Featured image: Aymara people outside the courthouse in Puno on June 28, 2017, during final hearings of the trial. Walter Aduviri was sentenced to seven years for protesting against a Canadian mining project.
This past month, eighteen Aymara community leaders endured the final stages of a trial that had them facing up to 28 years in prison and massive fines for their alleged roles in the 2011 ‘Aymarazo’ protests against the Santa Ana silver mine on the Peru-Bolivia border. The group of Aymara leaders stood accused of obstructing public services, disturbing the peace, and committing aggravated extortion against the state.
Seventeen of the accused were acquitted of all charges; however, on July 18, Walter Aduviri was sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to pay a 2 million sol fine (over $600,000). His lawyer, Martín Ticona, speaking to the crowds in Puno after final sentencing, indicated irregularities in the judicial process and said that they will appeal Aduviri’s sentencing. The prosecutor, Juan Monzón Mamani, also intends to appeal the decision for reasons that are not yet clear.
Aymara Branded as Criminals for Resistance against Mining
Initially, 100 Aymara had criminal investigations brought against them after the ‘Aymarazo’ protests in the southeastern region of Puno. The investigations were dropped against 82 of the Aymara, leaving just eighteen to stand trial. They had all been equally charged with obstruction of public services, disturbing the peace, and aggravated extortion. On June 28, the accusations were withdrawn against eight leaders—including Francisca Sarmiento, the only woman charged—due to lack of evidence. Ten went on to face sentencing; but only Aduviri was found guilty, for the charge of disturbing the peace.
Photo: DHUMA
“They say that the Aymarazo is an emblematic case, and that should mean justice for our leaders, and compliance with the law of prior consultation,” an Aymara man explains in a video by PUNO organization Human Rights and Environment (DHUMA, its acronym in Spanish). “And the government has decided that because of the protest they must prosecute our leaders, so what is our response? That we must organize ourselves as Aymara communities and indigenous and rural communities in general.”
The accused have paid a heavy price over the past six years – not only in terms of time and money spent to attend numerous court hearings and the heavy threat of 28-year prison sentences. They have also had to cope with the psychological trauma of criminalization, and the Aymara population at large have struggled with a dominant public narrative stigmatizing the Aymara population as alleged “criminals” or with labels such as “anti-development,” according to local organizations and activists.
The ‘Aymarazo’ protests in 2011
Rumors of the proposed mine began to circulate as early as 2004. Communities were immediately concerned about the proposed mine because of its sensitive location. Mining operations are inherently water-intensive and Santa Ana could also contaminate drinking water, affecting agriculture, livelihoods and food security for hundreds.
“We’ve come here today to say clearly that the Santa Ana Mine was going to operate in an area where there are many rivers,” a woman at a recent demonstration reiterated to DHUMA. The Callacami River runs through the area and if it’s contaminated, the pollution could even reach the town of Desaguadero, [near] Lake Titicaca, and the whole lake could be polluted, affecting the entire region and even Bolivia.”
While communities had found out about the mine through rumors in 2004, it was not until 2007 that the news became official when the government authorized the Santa Ana mine. Communities began to carry out a series of public petitions, administrative complaints and procedures directed at local and regional government and environmental authorities. When their concerns remained unaddressed, demonstrations began to be organized in communities and towns all along the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia, and in the city of Puno, where this steady resistance came to a head with the events known as the Aymarazo in March to June of 2011.
Those protests culminated over several days in May in a mass mobilization in Puno of more than 15,000 Aymara people from all over the south of Peru, paralyzing parts of the city for days. Communities were calling for not just cancellation of the Santa Ana mine, but cancellation of all mining concessions since 2011, and a moratorium on future concessions, according to Rodrigo Lauracio, a lawyer with DHUMA, in an extensive interview with the authors. Indigenous territory in Puno province has seen a massive increase in permits for extractive projects over the past two decades, he said, consistent with nationwide trends.
“This was a social protest not just by communities in the district of Huacallani [where the concession is] who were directly affected, but by many communities who would be indirectly affected,” said Lauracio. “In the environmental impact study only three communities were considered, but in reality many communities [were affected].”
Bear Creek Mining Corp.’s public presentation of the company’s environmental impact study in February 2011, badly translated into Aymara in an undersized hearing room, only deepened public fears, according to Lauracio.
“It’s important to note that this mining project was proposed in the territory of rural Aymara indigenous communities,” he said. “They had many concerns to do with impacts on their territory, and above all on the water… Many of these concerns were not resolved by the mining company at this time.”
Aftermath of the Mobilizations
The Aymarazo protests forced the government’s hand: They rescinded the controversial Decree 083 that gave Bear Creek authorization to proceed, effectively stopping the project.
Repressive criminal proceedings are just one of the consequences of the Aymarazo mobilizations. But the repeal of the Santa Ana decree is also a factor in another lawsuit. In 2014, the company responded to that move by filing a $1.2 billion case against Peru at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes. Bear Creek contends that Peru violated the terms of its trade agreement with Canada by not allowing the mine to go forward. The hearings, which are ongoing, take place in a closed court in a highly undemocratic process.
Bear Creek asserts that the Aymarazo protests were politically motivated. However, DHUMA and other supporting organizations say that communities rejected the project in order to protect their water sources, and because neither Bear Creek nor the Peruvian state followed correct legal procedures. The company’s attempt at community outreach manipulated communities and both the state and the corporation implemented their policies and plans with a complete lack of transparency, according to Lauracio, failing to even comply with national and international law on free, prior and informed consent.
Repressive Policies and Multiple Abuses of Power
Peru has seen an increase in free trade agreements and a relaxing of environmental protection in recent years. These policies aim to facilitate the entry of transnational corporations and international investment into Peru, and mining and extractive industries have increased across the country.
There has also been an increase in “… public policies that create new crimes against people who participate in social protests,” observed Lauracio. Peru’s wave of neoliberal and repressive policies not only gives extractive industry a helping hand but creates further mechanisms to criminalize resistance to extractivism in the courts. These mechanisms are designed to prevent further protests like the Aymarazo and help pave the way for future extractive projects.
Police stand on guard outside the courthouse. Photo: DHUMA
The repressive tactics of criminal proceedings go along with other forms of state criminalization. These are also present in the Aymarazo – such as the smear campaigns against social protests and those who organize and participate in them as violent criminals or “backwards” or “against development.” The state also intervened in Aymarazo protests in ways that sparked violence, such as the declaration of a state of emergency, which allowed increased repressive tactics and violence on the part of the armed forces and caused trauma, injuries and death.
These dynamics are not just playing out in Puno, but across Peru, which currently has 39 mining conflicts registered by the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America. In the same week as the Aymarazo sentence, three community leaders from Espinar, Cusco, also faced sentencing in a trial for charges relating to protests calling for mining company compliance with environmental and health regulations. The criminal charges are related to protests over mining in 2012 in which five people were killed by Peruvian police during a declared state of emergency. The three have been acquitted—but they’ve gone through five years of unfair criminal proceedings.
In another example of policies that criminalize and harm people, Peru modified its laws in 2014 to create a loophole that allows police officers to kill people in situations of social protests. The police are also permitted to contract with corporations to provide private security services.
On one side, Bear Creek still has Santa Ana mine featured on its website (no doubt in the hope that its share price doesn’t drop, as it did after the 2011 protests) and the Peruvian state may be forced to pay $1.2 billion to Bear Creek, and could reissue the Santa Ana permit. On the other side, the Peruvian state seeks to jail Walter Aduviri and criminalize anti-mining resistance in a bid to silence future protests. Furthermore, they are demanding exaggerated fines, with an initial demand against the 18 for over $2 million, and Aduviri now sentenced to pay $600,000. To put that amount into context, the monthly minimum wage in Peru is around $270 – it would take 185 years of minimum wages to pay Aduviri’s fine.
The Politics of the Guilty Verdict against Aduviri
Aduviri has said that the trial is politically motivated, and that he is the target of political persecution. He ran for governor of the Puno province in 2014 on a platform many said was controversial, and has been branded as using the movement as a leadership platform to gain votes, by those seeking to discredit the demands of the 2011 protests.
Walter Aduviri campaigning in 2014. Source: YouTube
While he may be acquitted of the charge of extorting the state, he is charged with being the ringleader of not only the protest, but acts of destruction of state property that happened during the Aymarazo in 2011: his guilty verdict for the charge of disturbances labels him as autor mediato— indirect perpetrator or perpetrator-by-means. His being part of the leadership of a movement, his politics, and the widespread support he receives in Puno, seem to be included in the condemning judgment.
Outside the courthouse on July 6, the day of provisional sentencing, hundreds of Aymara mobilized in support of Aduviri, crying, “If there’s no solution, Quechuazo y Aymarazo! [more protests].” Aduviri declared his innocence in a press conference on July 7. On July 18, the day of the final sentencing, he addressed crowds in Puno in a fiery speech, interrupted by shouts of slogans denouncing the prosecutors and judges as biased. Aduviri is not in jail because the sentence can’t be executed while his appeal is ongoing.
With the verdict in the ICSID case due in September of this year, and Aduviri’s harsh sentence, the situation is a confluence of the state’s policy to criminalize anti-mining protests, and the toxic impacts of the tools of corporate power, like free trade agreements, when protests cause a mining project to be halted.
In southeastern Utah, not far from many of America’s famed national parks, lies America’s last remaining uranium mill. After more than 36 years in operation, the leaders of the nearby Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s White Mesa community worry that lax regulations and aging infrastructure are putting their water supply, and their way of life, at risk.
Springfield, LA – Following legal victories for the Tribes at Standing Rock, Water Protectors in Southern Louisiana will open the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp tomorrow. The launch marks the next fight to protect Indigenous rights, life-giving water and to stop Energy Transfer Partners from committing acts of environmental injustice.
The Indigenous Environmental Network announced the opening of the camp with a video, highlighting, Cherri Foytlin who represents IEN’s interests in the Bayou. The video explains the connection between the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access Pipeline, the Houma tribe, and all people who will be impacted by these pipelines, and why completion of the Bayou Bridge pipeline must be stopped.
Watch the video below, and learn more about the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp and the lead organizers rising up on the frontlines of the fighting for environmental justice to protect Indigenous rights, clean water, and rapidly disappearing wetlands on the Gulf Coast.
The following is a statement from Monique Verdin, councilwoman of the Houma Nation:
“I’m not sure if we are at the head or the tail of the black snake; But we already got enough pipelines, 83,000 miles running through Louisiana. Miles of old infrastructure, built across the Mississippi River Delta’s coast decades ago, surrounded by a disappearing landscape in some of the most vulnerable territories in the world, enduring rising tides and more frequent, powerful and unpredictable weather conditions. Louisiana has sacrificed enough, we don’t need another risk of oil in our waters. It’s one thing if you can’t fish. It’s another thing if you can’t drink water. Over 300,000 people depend on the Bayou Lafourche, for their drinking water in the heart of Houma territory. We don’t need another pipeline. We need clean water.”
The following is a statement from Cherri Foytlin, of BOLD Lousiana:
“The corporation Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) has proven themselves to be untrustworthy in regards to their moral responsibility to preserve both human and ecological rights. Whereby they have obfuscated the truth, sabotaged democracy, destroyed our lands and water, and even hired mercenaries to injure our people, we have but one recourse, and that is to say ‘you shall not pass.’ No Bayou Bridge! We will stop ETP. They are not welcome here – not in our bayous, not in our wetlands, not in our Basin, not under our lands or through our waters. Period.”
The news broke Wednesday in the most banal of venues: the biweekly environmental compliance report submitted by Arlington Storage Company to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Deep in the third paragraph of section B, this wholly owned subsidiary of the Houston-based gas storage and transportation giant, Crestwood Midstream, announced that it was walking away from its FERC-approved plan to increase its storage of methane (natural gas) in unlined, abandoned salt caverns along the shoreline of Seneca Lake.
In its own words, “Arlington has discontinued efforts to complete the Gallery 2 Expansion Project.”
It was a blandly expressed ending to a dramatic conflict that has roiled New York’s Finger Lakes region for more than six years. Together with a separate—and still unresolved—plan for lakeside storage of propane (LPG) in adjacent salt caverns, Crestwood’s Arlington operation has been the focus of massive, unrelenting citizen opposition that has taken many forms.
The Gas Free Seneca Business Coalition has, at last count, 398 members. Together with the more than 100 members of the Finger Lakes Wine Business Coalition, this group has been a powerful voice in promoting wine and agri-tourism—a $4.8 billion industry in New York State—as the centerpiece of the Finger Lakes economy, deploying renewable energy systems for wineries and providing an alternative vision to Crestwood’s plan to turn the region into “the gas storage and transportation hub” for entire Northeast. In letters, petitions, press conferences, interviews and editorials, these business leaders have made clear that industrialized gas storage on Seneca Lake—with all the attendant pipelines, compressor stations, flare stacks and air pollution—is incompatible with the pristine environment on which wine and tourism depend.
Local business leaders have also hammered home the message that gas storage is all risk and no reward for the region. The gas—methane or propane—is not intended for local use. All of it would be sent, via pipeline, to burner tips far from the Finger Lakes. Moreover, shoving massive amounts of fossil fuels into crumbly salt mines creates, as it turns out, only a handful of jobs.
Meanwhile, 32 municipalities—representing 1.2 million residents—have passed resolutions against gas storage on Seneca Lake. These efforts have played an important role in generating political pressure, capturing media attention, and raising awareness among community members about the public health threats created by storing highly pressurized, explosive gases in abandoned salt caverns situated below a lakeshore in an area crossed by geological fault lines.
Seneca Lake serves as a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. Even absent earthquakes or catastrophic accidents, simply pressurizing the briny salt caverns with compressed gases may salinate the lake in ways that could potentially violate drinking water standards.
And then there’s the direct action movement. We Are Seneca Lake—in which I have participated—has engaged in protests, marches and repeated acts of civil disobedience. Since October 2014, when construction on the Arlington project was authorized to begin and all legal appeals to FERC were exhausted, more than 650 arrests have taken place at the gates of the Crestwood compressor station site on the hillside above Seneca Lake. For the act of blockading trucks on Crestwood’s driveway, some of us have gone to jail, serving sentences as long as nine days, while others have had their charges dismissed “in the interests of justice.”
As the months went by, Crestwood, waiting on remaining approvals from New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), did not begin construction.
We Are Seneca Lake continued protesting.
When the state clearances still did not arrive, FERC granted Crestwood a two-year extension to “accommodate the New York DEC’s underground storage approval process.”
We Are Seneca Lake continued protesting.
The power of our all-season civil disobedience movement did not lie in the daring risks that we took—no one ever scaled fences, rapelled down walls, went limp, or chained themselves to heavy equipment. We called ourselves the Girl Scouts of civil disobedience because participants engaged in actions whose sanctions were intentionally limited to violation-level charges (trespass or disorderly conduct).
Tantamount to traffic tickets, such charges do not result in criminal records (although one might choose, by refusal to pay a fine, to serve a jail sentence). This practice allowed arrestees to represent a diverse cross-section of area residents. Ranging in age from 18 to 92, Seneca Lake Defenders have included teachers, nurses, doctors, midwives, farmers, winemakers, faith leaders, town board members, military veterans, mothers, fathers, chefs, bird watchers, cancer survivors and numerous disabled individuals.
Our goal was to showcase the breadth and depth of citizen opposition to gas storage. Accordingly, we sought to make civil disobedience as inclusive as possible for as many people as possible, and, for those whose conscience so led them, as safe as possible.
We sustained our movement, season after season, by careful vetting of all participants, meticulous preparation for each action, and requiring that all those risking arrest or playing support roles undergo a training session in non-violence. As a result, We Are Seneca Lake maintained high levels of personal discipline during our actions and, through our almost ceremonial approach to civil disobedience, won the (somewhat begrudging) respect of the county sheriff and his deputies.
We did not turn away luminaries. Seneca Lake Defenders have, variously, included filmmaker Josh Fox, actors James Cromwell and John Hertzler, and environmental leaders Bill McKibben, Rachel Marco-Havens, David Braun and Wes Gillingham.
Seneca Lake Defenders blockaded while reading aloud from Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, while enjoying a potluck of local food, and while performing a concert. Our efforts were featured in the New Yorker and the New York Times, as well as in local and regional media. We have received messages of solidarity from around the world.
Unsurprisingly, none of the above activities are mentioned in the official explanation for why Crestwood is now abandoning its plans to expand methane storage.
Nor does it reference last month’s incident at an underground gas storage facility in rural southwestern Indiana where a well failure prompted evacuations and a highway closure. Nor the blowout in California’s gas storage field at Aliso Canyon where, from October 2015 until February 2016, more than 100,000 metric tons of methane spewed into the atmosphere, thousands of households and two schools were relocated, and many residents suffered illnesses from exposure to the emissions.
Instead, the company has this to say about why it is folding its tents:
“Despite its best efforts, Arlington has not been successful in securing long-term contractual commitments from customers that would support completion of the Gallery 2 Expansion Project. While demand for high-deliverability natural gas storage services remains robust in New York…bids for firm storage capacity which Arlington has received from time to time are not adequate to support the investment required to bring the project to completion.”
Credible? For area resident Suzanne Hunt, who, as president of HuntGreen, advises wineries about their renewable energy options, the bigger question is how to make this explanation come true over and over again. In other words, let’s use renewables to make wavering bids for fossil fuels even more unworthy of continued investment.
“The winery owners and other business leaders here didn’t just say no to gas but also collectively invested million of dollars in clean energy systems both to demonstrate their economic and technical viability and to show the state that we are serious about protecting our unique and beautiful Finger Lakes region,” Hunt said.
“As with any major transition, it has been challenging, but we are succeeding in demonstrating that renewables can meet our energy needs and enable economic growth without compromising the health and safety of people today and generations to come.”
For her mother, Joyce Hunt, who is the co-owner of Hunt Country Vineyards in Branchport, New York, the point is to demonstrate how the economic future of the region—based on agriculture, tourism and small business—is aligned with the long-term climate and energy security of the state.
“We applaud the governor and the DEC for withholding permits for natural gas storage, and we are all counting on the governor to deny the permits for LPG, recognizing that these caverns that are unfit for natural gas storage are likewise unfit for propane storage,” she said.
But is Arlington’s natural gas storage expansion project really gone for good? Maybe, maybe not. Fossil fuel infrastructure projects are always resurrectable. Even the Keystone XL pipeline is back in play. But for California native David Braun, who was arrested in a civil disobedience action at Seneca Lake last July, the point is in understanding that we are each, after all, our brother’s keeper.
“None of these gas storage facilities are a problem until they are. And once you see firsthand the kind of devastation and disruption they cause—as I have seen at Aliso Canyon—you begin to understand your moral responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen somewhere else, to someone else,” Braun said.
“I risked arrest at Seneca Lake because we only need to look at how the last bad idea turned out to know what the next one is going to do.”
Featured image: The Serapo Gate is one of three port of entries located on the Tohono O’odham Nation that tribal members can use to travel into Mexico. By Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan
TUCSON, ARIZONA—The Tohono O’odham Nation Executive Branch is firm on their stance against a border wall being built.
“[It’s] not going to happen,” said Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Edward Manual. “It is not feasible to put a wall on the Tohono O’odham Nation…it is going to cost way too much money, way more than they are projecting.”
TON Chairman Manuel went on to say, “It is going to cut off our people, our members that come [from Mexico] and use our services. Not only that we have ceremonies in Mexico that many of our members attend. Members also make pilgrimages to Mexico and a border wall would cut that off as well.”
On January 25, President Donald Trump signed executive actions to begin construction of a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico Border. Seventy-five miles of the U.S.-Mexico border runs through the Tohono O’odham Nation (TON).
On January 26, the TON’s Executive Branch sent out a press release stating that they do not support the building of a border wall and invited President Donald Trump to the Tohono O’odham Nation.
“We have been working with other law enforcement agencies any way we can because we are limited on funding and we are using our monies for border enforcements and helping out Customs and Border Patrol,” said Manuel. “We spend our own monies on them and helping migrants that are sick.”
Furthermore, the TON pays $2,500 per autopsy for bodies found on the reservation. Richard Saunders, TON Executive Director of Public Safety, said they found 85 bodies last year, ranging from recently deceased to completely decomposed.
“We spend about $3 million a year and we never get fully reimbursed on those costs,” Manuel said.
On February 8, the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council (TOLC) passed Resolution 17-053 which states, “…while the Nation coordinates closely with CBP and ICE and has supported the construction of vehicle barriers, the Nation opposes the construction of a wall on its southern boundary with Mexico…”
The resolution went on to list what would be affected from a border wall which included: deny tribal members to cultural sites; injure endangered species such as the jaguar and militarize the land on the TON’s southern boundary.
On February 10, the Inter Tribal Association of Arizona passed Resolution 0117, supporting the TON by opposing the construction of a border wall and “the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 Section 102(c) waivers of federal and other laws on tribal lands.”
Manuel and TON Vice Chairman Verlon Jose took a trip to Washington, D.C. from February 11-16 to attend the National Congress of American Indians Executive Council Winter Session and to meet with individuals.
Jose said they met with a lot of people during their time in D.C. which included Department of Homeland Security, the Congressional delegates from Arizona, the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and New Mexico State Senator Tom Udall.
Looking west, the U.S.-Mexico Border is visible for miles as well as the access road Border Patrol Agents use to monitor activity. Mexico is on the left side of the fence and the Tohono O’odham reservation is on the right side. By Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan
Jose said the TON gave a formal presentation at NCAI and made another formal invitation to President Trump to come to the Tohono O’odham Nation.
“We are a sovereign nation so they have to come talk to us before they make a decision, that is what we told the Congressional people,” Manuel said. “We want to sit at the table if there is going to be any discussion on a wall along the international boundaries because it is going to impact us directly.”
Jose said they received an overwhelming amount of support in D.C. especially from tribal leaders.
So much so, that NCAI passed Resolution ECWS-17-002, supporting the Tohono O’odham Nation and opposing a border wall.
“The NCAI resolution is a clear statement from our Native American brothers and sisters across the country that they will not see their land seized or their rights trampled by this administration. Trump may have bullied his way into the White House by spreading delusions of a border wall, but if he expects to bully the tribes whose land the wall would cut across, he is gravely mistaken. Native Americans will not give legal consent to any entity determining what happens with their sovereign lands, and will in every way possible oppose the Trump Administration’s plans to build a wall on tribal land,” stated a press release from Arizona Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva and New Mexico Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham.
On February 17, the day after they came back from Washington D.C., Manuel and Jose were part of a border wall panel discussion organized by tribal members. The panel was held in the TOLC Chambers in Sells, Arizona. Almost every seat was filled that Friday evening.
The other panelists included Billman Lopez the Domestic Affairs Chairman for the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council, Lucinda Allen TOLC Vice Chairwoman, Adam Andrews a graduate of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona’s James E. Roger College of Law and James Diamond, Director of Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Tribal Justice Clinic at UA.
Each panelist had five minutes to address Border Safety, Narcotics and Smuggling, Environmental Impacts, Cultural Aspects and Solutions, what is the next step. Afterwards audience members had the chance to ask questions.
On February 20, Shining Soul released a music video for their song “All Day.”
“In light of Trump’s proposed wall, Shining Soul decided to highlight the faces and voices of those who would be negatively impacted by it; Borderland communities such as the Tohono O’odham Nation, Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora,” according to a press release.
On February 21, the TON Executive Branch released a video called “There is No O’odham Word for Wall.” The six-minute video highlights the TON Executive Branch’s opposition against a border wall while offering background information about the TON.
On February 28, the Native American Student Affairs at the University of Arizona held a discussion about the border wall as part of their Social Injustice Series. There were over 50 people who attended the talk.
“A border wall would not work right now because all the right parties are not at the table,” Jose said. “Take a look at other countries that have built walls, have they worked? There is a lot of other things that come with building a wall, we don’t know if they are looking at that and this border has already cut our home in half.”
