions that took place outside of Canada. Among them, there is Barrick Gold, Fortuna Silver, Sherritt International, IAMGOLD, Curis Resources, Tahoe Resources Inc., Denison Mines Corp., First Majestic Silver, TVI Resource Development, Inc., Nevsun Resources Ltd., New Gold Inc., and GoldCorp.
In their unyielding pursuit for justice and accountability, Indigenous Peoples are presently pursuing at least three of these companies in Canada’s court system. Foremost among them is Hudbay Minerals.
In 2010, Toronto-based law firm Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors filed a set of civil suits against Hudbay Minerals on behalf of Maya Q’eqchi people in Guatemala who suffered three separate injustices in connection to the Fenix Mining Project in El Estor municipality near the Pacific Coast.
The ongoing case against Hudbay Minerals centers on the actions of its former subsidiary Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN) and security forces hired by CGN between 2007 and 2009, specifically the murder of Adolfo Ich Chaman, a respected community leader; the attempted murder of German Chub, who was paralyzed after being shot at close range; and the gang rape of eleven women.
The case is widely considered to be a major step forward to holding the Canadian mining sector to account for its actions abroad.
The story of Hudbay in Guatemala goes back several decades to another Canadian mining company, INCO (now Brazilian company Vale). Linking together the history of INCO and Hudbay in this Central American country is crucial to understanding not only the Canadian mining sector but also its role around the world.
HISTORY OF INCO IN GUATEMALA
The violence against Indigenous Peoples who have opposed mining in Guatemala should be viewed as part of the wider violence that swept through the country in the 1950s when a military coup overthrew a democratically-elected government. “The history of INCO in Guatemala is [in its simplest form] the history of the military coup in 1954 and then the aftermath of that military coup”, Graham Russell, director at Rights Action network, stated in an interview with IC.
From 1944 to 1954 two nationalist, reformist and capitalist regimes attempted to modernize and equalize the country[1]. Part of this effort stemmed from a moderate agrarian reform bill in 1952 that would have redistributed hundreds of thousands of acres of land to landless peasants. This bill greatly affected the United States-based United Fruit Company (UFC), which was at the time the largest landholder and employer in Guatemala. Seeing the bill as a threat to its deeply entrenched economic interests, UFC hired legendary public relations expert Edward Bernays to carry out an intense misinformation portraying then-president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán as a communist threat. While Bernays was busy winning hearts and minds, the company carried out an equally energetic lobbying effort back home to convince lawmakers and the U.S. public that Guatemala desperately needed a regime change.
Once U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower came to office, it wasn’t long before he authorized Operation PBSUCCESS, a covert op in which the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded, armed, and trained 480 men led by Carlos Castillo Armas, the first of many dictators to succeed Guatemala’s presidency.
A long and brutal civil war ensued that would – over the course of 36 years – take the lives of more than 200,000 civilians and displace more than 1.5 million, culminating in a genocidal rampage against the Maya in the 1980s.
INCO had its own role to play in this vicious circle of violence. The Guatemalan military repeatedly used the company’s airplane landing strip to bring in soldiers and INCO trucks to transport them to Maya Q’eqchi lands for de-population. Graham Russell told IC that INCO’s position in the mining industry was a key factor as well, explaining that “…at this point (INCO) was the biggest private investor in all of Central America, not just Guatemala. These brutal military regimes and the wave of brutal violence starting in the late 60s and all through the 70s was directly associated to INCO’s mining interests in Guatemala.”
INCO was able to gain its status in Central America by cultivating a monopoly on nickel extraction. The company controlled nearly 54 percent of the nickel market in the West. During the 1950s it controlled 75 to 80 percent of the US nickel market[2]. Part of building this monopoly also involved Nazi war profiteering. Prior to World War II, INCO arranged a cartel agreement with the German company I.G.Farben to allow the stockpiling of nickel for the Nazi war effort[3].
INCO and the U.S. Hanna mining company formed Izabal Mining Operations Company (EXMIBAL), a subsidiary company, to operate in Guatemala in 1962. EXMIBAL attained a tax-exemption in Guatemala in 1968 for leading what was described as an “industry of transformation.” Under its contract, EXMIBAL would pay the Guatemalan government $23,000, a tiny fraction of the estimated $10 million it would make each year between 1971 and 1980.
With the civil war well underway, both government and private security forces seized the opportunity to remove any indigenous-led opposition to mining under the auspices of fighting communism. Over 400 massacres were carried out during the period of the civil war, including the notorious slaughter of more than 100 Q’eqchi who were peacefully protesting EXMIBAL’s mining operation in El Estor.
Although there was considerable resistance to EXMIBAL’s mining operation and controversy over how little INCO paid in taxes what lead to the end of the company’s mining operation was the 1980 demand from the military government of Romeo Lucas Garcia that EXMIBAL pay 5% of the value of nickel extracted to the Guatemalan government. EXMIBAL suspended operations and left Guatemala, retaining rights to its mining concession.
In 2003, the former director of INCO became the president and executive of the Canadian company Skye resources. Days before the 40-year concession on the old EXMIBAL mine expired, it was transferred to CGN, the local subsidiary of Canadian Skye Resources (purchased by Hudbay Minerals in 2008). The concession also gave CGN the “right” to expel the Maya Q’eqchi. In 2006, the International Labour Organization (ILO), a branch of the United Nations, held that Guatemala broke ILO Convention 169, a binding international law, by failing to carry out free and prior consultations with the Maya Q’eqchi. Five years prior to this, in 2001, the constitutional court of Guatemala held that the property rights of the land in question belonged to the Maya Q’eqchi. Both rulings were ignored by the Guatemalan government and CGN.
As if tearing a page straight out of Guatemala’s civil war, CGN proceeded to order the eviction of five indigenous communities from the concession area. In January 2007, a combined police and military force arrived to carry the order out with help from residents from neighboring areas who were trucked in by CGN. During the eviction, hundreds of homes were burned to the ground and, in the community of Lote Ocho, a total of 11 women were gang raped by CGN’s mine security personnel and members of Guatemala’s police and military forces.
Homes in the community of Barrio La Revolucion are burned and destroyed by personnel hired by the Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN). (Photo: James Rodríguez/mimundo.org)
One year later, HudBay Minerals purchased Skye Resources and promptly changed the company’s name to HMI Nickel Inc.
Despite the re-branding, however, the Maya Q’eqchi would continue to face a routine of repression with HudBay’s security forces shooting and killing Adolfo Ich Chaman and paralyzing German Chub Choc in 2009. One year later, Angelica Choc, the wife of Adolfo Ich Chaman, announced her intent to sue HudBay Minerals and its subsidiary in Canada.
Eager to evade a potentially catastrophic ruling, HudBay Minerals promptly sold CGN, the Fenix mine and its other Guatemalan assets to the Cyprus-based Solway Investment Group. The sale, however, did not deter Canada’s courts from agreeing to hear the case(s) against Hudbay.
PATHWAYS TO JUSTICE
A favorable ruling could have far-reaching implications not only for Hudbay but for the entire Canadian mining sector. As Graham Russell explained to IC,
“…there is a growing number of Canadians becoming aware that there are hundreds, if not more, [Canadian mining companies] operating in many places around the world [that] are often involved in creating environmental harm or contributing directly or indirectly in serious human rights violations including killings and gang rapes.”
The possibility that anyone who suffers at the hands of a Canadian mining company could turn to Canada for their day in court could very well change the face of the industry.
Katherine Fultz, visiting Instructor of Anthropology at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, who has studied opposition to mining in the Highlands of Guatemala, told IC by phone that community referendums as a tool to resist mining projects are also gaining popularity among mine-affected communities:
“It actually started elsewhere in Latin America. The first one was held in Peru and a number were held in Argentina and later in Columbia … Guatemala has held more than any other country with more than sixty votes at this point. Over half a million people have participated in them.”
These community referendums have rejuvenated anti-mining activism in the highlands of Guatemala leading many communities to take direct legal action against the Guatemalan government to protest mining on a national level.
Recently, the Guatemalan constitutional court ordered the suspension of two hydro-power mega projects (Vega I and Vega II) for failure to properly consult with affected Indigenous communities. Other mining projects have also been suspended due to lack of consultation with indigenous communities. In one case, the rural community of Zunil in the municipality of Quetzaltenango carried out referendums (consulta) declaring their territory to be a mining free zone.
An avenue that Canadians can use to stop international human rights abuses by mining companies may one day be found in Canada. In 2009, Liberal MP for Scarborough-Guildwood John McKay introduced Bill C-300 as a private members bill to the Canadian House of Commons. The bill called for the creation of an ombudsperson that would oversee Canadian mining firms. Bill C-300 ultimately lost by six votes in 2009, even though the NDP and Liberals held a majority in the House of Commons at the time. McKay said in a recent interview that, although he thinks existing structures that oversee mining companies need to be strengthened, re-introducing the bill is a high priority for the Liberal government.
Instead of the provisions in Bill C-300, Canadian mining and extraction companies fall under “Building the Canadian Advantage” (BCA) which the Conservative government put in place instead of Bill C-300. Viewed by critics as an irresponsible PR gimmick, BCA moved Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funds to support community projects run by Canadian mining companies and created a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) councilor to mediate disputes between affected communities and mining companies. None of these provisions, however, are binding; and while there is strong language about protecting human rights in BCA they are little more than guidelines that companies are under no obligation to follow.
The historical and contemporary case of Canadian mining companies operating in Central America shows that one should have no illusions about the role these companies play around the world. While building more north-south solidarity and mine-affected communities holding referendums are positive steps on the road to justice, there is the bigger issue related to the way that mining is tied to larger social, political, environmental and economic realities.
In an interview with Canadian Dimension Magazine, Alain Deneault, who was sued along with his co-author and publisher by Barrick Gold for the exposé Noir Canada, ties together the issues of over-consumption and planned obsolescence to the mining industry. “If we could put all of these questions on the agenda at the same time, we could say, okay, maybe it’s worthwhile to dig that hole in that specific area because we need zinc, but we’ll use it carefully. We’ll exploit zinc carefully because we’ll make sure that what we dig out will be recycled in many objects that we will use.” Deneaut went on to advocate for the creation of a permanent and independent commission of inquiry that would have powers to not only inquire into the activities of corporations but also summon their representatives to appear and submit documents.
For now, the more the Canadian public is informed about the activities of Canadian mining companies, the better. Pam Palmater advocates for a broad approach to bring Canadian mining companies abuses to light and urges that we work together to fight for our collective futures:
“…the more the public knows about the destructive activities of mining companies, who’s really profiting and what it means for our collective futures, the better chance we have at forcing change through varied means used simultaneously – including protests, court cases, political pressure, shareholder pressure, advocacy at the international level and building allies amongst social justice activists, environmentalists, scientists, First Nations, other countries, politicians and legislators.”
Notes[1] Guatemala: the politics of violence pg 1.
Featured image courtesy of Wikipedia under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry (MPF) has found the Brazilian federal government and the Norte Energia company guilty of ethnocide for the social and cultural destruction wrought on seven indigenous groups during the Belo Monte dam’s construction.
The MPF is demanding the courts set up an external commission to prevent future harm, even as the Brazilian government is granted an operational licence for the dam, whose reservoirs are now filling.
The MPF report states: “What is happening with the Belo Monte dam is a process of ethnic extermination by which the federal government is continuing with the colonial practice of integrating Indians into the hegemonic society.”
Brazil’s Public Federal Ministry (Ministério Público Federal, MPF), an independent state body, has started legal proceedings to have it recognised that the crime of “ethnocide” was committed on seven indigenous groups due to the severe detrimental impacts on their lives made by the building of the giant Belo Monte hydroelectric power station that will soon begin operating on the Xingu River in eastern Amazonia. The charges have been made against Brazil’s federal government and Norte Energia, the contractor that built the dam.
After carrying out a lengthy study that fills 50 books and includes contributions from a wide range of experts, the MPF has concluded that the “social organization, customs, languages and traditions” of the indigenous groups have been destroyed by the construction of the dam.
One of the actions undertaken by Norte Energia about which the MPF is most critical was a plan called “Plano Emergencial”. Under this plan the company set up a distribution center in Altamira, a town that has experienced explosive growth recently as a result of the dam’s construction. Goods and foodstuffs were available here each month for every indigenous village but the Indians had to travel to the town to pick them up. The money for the center came from a budget line for “ethno-development”, which was set up to help the villages become sustainable in food and to develop viable economic activities.
Indians, some of whom had never been to Altamira before, had to stop planting and fishing in order to travel to the town each month. The journey could take days and the whole procedure was very damaging to indigenous culture. The MPF says: “The villages became covered in garbage, with a proliferation of disease as a result, illnesses such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes became common because of the change in diet, child mortality surged, along with alcoholism, drug consumption and prostitution.”
The Belo Monte dam was completed at the cost of ethnocide to seven Amazon indigenous groups, according to the MPF. Photo by Pascalg622 licensed under under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
At the same time Norte Energia began to build cheap houses in villages higher up the Xingu River, without taking into account indigenous culture. “Dozens of houses were built — wooden shacks with fiber cement roofs, like those in urban shanty-towns — with no consultation with Funai [the Indian Agency] or Ibama [the Environmental Agency]”. The building work itself was very harmful: unskilled workers without proper authorization entered the villages, disrupting village life and leaving construction waste behind; timber was illegally felled; a 17-year-old indigenous girl became pregnant from a construction worker.
Reservation of Wounaan Burujon, La Union San Bernardo
An exclusive area of civilians and peacebuilding and justice
The Wounaan Tribe of Northwestern Colombia’s San Juan River is the latest casualty of a violent 25 year reign of terror hastened by the convergence of coca growers, gold miners, paramilitaries, guerillas, and government troops—all vying for control of the waterways and resources along the ancestral stretch of traditional Wounaan territories. Until the arrival of mono-crop production for export, Wounaan’s steadfast strategies have thwarted the bloodied battlefields of Spanish colonial impositions, nationalist armies, and Marxist guerrillas.
Occupying small thatched huts stilted on posts hovering up to eight feet high along the clearings on the riverbanks, the Wounaan kept to their subsistence livelihoods of hunting, fishing, Werregue Palm basket-weaving, and small-scale agriculture of bananas, pineapples, and yucca. That is until November 2014 when the Wounaan Tribe was forced to leave their village of Unión Aguas Claras along the San Juan river of the Cauca Valley and take up a 12-month residence in El Cristal Sports Arena in Buenaventura, Colombia.
According to Wounaan spokesman Crelo Obispo, “Paramilitaries kicked us out of land” and for twelve months they worked diligently to “find a peaceful way to recover our own indigenous land.” The Wounaan turned their occupation into a form of civil disobedience and refused to return to their lands without adequate protection and security from warring factions. Although on November 29, 2015, they returned home along the San Juan River, their cultural survival signals a critical humanitarian and environmental emergency in which indigenous people living sustainable lives have been caught in a resource war for coca cultivation, gold mining and control of key river tributaries.
Occupy El Cristal
For a full year, 343 Wounaan people, 63 families, occupied the cold hard floor of the basketball courts sleeping in multi-colored hand-woven hammocks strung beneath the stadium bleachers. One of them was a young wearied mother holding a shirtless 11 month-old infant suffering from a burning fever and bouts of diarrhea and vomiting. She recalled: “There wasn’t any medicine.” Herein lies the crisis. Not only were mothers unable to gain access to traditional herbal medicines, they were also unable to gain access to modern health care. Three somber mothers told me they were running out of adequate food and water sources. Buenaventura Officials confirmed the death of two young children, one year-old Neiber Cárdenas Pirza in December 2014 and a two day-old baby in June 2014. The Wounaan claimed the deaths were a result of inadequate health care and living conditions in the sports arena. “Our people practice culture, artistry, spirituality and traditional medicine. We need our lands to do so,” said Obispo.
The affirmative belief that the Wounaan were “occupying” the sports arena and taking a political stand against their dispossession by violence is key to understanding Wounaan resistance. “We arrived November 28, 2014 and since that time we had been in resistance,” Chama Puto said. Because the “the local government hardly did anything, and gave no guarantees of assistance,” he urgently called on international help and social advocacy networks to “get meetings with entities who could make change” and affirmed Wounaan ancestral ties to their lands. “Land doesn’t belong to the government or police. It belongs to the indigenous,” he added.
The occupation of El Cristal is an example of how Indigenous peoples enact visibly distinctive resistance tactics to draw political and social mobilization to defend their right to living in their native territories. Although Wounaan Leaders such as Chama Puto are well versed in Colombia’s constitutional law, they are fully aware of how constitutional decrees have remained rhetorical discourses because of the government’s failure to implement constitutional protections within its infrastructure—an absence of institutional support that has undermined the visionary purpose of the protections. In particular, Article 63 states: “Communal lands of ethnic groups and reservation lands cannot be taken away or attached”; Article 72 states: “Ethnic groups settled in areas of archeological treasures have special rights over that cultural heritage, which rights must be regulated by law”; Article 246 provides that “the authorities of the indigenous peoples may exercise jurisdictional functions within their territories, in accordance with their own standards and procedures, provided they do not conflict with the Constitution and laws of the Republic.”
While in some cases, legal maneuvering and mobilization within Colombian Courts have served to defend indigenous landholdings, the year-long Wounaan occupation of El Cristal is a blatant recognition of the ineffectiveness of Colombia’s legislation and juridical processes. Innovative forms of resistance appeal to wider socio-political networks capable of eliciting support across local, regional, national and global borders; however, it comes with a price.
Rhizomic World
El Cristal Sports Arena was a far cry from the Wounaan’s rhizomic world of heterogeneity and its interconnected relations of all plant, animal, ancestral and human life living within its ecosystems. This dynamic cartography of interconnected networks mapped across their ancestral rhizomic river systems and landscape moves beyond western metaphysical notions of duality to foster a cosmos of inter-being. Wounaan livelihood and well-being rely on their interaction with their landscape, an animistic ethno-geographic interaction grounded in rhizomic thought in which “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be” (Delueze and Guattari 1988).
These beliefs further their kinship networks across time and space in a continuous state of growth in which identities and relationships extend and merge through a web of intersecting relationships. Bill Ashcroft explains the rhizome in biological imagery as multiplying “root system which spreads across the ground” from varying points reaching out across the nomadic space “rather than a single tap root” (1999).
For the Wounaan, the San Juan River is an essential organizing principle of their rhizomic networking system, rich in its biodiversity in which their cosmology interconnects them to 8000-9000 vascular plants, 577 bird species, 52 snake species, 45 lizard and allied species and 127 amphibian species—all inter-being in an ecosystem without hierarchies. In addition to its cohesive social networks, the San Juan River is the true river (döchaar) and ancestral homeland and thus a material feature in the development of their worldview and their perceptions of themselves (Velásquez Runk 2005).
The fluvial systems crisscross over a three-dimensional topography, which includes portals underworld, the real world and the celestial world. In this way their river-dominated cosmos reflects the comings and goings on the river up (marag), down (badag), to (jerag), and from (durrag) in a world where spirits, beings, plants and animals in the visible and invisible world live in a balance of reciprocal equilibrium (Velásquez Runk 2005).
Because of their metaphysical approach which links native individualities, political strategies, and traditional subsistence practices they have been able to maintain their traditional livelihoods and ways of being against the onslaught of land dispossession and acculturation (Velasco 2011). Although their rhizomic community is resistant to rupture where it has fissured and peoples are deterritorialized, the river’s organic networking systems have been capable of reattaching the Wounaan to people, plants, animals within its extended network or creating new connections across its geographical space (Kamash 2008).
Since the 1990s, the San Juan River’s fluvial systems have become reconfigured spaces in which flows of capital, commodities and contraband have brought in a host of nonlocal actors vying for spatial control of its strategic geographies. These vital commercial river networks, which connect the Colombian interior with the Pacific Coast are needed for the production and transportation of gold mining excavation and cocoa cultivation turning the once-peaceful rhizomic ecosystem into a bloody battleground between narco traffickers, gold minders, the FARC, the ELN, the Urabeños, the Rastrojos, and other left wing, right wing, and neo-paramilitary forces.
The result is not only the displacement of indigenous peoples and the disruption of the natural equilibrium of the Wounaan subsistent lifestyle, but the destruction of the biodiverse habitat in which its diverse resources have been transformed to commercial assets and mobilized for monocrop and gold production of surplus value. Added to the actors competing for resources is the introduction of new players from the National Development Plan hoping to position the San Juan River as a key geographic territory for the neoliberal exploitation of resources for free trade agreements. Dispossession for capitalist production has more importantly led to the desecration of ancestral homelands in which families are increasingly intimidated, disappeared and butchered by a collusion of local and nonlocal actors to expedite commodity commerce.
“The government said we are something in the way of development,” said Crelo Obispo further noting, “We’ve been attacked by our conqueror.” Another Wounaan spokesman added, “They want to exterminate us.” Whether it is death by paramilitary, death by narco trafficker, or death in the crossfire between guerillas and the army, there is one certainty as Crelo Obispo declares: There return to their homeland is precarious and must be “met with protection and dignity.”
Amidst these conditions are ongoing negotiations for a bilateral ceasefire between the Government and FARC. Although the Colombian government and FARC rebels have moved towards a comprehensive plan to end an ongoing civil war which, since 1964 has killed 220,000 people, the Wounaan have still been left out in the cold (Rodzinsky). Chama Puto points out that while they are negotiating in Havana, Cuba, “we had been ignored in all negotiation processes.” He believes that conflict resolution can result only when “the government negotiates with all its people.”
As of today, this has not happened and the people the color of the soil who turned their displacement into a political strategy of indigenous resistance to the destruction of their traditional ecosystems still struggle for survival. Chama Puto wants a governmental guarantee of protection and safety in order to survive on their ancestral lands. “We are done negotiating,” he said.
Forceful dispossession underpins the plight of the Wounaan whose homeland has been drained by capital’s international reach for resources in which a “free market exchange relies on and takes advantage of the political and cultural dispossession of certain subjects” (Hennessey 2013). How do indigenous people who make up two percent of Colombia’s population coexist in a global world that renders them disposable, inhuman beings? In this scenario, the two percent making up the indigenous groups of Colombia become eight percent of the dispossessed, displaced, and destined to misery as a form of “human waste”; sadly, a myth narrated and played out in the many parts of the globe.
In El Cristal, the Wounaan were separated from their means of subsistence and vigorously resisted all paradigms of commercial expansion and regional control of their economies—a pattern in which, “more than 5.7 million people have been internally displaced in Colombia since the start of recording official cumulative registration figure” (UNHRC 2015). As of 2014, Colombia’s National Victims’ Unit documented 97,453 cases of forced displacement, mostly along the Pacific region. The El Cristal crisis exposed the systematic layers of political collusion that render Wounaan territories disposable sites of exploitation and economic casualties, which dispossess its peoples from their traditional livelihoods for the benefit of both regional, national, and global markets.
Wounaan Resistance Strategies
Wounaan resistance strategies date back to colonization and manifested in their traditional tactics they implemented to maintain their sense of cultural dignity during their resistance campaign. While living in the Sports Arena women practiced small-scale artesanías in the form of colorful bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and small-carved wooden bowls. The unbroken practice of these customs created communal solidarity and furthered their economic livelihoods, traditional knowledge, and cultural sustainability (Velasco 2012). Although these courageous women were proud to sell their artisans to sports arena visitors, the transactions were soured by the reality of their dispossession. “Collectively and physically the living conditions” were “inadequate, the food inadequate.”
Wounaan resilience to reattach itself to its rhizomic rivers network is precarious and subject to intra-institutional support of regional and national control. It is yet to be seen if this latest mobilization strategy will provide any safeguards and protections for their community. “Promises have been unfulfilled and we have become strangers to ourselves,” sighed a wearied Obispo.
References
Ashcroft, Bill (1999). “The Rhizome of Post-colonial Discourse” in Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks (eds.) Literature and the Contemporary: Fictions and Theories of the Present, London: Longman pp. 111-125.
Deleuze, Giles, and Felix Guattarri (2007). A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and Schizophreina. Brian Massumi, trans. Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press.
Colombia, Información sobre Derechos Humanos y Libertades Fundamentales de la Poblaciones Indígenas presentada por el Gobierno. (Published in UN.E/CN.4/ Sub.2/AC.4/1991/4).
Hennessy, Rosemary. Fires on the Border. Hennessy, Rosemary. Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Print.
Kamash, Zena (2008). What Lies Beneath? Perceptions of the Ontological Paradox of Water, World Archeology 40 (2) 224-237).
Velasco, Marcela (2011). “Contested Territoriality: Ethnic Challenges to Colombia’s Territorial Regimes.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30 (2): 213–228.
Brodzinsky, Sibylla. “ Colombia’s government and Farc rebels reach agreement in step to end civil war.” The Guardian. 15 Dec. 2015.
Runk, Julie Valasquez. (2005). And the Creator Began to Carve Us of Cocobolo: Culture, History, Forest Ecology, and Conservation among Wounaan in Eastern Panama. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University and the New York Botanical Garden.
__________. (2009). Social and River Networks for the Trees: Wounaan’s Riverine Rhizomic Cosmos and Arboreal Conservation. American Anthopologist 111(4).
2015 UNRCR Country Operations Profile-Colombia. The UN Refugee Agency.
In this 43-minute documentary, you will learn about the history of the Doctrine of Discovery, its basis in Christian theology, its effects on Indigenous Peoples today, and how we might start to undo it. “Doctrine of Discovery: In the Name of Christ” features interviews with Indigenous scholars, leaders and activists from around the world, as well as Christian theologians and pastors. Made for a Mennonite audience, the documentary is also relevant for a wider Christian audience.
