Dec
Defending Natural Resources
Silencing Voices: Murders of Anti-Mining Activists in Chiapas and El Salvador
December 2, 2009
By the Communications team of the National Roundtable against Mineral Mining
On November 27 Mariano Abarca Roblero, a leader in the Mexican Network of the Affected by Mining (REMA), was assassinated. During the criminal act, Orlando Velásquez was also gravely injured. Orlando was a friend of the environmentalist that was riddled with bullets in front of his house in Chiapas (Mexico).
Abarca Roblero, together with his wife and four children, participated in an intense struggle against the Canadian company Blackfire, owner of ten mineral exploitation concessions in the Chiapan municipality of Chicomuselo.
On July 10th of this year, the director of public relations for Blackfire, Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro, took the environmentalist to court in the name of the company, accusing him of participating in illegal organizations, attacks on means of communications, damages to Blackfire property, disturbing the peace and other crimes.
Defying the suit, Mariano participated in a sit-in in front of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City to demand that the Canadian extractive companies leave the indigenous Mexican territories. Days after, he participated in a forum about mining carried out in the Mexican Congress, where he denounced the damages caused by Blackfire in Chiapas.
On August 17th Mariano was violently arrested by the police. The state governor offered to acquit him in exchange for him abandoning the struggle against the mining and if he impeded the II REMA Assembly in Chiapas, but he didn’t accept. Finally he was released, thanks to national and international pressure, and he continued the work until the day he was assassinated.
The homicide of the Salvadoran environmentalist Gustavo Marcelo Rivera has many similarities with the Mexican case: a anti-mining resistance leader, opposing a Canadian company (Pacific Rim) persecuted by a local governmental officials (the mayor of San Isidro), an infallible fighter who was assassinated for defending the environment.
Gustavo Marcelo was never taken to court by Pacific Rim, but he was the victim of harassment by alleged mining employees—sent by the company—to insult him and threaten him, at his office at the Cultural Center in San Isidro.
Lawyers from the Canadian company did file suits against other environmental defenders: German Menjívar, Edelmira Menjívar, among others. While the Pacific Rim thug, Oscar Menjívar, assaulted other community leaders that rejected mining: Santos Rodríguez, Nelson Ventrura and Ramiro Rivera.
The coincidence between these and other cases suggests that the transnational mining companies look to silence, “for good or bad,” the voices that promote organizing and mobilization against the sinister metallic extraction projects.
In Chiapas, people demand justice for the homicide of Abarca Roblero and in Cabañas they are outraged that the authorities that have not investigated the intellectual authors of the disappearance, torture and murder of Rivera.
Translated by U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities
Link to Original Article
