A gold mine project in Veracruz that has run into local opposition envisions a low CAPEX, simple heap-leach open pit mining operation targeting approximately 100,000 ounces of gold production annually. Gold reserves at the project are estimated at 575,000 ounces which assures high pollution and destruction of the land in order to yield as much of the precious metal.
A new gold mine in Veracruz, Mexico, will be the first one in the world to be opened only two miles away from a nuclear reactor and from many pipelines – all in the middle of a densely populated, touristic area that is also the most important migratory route in North America. These are some of the main reasons why local activists are strongly opposing the project.
A History of Colonial Extraction
Mexico has a long mining history. Before the conquest, gold and silver were sought mainly to make jewelry and offerings. Tin, lead, and copper were also mined in the state of Michoacán after the Purembes (Tarascans) found a way to extract and work it. All these minerals were used to make certain tools, utensils and weapons.
But the history of extractivist mining in Mexico begins with the Spanish invasion. Most of the mineral resources were exported to Spain, and it is stated in the General Archive of the Indies (an important Spanish colonial archive housed in Seville, Spain) that 185,000 kilos of gold and 16,000,000 kilos of silver arrived in Spain from America between 1503 and 1660 alone.
“La Paila” and Other New Projects
Despite the efforts of the Spanish crown, however, Mexico still retains vast mineral wealth, and there are currently 21 mining projects about to start up. The project that concerns us was once known as “Caballo Blanco” and now as “La Paila,” which is the name of the hill where the project is to be located. This would be an open-pit gold mine on the hill of “La Paila” in the municipality of Alto Lucero, Veracruz.
The mining company is a subsidiary of the Canadian Candelaria Mining Corp., which reports that it has 12 concessions on 19,815 hectares of land (roughly 76.5 square miles) for the main project. The company has also identified four “high priority targets” for further exploration in the surrounding area: Bandera Norte, Bandera Sur, Las Cuevas, and Highway North. If permits for these additional projects are approved, it would significantly increase the footprint of Candelaria’s activity in Veracruz.
Impact of Extraction
To operate just one of these projects, thousands of liters of water are required for the leachate lagoon. These are the waste products of the process. They remain in the tanks and contain cyanide, sulfuric acid, mercury and other solvents that will be used to obtain 0.03 grams of gold for each ton of soil. Gold is associated with quartz rocks that must be ground, placed in large mounds, and washed with water mixed with cyanide. This represents a great risk for the populations living downstream from the mine. In addition, the water used for these projects is extracted from the nearby aquifers, leaving the local populations without water.
To extract the rock, large tajos (quarries) are opened that will remain there permanently. Such a process gives no thought to the layer of soil and vegetation that have to be destroyed in order to open these large holes in the earth, leaving a lunar landscape in which life would be impossible.
According to research presented in 2015 in La Jornada Ecoloógica, the following is necessary in order to obtain one ounce of gold, or what is contained in a “US Golden Eagle”:
extraction of 150 tons of rock
40 kilos of explosives (enough to demolish a five-story building)
processing of 25 to 50 tons of earth leached with cyanide solution
release into the environment of three kilos of cyanide salts (enough to kill 60 thousand people)
consumption of 100,000 to 150,000 liters of fresh water (enough to provide services to an average family for one year)
consumption of 1300kws of electrical energy (enough for an average family for a month)
consumption of 450 liters of fossil fuels to maintain water supplies and move mine equipment
emission of 650 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide
The researchers also report that this type of project offers only 15 person-hours of income to the region, or “the salary of one person working for two days” (La Jornada Ecoloógica 200, August-September 2015).
Meanwhile, over a 20-year period, a gold mine uses 500 thousand tons of explosives, or roughly 40 percent of the explosives used in World War II. And in this case, those explosives would be used at a distance of only three kilometers from the Laguna Verde nuclear plant and two kilometers from five gas pipelines that pass through the region.
Ecological and Cultural Destruction
The area around the “La Paila” project is also an important migratory corridor known as “el rio de rapaces” (“the river of raptors”). It is the migratory route of hundreds of raptor species that travel between Canada and Central America, as well as a large number of hummingbirds and butterflies. In addition, there are 51 endemic and endangered species that live in this area year round.
There is also a community of 1231 cycads, which have an estimated age of between 2,000 and 3,000 years and are the oldest living vegetation in Mexico. These kinds of large-scale mining projects also have disastrous repercussions for the historical heritage of the region. In this case, the archaeological heritage of Quiahuixtlan and its surroundings would be destroyed.
And all this without even mentioning the 87 communities that would be directly affected by the project through the destruction of agriculture, livestock and fishing in the region.
We would be left without land, without water, without vegetation, without animals, and without spirit.
In these brief series, Max Wilbert explores the #ThackerPass Litium Deposit in Humboldt Count, Nevada which will serve as a lithium clay mining development project proposed by the Nevada government and federal agencies. This project will compromise the flora, fauna and streams of the area just for the sake of “clean” energy and profit.
This is the first video dispatch from my trip to the area of two proposed lithium mines in Nevada. I’m working to build awareness of the threats these projects pose and resistance to them. I’ll have more to share next week.
This video comes from the top of a ridge directly to the east of the proposed Rhyolite Ridge open-pit lithium mine in Southern Nevada. After arriving by moonlight the night before, I scrambled up this rocky ridge in the dawn light to get an overview of the landscape. Everything that you see here is under threat for electric car batteries.
This is habitat for Tiehm’s buckwheat, cholla cactus, sagebrush, rabbitbrush, prairie falcon, desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, jackrabbit, ring-tailed cat, and literally hundreds of other species.
Is it worth destroying their home and their lives for electric cars?
This is the traditional territory of the Walker River Paiute, the Agai-Dicutta Numa, and other bands of the Northern Paiute.
What killed 14,000 critically endangered buckwheat plants at the site of a proposed lithium mine to supply critical minerals for the so-called “green” electric vehicle industry?
This video reports from Rhyolite Ridge in western Nevada, traditional territory of the Walker River Paiute, the Agai-Dicutta Numa, and other bands of the Northern Paiute.
Was it rodents, or was it vandalism? Climate catastrophe or eco-terrorism?
Benjamin R. Grady, the President of the Eriogonum Society, said in a letter that “As distasteful as it is to consider, intentional human action may have caused the demise of thousands of E. tiehmii individuals over the course of two months from July to September 2020. Having studied this genus since 2007, I have visited hundreds of different Eriogonum populations across the American West. Never once have I seen this type of directed small mammal attack at any of those sites. To me, the widespread damage to just E. tiehmii plants was remarkable. The timing of this attack is also suspicious. The threat of a large-scale lithium mine has recently thrust E. tiehmii into the spotlight. This species has been monitored since the early 1990’s and this type of widespread damage has not been documented. While on site on the 23rd of September, I did not notice any scat, with the exception of a few scattered lagomorph pellets. I carefully examined uprooted plants and no actual herbivory was noticed. The green to graying leaves were unchewed and intact. Eriogonum species likely offer little reward of water or nutrients at this time of year.”
Either way, this video is a crime-scene investigation from the middle of the proposed open-pit lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge, in western Nevada on traditional territory of the Walker River Paiute, the Agai-Dicutta Numa, and other bands of the Northern Paiute.
We don’t know what happened to these plants, but it is clear that they deserve protection. Ioneer’s plan to build an open-pit lithium mine at this site must be resisted.
Reporting from #ThackerPass#Nevada – site of a massive proposed lithium mine. Nevada government and federal agencies have fast-tracked the sacrifice of this mountainside in favor of a $1.3 billion dollar mine that could produce tens of billions in profits. Meanwhile, local streams will be polluted, Lahontan cutthroat trout spawning grounds will be smothered under radioactive sediment, Pronghorn antelope migration routes blocked, Greater sage-grouse habitat blasted to nothing, local people will have to deal with acid rain, ancient cultural sites will be desecrated, and this quiet wilderness will be turned into an industrialized zone — unless the project is stopped.
Liberation Listening is a radical community healing method designed to increase the effectiveness of change-making organizations in the face of systems of oppression and a collapsing society. A major focus of our work is in developing and supporting leadership. Although readers of this article may be unfamiliar with the practices of Liberation Listening, the principles of leadership apply to all kinds of human groups.
In Liberation Listening we define leadership as the ability and willingness to make a commitment to see that everything goes well to the limit of one’s resources.
Leadership is the commitment to help everything go well in your family, community, and environment. It is realizing that you are responsible (able to respond) to the challenges that face us.
In order to do this, we must heal the old distresses that cause us to feel helpless. The truth is that we are powerful, capable, loving, and intelligent. The challenges before us are large, and we are the best people for the job.
Leadership is an inherent human characteristic. In any group of people, leadership functions must be performed in order for the group to function well. At least one person must think about the group as a whole rather than about just her or his role in it.
It is possible to deliberately create sanctuary spaces where we can connect with other humans, think, release emotions, and heal from old traumas. This creation of sanctuary space can help the group to function better in terms of addressing the real-time challenges we encounter. It is not necessary for all people in the group to be committed to specific emotional healing paths in order to use the safety of the group for their own healing. It is only necessary that we make and follow agreements that lead to a greater sense of safety, trust, and connection with each other over time.
Leadership may include listening respectfully to people in your group who are unawarely acting out old emotional trauma. Usually this listening requires us to decide that we are not actually threatened by the person’s emotional reactions. By listening respectfully, we give the person time and space to heal themselves with the help of our positive regard. We may also need to give ourselves attention for challenging emotions that arise while listening. This form of listening assumes that each person has always done the best they possibly could with the resources available to them at each moment. By listening, we offer a moment with additional emotional resources, to see if that may be what they need in order to do better than before.
Be aware, however, that it is not always effective or advisable to use compassionate listening skills on someone who unawarely acts out emotional distress in your group. Sometimes the best option is to set clear boundaries and expectations for behavior, and ask people to leave the group if they cannot follow these agreements. The specific appropriate response to each incident will require the thinking of the group, and while we can learn from other groups’ successes, we will require fresh thinking to solve our group’s problems. Giving time to really hear all group members’ thinking is a valuable tool.
It is not the leader’s job to do all the thinking for the group. Rather, a good leader listens to the thinking of every group member, fills in any gaps, and organizes the thinking into a consistent form. The leader then communicates this synthesis of ideas back to the group well enough to secure their agreement, and, if possible, their commitment to it.
Being a leader opens you to attacks. People have lots of old trauma about power dynamics in their past. People also project hopes and frozen needs onto leaders. A frozen need is something you needed in childhood, but did not get. It continues to feel like something you need, even though it can never be met because it was actually a need in the past, not the present. For example, many people have both current needs for connection, and frozen needs for connection from too much isolation as young children. Frozen needs can never be satisfied, so when they are projected onto leaders, they are bound to be disappointed. People often react to this disappointment by blaming the leader. (We can never satisfy our frozen needs, but we can heal them by mourning the developmental loss.)
As leaders, we must be ready to listen compassionately to ourselves and others in times of attack, and use it as an opportunity for further healing. Peer support is essential in these situations. Use your listening relationships to stay resilient during, and to recover from, attacks. Look at it as an opportunity to heal old traumas and free more of your thinking from the binding power of past hurts.
Within the context of Liberation Listening, we agree to support the leaders of classes and workshops in several specific ways. These include:
Continuing to do our own thinking, and considering what we as individuals can do to help the classes and workshops go well.
Supporting the leader’s thinking, even when that thinking is different from our own. This may include agreeing to take on roles delegated to us by the leader.
Sharing our thinking with the leader. If we think the leader is making a mistake, or missing valuable information, or acting out distress in the class, we find an appropriate time to share our criticism. The goal is not to make the leader change direction, but to give the leader more information with which to make good decisions.
Using Listening Skills on the leader. All people have patterns of behavior based on old trauma that they are not yet aware of. In order to help the leader move forward on topics that will make future classes go well, the class is asked to think together about the leader and use listening skills on the leader at the end of every class series. Feel free to push the leader with persistent listening outside of class as well. Of course, do this as two people thinking about one person—in other words, include the leader in your thinking about how you plan to use listening skills on her or him in persistent sessions.
Using time in your listening sessions to talk about leading and leadership. What distresses make you want to avoid leadership or rigidly take on leadership?
Learning to take on leadership ourselves. If there is a topic that is underrepresented by current Liberation Listening leaders, learn about the topic and do extensive listening sessions on the topic. Prepare yourself to lead on that topic. Solicit the support of the leadership team in reaching for your goals.
Directions for Listening Sessions:
You can try doing this with a friend or co-revolutionary: Set a timer for 20 minutes. One person talks while the other person silently listens with curiosity and interest. When the timer goes off, switch roles and start the timer for another 20 minutes. The second person talks while the first listens. It’s important for each person to get the same amount of time. Hold what you hear with confidentiality.
If you prefer to do this work alone, try journalling on the topic, or daydreaming. You can also try telling your thoughts to a tree, animal, or rock.
Use the following prompts for your work on leadership:
Tell memories of good leadership in your past: mentors, people you admired, people who could think well about you and the group, people who helped things go well. If you can, start with the earliest memory, and tell each memory in chronological order.
Tell memories of poor leadership in your past: authority figures, people whose power over you or over the group was tainted by their distresses, people who had power but could not accept feedback, etc. If you can, start with the earliest memory, and tell each memory in chronological order.
What happened in the past when you tried to right a perceived wrong?
Tell memories of your own leadership or attempted leadership. If you can, start with the earliest memory, and tell each memory in chronological order.
What does it mean to you to be out in front? When you are in a group, and everyone is looking to you for guidance or leadership, what emotions arise in you? What thoughts come into your mind? How does your body feel?
What groups are you a part of? How could you help those groups function better? Think about the group’s current functioning. What are the needs and challenges of its members? How can the group meet those needs and address those challenges?
Kara Huntermoon is one of seven co-owners of Heart-Culture Farm Community, near Eugene, Oregon. She spends most of her time in unpaid labor in service of community: child-raising, garden-growing, and emotion/relationship management among the community residents. She also teaches Liberation Listening, a personal growth process that focuses on ending oppression.
Shale Must Fall: Global day of climate actions uniting sites of extraction in the Global South and beyond with their counterparts of consumption in the Global North.
Friday Dec. 11th, on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, a diverse group of environmental movements from 20 different countries are mobilizing together to bring visibility to the environmental destruction of fracking.
The movement is mobilizing to highlight the damage caused by European multinationals that do abroad what they are banned from doing at home (in this case, fracking) with the complicity of their governments that subsidize the industry.
The day of action highlight how those government policies completely undermine the Paris Agreement, as Europe is simply “outsourcing” its emissions to the rest of the world.
The actions around the world are focusing on some of Europe’s largest climate criminals which are also shale oil companies—Repsol, Total, Wintershall, Shell, BP—by connecting the dots of their operations around the world.
It is outrageous that Europe is on one hand committing to emissions reductions and the Paris Agreement, yet on the other it is allowing and even subsidizing companies based in their country to frack the rest of the world, causing enormous harm to human health and to the natural world, and dooming future generations—including their own people—to climate chaos.
Local and grassroots movements from the frontlines of extractivism in the Global South are mobilizing against the operations of these multinationals from the Global North demanding climate justice and an end to this international ecocide.
Solidarity is Strength
Each of the environmental resistance struggles at the frontlines in the Global South is usually not strong enough, if isolated, to defeat a threat so disproportionately larger. But as our struggles begin to come together as we are doing today, we can present a united multinational resistance against a threat that is multinational in nature.
The Harms of Fracking
Science has shown fracking to be responsible for more than 50% of all of the increased methane emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately 1/3 of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade. Methane is 87 times more harmful than CO2 in its global warming impact on the atmosphere during the first 20 years, and thus the fracking industry is a major cause for accelerating global warming.
This also makes shale gas the fossil fuel with highest greenhouse gas emissions among all fossil fuels.
After having banned or imposed moratoria on fracking in their home countries, European governments are not only allowing their companies to frack the rest of the world, but they are also subsidizing the import of fracked gas with billions of euros of taxpayers’ funds, by building LNG import terminals across the region that will lock the EU into decades of dependency into this fossil fuel.
They are selling the fossil fuel with the worst carbon footprint of all as a clean form of energy that will serve as a bridge to move away from coal. A transition away from coal with something worse than coal? This is insane and we have to stop it. Clean gas is a dirty lie!
For this episode of The Green Flame, Jennifer Murnan and Max Wilbert discuss extreme weather around the world. As the Arctic is experiencing catastrophic low ice formation, wildfires have swept western Turtle Island this summer and fall, and storms have pounded southeast Asia and the Caribbean. We include excerpts from a January podcast covering the megafires in Australia, discuss the rise of extreme weather under global warming, the basic science of why this occurs, and more.
From this episode:
Max Wilbert: It’s not too late. This can be a really heavy topic, but I want to emphasize for people that any change that we can make right now, any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, is going to make the future less grim.
Any natural habitats that we can protect will be a reserve of biodiversity, will be a potential climate corridor, to help adaptation, to help the natural world, both non-humans and humans, to to to be more resilient in the face of what is coming.
I personally will not give up until every last living thing on this planet is dead, and that’s because I love this living world and it’s so important that we keep fighting no matter what.
Jennifer Murnan: Thank you, Max. I’d like to offer some insights too from from what I’ve observed. I can’t help but realize the immensity of what we are gifted by life. As you strip away the biological communities then you’re faced with the raw elements and one of the things that struck me is that the fires are creating their own weather.
That strikes me in a kind of poetic sense. Yes, you take away the mitigating forces of life and the balancing forces of life in this beautiful symphony of beings and what can be created, and you strip that away, and then you’re faced with the raw elements.
So what’s the reaction? I want to put all of my all of my belief all of my effort all of my energy all of my courage all of my fight into my fellow beings and into protecting and defending and loving the life that’s around me because i just got this massive lesson in what life is capable of. I’ve also read about mass extinctions that the planet has gone through before. I know that you can get through, and that life is part of getting through all of this. Much of the brilliance is in the smallest beings that are here. That’s where I find my courage and my strength right now, is from from life itself.
Max: I couldn’t agree more that life on this planet is so incredibly resilient and wants to live so badly. I’m always astounded at life’s capacity to hang on, whether it is plants growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk, or whether it’s in the Chernobyl irradiated zone where wildlife is flourishing despite some of the most toxic conditions on the planet, whether it is the salmon who are hanging on despite their streams having been dammed for 50, 60, 70 years, whether it is the trees who are ;osing their ability to reproduce in their home ranges but human beings are helping them migrate northwards to adapt to global warming. That’s already taking place. The natural world wants to live and is incredibly adaptive to varying natural conditions which are often pretty extreme throughout the Earth’s history. The world can survive a great deal. All we have to do is get industrial civilization out of the way, and help in that adaptation process.
Our music for this episode comes by the hand of DENNI.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Reporting from amidst fields of fracking wells in Colorado, Trinity La Fay writes about the conscious experience of being in relationship to the place she lives, and the disconnect between people and land needed to maintain the destruction.
On the Colorado Rising website, the maps of oil and gas rigs light up the area just above where I live, past my friend’s house halfway up the state, all the way up and out along the plain in a great sweep. Like some demented statistical X, the active wells appear in a sea of blue dots: the abandoned wells. Combined, they swarm completely around the jagged Rocky Mountains, a rising, desperate sea of exploitation.
I remember when the word fracking was used as a supplemental television curse. The way that they said it seemed perfect, as if they understood that it was a primary contributing source of the doom. The story was about a people who, ejected from a poisonous Earth, had colonized in space only to be pursued repeatedly by a predatory cybernetic race. A race they had created. I think stories are important. So does Joseph Campbell, but, as Mary Daly quotes him regarding child victims of sati (the Hindu practice of burning widows alive in the funeral pyres of their late husbands):
“In spite of these signs of suffering and even panic in the actual moment of the pain of suffocation, we should certainly not think the mental state and experience of these individuals after any model of our own more or less imaginable reactions to such a fate, for these sacrifices were not properly individuals at all.”
While I have visions of flickering relatives keening at the river’s edge, smell burning hair, feel the air being sucked from my lungs: he does not imagine their stories are relevant to his experiences.
So, harrumph.
Scrolling out on the Drilling Maps.com site, I see that we, at least, have the resistance of Mountain Range.
Texas; Oklahoma; Louisiana; Mississippi; Kansas; Michigan; the border between North Dakota and Montana. Just about every square inch from Cleveland, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Charleston, West Virginia: like fire, the red dots blend. The names of places are all but erased behind them. I cannot see Arkansas written, but I know it is there. From Pennsylvania’s border with New York; all the way down California; all the way up from the Gulf of Mexico to the ice of the Beaufort Sea.
From the Great Lakes down to the Rio Grande; like a ring of fire around the coast of South America, like accidents waiting to happen from the Gulf of Oman to the Barents Sea; like sinking islands from the Arabian Sea to the Yellow Sea to the Tasman Sea. From the North to the South Pacific: companies know no boundaries.
The beneficiaries of these companies, the responsible, I wonder if they learn these names.
I wonder if they are all unreachably psychopathic, or stupid, or if it matters. The dead squirrel on the road; the stoodup friend; the barren landscape full of ghosts: to their experience, it does not matter if it was cruelty or carelessness.
Besides making it possible to set aflame the now undrinkable water that results from such enterprise, whose footage abounds online, Elementa, Science of the Anthropocene, hosts a special collection forum of “Oil and Natural Gas Development: Air Quality, Climate Science and Policy” wherein an article by Chelsea R Thompson, Jacques Hueber and Detlev Helmig, entitled Influence of oil and gas emissions on ambient atmospheric non-methane hydrocarbons in residential areas of Northeastern Colorado discusses ozone levels and calls it abstract.
Like Paul R. EhrlichPaul R. Ehrlich and Carl Sagan in The Cold and The Dark: The World After Nuclear War, everyone agrees that this is not working. Unlike that pivotal conference, however, modern realizations are lost in a desperate sea of distractions. Here is what The Cold and The Dark said abstractly:
“- survivors would face starvation [as] global disruption of the biosphere could ensue. In any event, there would be severe consequences, even in the areas not affected directly, because of the interdependence of the world economy. In either case the extinction of a large fraction of the Earth’s animals, plants, and microorganisms seems possible. The population size of Homo sapiens conceivably could be reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded.”
Boundaries are underrated.
According to me. Lots of people like to travel; I’m not into it. I have fallen in love with every landscape I’ve seen, but then, I didn’t get to know them. I live in a hard place that I know very well. Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson have a wonderful conversation during which they speak about the necessity of listening to the Others that are places to care for and live with them, and also the joy of being of a place: the intimacy that comes from noticing what cannot be observed in passing. It can be argued that Amber is ancient light that has been stored and that Jet is ancient darkness. Like Saga, they keep our stories. Shale; Oil; Gas; Tar: these exhumed ancestors seem to bellow as they burn that we wake sleeping titans at our peril. Or, as the article put it:
“The findings presented here suggest that oil and gas emissions have a large-scale regional impact on ambient [non methane hydrocarbons] levels, thereby impacting a large population of [-] residents, and representing a large area source of ozone precursors. The short-chain alkanes exhibit strong correlations with propane in Erie/Longmont, Platteville, and within Denver, supporting the conclusion of widespread impact of [oil and natural gas] emissions.”
They recommend further monitoring.
Trinity La Fey is a smith of many crafts, has been a small business creatrix since 2020; published author; appeared in protests since 2003, poetry performances since 2001; officiated public ceremony since 1999; and participated in theatrical performances since she could get people to sit still in front of her.
Ehrlich, Paul & Harte, John & Harwell, Mark & Raven, P & Sagan, C & Woodwell, George & Berry, Joseph & Ayensu, E & Ehrlich, A & Eisner, T. (1984).Long-Term Biological Consequences of Nuclear War. Science (New York, N.Y.). 222. 1293. 10.1126/science.6658451.
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