Friday 7th May, in the central Plaza de Armas, Cajamarca, communities and social organizations, including the Frente de Defensa Ambiental de Colpayoc, convened a press conference denouncing and rejecting the gold mining project Colpayoc, owned by the Canadian mining company Estrella Gold S.A.Cthat is being pushed forward in the province of Chetilla. Community leaders and environmental defenders from across the province claim they are not being included or heard in the process, and will take to the streets to defend their territories.
Protest December 2022 against the Colpayoc mining project. “Chetillanos rechazan proyecto minero”. Copyright: CONACIPE
The province of Chetilla is the one of the last remaining areas of indigenous quechua speakers in the region of Cajamarca, and is also the poorest province. According to the mining companies own assessment of the project, around 83% of the population within the area of impact earn less than 300/S (around 75 euros) a month. In addition, 33% of the population have not finished primary school, and 13% are illiterate. Clearly, this is a community that is extremely vulnerable to exploitation by mining companies and the state apparatus, promising jobs and economic development, as long as they sacrifice their right to clean drinking water for their children and animals on which they depend.
Een delegatie van JASS (Service and Sanitation Management Board) Ronquillo protesteert tegen Colpayoc, Persconferentie op Plaza De Armas, Cajamarca 7 mei 2023. Bron: CATAPA
Photo of the La Esperanza gold mine, Arequipa, Peru where 27 miners died in a fire this May 2023. Source: AFP
CATAPA supports the Right to Say No of the communities of Colpayoc. To solve the climate crisis, we must search for and implement just solutions that work in harmony with people and planet. We cannot continue sacrificing our right to water and breathable air for the profits of a few multinational mining companies that are intent on extracting maximum profits at all costs whilst destroying our communities and ways of life.
COLPAYOC WILL NOT BE EXPLOITED, WE WILL DEFEND COLPAYOC
Last week, 22nd – 24th March, several Environmental Vigilance Committees of GRUFIDES participated in ‘The IV National Meeting of Community Environmental Watchers and Monitors’ in Ayacucho alongside committees from the regions of La Libertad, Pasco, Junín, Ayacucho, Chosica -Lima, Apurímac, Cusco, Moquegua y Puno.
The aim was to strengthen our capacities and share experiences of water monitoring in areas affected by mining projects. The delegation of Cajamarca was the largest present at the meeting by some distance.
On World Water Day, we visited the community of Santa Fe, Cangallo province in the mountains of Ayacucho, at around 4,500m altitude. There, in a powerful display of hope and defiance in the face of the destructive impact of large scale mining on our communities, regions from across Peru made an offering to the lake and sang protest songs.
River that runs alongside the community of Sante Fe, in which the committees from various regions conducted several tests to monitor the quality of the water. Photo Copyright: CATAPA
Afterwards, we practiced different methodologies of water monitoring along a stretch of the river that flows alongside the community of Santa Fe.
Map of mining concessions, region of Ayacucho, 2022. Photo Copyright: CooperAction, 2022.
During the following days, we planned actions for the upcoming year and discussed measures to escalate and strengthen our movement on the national and regional level of Cajamarca to say Yes to Water and No to Mining.
The current political crisis was also discussed, particularly in relation to mining. According to Jaime Borda of Red Muqui, the first 100 days of Dina Boluarte has seen a reactivation of the mining industry, with the looming threat that abandoned mining projects such as Conga could be reactivated.
In the face of this, representatives present at the meeting released a joint statement with several demands, including a denunciation of the assassination of 49 protestors committed by the police and armed forces, recognition by law of the work of water monitoring committees, the resignation of Dina Boluarte, the convening of new elections and the initiation of the process for a new constitution with the active participation of indigenous peoples and social organisations. You can read the full declaration here.
Step by step, via initiatives such as the water monitoring committees, we as communities impacted by mining are learning more about our rivers, and how to care for and protect them.
We are water defenders, guardians of the gift which gives us life. State institutions must respect and recognise this, and work with us to protect our water resources for the generations to come.
Written by Connor Cashell, CATAPA Global Engagement Officer Peru and volunteer for GRUFIDES.
Representatives of the community of La Lucma following the route of one of their local rivers. Photo copyright: CATAPA.
Every year, since 1993, World Water Day is celebrated to raise awareness about the global crisis of access to water, and to take action to defend our rights.
According to the UN, more than two billion people are still without access to drinkable water. There is a critical situation in the province of Cajamarca, which is one of the regions of Peru with the highest number of houses without access to clean water. 42% of houses within the city of Cajamarca lack access to water apt for human consumption.
One of the driving forces denying Cajamarquinxs access to their fundamental right to water is large-scale mining.. Between the end of October and the beginning of November 2022, the entire city of Cajamarca suffered from severe drinking water shortages. According to several reports, this was caused by a decrease in water supply from the Rio Grande dam, controlled by the Yanacocha mining company. During this time, several citizens and journalists reported seeing highly contaminated water and dead fish within the Rio Grande dam catchment area.
In this context, GRUFIDES and CATAPA have been working together since 2020 on a series of projects that aim to provide local communities affected by mining the tools to create their own committees to monitor the quality of their rivers.
This project has been essential for building the autonomy and knowledge of local communities within Cajamarca to take control of the monitoring of their water supply and to demand the right to safe and healthy drinking water from the local authorities. Rather than laboratories or governmental agencies, this places the power and knowledge directly in the hands of local communities to care for their rivers and make collective decisions in defence of their territories.
Who knows their territory and rivers better than the communities who have lived there for generations?
Bambamarca: insight into the building of collective knowledge and the right to say no
These water monitoring committees have acted as a catalyst for organised community resistance against further mining developments. In March 2023, GRUFIDES visited the community of La Lucma in Bambamarca, a few hours north of the city of Cajamarca. In a highly moving meeting, representatives of the local community shared their experiences and participated in a water monitoring workshop. Several testimonies claimed numerous mining projects have caused high levels of contamination of their rivers, infecting children with mercury poisoning, and impacting agriculture on which their livelihoods depend.
As part of the visit, the group collected several samples along a thirty metre stretch of the river. The process of sample collection is highly accessible and simple in practice. Participants collectively retrieve water samples in several points of the river with a net. The soil at the bottom of the net is then poured into a tub, to analyse what benthic macroinvertebrates (aquatic animals without backbones that can be seen without the use of a microscope) are present. The presence of particular macroinvertebrates is an important indicator of water quality, with some only able to survive in fresh, clean water, or vice versa in very polluted conditions.
It was clear from the very first moment that the river was extremely contaminated from the mining projects up stream. The river was the colour orange, with a strong smell of chemicals. In fact, there was zero presence of any macroinvertebrates in the samples. The river is so polluted that nothing is able to survive in the water that the entire community of Bambamarca depends on.
Group from the local community of La Lucma monitoring the conditions of their local river. Photo copyright of CATAPA.
After the collection process, the group reconvened to record the results, share their testimonies and collectively decide a way forward. Representatives signed an agreement declaring they would bring the results back to the wider community to push for the collective organisation of several water monitoring committees to declare their Right To Say No to further encroachment of mining activities, and demand the local authorities take action.
Next Steps: Organisation for the defence of territories and the right to clean water
To mark World Water Day, GRUFIDES will convene a forum of dialogue in the city of Cajamarca to provide a platform for water defenders to share their testimonies, analyse the water crisis and demand the right to safe and clean water in Cajamarca.
Water monitoring committees from across Peru will also convene in Ayacucho from the 21st – 25th March to share experiences, compare methodologies and strengthen the capacity of movements fighting for access to clean water in their territories.
Article written by Connor Cashell, Global Engagement CATAPA officer (GECO) at Cajamarca, Peru.
The Speakers Tour was a big success! Thank you all so much for making this happen! What a wonderful edition.This year, two environmental defenders, Mirtha and Rosas from Cajamarca, Perú, were invited by Catapa to raise awareness and to talk about their struggle.
They shared their story fighting big scale mining in Perú and talked about how standing up for their rights comes with the risk and fear of being intimidated, stigmatized and prosecuted. During their visit they talked to students, local and european politicians, press, civil society organisations and interested citizens.
Let’s recap everything we did:
Finally the day has arrived: our guests will arrive in Belgium. In times of Covid, this is not an easy task. When Rosas, Mirtha and Maxime are supposed to board their first plane in Cajamarca, Perú, to Lima, Mirtha and Maxime are refused entry. Rosas is able to pass and does the transcontinental journey all by himself. Luckily, we manage to find flights to get Maxime and Mirtha on a plane the next day. At night we go to pick up Rosas at Brussels Airport. But, he does not come through arrivals at the expected time! Then we find out his flight from Lima has been delayed and he missed his connection flight. Four hours later than planned, he finally arrives! What an adventure, welcome to Belgium Rosas, so curious to hear all your stories and the wisdom you will share with us.
Arrival Mirtha & Maxime: Good news, we heard Mirtha and Maxime were able to start their journey this time and will arrive in the evening. With Rosas we already start preparations for the presentations he will give during his time here. It seems he brought the sun, because since he arrived we have only had clear blue skies and sunshine. He has so much to tell us and many questions to ask too. At night at last Mirtha and Maxime are picked up at Ghent station. We celebrate by eating a mountain of Belgian fries. Our speakers are finally reunited, the tour can start!
EEB Event
Our Peruvian environmental defenders, alongside indigenous representatives from Russia and Guatemala, meet with MEP’s to share their stories of fighting on the frontlines to defend their communities from destructive mining projects.
They demand tougher battery and due diligence legislation that centres the voices and experiences of impacted communities. Under the ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO), a non-binding voluntary commitment to ‘good practice’, corporations are able to greenwash their operations. International voluntary standards on responsible corporate conduct have failed to have an impact on environmental and human rights abuses along supply chains.
The delegation emphasised the importance of retaining copper, bauxite and iron within proposed due diligence obligations. They also brought attention to the need to include obligations towards climate impacts.
El pueblo reclama el agua que es vida, porque la minera ensucia y contamina…”
When one thinks of Cajamarca, one thinks of Carnival. As the Carnival capital of Peru, it isn´t a surprise we can also recognize this Carnival culture in the activists´ fight against mining companies. There are dozens of carnival songs written about the defense of water and human rights. Art is one of the most powerful forms of protests, and has been during hundreds and hundreds of years. Murals, songs, tales, poetry, paintings, all forms of art can be powerful ways of protesting. Think of the impact Máxima Acuña had when she sang her story when she won the Goldman Environmental Prize instead of telling it…
And it´s that bit of Cajamarcan culture, and art as a powerful way of protest, that we brought to Sint-Pietersplein in Ghent on the first Friday of our Speakers Tour. We sang typical carnival resistance songs from Cajamarca about the defense of their rivers, lakes and land as an opening of our tour and out of solidarity with Cajamarca. ¡Agua si, oro no!
KICK-OFF
After our public action our Speakers Tour could really start! In a nice setting in the Sint-Pietersabdij, we all got together to really get to know our guests for the first time. After some nice introductions by Truike, part of the organization of the Speakers Tour, Charlotte, as partner coordinator, and Maxime as GECO in Cajamarca, we finally got the chance to hear the stories of Mirtha and Rosas first hand!
Mirtha, director of our partner GRUFIDES, told us about the beauty of Cajamarca, a district in the northern Andes of Peru, and how it suffers under mining activities. 23.9 per cent, almost a quarter of Cajamarca, is already sold to mining companies! Mirtha told us about the impacts of these mining activities in her region, in a very emotional speech, and showed all of us why we should keep fighting against mining projects.
Then it was Rosas turn. Rosas comes from the Valley of Condebamba in Cajamarca. He told us about how he dedicated his life fighting against formal, informal and ilegal mining projects in his region, how he spent months up in the mountains amongst thousands of his compañeros and made the mining company leave, about how he has already been denounced 5 times for defending his land. He told us about how the products from his Valley are completely contaminated by heavy metals, and how these products are exported and sold even in Carrefour in Belgium! This shows us once again that the fight against mining activity isn´t something from far away, it´s something that impacts all of us, we are also eating these contaminated avocados. ¡La lucha es de todxs!
Breakfast with a Rebel
The first public event of the tour! A traditional one: our annual Breakfast with a Rebel/Ontbijt met een Rebel, part of the Gentian Belmundo Festival! Together with partners FOS, GAPP, Linx+ & Cubanismo we placed 6 rebels around seperate tables. The rebels all had an interesting personal story with a link to human and nature rights. Participants could enjoy a Palestinian brunch, while listening to these inspiring stories. Two of those rebels were Rosas & Mirtha! Their enriching stories showed the strong interlinkedness between human and nature rights, from a Peruvian perspective.
Tourist trip in Ghent
The guides Alberto and Silke were showing Mirtha and Rosas around in Ghent. Both were very interested in how the city is changing into a more friendly for pedestrians and bikers. And how the water system in Ghent was reconstructed towards recreative and sustainable goals. We had a hot chocolate and some Belgian waffles to warm up!
Bel-LATAM Network
Mirtha participated in her first Bel-LatAM Network meeting at the office of 11.11.11. She was surprised by the many people knowing Grufides and having worked before with Mirtha Vasquez. Mirtha was very eager to share the movie where Maxima Acuña is filmed in Cajamarca in Dec too, making the connections with screening here in Brussels. Mirtha ended the meeting with sharing many stories and anecdotes about the analphabetic populations affected by mining and being very vulnerable in how to protect themselves having no access to the Spanish Language, documents or data. And how mining is framed as needed for the so-called “green transition” but really affected again their territory. Our international support is more than ever needed.
Student Event Leuven
Rosas travelled to KU Leuven to deliver a striking testimony about the impact of several mining projects on his community and their collective resistance. In the second half of the event, students were challenged to question the links between extractivism and their university.
The members of the Peru WG met all together for the first time in person!!! We had the chance to listen directly from Rosas the current situation in the valle de Condebamba where the communities are threatened by informal mining and we listened to Mirtha updating us about the new threats of the subterranean mining that Yanacocha wants to start. We then brainstorm about further activities that the WG can put in placed to support the fight of our friends.
Round Table
On March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, we listened to the testimony of defensoras from Peru, Colombia and The Netherlands/Bolivia. They shared stories about climate activism and their experiences and struggles within the defense of their territories, in order to promote solidarity and to connect different struggles for justice. They also talked about the vital role of women in activism.
Student event in Antwerp
Rosas gives a powerful testimony to students of the University of Antwerp. After a Q&A, the students take part in a citizen council, in which they take a critical view on the link between mining and their university. Willy guides Rosas through Antwerp, and they have dinner in the restaurant Via Via.
Meeting with Quinoa
Mirtha met with Quinoa, one of Grufides partners, to present the ongoing projects of Grufides, update about the current situation in Cajamarca and discuss the programme of the Quinoa summer project for a group of Belgian volunteers
Farm visit
Rosas met with farmers from Boerenforum, a collective of farmers organisations utilising a range of agroecological methods within Flanders, to exchange knowledge and practices. Agroecology is a not only a practical science involving zero use of chemicals and pesticides, but also a social movement. Agroecology calls for the complete dismantlement of the industrial food system and green revolution, with it’s focus on food production and profits over access and the rights of nature.
The delegation visited several farms across the region, including a bio-dairy farm which creates a variety of agroecological products, including it’s own delicious ice cream! The delegation shared their experiences of working within a variety of farm systems and environments. They also discussed several barriers preventing the further scaling up of agroecology within both the European Union and Peru, including access to technical knowledge and expertise, financial support, land, water and harmful legislation that continues to prioritise destructive industrial agriculture over the environment.
H-LEP and NEMO
Mirtha and Rosas participated in a High-Level Expert panel (H-LEP) on recycling mining waste organised by EU Horizon 2020 NEMO project. People from academia, industry, civil society, the European Commission and the United Nations sat together with our Peruvian guests at the table looking for a global perspective on the revalorisation of mining tailings. Mirtha was invited as a speaker and presented the mining waste reality and the community’s struggles in Cajamarca. She ended her presentation with four recommendations for the European Commission: protect Human Rights, provide meaningful community participation, empower the community to recognise and revindicate indigenous knowledge. After Mirtha’s presentation, the other three speakers presented a proposal of recycling mining waste in Bolivia, the Recycling of mining waste in Sweden, and the Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the impact of recycling mining waste.
Following the presentations, Mirtha and Rosas participated in round tables to bring their perspectives and experiences further. Meeting them was, for many, a reality check of the situation at the beginning of our metal supply chain.
Yes to Life No to Mining network
Mirtha met like-minded civil society activists from the Yes to Life No to Mining network (YLNM) in the afternoon and evening. It was an international hybrid meeting, with people joining from Brussels, the UK, Finland, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Bolivia, Peru, and many more European and non-European countries. The objective of the meeting was to align understandings and strategies on the Right to Say No (RTSN). Mirtha painfully described the absence of the RTSN in Cajamarca and Perú in general and vividly described the consequences of this gap. Our understanding of the RTSN is growing fast, just as the demand for more metal for the green transition to fighting Climate Change. We still need to learn many things, but we know for sure that communities like Cajamarca, and people like Mirtha and Rosas, need to be in the driving seat when it comes to deciding on mining their resources and quality of life. They need to have the Right to Say No.
Lunch with the city of Ghent
We had a lunch meeting today with people of the city of Ghent, including a deputy minister of international cooperation!
Pago a la tierra
On our last Saturday morning, a sunny morning anouncing spring is finally on its way, we took a bus and a tiny little ferry to visit the natural reserve of Levende Leie and end our Speakers Tour with an intimate ceremony, a pago a la tierra. In Peruvian culture during these pagos a la tierra you thank the Earth for all its given you and ask to continue helping you in the future. We circeled around some typical peruvian foods, seeds from Cajamarca, flowers, natural products, and Cajamarcan instruments, and expressed our gratitude for these last two weeks, for all we´ve learned and shared, and vouched that we will always continue this fight together.
Trip to Brugge
Rosas and Mirtha visited Bruges and were fascinated by the charm of this small town in Flanders: the historic centre, the cobbled streets… We had a nice lunch and shared a waffle afterwards! It was a very nice day in which we shared anecdotes from the tour.
Restart Party
CATAPA, together with Bos+, Repair&Share, De Transformisten and Avansa, gave a preview of what a system without growth would look like, at the Restart Party in Antwerp.
While repairers at the Repair Café tried to get electro-appliances working again, our workshop went deeper into the dangers of planned obsolescence for people and the environment. We dwelt on the actions needed to wake up politicians and businesses to push that reset button. Rosas and Mirtha shared their story and afterwards we went to @Circuit’s cozy Kringwinkel.
End of the Tour
The tour is finally over. Thank you all so much for making this happen! What a wonderful edition. Thanks to all of you who all helped in many different ways. What a privilege to have had them here for this time and what a joy to have it shared with so many.
THANK YOU ALL WONDERFUL CATAPISTAS!!!! For the amazing organization! And the super leuke activities and initiatives!!!
Water pollution caused by toxic mining waste has radically transformed the regional ecosystem, poisoning the land.
Author – Giacomo Perna
During one of his visits to Macondo, Melquiades and his gypsies presented to the people what they declaimed to be the eighth wonder of the world of the wise Macedonian alchemists. It was a magnet. By means of this device, José Arcadio Buendía hoped to be able to dig up all the gold in the earth by simply dragging his ingots through the village. If only it really worked, for the world would have been spared centuries of pollution caused by mining. If it did, the lives of the people of El Tingo might be better today.
The community of El Tingo is currently without water. It’s such a controversial situation. Even though the area is rich in rivers and streams, nowadays every spring and water source is in a critical state of contamination, according to university studies and CATAPA’s report. Pollution has reached exasperating levels: it is so high that plants are burned due to the excess acidity of the waters.
The El Tingo community was born as a peasant community. The local economy has always been based on crops and livestock. The current situation prevents these activities from being carried out without risk. As a consequence of water contamination, cases of disease have increased significantly, dangerous amounts of heavy metals have been found in the blood of the inhabitants, and previously unseen malformations have started to appear in newborn animals. And it all happened because of the mining action that affected the territory
Every water source in the region is contaminated. Lack of resources and income afflict the area. Socio-economic growth promises made by the mining companies did not materialize.
The mining history of the region of El Tingo goes back many years. Environmental liabilities from mining projects of yesteryear still afflict the territory, threatening the well-being of local flora and fauna. Among them is, the San Nicolás project, started in 1972, whose remains represent a still open wound that scars the local environment.
The entire geographical area is seriously affected by excavation and mineral processing. The main reason is that the plans to minimize and neutralize the effects of the toxic waste were – and, according to the local community, still is – not respected and, today, the inhabitants of the area suffer from a lack of resources and income, in addition to directly experiencing the harmful effects of the mining waste.
The community of El Tingo is located in the district of Hualgayoc, in the region of Cajamarca. The area is rich in raw materials and minerals, which does not favor the well-being of the communities. In fact, El Tingo is located between two active mining projects that directly influence the development of life in the community: the Cerro Corona project, started in 2005 by the South African mining company Gold Fields, and the Tantahuatay project, started by the Peruvian company Coimolache, affiliated with the Peruvian company Buenaventura, which discovered the mine in 2010.
These companies have settled in the territory to exploit the huge mineral reserves present in the subsoil: gold, silver and copper. Initially, both companies arrived in the area promising improvements and development, signing social agreements and agreeing to promote socio-economic growth. Unfortunately, they did not live up to their words.
The curious thing is that Peru has a mine closure law. According to regulation passed in 2003, the state obliges companies that own mining projects to ensure the protection of the environment and to cease their activities in areas where mining action could cause environmental risks, but neither the government nor the companies have made any effort to respect – and enforce – this law.
The grass burns due to the high acid concentration of the waters. People and animals suffer from the diseases caused by the environmental pollution of the mining.
It is also worth mentioning that the region is subject to periods of heavy rainfall. On several occasions these rains have caused the tailing dams to overflow, leaking mining waste into the surrounding pastures and water basins and generating catastrophic consequences. An infamous example, is the case of December 2018, where a tailings spill caused the death of 17,000 trout present in the fish farm ‘La trucha de oro’.
The problem of pollution does not only affect the El Tingo area. The streams that traverse the territory flow into other rivers. Among them is the El Tingo-Maygasbamba river, which flows into the Amazon river and then crosses the continent to the Atlantic, carrying its poisons for thousands of kilometers.
On the economic side, the promises made by both Coimolache and Gold Fields company were not kept. According to the community, the agreements stipulated were not respected. Despite the promise not to bring foreigners into the region, companies soon began to hire outsiders to work in the mines. In addition, local workers often suffered violations of their labor rights: firing a local worker seems so much easier than firing a foreigner. Furthermore, the promises of prosperity did not materialize and no improvements were made to the roads, which are in a critical state. Even the local architecture suffers from the consequences of mining. Excavations to expand the mines are carried out through continuous detonations in El Tingo, which over time affects the integrity of community buildings. As a result, cracks and scratches populate the walls of many houses, jeopardizing the structural stability of the homes.
Local growth was not improved. The mining presence caused conflicts and social tensions.
The local community has resisted against the injustices from mining in the territory, evidenced by the social tensions that have been documented since 2008. Indeed, the people of El Tingo have risen up against mining servitude and exploitation. Protests and strikes have taken place over the years, demonstrating the commitment of the local community to defend their land and water.
The people of El Tingo have been organizing themselves autonomously in opposition to the mining industry and have also asked for assistance to publicize their struggle and finally be heard. It was for this reason, that CATAPA became actively involved in the territory together with its partner Grufides, conducting dozens of interviews and collecting water samples from the springs. The tests demonstrated a high level of contamination of the rivers and streams that cross the area. Through the interviews collected, a documentary was produced about the case of El Tingo, to give voice to the testimony of the local community. In addition to this, a webinar and a social media campaign were organized. Today, Grufides’ lawyers continue to fight alongside the communities legal representatives, to support the fight for justice.
The El Tingo history is a tale of unfulfilled promises and abuses. The pressure from the central economy is pushing the development of underdevelopment in the region, relegating the community to a situation of irreversible dependence. The area has become an oasis for mining extraction, a locus amenus where the West found the answers to its expansionist demands. It is hard to believe that such abuses are taking place today. The situation in which the inhabitants of El Tingo find themselves is intolerable, and CATAPA’s aim, together with its allies and the community, is to bring justice to a people who for decades have suffered the ravages of dispossession.
In 1957 the American newspaper The New Yorker published a poem by British poet W. H. Auden, the end of which recited: “Thousands have survived without love. Not one without water”.
Indeed, he was right. Despite attempts to raise awareness, today, a part of the world’s population still considers clean water as a given, eternally at their mercy, thanks to easy access to water resources. Unfortunately, they are wrong.
Water does not just come out of the pipe. Although it is a renewable resource, waste and pollution threaten to drastically reduce drinking water supplies. In some cases, human intervention in the environment can cause catastrophic effects on drinking water supplies. That’s what is happening in many parts of the world.
Mining poses a risk to drinking water sources in the vicinity of mining projects. In many cases, the chemical residues used in mineral extraction processes end up being dumped into rivers and streams, poisoning riverbeds and transforming water, a source of life, into a critical danger to life itself.
Due to the need to preserve the integrity of water in high-risk areas, such as those regions subject to mining activities, the project “Guardians of water” was born, as a result of a collaboration between CATAPA and the local organization Grufides, along with subsidies provided by the city of Ghent (Belgium).
If the water were to become contaminated, any plant or animal food from the region would be harmful for human consumption
The project, which started in January 2020, takes place in the Cajamarca region, in northern Peru, an area subject to high mining impact. The objective of the project is to strengthen environmental governance in the Environmental Monitoring Committees through the community participation in social management activities and water quality monitoring.
By being active in the territory, CATAPA, together with its local partners, seeks to promote the social commitment of native communities to safeguard the purity of the rivers that run through the Cajamarca region. Since the beginning of the project, CATAPA has been able to count on strong local participation and the support of several communities interested in preventing possible damage caused by the action of mining extraction.
The problem does not only concern the inhabitants of the rural areas closest to the mine. In fact, life in Cajamarca and its surroundings depends on the water coming from the highlands. The rivers that are in danger of contamination represent the most important source of drinking water for the city and its surroundings. It is this same water that irrigates the fields and quenches the thirst of farm animals. Natural products from the region depend directly on local water flows.
This means that if the water were to become contaminated, any plant or animal food from the region would be harmful for human consumption. In fact, recent studies by the OEFA (Organismo de Evaluación y Fiscalización Ambiental) have found the presence of 40% arsenic in avocados from Cajabamba, in the province of Cajamarca.
It should also be borne in mind that rivers are not sedentary entities, as their extension knows no jurisdictions. Many of the rivers affected – or threatened – by the presence of mines, run over vast areas, flowing to the coast or even joining other larger rivers, such as the Marañon, which ends up flowing into the giant sea river, the Amazon. A clear example of the large-scale dangers of river pollution can be found in the Tingo issue. The aim of CATAPA and its partners is to prevent another environmental disaster with such an impact.
Local communities demonstrated their commitment by supporting the creation of committees dedicated to registering the state of river waters. Thanks to the action of CATAPA these committees have been consolidated and strengthened. Nowadays, water measurement tests are considered as legal tests to evaluate the state of the water before and after the mining action. These tests can be the basis for bringing charges against companies that have caused, through their actions or negligence, the pollution of rivers.
The opening of the mine represents a danger to the waters, as the mining waste could poison the river and the fields, composing the requiem for the region and its resources
The project was initially to focus on three local water basins, the Chetillano, San Lucas and Llaucan ones. The first water monitoring was carried out on the San Lucas river in Cushunga and on the Llaucan river in Bambamarca, with the participation of the local population and also with the support of the Environmental Vigilance Committees. Both tests proved the purity of the water.
The normal development of the project was temporarily slowed down due to the COVID-19 situation in the country, but the unforeseen event did not dampen the enthusiasm of CATAPA volunteers and local partners. In fact, to cope with the impossibility of moving around the region, the volunteers active in the territory adapted themselves to continue fighting. Webinars, virtual presentations and online workshops on methodologies and useful tools were organized to familiarize local populations with the process of community-based environmental monitoring of water quality. Photo campaigns were also promoted, videos and documentaries were published, and a basic guide was written to explain how to monitor water. Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, the activities were a success.
When the restrictions were partially lifted, water monitoring was able to start again. Unfortunately, interprovincial travel was prohibited, so no further tests could be carried out in the Bambamarca area. Therefore, it was decided to include the river La Encañada in the project. This river is located right next to the under-construction mining project called Michiquillay, scheduled for 2022. Concern among the local population is high, as construction work on the mine has been accelerated due to pressure from the Peruvian government, which is seeking to boost mining as part of a project to revive the country’s economy.
The opening of the mine represents a danger to the waters, as the mining waste could poison the river and the fields, composing the requiem for the region and its resources. Fortunately, a local committee is already in place to monitor the area. The situation of the La Encañada river is at extremely high risk, as it is an indirect tributary of the Amazon river. Its contamination would put an immense geographical area at risk.
Today, the Environmental Surveillance Committees, continue to monitor the waters autonomously, fulfilling their role as Guardians of the Water. The project ended in August 2020, but the second part has been underway since January 2021.
In fact, despite the achievements, the struggle is not over. Volunteers and local partners are drafting a detailed guide on how to carry out autonomous water monitoring, which will be delivered in Cajamarca and its surroundings. In addition, the initial project has revealed the importance of focusing on the La Encañada river, establishing local committees along its length, and the need for a law that officially recognize the presence of Environmental Monitoring Committees throughout the country.
Here you can find the link to the documentary CATAPA made in Cajamarca.
10 Ways CATAPA Took on the Mining Industry in 2020
Its been a challenging year across the world with the Covid-19 pandemic not least for communities facing down mining projects trying to exploit the situation we now find ourselves in.
Despite these new challenges here are 10 Ways CATAPA Took on the Mining Industry in 2020:
1. Uncovering the exploitation of Bolivian miners in European supply chains
In 2020 CATAPA produced a research article uncovering how the rare metal Indium exchanges hands without being paid for, as it travels through the supply chain, from Bolivian mines into the hands of European Industry. This followed up the first investigation on polymetal mining in Bolivia earlier in 2020 which assessed the impacts of mining in the region of Oruro. The research mapped the local and regional actors involved in the Bolivian supply chain, to better understand what “Making ICT Fair” could look like in a Bolivian context.
2. Supporting the #WhoIsKillingThem Campaign
Colombia is the most dangerous region worldwide for people defending the environment. This is why CATAPA, led by CATAPA Colombia activists launched the campaign called #WhoIsKillingThem to raise awareness about the impacts of mining and the increasing number of environmental and social activists being assassinated in Colombia.
3. Empowering Water Guardians in Peru
The ‘Guardianxs del Agua’ project involved providing water monitoring training to 5 local ‘water committees’, whose fresh water sources are in danger from current and potential mining projects in Cajarmarca, Peru. The series of workshops and trainings provided the “Guardians of Water” with the capabilities to better identify any signs of contamination and document the quality and quantity of local water supplies.
A social media campaign called “Guardianxs del Agua”, drew attention to the work of the water monitoring committees and the importance of protecting these last sources of clean water. The campaign also raised national attention around a new law proposal, which would protect environmental committees. The project and campaign ended with the publication of a short documentary Guardianxs del Agua.
4. Hosting an International Webinar Series on sustainable and responsible electronic supply chains
In 2017, eleven European partners joined forces to create the project “Make ICT Fair – Reforming manufacture and minerals supply chains through policy, finance and public procurement”. Organized by CATAPA, the Make ICT Fair international webinar series drew hundreds of participants from multiple continents with the aim to improve the lives of workers and local communities impacted along the ICT supply chain through research, capacity building and campaigning.
5. Adapting mining activism during a Pandemic
CATAPA’s largest annual event, the Open Min(e)d Speakers Tour, included guest speakers from Hong Kong, Ecuador and Colombia before being moved online by the start of the pandemic. 2020’s changemaker trajectory saw 30 changemakers complete our tailed programme on Extractivism, Degrowth and Buen Vivir with various trainings, including on how to run impactful social media campaigns.
Partnering with universities Catapistas gave lectures to students on issues such as resource conflicts and human rights violations in Latin America. Every year CATAPA supervises several students writing their thesis about mining related issues & ICT procurement and ‘Thesis 4 Bolivia” provided a space for graduates and researchers to share their experiences of conducting research abroad.
2020 also brought new opportunities as CATAPA delved into the world of Deep Sea Mining with a webinar and the formation of an action group. Once the first wave subsided, covid safe Summer’s End Sessions were created, allowing the Catapistas to further build and develop the movements strategy for 2021.
CATAPA put on Doculatino and Cinema Peru, an online series of film screenings which highlighted the stories of the featured communities impacted by extractive industries. Bar Circular saw hundreds tune into a series of ICT workshops taking place online, covering topics on digital health, repair and how to extend the lifespan of your digital devices.
6. Challenging the European Commission’s Green Mining Agenda
CATAPA joined over 230 civil society organisations, community platforms and academics in releasing an open letter to call on the European Commission to urgently reassess its plans to drive a new resource grab both in the EU and the global South.
Instead of expanding and repatriating mining destruction which will threaten communities, biodiversity & the planetary life support systems – we called for:
1. Absolute reduction of resource use and demand in Europe
2. Recognition and respect for communities’ Right to Say No to mining
3. Enforcement of existing EU environmental law and respect for conservation areas
4. An end to exploitation of Global South nations, and respect for human rights
5. Protection of ‘ new frontiers’ – like the deep sea- from mining.
7. Raising the profile of ‘El Tingo’
The community of El Tingo is one of the most affected by mining in Cajamarca (Peru), as the community is located between two mining projects. Despite mining companies Gold Fields and Coimolache signing social agreements with the community, the mining projects brought the community water contamination, loss of agriculture and livestock, property destruction, heavy metals in the blood of the community members and empty promises of work in the mines.
We secured social-cultural organizational status, allowing us to increase the number of paid staff we have and finance more exciting projects and initiatives from 2021 onwards. This was really important to secure structural funding especially in the current economic context – allowing us to carry on fighting for a socially and ecologically just planet.
9. Piloting worker led monitoring of the mining industry
CATAPA entered into a new partnership in 2020, which will see the extension of worker-driven monitoring of mining operations across three continents. CATAPA supported the delivery of monitoring trainings with Electronics Watch and CISEP to start building the local foundations needed to begin the monitoring of Bolivian Tin mines. The end goal of worker driven monitoring of these mines, will be an important step-change in the transparency of these global supply chains.
10. Encouraging Public and Private bodies to clean up their ICT
The links between mining and ICT products are clear. The average smartphone contains 60 different elements, many of which are metals. Without the extraction of metals many of the technologies used in offices across Belgium would not exist. This year the Fair ICT Flanders project set up a learning network with 30 large buyers of ICT hardware and actively supported 6 pilot organisations in Flanders to make their purchasing policies more sustainable. The first Fair ICT Award was given to the KU Leuven. They were recognized for their commitment to ‘ Human Rights Due Diligence’ and life extension of their ICT devices. In this way, they hold the ICT industry accountable and contribute to less (over)consumption and mining.’
If you want to get involved in CATAPA’s activism and find out more about what we have in store for 2021, you can contact us to sign up for email updates here – and if you can afford it, please donate to support our efforts to stop mining here.
Ghost town Choropampa: Twenty Years after the Mercury Spill
On June 2, 2000, a truck with a load from the Yanacocha mine lost about 150 kilograms of mercury in the small community of Choropampa in the province of Cajamarca, in northern Peru. Twenty years later, the village seems to be completely forgotten, while the inhabitants are still dying from the consequences of the disaster.
It’s June 2, 2000, around five in the afternoon. Loud voices can be heard on the street, shouting. “Everything in front of my shop is mine”, exclaims Julia Angelica. A sparkling, clear, silver-colored sort of liquid slides like some sort of jelly over the road that runs straight through the village. “Mommy, mommy, look”, you can hear elsewhere, “there is something shiny and sparkly on the street and everyone is collecting it. I am going as well!”
Children pop in the middle of the mysterious stuff, collect big, empty bottles of Coca Cola and Fanta and fill them with the shiny liquid. They play with it, throw it in the air and walk under it, rub it on their bodies, even consume it. Is it gold? How much would it be worth? The confusion reigns, but it must be worth something. Wealth for Choropampa.
Children passing out
Nothing turns out to be less true. Twenty years later, we are standing on that same spot, on the long road that connects the important mining city of Cajamarca with Lima, the capital of Peru. The road on which trucks of the Yanacocha mine pass on a daily basis, and where exactly twenty years ago today, such a truck from the transport company Ransa, contracted by Yanacocha, lost 151 kilos of mercury. No gold, but 151 kilos of shiny, sparkly, but deadly poisonous mercury, spread out over 27 kilometers of road between San Juan and Magdalena. The community of Choropampa, in the middle of that road, got hit the worst. Directly or indirectly, all three thousand inhabitants were exposed to it.
The mercury destroyed the whole community. It entered the ground, the water, the plants, the air. Water measurements show that the level of mercury in the water grows over time. The harvest is yielding less and less, and no one wants to buy or consume agricultural products from the region of Choropampa.
People who hadn´t had physical contact with the mercury, inhaled it. And still inhale it. When the weather is hot, the mercury that´s still in the soil evaporates and rises. Inhalation even turns out to be worse than touching it.
Inhaling mercury breaks the protective membrane of the brain and mainly causes problems with the nervous system. Salomón Saavedra from Choropampa confirms that. “When it’s hot, you often see children passing out on the street, on their way home from school. They pass out from all the mercury they inhale. They are taken to the health post, they recover a little, but they remain sick. They continue to have the same symptoms. Like all of us, for the rest of our lives.”
Hours after the mercury spill, the health post in Choropampa filled with people with the same complaints. Nose bleedings, headaches, stomachaches, hives over the whole body. The list of symptoms grew over time. Vision loss, severe pains in the bones, joint pains, peeling of the skin, blood in the urine, irregular menstruations, menstruations that fail to occur, infertility, ectopic pregnancies, deformed children, and so on.
We find ourselves in the small living room of Juana Martínez. When we ask her whether she can tell us what happened the day of the disaster, she looks at us desperately. “I don’t know… I really don’t. We are losing our memory because of the mercury.”
Forgotten. Not only the authorities have forgotten about Choropampa, also the memory of the inhabitants themselves is failing them.
Around ten villagers have gathered in the small room to tell their stories. Others couldn’t walk the few blocks to Juana’s home, and we visit them in their own houses. The stories are similar.
Pretty poison
“It looked so pretty,” María Clementine Hoyo Zabreda remembers, “so pretty how it decorated the street. But it turned out to be poison. Look at my body.” She pulls up her skirts and shows her swollen legs. Different women follow her example. Hands, feet, spots everywhere and skin peeling off.
Vision loss is another serious consequence of the disaster. “The whole village needs to wear glasses. And change those glasses every year”, they say.
Melisa Castrejón Hoyos wasn’t in Choropampa when the mercury spill happened. She arrived to her home in Choropampa six days later, to hear poison had arrived to the community. Poison that was just sitting there in a glass bottle in her home. “I was so scared. I didn’t dare to come close. There I was, with my baby of barely two months old in my arms… Now my son is basically blind. He can’t read. He is studying, but I think that he won’t finish his studies, just as most of the rest of the youth of Choropampa.”
Wait
Santos Mirando does remember the day of the mercury spill very well. He ran out to scoop the mercury up with his bare hands. “I have the most terrible headaches. All the time. And all the doctors prescribe me is paracetamol. My wife is shaking so hard that often while she is cooking, she drops the plates. My seven-year-old daughter has severe pains in her bones and can´t see anymore. She hadn’t even been born when it happened. And we are poor. We can’t do anything. Nothing. Just wait.” Santos wipes the tears from his cheeks. “We will just have to push through the pain.”
Wait. That’s the only thing that rests the people of Choropampa, while slowly the villagers are dying. “My niece died from lupus,” says Helena Portilla, “and right after that my son died. He was only 23 years old. They gave him three months when he got to the hospital. Little afterwards also my daughter in law passed away. She felt bad around one, and at seven she had died.”
Many villagers fled the community and went to other cities to look for a healthier way of living, but no one can escape the death of Choropampa. Even children and youth born after the mercury spill have high levels of mercury in their blood and urine, and severe health issues.
Judith Guerrero Martín suffered a miscarriage. “I can’t get pregnant. Many women are at risk during pregnancies. There are women who lose their child after three, four months of pregnancy. Or their children are born deformed. When I lost my baby, my doctor told me that it was better this way. That it was an ectopic pregnancy, as many women have here. A friend of mine even died during her pregnancy.”
Sentenced to chair
The mayor of Choropampa brings us to a house a little further down the road. A new face, with the same look of desperation. She talks quietly and it’s hard to understand her words. Headaches, backaches, pain in her arms. For the last three years, she had barely been able to move. Three years in which she hasn’t been able to do anything. She can’t fold her hands, she can’t stretch her arms. She can’t wash herself, she can’t comb her hair. She is sentenced to her chair.
“My life is so sad”, says Modesta Pretel. “I can’t do anything anymore. I can’t work on the field. I can’t cook. I can’t knit. What the doctors say of my case? I have no idea. I can’t remember. I forget everything, like most of us. Even my daughter, who is born after the disaster, suffers from memory loss.”
Close to where the accident happened, we meet Imelda Guarniz Ruiz. She also suffers because of the impact of the mercury in her community. “I was a strong woman, and now? I can’t even walk anymore. My kidneys hurt. There is no solution. They give me ibuprofen and paracetamol. How is that going to help me? The people from the Yanacocha mine make fun of us. And I can´t do anything anymore. Before I sit down, I always have to find someone who will be able to help me stand up afterwards”, she says. She reinforces her words by calling her son to help her get up from the stairs she is sitting on.
The complaints aren’t new, but they are getting more and more serious with the years. Around the time of the accident, about 100 people died. “Doctors from Germany and the United States told us that everything would be way worse in five, ten, fifteen years”, Juana Martínez says. And look at the situation now. “In the past we had one death every three, four years. Now we have three to four deaths every month.” The impact of the disaster is more visible than ever, twenty years after it happened.
It took a long time before the villagers heard how poisonous the mercury was. Two days after the accident, employees of Yanacocha arrived in Choropampa. The villagers remember how they arrived in special suits with protection goggles. It raised questions, but still no one had informed the local population about the risks of mercury. The workers only reported that they had come to buy the spilled mercury, and offered money in exchange for the collected mercury.
Children ran out on the streets again, looking for whatever was still left of the mercury. Five to ten soles they got, depending on how much mercury they could gather. “A circus had just arrived to our community,” mayor Ronald Mendoza Guarniz says, “and with five soles the children could do a lot. For a kilo, they would even give them up to 100 soles. Our children ran back and forth with their hands full of the shiny liquid.”
Yanacocha was able to recover only a third of the spilled mercury. The rest stayed behind in Choropampa, in the fields, in the houses, even in the bedrooms.
The damage was done and very fast the irreversible consequences of the spill became clear. Choropampa got sick. And Choropampa protested. They wanted an analysis; they wanted to know what was wrong with them. Fifteen days after the spill, the contamination in the villagers was measured.
The analysis showed that the villagers had high levels of mercury in their blood and in their urine. But the results of the analysis disappeared. And twenty years later, they still haven’t been found.
While inhabitants of Choropampa all ended up in the hospital with similar complaints, Yanacocha returned to the community with lawyers.
Yanacocha offered money to the inhabitants of Choropampa. Any amount of money, depending on what the villager said yes to. 2500 soles (about 650 euros) for one person, 5000 (about 1300 euros) for another. Whatever they agreed on, to buy their silence.
After all, to receive the money, they had to sign a document. An extensive document with several clauses, clearly stating that Yanacocha is not to blame for what happened, that Yanacocha pays only to end the controversies about the disaster. And by signing, the villagers said goodbye to their rights to sue Yanacocha for what had happened or take any legal action against the mine.
Fingerprints
Almost all of Choropampa signed. The majority of the people by leaving his or her fingerprint. At the time, 85 percent of Choropampa was illiterate and could neither read nor sign the document.
The villagers used the money to cover their medical costs. They ran out of money quickly, even before the true impact of the health issues reached the population. It wasn’t about a few temporary health issues. These were lifelong complaints that would only get worse over the years. But what choice did they have? Even the then Minister of Women and Human Development traveled all the way to Choropampa from Lima to advise the community against hiring lawyers to help them.
Choropampa was silenced. Nobody was allowed to speak. For years, the inhabitants of Choropampa have been silent under the weight of the documents. Twenty years later, while the number of deaths from the consequences of the disaster suddenly starts to increase rapidly, they give up their obligation to remain silent. If we die anyway, we might as well open our mouths; seems to be the motto.
No medication
Next to money, the inhabitants of Choropampa also received health insurance for five years from Yanacocha. Health insurance they can barely use in Choropampa.
Right next to where the mercury spill changed the lives of three thousand Cajamarquinos, we find the health post of Choropampa. On this health post, everyone agrees. “We have let go of the hope to receive help or medication. The only thing we still ask for, are tranquilizers and painkillers. Either way we can never be cured anymore.”
We knock on the door of the health post, but can’t be let inside. It´s better to come back in a day or two, they tell us. Then they will be able to show us the post.
The look on the mayor’s face says it all. “There is nothing to show. Nothing. The health post is empty. That is the problem that we have had for years. There is no medication in the health post, no help. They only check your pulse and give you some sort of sedative. But I’m sure if Yanacocha knows you’re here, with the cameras, they’ll come with a car full of medication. That’s why they need a two days’ notice to let you in.”
A day later, we suddenly receive a video from the health post from an anonymous source, filmed that same day. The racks are empty. There is no medication in Choropampa.
“We are dying,” Helena Portilla says, “this is no life for us. We have been forgotten. We are asking for justice from Yanacocha, but nothing happens. They came, poisoned us, and abandoned us.”
Also in other cities, the population of Choropampa seems to have difficulties to find help. “We lie. We tell them we are from Magdalena or Cajamarca. Nobody wants to help the people from Choropampa. We are nobody”, they say.
The cemetery of Choropampa is filling extremely quickly. The dates of death on the crosses follow each other up faster and faster. Two per month, three per month, four…
Mayor Guarniz looks at us with a desperate look on his face. He is still young, was still a kid when the mercury spill happened. As was his wife. Seven days after the accident she ended in the hospital for the first time. Five years later, she came back with the same complaints. Two years later again. “And what now? Do I take her back within a year? And then every month?” Guarniz asks.
The previous mayor was only 28 when he died. They quickly brought him to Chiclayo, but he died almost immediately upon arrival. “And such quick deaths are the rule rather than the exception”, Guarniz says. “Today we feel good, tomorrow we might feel bad, and poof, straight to the cemetery. What are we still waiting for? We are completely left to our own devices.”
Only eighty inhabitants of Choropampa didn’t sign the document of Yanacocha twenty years ago. They are the only ones who can still take legal action against the company, although most lawsuits were filed quickly. Only three of them were reopened.
In twenty years Choropampa has lost all hope of help. “We have been deceived so much already,” says Julia Angelica Guarniz Luis, “twenty years have passed and still nothing has happened. We are going to die. Soon it will be done with Choropampa. All that´s left for us is wait until God says it is enough.”
Twenty years have passed and still there is no solution for Choropampa, the village in which the inhabitants continue to die and are more and more intoxicated with every breath they take. It is time for Choropampa to get justice.
Watch the documentary “Choropampa, Tierra de Nadie” here:
Covid-19 in the Peruvian Amazon: Challenges for the most vulnerable communities of Loreto
Author: Mirna Fernández
If there is one thing which the Covid-19-outbreak has brought to the surface in a very clear way, it is the existing global inequalities. To which extent communities are able to withstand the crisis, depends a lot of their access to healthcare, sanitation and food systems.
The reality in the region of Loreto, located in the Peruvian Amazon, shows that this pandemic and its socioeconomic implications will pose severe threats to some of its most vulnerable communities.
An already collapsed Health Care System
When the first positive cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Loreto, the hospitals were already close to collapsing. The Peruvian Health Minister, Victor Zamora, announced that Loreto was facing two “big problems” at the same time: Coronavirus and Dengue.
Before the arrival of Covid-19 the region of Loreto was victim of one of the worst episodes of a dengue epidemic in the history of the region. According to the National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Control of Diseases (CNE), only in the first 3 months of 2020, the number of cases of dengue in Peru reached 8 times the amount of cases compared to the same period last year. Loreto has reported the biggest number of cases, with 3,925 in total, which is 31 times higher than the same period last year. This was already a heavy burden for the weak regional health care system. In the hospitals, few beds were available for the many patients that needed to be covered by mosquito nets to prevent the spread of the disease to other patients in the hospitals.
The Covid-19 outbreak disrupted Loreto, as the region doesn’t have enough beds ready to use in Intensive Care Units (ICU). The Regional Hospital of Loreto – the biggest and most equipped hospital of Loreto – has only 12 ICU beds for Covid-19 patients, of which 10 are already in use. The other hospitals in the region all together have only 9 extra ICU beds and all of them are in use already by non Covid-19 patients. This should cover a population of 884 000 inhabitants. Belgium, in comparison, has a population of 11.46 million inhabitants and 1864 ICU beds, of which 785 remain free for future patients needing Intensive Care. The fact that only 2 ICU beds remain free for the whole region of Loreto is a hard reality check.
While the pandemic is spreading in the region, everyday we hear reports from health personnel dropping out due to a lack ofprotective equipment. A hospital called ESSALUD had to close temporarily when 4 health workers were tested positive, and improvised health centres had to be put in place to continue the medical attention for its patients. The president of the Medical Federation of Loreto, María Huilca Chambi, pointed out the lack of biosecurity for the personnel taking the samples for Covid-19 testing. “We are putting our lives at risk”, she said.
Loreto is currently the region with the fourth highest amount of most positive cases in Peru, with 619 to date. This is the result of 2876 tests performed in the region since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the official government data. There is an obvious lack of tests, labs and equipment for the personnel’s health, which did not improve much since the beginning of the outbreak. This raises questions about the credibility and transparency of the local authorities.
Increasing food prices
Loreto does not have a diversified agricultural production, due to the hard conditions that the Amazon ecosystem poses on peasants. With mainly poor, infertile soil where crops are often suffering from erosion due to heavy rains and from different plagues,only a limited variety of crops can survive. Therefore, the region needs to import massive amounts of food, especially vegetables, from other regions of Peru.
The transportation of imported food is especially complicated for Loreto. Its main city, Iquitos, which has about one million inhabitants, is the only major city in Peru that is not accessible by road. The imported food from other regions needs to arrive either by air or by ground transportation until Yurimaguas, and from there by boat for more than 3 days. The regional food supplies reach Iquitos by boat, coming from local communities settled on the river sides.
Family agriculture produces 70% of the food supplies that are consumed in Peru. In many cases, this means that the surplus food production of small families is sent to other regions by means of passengers’ transport, which is now prohibited by the State of Emergency. The cargo transport of food supplies is allowed, and people working in the food supply sector are officially allowed to pass by regularly. However, to obtain the necessary permits with the National Police, you would need to provide certain certifications that many small producers don’t have.
Therefore, if prices of basic food in the region have increased, it is directly linked with the State of Emergency declared by the government of Peru and its transport restrictions. Basic fresh food items like eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and onions have doubled in price since the beginning of the lockdown.
Speculation is another cause of increasing food prices. There was a wave of panic among the inhabitants of the country, especially during the first days of the lockdown, so the markets and stores were wiped out of some products. The resulting demand in turn increases the prices. While the Peruvian government is trying to send positive messages to the population ensuring that there will not be a shortage of food supplies, the outcome is nonetheless that the prices of some products might take a while to stabilize after the panic-buying.
There are also very strict and inconvenient rules put in place during the State of Emergency regarding groceries shopping. In Iquitos, markets start business around 5 am and the police force the vendors to start closing by 9:30 am. The result is a major assembly of people trying to buy their food in the very early hours of the morning, which absolutely poses more risks for mass contagion.
Threats to Indigenous Peoples and Native Communities
There is no national action plan for Covid-19 focused on Indigenous Peoples, despite the demands from the largest national indigenous organization, Aidesep, and the regional organization of indigenous federations, Orpio. They demand the participation of indigenous peoples’ representatives in the planning and implementation of measures to avoid scenarios of mass contagion in the indigenous communities.
Indigenous peoples’ organizations from Loreto such as Fediquep, Feconacor, Opikafpe and Acodecospat have proposed sanitation protocols to be urgently implemented, but they are still waiting for a response from the government. Loreto compasses more than 24% of the Amazon indigenous population in Peru according to the latest national census. It is the region with the most indigenous communities in the country, which count about 1200. But in most of these communities, health posts have a shortage of supplies, even more so during this sanitary crisis.
There is only one lab in the region that can process the Covid-19 molecular tests: it is located in Iquitos. The Regional Health Director, Percy Minaya León, mentioned that his main concern is the population in remote areas and close to international borders, which includes indigenous and native communities. In these areas, the health care personnel that takes samples for example in Santa Rosa o Caballococha (near the borders with Colombia and Brasil), must travel by boat on the Amazon river for more than 12 hours and then go back to the lab in Iquitos with the samples for testing. There are not enough tests, nor enough personnel to cover these areas appropriately in terms of Covid-19 testing.
Out of fear of getting infected by the virus, several native communities took the decision to block all entrances to their territories in order to isolate themselves. They prefer not to receive any donation rather than exposing themselves to possible infection. However, not everybody is respecting their decision. There are unscrupulous merchants, hostile public officials, rapporteurs, illegal loggers and miners, uninformed military and police, and other outsiders who do not understand that their decision falls within their right to self-determination and is valid and well-founded.
There are many basic needs which lack coverage for indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon, now representing major obstacles for their wellbeing during this health crisis. According to the census for native communities conducted in 2017, only 9,8% of the indigenous population in the Amazon has access to the Internet, where they could consult the most recent prevention and protection measures. Moreover, only 25,8% of these communities have access to a public drinking water system, complicating washing hands to prevent infections.
To overcome this crisis, the national and regional governments have a huge amount of work to do, especially in these remote areas, to avoid the worst-case scenarios, in which the most vulnerable communities become infected on large scale. After the crisis it will be necessary to evaluate to which extent the government failed to meet the needs of the indigenous population during this pandemic.
CATAPA wants to dedicate this Earth Day to our partner organization in Peru, the Chaikuni Institute. They are facing a critical financial situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We want them to keep fighting against climate change and we are sure you do too! Here we are sharing their message and call for donations.
FROM CHAIKUNI INSTITURE
Today is the 50th Anniversary of #EarthDay, a historic moment of reflection and celebration… But, what is different this year?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us in different measures and proportions, we all know that nothing will be the same again. It’s time to reflect, prevent, and reinvent.
After 8 years of work promoting sustainable land-management and forest regeneration with local communities, supporting indigenous federations in making their fundametal rights respected, and accompanying indigenous students on their journey to become professionals, the Chaikuni Institute faces a critical situation. If we don’t quickly raise enough funds we will have to end our activities.
Now, more than ever, we need your support. We are working to mitigate the effects of climate change by regenerating the most important terrestrial ecosystem, the Amazon rainforest. We can’t give up. There is too much to be done.
Celebrate nature, celebrate life and celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day with us. Please, DONATE NOW and become part of the global movement to fight climate change
All donations will be matched a 50% until April 24 as part of the Climate Action Campaign of Global Giving!
The 2020 Climate Action Campaign is an exclusive opportunity for GlobalGiving partners working on climate action to participate in a five-day matching campaign and compete for five year-long slots in the GlobalGiving Climate Action Fund. The Climate Action Campaign runs from Monday 20th of April 20 till Friday 24th of April.
The campaign is centered around the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
*GlobalGiving is the largest global crowdfunding community connecting nonprofits, donors, and companies in nearly every country.
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