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Fortuna Silver mine opposed by community of Santa Carina Minas in Oaxaca, Mexico

By
Brent Patterson
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In November 2018, Peace Brigades International-Canada brought two human rights defenders from Mexico to share their concerns about the intentions and impacts of Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines in the south-eastern state of Oaxaca.

Salvador Martínez Arellanes and Neftalí Reyes Méndez visited Toronto and Ottawa with firsthand information and updates about the concerns being expressed by the residents of Santa Catarina Minas, a community in the Central Valleys Region of Oaxaca.

Martinez Arellanes is an Indigenous leader from Santa Carina Minas, while Reyes Méndez is with the Oaxacan Territorial Defense Collective and EDUCA, a non-governmental organization based in the city of Oaxaca that promotes justice, equality and social participation.

Virry Schaafsma, the Mexico City-based Advocacy Coordinator for Peace Brigades International – Mexico Project, travelled with them to Canada.

Large parts of the territory in Oaxaca have been granted to Fortuna Silver without the consent of local Indigenous and farming communities.

Fortuna Silver holds about 80,000 hectares of concessions in Oaxaca.

The residents of Santa Catarina Minas are aware of the violence Fortuna’s operations has brought to the nearby community of San José del Progreso.

Intercontinental Cry has reported, “In January 2012, as opponents of the mine [near San José del Progreso] gathered for a protest in defence of their water resources, a municipal police officer fired into the crowd, killing local resident Bernardo Méndez Vásquez.”

It adds, “In March 2012, gunmen opened fire on members of the environmental and human rights group the Coalition of United Peoples of the Ocotlán Valley (CPUVO) as they travelled home from the Oaxaca airport, killing Indigenous Zapotec land defender Bernardo Vasquez Sánchez.”

The Zapotecs are Indigenous peoples mostly situated in Oaxaca.

In July 2018, the community of Santa Catarina Minas joined with other communities in the region and decided to form the Assembly of the Central Valleys Against Mining.

The communique from that gathering stated, “In the exercise of our free determination and autonomy, as Zapoteco communities of the Central Valleys, we declare that in our territories, ‘any activity whatsoever of mining prospecting, exploration and exploitation is prohibited.'”

The communique also stated, “We declare our commitment to continue defending Mother Earth, caring for and defending water that gives us life, as well as defending all of the natural resources present in our territories.”

And it highlighted, “We demand justice for Bernardo Méndez and Bernardo Vásquez, assassinated in 2012 for their work in defence of the territories in San José del Progreso.”

Then in October 2018 the community participated in the first “People’s Trial against the State and Mining Companies in Oaxaca.”

Intercontinental Cry notes, “Speakers at the tribunal event said that Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization requires the consent of Indigenous peoples regarding projects that may affect their communities.”

Article 6 of Convention 169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention states, “The consultations carried out in application of this Convention shall be undertaken, in good faith and in a form appropriate to the circumstances, with the objective of achieving agreement or consent to the proposed measures.”

Both Canada and Mexico are signatories to Convention 169, but Indigenous communities have stated that they were not consulted about the Mexican government’s concession of land to Fortuna Silver Mines on their territories.

The People’s Trial called for a state-wide moratorium on mining activities, the cancellation of the 322 concessions granted by the Mexican government to mining companies in the state of Oaxaca (including the one granted to Fortuna Silver near the community of Santa Catarina Minas) and an end to the existing 41 mining projects in Oaxaca (including the Fortuna Silver mine currently operating near the community of San José del Progreso).

To follow the work of Peace Brigades International-Canada, please see its Twitter feed and Facebook page. To support PBI-Canada’s work, including another speaking tour in this country in 2019 with human rights defenders accompanied by PBI, please click here.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies TZ’KAT who seek an end to violence against the land and women

By
Brent Patterson
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The TZ’KAT Network of Ancestral Healers of Community Feminism from Ixmulew in Guatemala was formed in October 2015 to defend Indigenous women’s rights and the land.

Many of its members are healers, midwives, and herbalists.

An article in La Agroecología notes (in Spanish) that TZ’KAT analyzes from a feminist and historical perspective how territorial dispossession has taken place.

The La Agroecología article explains, “They say that the original ancestral patriarchy consisted in the appropriation of the bodies of women as trophies of war… The original ancestral patriarchy was mixed in the invasion with the patriarchy of the western world.”

It provides the example that, “The Spaniards who invaded violently brought a whole structure to justify that men could take the lives of women, as well as ‘conquered’ the lands of indigenous peoples.”

The article also notes, “There are multiple dimensions of violence brought by the patriarchal connection, community feminists in Guatemala call it territorial femicide, which is the systematic persecution and murder of human rights defenders, women’s rights and territories, as was the murder of Berta Cáceres on March 3, 2016 in Honduras.”

A recent article posted by the World Rainforest Movement says, “Guatemalan community feminists have proposed the category body-land territory.”

That category highlights “that the struggle for the defense of the land against extractivism must be simultaneous and inseparable from the struggle for women in such territories to live a life free from violence and the exploitation of their bodies.”

That article adds, “Extractivism is based on and exacerbates the patriarchal culture, which has a particular affect on women’s way of life.”

It further notes, “In the contexts of mining and oil exploitation and hydroelectric installations, for example, a ‘masculinization’ of territories takes place in which community spaces and daily life are restructured around the desires and values of a hegemonic masculinity.”

Lorena Cabnal is a Qeqchi Xinca, communal feminist, healer, and a member of TZ’KAT.

She has written (in Spanish) that the network “accompanies processes of emotional and spiritual recovery by Indigenous women defenders of bodies and land.”

TZ’KAT members “feel, act, and come together to collectively defend their bodies and the Earth.” And given the task of women defenders can be exhausting, TZ’KAT looks to “ancestral knowledge through processes of emotional and spiritual recovery.”

An article posted to Casi Literal has explained (in Spanish), “Defending natural resources, defending an Indigenous Mayan entity, defending collective rights and defending women’s rights in the face of a false development has cost the lives of many people whose names are not reported by the media.”

That article adds the members of the Network are “women who fight and face every day the effects of ‘patriarchal-corporative and state violence in their neoliberal manifestation’, who believe in the reciprocity of healing, and who embody the motto, ‘Alive we love each other, we love ourselves freely, not one less.'”

Peace Brigades International has stated, “These women defenders have a history of being politically persecuted, suffering stigmatization, death threats, territorial political displacement and criminalization as a result of their work in defence of their rights.”

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied TZ’KAT since February 2018.

To read In her own words: Lorena Cabnal, please click here.

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