PAINFUL RETURN

by Sandra Cuffe Intibucá, Honduras

That’s the headline on the front page of today’s paper (El Tiempo), beside a
photo of an adolescent in a wheelchair, crying. He and four other young Hondurans,
aged 8 to 26, were flown back into the country yesterday afternoon, minus a few
legs.

They had been on their way to the United States, where they probably would have
worked long hours in miserable conditions in order to send money back to their
families here in Honduras. Cold and tired, they did not manage to hang on in
the trains in Mexico and were mutilated under the wheels. The press and some
of the highest members of the government were present at the airport to greet
them and their families. Everyone cried out against the barbarity of their misfortune
and urged Honduran youth not to follow the dangerous path north, in light of
the considerable risks involved.

The youth of Honduras is not ignorant of the risks involved. The issue of
what causes them to migrate north in spite of the risks involved was totally
lacking from the coverage of what would appear to be a few unfortunate
incidents, isolated from any context whatsoever. What immediately struck me
was the origin of one of the five returned Hondurans: El Pedernal, El
Porvenir, Francisco Morazan - in a region called the Siria Valley.

I visited El Pedernal a month ago. The community is situated in close
proximity to the San Martin gold mine, owned by Glamis Gold, a company with
Canadian and US shareholders and investors, via its wholly owned subsidiary,
Entre Mares. The overwhelming majority of local inhabitants are and have
been opposed to the mine, and have many reasons to do so. The mining
industry employs ’modern’ methods at the lowest possible cost, to attract
investment. This is of course aided by the fact that powerful countries and
financial institutions have lobbied most governments to reform their
legislation, benefiting foreign companies at the expense of the local
population.

In the Siria Valley a multinational company bought a mining concession from
the Honduran government. When they decided they wanted to go ahead and
mount a gold mine, they had the right to evict (voluntary displacement is a
myth) an entire community. They have the right to use any water both inside
and outside of their concession. They could import any machinery and
equipment without paying taxes. They clearcut the entire area.

What this means in concrete terms is that every day Glamis Gold blasts apart
a mountainside, crushes it into smaller particles and extracts the gold by
soaking the material in cyanide solution. I left El Pedernal by a road that
hugs the fence protecting the mining installations. What was once a
mountain is piled in heaps a few meters away, reportedly also to help
conceal from view the deep craters where tons and tons (literally) of
material is blasted and processed every day. Some of these piles are waste
material, the gold already having been extracted. Others have a sprinkler
system to douse them in cyanide solution before being transferred to the
lixiviation pools of cyanide solution also right on the other side of the
fence.

There has been an alarming increase of disease among the surrounding
communities, especially in El Pedernal. Respiratory illnesses, strange skin
diseases, and mental health problems have all been documented by medical
brigades. Company representatives maintain that there is no relation
between the mine and the alarming health problems that have appeared since
the operations begun; they are unfortunate isolated incidents, probably due
to the lack of hygiene in the area.

WHERE THERE IS MINING, THERE IS PROGRESS

Further into today’s newspaper, there is a paid announcement by the National
Association of Metallic Mining of Honduras (ANAMINH), in an attempt to
combat the growing opposition movement to open pit mining, and more
specifically, to the recent press coverage of a Civic Alliance’s proposal to
reform the General Mining Law, which came into effect in the aftermath of
Hurricane Mitch. The page displays information about all the benefits
received by the municipalities since the new Mining Law from the 1% tax the
companies are obliged to pay, and notes the various projects they have
supported. ’Where there is mining, there is progress.’

In the Siria Valley, the 1% municipal tax is paid to the municipality of San
Ignacio, while the majority of the mine’s impacts are in El Porvenir, but
that is really beside the point. The point is that a foreign mining company
has come in and destroyed an entire region, in total but foreseeable
disregard of the local population’s concerns and opposition, exporting
millions and leaving peanuts to fuel their public relations campaign. The
point is that the destruction cannot be compensated by any amount of money
or token social projects.

ANAMINH reports that in the Siria Valley a water project has been carried
out - a part of the company’s ’Community Development’ project support. This
is laughable at best. Water and soil samples examined in a recent study
showed unacceptably high levels of mercury and arsenic. When in the area, I
crossed at least 5 river and stream-beds. They were completely dry - during
the rainy season. In fact, community members told me that it hardly even
rains anymore, due to the immense deforestation carried out by the mining
company and also by elements of the powerful logging industry. Crops have
been failing due to the lack of water and rainfall. This year, most people
did not even bother sowing their crops.

Community members explained that as a result of the situation many families
live almost entirely from ’remesas’ - the money family members working in
the US send back home. The great majority of families in El Pedernal and El
Porvenir have at least some relative working in the north.

Although their descriptions of the train ride and accidents were included in
the news, either no one asked the 5 youth to tell the stories of why they
left or these were omitted from the coverage. After all, it’s much better
to leave the issue as 5 unfortunate accidents and to blame the dangerous
trains in Mexico than to connect it to the situation in Honduras - to
poverty, to environmental destruction, to foreign domination, to reality.

TO THE RESCUE

A cartoon in the same paper depicts President Ricardo Maduro and the United
Nations World Food Programme carrying bags and cans of food, running to the
rescue of a poor campesino family, who, startled, respond "But we’ve been
living in poverty all our lives!"

There is somewhat of a famine going on in part of Honduras because crops
have been failing due to a drought. Aside from the cartoon, I didn’t see
any comments about the everyday poverty of the communities in the area and
around the country, nor was there discussion of the causes of rainfall
shortages and crop failure around the country, in many areas directly linked
to deforestation and other industries causing environmental damage, such as
mining.

President Ricardo Maduro poses for the cameras, handing out bags and cans of
basic staples. The UN World Food Programme has been supplying food aid to
support the crisis. Crises in general do not appear all of a sudden;
indeed, most famines around the world are predictable months in advance.
However, it is much easier to ignore root causes and warning signs, and to
hand out some donated grains in highly publicized gatherings.

The concept of ’food aid’ has been heavily criticized by many progressive
analysts. In many parts of the world, it has been seen as an organized
effort to undermine grain production and the local market. Much of this aid
is heavily subsidized grain produced in North America, bought by government
aid agencies and distributed to local farmers during the crisis. The FAO,
USAID and the Catholic Relief Services have been especially criticized by
grassroots organizations and communitites in Latin America for their dumping
of genetically modified corn and soy products. A recent study of FAO aid in
several Latin American countries revealed that food aid to Guatemala,
Colombia and Bolivia, among others, contained Starlink corn, a brand of
genetically engineered corn banned in the US even for animal consumption,
due to serious health risks.

Back in Honduras, the shortage in south-eastern Honduras would not be able
to be alleviated by national production. There is currently a shortage of
beans; the government has banned export until the next harvest and is
depleting the state supply in order to keep prices in check. This should
not be happening - Honduras has more than enough rich and fertile land to
feed its population.

Most of the richest lands, however, belong to members of the national elite,
and to the US-based multinational fruit companies still operating in the
banana republic, although they have somewhat diversified their crops to
include pineapple and African palm plantations, covering the vast majority
of northern Honduras.

Diversification has also been actively promoted by international
’cooperation’ and ’development’ agencies, which often come and go with
projects that reflect their changing policies. Coffee farmers in Intibucá
explain that they used to grow shade coffee. International agencies came in
with projects financing open plantations, and the population changed their
cultivation methods. Over the last while, more projects have come to
finance shade grown coffee; coffee farmers laugh at the irony as they revert
to their original method. Other government and international agencies
decide that certain regions are not in fact most apt for coffee, and promote
vegetables. Or oriental eggplants. Or ornamental flowers. It is
export-oriented ’development’ at the expense of what would seem to be the
rational order of priority: local subsistence, national market, export.

And so, there is currently a bean shortage in the country. Another local
crisis is being resolved with international food aid. Mining has brought
progress to the Siria Valley. Five young Hondurans’ legs were mutilated in
unfortunate train accidents in Mexico. The overall message of today’s
newspaper reveals numerous isolated stories and incidents.

The message of today’s newspaper: Melvin Aguilar Acosa, aged 20, of El
Pedernal, El Porvenir, Francisco Morazan, lost a leg in a terrible but
isolated incident. Period. This story is neatly contained on page 15. It
need not be situated in any other context. Page 15 is not to be connected
to page 3, page 54, or to the reality in your community or country. Crises
are local and unconnected problems; they are not manifestations of the
nature of the dominant system that survives off the backs of the majority of
the population.

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Sandra Cuffe works with Rights Action in Honduras. For more information, to
participate in an educational delegation dealing with natural resources and
globalization in Honduras (August 14-22, 2004), or to support grassroots
organizations struggling for land, freedom and justice in Honduras,
Guatemala and Chiapas, contact Rights Action: info@rightsaction.org ,
416-654-2074.