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Colombia Has Lost its Fear: The Strike Lives

Piles of charred trash burn and smolder in a lamplit city street. Masked community members, illuminated by the fires and LED business signs, walk through the debris as members of the press document the scene.

by Medios Libres Cali, originally in Spanish. First released in English by Crimethinc. Header photo by AP, all others by Medios Libres Cali.

Update: Since the following text was written, President Ivan Duque of Colombia made a statement on Sunday, May 2 asking Colombia’s congress to withdraw the tax reform bill that had sparked protests across the country. However, as of today, the protests in Colombia continue—especially in the city of Cali, arguably the epicenter of the demonstrations—because that failed law is only the most visible measure in a package of reforms that also includes healthcare privatization.


When the government is more dangerous than the pandemic, the people must gather en masse to protest.  We throw carnivals in the streets to demand our rights, convert police stations into public libraries, and the people, neighborhoods, and sectors of the city unite in a great celebration of grassroots resistance in Colombia. The response has been excessive police force and a president who moves to militarize the country. This is the dual face of the historic General Strike of April 2021. All of Colombia is united against a bad government.


"SOS: The narco-state is killing us."

The People Have Been Hobbled, but Still March On

Despite the peace accords signed by the government and the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Popular Army) in 2016, which were supposed to bring an end to the armed conflict in Colombia, paramilitarism and narco-trafficking continue to fuel the war. El Centro Democrático (the party of ex-president Álvaro Uribe and current president Iván Duque) is responsible for continuing the war; it is focusing its power on asserting political and financial control of the country.

As of February 2021, 252 former FARC guerillas who demobilized to sign a peace accord have been assassinated. Today, four years after signing that peace accord, the government has implemented less than 75% of the agreement, and has taken no action on substantial components of it that were supposed to address the structural causes of the conflict, such as access to, redistribution, and possession of land—which has historically been one of the causes of the deep inequality within the country.

This inequality intensified with the arrival of the pandemic, clearly showing the state's ineffectiveness, incapacity, and disinterest in the well-being of its people. The delayed decision to close airports greatly accelerated the early spread of the virus. Now, while Colombia is experiencing its third COVID peak, the nation is facing an even worse wave of violence, poverty, and corruption, in which hunger is one of the worst problems. The war is bathing our territory in blood. In the first months of 2021, at least 57 influential participants in social movements have been murdered, 20 of them Indigenous people, most of whom were from the province of Cauca. In addition, there were 158 femicides in the first three months of the year and several other massacres.

A young combatant squares off behind a shield.

Colombia is the country of extrajudicial executions. A report by the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP) documented 6402 illegal murders of civilians between 2002 and 2008, all of whom the army and police dishonestly misrepresented as “killed in combat.” These killings peaked in 2007 and 2008 during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Véles. The figure comes close to the total number of casualties of Jorge Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship in Argentina; it is more than double the official number of victims executed or disappeared by Augusto Pinochet in Chile. In Colombia, people no longer wonder who gave the orders for these killings. They know the orders came from Uribe, and they no longer fear saying it aloud. Colombia has lost its fear.

Ever since the peace agreement, the government of Iván Duque (a protégé of Uribe) has sought to undermine the peace by all possible means, and they are succeeding. According to INDEPAZ (Institute for Studies in Development and Peace Networks), 124 massacres have taken place in 2020 and 2021, involving over 300 victims altogether. More than 1,000 activists have been murdered in Colombia since the accord was signed. Living in this country is a constant struggle against the austerity policies of a government whose only response to people’s needs is a boot to the face. Alongside economic programs that foster misery and inequality, genocidal political programs aim to exterminate any collective identity outside of or opposed to the reigning order.

A half-eaten loaf and an improvised weapon.

COVID-19 Is the Least of Our Problems

Amid a third peak of COVID-19 infections, thousands took the streets to participate in the general strike of April 28. What could make people overcome their fear of the virus and occupy the streets in the face of the bloodiest government in Latin America?

The Duque administration’s corrupt and negligent management of the crisis generated by COVID-19 has thrown the country into a tailspin of exponentially increasing impoverishment. According to government figures, in 2020, the equivalent of $11.5 million USD was invested in hospital infrastructure and humanitarian aid in the form of economic transfers; yet there have been thousands of allegations of corruption regarding the management of these policies. Meanwhile, Duque’s government has failed to implement a basic income proposal signed by 4000 people, including at least 50 members of parliament, as a means to sustain the households with the greatest need. Day in and day out, these people have to go out into the streets and risk exposure to the virus just to survive.

“If COVID doesn’t kill us, this perverse government will.”

On the contrary, the government has focused on providing support to the banks, securing their financial liquidity through funds transferred directly from the Emergency Mitigation Fund (FOME) created in the wake of the pandemic. Experts have stated that, solely through transfers known as “Solidarity Income,” the banks would pocket at least $6.3 million USD taken directly from the public treasury. This “Solidarity Income” never reached the people who really need it. Even during the pandemic, in Colombia we continue to see the vast majority of people get poorer while the rich get richer.

None of this is new. For decades, the political class of conservatives and right-wingers have presented themselves as the intermediaries between the country and the hegemonic global economy. They systematically maintain this position by exterminating peoples, stealing land, and dominating the working majority. This is a dictatorship in disguise, with enough weapons and resources to keep the country chained down for many more decades.

The grassroots uprising that is taking place today is not spontaneous. Rather, it is a reaction to years upon years of domination and injustice. The final straw that set off the protests we saw this April was the proposal of the so-called “Solidarity Financing Law,” a tax reform that will impoverish the majority of the population.

Under the pretext of reducing the deficit that it had created with the last reform, Duque’s administration came up with the terrible idea of increasing the cost of living in one of the most unequal countries in the world. It's shocking that in the midst of a crisis, the Colombian government would decide to raise food taxes for the lower and middle classes. It makes no sense to raise the price of food when the population is going hungry. It is even more outrageous that the proposed reforms will not only harm everyday people but further enrich the country’s wealthiest monopolies.

Shield tactics have been crucial to defending against police attacks since the 2019 general strike.

The Tax Reform Might Ruin Us, but the Health Reform Will Kill Us

The decisions that determine the direction of the country and the future of millions are made solely by political, military, and economic elites. They pass laws in favor of banking and ranching empires, laws in favor of North American, Asian, and European financial interests, laws to grant themselves immunity after they steal everyone else’s resources, laws to keep them in power both locally and nationally. These laws are approved behind closed doors, without public debate. One of the most obvious examples of this is the legal reform that will make changes to the Colombian healthcare system. Introduced on March 16th, 2021, it has still not been passed by Congress, but its supporters in the legislature pulled secretive moves the night of April 26 to try to push it through while attention was fixed on the tax reform.

This health reform could be worse than COVID-19 itself. Essentially, it is intended to implement the full privatization of the Colombian healthcare system. We will have to pay coverage fees for pathology, or the EPS (Colombia’s public health insurance) will deny us medical attention. People who require medical attention through the EPS will have to demonstrate that they are taking good care of themselves and did nothing to cause their illness or injury; if their insurance provider can prove otherwise, it will be able to deny them coverage, forcing them to pay out of pocket. This program is also intended to end public municipal vaccination programs—at the peak of the pandemic!—and to give insurance providers authority to decide how to offer these services and to whom.

This reform would allow multinationals and transnational pharmaceutical companies to impose prices and market rules for healthcare in Colombia. It would end health insurance discounts for those in professions including education, manufacturing, and the armed forces. Hospitals will have to demonstrate results in a proposal gruesomely similar to the “results” that the Uribe government demanded of soldiers, which resulted in over 10,000 "false positives"—the practice of extrajudicial execution in which the government and military kidnapped and murdered young people, then falsely reported them as FARC-EP combatants in order to fill quotas.

Similarly, it's estimated that the current health law that privatized the health system in 1993 has led to one million deaths through lack of medical attention or negligence, inflicting even more casualties than the armed conflict.

Five Days of Mobilization, Protests, and General Strike

From the beginning of the pandemic, the poorest have faced the cruel choice between staying home to avoid the virus and working to survive. A few weeks into the pandemic, red handkerchiefs began to appear in the windows of houses in marginalized neighborhoods, signifying that the household was going hungry. Soon, they could be seen by the thousands.

This is why, one year after the beginning of the quarantine, when the government proposed a tax reform that would hit the lower and middle classes the hardest, people did not hesitate to take to the streets. In that moment of crisis, there was no longer any choice—only rage and frustration.  It was time to bring Colombia to a halt in defense of human dignity.

“Corruption and oppression are destroyed by rebellion.”

There were no leaders, only a date proposed by the labor unions, and that was enough for families, friends, neighbors, and neighborhoods to self-organize through social networks. The people flowed together into a great river of communities marching toward the major gathering points and entrances to the city. This was an efficient way to make the strike real, ensuring that no one could enter or leave.

The first day was filled with shouting, speeches, and singing and dancing in the street. This is the way we are in Cali: happy and brave, dignified and festive, dancers and warriors. People walked back to their houses that night, tired but with the knowing smiles of those who have accomplished something. In the following days, the blockades multiplied and the number of participants swelled, inspired by examples of resistance to overcome the fear of repression.

But the government has experience as well, particularly violent and paramilitary experience. It began detaining, killing, disappearing, and raping young people. This only increased the intensity of the resistance in the streets.

While restrictive measures were still in place in some Colombian cities, the government declared a curfew beginning at 8 pm on April 28 in an attempt to break the continuity of the mobilization. By 10 am the next morning, they had already modified the measure in response to the discontent in the streets, using the pretext of seeking to prevent crowded situations to pressure people via the curfew.

On April 30, the third day of the strike, the authorities shifted to a strategy of state terror—the same terror they have used on other occasions to paralyze communities. The restrictive measures supposedly necessitated by the pandemic provided an excuse for police agencies to carry out illegal mass arrests under the cover of municipal orders, as well as grave abuses of authority including murder, excessive force, threats, irregular arrests, destruction of protesters’ possessions, and sexual abuse.

Nonetheless, on May 1, attendance in the protests exceeded all expectations and many other cities joined in. By this point, demonstrations were taking place in more than 500 cities across the country. Our memory from other difficult struggles, passed down to us from other times by our parents and grandparents, reminds us that when the people unite, there is no power more transformative.

Through their police abuse complaint platform “GRITA,” by 11 pm on May 1, the human rights organization Temblores had received reports of 940 complaints of police violence, 92 victims of physical police violence, 21 people murdered by the police, four victims of sexual abuse at the hands of police officers, and 12 people shot in the eye by police.

Massive numbers took to the streets all over Colombia.

Cali: Capital of Resistance

The city of Cali has poured out in protest, organizing in spontaneous ways that allow people to meet. People have poured into the major gathering places with beautiful creativity. Food is always at the center of these places—diverse and delicious meals distributed from the communal pots. The front line is there, and other lines of care and defense on the part of youth in resistance. Many areas of the city have been renamed: La Loma de la Cruz, “Hill of the Cross,” is now called La Loma de la Dignidad, “Hill of Dignity”; El Paso del Comercio, “Commerce Pass,” is now called el Paso del Aguante, “Endurance Pass.” The Bridge of a Thousand Days is now the Bridge of a Thousand Struggles and the Gate to the Sea is now the Gate to Freedom.

Barricades were set up and defended all over Cali.

However, repression has continued on a daily basis. Echoing the phrase "I will always remember when I threw a stone in anger and the repressive government responded with shrapnel," people have lived through intense days of resistance defending at least seven permanent blockades throughout the city. The people of Cali protested in huge numbers and with determination from the first day of the mobilizations. At most gathering places, people were provoked by police forces, leading to clashes between the protesters and the riot police (ESMAD). Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina’s city government has assigned the task of policing the demonstrations to the Special Operations Group (GOES) of the National Police.

Here, we present an overview of police atrocities in Cali each day during the strike, compiled by a number of human rights organizations.

“Murderers, Rapists. #ESMAD #policias”

#28A—April 28, 2021

• Eight people experienced serious injuries and 50 experienced minor injuries from tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades launched by the ESMAD.
• Police shot 17-year-old Marcelo Agredo Inchimad in the back, in the neighborhood of Mariano Ramos. He died at the Valle del Lili Clinic.
• Police murdered 13-year-old Jaison García. He was admitted to Carlos Holmes Trujillo Hospital in the neighborhood of República Israel without vital signs.
• Six people were taken to police stations and released with fines for violating the curfew decreed by Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina.
• Numerous videos recorded by protesters showed police utilizing less-lethal weapons improperly[1] and using firearms to shoot protesters.

#29A—April 29, 2021

• Police officers murdered 23-year-old Miguel Ángel Pinto at the gathering place called "Puerto Resistencia."
• Police detained 106 protesters and transferred them to police stations, where they were beaten, tortured, and stripped of their belongings and audiovisual equipment. At least 31 disappearances were reported.
• A protester on Calle Quinta was hit in the eye by a tear gas canister and seriously injured.
• 16-year-old Michel David Lora, a Venezuelan national, was reported to have been disappeared. After being arrested with his mother, Lora was taken to a temporary shelter. When his mother arrived, she was told her son was not there.

“Resistance Port: Against the Reform.”

#30A—April 30, 2021

• During the protests, Edwin Villa Escobar, a merchant, and Einer Alexander Lasso Chará, retired, were murdered in the El Diamante neighborhood. Jovita Osorio, a preschool teacher, was murdered in the Paso del Comercio neighborhood and three other unidentified persons were murdered in the El Poblado neighborhood in eastern Cali. These incidents were recorded on video.
• Angely Vivas Retrepo was shot in her left leg in the neighborhood of Julio Rincón, near the Calipso gathering place. Meanwhile, two women and a man were wounded in the neighborhood of Las Américas. In addition, police injured 105 more people.
• Two members of the Francisco Isaías Cifuente human rights organization, Daniela Caicedo and José Cuello, were arrested at the Sameco gathering place. Police stole the articles identifying them as part of the organization.
• Police took 94 persons to police stations from protest sites throughout the city. Many were beaten and tortured by the police inside the stations.
• José Miguel Oband, Diego Alejandro Bolaños, and Jhon Haner Muñoz Bolaños were reported disappeared.

#1M—May 1, 2021

As of this writing, there is no human rights report yet from May 1, despite large numbers of protesters who covered a great part of the meeting points in the city center. Indiscriminate attacks were reported in the Paso del Aguante, Calipso and Puerto Resistencia protest sites. The police took advantage of the night to attack the most vulnerable points of the May 1 demonstrations. There have been reports from throughout the city of armed civilians shooting into the neighborhoods next to these areas. That night, a state of “Military Assistance” was declared to legalize the militarization of cities where mobilization and civil resistance against the tax reform continued.

A young family on the barricades.

The Enemies’ Tools: A Military Response to Social Protest

It has been difficult to find information about military expenses from official sources. It seems that they intend to hide the truth about government spending on war materials. Colombia currently spends around 40 billion Colombian pesos ($10.5 million USD) on the defense ministry every year. The military budget has historically been high, as internal conflict has continued and escalated for several decades now. Despite efforts to establish peace talks, today the conflict has diversified and intensified in many parts of the country, and defense expenses now make up around 11% of Colombia’s government spending—a high percentage for a country with a weakened economy. This puts Colombia in 25th place in the world ranking for public defense expenses, far above countries like France (with 3.3%), Spain (2.9%), or even Brazil (3.86%).

The ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad), a division of the national police apparatus, was created in 1999 to suppress mobilizations in the country. It was supposed to be a temporary special force, but it has now existed for more than 20 years and grown stronger through successive governments. Today, it consists of 3876 officers with a budget of 490 billion pesos ($131 million USD). In the course of its tenure, the squadron has murdered at least 20 civilians via what they call “excessive force.”

Today, the Duque-Uribe government, estranged from the people and anticipating strong popular discontent stemming from the aforementioned measures, has allocated millions to strengthen its security forces. The government has been preparing for some time now to use repression to deal with unrest. In March 2020, at the onset of the social and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, it purchased five armored vehicles for 8 billion pesos ($2.1 million USD) along with 9.515 billion pesos ($2.5 million USD) worth of ammunition and weaponry for the ESMAD. The 2021 budget has been increased by almost one billion pesos. In short, this government responds to social protest as if it is at war.

Yet neither the ESMAD nor the police have succeeded in containing the general strike. This is why President Duque declared the installation of “Military Assistance” in any cities that needed it—a measure that allows the use of military forces to respond to public disorder and disasters. The presence of these forces on the streets curtails rights as in a state of siege. Military presence in the streets increases the possibility of acts of war during demonstrations, because the state approaches the situation from a military perspective.

A crowd confronts the heavily armored ESMAD (Colombian riot police).

Overflowing Streets

The Colombian people gathered on every corner, shutting down every city. The neighborhoods took to the streets to reject the tax reform under the slogan “If we don’t unite, we will sink.” Colombia became a river of people. A great fire of unity has spread in honor of those who have given their lives. Their loss hurts us deeply, but their deaths must not be in vain. The voices of the entire country make themselves heard and a multitude of marches have spread the voice of resistance.

Colombia has shaken off its fear. We have nothing left to lose.

¡A PARAR PARA AVANZAR!  WE STRIKE TO MOVE FORWARD!

“For our dead: a minute of silence and a whole life of combat.”

Collectives in Europe prepare to welcome the Zapatista delegation

Translated by Shantal Montserrat Lopez Victoria, Voices in Movement / Cover photo by Anthony Guerra

While the pandemic keeps the population contained, the Zapatistas have decided to leave their communities to begin a five continent tour, starting off in Europe. The Zapatistas are scheduled to be overseas in July, August, September and October of 2021.

“Various Zapatista delegations, men, women, and others, the color of our earth, will go out into the world, walking or setting sail to remote lands, oceans, and skies, not to seek out difference, superiority, or offense, much less pity or apology, but to find what makes us equal.”  This was the message of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in October 2020, just as mobility was beginning to tighten.

Since that message was issued, several in person and virtual meetings have taken place in the Spanish State. “Issues of Covid concerns us a lot, but the truth is we are very excited to welcome the compas here, to be able to have them with us. We think it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet and get together,” said Lola from the Documentation Center on Zapatismo collective (collectivo Centro de Documentación sobre el Zapatismo) in Madrid, an organization that has been following the Zapatista movement for years.

José Sánchez from Germany, a member of the Citizens Summons collective and the Ya Basta Netz Network, affirms that in this country a network of collectives have been organizing to receive the Zapatistas. “Knowing that Europe is the first stop has driven us to unite diverse collectives. But other networks, collectives and groups are also being created. We were already working with Spain but we are now working with other countries,” said Sanchez.

Danae, from the Yretiemble Madrid collective, affirmed that the pandemic has strongly affected the processes towards resistance and struggle in Spain, “because it has been one of the main countries affected by Covid and this has exacerbated the inequalities. For this reason, the Zapatistas visit is very important, because we need to mobilize ourselves in spite of what we are living,” she said.

Everardo, also from the  Yretiemble Madrid collective, says that this visit has already lead to the creation of “diverse spaces of self-organization in Madrid, Barcelona, the Basque Country, among others.  We’re not just thinking about a visit from a loved one. We have to think about how to organize ourselves to receive the compas, but also on how to strengthen our networks. We are trying to gather together organizations who are in the struggle to meet with the Zapatistas, firstly so we can listen to each other, but also to create networks that will allow us to continue fighting together.”

Most of the collectives that have started to get together are running into their first obstacles, the restriction of mobility due to the pandemic. “But if there’s something we have learned from the Zapatistas is that there is always a way. We have been meeting one-on-one, in virtual meetings and by email. Our organizing is growing in other countries,” adds Sanchez.

Lola emphasizes that these first meetings in Madrid have made them think about the forms of organization they are creating. “We are focusing on seven main points: migration, social rights, work, art, etc. It is something we are building.”

Connecting with Europe

The collectives have pointed out that Europe feels a closeness with Mexico and the rest of Latin America. “The problems in the different countries are mainly due to the presence of European capital in the mining  process and with other companies,” adds Sánchez.

“We must not forget that when we talk about Europe, there is Europe from below and to the left. But there is also Europe from above. In Spain there are many companies that are responsible for the plundering in Mexico, they are investors in megaprojects, such as wind farms that are dispossessing the people of the Isthmus in Oaxaca. We have to give that information to the people in Europe,” said Danae.

Plan B

The participating collectives conceded that in logistical terms it has been a great organizational challenge to host the delegation.

In their opinion, the pandemic is not hindering the moment of resistance and struggle, “from the beginning we knew that we had to walk slowly and deal with the uncertainty of the pandemic. Collectives that are organizating are aware that the meeting could be postponed if the conditions do not allow. In the meantime, we have not only been building networks but also new ways of organizing ourselves,” shares Everardo.

Deforestation and Corruption, results of Sembrando Vida in Southern Mexico

Translated by Schools for Chiapas

Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, clientelism and corruption are just some of the consequences of the implementation of Sembrando Vida, the federal government’s most ambitious environmental program, which seeks to reforest a million hectares of deteriorated lands throughout Mexico.  

The above is stated in numerous reports by academics, NGOs and the press. One of the studies, Analysis of the Impacts on Forest Canopies and Potential for Mitigation of Parcels of the Sembrando Vida Program in 2019, carried out by Javier Warman, Ivan Zuñiga and Manuel Cervera, indicates that the program caused the deforestation of an area of 72, 830 hectares. “There is one critical aspect related to the loss of forest canopies; the targeting of this phenomenon in only 22 municipalities of the country, and a great concentration of losses (50,981 hectares representing 70% of the losses) in those regions vulnerable to climate change and those of great biodiversity, of Chiapas, Tabasco, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche.”

For 2019, the municipality with the greatest forest loss was Ocosingo, in Chiapas, with 12,920 hectares, followed by Othón P. Blanco, in the state of Quintana Roo, with 5,829 lost hectares.

The damaged areas, 11.2% of the total area benefitted, were located by a study of satellite images and represents almost half of the annual amount of forest cover lost due to changes in land use and illegal logging in the same region, according to estimates of the World Resource Institute (WRI).

In a report published by Bloomberg, campesinos enrolled in Sembrando Vida in Yucatán and Campeche, report having logged and burned trees in order to receive money from the program. 

This recent report is in addition to those circulated since the end of 2019 and during 2020. For example, in Quintana Roo, Sembrando Vida led to the deforestation of nearly 10,000 hectares of jungle, primarily in the ejidos of the southern part of the state. 

“It has been noted that, in the ejidos, to have the area needed to plant fruit trees, people deforest with the approval of the federal government,” Cristóbal Uc Medina, president of the Society of Forest Ejidos of Quintana Roo, told local media.  

In addition to the deforestation, the program is also implicated in the planting of non-native species in Chiapas and Tabasco, and even  “some participants say that they are forced to fell the new native trees and re-plant non-native species that have died for lack of water or too much sun,” the report ¿Deforestar en vez de reforestar? Esto es lo que ocurre con Sembrando Vida. (Deforesting instead of Reforesting? This is what happens in Sembrando Vida) details.

Corruption

Sembrando Vidapays out 4,500 pesos monthly to 420 thousand farmers. It operates in 20 states and records historic budgets for the Mexican countryside with 15 billion pesos in 2019 and 27 billion in 2020. 

According to the federal plan, in addition to taking care of the environment, the program seeks to combat poverty and corruption by eliminating intermediaries in the delivery of money. However, there are indications that the little to no supervision of the so-called productive and social technicians constitutes a scenario conducive to bad practices. 

“There remain certain bad practices on the part of some (technicians) that abuse their power and the lack of understanding of the beneficiaries about the rules of operation of the program; at the same time there are those campesinos that seek to join Sembrando Vida without meeting the requirements, in exchange for bribes; simulation of land ownership; and more than anything, a disguised political clientelism.”

This was recorded in “Risks of Corruption in Social Programs. The Case of the Sembrando Vida Program.” elaborated by the Ethos Laboratory of Public Policy, which also points out the falsification of the properties to enter the program as well as the work in the plots..

“We have specific testimonies in Veracruz, Chiapas and Campeche of landholders that accumulate that falsify small properties, based on naming their wife, their cousin’s son, etc. as beneficiaries. We have had testimonies of people with different surnames that are the same person, because in addition, the program has the possibility of registering leased properties,” the Mexican Network of Peasant Forestry  Organizations (MOCAF) details.

Among the problems identified since the beginning  of the program are the deficiencies in the supply of plants, both in the construction and equipping of the community nurseries, but especially on the part of the military forestry nurseries. 

In Mexico, there are 12 nurseries, distributed throughout 7 states, operated by the army, which on paper would represent the primary source of plants for Sembrando Vida. However, according to a review on the Compranet portal carried out by Ethos, due to the fact that they have not been able to achieve the necessary numbers to meet its objectives, it was authorized to award 77 suppliers direct contracts to provide 28 species and diverse varieties of plants.

The deficit in the supply of plants also enables abuses on the part of the technicians. One testimony gathered in the report of Ethos details that in the municipality of San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla, Oaxaca, the participants of the program have neither received plants nor money to acquire the inputs for the construction of the community nursery. 

For this reason, the testimony “reports that one productive technician, demanded 50,000 pesos from her mother, who is the beneficiary, and the other members of the CAC (Campesino Learning Community) made up of technicians, campesinos, and scholarship holders, in order to acquire fruit trees, who she herself would buy and bring to them so that they could start planting.”

With this deficiency, Sembrando Vida finds itself far from its goal. In 2019 alone, the first year of its implementation, despite that the objective was to plant more than 500 million trees, only 80 million were planted. By the end of 2021, and with a budget of more than 28 billion pesos, the program intends to grow more than a billion plants.

It’s worth remembering that last February, the Top Federal  Office of Audits (ASF) reiterated that the program has deficiencies in both its design and its implementation. Among the failures found by the ASF is that the target population was not identified, and that the integration and updating of the registry of beneficiaries has failings, in addition to the fact that it didn’t not produce reports or elaborate on parameters to evaluate the program.

Despite Biden’s promises, mistreatment towards migrant children continues

A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs asylum-seeking migrants as they line up along the border wall after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft, in Penitas, Texas, U.S., March 17, 2021. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Along the first trimester of 2021, the government of the United States of America has reported an increase in the flow of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador). Among the travelers, there is a group which stands out due to their extreme vulnerability: children and teenagers who endanger themselves without any guardian taking care of them throughout their journey.

A week ago, the US Congressional Representative for Texas, Enrique Roberto "Henry" Cuellar, revealed photographs of the children in the migrant detention center in the city of Donna, Texas. The images show how children are crowded in "rooms" divided with thin transparent polymer; only given isothermal blankets and plastic-lined mats are the meager resources for their comfort.

During the campaign months, US President Joe Biden (who took office in January of 2021) promised that, if elected, his "administration would treat asylum seekers at their border with dignity and ensure that they receive the fair, legal hearing to which they are entitled". His promise contrasts with the current scenario.

The trenches became abysses

Unlike single adults and families, who are expelled to Mexico in the shortest possible interval (with a few exceptions) after they are detained by the US border patrol, children who travel unaccompanied are asylees in facilities located within US territory, while their cases are studied.

Ideally, the process starts when border patrol agents apprehend the children, then transfer them to their facilities. After guarding them for 72 hours (maximum), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would deliver these children and adolescents to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to assess them medically and put them under quarantine. Simultaneously, each of the families to whom the custodies of the children will be entrusted are investigated (80% of the children and teenagers have a sponsor waiting for them in the USA and in 40% of the cases it is one of the parents or a legal guardian).

However, children remain crammed into facilities run by border protection patrols -whose job is to prevent undocumented migrants from entering the United States- for much longer than three days, because the shelters lack vacancies. 

Crisis?

Troy Miller, the Senior Official performing the Duties of the Commissioner (SOPDOC) for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), asserts that children within DHS facilities are provided with care, food, and the possibility to take a shower every 48 hours. But Leecia Welch and Neha Desai (attorneys authorized to inspect the conditions in which unaccompanied migrant children are held) have stated that they were not allowed to enter to Donna City DHS facility, instead they were only allowed to interview 20 minors inside a portable unit. Some of the children reported that many of their fellows lacked any blankets or mat to sleep on, so they had to lay down on the floor and bare surfaces. Likewise, the children sometimes have to go three or even six days without being able to clean themselves properly.

It is estimated that a remarkably high number of children (14 thousand according to Diario.es, 15 thousand according to Forbes), many of them under 10 years of age, suffer the loss of their well-being while they spend up to a week stranded before being transferred to a hostel. The authorities refuse to be transparent and continue to hide numbers, and in the middle of this contradiction, Biden's government prefers to call this a "challenge" when it is an actual crisis.

What does the US government say?

The Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro N. Mayorkas, has made some statements regarding the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security official website. He explains that the boost of unaccompanied immigrant minors is due to various factors, such as the devastation produced by the hurricanes that hit Central America in 2020, the increase in levels of crime, impunity, and violence in the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico, and the collateral ravages of the COVID 19 pandemic.

In his speech, Mayorkas demonstrated that the previous administration transferred an inefficient system to them, which continuously violated the rights of immigrants, closing shelters, expelling unaccompanied children to their fate, and even making them easy prey for traffickers. On the other hand, opponents of the new administration argue that President Biden's decisions to remove immigration restrictions recklessly encourages immigrants to try to cross borders illegally.

The DHS Secretary admits that the 72 hours of detention stipulated by federal law are being exceeded, and that the spaces to house detained immigrants are in fact limited (they do not allow people to keep the social distancing demanded by the current pandemic).

The Next Step

On March 24th, President Joe Biden assigned Vice President Kamala Harris the task of solving the immigration crisis.

Now it is only about waiting for Harris's first move, not to mention the possibility that the humanitarian abyss will simply widen. Members of the Republican party and some Democrats express their disagreement with the humanitarian crisis and the potential repercussions of the immigration agenda proposed by the current administration (stop the border wall construction, provide legal status to almost 11 million immigrants, reunify families) and warn that they will not facilitate their support.

A License to Pollute at Fortuna Silver Mines in Oaxaca

The Canadian-owned company Minera Cuzcatlán is the sixth-largest silver producer in Mexico. In 2018, a waste spill at one of the company’s mines impacted a stream in Oaxaca State.

The event sparked an intense controversy, documented by the media, over whether or not the mining waste had contaminated communities’ soil and water.

This journalistic investigation uncovers the original reports, which indicate the presence of toxic materials at levels that in some cases exceed Mexican standards by up to 1845%.

It also shows how Mexican authorities and the company kept these documents under wraps these documents in order to let Fortuna off the hook for the effects of its contamination in this region of southern Mexico.

By: Santiago Navarro F. and Renata Bessi 

Translated by Samantha Demby

Versión en español: Minerá Cuzcatlán, con licencia para contaminar

Aquino Pedro Máximo vividly recalls the early morning of October 8, 2018, when a torrential downpour broke loose. Aquino is an Indigenous Zapotec farmer from the community of Magdalena Ocotlán, Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. On the night of the 7th, he heard a deafening noise over the tin roofs of the homes in his village. Very early in the morning, as was his custom, he grabbed his machete and set out to begin the day’s work on his crops, along with the other farmers. They were taken by surprise when they saw that the El Coyote stream was stained with a grayish material. “It looked like cement,” Aquino recalls.

More than four kilometers of the stream had been covered with this gray mud. The water, which the campesinos use for agricultural and livestock purposes, was completely grayish, as was the vegetation and soil surrounding the stream. In the municipality of Magdalena Ocotlán, where Aquino lives, the muddy mass had spread around the area known as “La Ciénega,” home to the community’s drinking water well in addition to a water dam used for grazing animals. The nearby Zapotec communities of San Pedro Apóstol, San Felipe Apóstol, San Matías Chilazoa and Tejas de Morelos were also affected.Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Canada's Fortuna Silver Mines, is the sixth largest silver producer in Mexico. The company also produces gold to a lesser extent. As of 2020, the federal government had granted Cuzcatlán five permits for mining exploitation in the region. On the land covered by these permits, the company had drilled more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) of tunnels. Cuzcatlán holds an additional 26 mining permits that form a gold and silver mining corridor covering an area of 64,000 hectares (around 158,150 acres).

Five concessions in the exploitation phase

The mud that contaminated the El Coyote stream was a mixture of rainwater and waste from the mining process, better known as tailings. At the company’s facilities, dry tailings can be observed from a distance because they form an enormous gray mound, made up of a fine powder that looks like cement. The mining waste is also concentrated in liquid form in a large dam. Fortuna claims that these tailings do not pose any danger to the environment or to the health of nearby populations, despite the fact that they are the result of a process in which a range of toxic chemicals are used.

Dry tailings from Fortuna Silver Mines in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca. Photo by Santiago Navarro F.

According to Fortuna, on October 8 heavy rainfall exceeded the capacity of the pool that captures rainwater and runoff from the tailings deposit, and which is around the size of three Olympic swimming pools. From this pool the dry waste is then pumped to a larger liquid tailings dam. In Mexican authorities’ case file on the incident, to which this investigative team had access, the company explained that “the pool’s two pumping systems were not sufficient to pump this water to the tailings dam, which caused the water to overflow.”

The spill sparked an intense controversy over whether or not the mining waste had contaminated the soil and water in surrounding communities. On the one hand, from the outset the company publicly alleged that its tailings are non-toxic and therefore there was no contamination. On the other hand, the communities denounced serious negative impacts to their territory.

Mexican authorities’ first official reports on the spill stated that Minera Cuzcatlán “dumped contaminants” into the El Coyote stream, “causing environmental damage.” The first analyses by an internationally respected British laboratory also identified contamination of the soil affected by the spill. However, Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua), the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa), and Fortuna Silver Mines put a lid on these early reports indicating contamination. The effect was to deny that the El Coyote stream had been contaminated and to absolve the company of all responsibility.

Tailings from Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Fortuna Silver Mines. In San José del Progreso, Oaxaca. Photo by Santiago Navarro F

The water was contaminated

Luz María Méndez Rodríguez is a mother from Magdalena Ocotlán, the community most affected by the spill. She is also the community’s Alderwoman of Finances. María narrates the days following the 2018 disaster. “Some of our animals began to die,” she says. “Children and older people began to have stomachaches, diarrhea, skin allergies. We were told there was an outbreak of Hepatitis. We had never experienced a situation like this before.”

Magdalena Ocotlán's Ecology Alderman, Oliva Odelia Aquino Sánchez, explains that because the gray mud reached the vicinity of the community’s drinking water well, residents decided to stop using this water. This situation, however, was not sustainable for long. “Everyone got worried and then we started to buy (bottled) water; many only held out for a few weeks. Then they went back to drinking that contaminated water, because it’s tough, there’s barely enough money to eat.”

In Mexico a 20-liter container of water costs around one dollar. That residents are unable to spend more than that each week is largely due to the fact that farmers do not receive a fixed salary; rather, each subsists on his or her own harvest. According to 2015 data from Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), 73% of the population of Magdalena Ocotlán lives in poverty. Almost a quarter of the population lives in extreme poverty, according to information published by the Ministry of Welfare in 2021.

José Pablo Antonio, a lawyer advising the communities, says that according to international legal frameworks, until the situation is resolved authorities are required to issue preventive measures and provide communities with information. “They should have suspended the population’s use of water and guaranteed its supply from other sources until the situation was completely resolved. But that’s not what happened here,” he says.

Two days after the spill, while the communities were living in uncertainty, environmental authorities carried out an inspection of the affected areas. The National Water Commission (Conagua) was responsible for analyzing the water; the Federal Attorney’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) was responsible for testing the soil. In each case, the authorities opened a dossier on the spill.

Water commission officials and state laboratory personnel arrived to test the water. They confirmed that the spill came from the “pool that collects rainwater that washes away the soil and sediments from the dry tailings, and which are deposited and stored on higher-level terrain....The conduction of this runoff to the basin is done by means of a channel,” the officials detailed in their report.

While the Conagua technicians were working, it rained again and they witnessed a new spill. According to the officials, the conduction channel was not able to withstand the added amount of rainwater mixed with mining waste. As a result, the edge of the channel broke: “This water, with the soil runoff and sediments from dry tailings, is observed to be grayish in color, flowing towards a road that leads to the El Coyote stream, where this runoff arrives and mixes with national waters,” the Water Commission report reads.

In the end, when there was a small lull in the storm, state laboratory personnel took samples “precisely at the site of the channel that collects soil runoff and dry tailings sediments.” During the same visit they took samples from the El Coyote stream.

The results of these samples were analyzed by two National Water Commission laboratories: the same South-Pacific Regional Laboratory that collected them, along with the National Reference Laboratory for Water Quality Management.

Heavy metals were identified. Their presence exceeded the levels permitted by Mexico’s national environmental agency. The presence of metals also meant that the water failed to meet the country’s quality criteria for agricultural irrigation and livestock uses. In the El Coyote stream, iron exceeded the permissible limits by up to 1845.8%, aluminum by 955.12%, silver by 591.2%, nickel by 173.915%, and lead by 167%.

In document number BOO.810.02.2455/2018, Water Commission officials state: “The rainwater that washes away the soil and dry tailings sediments does not comply with the maximum permissible limits established in Mexican official standard NOM-001-Semarnat-1996. It also exceeded the maximum levels established in the [Ecological Water Quality Criteria] published in the Official Journal of the Federation on December 13, 1989, which establish parameters for pH, Total Suspended Solids, and Chemical Oxygen Demand for bodies of water used for agricultural irrigation and livestock purposes. As regards heavy metals, they exceeded the maximum permissible limits for Aluminum, Iron, and Lead, contaminating the El Coyote stream.”

Conagua also claimed that there was “environmental damage” and warned that the affected water should not be used for agriculture and livestock. “As these contaminants exist in the Stream, the runoff from national waters that flow through the streambed cannot be used for these purposes,” the document reads.

However, authorities’ initial conclusions about the contamination of the stream changed over time, in response to new studies conducted by consultants and laboratories paid for by the Cuzcatlán mining company, subsidiary of Fortuna Silver Mines.

One turning point occured on November 27, 2018, when Conagua notified Cuzcatlán that it had opened a case file on the spill. The case file contained test results from the first water samples collected by government lab technicians. In a written statement, Conagua said that according to its studies the spill had contaminated the El Coyote Stream. As a result, the water authority ordered the company to carry out three urgent measures. The company complied with two of the measures, which required  improvements to its facilities.

In an interview with our investigative team, Cristina Rodríguez, deputy director of sustainability at the Cuzcatlán Mining Company, said the company had “doubled the size of the water collection pool at our dry tailings deposit, from 7,000 to 14,000 m3, and quintupled pumping capacity to prevent runoff during the rainy season. We also built an emergency collection pool with a total capacity of 23,000 m3.”

The third measure ordered the company to evaluate the health and environmental risks of its tailings and to present a remediation plan to address these risks. In this way, Conagua gave the mining company an opportunity to conduct a new analysis of the affected area, thus paving the way for Fortuna to present new data on water quality and contamination.

The company presented its Program of Activities for the Remediation of the El Coyote Stream. The first action item was to collect new water samples so as to “determine the impact (...) and, if necessary, formulate the corresponding remediation program.” The National Water Commission accepted the company’s proposal.

Seventy days after the spill, a laboratory contracted by the company (Laboratorio Ingeniería de Control Ambiental y Saneamiento, S.A., de C.V.) took new water samples, which were analyzed by consultants of Cuzcatlán’s choosing (Nova Consultores Ambientales).

The new water samples were taken in a scenario that differed starkly from the October 8 spill. For example, there was no sampling in the rainwater and tailings runoff pool where the spill started, since the rainy season had already ended and the pool no longer contained any water. Instead, technicians took samples from the El Coyote stream. Their studies concluded that the concentrations of heavy metals fell within permissible limits. In sum, the stream had not been affected. “There was no evidence of contamination of a body of water into which national waters flow,” the company said.

Based on this conclusion, Conagua fined the Cuzcatlán mining company 42 thousand dollars for failing to prevent the spill. “It is derisory,” said lawyer Claudia Gómez Godoy, a specialist in Indigenous issues and extractive industries. “These companies earn millions of dollars in a day; they can recover [that amount] in hours.”

The general director of Conagua’s South-Pacific Watershed Agency, Miguel Ángel Martínez Cordero, admits that the agency’s initial analysis found “contaminating elements that should not be there.” As a result, the mining company was allowed to do “what corresponds to its rights. Whatever is in their best interest.” When Cuzcatlán was granted the “right to reply, to defend themselves,” the company “sent us a series of documents,” says Martínez Cordero.

Subsequently, “we entered the remediation phase,” which is to say, “we had to know if there was something to remediate.” For this reason, Cuzcatlán “had to take new [water] samples.” According to Martínez Cordero’s version of the story, the sampling carried out 70 days after the spill “was within the administrative procedure, based on what the law says.” The contamination was no longer there because “the water flowed on and on and on.” He admits that the contamination did not disappear; rather, the contaminants merely migrated to an undefined “elsewhere.”

For Omar Arellano Aguilar, a researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), specialist in eco-toxicology and member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, timing is crucial for water sampling. Water samples must be taken as soon as possible after a contaminating event. This is because as rivers and streams flow, the metals they contains also move. These tend to accumulate in the soil surrounding the water. This means that while contaminants will be found in the water right after a spill, over time they will become trapped in the soil. For this reason it is necessary to take several samples, not only of the affected water but also of the soil over an extended period of time.

According to biologist Martha Patricia Mora Flores, a research professor at the National Polytechnic Institute, the National Water Commision’s first studies provided sufficient evidence to conclude that the area had been impacted. Therefore, authorities should have implemented an urgent remediation plan for both the stream and the affected communities, as well as plan for monitoring the evolution of the contamination.

“Undoubtedly, the most reliable studies were Conagua’s,” she said. “What they did was to disqualify the analyses of a fundamental authority charged with protecting our water. If Conagua’s initial findings had been followed, the company wouldn’t have gotten off so easily, because they would have had to justify many things that they no longer had to justify with the new study.”

Zapotec Indians protest contamination of Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Fortuna Silver Mines

A transcription error?

Two days after the spill, technicians from the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) carried out an “ordinary inspection visit” to the Cuzcatlán Mining Company’s facilities. Their aim was “to verify, physically and through documents (...) that the company is complying with its environmental obligations.” In their inspection report they noted that the runoff pool has a gate that leads into the El Coyote stream. They also observed that “on the surface of the gate there is wet soil impregnated with gray mining tailings, which are also observed on the natural soil and weeds bordering the stream bed.”

No soil samples were taken during the inspection. In Profepa's opinion, the Cuzcatlán Mining Company was responsible for carrying out the corresponding studies. The company thus turned to the Intertek-ABC Analitic laboratory. Ten days after the spill, on October 18 and 19, technicians from this lab took 12 soil samples along the El Coyote stream.

The results identified thallium contamination in the soil at two different locations along the stream. One of these sites was in the vicinity of the community’s drinking water well. Based on the results of Intertek’s studies, Profepa issued a technical opinion confirming the existence of thallium contamination in the area.

In one of the plots of the land where the stream passes, thallium levels exceeded nationally permitted levels by 350%. Meanwhile, in the sampling site labeled as the “drinking water well,” thallium levels exceeded limits by 300%. Profepa wrote: “We conclude that there is soil contamination with the heavy metal Thallium at the sites named Parcel 1498 (Thallium 0.09 mg-L) and Drinking Water Well (Thallium 0.08 mg-L).”

The Cuzcatlán Mining Company tried to argue that it was not responsible for the presence of heavy metals in the soil. Not only did Cuzcatlán present various documents and reports to Profepa. The company also hired three different environmental consulting agencies to analyze the lab results documenting thallium contamination. Each analysis either disregarded the presence of this metal or argued that it did not represent a risk to the environment or to the health of the surrounding communities.

One of the consulting firms, Nova Consultores Ambientales, argued that since thallium concentrations in the Interteksamples exceeded permissible limits, a new sample collection was necessary. This was conducted by Grupo Microanálisis, which delivered the samples to Cuzcatlán. When Cuzcatlán brought the samples to Intertek for analyis, the lab’s technicians warned that the samples had not been properly preserved. However, the mining company authorized the study to be carried out anyway. In the case file on the spill, there is no document indicating that authorities question Cuzcatlan about the improperly preserved samples.

Whatever the case, the results from these samples no longer showed the presence of thallium. However,  new metals appeared: barium and vanadium, which exceeded national standards by 50% and 72.9%, respectively. Nova justified that these could be due to “a local phenomenon and not due to the spill.”

In the end, Profepa disregarded all of the consultants’ analyses. This is because the Cuzcatlán Mining Company asked the Intertek laboratory to verify its initial results indicating thallium contamination. Intertek complied and concluded that it had committed an error in the data demonstrating thallium concentrations above national norms. The lab thus presented a new table in which the quantity by which the heavy metal exceeded permissible limits was replaced by the symbol “ND,” indicating that no thallium was present.

As stipulated in the case file reviewed by this reporting team, Profepa’s final report concludes that “due to an error (…) in the transcription of the results,” it was determinated that the presence of heavy metals did not exceed permissible limits. “Therefore it is concluded that there is no soil contamination and, consequently, no remediation is required.”

When our investigative team sought out Intertek's version of what happened, employee Diana Vásquez responded. The laboratory “has no press area as such,” she explained. “It’s a bit complicated if you don’t have a specific contact.” In the end our call was redirected to the company’s automated messaging system. We made another attempt to contact Intertek but were only able to reach the company’s voicemail.

According to the Cuzcatlán Mining Company’s deputy director of Sustainability, Cristina Rodríguez—as verified by the reports issued by Profepa and Conagua—“the runoff from our collection pool that occurred in October 2018 did not cause environmental damage, mainly because the Cuzcatlán Mining Company’s tailings are not classified as hazardous or toxic. However, the company maintains its commitment to environmental care and to a good relationship with the communities affected by the incident. In this way, the Cuzcatlán Mining Company has promoted agricultural and livestock development programs in the area, as well as reforestation, and frequent monitoring of water quality and the integrity of our facilities.”

The Polytechnic biologist, Martha Patricia Mora Flores, has doubts about Intertek's transcription error. “It is hard to believe a laboratory provider that’s a leader in total quality assurance for industries around the world would make such mistakes. The authorities should have reviewed the documents very carefully, especially because there were clear contradictions in the case.” Mora Flores explains that the only way to get clear answers would be to request “the raw lab results. To ask an independent expert to review and analyze the raw results, to prove that there was a typo."

We can’t believe “the company, just like that,” adds Claudia Gómez Godoy, the attorney. Rather, their word “must be guaranteed by means of tests, by means of new verifications.” Gómez Godoy emphasizes that Profepa is “the authority responsible for this and for taking care of environmental quality.” However, the case file shows the extent to which Profepa’s internal decisions were based fundamentally on “the documentary evidence provided by the legal representative of the Cuzcatlán Mining Company.”

The company submitted its documents to Profepa; the agency’s Legal Subdelegation received them and requested a technical opinion from its Subdelegation of Environmental Auditing and Industrial Inspection. This technical opinion was formulated on the basis of the documents and studies paid for by the company. It was then returned to the Legal area. This is how decisions were made, with technical opinions based solely on evidence presented by Cuzcatlán.

“No company is going to assume that it contaminated,” says Gómez Godoy. “These practices lend themselves to corruption.” According to the eco-toxicology researcher, Arellano Aguilar, the state has disregarded its duty to carry out effective environmental oversight and enforcement. “The burden of proof falls on the companies, which have laboratories at their command,” he says. “There’s a conflict of interest; unfortunately, regulatory mechanisms have been designed just for that—so that there’s impunity.”

This investigative team requested an interview with the department of social communication at the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa). Rubén Jiménez was in contact with us; however, we were never able to schedule an interview, and the agency had not replied to us by the time of the publication of this article.

Zapotec Indians protest contamination of Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Fortuna Silver Mines

The eternal suspense of the villagers

The affected communities were never aware of the role the environmental authorities played in dealing with the October 8 spill, which negatively impacted their health as well as their access to potable water. “At no time did Profepa, as a public agency of the federal government, approach the communities to provide them with information,” says José Pablo Antonio, the lawyer advising the communities.

Aquino Pedro Máximo, the Zapotec farmer from Magdalena Ocotlán, insists that they were never informed of the presence of heavy metals in their water or soil. “We don't have money to pay for our own studies,” he says. “We don't trust the authorities either, because from the way they behave it seems as if they work for the [mining] company. They’re most concerned with ensuring the company can keep operating and they don’t care if we suffer.”

According to Gómez Godoy, the attorney and expert on extractive industries, a lack of information is characteristic of the violation of fundamental rights. “If people from the communities don’t have information about water quality then a series of their rights are being violated. First, the right to information, but also the human right to water, to health. Information is fundamental to guaranteeing the other rights.” Gómez Godoy also points out that it’s necessary for Mexico’s environmental agencies, including “Semarnat, Profepa and Conagua, to adapt to the new reality of international human rights conventions, which are on an equal ranking with the Mexican constitution [since 1992].”

Federal environmental agencies also never warned local health authorities about the presence or possible impacts of the metals identified in the vicinity of the El Coyote stream.

Eiser Ariel Vázquez Salazar is the coordinator of the Medical Unit at the Mexican Social Security Institute in the community of Magdalena Ocotlán, where he has worked for six years. “These institutions charged with protecting the environment have never officially provided us with a protocol so that we know what measures to follow,” he says.

Efrén Sánchez Aquino, a municipal trustee of Magdalena Ocotlán who took office in 2020, is worried because many people got sick. “I had diarrhea and stomach pains for several days,” he says. “Today as an authority my concern is even greater because we have to watch over our community.”

The social security doctor, Vázquez Salazar, confirms that in recent years—and especially after the spill—he has noticed an increase in intestinal diseases, liver-related problems, oral diseases, and allergies, mainly of the skin.

This reporting team requested information from the Health Department in Magdalena Ocotlán about the types of diseases and number of cases registered in the municipality in the last five years. The municipal health authority stated that they have no such records. Instead, he directed the team to the municipality’s rural health unit—the same office coordinated by Vázquez Salazar. In an interview, Vázquez Salazar said that his health unit does not keep any systematized records of diseases in the municipality.

This investigative team also filed a request for information regarding diseases in Magdalena Ocotlán with the federal government’s Secretary of Health. The request turned up no records. When a request for information was filed with the Institute of Health for Welfare (Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar), the federal agency replied that the request was outside its scope of authority. Staff directed our inquiry to the Secretary of Health of the state of Oaxaca, which did not respond to the request nor pay attention to the complaints filed.

“We haven’t been able to get an assesment or study indicating the real impacts of the spill on our community’s health,” says Vásquez Salazar, the coordinator of the medical unit in Magdalena Ocotlán. He does not rule out a correlation between the increase in diseases in the community and the spill, as well as Cuzcatlán’s mining activity more broadly. “We found that substances from the mining process reached the community’s main water supply. This is a fundamental fact that we cannot disregard,” he concludes.

Meanwhile, the general director of Conagua's South-Pacific Watershed Agency, Miguel Angel Martinez Cordero, claims that they never informed affected communities about environmental and health risks because the responsibility to do so lies with the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat).

This reporting team requested an interview with the president of Semarnat’s Coordinating Unit for Social Participation and Transparency, Daniel Quezada Daniel. Daniel is also responsible for following up on the conflicts between communities and the Cuzcatlán Mining Company. However, Daniel never followed up on our request.

Contamination identified in 2020, less than 300 meters from Minera Cuzcatlán. Photo by Santiago Navarro F.

History repeats itself

Affected communities still do not know the true outcome of the 2018 spill. Yet environmental authorities have already closed the case file, as if they expected community members to simply forget about the negative impacts of mining on their soil and water. This has not been possible. As recently as July 13, 2020, residents of Magdalena Ocotlán detected a new case of contamination.

When the shepherds of the community brought their cattle to drink water from a storm water collector—located less than 300 meters from the mining company’s facilities, on the banks of the Santa Rosa stream—they noticed that the water had a reddish color with a white streak.

The shepherds notified their town authorities, who filed an official complaint with the Federal Attorney’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa). The Cuzcatlán Mining Company immediately stated that there had been no spill and disclaimed any responsibility.

The environmental authorities again conducted water and sediment studies. Two months later, Ernesto Faustino González Vázquez, head of the National Water Commission’s environmental impact project in Magdalena Ocotlán, came to the community to physically deliver a summary of the results. This investigative team was present at the site.

Magdalena Ocotlán’s Alderman of Public Works, Francisco Rosario Valencia, asked González Vázquez whether or not there were heavy metals in the community’s water supply. The official replied: “We put those that exceed the limits in bold (...) there are no heavy metals, aluminum is the one that’s above [the limit].”

Table of results identified in a 2nd contamination near Minera Cuzcatlán

When the official was asked if he knew about the health impacts of high aluminum concentrations, he replied: “I’m not a doctor, I just know that it’s over [the limit].”

The technical report, to which this investigative team had access, showed the presence of aluminum up to 25,900% over the Ecological Water Quality Criteria for the protection of aquatic life in fresh water. Iron exceeded the same criteria by 900% and Ammoniacal Nitrogen by 413.33%. Meanwhile, the percentage of dissolved oxygen was found to be below the ideal range, “indicating a lack of oxygen that limits the use [of this water] for the protection of aquatic life.”

The official documented presented by the National Water Commission exempts the Cuzcatlán Mining Company of all responsibility for water contamination, based solely on an on-site inspection of its facilities: “With the data obtained during the inspection visit and the water samples from 6 sites (in the water collector), it is not possible to establish that the agent causing the probable contamination is Minera Cuzcatlán,” the report reads.

By the date of this article’s publication Profepa had not made the results of the sediment studies public. The case file for the July 2020 incident remains open. Yet history is repeating itself. As environmental authorities and the mining company make decisions about this latest episode of contamination, community members are once again being kept in the dark, deprived of crucial information regarding their own health and territory.

-This investigation was conducted for Avispa Midia, Aristegui Noticias, Pie de Página and CONNECTAS with the support of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), in the framework of the Investigative Journalism Initiative of the Americas.

 

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Organizations Denounce Counterinsurgency Strategies of the 4T Against the Zapatistas

Translated by Schools for Chiapas

With the government of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the model of counterinsurgency in Chiapas “is more cynical in violating human rights, agreements, treaties and both national international  pacts by using a supposed electoral legitimacy to do the same criminal work of those who came before,” states the second report from the Caravan of Solidarity and Documentation made up of dozens of organizations, networks and collectives.

The document is the result of the record of  visits to Zapatista communities carried out between October of 2020 and February this year. In it, they underscore that in Chiapas the war of counterinsurgency from the “Fourth Transformation” not only continues in practice, but  is expressed in various forms: economic, political, agrarian, psychological and military-paramilitary.

“The strategy is being able to coordinate various tactics ranging from an information campaign of contempt and slander towards the EZLN, intimately related to the presence of the National Guard and armed groups, the execution of megaprojects, and projects of depeasantization like ‘Sembrando Vida’ and the harassment of members of the CNI (National Indigenous Congress.) Its objective consists of advancing the dispossession of the Zapatista communities from their recuperated lands,” the report denounces. 

Among the main effects on the life of the Zapatista support base communities (BAEZLN) are the impediments to planting and harvesting their food, constant surveillance and harassment, primarily of women, and the destruction of the infrastructure for carrying out the collective work in vegetable production, farmland and livestock.

In the report presented on the 11th of November of 2020 the members of the Caravan of Solidarity and Documentation identified seven mechanisms of violence of the wholesale war of attrition against the Zapatista communities. 

These are: 1)Invading lands and destroying the Mother Nature 2) Enclosure by fences and an environment of gunfire. 3)Violations of the right of access to water 4)Causing hunger 5)Destroying the autonomous economy 6)Violence of defamation, slander and disinformation 7)Mechanisms of violence toward the bodies/territories of women.

For the period from December of 2020 to February of 2021, the report identifies four of them below. 

  1. The tone of domination and terror that dispossession takes on in the face of impunity from the three levels of government toward the invading groups has led to the Zapatista families abandoning their houses and gathering in a safe shelter; the families have remained encapsulated in three quarters of a hectare, where they continue resisting in the carpentry collective, the clinic, the school, the store and the church.
  2. The psycho-social exhaustion for women grows greater all the time. A situation that puts them in a state of vulnerability of not being able to move about freely, and under permanent intimidation on the part of the invaders’ leaders.
  3. As a consequence, we see that the conversion of communal territory to private property. Invading, fencing in, and parcelling the recuperated land in order to generate terror and discouragement once they transform all of the vital spaces – elemental for the reproduction of autonomous community life, into exclusive spaces of private property where the relationship with Mother Nature becomes on of use as merchandise. 
  4. New leading landowners. Catechists, ex-policemen and landowners offer recovered lands to people outside the community, they put the land up for sale as they continue the defamation, slander and disinformation about the project for life and the autonomous organizational forms of the Zapatista communities.

Agressions on Nuevo San Gregorio

In a press conference that accompanies the publication of the report, organizations and collectives, defenders of human rights, presented testimonies and denunciations of EZLN bases of support (BAEZLN) families about the agressions on their community of Nuevo San Gregorio, in the Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipality of Lucio Cabañas.

“We have now been here for 8 days, sequestered in one place, yes. The families all have our houses, our animals or what each person or family has, and right now it is all abandoned,” states a testimony collected on February 7th of this year, after the agressions escalated to the point of forcing the Zapatista families from their homes.

Those responsible for the violence have been identified by the BAEZLN as “the 40 invaders.” Said group, is made up of people who come from the ejidos of San Gregorio de Las Casas, San Andrés Puerto Rico, Ranchería Duraznal, and Rancho Alegre, including some members who have ejido and church roles, besides owning land in their own ejidos.

Among the leaders, Nicolas Pérez Pérez, former PRD councilman in the municipality of Huixtán during the years of 2008 and 2010; Sebastián Bolom Ara, former official of Huixtán during the same period; Pedro Hernández Gómez, ejido land holder in San Gregorio Las Casas; and Javier Gómez Pérez, ejido land holder in Ranchería Duraznal.

“At the begining of February, the group of “the 40 invaders,” equipped with machetes, knives, batons, communication radios, binoculars and cell phones set up guards in various positions: in the different parcels and work spaces of the community, on the road, at the access to the spring and in front of the center of the community. One of the invaders, Miguel Bolom Ara,  dresses as police while he watches the Zapatista families who, to avoid any kind of confrontation, have concentrated in the center of the village.”

REPORT FROM THE SOLIDARITY CARAVAN ABOUT THE AGRESSORS

The social organizations emphasized that the intention of the aggressions is to dispossess the BAEZLN of their lands. It is worth noting that a year and three months ago, the group of “The 40 invaders” arrived in Nuevo San Gregorio and among their members are ex-police of Huixtán.

Autonomy

The village of Nuevo San Gregorio, located on lands recuperated by the EZLN extends across an area of 155 hectares, including the shell of the ex-hacienda called the Casa Grande and belongs to Caracol 10 Floreciendo la Semilla Rebelde (Blossoming the Rebel Seed).

Over the course of 27 years, the community has managed to strengthen different vital works for its process of autonomy, such as projects of agroecology, health, nutrition, education, justice and economy. 

To this end, the BAEZLN have carried out many collective projects from the management of a grocery store, to the production and sales of artesanía, pottery, woodwork, livestock, vegetables, fruit trees and medicinal plants.

“A  dignified life is lived from the exercise of the peoples in resistance-rebellion that build self-reliance with collective work for a healthy and wholesome life, where the families exercise the right to a balanced and equitable food and health. The rivers and lakes are not contaminated, the soils are clean, the mountains, forests, jungles and ceibas are still standing; the women, young people, boys and girls practice art, culture and education. The communities decide on their forms of self governance”

the report refers to the Zapatista way of life that is under constant siege.

The organizations visited the community of Nuevo San Gregorio to compile the complaints, which allowed theme to witness “the impunity and  complicity of this regime that is being carried out by all three  levels of government,” affirmed Diana Itzu Gutiérrez, of the Center for the Rights of Women of Chiapas. 

Among the member organizations of the caravans of solidarity and documentation are: Centro de Derechos de la Mujer Chiapas A.C., Colectivo Anarcista El Pueblo (Grecia),  Desarrollo Económico y Social de los Mexicanos Indígenas, A.C., Desarrollo Tecnológico y Servicios Comunitarios El Puente, S.C., Enlace Civil, A.C., Espacio de Lucha Contra el Olvido y la Represión, Grupo de trabajo No Estamxs Todxs, Lumaltik Herriak, Médicos del Mundo, Suiza-México, Memoria Viva, Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria A.C., Red de Resistencia y Rebeldía Ajmaq,  Salud y Desarrollo Comunitario, A.C.,BIZILUR y TxiapasEKIN Plataforma.