Tarnished: The True Cost of Gold by Drost Nadja & Fung Mellissa & Kenarov Dimiter & Kushner Jacob & Price Larry C. & Regan Jane & Sapienza Stephen & Tabor Damon

Author:Drost, Nadja & Fung, Mellissa & Kenarov, Dimiter & Kushner, Jacob & Price, Larry C. & Regan, Jane & Sapienza, Stephen & Tabor, Damon [Drost, Nadja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Pulitzer Center
Published: 2014-04-21T21:00:00+00:00

A miner rests from breaking rock inside a tunnel in La Toma. Image by Nadja Drost. Colombia, 2011.

In trying to prevent the incursion of mining companies that have obtained exploration titles to the land around La Toma, the community has put up a sustained fight to protect not only its livelihood, but also an integral part of its culture. The struggle is taking place within a climate of threats and violence that many here see as linked to the big mining interests. Community leaders and miners from La Toma and the surrounding area have been assassinated and the community council has received death threats via cell phone text messages and fax, sometimes signed by a paramilitary group called the Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles). But often, it’s hard to know if the violence and threats are directly related to mining conflicts.

Eduar Mina Lopez, the community council president, says he thinks the mining companies are responsible. “We didn’t have problems before the mining companies came,” he told me one evening sitting in front of his house at the foot of a hill outside of La Toma. “It’s a great coincidence that the threats and deaths started at the same time.”

One of the holders of a mining concession in La Toma, a Colombian national named Hector Jesús Sarría, filed for an administrative injunction that requires the municipal mayor of Suarez (to which La Toma belongs) to remove the traditional miners from his concession. This similar scenario has put mayors across Colombia in an impossible situation of going against their electorate. Suarez’s mayor, Luis Fernando Colorado, didn’t want to carry out the order to displace La Toma’s miners. He managed to continually delay plans for police to execute the order. As a result, he’s facing charges of failing to fulfill his lawful duties.

A separate legal proceeding has so far saved him—and La Toma. Afro-descendants and indigenous communities have the right to be consulted prior to infrastructure and resource extraction projects. But La Toma was never consulted before mining titles were granted and so decided to take the matter to Colombia’s Constitutional Court. In April 2011, the court made a decision to suspend all further mining titles in La Toma—requiring that Sarría, and other mining title holders carry out “adequate consultation” before proceeding with further mining plans.

The decision is a victory for La Toma, but only time will tell if it will be effective in halting outside mining interests. It has also given reprieve to Colorado, Suarez’s mayor. The lawsuit against him has been shelved for now. “If it wasn’t for that decision,” he told me, “I would’ve been arrested by now and put in jail for serving the interests of my people.”

More than two years after the Constitutional Court ruling, there has yet to be a consultation process between the government, the community and mining interests.