South America's Mining Wars Heat Up

On May 25, some 2,000 protestors near Espinar, Peru stormed the world's third largest copper mine, attacking officials, taking over facilities and forcing the mine's owner, BHP Billito, to shut down the facility for four weeks.

Though it's unclear what concessions were won, the protesters, who clamored for social investments in neighboring communities, cost the mining company $1 million per day in processed ore.

They also added to a growing trend.

As global metals prices rise, a new Latin American mining rush is underway as are dramatic struggles between mining companies and indigenous groups demanding community paybacks and opposing environmentally destructive methods of extraction such as strip mines and heap leaching.

When European explorers first mined Latin America's lodes in the 1500s, they burrowed underground with tunnels to get the ore. Conservationists say today's technologically sophisticated methods pollute more and create more waste compared to how much ore the methods retrieve. "Heap leaching," for instance, involves piling broken ore onto supposedly impermeable pads and spraying it repeatedly with a cyanide solution to dissolve out the gold content. It is perhaps unsurprising that this method, if not impeccably performed, can leak deadly cyanide into local water supplies.

And mining companies are getting bold: a Canadian company is proposing to "relocate" massive glaciers in the Andean Mountains in order to get to the gold underneath. The problem is that the glaciers are an immensely important source of fresh water for the ecosystem, and removing them would lead to unimaginable disruption of the ecosystem.

Though many Latin American governments are eager to reap the jobs and revenues mining operations bring, grassroots opposition to some mining projects has been impressive.

From Mexico to Peru to Argentina, indigenous opposition groups have chalked up a series of victories against mega-wealthy mining interests. But activists say U.S.-backed trade deals such as the Dominican Republic Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA, could offset populist victories by giving transnational corporations the right to sue poor developing nations for lost economic opportunity.

In Argentina, which in 2004 witnessed a trebling of mining investment, 81 percent of residents in the town of Esquel voted to shut down an open-pit gold mine proposed by Canada's Meridian Gold. In Cajamarca, Peru last November, U.S.-based Newmont Mining Company for the first time closed an exploration site after local residents blocked roads in protests. And in the Andes Mountain borderlands between Argentina and Chile, activists have helped stall the proposal by Canada-based Barrick Gold to remove three glaciers that collectively cover 17.6 million ounces of gold and silver lodes.

In Central America some national governments have responded to activist pressures by taking tough stands against mining companies. Citing environmental reasons, a Costa Rican court in December negated a gold-mining concession owned by a subsidiary of Vannessa Ventures Ltd of Canada. Earlier that year, Honduras cancelled a mining concession owned by Silver Crest Mines, Inc. because its strip-mining operations threatened a nearby nature reserve.

The problem? Activists say the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), CAFTA and other U.S.-backed free trade accords contain a highly controversial provision known as the Chapter 11 investor-state provision, which lets private companies sue governments for lost economic opportunity.

Experts worry the provision could be used to sue governments whenever protestors halt mining operations.

NAFTA's Past, CAFTA's Prologue

Though unfamiliar with CAFTA's investor-state provisions, Alejandro Calvillo of Greenpeace Mexico said in an email interview that CAFTA's cousin, NAFTA, "clearly supports mining companies against community rights." So far, companies have used NAFTA's Chapter 11 provision (which has been embedded and expanded in CAFTA) to file outrageous lawsuits in cases where governments sought to protect the environment.