Following our ‘Shout Out Against Mining Injustice’ conference in Vancouver this past June, tomorrow Blue Planet Project organizer Claudia Campero Arena will be in Cerro de San Pedro, a community about 400 kilometres north of Mexico City. A subsidiary of the Canadian-owned mining company NewGold operates a destructive gold and silver mine there.
After a November 28, 2010 visit to this community, Council of Canadians campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue and I wrote, “We were welcomed in the town square—with music and kind words—by members of the community. They told us about how NewGold removed the top of their mountain to get at the gold and silver—a mountain which is tied intimately to their history and cultural identity. In the extraction process, NewGold uses cyanide to separate the minerals from the rock. We are told that this has polluted local water sources, which explains the chant of community members as we walked the kilometre in town: ‘Water yes, cyanide no’. The community has been challenging this mine for 14 years, including in the Mexican federal court where, as a result of the impacts it is having, it was found to be illegal. But the Mexican government allows the mine to continue, and so does the Canadian government. We expressed our solidarity and determination to stop this destruction of their land and water, and the resulting impact on their health.”
Campero will be in Cerro de San Pedro to learn more about the situation there, to express our continued solidarity, to talk with the community about how we can work with them, and to share a banner that reflects our shared commitment to “alza tu voz contra las injusticias de la minería canadiense” (shout out against the injustices of Canadian mining) and to “alza tu voz por el agua y contra la minería canadiense” (shout out for water and against Canadian mining).
She will be reporting on this trip after her visit.
