Activist Sunday

A new week has started with the announced changes. I've started my labor day at 05:52 hours, and will keep it up to 15:36 hours. Kind of feels like a blessing, though I can see around all those who choose the 06:00 hours schedule playing "The Lion", a.k.a., yawning wide. The change so far has gone pretty much unnoticed, and side from the few morning birds here and there, people still get mostly at 07:00 hours (though some have the 07:00 hours entrance and still make appearance at 08:00 hours, with an excused perfectly lined and pulled entirely from yesterday's True Blood episode), and the elevators... well they keep letting people pool at the doors, with their usual rudeness, skipping floors or getting stuck here and there. Silence is also more resonant now, for some reason, though I haven't figured out why is so.

To start this particular week, I had an amazing charge-up experience yesterday. I did activist work. Yep. There was a peaceful protest walk programmed by the Movement Against Open-Pit Gold Mining in Crucitas, a rural area of the provice of Alajuela in Costa Rica, carpeted with old-grown forest (or primary forest), which has been brutaly cut off endangering protected species such as  the  yellow almond tree, but also the Great Green Macaw. The mining is being sought both by the past Administration (Arias, 206-2010), and the Canadian Gold Mining enterprise, known here as Industrias Infinito. The community near which the Mine has been planted struggles with high levels of poverty and Government abandon. The mine offers them a solution to unemployment, though in the best of cases the created jobs would last only 10 years, after which the mine would pack up their belongings and leave a deforestated, poisoned land.

Though on first glance it seems like a good opportunity (bear with me and lets pretend it seems so), truth is that several things are off with the picture. Let's start with the fact that it isn't actually the job of a foreing company to build roads and give computers to schools (those that do not protest against the mine, of course), and procure jobs, but of the Government. I mean that's why the whole SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) programs and hedge funds have been created for, and that's why there's a Law and a Bank Ruling - managed by the BNCR and the BPDC -  in this regard. But then, okay, let's say we believe in the good and greatness of FDI (Foreing Direct Investment) and, yes, why not let a company go there and make jobs and help the population of the region out of the slums. Sure, but then, is a mine the only company willing to go there and do the job? When you could have hotels and other touristic and recreational businesses there, or agriculture oriented enterprises that would stay in the area for long, protect the nature and the endangered species and if they leave, they won't leave behind a poisoned footprint?

Here in Costa Rica there was already an attempt to do an Open-Pit gold mine in Miramar of Bellavista in the province of Puntarenas. Okay, in case we have forgot, I'd like to remind you that this type of mining uses cyanide to lixivate gold from the stones. Yes, cyanide, like that super-poison 007 has to take if he's compromised. That chemical that can kill a man in 30 seconds flat. You're dead before you hit the floor, and all that. The amount of a grain of rice can kill a man. In this project 80 million tons of cyanide will be used. The cyanide would be left in a pool, protected from the soil by a membrate. Top nitch technology keeps it from any accident happening. Yes, only that top-notch tech didn't keep the membrane from ripping in Miramar and lands and rivers around got poisoned.

In the protest of yesterday, Nicaraguan and Panamaian activists joined us (after being held up in the borders, as it was said they had no right to enter the country since they were going to partake in a protest and such a thing was forbidden to foreigners), and talking to them I learned that they had suffered the same misfortues and more. Farmers got sick and died due to chrome poisoning, but the company denied it. In Petaquillo, Panamá, a Canadian gold mining company's mine had also a rupture on the membrane holding the cyanide , poisoning the waters of ponds and rivers nearby. Fish turned up dead. The company said it was the local people who fished and then threw the unsold fish into the pond. Perhaps it would be important to notice that the local people fished in the sea, and sea fish are different from river and pond fish, and all the dead fish were river fishes.

It also happens that a Canadian company opened a mine in Rumania, at Transylvania, known as Rosia Montana. Disaster again as the membrane ripped and cyanide flood a valley. Left you the link if you wish to check.

So, in a world lashed by climate change, where forests are our way to survive, where eco-friendly sustainable solutions are sought, where the European Union forbids open-pit mining with cyanide, this country, claiming democracy, development and "peace with nature" tries to usher in an open-pit cyanide gold ming against the wishes of the 85% of the population, risking also crossborder ecological damage. All for a handful of jobs that might last 10 years, though Miramar's didn't, nor those in Panama, where the company closed leaving workers unpaid when the price of gold dropped, claiming there wasn't gold in the mine.

The walk was tiring, as I was up since 06:00 and the walk went from 07:00 to 11:30, but I feel happy and recharged about it. It was good to walk with others, share experiences and thoughts, feed on the words, hopes and wishes of those struggling with us, not giving up. It was heartwarming to see, to experience the support of people who came out to greet us, the drivers who slowed down and honked or rolled their windows down and cheered with us, bid us strenght and endurance, as their hearts walked with us.

I was humbled by the people who had walked for a week from the conflicted area of Crucitas, the village of Coopevega, where the Mine reings strong and bullies the population and bids them to bully the protesters, and yet they stayed strong and walked to save life and nature.

The movement wasn't all that big, and after living the massive protests against the CAFTA, this one seemed to me rather small, and yet, 85% of the population's hearts walked with us, and we felt that.

It was an amazing experience, even if after it my legs hurt like hell.