MINERS AND FARMERS CHALLENGE MEXICO'S COPPER GIANT
By David Bacon
Al Jazeera America, 4/15/15
Miners from all over Mexico march in Cananea to support
the strikers and farmers.
Traveling west across the Sonoran desert, just south of
the U.S. border on Mexico's Route 2, La Mariquita peak dominates the horizon
for miles. Just below it rise huge ochre
mountains of tailings from the world's second largest copper mine - Cananea.
As the highway approaches town, it passes a huge white
concrete water tank and adjacent pumping station. Normally its huge pipes would be humming from
the water flowing through them to the mine.
For two weeks, though, the pumps have been silent and the flow
halted. Instead, in what is normally empty
desert, tents and busses line the highway.
Dust and smoke from cooking fires fill the air. Hundreds of people walk about, listen to
speeches, or just talk among themselves.
This planton, or occupation, has successfully shut most
operations at the mine. Cananea must
consume huge quantities of water pumped from 49 wells across the desert in
order to process crushed ore into copper concentrate.
Sergio Tolano
Many of the planton's residents are miners who went on
strike in 2008. Two years later the mine
was reopened by massive police intervention.
Since then it has been operated by contracted laborers recruited from
far distant parts of Mexico. Now, for
the first time in six years, 80% of the mine is again paralyzed. This time, however, strikers didn't stop the
operation by themselves. Half of the
people with them here are farmers -- residents of the Rio Sonora valley, angry
over a toxic spill that upended their lives in August last year.
This winter groups of miners fanned out to the small
towns along the river, talking about that disaster's impact. Strikers and community leaders called
meetings in the town plazas, making speeches through jerry-rigged speakers on
the back of pickup trucks. Finally, on
March 18, busses headed from the towns toward Cananea. Mine managers, hearing they were coming,
called out hundreds of police to keep strikers from blocking the mine gates.
The protestors outflanked them. Instead of heading through town to the mine
itself, they roared down the highway to the pumping station. Facing hundreds of angry miners and farmers,
the operators shut down the pumps and fled.
And as the pumps grew quiet, so did operations at the mine itself.
The planton
The first battle
of the Mexican Revolution was fought here, when a miner's insurrection
challenged the mine's U.S. owner, Colonel William Green, in 1906. That earned the town its reputation as
"Revolutionary Cananea."
Over the years since, the mine first belonged to U.S.
corporations, and then was taken over by the Mexican government. It's union, Section 65 of the national
miners' union, the Mineros, had a strong contract. Work in the mine, while dangerous, paid
better than most jobs in Mexico. Miners
built small homes in the town at the foot of the mountain.
In 1990, however, the mine was sold to Grupo Mexico, a
corporation owned by German Larrea, for $475 million, less than a quarter of
its market value. Larrea bought the
privatized national railroad as well.
Capitalizing on his friendship with then President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari, he became one of the wealthiest men in Mexico, worth over $15 billion.
Reyna Valenzuela and her family
Grupo Mexico produces two-thirds of Mexico's copper and
has the largest copper reserves in the world.
It bought the U.S. mining corporation American Smelting and Refining
Company (ASARCO) in 1999, and now owns mines in Arizona. It operates the world's fifth largest copper
mine in Peru, and is negotiating to buy others in Spain.
Corporate expansion, however, came at a price. In 1998 miners struck in Cananea to stop
reductions in the workforce to cut labor costs.
After Grupo Mexico asked the government to call in troops to break the
strike, 800 miners were laid off. Union
leaders were blacklisted. According to
Carlos Navarette, one of the organizers of the planton, "the company
blacklisted us throughout the whole country." In one job interview, he
charges, "the person interviewing me asked me where I was from, and I told
him from the south. But then he saw my
name on his computer. He said, 'There's
no work for you here.'"
Anger mushroomed in 2006 when 65 miners died in an
explosion at Grupo Mexico's Pasta de Conchos coal mine. Workers had complained of gas leaks, and
struck repeatedly over safety concerns.
After five days, however, the company halted rescue efforts, and the
government announced the mine would be closed.
Laura Gutierrez, from the river town of San Rafael
The head of the Mineros, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, accused
the corporation and government of "industrial homicide." Within weeks the conservative administration
of President Vicente Fox charged him with fraud, and Gomez left Mexico to
escape arrest. Since then all charges
against him were found groundless, and he has been reelected union president
several times. Nevertheless, he
continues to stay in Vancouver, Canada, worried that the government and Grupo
Mexico will find another pretext for jailing him should he return.
In 2008 miners in Cananea went on strike again, over
health and safety concerns. They charged
that the company had disconnected the huge fans and pipes that extract dust
from the buildings where the ore is crushed.
Dust buildup can cause silicosis, permanently damaging miners'
lungs. A study by a team of U.S. and
Mexican health and safety experts found "substantial elevations in the
prevalence of respiratory symptoms" among miners and that "a significant
percentage of this population may have radiologic silicosis." In one area acid mist was so prevalent it had
eaten away at the structure of the building.
Under Mexican law, an enterprise that is on strike cannot
continue to function, so the mine stopped operation. But Grupo Mexico asked the administration of
Mexico's next president, Felipe Calderon, to declare the strike illegal. In spite of court decisions upholding its
legality, the government complied. Three
thousand federal police drove miners from the gates and the mine was then
reopened.
Sergio Martinez and Juan Velasquez, two striking miners in front of the pumping station
Grupo Mexico created a new business entity, Buenavista de
Cobre, to hire workers through contractors to replace the strikers. Sergio Martinez, who worked in the foundry
for 13 years, says that before the strike miners got a base pay of 1800 pesos
for working 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.
With a productivity bonus, they earned at least 3000 pesos ($215). Today the contracted employees earn 1200
pesos ($85) a week, and work 12 hours a day instead of 8. Adjusted for inflation, the average wage in
mining nationally is 21 percent lower today than it was in 1978.
Says another miner, "If you say you're from Cananea,
you can't get a job. Ninety percent of
the people now working in the mine are from far away. This is very humiliating for people
here. You have kids and there's no work
for them either - even more humiliating."
Like many others, this miner crossed the border without documents to
find work in Arizona. "I left my
family here. The pain of our separation
can't be compared to anything," he laments.
Then last August 40,000 cubic meters (10.5 million
gallons) of concentrated sulfuric acid and heavy metals was released from a
holding pond at the mine into the headwaters of the Sonora River. Arturo Rodriguez, of the office of the
Attorney General for Environmental Protection, told the Associated Press that
the cause was lax supervision at the mine, along with rains and construction
defects. Grupo México didn't respond to
requests for comment, but according to Yahoo News, Juan Rebolledo, vice
president for international relations, said that the acid wasn't toxic and
"there's no problem, nor any serious consequence for the population, as
long as we take adequate precautions."
Grupo México's solution was to pour calcium into the river to neutralize
the acid.
Heriberto Verdugo, a miners' union leader, talks with a
group of farmers
Miners charge, however, that Grupo Mexico was using a
contractor, Tecovifesa, to work on the dam.
"Before the strike, experienced union members, who were direct
employees, did all the work," according to Martinez.
And although the spill began on August 6, the company
didn't tell the river communities until August 8. Many only discovered what had happened when
the river turned orange. "Our
children were at the river that day," remembers Reyna Valenzuela, from
Ures. "We didn't know they would be
affected because the company didn't tell anyone." The children got extreme rashes, and doctors
finally told her they were due to heavy metal exposure. Other residents began to experience more
serious health problems.
The family's business making sweets and cheese folded
when customers in the state capital didn't want to buy any products from the
river towns. Valenzuela went to the mine
to ask for money to take the kids to Phoenix for tests. "The miners helped
us and gave us a place to stay," she recalls, but when they went to the
mine's director, José Julián Chavira, "they wouldn't even talk with
us." She became one of the first residents of the planton.
Jose
Angel Villa Peralta, a farm laborer from the river town of Distancia de Aconchi
Another was Laura Gutierrez. "Our town, San Rafael, is made up of
farmers," she explains. "We plant corn and peanuts, and we didn't
harvest anything last year. The crops were just thrown into the trash. Now we have nothing to live on. That's why we're here." Farmers there and elsewhere along the river
aren't planting this spring because they fear the water is contaminated. So do customers for their crops.
"This was an extremely toxic brew that went into the
river," according to Garrett Brown, director of the Maquiladora Health and
Safety Network, and former inspector for CalOSHA. "Lead causes serious and permanent
damage to children. Cadmium is a known
carcinogen. The spill deposited heavy
metals along hundreds of miles, which wind up along riverbanks and leach into
the aquifer. People eat the food that's
grown with water from the river and aquifers.
That has long term implications for their health."
Approximately 24,000 people live along the river. Three hundred wells were closed after the
spill. Grupo Mexico's website displays
photos of pastoral scenes along the river and posts articles that describe its
efforts to clean it up. It says the
company has distributed 164 million liters of water, and installed 58 tanks of
5,500 gallons each in schools. The
company set up a $150 million fund to pay damages to residents, and paid a fine
of $2 million.
Jesus
Rios Leon holds a list of all the heavy metals found in a test of his blood.
Many river residents, however, say they haven't received
anything. "We didn't go talk with
the town people right after the spill, because many believed in the
promises," says Sergio Tolano, general secretary of Section 65. "But months later most saw they would
get nothing, and were willing to take action."
The purpose of the planton, he says, is not just to stop
the mine's operation. The union and
residents have organized a coalition, the Sonora River Front. It is demanding that the government force
Grupo Mexico to clean up the river and take responsibility for the health and
lost income of residents. It also seeks
to restore the strikers to their jobs.
Some elected officials recognize that their political
future could be at stake if people vote against a government they perceive as
too friendly to Grupo Mexico. Alfonso
Durazo, a Federal deputy from the leftwing MORENA party, came to the planton to
show support. When he tried to turn his
speech into a campaign event for local candidates, however, an angry crowd told
him to speak to their concerns, not his own.
"Because the miners are supporting us, we're
supporting them," Valenzuela says. "If we all get together, we can do
something here. The whole Rio Sonora is
with them."
Strikers burn in effigy a picture of German Larrea, owner
of Grupo Mexico
Part of this effort also includes the U.S. union for
copper miners, the United Steel Workers (USW). Manny Armenta, a USW
representative, has helped the local union in Cananea since the strike
started. The night the police broke the
lines at the gate in 2010, he led families out of the union hall to
safety.
"You could smell the tear gas all over, " he
recalls. "It was like a military
occupation." At the march to the
pumping station, Armenta spoke to the crowd.
"The government and Grupo Mexico are making history," he
charged, "but backwards, taking away the right to strike and the right to
industrial safety."
The U.S. union is trying to renegotiate a contract with
Grupo Mexico. As a result of buying
ASARCO, the company is now the new owner of mines where the Steel Workers
represents the miners. Two years ago the
Mineros and the USW agreed to join to form a single union. The merger has not been completed, but they
now support each other in dealing with their common employers, and look to the
day when their bargaining can be coordinated.
Tolano credits this alliance with keeping the strike in
Cananea alive. "Some of us have had
a very hard time, but due to our tradition of supporting each other we've been
able to take care of ourselves," he says.
"There have been divorces.
Some people have lost their homes.
But we're still here."
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