Hundreds of campesinos marched from the northern town of La Barca to protest new laws expanding mining and enabling the creation of autonomous “model cities.”
Peru’s Yanacocha mining company, facing an ultimatum from protesters to leave the contested Conga site, denied press reports that it plans to quit gold-rich Cajamarca region.
Saying justice is no longer possible within Peru, AwajĂşn and Wampis leaders in Amazonas region announced they plan to seek independence or unite their territory with Ecuador.
Sabino Romero, cacique (traditional chief) of the Yukpa indigenous people, who opposed extractive industries in Venezuela’s Sierra de Perijá, was assassinated in a road ambush.
Lenca indigenous communities in Honduras have declared a state of “maximum alert,” pledging to resist hydro-electric and mineral development projects slated for their lands.
Hundreds of National Police troops have surrounded a protest encampment estabished by campesinos at the site of the Conga mining project in northern Peru.
Colombia’s largest coal miner, Cerrejon, under force majeure due to a work stoppage, was targted in a guerilla attack that left four of the company’s trucks destroyed by fire.
Protesters demonstrated against the Dominican government’s deals with a Canadian mining multinational, and with developers claiming titles to properties in an ecological reserve.
Ecuador’s indigenous movement reacted to the re-election of President Rafael Correa by calling upon him to end the extractive model and criminalization of protest.
The Yanacocha mining company issued a statement warning that a consulta by local villagers on the Conga project could “place in danger all the mineral industry” of Peru.
A contractor gets 38 years for the murder of two leaders of the union at a Drummond mine; the judge asks for an investigation of the company’s managers back in Alabama.
Canadian companies plan to make $50 billion on a Dominican gold mine; Dominicans can look forward to getting $1.3 billion—and an environmental disaster.
