Reportaje Rancho Grande- versión ingles

B2Gold has to go! Struggle against Canadian open cast gold mining in the North of Nicaragua. Birgit Müller, FOEI The three yellow school busses with young anti-mining activists from ecclesiastic grassroots communities from all over Nicaragua ploughed their way through muddy roads, never ending lush valleys over dangerously narrow bridges crossing rushing waters to reach the small town of Rancho Grande in the North of Nicaragua that has been designated to become one of the centres of open cast gold mining. Here beautiful old trees shade coffee and cacao bushes of all sizes interspersed with banana plants, yuca,malanga and the occasional cornfield with mature cobs. The fertile valleys of Rancho Grande are among the breadbaskets of Nicaragua. When other regions are affected by drought, food continues to grow here.

This lush paradise is in danger now since the Canadian mining company B2Gold from Vancouver acquired gold mining concessions in the area buying up the joint venture between the Canadian mining company Central Sun Mining and the Nicaraguan company Minesa. The planned open cast mine in Rancho Grande is part of 53 mining concessions that the Nicaraguan government granted since 2011. Since 2004 Canadian mining companies in cooperation with Nicaraguan enterprises have explored the gold reserves in this area and found gold arteries that run from lasBrisas, through el Cerro Grande all the way to La Dalia. For four years now successive mining companies have tried to buy up land in the area, while the ranchers, coffee growers and small farmersstruggled to keep them from their land.1 49 000 hectares in the area around Rancho Grande are part of the 25 year long concession, among them the nature reserve Las Aguas, the majestic Cerro Grande where most of the major rivers have their spring and in particular the Yaoscariver whose waters the mining companies uses to wash the gold ore with cyanide. A study of the Centro Humboldt shows that although mining is still in its exploratory phase the fishes in the river have become so contaminated that they are non-comestible. Gold mining is one of the most inefficient and most polluting extraction activities known. From one ton of earth dug up with huge caterpillars one to five grams of gold are actually extracted, leaving a landscape of devastation, pollution and destruction.In 2013, however, gold has become the main export commodity of the countrysurpassing both beef (US$389 million) and coffee (US$349 million), the Centro de Tramites de lasExportaciones (CETREX) reported. Led by B2Gold, a Canadian firm, mining companies exported nearly US$436 million worth of gold, a new record, despite a substantial drop in the commodity’s selling price. The industry’s overall contribution to the economy, furthermore, is deceivingly small: mining employs just 2.2% of Nicaragua’s eligible workforce and represents only 2.5% of the Gross Domestic Product, the 92-page report of the Centro Humboldt argues2. The ecclesiastic grassroots communities chose Rancho Grande as this year's venue for their third folk festival of the environment to attract media attention to the local struggle against the powerful mining

1http://www.addac.org.ni/videos/10-la-mineria-una-nefasta-realidad-para-rancho-grande/ (accessed 3. November 2014) 2Centro Humboldt 2013 EstadoActualdelsectorminero y sus impactos socio-ambientales en Nicaragua, 2012-2013 (Current state of the mining sector and its socio-environmental impacts in Nicaragua)

companies. The local major and the governing FrenteNacional de LiberacionNacional (FSLN), however, continued to present the mining projects as economic blessings and export successes, and brought in mine supporters from mining towns as far away as Siuna and Waslala to demonstrate support. Fortunately a convoy of thirty busses and lorries carrying mine supporters were on their way home when the yellow busses with the opponents approached the last river crossings. Direct clashes were avoided and shortly before the fall of the night the activists arrivedin the safe haven of the yard of the Catholic Church where the local chaplain welcomed them with a warm meal. A succession of local catholic priests has been instrumental for informing the population around Rancho Grande about the mines and for backing their protests. When the mining company found gold after eight years of exploration and wanted to convert their exploration permit into a permit for exploitation in 2012, father Theodor Curtis preached against the environmental destruction that would follow. In the tradition of Monsignor Romero of el Salvador he urged the inhabitants not to give their consent to a project that would destroy the basis of their livelihood. According to the article on energy and mining of Nicaragua's environmental legislation, the local population has to be consulted. Although failure to obtain consent does not lead to a legally bindingstop of mining, the mining companies want social calm to go about their business undisturbed. To make people sign up in support of the project the mining company B2Gold thus started to distribute zinc laminas for roofing, chicken and pigs, rubber boots and machetes. When father Curtis warned the local population that they were being cheated, the company started to use more sophisticated measures and enrolled the local authorities to obtain signatures of consent. When poor familiessigned to receive food parcels from the local authorities their signatures were used in support of the mine. A drinking water project was started and inhabitants who signed up for it had their signatures counted in favour of the mine. Health workers, teachers and other public servants were coerced to give their support to the mine if they wanted to keep their jobs. Sandinista members of the municipal council who objected to the mine were asked by theFSLN partyto resign. The large majority of the inhabitants of Rancho Grande and of the surrounding villages however remained opposed to mining and numerous members of the evangelical church refused to follow their pastor who was a strong advocate for the mining company. In 2013 parents from the 38 surrounding communities organised a school strike in opposition to the mine in 45 schools and nine marches in protest. A stage had been set up outside of the Catholic Church and as the music began to play, more and more people came in from the streets. The youth groups from different regions of Nicaragua performed folkloric dances in colourful costumes to Marimba and Costeña music that had inspired the Sandinista Revolution in the 1970s. Short theatre pieces alternated with prayers and calls to resist the mining companies that"play with the lives of the people". Over and over the motto of the movement resounded: "Quientiene un amorgrandedefiende a Rancho Grande!" (Who is capable of great love defends Rancho Grande). The discourses explicitly situated the resistance to the mining companies in the much longer tradition of 522

years of resistance to colonisation, exploitation and oppression. Also the revolutionary spirit of the older generations who had been up in arms thirty years ago came back to life. They evoked Sandino, the love for the land and the church of liberation. Not even the rain that started to pour diminished the enthusiasm as young and old drew closer and closer to the stage fusing with the performers in a single wave of joy.

After the celebration wet and tired the younger activists slept on the church benches or on the floor while the older ones were offered a bed by the local inhabitants. Early the next morning the church was packed with peasants who had sometimes walked for hours to join the service held by father Pablito Espinoza who preached with fervour for the courage to defend the rights of the poor and against fear. "I received death threats", he said, "I was told 'father you are going to die' — 'yes of course', I answered them. I told the mining company, 'if you have any dignity left, leave Nicaragua'!" The company B2Gold, however, continues to buy up land, often hiding its identity behind straw men or governmental projects. The inhabitants suspect that the 5000 manzanas that a government commissionaire wanted to purchase on the Cerro Grande supposedly for reforestation were in fact a cover up, as the Cerro

Grande is still covered with splendid old growth forest. Instead of 5000 the government agents were so far only able to acquire 1500 manzanas as the locals refused to sell. Barbed wire and army units secure the exploratory pits. The earth extracted from 150 meter deep exploratory wells is washed with cyanide in plastic lined pools, so called pozas de cola. People who walk after night on the road close to the pits are stopped and interrogated.

"We don't have economic power, we only have tenderness", the speakers in the final rally maintained, "the bad have everything and the good has so little". While the Sandinista youth groups threw firecrackers and loudspeakers played recordings of a discourse in favour of the mine in a loop to drown out the speeches at the meeting, the activist unperturbed declared: "this fight has no party flags, no race, no confession. The yes or no of this mining concession depends on us here in Rancho Grande." While father Espinoza tried to hold back the protestors from going into the streets of Rancho Grande, as no authorisation to demonstrate had been possible to obtain, people went anyway for a short march through the town to show that they would not allow the government "to oppress our rights", as one old man expressed it. When the three busses went back on their precarious journey, they encountered again the busses and lorries that brought backthe mine supporters from outside. In the official Nicaraguan media, it was only these officially orchestrated marches that received attention. The insight that foreign investment in gold mining brings environmental destruction rather than positive development that inspired local protests didnot fit with the outlook neither of the Sandinista nor of the Conservative newspapers. Cut off from national media and without Internet access the inhabitants of Rancho Grande have however a clear idea about the Canadian investors. As one of the farmers put it: “They donot carewhether our wateris contaminated.A foreigner, he is not interested in our lives.And Iwonder: If I were topeein Canadain a public space, they will put me in jail,won’t they? And I just let off water what would they do to me if I did all they are doing here… Whydon’t they respectour water, why don’t they respect usas humanbeings?” Canadian mining companies can act with impunity in this remote corner of Nicaragua where courageous men and women fight an almost impossible fight for their land, health and future of their children. It is now up to the Canadian public to do their part and call the Canadian companies to account.