06/13/02 -- Peru: A Life Worth More Than Gold

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Peru: A Life Worth More Than Gold

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/samerica/ -- South American Forest Conservation

News & Information

June 13, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Industrial resource development is the bedrock of modern and affluent,

yet over-developed and unsustainable, societies. Mining, logging and

oil industries in particular ravage ecological systems with grave

impacts upon prospects for long-term global ecological sustainability

and equitable economic development. In the past resource development

often brought capital to local economies and served as a spring-board

to further material advancement. In the era of multi-national

corporate governance, this is no longer the case. Local communities

generally benefit very little from mines (or logging for that matter).

The relatively few, poorly paying jobs do not last forever and most of

the revenue is sent elsewhere. The frugal and subsistent - yet

frequently fulfilling and dependable - livelihoods of local peoples

are almost always shattered as industrial ecosystem liquidation leaves

behind ecologically depauperate lands. Future generations of

ecological refugees are often doomed to a life of grinding, hopeless

poverty.

Increasingly indigenous and other local peoples are realizing they

have a choice between true development - based upon local control and

ecologically based sustainable land management; or the false

development found in turning their lands over to the global growth

machine - for a brief cash infusion that is a pittance in terms of

what is lost forever. Read below how a Peruvian town has overwhelming

voted to turn down a massive mining project. "Mining has a

bittersweet legacy in Peru. The industry is the top foreign currency

earner but the poor nation bears the environmental scars of decades of

big mining deals." Despite overwhelming indigenous opposition, a

predatory Canadian mining company plans to proceed while the

government insists the project is meant to alleviate local poverty.

This updates Forests.org's earlier report that this proposed mining

project would disrupt highly sensitive cloud forest ecosystems and a

sustainable and fulfilling agrarian society

( http://forests.org/recent/2001/micoinva.htm ).

Industrial liquidation of the Earth's ecological systems is rapidly

dismantling the basis of human existence. Without ecological systems,

there can be no economy, or even survival. Without rapid and massive

efforts to establish a global environmental ethic based upon equity,

justice and sustainable development for all; we are doomed. Perhaps

we could learn from the peoples of Tambogrande, Peru. We could be

satisfied with what we have, and organize to resist the eco-terrorism

being wrought by those plundering our natural resources and

ecosystems.

g.b

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ITEM #1

Title: A Life Worth More Than Gold

Peruvian Town Tries to Turn Away Mining Company

Date: June 9, 2002

Byline: By Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service

TAMBOGRANDE, Peru -- Just below the lime, mango and avocado orchards

that have sustained life in Tambogrande for generations lies a thick

deposit of valuable metal. Gold and silver sit on top, copper and zinc

underneath. The deposit could be worth $1 billion to the Canadian

mining company that has the rights to tap it.

Doing so, however, would require demolition of a crescent of homes

bending down from the highest hilltop of Tambogrande, which is crowned

with a peach-colored statue of Jesus. The open-pit mine would open up

just blocks from the central square, replacing about a third of this

comfortable town beside a slow river in Peru's arid north.

Although this is a place where most streets and houses are made of

dirt, the 20,000 residents of Tambogrande have decided that they

prefer their homes, their hillside and their fruit orchards to gold.

In an unofficial referendum held here last Sunday, nine in 10 voters

made known that the mining company, Manhattan Minerals, was not

welcome.

Despite that message, the company intends to proceed. In doing so, it

has embarked on a confrontation that involves such enduring national

themes as gold and greed, murder and foreign interests -- and even

ceviche, the seafood delicacy that is Peru's most celebrated

contribution to Latin American cuisine.

The confrontation has brought the debate over global capitalism to

this dusty corner of Peru. A flock of international nonprofit

organizations have arrived to advise townspeople in their fight,

precipitating a war between a foreign mining company and a foreign

anti-globalization movement, with Tambogrande in between.

Towns like this one have rarely been allowed to harness their own

wealth. The eventual result here in the fertile San Lorenzo Valley may

be a mine that sends most of its profits abroad and the remainder to

the government in Lima, 540 miles to the south. But the residents of

Tambogrande have resolved to prevent that. They are counting on a

tentative democratic revival underway in Peru after a decade of quasi-

dictatorship, hoping that a clear expression of their will can counter

the promise of contracts and cash.

"If they don't respect these results, we will have to rely on the

power that comes from the whole world knowing that these are our

wishes," said Hugo Abramonte Ato, a retired schoolteacher born 55

years ago to landless peasants. "We don't want to change our life in

exchange for this supposed bonanza."

The referendum was the first of its kind in a country that has known

only 15 consecutive years of democracy in the past century. It

followed months of debate characterized at times by the type of

violence traditionally used to solve problems in this part of the

world.

A leader of the anti-mine movement, Godofredo Garcia, was killed in

his lime grove last year by two hooded men, a month after a mob

torched the first section of "model homes" that Manhattan Minerals

planned to give to 1,600 families displaced by the first phase of its

project. The Vancouver-based company, with its sole interests in Peru,

saw $16 million in property burn.

Underlying the debate is Peru's dark, unfinished legacy of struggle

over property rights for the rural poor. Many of these farmers are

first-generation landowners, the sons and daughters of parents who

worked as indentured servants on the valley's vast haciendas. They

became the first beneficiaries of Peru's grand experiment in land

reform three decades ago. Now that the haciendas are gone, many of

these peasants' children view the foreign mining company as a new

enemy in the same struggle.

Manhattan cannot proceed without buying the houses at the site of the

proposed mine. It will likely sweeten its offer to the town to

persuade the owners to sell.

The negotiations are also a test for President Alejandro Toledo, who

took office less than a year ago after pledging to turn the page on

corruption and energize Peru's underdeveloped agricultural sector.

His predecessor, Alberto Fujimori, fled to Japan and faces charges in

Peru ranging from corruption to murder. If Toledo backs Tambogrande,

it would mean nullifying a Fujimori-era contract and risk spooking

foreign investors at a time when exploiting gold deposits has become a

linchpin of national economic development policy.

Peru is the world's eighth-largest gold producer -- the largest in

Latin America -- while a decade ago it did not appear on the list at

all. Gold accounts for a third of Peru's export revenue, and only 10

percent of the country has been explored.

"This is part of an anti-development campaign that is going to be

unfolding across Latin America, and I think it needs to be understood

in that way," said Lawrence M. Glaser, chairman and chief executive of

Manhattan Minerals, who called the referendum a ploy by anti-

globalization activists to undermine the project.

The company has had the concession here for five years. Along with

guaranteeing new homes for displaced families, the company has

promised that 300 mining jobs will be filled by town residents and

predicts that another 1,500 spinoff jobs will be generated by the

project. The company plans to invest $350 million in the operation,

and estimates a billion-dollar profit over the life of the project.

In a phone interview, Glaser said the fact that the referendum was

held three weeks before the scheduled release of a company-funded

environmental study "should be seen for what it is, a public relations

campaign." Before it was held, the vote was deemed illegal by Peru's

minister of energy and mines, Jaime Quijandria, one of the government

officials who have refused to comment on the project until the

environmental study is released.

"There has been almost no investment in the agricultural sector in

this area since land reform, and we don't see the foreign

[nongovernmental organizations] that are opposing this project

offering any development alternatives," Glaser said.

Almost a century and a half ago, German scientist Ernest Wilhem

Middendorff got off the boat in the nearby port town of Paita, made

his way to Tambogrande, and discovered gold. In those days, mining

gold from the Piura River was a low-tech, low-bother operation. Most

residents saw a greater potential for riches in the fruit trees that

sprouted from the dry soil.

A century later, starting in the late 1940s, an irrigation system

financed largely by the World Bank turned 150,000 desert acres of the

San Lorenzo Valley into some of Peru's richest farmland. The large

hacienda owners reaped the early benefits, their cotton plantations

flourishing under the care of peasants. That system persisted until

the early 1970s when land reform turned peasants into landowners for

the first time. Today, the valley's hundreds of small and medium-size

plots account for $100 million a year in agricultural production.

The region produces 25,000 tons of mangoes each year, many bound for

the United States, and almost half of the limes that Peruvians use to

make ceviche, a savory, spicy cocktail of raw seafood seared by lime

juice.

That fact has been exploited by shrewd anti-mining activists, who have

popped up on Lima's busiest streets wearing fluorescent lime costumes

and chanting the slogan: "Without lime, there is no ceviche."

What farmers fear most is that a mining operation would consume

farmland, contaminate their fruit and siphon off too much water,

forcing them into mining jobs they known nothing about. Manhattan is

one of 10 mining companies with concessions in and around Tambogrande,

and residents fear it is the Trojan horse for an industry with designs

on the whole valley.

In the past year, two chapters of Oxfam International have joined the

town's cause. Oxfam America has spent an estimated $20,000 on the

community, including commissioning a study last year that predicted

dire environmental consequences if the mine opens. The Environmental

Mining Council of British Columbia and the Washington-based Mineral

Policy Center, two groups opposed to mining, helped underwrite the

study.

In addition, Oxfam America has contributed $4,000 to the Defense Front

of Tambogrande, a local group formed to fight the mine, to help defray

legal costs for several people facing charges for destroying

Manhattan's property last year. Cathy Ross, a program officer for

Oxfam America in Lima, said the group has not taken sides in the

debate but is only helping Tambogrande determine its own future.

"There are few cases as clear-cut as this one," Ross said. "There's a

lot at stake for the company, a lot at stake for the government. And

from their perspective, those look a lot more important than what's at

stake for the local community."

It is perhaps Manhattan's bad luck that, on the surface at least,

Tambogrande doesn't want for much. All 8,000 people living in the

urban center have running water and electricity. While not generating

the opportunities it might with more technology, agriculture has meant

that the town is fully employed.

"Why would I want a new house?" asked Alejandro Silupu Riofrio, 35, a

shop owner whose home has crumbling mud walls. "We're fine with this

one."

Those resources make Tambogrande different from Peru's other mining

zones, usually distant, desolate mountain regions where towns, if they

exist at all, have nothing. But several reports, including a second

study financed by Oxfam America, suggest that surrounding communities

hardly benefit from mines.

While local jobs are created, they do not last forever and most of the

revenue is sent elsewhere, the reports have found. Last year, for

example, the Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. paid $50 million in

taxes to the government from its gold mine near Cajamarca, 450 miles

north of Lima, the most profitable gold mine in the world. The city

received $800,000 of that and is resisting the mine's expansion plans.

In the past year, scores of Tambogrande residents have heard this

message in workshops organized by Oxfam Great Britain. Many now worry

that the mine would transform a place where the Saturday evening

gathering of Christian evangelists has been the most popular form of

mass entertainment in a honky-tonk town with a disco on every street

corner.

"In mining zones, poverty is the highest and prostitution the

greatest," said Eligio Villegas Salvador, an evangelical Christian,

recounting what he has picked up in the workshops. "So we say no thank

you."

ITEM #2

Title: Peru says disputed mine would foil poverty

Date: June 10, 2002

LIMA, Peru - Peru's prime minister on the weekend urged that plans to

develop a controversial $315 million gold and copper mine plan go

forward, saying this mineral-rich nation could not let the northern

farming valley where the mine would be dug languish in poverty.

"We can't condemn the (Tambogrande) community to backwardness and

poverty.... We need to work to ... make this project happen in a way

that respects people's concerns and brings prosperity to the community

and to the country," Prime Minister Roberto Danino told CPN radio.

Canadian mining company Manhattan Minerals Corp. has spent $58 million

since 1999 exploring the fertile Tambogrande valley, 640 miles (1,050

km) north of Lima, which produces 40 percent of Peru's mangoes and

limes.

"It's an important reserve to be exploited," Danino said. Peru is

Latin America's leading gold producer and ranks No. 5 worldwide in

copper output.

While Manhattan denies some townspeople's allegations the that project

could destroy Tambogrande's farm industry and hurt the environment,

some 99 percent of voters who turned out for a nonbinding June 2

referendum voted against the mine.

Mining has a bittersweet legacy in Peru. The industry is the top

foreign currency earner but the poor nation bears the environmental

scars of decades of big mining deals.

The government of President Alejandro Toledo, which is seeking to lure

desperately needed foreign investment in projects like this one, has

not recognized that vote.

"We have said clearly that this was an invalid vote that didn't give

people enough information to make an informed decision," Danino said.

Manhattan, meanwhile, accused international nongovernmental groups of

manipulating local public opinion, a claim local officials deny.

The company says it will use only fail-safe mining techniques and

promises the project will create 1,850 new jobs. They also say they

will offer new homes and other incentives to about 2,000 people now

living on top of what it wants to see as a 2.7-square-mile (700-

hectare) mining area.

Danino said there needs to be an information campaign to explain to

farmers the project's advantages and disadvantages.

"We're talking about serious talks that will allow people to analyze

whether mining is going to improve their quality of life, allow them

to join the modern world, give them prosperity," he said.

But local officials have been skeptical and are urging the government

to respect the referendum.

"Tambogrande will bring almost no benefits (for locals).... Every

project like this one must be accompanied by a local development plan

and environmental protection," Tambogrande Mayor Alfredo Rengifo told

Canal N cable television.

"We will be waiting and watchful to see that public opinion is

respected," he said.

According to Manhattan, the site could yield at least 56,250 pounds of

gold (25,568 kilograms) and 1.5 billion pounds (682 million kilograms)

of copper.

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