Honduras and out

    Honduras was quite a different experience from the two countries visited earlier. (See the previous posts.) For one thing, in economic terms, it is the poorest country in Central America--and it shows! It is also the country that showed the biggest sellout to U.S. style enterprise with major American transnational logos, offices, and outlets staring one in the face just about everywhere in the capital. We visited another Goldcorp mine, the San Martin Mine about two hours north-west of Tegucigalpa. It is a mine that ceased operations a couple of years ago and has been going through the process of shutting down. Goldcorps presents this as a model case for how a responsible mining operation should be closed out. Unfortunately there are a lot of unanswered questions about what went on and is still going on. People from other parts of Latin America who are threatened with mining projects have come to the San Martin mine to learn about the impact of a mine of a community: division and violence in the community, breakdown of cultural ties, contamination of the water sources and indeed possibly of the water table, a distinct possibility of long-term acid drainage. In the history of the mine, children became sick, broke out in rashes and lost clumps of hair. Livestock died, in fact 70 in one instance. The mine has erected an enormous poster at the entrance to their "Ecological Park" announcing the presence of a navigable lake, the presence of many species of animals and plants etc. In the area where the mine deposited its tailings (a very long and high ridge in place of the large hill that was there before), they have planted plants for fodder rather than the trees that were there on the hill before. There are many questions.
   At the same time we tried to discover the situation in the country following the coup that removed President Zelaya from office a year ago. It was followed by months of massive protest and it is clear that the movement to restore a democratic government has not abated in spite of the so-called elections that took place a few months ago.  While little of the opposition appears in the national or international press, the repression of the leaders continues unabated. Almost every day we heard of killing and disappearances. Many of them were officially attributed to gangs but it is remarkable how consistently the  victims turn out to be leaders in the resistance. As one person told us, the situation is very serious and dangerous !

Moving on to Honduras

   We have now completed our visit to Guatemala and El Salvador. We were able to visit the Canadian gold mine operating in San Marcos. The company here is called Montana Explorations but the owner of that company is Goldcorp, registered in Canada. It is a much larger mine that we had realized and there are a number of serious questions about the contamination (especially of water) and the treatment of the surrounding communities. According to a report we received yesterday, one woman who has been opposing the mine -- now operating for several years -- was shot in the head earlier this week. We met with representatives of these woman while in San Marcos. They are poor campesinos without much education, who have seen their lives turned upside down since the mine arrived.
   Yesterday we were able to visit a second gold mine operated by the same company near the El Salvador border. While it is not yet operating, the infrastructure is well advanced and they hope to go inter operation in another few months. There are serious questions here about contamination of water because the mountain where the mine will operate is impregnated throughout with water and the discharge from the mine would be into streams that feed a river that then goes into a very large lage that occupies both sides of the Guatemala-El Salvador border. About 25,000 families live along the shore on the El Salvador side and are fearful that the lake will be affected by the discharges from the mine and that the fish in the lake will die. Several fishing cooperatives cultivate talapia in the lake and most families either live off the fishing or at least feed themselves from the lake which has an abundance of species.
  We were also able to speak with representatives from an NGO in San Salvador which is monitoring the situation in the Cabañas region of El Salvador where a Canadian mining company is suing the Salvadoran government for 10 million dollars for having denied permission to operate. Another American company did the same thing just a few days and for the same amount. It is will probably take quite along time for the issue to be resolved through the Free Trade Agreement mediation processes.  Meanwhile in that same area several people have been assassinated in the area over the past year -- all of them leading opponents of the mine there. While the mine itself has not been identified as directly responsible for the deaths, it is fairly clear that the conflict between those who support the mine and those who oppose it has played a role in creating a violence-prone climate.
   The representative of the Canadian embassy in Guatemala, with whom we met several days ago, minimized the importance of the mining dispute even though the United Nations special relator on mining who visited Guatemala a few weeks ago met with two major manifestations of opposition to the mines -- one group is officially calculated to have included 10,000 people and the other 15,000. The indigenous people of Guatemala are are solidly against mining in their territory -- especially in the western regions of San Marcos and Huehuetenango. 
  Later today we will begin our visit of Honduras where there are several Canadian mining projects. We are also interested in the role the Canadian government and Canadian business interests may have played in the troubles that have plagued Honduras over the past year and that led to a government coup. 
  More later

Visit to Central America

    I have not entered any new material for some time now and it will be difficult to post very much in the coming days.
However I do want to bring anyone visiting this site up to date.
    Currently three members of the Social Justice Committee of Montreal (myself included) are visiting Central America. I am sitting here in the middle of Guatemala City after spending several days visiting the western region of  Guatemala, talking with communities affected by mining companies there.  Later in the week we will begin visiting other Central American countries as well.
    The situation is serious and the people are more and more organized. There will be more to say later in the month.
     Meanwhile I hope everyone is enjoying the summer and some measure of rest.