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New Notebooks of Socialism

Canadian mining against indigenous peoples in

Mexico
Pierre-Beaucage

Issue 18, Fall 2017

Natives and Quebec society. fight together

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Beaucage, P. (2017). Canadian mining against indigenous peoples in Mexico.
New Cahiers du socialisme, (18), 140–144.

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Canadian mining against

indigenous peoples in Mexico
Pierre Beaucage1

For several years now, the mineral resources hidden in the

indigenous territories of several Latin American countries have aroused
the greed of powerful interests. The Amerindian peoples had to adapt
their defense strategies to this new context. In Mexico, the Sierra
Nororiental de Puebla, a mountainous area located about three hundred
kilometers northeast of the capital, is no exception. This region is
inhabited by approximately 600,000 Indigenous people, mostly Nahuas
and Totonacs. In 1992, to please its NAFTA partners, the Mexican
government passed new mining legislation.

The gold rush

Like Canadian law, Mexican law gives priority to the exploitation of
minerals and hydrocarbons over any other land use, which has
facilitated the penetration of foreign mining companies2 . After the year
2000, the rapid rise in the price of raw materials caused a veritable
rush towards areas likely to contain gold deposits, in particular the high
mountains of Puebla. Canadian transnationals, such as Almaden
Minerals and Gold Corp., as well as Mexican companies (Minera Plata
Real and Frisco) have obtained enormous concessions. By 2005,
these totaled 56,000 hectares, of which 60% for the Canadian company Almaden
The new technology used no longer proceeds by digging galleries
to reach the richest ore veins. After a period of exploration, during
which the highest-grade deposits are determined by drilling, so-called
“open pit” mining proceeds with the removal of the vegetation and all
the surface soil. After which, thousands of tons of rocks are blasted,
transported, crushed in giant crushers; the crushed ore is

1 Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Montreal.

2 Between 2000 and 2006, the government of Vicente Fox granted 17,629 mining
concessions, covering an area of 30 million hectares, while his successor was a little
more reserved, with 8,414 claims, for a total of 22 million of hectares.
In August 2012, for example, 833 new mining projects were registered by 301
companies, of which barely 12 were Mexican, against 202 Canadian. In all, it is a
quarter of the national surface which has been thus alienated. Pierre Beaucage,
“Other South Plans. Canadian mining companies in Mexico and popular resistance",
Possibles, vol. 39, n° 1, 2015, <http://redtac.org/possibles/2015/05/30/dautres-plans-
sud les-compagnies-minieres-canadiennes-au-mexique-et-la-resistance-populaire> .
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Canadian mining companies in Mexico 141

then centrifuged using torrents of water. The gold granules, heavier and purified
with sodium cyanide, settle at the bottom of the vats. At the current market price
of 1000 dollars per ounce, four ounces of gold per ton of rock are enough to
make the operation profitable. Next to the site, mountains of slag accumulate
and, in a huge retention basin, water contaminated with cyanide.

Resistance
When the indigenous communities saw the drilling teams arrive and were
informed of the consequences of open-pit mines on their living environment,
resistance was organised, first at the local level. You should know that in Mexico,
before a major project is implemented in a municipality, the mayor must sign a
document authorizing the change of land use. AT
Tetela de Ocampo, the Frisco mining company, which is owned by Carlos Slim,
one of the richest men in the world, claimed to operate a gold mine at the La
Espejera site. The municipal authorities, reiterating the wish of the majority of the
inhabitants (small farmers and herders), declared the site a “protected area” from
any mining exploitation; Frisco opted out. In the municipality of Zautla, more than
five thousand peasants marched on the La Lupe site, property of the Chinese
transnational JDC Minerales and evicted – peacefully – the workers and
managers. In this case, it was a network of local associations (craftsmen's
cooperatives, savings groups, popular education center) that was the driving
force behind the movement, which was subsequently endorsed by the municipal
council.
In the municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, Almaden Minerals, owned by Canadian
Morgan Poliquin, having discovered a promising deposit near the village of Santa
Maria, has a concession covering thousands of hectares.
Its strategy has been to appease municipal authorities by funding repairs and
expansions to public buildings. In Santa Maria, the company hired a few dozen
young people, offering them salaries much higher than local standards, and it
compensated the owners of the plots where it had boreholes drilled. The
population found itself divided: on the one hand, those who benefit directly from
the activities of Almaden, on the other, the peasant families who see them
drawing heavily on the water resources of these semi-desert lands. Some
communities, however, have community titles, the ejido, inalienable under the
Mexican constitution. This is the case of the peasants of Tecoltemic, a hamlet
whose lands were included in the huge concession of Almaden. They protested
and won an injunction against the company, which currently prevents Almaden
from selling or operating the mine.

Solidarities put to the test

In all three cases, the basis of resistance has been the solidarity of indigenous
communities. It is rooted in a territory-living environment, where we cultivate the
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142 New Notebooks of Socialism

corn on the land inherited from the ancestors. This very strong community identity has
persisted even after Spanish had become the language of use and the
traditional costume had been abandoned, as is the case in the high mountains.
In the lower mountains, the situation is more complex. The Nahua (in the
south) and Totonac (in the north) communities have largely preserved their
language and culture. At the same time, the capitalist economy deeply
penetrated the communities, with the expansion of coffee cultivation in the
20th century. A non-indigenous, Spanish-speaking middle class (known as
“the caciques”) took control of the wealthy municipalities and ensured a
monopoly of trade, if not able to massively expropriate the Amerindian
peasantry. After 1970, Aboriginal identity took on a more explicit, more
political dimension when social protest movements arose. Among the Nahuas
of Cuetzalan a regional cooperative, the Tosepan Titataniske, has been
consolidated, supported by committed Christians and progressive
agronomists. Among the Totonacs, with the help of priests and nuns who
adhered to the theology of liberation, a vast network of educators, catechists
and basic ecclesial communities (CEB) was set up. In Huehuetla, this
movement gave birth to a political party, the Organización Independiente
Totonaca (OIT), which drove out the caciques and exercised democratized
municipal power for ten years. After the electoral defeat of 1999, the network
gave itself a formal existence through the creation of Unidad Totonaca Nahuatl (UNITO
The arrival of mining companies presents these organizations with a
major challenge: the struggle no longer pits indigenous communities against
a local bourgeoisie, but against giant companies, foreign or Mexican, with
political support at the highest level. In Cuetzalan, a Mexican company,
Autlán Minerales, obtained in 2012 a concession straddling three municipalities
which deprives the 47,000 inhabitants of their sources of drinking water. A
coalition was formed, Altepe Tajpiani (“the guardians of the territory”). Relying
on Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, ratified by Mexico,
which requires prior, free and informed consultation before the implementation
of any development project, it obtained an injunction blocking the installation
of the mine.

After the mines, the dams

The proposed mines have other consequences for the Aboriginal peoples
of the region. Mining them in the open requires a lot of electrical energy.
However, the low mountain is very rainy and its steep-sided rivers represent
an important hydroelectric potential. In a few years, dam projects

3 Pierre Beaucage and Ignacio Rivadeneyra Pasquel, "The struggle for political space:
the Totonac organizations of the Sierra Norte de Puebla (1960-2013)", in Nancy ede
and Mélanie Dufour-Poirier (dir.), L'Amérique latine . Different political laboratory,
Montreal, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2014.
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Canadian mining companies in Mexico 143

have multiplied. Unlike mining projects, they generally involve several

communities, crossed by the same watercourse whose flow we want to
alter. In these so-called “new generation” hydroelectric installations, while
the valley is flooded upstream of the dam, downstream, the river
disappears for kilometers, before reappearing in the turbine hall.
Throughout the area, cornfields and coffee plantations would have to be
destroyed in order to build, in the mountains, access roads and high voltage lines.
In 2011, the Comexhidro4 company obtained the permit to build three
dams on the Ajajalpan River, affecting several Totonac villages in the
municipalities of Ahuacatlán and Tepatlán. Downstream, on the same
river, Grupo México has also obtained a permit for another dam, in the
municipality of Olintla. In 2012, in the neighboring valley, that of Zempoala,
the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT)
authorized the construction of another dam. In Nahua country, five dams
are proposed to be built on the large Apulco River, aecting a dozen
riverside communities. In addition, in 2015, the inhabitants of Cuetzalan
learned that a high voltage line, intended to transport the electrical energy
produced by the dams, would cross the municipality, including densely
populated areas.
Faced with these new threats, the Nahua and Totonac organizations
created the Tiyat Tlali (“land” in the two indigenous languages) Council in
2012 to coordinate their eorts at the regional level. Active resistance first
surfaced at Olintla, on Ajajalpan. In December 2012, residents of the
village of Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the bulldozer opening the first track
and held back the machinery for several weeks. One of Tiyat Tlali's first
acts was to send a support group to Ignacio Zaragoza's protesters. The
municipal authorities of Olintla – representing the local bourgeoisie in
favor of the dam – retaliated violently, confining the demonstrators for 24
hours. The repression gave an unexpected resonance to the struggle;
even the national press talked about it. A month later, Grupo México
announced the abandonment of the project, thus marking a first indigenous
victory against the hydroelectric companies. This has spurred resistance
in other affected communities. In Aguacatlán and Tepatlán, committees
have been formed to inform local residents of the concrete consequences
of hydroelectric projects. The river which must “disappear” in the
underground canals is next to their plantations and they fish there, not to
mention the sand which each flood brings and which they use in the
construction of their houses.
As for the indigenous peasants of Cuetzalan, informed of the dangers
to health posed by the immediate vicinity of the high voltage line

4 With which is associated the Quebec company Innergex Renewable Resources, whose
head office is in Longueuil.
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144 New Notebooks of Socialism

planned5 ,and faced with the complacency of the municipal authorities, they
decided in November 2016 to occupy the site of the future building which will
house the alternators. To show their determination, they have sown corn
there, known as “ sun corn” (tonalmil), to be harvested next July! From now
on, in addition to the picketers, the land will be protected by the Corn Guardian
Spirits, who will not allow the plants to be damaged.

Resistances of symbols and symbols of resistances

The mining and hydroelectric transnationals and the political authorities
are learning that the Amerindian peoples, in the Sierra Nororiental de Puebla
and elsewhere, do not fight only for material interests which could be satisfied
by financial compensation. It is not plots of land registered in the cadastre that
they defend, it is a territory where their history is inscribed and which they
share with powerful supernatural entities: the Guardians of the water (Apiyani)
protect the rivers; the Old Man of the Forest (Kuoujueuentsin) opposes
clearcutting; the Heart of the Mountain (Tepeyolot) punishes the reckless who
want to dynamite it to build roads or dig mines.

It is with these divinities that the alliance is renewed during the imposing
festivals, with a strong symbolic content, which the villagers periodically
celebrate6 . To date, thanks to indigenous resistance, which combines direct
action with legal proceedings and which incorporates an important cosmic
dimension, no extractive company has been able to undertake the exploitation
of a mining concession or a hydroelectric dam in the Sierra Nororiental de
Puebla.

5 According to several studies, the incidence of leukemia is much higher in children

under four years old who live less than a hundred meters from the lines. There is
also a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease among adults who work inside a
magnetic field. See Denis Gauvin, Emmanuel Ngamga Djeutcha and Patrick
Levallois, Exposure to electromagnetic fields: update of health risks and relevance
of implementing the precautionary principle, Quebec, National Institute of Public
Health, 2006, <www.inspq .qc.ca/pdf/publications/655- ChampsElectromagnetiques.pdf>.

6 Aldegundo González Álvarez, «Koujpapataninij. The Dance of the Flyers, time and
maseual territory », Annals of Anthropology (sous presse).