The A’I Cofan in the Amazon fight back against small-scale gold-miners invading their land and new, large-scale concessions upriver
Three A’I Cofan men were staring down at a pit of rocks, dead foliage and filthy water where two gold-panners were working. Beyond was a sluice and hoses running down to the rushing, green waters of the River Aguarico. To the right, there was mud, more rocks, more equipment, a makeshift tent and camp. Behind, to the left, a Hyundai excavator and a track running downriver.
No more than two weeks before, no track had existed and all this had been primary forest. Now that was gone. Only an area about 110 x 50 metres, you might say, but this is how gold rushes start.
Down below, several other A’I Cofan men - most wearing tunics, kerchiefs and life-jackets after a rocky canoe ride - were standing with one of the miners. He said his name was “Joselito” and he wore a yellow hardhat and pique shirt suggesting he was from the nearest village, Puerto Libre. Minutes before, the miners had been pumping water through the sluice and the excavator had been filling in the pit, but all that stopped with the arrival of the A’I Cofan - most immediately concerned if the miners were using mercury and the potentially catastrophic impacts on their village, Sinangoe, less than an hour downriver.
Joselito told the Guardian and others standing there that wasn’t the case. No mercury. “Eight years in prison [if you do that],” he said at least twice.
The new mining site is in a concession awarded to one Celso Amable Ureno Quezada in January 2018, according to the Ministry of Mines, in Sucumbíos province in a stunning part of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Joselito claimed it was his first day working there and he didn’t know who the concession belonged to, although he identified one of the others, a woman he called Alejandra Cortes, as the “boss.” Asked if the concession had obtained its licence from the Ministry of Environment, as is required by Ecuadorian law, Joselito almost laughed and said he didn’t know anything about that.
The miners had been spotted and filmed by drone the previous day, but Sinangoe’s president, Mario Criollo, had been warned they might soon be there when earlier in the week he had visited operations on a large beach slightly downriver, purportedly within the same concession. Accompanied by representatives from the Defensoría del Pueblo and government water agency SENAGUA, Criollo saw the same excavator and noticed a track recently cleared through the forest along the riverbank. According to Criollo, he had been told the plan is for the track - or rather, a road - to run all the way up to the northernmost tip of the concession towards the confluence of the River Cofanes and River Chingual, where form the River Aguarico.
Publicado em : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2018/apr/09/our-territory-our-life-struggle-mining-ecuador
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