You can't drink gold, so just swallow bullets

Last week, Ollanta Humala's government has marked another black page in the history of Peru. In a country that has been marred by social conflict as a result of mismanaged extractive industries - a sad continuum across governments of the past two decades - five people have been killed during a peaceful protest march in the town of Celendín, Cajamarca province. One day later, some 20 combat-armed policemen threw Marco Arana, one of the figureheads of an indefinite strike against a huge mining project planned in the province, brutally off a bench in a park of Cajamarca city. He was forcefully grabbed by the head (a jaw was broken), pushed to the ground, hit several times in the kidneys (having passed a severe kidney operation earlier this year) and then abducted to prison [see video below, in Spanish], where he was held without charge and further beaten. His lawyer was refused due access to her client by police officers who could not present any credentials, upon which the officers maltreated Arana's lawyer as well. Apparently, Arana's only crime was to have worn a cardboard sign around his neck saying "Yes to life, No to gold" in a public space during a state of emergency.

Once again, peaceful protest has shown how powerful it can be, considering that the regrettable answer of a seemingly powerless government has been to resort to lethal violence. To be honest, it really takes my breath away to see how far governments are willing to go to safeguard investment commitments made by extractive industries in a region that has patently objected such environmentally damaging investments in its livelihoods. Even more so, when the current president was elected by promising Cajamarca's electorate to respect their decision not to support mining projects in their region, for "you cannot drink gold, so it is of utmost importance to protect natural water sources such as your beautiful lakes and prevent their contamination".

All these lofty promises have been mysteriously forgotten, as President Humala is fully committed to have the infamous Conga mining project started, a Newmont Mining Corporation investment that will affect four precious lakes - essential sources of clean water for the nearby communities - by converting them into depositories for toxic mining waste. Of course, promises have been made to treat the water and turn it into Peru's purest drinking water, but evidence of such practices are scant, not to say inexistent, in the country. Even one of Peru's star projects in terms of social and environmental responsibility turned out to be a fraud, deforming newborn lamas and contaminating nearby rivers.

What strikes me most is how the government has unequivocally sided with private industry, instead of being the gatekeeper that veils over the balance between the public's and the private sector's interests. How else to explain that national police officers are being transported by buses from the Yanacocha mine company (daughter holding of Newmont Mining)? Human rights violations as the ones described above, committed in plain daylight, in front of twenty cameras, while the region's provincial and local authorities have been drawn away from the scene to the capital, do not occur unless they are sanctioned from the highest level downwards.

I cannot even figure how these policies go down, from top government figures into the heads of the national police. It sure is no bed-time story material, judging from the police man's reaction to a Cajamarca inhabitant asking him why the police is treating citizens in such a horrible, irrespectful way: "Because you are a bunch of dogs, you son of a bitch!" And then to figure that this has been happening at a far wider scale over the past year in Syria, under the all-seeing eye of the international community, as world leaders are belt-tightening their way through domestic crises and smother their electorate with election-proof foreign policies...

For those interested, here is more information on the criminalisation of social protest and Marco Arana, and the social conflict as a result of the planned Conga Mining project. There is also a petition running on Avaaz, in case you would like to support the communities of Cajamarca in their struggle.