Capulalpam de Mendez: A Magic Town and Its Arduous Road against Mining

Concessions
Angela Martnez, American Jewish World Service

As our bus climbed the deep and winding road through the Sierra Juarez mountains, signs proclaimed
our arrival to the pueblo magicomagic townof Capulalpam de Mendez, Mexico. Looking at the
green mountains around us, I wondered what exactly the magic might be.
Capulalpam got its official magic town title several years ago, becoming the first magic town in the
Oaxaca region. The Mexican government had launched the magic town initiative in 2001 to promote a
series of unique destinations around the country, boosting the number of visitors and the local economy
in each town. But in 2011, the government of Oaxaca pressured Capulalpams indigenous authorities to
accept a new mining contractone that threatened local ecosystems, water sources and indigenous
peoples rightsin exchange for keeping the magic town title.
Capulalpams indigenous people, the Zapotec, have lived throughout Oaxaca for thousands of years, and
their territory has a history of gold and silver mining going back more than two centuries. Saul Aquino, a
Zapotec indigenous leader in Calpulalpam, told me that the chemical waste of the mining activity has
started to pollute the water, the communal land and the forest.
Throughout Oaxaca, indigenous communities have faced serious threats from the corporations that
explore and exploit their land without their consent. In some Oaxaca towns such as San Jose el Progreso,
the government failed to inform and consult the local community before giving out 50-year mining
contracts; when indigenous leaders peacefully protested these unfair mining practices, two of them
were murdered. Six people have been detained, who presumably were hired by the mining company
with the support of the municipal government.
Currently, the state of Oaxaca has around 343 mining contracts underwaymany of them for Canadian
mining operations. Despite the brutal human rights violations taking place near many of the mines, the
Canadian government has refused to enforce any type of human rights regulations on Canadian
corporations operating in Mexico and other Latin American countries; instead, the Canadian
government supports the mining industry financially and politically, regardless of its practices.
[i]

Notably, Canadas mining industry is the largest in the world, accounting for about 60 percent of the
global mining market. (The entire Latin American region is also teeming with mining exploration and
development activity, ranking second largest in the world behind Canada.
[ii]
)
Despite pressure from the Oaxaca government to accept these mining contracts, the indigenous people
and authorities of Capulalpam did not give up; instead, they raised awareness of the issue in the
community and organized at a communal assembly. Together, they decided that Capulalpam should be
a territory free of mining.
To defend their land, water and indigenous rights, the people of Capulalpam partnered with Colectivo
Oaxaqueo en Defensa del Territorio (Oaxacan Collective in Defense of Territory, or CODT), an American
Jewish World Service grantee that facilitates grassroots organizations and activists working together to
defend and promote communities' rights to their territories and natural resources.
It has been a difficult road we are walking together. [But] the collective spirit in Capulalpam is like a
belt that ties everyone together, said Francisco Garcia, a local indigenous authority who oversees
natural resources. Our spiritual values as indigenous people are attached to our land, water and
territories, which go far beyond simple monetary value.
Working together, the Zapotec people and CODT strategized, advocated and eventually made
Capulapam the first territory in Mexico that is officially free of mining. Capulalpam also kept its magic
town title, despite rejecting the new mining contract. In recent years, Capulalpams people and
indigenous government have also developed a sustainable way to increase income in the area, based on
communally-owned natural resources. In addition to a nationally-recognized ecotourism project, the
town also bottles water from a local mountain spring, runs a sustainable forestry service and operates a
small-scale gravel quarry. All of these projects are cooperatively administered by the local Zapotec
communal assembly.
After learning from the people of Capulalpam, it was clear to me what the real magic of this town is.
One definition of magic is the use of special powers to make things happen that would usually be
impossible. Author Matthew Strecher has also described magical realism as "what happens when a
highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something 'too strange to believe. Capulapams magic is
the power of the indigenous people to come together and collectively decide their own future, and to
preserve their identity, existence and spiritual relationship with the forest, the water and the land. It is a
magic that governments and mining corporations do not understand yetperhaps because it is too real
and powerful to believe.
[i]
Gordon, Todd and Webber, Jeffrey R. Imperialism and Resistance: Canadian Mining in Latin America,
Third World Quarterly, 29: 1,70
[ii]
http://www.coha.org/hidden-hegemony-canadian-mining-in-latin-america