Copper

By Ahni / Intercontintental Cry Indigenous Lumad communities in South Cotabato have organized a set of blockades against an Australian-owned mining company that wants to relocate them to make way for a new copper-gold mine project. A group of journalists were invited by a local Catholic Church this past weekend to sit down with the Lumads and discuss the situation. Speaking through interpreters, the Lumad explained how Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), an affiliate of Australia’s Xstrata Copper, recently outlined the terms of a proposed relocation project on a bunch of tarpaulins which it posted in the region without telling anyone. ...

By Irene Caselli / Christian Science Monitor Six years after working to elect Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, the country’s indigenous population is now taking to the streets against the very government they helped bring to office. Hundreds of people from Ecuador’s Andean and Amazonian indigenous groups marched into Quito today, after a 14-day trek across the country. Dressed in colorful traditional clothing, they are protesting against the government’s large-scale mining projects, which they say go against Mr. Correa’s electoral promise to protect the rights of nature, and could impact their access to clean water. ...

By Environment News Service Several hundred members of the largest Ecuadorian indigenous organization today began marching to the capital, Quito, to protest new mining in their territory. They expect to arrive in Quito on March 22. The indigenous march started from Yantzaza in Zamora Chinchipe province southern Ecuador, where a Canadian company has been authorized to develop a large open-pit copper mine - the first large-scale mine under a new government mining policy. ...

By Edward Helmore / The Observer As she stands among villagers in the highlands of western Panama, their chosen leader, Silvia Carrera, is an image of bucolic harmony. Then Carrera, elected chief or general cacique of the Ngäbe-Buglé community, gestures to a woman who hands her a bag of spent US riot-control equipment – rubber bullet casings, shotgun shells, sting-ball grenades, teargas canisters. Panama national police, she explains, used these against her people only days earlier to break up a protest against government plans for a vast copper mine and hydroelectric schemes on their territory. Three young Ngäbe-Buglé men were killed, dozens were wounded and more than 100 detained. ...

By Barbara Fraser / Indian Country Today A caravan of about 700 people from Peru’s northern Cajamarca region arrived in Lima, the capital, on February 9, at the end of a nine-day journey to protest a mine they said would destroy key watersheds. “We want the president to say that there won’t be mining at the tops of watersheds,” said Jaime Lozana Infante, 38, of the community of Huasmín, near the site of the Congas mine. Congas is a project of Yanacocha, a mining company consisting of Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corporation, Peru’s Compañía Minera Buenaventura and the International Finance Corporation. ...