Mining in Honduras, Post-Coup, May 2010

Honduras:  Lobo Rewards Mining

Porfirio Lobo appears smiling, posing together with the Canadian ambassador, Neil Reeder, and the mining businessmen, among them Patrick Docuney, executive director of Aura Mineral Inc. and David M. Petroff, a recognized investor of extractive mining, textile sweatshops and other areas.

The photograph, on the official web site of the Honduran presidency, is accompanied by a brief description of the event: President Lobo is committed to expanding the mining sector in Honduras.

Among Lobo's commitments is a much more permissive mining law, giving total legal certainty to Canadian mining.  This law confronts a growing social resistance due to the damages to human health and water resources caused by mineral extraction ( in Valle de Siria, Entrmares alone, mining has dried up 19 of 23 rivers that they used).  

In exchange, the generous Canadian companies promise to invest $700,000,000.  Ambassador Reeder offered to compensate for the patriotic action of Lobo by promoting the return of Honduras to the Organization of American States (OEA).

This took place on April 6 in the seat of the Honduran government, the seat from which the former President Manuel Zelaya was expelled on June 28, 2009. Military vandals, on the payroll of the Honduran oligarchy and a group of trans-nationals, principally Canadian mining companies, exiled him.

These companies hated Zelaya because he promoted, together with environmental groups, community organizations and the Dioceses of Santa Rosa de Copán, a new mining law that would prohibit open mining and the use of cyanide and to give affected populations the right to make decisions about the extractive projects.

After the coup was carried out, representatives of the mining companies endorsed "the new political situation", and Peter Kent, Secretary of State for the Americas-Canada, condemned the coup but without asking for the return of Zelaya. 

Porfirio Lobo won the election [in November] and, after taking office, began to reward military coup perpetrators and their financers. As such, the president appointed the former military chief Romeo Vasquez as chairman of the state telephone company Hondutel, and the oligarch Mario Canahuati as chancellor.

Next, Lobo compensated the work done by the presidential candidates, which validated the election he won as having been democratic. He put the ex-Christian Democrat candidate, Felícito Ávila, in the Ministry of Labor and César Ham, the revolutionary candidate of the leftist Democratic Unification, in the National Agrarian Institute.

Now it is the Canadian extractive mining companies' turn (Gold Corp. Yamana Gold, etc.), and Lobo is giving them even that which the territory of Honduras lacks. In the waiting line are the telephone company, petroleum sector, media, and others.

 —

Communication team of the National Round Table against Mineral Mining

May 5, 2010

http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20100505/opiniones/79599/

 

 

  .