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CCALCP helped stop Toronto-based Brookfield Asset hydroelectric project in Colombia

By
Brent Patterson
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The Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP), an organization of eight women lawyers based in Bucaramanga and Cúcuta in northern Colombia, works on crucial public interest issues, notably the defence of territory.

In 2016, CCALCP filed a challenge against Isagen’s Piedra del Sol hydroelectric project.

The October 2017 report Defending the Land and Environment Where Extractive Companies are Engaged notes, “[Brookfield Asset Management] has been present in Colombia since 2011 [and] consolidated its activity in 2016 when it became the majority owner (57.6%) of the company Isagen through the largest privatization in the history of Colombia.”

The report also notes: “Isagen operates at least 14 projects in Colombia: seven power generation plants, six hydroelectric plants and one thermal energy plant in five departments around the country. It is also developing five hydroelectric projects in the departments of Antioquia and Santander…”

“‘Piedra del Sol’ is a hydroelectric project using the run-of-the-river technique on the Fonce River in the Pinchote, San Gil, Socorro and Cabrera areas of Santander department where the company failed to guarantee the effective participation of the population with respect to the environmental impact of the project.”

“CCALCP filed a motion for protection in 2016 with the Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (ANLA – National Authority for Environmental Licences).”

“This motion led to a ruling from the Administrative Court of Santander protecting the rights of the communities affected by the project and helping pave the way for citizens’ participation in environmental decisions prior to the granting of environmental permits, meaning that citizens would have access to technical details.”

Renewable Energy World explains, “ANLA issued its refusal in September 2016, and Isagen and HMV filed an appeal in December 2016.”

W Radio further explains, “Isagen and HMV Ingenieros Ltda … filed a petition for restitution, after challenging the technical considerations made by the authority to the Environmental Impact Study and the process of socialization and citizen participation.”

On April 20, 2018, Renewable Energy World reported, “ANLA has upheld its decision to reject the permit request for the 152-MW Piedra del Sol hydro project in Colombia, citing deficiencies in information related to the project’s impact on water supply and fragile ecosystems in northern Santander department, among other factors.”

Photo from UNO news report, March 30, 2018.

CCALCP opposed Vancouver-based Eco Oro mining in Colombia’s Santurbán wetland

By
Brent Patterson
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Vancouver-based mining company Eco Oro Minerals Corp. has long pursued its Angostura gold and silver mine project located in Santander Department (province) in Colombia.

The mine would have been situated in the Santurbán Páramo, a high-altitude wetland ecosystem that serves as a vital source of drinking water for approximately two million people in the city of Bucaramanga and surrounding areas.

It’s helpful to review a timeline of the controversial project.

The history of it goes back to 1994 when Eco Oro (then called Greystar Resources) began their exploration in the area.

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) notes, “Eco Oro’s initial interest in the Angostura mine project came in the midst of then-president Alvaro Uribe’s decision to grant foreign companies limited exploratory mining permits.”

CIEL has also noted, “These permits allow for exploration but not extraction unless environmental permits are granted.”

It highlights, “Colombian law prohibits mining within páramo limits [but] many companies have attempted to exploit this ambiguous language to carry out harmful mining projects.”

Mongabay reports, “[Eco Oro’s] Environmental Impact Assessment was denied by the Colombian government in 2009 and again in 2011. Eco Oro changed its approach from an open-pit mine to a proposed underground mine.”

CIEL adds, “Since 2010, the Committee for the Defense of Water and the Santurbán Páramo, a diverse civic coalition composed of 40 groups, has opposed the mining project.”

The Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP), which receives protective accompaniment from Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project, is one of those groups that has worked with this committee in defence of the moor.

In 2012, the Committee for the Defense of Water and the Santurbán Páramo made a complaint about the project to the compliance advisor ombudsman, a recourse mechanism for projects financed by the International Finance Corporation, the private lending arm of the World Bank.

That complaint was made in partnership with CIEL, MiningWatch Canada and the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA).

In January 2013, in a clear setback for the mine, Colombia’s Ministry of Environment declared the Santurbán páramo a Regional Natural Park.

Then in February 2016, Colombia’s constitutional court ruled that mining in the páramos was illegal.

The Bogota Post reports, “Previously, companies had been operating under a loophole that exempted mining licenses issued before February 2010. The court deemed these exceptions ‘unconstitutional’ and cited the ecological importance of the páramos, including their role in providing 85 per cent of the country’s drinking water.”

The constitutional court also ruled, with respect to a challenge filed by the Committee and the Lawyers Collective, that the Ministry of Environment violated the community’s right to participation and due process.

At that time, El Espectador reported (in Spanish), “Despite the fact that the Committee had requested in November 2013 that a public hearing be held, prior to the demarcation of Santurbán, it was never held and, instead, the Ministry of the Environment limited itself to listening to some actors, such as mining companies, but not to the community in general.”

In March 2016, Eco Oro announced that it could not reach a settlement with the Colombian government and that it would take the dispute to international arbitration.

Mongabay reports, “The company argued that Colombia violated its obligations under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement when the state implemented measures to protect the Sánturban Páramo, limiting the company’s future prospects.”

In August 2016, the Colombian National Mining Agency issued a decision against Eco Oro given the February 2016 constitutional court decision. By December 2016, the International Finance Corporation divested from Eco Oro.

In March 2018, Eco Oro filed a memorial on the merits of this case with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

While Eco Oro claims to have invested US$250 million in the project, it is seeking US$764 million as compensation for the cancellation of the project.

On February 27, 2019, the Center for International Environmental Law noted in a media release, “The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes has declined to accept an Amicus Curiae that was to be presented by the Committee for the Defense of Water and the Páramo de Santurbán and allied international organizations.”

Those opposed to transnational corporations using investor-state provisions in “free trade” agreements to undermine the public’s ability to protect fresh water will want to monitor this case as it unfolds at the World Bank.

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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