Gold mining that violates the territories of indigenous peoples in the Bolivian Amazon, the use of mercury that pollutes rivers and episodes of violence have entered the Madidi Natural Park raising claims to protect this jewel of the world’s biodiversity and the ethnic groups that protect it. they inhabit.
“It is worrying to see that these groups of miners are taking control of indigenous territories and protected areas and everything is getting more and more violent,” leader Ruth Alipaz, of the Uchupiamonas ethnic group, who lives in the heart of the country, told France 24. Madidi.
“This territory is supposed to be titled for the Uchupiamonas, but anyone arrives with a mining title and says ‘this part of the river and this concession are mine’ and they settle there and the law protects them,” protested the also leader of the Coordinator. National Defense of Indigenous, Native, Peasant Territories (Contiocap), which in March took its complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The complaint is that the mining cooperatives, which are an influential sector in the Luis Arce government as they were in that of Evo Morales (2006-2019), are occupying areas superimposed on indigenous territories due to the contradictions between the legislation to protect those zones and the extractivist policy of natural resources.
Although the 2009 Constitution recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, contradictorily, since 2014 the State has approved laws that allow mining settlements that “risk our existence” in Madidi, said the indigenous leader.
The bottom of the problem is the “gold rush” that this region is experiencing due to the prices of the precious mineral to the point that it has become the main product exported in 2021 by Bolivia with a value of 2,557 million dollars, above the sale of hydrocarbons.
Mining has driven many people to the Amazon to exploit gold with dredges and mercury in the Beni and Tuichi rivers, causing peoples like the Uchupiamonas, who live from community ecotourism, to see “their own life options destroyed,” he said. the indigenous leader.
Alipaz understands that the explosion of gold mining has to do with the poverty of many people, but also, according to what he said, with the presence of Chinese and Colombian companies that operate with dredgers and heavy machinery that threaten the lives of ethnic groups, among which are also the ancestral Tacana and Leco peoples.
El Madidi covers an area of 1.8 million hectares in northwestern Bolivia, bordering Peru, and is considered a world-class paradise for science due to the diversity of flora and fauna it has revealed in recent years.
The government has denied having issued new permits to operate in protected areas and the Mining Administrative Jurisdictional Authority (AJAM) said it rejected 97 requests from companies, but recognized the existence of mining rights prior to 2014.
However, according to the indigenous people and legislators who visited Madidi, the legal and illegal mining cooperatives continue to establish themselves and there is no one to control them, generating scenarios of confrontation.
Alarming mercury levels in indigenous
One of the alarming angles of the problem is the level of mercury detected in the indigenous people from their consumption of fish contaminated with that metal used in the rivers to exploit gold.
The Bolivian Documentation and Research Center (CEDIB) confirmed at the end of 2021 that the presence of 7 parts per million (ppm) of mercury has been detected on average in 350 hair samples from indigenous people in the area, when tolerable, according to the World Health Organization, it is only 1ppm.
The investigation even detected the end of a person with 27ppm.
The director of the CEDIB, Oscar Campanini, told France 24 that the study will be complemented in August with an analysis of the most affected age group, economic activities and food consumption, “although all the indications show that fish is mercury contamination channel.
Campanini, who also participated in the IACHR hearing, said that he sees “very little or no political will” in the State to reduce or eliminate mercury, despite the fact that the country has signed the Minamata agreement (Japan) and has deadlines above to present their regulatory and action plans.
At the March hearing at the IACHR, the UN Rapporteur on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, Marcos Orellana, warned that exposure to mercury causes serious disabilities and “can be lethal” and recalled that concerns have been reported about the increase of imports and the “illicit trafficking of mercury from Bolivia to other countries” such as Peru and Colombia.
Bolivia is considered the first importer of mercury in South America and the second in the world. According to the private Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE), between 2015 and February 2022, 1,292 tons of mercury were imported, which cost 45 million dollars.
During the IACHR session, the environmental director of the Ministry of Mining, Fausto Vélez, admitted that the issue of mercury is “worrying”, but said that “it is difficult to replace it in alluvial mining”, although he promised that work will be done to contain the trade in the product.
Senator: violence becomes common in the face of vulnerability
Senator Cecilia Requena, president of the Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment, visited the area a few days ago, but her delegation allegedly suffered attacks from miners who prevented her from getting off a boat, intimidating her with explosions from land and then throwing stones at her boat.
Requena intended to visit the town of Chushuara where violent and confused conflicts involving miners, peasants and indigenous people had taken place hours before, resulting in the arrest of 18 people and one wounded by a bullet.
The senator told France 24 that “the extreme vulnerability of people and the violence that is becoming increasingly common in the northern region of the department of La Paz and that in many cases is related to mining has become visible.”
But beyond that, there is a risk of greater lack of control due to the lack of a state presence in those areas.
“There are places to the north of La Paz, near the border with Peru, where drug trafficking activities are being combined with gold mining because it is very profitable. Already in those cases we are talking about another level of violence, ”he warned about the possible consequences.
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