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 Editorials | Opinions | August 2007 
Canadians' Complicity in Mexican Street Violence
 Mandeep Dhillon - MiningWatch.ca
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The history of mining in Mexico is a long one. The riches of the Mexican sub-soil were a major motivation for Spanish colonizers and the mining industry is often accorded an important place in events leading to the Mexican Revolution; the 1906 bloody repression of striking miners working for US Cananean Consolidated Copper in Sonora is often cited as a precursor to current labour struggles in Mexico. The authors of the Mexican Revolution sought to make a reality of the ideal that those who work the land should have control over it. In order to protect its land from foreign interests, Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution dictated that the land, the subsoil and its riches were all property of the Mexican State.
As in the colonization of indigenous lands elsewhere, mining was an activity of primary economic importance to colonizing forces and a major cause of injury, death, land destruction and impoverishment for indigenous communities. Not much has changed in this imbalance today. And Canadian mining corporations - with wealth created from the historic (and ongoing) take-over and exploitation of indigenous territory in Canada - are at the lead of these colonizing forces in present day Mexico.
Since NAFTA, bilateral trade between the two nations has increased about 300 per cent. Some of Canada’s largest corporations have a significant presence in Mexico, including Scotiabank, TransAlta, Transcontinental, Magna International, Palliser, Precision Drilling, Fairmont and Four Seasons Hotels.
In the southern state of Oaxaca, a social movement calling for an end to years of impoverishment through neo-liberal policies, displacement of indigenous communities and government violence is simmering. Oaxaca, like the rest of Mexico’s south, is rich in natural resources that have been the target of foreign corporations for years. Vancouver based Continuum Resources already has 10 projects in Oaxaca at various stages, covering over 70 000 hectares of land and “continuing to consolidate larger land positions.” At the end of September, Vancouver-based Chesapeake Gold Corp announced it had optioned 70 per cent of its two Oaxaca projects to Vancouver’s Pinnacle Mines. Horseshoe Gold Mining, also based in Vancouver, acquired a 60 per cent interest in Almaden’s Fuego prospect located in Oaxaca and Halifax’s Linear Gold Corp also owns an active project in the state. Neighbouring Chiapas, another of Mexico’s most impoverished and most militarized states is also the target of Canadian mining projects.
Canadian mining corporations in Oaxaca and Chiapas are not just witnesses to the violence that is occurring there but rely on that violence to protect their profits. Businesses and governments have identified one of NAFTA’s shortcomings as the failure of its benefits reaching Mexico’s southern states rather than an increase in poverty and inequality caused by NAFTA itself. In more recent business reports and talks between Canada, the US and Mexico focused on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the opening up of Mexico’s energy resources - in particular to Canadian corporations - has been accorded prime importance.
The perception of Canada as the Americans’ junior partner often comes with a lack of clarity on Canadian responsibility in the history of violence and displacement within and beyond its national borders. Often, language around Canada-based solidarity work with the struggles of indigenous communities, campesino and labour movements in Mexico distorts the responsibility of Canadian governmental and corporate players in the violence which has engendered those movements. Canadian mining corporations are but one example of how Canadians are complicit beyond just silence on the issues. Activists in Canada cannot limit their work to pointing fingers at a “corrupt Mexican government” or US imperialist drive. To get to the roots of this displacement, there is a need to first look inwards at what is being perpetrated against indigenous communities here and how the authors of that violence are also dictating crimes against the people of Oaxaca, Chiapas and other parts of Mexico.
MiningWatch Canada is an Ottawa-based, pan-Canadian non-profit focused on coordinating a public interest response to the threats to public health, water and air quality, fish and wildlife habitat and community interests posed by irresponsible mineral policies and practices in Canada and around the world. |
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