Chapter 7 - Mining and communities

Former MiningWatch Canada researcher Jen Moore reports on Global mining companies which have used the pandemic to push unwanted projects on vulnerable communities, who are fighting back — and sometimes winning.

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered in a remote area of the Amazon – almost certainly by or on the orders of those who run the illegal trade in fish, timber, drugs and minerals. President Bolsonaro has fuelled lawlessness by his rhetoric.

What is happening in the Amazon is a war -- against the rainforest, its original inhabitants, and also against the rest of the world. Perhaps this is the Third World War, the war to end all wars?

In April this year, a delegation of representatives from mining-affected communities in Minas Gerais, Brazil came to London, on a mission to raise awareness of abuses committed by transnational mining companies – including two with connections to the UK.

Director Marcos Colón has made a remarkable film about the Amazon, charting how in three countries, Brazil, Peru and Colombia, 'modernity' means exploitation and destruction. He interviews indigenous leaders with a very different vision.

Chinese companies are behind rapid expansion of gold mining in the Mayaya region of Bolivia, and are invading the Madidi National Park. Bolivian journalist and LAB correspondent Sergio Mendoza travelled by canoe down the Beni and Quendeque rivers, witnessing how the illegal mining activity is hidden by Bolivian mining cooperatives and supported or permitted by the government.

The deliberate killing and starvation of indigenous Yanomami people in Roraima state is the direct result of the policies of the Bolsonaro government. As the new Lula administration rushes emergency aid to the area, calls are being made for Bolsonaro to be tried for genocide.

Five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, El Salvador have been arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of a woman in their community. However, their active membership of an organisation opposed to mining and strong signs that the government wants to subvert the country's mining ban suggest another motive for their persecution

'The Government is responsible for these two murders, and Xiomara Castro must provide an explanation,’ declared ERIC-SJ researcher Joaquín Mejía Rivera, in the wake of the killing of two environmental defenders in Guapinol.

In January, a wave of outrage swept Brazil after photos and footage of sick and starving Yanomami were made public. Indigenous federal deputy is trying to speed up the vote of a new bill that establishes new rules for the gold trade in Brazil.