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Although there was an announcement of a 45-day halt on protests that were preventing the operations of Las Bambas mine, the Yanahuara Indigenous communities of Pumamarca, Choquecca, Allahua and Quehuira rejected the agreement and pledged to continue with their measures.
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The main civil disobedience action has been blocking the road used by hundreds of company trucks to transport the materials extracted. Vice President Martin Vizcarra led the negotiations on behalf of the government but was only been able to get the support of the mayors of six districts in the area.
The conflict with Las Bambas Mine started in 2014 where clashes took the lives of two people. In late 2015, the confrontations started again claiming the lives of three more people. What sparked the conflicts at that time were several changes made to the original agreements with the communities in the Environmental Impact Study without consultation.
The changes included adding a processing plant close to a local river and replacing the method of transporting the materials from a pipe system to using hundreds of trucks.
In 2015, the previous government swiftly approved the changes claiming the mine is one of the most important projects for the growth of the Peruvian economy. The transnational MMG in charge of the operations is investing a staggering US$10 billion in the mine, which is devoted to the extraction of copper and molybdenum as primary targets.
This year’s protests were the continuation of the unresolved issues between the communities and the mine. They were sparked by the beginning of the mine operations with claims that the hundreds of trucks transporting the metals are polluting the area by lifting dust and making constant loud noise.
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The resulting clashes with the police have so far caused one additional civilian death increasing the overall total of killed to six.
The areas through which the trucks circulate to and from the mine are not owned by a private or public entity but by collectives of Indigenous people and small farmers. The road used by the mine was also of communal ownership but the provincial municipality changed its status to a public road to benefit the mine.
Julia Cuadros, mining conflicts expert and director of the NGO CooperAccion, claimed the municipality “took their communal territory away because it transformed the road into state territory without paying reparations to the communities or even notifying them.”
It hasn’t been clarified who gave the police the order to shoot demonstrators in the last clashes. After the loss of life, the government quickly claimed the local police used lethal weapons without national consent. As a result, Cuadros asked, “under whose directive (was the police) acting then?”
Cuadros explained there is a close and mutually benefiting relationship between MMG and the local police. The police headquarters are located inside the mining camp and the company provides the police with logistics and equipment. Many police officers have contracts with the company to work as security officers and therefore part of their monthly salaries are dependent on their relationship with the mine.
Under such context, Cuadros is certain “the company asked the police to clear the road and that is when the killing took place,” but she said she cannot confirm the order to shoot came from MMG.
A source of distrust in the government by the communities that are continuing to protest Las Bambas mine is the alleged economic interests President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has in the company. Such a claim of conflict of interest is supported by an extensive investigative piece by the political magazine Hildebrandt En Sus Trece.
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The publication showed documents claiming the president continues to have investments in a company called Servosa which provides the transportation and gas supply services for MMG. Servosa is financed by the Spanish company Devon Iberia and Hildebrandt’s research appears to show Kuczynski as proprietor of Devon Iberia since 2014. The publication also claimed there is no official document showing his status has changed and Kuczynski owns 44.3 percent of Devon Iberia’s shares.
The president responded to the accusations by issuing a press release stating, “On November 30th of 2015, at the beginning of the campaign and to prevent any potential conflict of interests, President Kuczynski resigned from all the boards in which he participated. The president is not a member of a board nor does he maintain shares as it was falsely suggested in a publication.”
The president of Pumamarca, Salomon Paniura, said they “will continue with their protest measures until the problem of contamination by dust is resolved and the company pays for the usage of the communal road.”
Pumamarca, along with another three communities defying the agreement, has issued a document with four demands. First, they want the renegotiation of the project including the revision of the Environmental Impact Study. Second, they want 5 percent royalties on profits for all the communities in the area. Third, they want the roads used paved to prevent dust from being lifted. And their final demand is to put an end to the prosecution of 300 community members involved in the protests.
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