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, 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.”
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Two US organizations, No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos (The Human Rights Coalition), report that the policies and tactics implemented by United States Border Patrol on the border with Mexico have fed a crisis of death and disappearance of migrants who cross through areas extremely inhospitable to life.
These organizations, made up of volunteers who help migrants with food and water among other forms of support, have released a series of three reports through which they seek “to expose and combat those US government policing tactics that cause the crisis of death and mass disappearance [of undocumented migrants] in the borderlands,” according to their official website.
The first document, published in 2016, details the policy that backs up Border Patrol in pushing migrants to the edge of death. It began in 1994 and is called “prevention through deterrence.”
This policy justified the militarization of urban zones along the US-Mexico border. According to the first report, titled Deadly Apprehension Methods: The Consequences of Chase & Scatter in the Wilderness, the objective was to push migrants away from official ports of entry towards geographically more remote and dangerous regions, driving them towards death.
In their investigations, these volunteers explain that “Border Patrol agents chase border crossers through the remote terrain and utilize the landscape as a weapon to slow down, injure, and apprehend them.” They add that “chases lead to heat exhaustion and dehydration, blisters and sprains, injuries due to falls, and drownings.”
The activists have had contact with hundreds of migrants and documented the experiences they have lived through while crossing the border. They conducted a survey which concluded that “tackles, beatings, Tasers, dog attacks, and assault with vehicles were all reportedly employed by the Border Patrol against border crossers during chase.”
Taking the Water from the Fish
In the second report, published in 2018, the organizations detail the practices employed by Border Patrol to reduce subsistence possibilites for migrants they don’t manage to capture. One of these is the destruction of humanitarian aid offerings that the volunteers leave on migrant trails. “In the desert of the Arizona–Mexico borderlands, where thousands of people die of dehydration and heat-related illness, Border Patrol agents are destroying gallons of water intended for border crossers,” states the report. “Border Patrol agents stab, stomp, kick, drain, and confiscate the bottles of water that humanitarian-aid volunteers leave along known migrant routes in the Arizona desert.”
According to the activists, these actions are systemic across the agency, not isolated. The agents “routinely intimidate, harass, and surveil humanitarian-aid volunteers,” calling into question “the Border Patrol’s own claims to be humanitarian.” Interference with aid “is a systemic feature of enforcement practices in the borderlands and a logical extension of the broader strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence,” claims the report.
The organizations state that according to the guidelines of this policy, “anything that makes the journey more dangerous or difficult for border crossers could be considered a reasonable tactic for enforcement, including the vandalization of safe drinking water.”
Since 2012, No More Deaths and other organizations have distributed thousands of gallons of water along the trails of undocumented migrants. Due to the length and difficulty of the journey, “it is physically impossible for anyone attempting to cross the border on foot to carry enough water and food supplies to survive. As a result, thousands of border crossers have died of thirst in the open desert.”
911 Doesn’t Work for Those Crossing the Border
The third part in the series, published in February 2021 and titled Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search and Rescue, and the Crisis of Disappearance, details how 911 response systems receive thousands of calls per year from people making unauthorized crossings into the United States and send them on to Border Patrol.
This agency is the one responsible for responding to emergency calls made through 911. However, the activists report that the majority of migrants who manage to make calls for help receive no aid, because they are presumed to be undocumented. “In 63% of all distress calls that families and advocates referred to Border Patrol, the agency did not conduct any confirmed search or rescue mobilization whatsoever,” states the document.
The report states that Border Patrol in effect has all decision-making power over emergency services for those attempting to cross which is to say, it’s in their hands whether undocumented migrants live or die. “The US Border Patrol is not a search and rescue organization. On the contrary, the agency is a massive, militarized federal police force that dedicates over 99% of its annual budget and over 99% of its personnel to support border enforcement activities.”
The organizations that worked on these three reports included a long series of recommendations directed towards government agencies, above all, border demilitarization and the immediate end of Border Patrol’s role as the only agency to respond to reported emergencies. “We call on government agencies to establish borderlands emergency response systems that are fully separate from immigration enforcement. Such response systems must be timely and well-funded, with a front line of medical responders and trained search and rescue teams who will scan the landscape with an empathetic eye rather than a punitive one,” they recommend in the third report.
They also demand that “the federal government must establish initiative(s) independent from border enforcement to centralize and publicize tracking of migration-related recovered human remains borderwide.”
The organizations’ research showed that Border Patrol maintained an official count of 7,805 remains recovered between 1998 and 2019; however, states the report, “our team estimates that three to ten times as many people may have died or disappeared since the implementation of Prevention through Deterrence.”
