Mining co. in Mexico has 'good relationship' with cartels

AP: The director of the mining company robbed of $8.5 million in gold in Mexico made the rare revelation in a television interview that his company has a "good relationship" with area drug traffickers.

Rob McEwen of Canada-based McEwen Mining Inc. said in an interview Thursday with Canada's Business News Network that company employees ask the drug cartels for permission before they explore. Read more. 

Mexico Says Mine Slow to Report Huge Acid Spill

NYTimes: A civil defense official says a private mine in northern Mexico did not immediately report a massive acid spill, allowing it to flow into a river that supplies water to tens of thousands of people.

Carlos Arias, director of civil defense for the northern state of Sonora, said the spill at a copper mine near the U.S. border was caused by defects in newly constructed leaching or holding ponds.  Read more. 

Mexico's Zetas gang joins coal mining business for bigger profits

Public Radio International
February 26, 2013

Mexico's drug cartel, the Zetas, have joined the coal mining business to increase their profits outside of their lucrative drug trading business. But legal and illegal coal mining practices in the region have mining advocates concerned for the miners' safety and future coal mining practice.

The Zetas, one of Mexico's drug cartels, is adding another source of income to their arsenal with illegal coal mining in the Mexican state of Coahuila.

Mines in Coahuila produce 95 percent of Mexico's coal. From small-scale mines, the Zetas can sometimes make a greater profit margins with coal than selling illegal drugs. John Holman, a reporter for Al Jazeera, says Coahuila is home to numerous pothos, small mines, with very little regulation.

The Zetas typically use miners who aren't highly trained, Holman says, so they can pay them poorly and make greater profits.  Read more. 

Mexican drug gangs dig into mining industry

The Zetas cartel, one of Mexico's most violent groups, has moved into coal mining as it's "more lucrative than drugs".

Aljazeera: John Holman, Jan 04, 2013.

On October 7, Mexican marines swooped in on one of the most powerful men in organised crime. But as the navy triumphantly announced the death of Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the Zetas gang, there was puzzlement over where he had been found. Far from the Zeta's strongholds and practically unprotected, he had been watching a baseball game in the small mining village of Progreso.

Theories abounded as to what exactly Lazcano had been doing in Progreso, a one horse town in the wide open spaces of the sorthern state of Coahuila. Humberto Moreira, ex-governor of Coahuila says that he has the answer: "Heriberto Lazcano changed from being a killer, kidnapper and drug dealer to something still more lucrative: mining coal. That’s why he lived in the coal region, in a little village called Progreso."

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Moreira says that the Zetas gang is fast discovering that illegal mining is an even more lucrative venture than drug running.

"They discover a mine, extract the coal, sell it at $30, pay the miners a miserable salary... It's more lucrative than selling drugs." Read more. 

Mexico Mining Union Wins Battle To Choose Its Leader

Fox Business: The longtime leader of a key Mexican mining union is planning his return to Mexico following years of self-exile in Canada, after winning a series of court cases against the government, including a recent Supreme Court case and a criminal complaint, lawyers for the labor group said Thursday.

The leader of the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, "has one foot in Mexico and one hand on his luggage," said Marco del Toro, a lawyer working for the union. Del Toro said Gomez has suffered a six-year persecution by the government for his defense of mining workers against politically powerful mining companies.

The miners' union run by Gomez is best known for its strike against copper mine and railways operator Grupo Mexico SAB (GMEXICO.MX) that shut down the nation's biggest copper mine at Cananea near the U.S. border for three years. read more

The "fifth power": Transnational mining

In this opinion piece in the Mexican daily La Jornada, Magdalena Gómez, a lawyer and expert on indigenous rights, takes a critical look at the power of transnational mining companies in Mexico, in the wake of the murders of two anti-mine community leaders in Oaxaca.

La Jornada  In our country we have a formal system based on the division of three powers that coexists with, supports and/or is complicit with powers outside the constitution like the power duopoly of the mass media--identified as the “fourth power”--and an extremely powerful “fifth power”: transnational capital, found mainly in mining companies that have in recent years been granted concessions covering nearly a quarter of national territory.

All this is cloaked in the logic of the free market, which apparently embodies the free exercise of liberties and in which potentially, and very abstractly, we all have rights. Luigi Ferrajoli has shown in his most recent book, Poderes salvajes (Savage Powers), how these real powers have dominated the model of democratic constitutionalism that formally governs in our countries.

Today it is clear that the neoliberal model has strengthened these powers and has seriously distorted so-called nation states that, rather than protecting and guaranteeing fundamental freedoms, have become subsidiaries of big capital. But we’re not talking about mere speculative tendencies; throughout the country we see the negative impact of extreme extractivism, to the detriment of the territory of indigenous peoples, who from long ago have historically resisted the plunder but who now face the greatest threat to their continued existence.

One of the most recent examples is the Zapotec community of San José del Progreso, Ocotlán. The community lives in an environment of tension and divisiveness caused by the activities of the  Minera Cuzcatlan beginning in 2008. Minera Cuzcatlan is a subsidiary of Fortuna Silver Mines (part of a group of Canadian mining companies known as The Gold Group). So far this year, the Ocotlán Valley United Peoples Coalition (CPUVO) has reported two crimes and accuses the mining company, in conjunction with the San José del Progreso local government, of using armed groups against opponents of the mine.

Bernardo Mendez Vasquez was killed and Abigail Sanchez Vasquez was seriously injured in an ambush on Jan. 18, 2012. Last March 15, Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez, leader of the CPUVO, an organization that has challenged the granting of mining concessions without consultation in indigenous territories in the Ocotlán Valley, was shot dead. Rosalinda Dionisio Sanchez and Andres Vasquez Sanchez were seriously injured in that attack. So far there has been no justice for these crimes: in the first case, the arrest of one of the perpetrators was announced just five days after the second crime took place. We have already heard the usual arguments that attribute the attacks to rifts in the community—and they do exist--but no one stops to analyze that these divisions are promoted by the alliances forged by the mining companies.

The truth is that, beyond the investigations required to arrest and prosecute the masterminds and perpetrators of these crimes, it’s urgent that we look into the devastating effects of the policy of granting mining concessions without regard to the territorial rights of the peoples.

The outlook is very grave and peaceful, rights-based principles are being attacked over and over again. Until the fallacy that transnational corporations are simply private actors is rejected and what has been called “the architecture of impunity” is deconstructed, peoples’ rights will be impossible to guarantee in the face of the reality of governments subjugated to transnational capital.

The United Nations has spent more than two decades debating, holding meetings, and issuing governing principles to examine the relationship between indigenous peoples and extractive industries from a human rights perspective, focusing on three main issues: a) processes for consultation between all parties; b) the ways in which the benefits from economic activities are shared with indigenous peoples; and c) the means to resolve disputes. This approach fails to focus on binding rules that encourage the application of international human rights standards. Instead, they follow the logic of so-called “soft law” or non-rights. In the most recent report of the ad hoc rapporteur John Ruggie, this spirit is reflected in the quote by Amartya Sen that “we shouldn’t hold on to illusions and it is better to deal with the injustices that can be remedied.” The idea that global markets can be made compatible with human rights continues to prevail. That’s how the fifth power works. Yet its very existence is never discussed at election time.

Would that be too much to ask? Read more

(Translation by Michael Kane, Americas Program)