COPYRIGHT ALL IMAGES MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY - ANY USE OF IMAGES WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION FROM MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Four workers - middle-age, wearing orange vests with white helmets over sun-darkened faces - return to the Pascua Lama mine camp at sunset. They've been setting up a platform high in the Andes so their employer Barrick Gold can access the $18 billion mineral bounty buried at 17,000 feet. These modern-day gold miners from small communities in Chile's arid, dusty Region III don't bring home gold; rather, they each pull fossils out of their pockets - shells and snails now hardened to stone. Before detonating explosives at the crest of the continent, the men dusted off shells that settled to the sea-bottom a million years ago.
Beginning in 2009, the part of the ocean floor that rose into a 17,000-foot mountain will become a scalped canyon, its substance moved by truck to adjacent valleys. Each day machines and chemicals, including cyanide, will sift through 44,000 tons of earth searching for, at most, five grams of gold per ton. That’s two blueberries worth, barely enough for one gold ring.
COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
The Huasco Valley makes a green ribbon exposed to the sun like grapes drying to raisins. The green follows the water. The water flows from the red, purple, and gray Andes Mountains that rise in hazy layers east of Vallenar, the valley's main hub. At the southern end of the driest desert in the world, Chile’s Atacama, the year-round presence of water seems unnatural if not miraculous. From Vallenar's downtown to the last one-store, one-school community of Chollay, children spend most summer days jumping into river pools. Even a half-mile outside Vallenar's paved, sometimes-bustling streets, patches of green earth reveal carefully irrigated fields growing avocados, grapes, and mangos or alfalfa for livestock. The agricultural lifestyle continues in the valley as it branches deeper into the Andes, becoming more rural and remote with each town. The swimming hole frequency remains steady. We stop at one by the relatively large town of Chanchoquin Grande.
About a dozen people, from toddlers carried by young parents to a middle-age grandmother, watch us scramble down a loose roadside embankment to get to the rock-covered riverside. The sun down here seems to arrive at mid-sky about half an hour after dawn. Its intensity doesn’t fade for ten hours. At around 6:30pm it begins a rapid descent and by 7pm it has disappeared behind the three-thousand-foot slopes of crumbling rock that wall in the valley. COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
The water pools to about five feet deep behind a hand-made jumble of rocks, wood, and chicken wire. The younger children show off for the camera with hand-stands, their skinny legs scissor-kicking the air, torsos submerged. Teenagers hang teenager style in the shade of a little black-tarp covered hut. Soon the shadow passes over the pool and goose bumps rise on brown skin with the increased breeze. Everyone wraps themselves in dry clothes or towels. I ask about the mine project and the younger kids answer with the enthusiasm of educating from recently acquired knowledge: it’s bad, it will contaminate our water, we won’t be able to swim here if Pascua Lama happens.
BARRICK = GOLD
Aside from minute medical and industrial purposes, no one needs gold; it's an accessory. 85% of the virgin gold produced today goes to gold jewelry, and a large chunk of that to supply the dowry of Indian women. But if there's a market, there's a way, and Barrick Gold has found the way.
Barrick Gold is the world's leading producer of virgin gold. The massive Canadian-based corporation mines throughout the world. They recently bought Placer Dome in Nevada, a strategic move that has pushed them to the front of the mining world where access to the world’s increasingly remote gold mines requires larger and larger companies. However, Barrick has also gained a powerful international name by enlisting influential world leaders. In the late 1990s George Bush Sr. joined former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as Barrick advisors. The addition coincided with a heated competition for extraction rights to what investors believed to be the most lucrative gold ore body in the world, Indonesia’s Busang claim. Busang was in fact a fraud, but Barrick showed an alarmingly aggressive political prowess.
Within the industry, Barrick has been recognized as exemplary corporate citizens; the tagline on their logo is “Responsible Mining.” Good public relations means fewer roadblocks in the approval process for new mines. New, bigger mines and efficient exploitation keep investor momentum going in the increasingly conglomerated gold exploration industry.
Barrick arrived in Chile with the purchase of the El Indio Mine in a valley south of the Huasco. It produced for a few years before Barrick shut it down using what they consider exemplary standards. The site now looks reclaimed – trees, grassy meadows, a creek returned to the surface. But locals claim it’s too early to tell, believing that Barrick just swept a clean surface of soil over the waste heaps and tailings piles. The local water authority group has not done a water test, claiming a lack of funds. In the meantime, Barrick had their sights on what could be one of the most productive ore bodies in the world, a series of belts that extend north from the upper headwaters of the Chollay and Turbio Rivers. The first project, Pascua Lama, includes a chunk of Chile (80% of proposed mine) and a sliver of Argentina (20%) with the heart of the pit located at the extreme elevation of over 15,000 feet.
Pascua Lama might have been another anonymous mine that only the government, the corporation, the local communities, and some mining watchdog groups knew about. Except for one word: "glacier." Part of Pascua Lama's gold loot lies under three "glaciers" - Toro 1, Toro 2, and Esperanza. According to Barrick's glaciology studies, they aren't really glaciers, rather icefields. And cold ice fields at that, meaning they don't play a large role in the water supply (.5%). But glaciologists insist that percentages carry little weight when considering the overall ecosystem in such an extreme and vulnerable high-elevation environment.
The original plan necessitated scraping into parts of those glaciers and moving them to another location where they would, according to Barrick, grow back to a natural state within the neighboring Guanaco Glacier.
Breaking apart a glacier is easy for a company that moves mountains. Replanting it on the nearest ice field and expecting it to grow back raises many questions. Townspeople present at the initial community meetings asked, "What happens if you find gold under the glaciers and you keep finding gold? Do you keep digging further into the ice?"
Suddenly, there was a battle. Pascua Lama and Barrick’s “Responsible Mining” tagline faced a rising mountain of criticism and scrutiny. The Chilean government ultimately drew the line, demanding that no glaciers be touched. But in the meantime, according to many local residents, including some who had worked at the mine, heavy equipment had already been manipulating the ice in an attempt to expedite melting.
Barrick needed some community friends. Time for the old standby: divide and conquer.
SERGIO, PRESIDENT HUASCOALTINO FARMER'S COOP, AVOCADO FARMER
“He’s one of the last houses out of town. Look for the Avocados for Sale sign.”
We keep driving the part-paved, part-gravel, all-dust road past vineyards and small, low houses baking in the afternoon sun. There’s the sign: Hay Paltas written on a paper plate and nailed to a wooden pole. A royal blue Ford Ranger truck sits behind a barbed-wire gate. No a Pascua Lama bumper stickers decorate both sides of the rear gate. Sergio is a central player in the fight to stop mining in the area, specifically the Pachuy project, a site Barrick is exploring in the mountains north of Pascua Lama. Pachuy sits on land owned by the Huascoaltino farming cooperative, of which Sergio is president.
It’s suddenly cooler as we walk through the opening and down the path shaded by avocado and mango trees. The path leaves us at the wide, covered deck of Sergio Campusano’s house. Sergio sits on the old couch at the far end. He’s well under six feet tall with a round face that seems too big for his stout frame. His amber skin and shiny, smooth black hair has a more rich hew than many Chileans further south. He’s Peruvian. In the background, his young son and daughter lie horizontally in the two-foot wide irrigation canal flowing with water. The girl has little green chunks clinging to her long, thick dark hair: avocado shampoo straight from the tree.
Sergio’s family isn’t primitive. He has the truck and inside a simple office (connected to two smaller bedrooms) he has two desktop computers. They aren’t iMacs but they get the job done. Sergio apparently has no idea who we are and looks at us skeptically. Plus, he’s a skeptical guy, an obvious defense mechanism when one lives in such a waffling environment; after years of division and backdoor politics it’s easy to wonder who’s pulling the strings.
After explaining our intentions, Sergio unfolds a large Barrick map of the high cordillera. Red, green, and blue Crayon streaks outline chunks of mountains like a toddler’s crime scene rendition. These indicate the four mining projects in exploration. Pascua Lama in green represents a big one to the south but three more blobs extend further north: Pachuy, Valeriano, and El Morro. We had no idea about these exploration zones. Not many people do. The chain emails are sent when a glacier relocation is mentioned not when dirt roads are cut and samples quietly taken for exploration purposes. Pascua Lama is just the first chapter and this is not a novella. The potential for gold exploitation in this spread of mountain-tops is epic. Pascua Lama alone could account for 25% of Barrick’s global profit: $1.51 billion in 2006.
The big picture concerns Sergio. He explains that most people in these towns know nothing about the Pascua Lama project much less believe in any of the benefits promised by Barrick. Sergio holds meetings with the small towns in the Huascoaltino Estancia because he wants to unite the members of the cooperative with the Diaguita group, a recently recognized indigenous culture. The distinction seems silly; both groups are part of the valley community, both rely on agriculture or livestock, and both drink the water. So why the divide? According to Sergio, it’s largely because the Diaguita have negotiated with Barrick, been bussed down to Santiago on a Barrick-chartered bus, and ultimately have signed off on the Pascua Lama project. The Huascoaltino have not. But the Huascoaltino own the land being explored for Pachuy. So Barrick can’t ignore them; they must negotiate.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
Sergio is stonewalling. He knows this frustrates a big company more than anything because the company needs to work quickly and they’re used to getting what they want. He also understands that Barrick relies on investor confidence; a farming cooperative obstacle with a multi-billion-dollar mine on the other side reduces that confidence. Barrick can’t understand Sergio. They might even hate him.
RON KETTLES, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, PASCUA LAMA
“Sergio doesn’t have an ounce of Diaguita in him. Neither does his wife,” Ron says.
Ron Kettles is a stout, serious man at the end of a long career developing mines. He’s not the slick executive type with Gucci shoes and three secretaries. Although the computer desktop displays his Miami-based motor yacht, Ron seems to prefer the front lines.
We meet him in the otherwise empty La Serena office at 9am Sunday morning. He’s been here two hours. After a few niceties, Ron fires off a lecture on ethics, misrepresentation of facts, and what it means to be fair-and-balanced. I imagine this must be what a Ted Haggert sexuality sermon feels like, but I listen.
For over an hour Ron walks us through Pascua Lama's plan according to a topographic map on his desk. The plan calls for five layers of protection in the waste pits and leaching pond. Surface water from the glaciers surrounding the pit will be redirected via canals to join the free-flowing Estrecho River below the mine site. A water treatment facility will treat the naturally acidic water and recycled mine water for reuse in the operations. This treatment process will, according to Ron, "stay in operation in perpetuity, if necessary," after the mine closes. That “perpetuity” would begin over 25 years from now, long after current Barrick officials have retired, moved on, or entered their own heavenly perpetuity. It’s easy to wonder who will be around to care in 25 years, much less to hold true to this promise of procrastination.
"If anything, there's probably a slight improvement to the water quality and quantity," Ron said.
As for waste material, Ron says the mine will move 44,000 tons/day. Waste rock will be placed in stockpiles with membrane linings to control leaching of dangerous material. Ron is especially proud of the tailings pond dam on the Argentina side of the mine where the cyanide treatment plant will live. Unlike similar dams, this one will be built of separate rock, not the tailings themselves. This, ideally, will act as yet another barrier to leaking. A nearby reclaimed water pond will be 1 km from the dam and all has been seismically tested to withstand catastrophic geologic events (a 6.8 earthquake struck in 2003).
Ron emphasizes this importance, "There will be no possibility of contaminated material getting past the dam. There will be zero environmental impact effect."
The cyanide will arrive in trucks via the San Felix valley road that leaves out of Alto del Carmen. Truck spills are a major concern with mines, especially since the mountainous road is extremely curvy (see http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/spills.htm for a recent timeline of spills in world mines). It also passes directly above the north shore of the Santa Juana Reservoir. Ron says two convoys of 20 trucks will travel the road each day during operation. That's 40 trucks a day, every day, for twenty years. Barrick's emergency response plan involves GPS satellite surveillance, though a cyanide spill into a river or, worse, the reservoir, spreads far too rapidly to be controlled, especially considering the slow pace of the mountainous roads.
Ron's proud of his mine - it is far more advanced than any mine he or Barrick has done in the past, including the year-old Veladero mine 7 km south of Pascua Lama in Argentina.
So why such dramatic improvements with Pascua Lama; why has Barrick gone to such length on this one?
"The emotional opposition has motivated us," Ron said.
So the “wayward journalists,” protesting environmental groups, misbehaving bloggers, and farmer’s cooperative leaders that tie Ron and Barrick in public relations knots are the motivation for the advancements and safeguards at Pascua Lama that Ron now brags about. Funny cycle.
Sergio holds a prominent place on Ron’s list of adversaries. After explaining how the Diaguita “magically” became a recognized culture only recently when a new Chilean minister named them such (“she’s a Diaguita herself”), Ron boasts of the cultural awareness initiatives Barrick is supporting via traditional cooking and art classes. Sergio, he explains, has no connection to the Diaguita people, rather he represents a farmer’s cooperative and his fight reflects personal financial interests. So Barrick Gold’s director believes this avocado farmer with a couple acres is wielding his mighty club of influence and manipulation in order to make a buck. How could he let money so cloud his judgment? Clearly, a buck for Barrick is more important than a buck for the locals. But that doesn’t even take into account the innate right and widespread expectation for someone to fight for his or her land. Ron recommends we speak to Anna Huanchequay, the Diaguita president with whom Barrick has dealt. Ron also suggests we find the Junta de Vigilancia, the not-so elected board of the Huasco Valley Water Users Association. Ron doesn’t mention Rodolfo Villar, perhaps because he’s another local with the nerve to fight for his land.
WATERED-DOWN DEMOCRACY
"The Water Users Cooperative, representing 2,000 farmers of the Huasco Valley, is fully supportive of the project. Chile is a democratic country and the media play an important role in the public discussion of the community concerns and interests. There has already been an extensive and open discussion of issues including the participation of farmers."
Excerpted from Barrick’s Website, www.barrick.com
Yes, the Junta represents the 2,000 farmers with water rights in the Huasco Valley. No, they do not fully support the project, according to Luis Mansilla Pereira, the Junta’s Director. We spoke with Luis in the Junta’s Vallenar office.
The Junta formed after the Pascua Lama project had long been in development. Once the mine was approved, the Junta agreed to work with Barrick on a water treatment study and to oversee the approval of the protection devices planned for the mine. Barrick also agreed to pay the Junta $60 million dollars over 20 years: $3 million a year deposited into the Junta bank account. The Junta signed off on the Barrick plans.
The Junta offers a unique take on democracy. The 2,000 Junta members share 12,000 acciones. Acciones represent the water rights for each farmer. One accion equals one hour of water usage. One accion costs roughly $2,000, though prices vary in different places. Acciones are limited to available water on each member’s land, but acciones can be bought and sold between members. Therefore, in a community dominated by a handful of prominent agricultural industrialists producing grapes and olives (further west toward the coast), the acciones tend to collect in the hands of the landed wealthy.
One accion also equals one vote and the Junta elects its own nine-person committee. The resulting board of directors for the Junta represents the most influential, powerful, accion-rich members. They speak for the remaining small farmers, many of whom have 1/2 to 1 accion for their family-sized, self-supporting avocado, grape, or mango farms.
Votes can literally be bought in this form of small-town democracy. Many locals wonder what $60 million can buy.
ANNA HUANCHEQUAY, PRESIDENT HUASCOALTO DIAGUITA CULTURE
Anna Huanchequay runs a newspaper and candy kiosk in Alto del Carmen. The blue metal box big enough for a six-pack of telephone booths opens its front window in the mornings and late afternoon each day. From inside, Anna looks down a quiet, paved street of Alto toward the horizontally layered ridge that separates her valley, the San Felix, from the Transito Valley. The two main rivers of this controversy meet just around the corner. Anna's position as liason between the Diaguita people and Barrick has not been such a smooth confluence.
We find Anna in her kiosk. Like Sergio, she’s apprehensive at first and seems worn down from trying to decipher people's motives. This Pascua Lama topic has obviously taken its toll on her. She stands in the corner of her low-ceilinged aluminum sided hut. Bright candy bars and posters of soccer players hang from every inch of wall or shelf. The wildly grinning cartoon faces on wrappers seem to mock the slightly stooped woman with sun-wrinkled skin as she moves forward to lean rest her curled hands on the kiosk counter.
Once convinced we aren't working with Barrick, she begins talking. Anna claims the Diaguita never supported the mine until after the government granted the permits; they felt, like the Junta, that once the mine was approved they better get involved as a watchdog. Anna and the Diaguita fought to keep the glaciers safe and Barrick ensrued them they would not and had not touched the glaciers. But Anna conveyed that a town representative had recently climbed up to the mine and reported that Barrick had manipulated the glaciers. Now Anna says they await a response to a formal letter sent to President Bachelet. Ultimately, they want further discussion on mine activity and their claim to land title.
This is what Anna told us. She also said Barrick offered her money and she refused. We have it on tape. But it’s talk. Someone else will have different talk in response. Moments later, Anna’s on her cell phone speaking to Carlos, a Barrick employee.
Anna looks tired. She brings to mind the shaky flag tied to the center of the tug-of-war rope.
CARLOS, A BARRICK TEAM MEMBER
In Alto del Carmen, the biggest town in the Transito and del Carmen Valleys, we meet Carlos. He greets us outside Barrick’s small office off Alto del Carmen’s calm plaza. In a Barrick golf shirt and khaki pants, Carlos looks tidy and wears a glowing sense of pride for his professional appearance and stature. He grew up and still lives 20km up the valley in San Felix. The full-time Barrick gig – cell phone, Bluetooth, red company pick-up, paid vacation – is as good as it gets. He’s nice. He smiles warmly and is genuinely interested in helping us; that’s part of his job as community relations – to answer questions and concerns.
Carlos speaks in length about the community programs Barrick has and will continue to offer in the area. He describes the cooking and pottery classes that teach local people traditional Diaguita customs. We ask him why no one we’d met had attended the classes and he says many of the people are shy or do not know about the classes. He discusses Barrick’s encouragement of local employment at the mine and the six scholarships for deserving college students.
When asked about the handouts of gifts, what locals call "Coima" for corruption, Carlos chuckles and describes an instance in which the company bought a specialized walker for a young boy with a muscular problem. Carlos smiles knowingly and asks us if that’s "coima."
He’s told that story before; it comes out like a familiar, well-rehearsed joke with a proven punchline. If a school requests a computer, Barrick will buy a computer and give it to the school once it verifies the request. These types of in-kind transactions, he continues, adhere to Barrick's strict policy of not giving cash. He must not mean the bigger deals like the $3 million deposited into the Junta de Vigilancia’s account each year.
PASCUA LAMA, THE TOUR
The two gates bordering the Pascua Lama are big, metal, and impenetrable. But they only block the road. Anyone can walk three feet to the side and around. There’s no guard, just the same dry, windy landscape of steep slopes narrowing to a fast stream the color of powdered milk in Windex. Miles uphill from the last communities, the shiny, sturdy gates with the bright Barrick: Responsible Mining logo look like billboards for a second. But then the eye broadens to the utterly empty context and curiosity takes over: What the hell is up there, 50 more kilometers on this windy road?COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
The little twin-engine plane swoops between chunky rock pillars poking into the sky at 17,000 feet and the runway finally comes into view. The packed dirt runway, we’d been told, is on a former Diaguita field where games were played by villagers who once lived in the upper valleys. Over 30 of their cemeteries also exist on the Pascua Lama land.
I ask Franco, Barrick’s young anthropologist/archaeologist, about this.
“No,” he says, almost too quickly, as if he anticipated the question. “The Diaguita ‘field’ is a term used for a pasture where they kept their horses and livestock. It’s not where they played games.” COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
Like Carlos with the corruption story, Franco has explained that one before.
Franco is accompanying us on this tour. He’s been with Barrick for two years. This is his second trip to the mine site, the first being in winter with five feet of snow covering the ground. When asked, Franco says his purpose on this 24-hour tour is “to get to know the site.” He’ll be with us the whole time.
After a quick check-up in the infirmary – flying from 3,000 to 15,000 feet in 25 minutes requires some monitoring – we eat a snack in the camp’s cafeteria. The building looks like the others in this makeshift base. Low, metal-sided buildings with gravel parking lots and metal stairs leading up to earthen terraces that hold the metal-sided dorms. The rooms are small but clean with a folded Barrick towel and washrag on each twin mattress and a bathroom shared between two rooms. Most rooms are empty with workers out on shifts. Only about 160 people work at Pascua Lama right now, mainly in the platform building and logistics arena.
In the afternoon we load into two trucks, two directors and I in one, Michael, Franco, and a driver in the other. We climb the wide dirt road that hugs the massive flanks of Andean mountain. We’re climbing to a saddle – the Chile-Argentina border. Pascua Lama is a revolutionary mine in many ways, one being its international nature. 80% of the open-pit mine will be in Chile, 20% in Argentina. This meant negotiating an unprecedented multi-national use agreement between the two countries. While Argentina operates its own controls, Chile delegated border patrol regulations to Barrick, essentially allowing free passage across the boundary. The majority of the ore will be accessed in Chile then sent via a tunneled conveyor belt to the Argentina treatment facility.
We stop at the 16,000 foot saddle. The mountain to our right hides the Pascua Lama ore body. It will be moved 44,000 daily tons at a time. To our left the hulking Guanaco Glacier crowns a mountain-top and drains into the future open-pit site and base-camp valley. In front of us, on the Argentina side, the treatment facility’s valley unfolds, flat and cleared for construction. Further east and south, mountain-sized clouds of gray dust circulate above the Veladero mine, a year-old Barrick project 7km southeast in Argentina.
I ask about the dust, a main concern since 15 tons/day can go air-born, silting the precious rivers and landing on glaciers, thus speeding their already-accelerated melting.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
Eduardo Silva, Barrick’s Communications Director, says, “It’s only dusty when the wind blows. That’s all.” Oddly, Michael, seated inside the car behind us, also notices the thousand-foot high cloud of dust blowing off Veladero. He asks the same question to his driver and Franco. They answer together, “It’s only dusty when the wind blows.” The players in this public relations theater might know their lines, but at 16,000 feet atop a continent I wonder when the wind doesn’t blow.
We drive by the glaciers - Toro 1 and 2 and Esperanza. Eduardo laughs at their size and explains again that they are barely glaciers at all and contribute less than 1% to the overall water supply of the valley below. He doesn’t mention that the slightest alterations at such high elevations as this can have dramatic effects on the overall ecosystem. Barrick officials sound exhausted to have to read from the glacier chapter’s script again.
As I hear it now for the fourth time the only difference is I’m looking at the glaciers in person. Esperanza’s top shines bright in the distance, a frozen layer over the mountain-side. Roads dead-end at an unnatural cross-section of the ice sheet and it seems that part of the mountain-side has been sheared off, including the glacier. I’ve seen plenty of glaciers and none have this dramatic edge to them without an underlying morphology to explain it. We snap photos, endure the wind, and climb back in the trucks.
The trucks return to camp, Franco the working anthropologist bobbing his head in altitude-induced sleep the whole way down.
CHEAP LAND AS NUISANCE
The machine is cranking up at Pascua Lama but a strange sense of stagnation exists. If the glaciers are safe, the infrastructure’s ready to roll, and workers are playing foosball at their lunch breaks, what’s the delay? Barrick casually mentions a few regional permits on the Chilean side. They don’t say a word about the Diaguita’s renewed interest in reclaiming their land title. Nor do they mention the lawsuit they just lost.
I had to ask Rod Jimenez, Barrick’s Director of Latin American Operations, about the recent court ruling in favor of a Chilean geologist and mine engineer. Rodolfo Villar filed suit against Barrick and won in November, 2006. In 1997 Barrick bought the land from Villar and, according to The New York Times, bought a smaller stake from Villar’s lawyer at the time. The lawyer received $650,000. Villar got $19 for his 8,600 hectacres.
Barrick is appealing the case. Despite the fact that Barrick’s only access road passes through Villar’s land, Jimenez asserts that the “nuisance suit” will have no effect on Pascua Lama’s development. When asked if the road passes through the land, Jimenez’s could not say yes or no, rather, “There will be no effect on the mine’s development.” Like Sergio, Villar apparently represents another pesky landowner out for his own financial gain.
We take the Barrick van down from Pascua Lama after our short, but rare visit. As expected, we don’t return with an expose of tortured workers and cyanide swimming pools. But while staring out the window at the natural pastures beside the Carmen River, alpacas dotting the green carpet, I’m awestruck first by the scale of a twenty-year, $18 billion dollar mountain-moving mine, then by a sense of doom: Pascua Lama could be multiplied three times if the future projects to the north gain momentum.
Back inside the van, Franco’s missing the view, his head still bobbing, full of corporate-anthropology dreams.
PAST VEGAS, WITH MIGUEL
Chollay is the last town in the Transito Valley. Fifteen kilometers from its small school and store the Barrick gate shines in dusty sunlight beside the Chollay River. Miguel Salazar lives in a small wooden house built next to his 80-year-old mother’s older stone house. A small orchard of avocado grows to the side, beyond the open-air kitchen where Adrianne cuts vegetables. Grapes drip from randomly placed canopies in the yard. We arrive late in the afternoon and Javier, Miguel’s twelve year-old son, greets us as we walk up the dirt driveway.
We leave our truck in the drive and cross the street with Javier to what has become our favorite swimming hole. The Pachuy River flows out of an oasis of overhanging branches and grass stalks. Above, the same bright, gray flanks of Andean dryness slant into the deep blue sky, but down here the 7pm shadow has swept over us, turning the pool behind the rock dam into a bowl of dark glass. We run across the flat dirt bank and push off the now-familiar jumping boulder, a flash of horizontal white that shatters the glassy water.
The Pachuy flows down from the Andes’ 15,000 foot crest 25km up the valley. A loose trail follows the river to the top, past a continuous string of vegas, the native grazing pastures of the valley livestock. Miguel has agreed to guide us on horseback so we can photograph the string of mountains housing the Pachuy gold Barrick wants to extract. The Huascoaltino group has title to this land and Sergio has no intention of letting it go. But Barrick has been exploring – their crude roads begin at about 11,000 feet, cut over the pass from nearby Pascua Lama. They know there is another lucrative gold pocket here, just a few kilometers north of Pascua Lama. The kids swimming in the Pachuy pool fear that its clean flow will soon be dirtied like the Chollay River that swallows the Pachuy in its milky blue just below the pool.
Miguel, Michael, and I stand around a small fire set into the makeshift stone encampment Miguel built up here for his frequent herding journeys. We rode for nine hours today to get to this elevation, a few thousand feet below the crest of the Andes but in an environment utterly different from the Chollay Valley. Up here, below the nearly lifeless zone at the crest, dense, spongy mounds of ground cover make an uneven carpet. Its green fluorescent glow among the dull red and brown rocks seems artificial, like an Epcot representation of an Andean vega.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY
Miguel worked at Pascua Lama for a year. He helped map the landscape and was a certified explosives technician – he pulls out the old laminated card that says so. But he hasn’t worked there since, despite job offers. He doesn’t believe in what they are doing and he thinks it’s wrong to ruin the cordillera. And he doesn’t need the work; he’s putting his oldest son through university in La Serena and Javier is on track, too. This is Miguel’s backyard. He rides up this steep, dusty valley a few times a week. La Mula, the pack mule needs no direction. Miguel points to all the sources of water flowing from mountainside curves and gullies. He indicates the side valley that leads over a pass to the third Barrick project, Valeriano. The entire range will be covered with gold mines. Or uncovered.
We lean against the angular rock wall to eat rice and onions. The Andes rising around us turn black and look somehow more inviting than their stark daytime reality. Conversation slows with eating and the exhaustion that comes with elevation, a full-day of horsepacking, and struggling to understand Miguel’s difficult Spanish. Michael and I go to our tent. Miguel piles blankets and saddle pads between the two short walls that blend into the Andes, a one-man footprint on this high-elevation vega.
All of the farmers and cowboys we met share Miguel's perspective. They don't want the mine or its employment. Officials might argue they need it, but no one wants it. They have their own rustic lifestyle and it works with free, wild vegas and clean water flowing down the Pachuy, Cholly, del Carmen, and Transito Rivers. They don't need the controlled, vaccinated ranching life and consolidated agricultural economy that makes sense to big companies like Barrick. They need their children educated so they work hard to make that happen. One of the six scholarships Barrick offers to the 70,000 Huasco residents would help but so would winning the lottery.
The world wants gold. Barrick wants to supply it. Barrick’s directors and Website say they want to help communities. The farmers, teachers, clergy, and kids swimming in rivers want their valley left alone. It depends on who wants to listen.
COPYRIGHT ALL IMAGES MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY - ANY USE OF IMAGES WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION FROM MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
For information on sources of clean gold, ideally scrap and recycled gold, go to www.NoDirtyGold.org
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Cheap Land
21,000 acres of land sells for $19 in the Andes Mountains surrounding Pascua Lama. At least, that was the value placed on a tract of land Barrick recently purchased from Chilean Rodolfo Villar. Villar had intended to sell the land to Barrick for much more but the contract he signed (without reviewing) via his lawyer quoted the $19 sale price. Oddly, Villar's lawyer sold a smaller piece of land to Barrick for $650,000, according to The New York Times.
Villar, now with a new team of lawyers from Santiago, is battling Barrick in appeals courts after winning his initial lawsuit returning land title to his name. He intends to revisit the negotiating table, asking no less than $100 million for the land.
The plot in question forms an irregular, blocky "U" around the Pascua Lama protocol area and includes the central road Barrick has constructed to access the site from the San Felix Valley.
Barrick claims Villar is waging a "nuisance case" against their company. Rod Jimenez, Director of South American Operations, could not speak directly to the case since it is still in progress, but in an interview in his Santiago office, he was confident there would be no negative effects on the project.
I asked Rod if the Pascua Lama access road bisects the land in question. Rod responded ambiguously, simply stating that the lawsuit would not affect the Pascua Lama development. With investors chomping at the bit to see an $18 billion potential become mine output, it's no wonder Barrick is trying to wrap this case up as quickly as possible. But it might not be that easy.
Although a Barrick director discouraged us from believing the press, we feel The New York Times and Washington Post have an obligation to present facts in their reporting. See the following links for full stories...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/world/americas/30chile.html?ex=1311912000&en=6fcf9bbf82edb5e6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/25/AR2006122500457_pf.html
Villar, now with a new team of lawyers from Santiago, is battling Barrick in appeals courts after winning his initial lawsuit returning land title to his name. He intends to revisit the negotiating table, asking no less than $100 million for the land.
The plot in question forms an irregular, blocky "U" around the Pascua Lama protocol area and includes the central road Barrick has constructed to access the site from the San Felix Valley.
Barrick claims Villar is waging a "nuisance case" against their company. Rod Jimenez, Director of South American Operations, could not speak directly to the case since it is still in progress, but in an interview in his Santiago office, he was confident there would be no negative effects on the project.
I asked Rod if the Pascua Lama access road bisects the land in question. Rod responded ambiguously, simply stating that the lawsuit would not affect the Pascua Lama development. With investors chomping at the bit to see an $18 billion potential become mine output, it's no wonder Barrick is trying to wrap this case up as quickly as possible. But it might not be that easy.
Although a Barrick director discouraged us from believing the press, we feel The New York Times and Washington Post have an obligation to present facts in their reporting. See the following links for full stories...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/world/americas/30chile.html?ex=1311912000&en=6fcf9bbf82edb5e6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/25/AR2006122500457_pf.html
Watered -Down Democracy
"The Water Users Cooperative, representing 2,000 farmers of the Huasco Valley, is fully supportive of the project. Chile is a democratic country and the media play an important role in the public discussion of the community concerns and interests. There has already been an extensive and open discussion of issues including the participation of farmers."
That was taken directly from the Barrick website in response to a chain email Barrick deems misleading. The Water Users Cooperative is also known as the Junta de Vigilancia. A few things should be known about the Junta, especially when it is used in the same paragraph as "democracy."
Yes, the Junta represents the 2,000 farmers with water rights in the Huasco Valley. No, they do not fully support the project, according to their Director with whom we spoke in Vallenar on January 29th. Rather, once it got approval from the government they wanted to monitor the project as much as possible.
The Junta formed after the Pascua Lama project had long been in development. After the mine was approved, the Junta agreed to work with Barrick on a water treatment study and to oversee the approval of the protection devices planned for the mine. Barrick also agreed to pay the Junta $60 million dollars over 20 years: $3 million a year deposited into the Junta bank account. The Junta signed off on the Barrick plans.
The Junta offers a unique take on democracy. The 2,000 members of the Junta share 12,000 acciones. Acciones represent the water rights for each farmer. One accion equals one hour of water usage. One accion costs roughly $2,000, though prices vary in different places. Acciones are limited to available water on each members' land, but acciones can be bought and sold between members. Therefore, in a community dominated by a handful of prominent agricultural industrialists producing grapes and olives (further west toward the coast), the acciones tend to collect in the hands of the landed wealthy.
One accion also equals one vote and the Junta elects its own nine-person officials. The resulting board of directors for the Junta represents the most influential, powerful, accion-rich members. They are supposed to speak for the remaining small farmers, many of whom have 1/2 to 1 accion for their family-sized, self-supporting avocado, grape, or mango farms.
Votes can literally be bought in this form of small-town democracy.
Many locals wonder what $60 million can buy.
That was taken directly from the Barrick website in response to a chain email Barrick deems misleading. The Water Users Cooperative is also known as the Junta de Vigilancia. A few things should be known about the Junta, especially when it is used in the same paragraph as "democracy."
Yes, the Junta represents the 2,000 farmers with water rights in the Huasco Valley. No, they do not fully support the project, according to their Director with whom we spoke in Vallenar on January 29th. Rather, once it got approval from the government they wanted to monitor the project as much as possible.
The Junta formed after the Pascua Lama project had long been in development. After the mine was approved, the Junta agreed to work with Barrick on a water treatment study and to oversee the approval of the protection devices planned for the mine. Barrick also agreed to pay the Junta $60 million dollars over 20 years: $3 million a year deposited into the Junta bank account. The Junta signed off on the Barrick plans.
The Junta offers a unique take on democracy. The 2,000 members of the Junta share 12,000 acciones. Acciones represent the water rights for each farmer. One accion equals one hour of water usage. One accion costs roughly $2,000, though prices vary in different places. Acciones are limited to available water on each members' land, but acciones can be bought and sold between members. Therefore, in a community dominated by a handful of prominent agricultural industrialists producing grapes and olives (further west toward the coast), the acciones tend to collect in the hands of the landed wealthy.
One accion also equals one vote and the Junta elects its own nine-person officials. The resulting board of directors for the Junta represents the most influential, powerful, accion-rich members. They are supposed to speak for the remaining small farmers, many of whom have 1/2 to 1 accion for their family-sized, self-supporting avocado, grape, or mango farms.
Votes can literally be bought in this form of small-town democracy.
Many locals wonder what $60 million can buy.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Barrick's Plan
"In over forty years I have never put as much environmental protection into a project as I've put into this one."
Ron Kettles, Pascua Lama's director of operations, told us this as we sat down with him in his La Serena office. Kettles is a mining veteran and he has the stout, strong build and direct, no-nonsense demeanor to match. Ron believes in Pascua Lama and insists on its effectiveness. He says he came out of retirement to lead this project because of the dynamic challenges it posed due to its elevation and cross-border location. He also appreciates Barrick's committment to the environment and community, exemplified by their recent closure of the El Indio mine in a southerly valley.
For over an hour Ron walked us through Pascua Lama's plan according to a topographic map on his desk. The plan calls for five layers of protection in the waste pits and leaching pond. Surficial water from the glaciers surrounding the pit will be redirected via canals to join the free-flowing Estrecho River below the mine site. A water treatment facility will treat the naturally acidic water and recycled mine water for reuse in the operations. This water treatment process will, according to Ron, "stay in operation in perpetuity, if necessary." It must be noted that that perpetuity begins over 25 years from now, long after current Barrick officials have retired or moved on. The glaciers will not be touched, according to Ron, although he says their water studies show that the ice in the three glaciers accounts for less than .5% of the water supply. Glaciologists argue that such percentages are hard to rationalize since the ecosystems in these high-altitude environments are very complex and sensitively balanced.
"If anything's, there's probably a slight improvement to the water quality and quantity," Ron said.
He quotes some numbers of water usage. The mine will use only 45 liters/sec during peak operation though they have rights to 200 liters/sec in accordance with their "acciones" in the Junta de Vigilancia. Ron states that 5,800 liters/sec enters the Santa Juana Reservoir, the main body of water collected to fund the Huasco Valley. That number has been disputed by the Junta, however, who's director says there is a fluctuation of 1,000 to 2,000 liters/sec entering the reservoir and between 2,000 and 5,000 liters/sec leaving the reservoir. Only during the peak runoff months from September to December does the reservoir yield between 3,000-5,000 liters/sec. Most of the year it hovers at 2,000.
As for waste material, Ron says the mine will move 45,000 tons/day. Waste rock will be placed in stock piles with membrane linings to control leaching of dangerous material. Ron is especially proud of the tailings pond dam on the Argentina side of the mine where the cyanide treatment plant will live. Unlike similar dams, this one will be built of separate rock, not the tailings themselves. This, ideally, will act as yet another barrier to leaking. A nearby reclaimed water pond will be 1 km from the dam and all has been seismically tested to withstand catastrophic geologic events.
Ron emphasizes this importance, "There will be no possibility of contaminated material getting past the dam. There will be zero environmental impact effect."
The cyanide will arrive in trucks via the San Felix valley road that leaves out of Alto del Carmen. Truck spills are a major concern with mines, especially since the mountainous road is extremely curvy (see http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/spills.htm for a recent timeline of spills in world mines). It also passes directly above the north shore of the Santa Juana Reservoir. Ron says two convoys of 20 trucks will travel the road each day during operation. That's 40 trucks a day every day for twenty years. Barrick's emergency response plan involves GPS satellite surveillance, though a cyanide spill into a river or, worse, the reservoir, spreads rapidly.
Ron's pride in this mine is obvious - it is far more advanced than any mine he or Barrick has done in the past, including the year-old Veladero mine 7 km south of Pascua Lama in Argentina.
So why such dramatic improvements with Pascua Lama; why has Barrick gone to such length on this one?
"The emotional opposition has motivated us," Ron said.
(Barrick has a very capable public relations team so further technical information on this and other mines can be found at www.barrick.com)
Ron Kettles, Pascua Lama's director of operations, told us this as we sat down with him in his La Serena office. Kettles is a mining veteran and he has the stout, strong build and direct, no-nonsense demeanor to match. Ron believes in Pascua Lama and insists on its effectiveness. He says he came out of retirement to lead this project because of the dynamic challenges it posed due to its elevation and cross-border location. He also appreciates Barrick's committment to the environment and community, exemplified by their recent closure of the El Indio mine in a southerly valley.
For over an hour Ron walked us through Pascua Lama's plan according to a topographic map on his desk. The plan calls for five layers of protection in the waste pits and leaching pond. Surficial water from the glaciers surrounding the pit will be redirected via canals to join the free-flowing Estrecho River below the mine site. A water treatment facility will treat the naturally acidic water and recycled mine water for reuse in the operations. This water treatment process will, according to Ron, "stay in operation in perpetuity, if necessary." It must be noted that that perpetuity begins over 25 years from now, long after current Barrick officials have retired or moved on. The glaciers will not be touched, according to Ron, although he says their water studies show that the ice in the three glaciers accounts for less than .5% of the water supply. Glaciologists argue that such percentages are hard to rationalize since the ecosystems in these high-altitude environments are very complex and sensitively balanced.
"If anything's, there's probably a slight improvement to the water quality and quantity," Ron said.
He quotes some numbers of water usage. The mine will use only 45 liters/sec during peak operation though they have rights to 200 liters/sec in accordance with their "acciones" in the Junta de Vigilancia. Ron states that 5,800 liters/sec enters the Santa Juana Reservoir, the main body of water collected to fund the Huasco Valley. That number has been disputed by the Junta, however, who's director says there is a fluctuation of 1,000 to 2,000 liters/sec entering the reservoir and between 2,000 and 5,000 liters/sec leaving the reservoir. Only during the peak runoff months from September to December does the reservoir yield between 3,000-5,000 liters/sec. Most of the year it hovers at 2,000.
As for waste material, Ron says the mine will move 45,000 tons/day. Waste rock will be placed in stock piles with membrane linings to control leaching of dangerous material. Ron is especially proud of the tailings pond dam on the Argentina side of the mine where the cyanide treatment plant will live. Unlike similar dams, this one will be built of separate rock, not the tailings themselves. This, ideally, will act as yet another barrier to leaking. A nearby reclaimed water pond will be 1 km from the dam and all has been seismically tested to withstand catastrophic geologic events.
Ron emphasizes this importance, "There will be no possibility of contaminated material getting past the dam. There will be zero environmental impact effect."
The cyanide will arrive in trucks via the San Felix valley road that leaves out of Alto del Carmen. Truck spills are a major concern with mines, especially since the mountainous road is extremely curvy (see http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/spills.htm for a recent timeline of spills in world mines). It also passes directly above the north shore of the Santa Juana Reservoir. Ron says two convoys of 20 trucks will travel the road each day during operation. That's 40 trucks a day every day for twenty years. Barrick's emergency response plan involves GPS satellite surveillance, though a cyanide spill into a river or, worse, the reservoir, spreads rapidly.
Ron's pride in this mine is obvious - it is far more advanced than any mine he or Barrick has done in the past, including the year-old Veladero mine 7 km south of Pascua Lama in Argentina.
So why such dramatic improvements with Pascua Lama; why has Barrick gone to such length on this one?
"The emotional opposition has motivated us," Ron said.
(Barrick has a very capable public relations team so further technical information on this and other mines can be found at www.barrick.com)
Diaguita: Indigenous Culture
Anna Huanchequay runs a newspaper and candy kiosk in Alto del Carmen. The blue metal box big enough for a six-pack of telephone booths opens its front window in the mornings and late afternoon each day. From inside, Anna looks down a quiet, paved street of Alto toward the horizontally layered ridge that separates her valley, the San Felix, from the Transito Valley. The two main rivers of this controversy meet just around the corner. Anna's position as liason between the Diaguita people and Barrick has not been such a smooth confluence.
When we met with Ron Kettles, Barrick's director of Pascua Lama, he discussed fair-and-balanced reporting and the dangers of misrepresenting the facts. Up until that point our blog had reported on encounters with valley residents. Sergio Campusano had been our main contact but from there we canvassed random homes in two different communities. Everyone we met but one - a bartender who hoped for increased commerce - feared the mine and wished it would go away. But our interactions with Sergio concerned Ron:
"He (Sergio) doesn't have an ounce of Diaguita blood in him," Ron said. "And neither does his wife. Sergio represents the Huascoaltino farming cooperative. He's looking after his own personal financial interests. You need to understand the politics and speak to the people involved."
Ron continued to explain that the Diaguita recently became an indigenous culture:
"The 'Diaguita' people were not even recognized by the Chilean government. With the new government they magically recognized the Diaguita as a people. Magically, they became an indigenous group because a (governmental) minister is Diaguita. Previously, we recognized them simply as part of the community."
Later, Barrick's anthropologist reiterated the freshness of the Diaguita's indigenous status. He went on to state that the indigenous status brings benefits to a community. From his perspective it seems everyone suddenly wants to be indigenous whereas years ago the term was avoided as a social stigma. He feels people are playing the indigenous card in order to gain influence especially since anyone living in the valley, regardless of heritage, can claim Diaguita status. In this case, Sergio could be a legitimate Diaguita.
Perhaps the distinction - Diaguita or not - matters because the official Diaguita group of the valley, led by Anna Huanchequay, is in favor of the mine. Barrick has been sponsoring classes in native traditions like pottery and cooking. They have also paid for a bus to take Diaguita to Santiago for a meeting, a move many locals question as an easy avenue to encourage favor from this suddenly influential group.
It's difficult to discern the fair from the imbalanced when a group of small farmers and a man who grows avocados and mangos out of a small house are portrayed as self-serving, manipulative forces wrenching influence from the hands of others. Yet two separate groups - the Diaguita led by Anna and the Junta de Vigilancia (more on them later) - who have approved of the mine are clear of such charges. So Ron recommended we speak with Anna Huanchequay, "one of the people involved."
We spoke with Anna in her kiosk. She was apprehensive at first and seemed worn down from trying to decipher people's motives. This Pascua Lama topic has obviously taken its toll on her. Once convinced we weren't working with Barrick, she began talking. Anna claims the Diaguita never supported the mine but since it gained approval from the government they had fought to keep the glaciers safe. Recently, however, according to Anna, a town representative had been to the mine and reported that the glaciers had been manipulated by Barrick. Now, Anna says they await a response to a formal letter sent to President Bachelet. Ultimately, they want further discussion on mine activity and their claim to land title. This is what Anna told us. We have it on tape. She also said Barrick offered her money and she refused. She's tired and everyone seems to have a different story about where she and the Diaguita she represents stand.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Divide and Conquer
Regardless of your "side" in this debate over mine or no mine, it is undeniable that a chasm has been cut through the Huasco Valley community of 70,000 inhabitants. We focused our inquiry on the opinions and interests of townspeople closest to the mine. While the residents of Vallenar, the biggest city in the watershed, have strong opinions, the small farmers and business people of the towns directly below the Pascua Lama site (Chollay, Conay, Alto del Carmen, San Felix, Los Perales, La Pampa, El Transito, etc) have a closer connection to the water: it flows through their backyards in canals and they open small gates each day to allow it into their fields. They are closely connected to the source.
A common and very effective practice among major extraction companies when gaining the all-necessary community support is to divide and conquer. Sure, that term makes it sound like a Visigoth raid, but the literal accuracy retains value. From our many discussions with all types of valley residents we heard the same distrusting undertone: those people who are in favor of the project have benefited in some way from the company. Stories abound about households receiving an ice-cream maker or a telephone or computer after attending a town meeting with the company. These tales might be sensational urban legend with no basis to legitimize the claims.
In Alto del Carmen, the biggest town in the Transito and del Carmen Valleys, Barrick has an office with 2-3 full-time staff. We met with Carlos, a resident of San Felix and now an employee of the company. Carlos spoke in length about the community programs Barrick has and will continue to offer in the area. He described the cooking and pottery classes that teach local people traditional Diaguita customs. (No one we met had attended a class and many scoffed at the idea that learning pottery could be considered a benefit from a multi-billion dollar project.) He described the training and scholarship programs Barrick sponsors to encourage local employment at the mine. When asked about the handouts of gifts, what locals call "Coima" for corruption, Carlos chuckled and described an instance in which the company bought a specilized walker for a young boy with a muscular problem, asking if that was "coima." He then insisted on Barrick's strict policy of not giving money to, say, a school that formally requested a computer. Rather, Barrick buys a computer and gives it to the school once it finds the request valid. However, this policy of giving only services and materials, not money, apparently does not extend to larger sums of money. The Junta de Vigilancia, Huasco Valley's water regulatory committee made up of elected locals and water users, negotiated with Barrick to ensure a safe water protection system at the mine. They also secured a $60 million contract with Barrick for water improvements within the Huasco Valley. The sum is being paid out in $3 million increments each year for 20 years and managed by the nine-member committee (more on the Junta later). The 2006 payment, according to the director of the Junta, is currently awaiting allocation in the committee's bank account. In cash.
This he-said-she-said ping-pong match of local accusations versus company policies never ceases. It's easy to understand how years of such ambiguousness and contradiction can lead a person to become mistrustful of everyone.
Anna Huanchequay, president of the local Diaguita people, seems to be taking the brunt of that confusion...
A common and very effective practice among major extraction companies when gaining the all-necessary community support is to divide and conquer. Sure, that term makes it sound like a Visigoth raid, but the literal accuracy retains value. From our many discussions with all types of valley residents we heard the same distrusting undertone: those people who are in favor of the project have benefited in some way from the company. Stories abound about households receiving an ice-cream maker or a telephone or computer after attending a town meeting with the company. These tales might be sensational urban legend with no basis to legitimize the claims.
In Alto del Carmen, the biggest town in the Transito and del Carmen Valleys, Barrick has an office with 2-3 full-time staff. We met with Carlos, a resident of San Felix and now an employee of the company. Carlos spoke in length about the community programs Barrick has and will continue to offer in the area. He described the cooking and pottery classes that teach local people traditional Diaguita customs. (No one we met had attended a class and many scoffed at the idea that learning pottery could be considered a benefit from a multi-billion dollar project.) He described the training and scholarship programs Barrick sponsors to encourage local employment at the mine. When asked about the handouts of gifts, what locals call "Coima" for corruption, Carlos chuckled and described an instance in which the company bought a specilized walker for a young boy with a muscular problem, asking if that was "coima." He then insisted on Barrick's strict policy of not giving money to, say, a school that formally requested a computer. Rather, Barrick buys a computer and gives it to the school once it finds the request valid. However, this policy of giving only services and materials, not money, apparently does not extend to larger sums of money. The Junta de Vigilancia, Huasco Valley's water regulatory committee made up of elected locals and water users, negotiated with Barrick to ensure a safe water protection system at the mine. They also secured a $60 million contract with Barrick for water improvements within the Huasco Valley. The sum is being paid out in $3 million increments each year for 20 years and managed by the nine-member committee (more on the Junta later). The 2006 payment, according to the director of the Junta, is currently awaiting allocation in the committee's bank account. In cash.
This he-said-she-said ping-pong match of local accusations versus company policies never ceases. It's easy to understand how years of such ambiguousness and contradiction can lead a person to become mistrustful of everyone.
Anna Huanchequay, president of the local Diaguita people, seems to be taking the brunt of that confusion...
Friday, February 2, 2007
Pachuy Photos
The four pictures below show scenes from our three-day trip on horseback up the Pachuy River canyon. The portrait of Miguel, our guide, and Michael's horse show the upper pastures of the Pachuy Valley. From here we were only a few thousand feet below the Andes crest and the border with Argentina. The second image shows a road cut by Barrick's exploration team to access the Valeriano project, another potential mine site in this lucrative gold belt. The final shot shows the same road a few thousand feet higher. The mountains in the background will become an open-pit mine if Barrick's Pachuy project moves forward. Miguel has seen encampments of exploration teams and heavy machinery in this valley.
Basically, if the wildest dreams of Barrick and Xstrata, a Swiss company exploring the Morro mine area, come true, every major upper watershed basin in the Transito Valley will have a mine.
Remember, at most, 5 grams of gold per ton of moved mountain. The average blueberry weighs over 2 grams. That's two blueberries of gold for a ton of mountain. If that makes you look twice at your gold bracelet, go to www.nodirtygold.org and look for retailers that sell recycled or scrap gold. www.brilliantearth.com is one such source.
Basically, if the wildest dreams of Barrick and Xstrata, a Swiss company exploring the Morro mine area, come true, every major upper watershed basin in the Transito Valley will have a mine.
Remember, at most, 5 grams of gold per ton of moved mountain. The average blueberry weighs over 2 grams. That's two blueberries of gold for a ton of mountain. If that makes you look twice at your gold bracelet, go to www.nodirtygold.org and look for retailers that sell recycled or scrap gold. www.brilliantearth.com is one such source.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Horsepack trip to Pachuy
Horses hurt.
We spent 22 hours in 2.5 days on them in order to get up and down the Pachuy River canyon. But it was worth it; we needed to see the crest of the watershed where Barrick is currently exploring for another mine at the top of the Huasco Valley.
Miguel Salazar led our trip of three horses and La Mula - the pack mule. Miguel, about 50 years old, has always lived in Chollay, the tiny and final town before arriving at the Barrick gate. Miguel lives in his family's mud brick house with his mother, uncle and young son, Javier. They have been farming and raising livestock in the valley for multiple generations. Miguel is a farmer-cowboy. He spends part of his time managing a nearby small farm and the rest of his days riding his horse up the Pachuy to check on his livestock - mainly goats.
Javier greets us at their gate and we immediately head to the best pool in the valley. Just before entering the larger Chollay River, the Pachuy River slows to a clear, deep pool that looks black in the dusky light. A few rocks make perfect diving boards and we have the place to ourselves this evening. Javier is a smart kid and hopes to follow his brother to study in a university. Currently, Javier attends the secondary school in El Transito, a 45-minute bus ride down the valley that requires him to stay in the dorms like a boarding school. It costs $2,000 a year but Miguel works hard and intends to fully educate his boys.
As we ate our rice and bread around the little campfire our first night up the Pachuy Valley, Miguel pulled out his ID card from when he worked at Barrick as an explosives detonator years ago. He spent a season working for Barrick in the exploring phase but he now speaks out strongly against the mine and claims to have recently turned down another job offer from them. Miguel fears water contamination, water loss, and the loss of valuable grazing "vegas" - the green patches of native shrubs and grasses that pop up around each bend of this otherwise bone-dry landscape. Once again, water sneaks out of small springs and maintains a steady flow down the length of the valley, even at the 14,000 foot elevations at the top of the valley. The vegas offer free summer grazing for the local "granados" who have taken their livestock up for centuries. Most vegas have small stone structures, some with thatch roofs and more developed rooms, where the granados spend the day and sometimes multiple nights while tending to their herds.
Barrick says it has organized the granados who historically used the Chollay Valley, which has been blocked for almost a decade. But a long time passed at the beginning when the road was totally off limits, so some cowboys took their herds elsewhere - the Pachuy - or moved into another form of living, perhaps agriculture. Barrick now works with the certain families offering vaccination programs and entrance into the blocked Chollay within a very structured system.
By noon the second day we make it to the top of the Pachuy Valley and see Barrick's exploration roads across the expansive valley surrounded by red and maroon peaks that crown the drainage. Water trickles down the small gullies and joins to form a creek with vegas down the middle of the open valley. A dozen horses graze in one vega. We hang out for photos, documenting what might soon be another open-pit mine surrounded by roads and bulldozers diging for bracelets and earrings.
We spent 22 hours in 2.5 days on them in order to get up and down the Pachuy River canyon. But it was worth it; we needed to see the crest of the watershed where Barrick is currently exploring for another mine at the top of the Huasco Valley.
Miguel Salazar led our trip of three horses and La Mula - the pack mule. Miguel, about 50 years old, has always lived in Chollay, the tiny and final town before arriving at the Barrick gate. Miguel lives in his family's mud brick house with his mother, uncle and young son, Javier. They have been farming and raising livestock in the valley for multiple generations. Miguel is a farmer-cowboy. He spends part of his time managing a nearby small farm and the rest of his days riding his horse up the Pachuy to check on his livestock - mainly goats.
Javier greets us at their gate and we immediately head to the best pool in the valley. Just before entering the larger Chollay River, the Pachuy River slows to a clear, deep pool that looks black in the dusky light. A few rocks make perfect diving boards and we have the place to ourselves this evening. Javier is a smart kid and hopes to follow his brother to study in a university. Currently, Javier attends the secondary school in El Transito, a 45-minute bus ride down the valley that requires him to stay in the dorms like a boarding school. It costs $2,000 a year but Miguel works hard and intends to fully educate his boys.
As we ate our rice and bread around the little campfire our first night up the Pachuy Valley, Miguel pulled out his ID card from when he worked at Barrick as an explosives detonator years ago. He spent a season working for Barrick in the exploring phase but he now speaks out strongly against the mine and claims to have recently turned down another job offer from them. Miguel fears water contamination, water loss, and the loss of valuable grazing "vegas" - the green patches of native shrubs and grasses that pop up around each bend of this otherwise bone-dry landscape. Once again, water sneaks out of small springs and maintains a steady flow down the length of the valley, even at the 14,000 foot elevations at the top of the valley. The vegas offer free summer grazing for the local "granados" who have taken their livestock up for centuries. Most vegas have small stone structures, some with thatch roofs and more developed rooms, where the granados spend the day and sometimes multiple nights while tending to their herds.
Barrick says it has organized the granados who historically used the Chollay Valley, which has been blocked for almost a decade. But a long time passed at the beginning when the road was totally off limits, so some cowboys took their herds elsewhere - the Pachuy - or moved into another form of living, perhaps agriculture. Barrick now works with the certain families offering vaccination programs and entrance into the blocked Chollay within a very structured system.
By noon the second day we make it to the top of the Pachuy Valley and see Barrick's exploration roads across the expansive valley surrounded by red and maroon peaks that crown the drainage. Water trickles down the small gullies and joins to form a creek with vegas down the middle of the open valley. A dozen horses graze in one vega. We hang out for photos, documenting what might soon be another open-pit mine surrounded by roads and bulldozers diging for bracelets and earrings.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Pascua Lama site
Good visit to the mine site the last two days. Awaiting release of photos and text from Barrick before sharing images/description.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Pascua Lama
We met with Ron Kettles, director of the Pascua Lama project, last week in La Serena. Ron took the time to show us the main map of the Pascua Lama project. He also gave us a thorough description of the operating system planned for the cross-border (Chile-Argentina) mine. We are now prepared to fly up to the Pascua Lama site for three days beginning tomorrow. We are fortunate to have the chance to see the site first-hand and take photos of the area. It seems as if the project has some innovative approaches regarding the delicate issue of water usage, so we look forward to posting photos and video of the site next week.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Center Street Photo Team
We just got word from Sarah Johnson, a Birmingham instructor helping us with the Center Street Photography Team. Apparently, she helped five of the students submit photos to the Alabama PTA photo contest.
Turned out to be a successful last-minute job: Camille won 1st place, Jeremy took 2nd, and Sam 3rd!
Great work, team! We´re psyched for you. Your work while we´re away inspires us down here in Chile. We can´t wait to see some new pictures and hear of the improvements with portraits and lighting. We´ll soon have a gallery of your work on this site.
We´re heading back into the Transito Valley to meet more people and continue gathering pictures and thoughts from the communities.
Turned out to be a successful last-minute job: Camille won 1st place, Jeremy took 2nd, and Sam 3rd!
Great work, team! We´re psyched for you. Your work while we´re away inspires us down here in Chile. We can´t wait to see some new pictures and hear of the improvements with portraits and lighting. We´ll soon have a gallery of your work on this site.
We´re heading back into the Transito Valley to meet more people and continue gathering pictures and thoughts from the communities.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Landscapes
The clouds blessed us with a classic performance on our first full day up there. Since clouds are the landscape photographer´s best friend, we hope that the first day´s shots as well as subsequent ones of water sources will draw attention to the pristine beauty of the "cordillera" at these elevations.
(See photos below and continue for more photos and description of last four days)
(See photos below and continue for more photos and description of last four days)
Days 6-10
On Monday we were headed out of the Huasco Valley (scene of the Pascua Lama project and conflict)to get some perspective from above. We´d met many locals - at their homes, in their small vineyard, lounging by the swimming holes, and we´d attended a few small community meetings. Everyone we approached listened intently as we explained our goals for the project and why we were wandering their dusty streets like freelance missionaries. Getting to know the people and the overall lifestyle of the valley is important and we had to do it in an informal manner. Luckily, it worked and we´ll go back for more in a week or so. But... we had to get into the high mountains and with every road in the Husaco Valley either ending at a Barrick gate (2) or at a horse trail that would take 50km of walking just to arrive at any elevation, we decided to drive south and enter the mountains via a maintained road that passes into Argentina. So on Monday we planned to leave early for the 6 hour drive.
However... planning for a project like this - rural villages without communication and a big corporation with too much communication (i.e. red tape) - requires the flexibility of silly putty. On our way out the valley Monday morning we stopped by Sergio´s house (community leader, initial contact). He said he would be in Vallenar the next day for the first meeting with the water commissioner of the region. He invited us to join and film it, leaving a copy for him.
So we rearranged and found a danky hostel in Vallenar for the night (apparently, the prices for dirty hostal rooms are twice that of other comparable cities because the miners have spiked demand during their off-days. Perfect.)
We met Sergio, the community lawyer, and one other Huascoaltino representative at the city hall on Vallenar Plaza. The meeting lasted an hour dominated mostly by the self-assured explanations of the water commissioner, a Latin American poor-man´s Indian Jones in dusty leather jacket, profesorial collared shirt, boots, scraggly hair, and a beard over weather-worn skin. He leaned back in his chair and confidently told Sergio and the lawyer that the private property of Barrick or anyone else could not be interfered with. I get a little confused with Spanish at this level, but it´s not that simple with different layers - surficial land, water vs subsurface water - belonging to different parties. We taped and recorded it and gave Sergio a copy. Off to the mountains.
Leaving one valley, driving south along the coast and then back east into the another valley sounds easy but this country is long and drawn out. We finally made it up to the bend-in-the-road campsite we´d picked out from a map at 10:30pm. Real dark and real starry. A creek ran by our pull-off and we could see the silhouette of some massive mountains up the creek´s valley. Some large patches of white reflected the lingering light in the sky. Snow, glaciers, snowfields, whatever you want to call them. We went to sleep at 13,500 feet and less than 10km from the Argentine border at the crest of the Andes.
For the next three days (until arriving this afternoon in La Serena) we explored the valleys extending up into the bank of mountains that held the most substantial water sources. The landscape is stark and harsh. At first glance it looks like massive piles of dirt with some snow on top and a few water-filled gulleys and a baking sun in blue sky. But as we adjust, slowly to the altitude and the lack of any shade, we find rich extremes. The crumbling gulleys of brown and gray slate rocks descend to little creeksides covered in carpets of thick grasses and rich soils. Up on the banks 50 feet above the waterways little pods of green, like rough, prickly mosses, grow every few feet. Climbing higher, the grasses diminish but the water keeps rushing out of the bases of dry slopes. Little springs pop out everywhere. We climb further, to the base of the snowfields/glaciers capping the mountains and find more water, now flooding out from mud-covered ice layers, running down in Yoohoo-colored torrents before disappearing into the loose rock surface of the mountainsides. The water will reappear out of the hillsides in various outlets, filtered clear of the original silt and mud. Water pours out of these desert mountains.
While the crumbly, steep mountains, high elevations, and 14-hours of sun had their way with us, the trip was necessary for the project. We saw first-hand the importance of water in these mountains and their valleys. Although it´s not the same mountains, snow, or rivers as those affected by Pascua Lama and Barrick´s other projects (Pachuy/Chollay, Valeriano) the climate, topography, and glaciology are similar
However... planning for a project like this - rural villages without communication and a big corporation with too much communication (i.e. red tape) - requires the flexibility of silly putty. On our way out the valley Monday morning we stopped by Sergio´s house (community leader, initial contact). He said he would be in Vallenar the next day for the first meeting with the water commissioner of the region. He invited us to join and film it, leaving a copy for him.
So we rearranged and found a danky hostel in Vallenar for the night (apparently, the prices for dirty hostal rooms are twice that of other comparable cities because the miners have spiked demand during their off-days. Perfect.)
We met Sergio, the community lawyer, and one other Huascoaltino representative at the city hall on Vallenar Plaza. The meeting lasted an hour dominated mostly by the self-assured explanations of the water commissioner, a Latin American poor-man´s Indian Jones in dusty leather jacket, profesorial collared shirt, boots, scraggly hair, and a beard over weather-worn skin. He leaned back in his chair and confidently told Sergio and the lawyer that the private property of Barrick or anyone else could not be interfered with. I get a little confused with Spanish at this level, but it´s not that simple with different layers - surficial land, water vs subsurface water - belonging to different parties. We taped and recorded it and gave Sergio a copy. Off to the mountains.
Leaving one valley, driving south along the coast and then back east into the another valley sounds easy but this country is long and drawn out. We finally made it up to the bend-in-the-road campsite we´d picked out from a map at 10:30pm. Real dark and real starry. A creek ran by our pull-off and we could see the silhouette of some massive mountains up the creek´s valley. Some large patches of white reflected the lingering light in the sky. Snow, glaciers, snowfields, whatever you want to call them. We went to sleep at 13,500 feet and less than 10km from the Argentine border at the crest of the Andes.
For the next three days (until arriving this afternoon in La Serena) we explored the valleys extending up into the bank of mountains that held the most substantial water sources. The landscape is stark and harsh. At first glance it looks like massive piles of dirt with some snow on top and a few water-filled gulleys and a baking sun in blue sky. But as we adjust, slowly to the altitude and the lack of any shade, we find rich extremes. The crumbling gulleys of brown and gray slate rocks descend to little creeksides covered in carpets of thick grasses and rich soils. Up on the banks 50 feet above the waterways little pods of green, like rough, prickly mosses, grow every few feet. Climbing higher, the grasses diminish but the water keeps rushing out of the bases of dry slopes. Little springs pop out everywhere. We climb further, to the base of the snowfields/glaciers capping the mountains and find more water, now flooding out from mud-covered ice layers, running down in Yoohoo-colored torrents before disappearing into the loose rock surface of the mountainsides. The water will reappear out of the hillsides in various outlets, filtered clear of the original silt and mud. Water pours out of these desert mountains.
While the crumbly, steep mountains, high elevations, and 14-hours of sun had their way with us, the trip was necessary for the project. We saw first-hand the importance of water in these mountains and their valleys. Although it´s not the same mountains, snow, or rivers as those affected by Pascua Lama and Barrick´s other projects (Pachuy/Chollay, Valeriano) the climate, topography, and glaciology are similar
Monday, January 8, 2007
Photos...
Outside Vallenar, the clean, family run Piscina Vallenar fills its 2 pools everyday with water from the Huasco Valley. The owner grew up nearby and now runs the popular cooling-off spot with his daughter. They fear the mining projects will contaminate the water and the overall quality of the valley´s agricultural life. To them, a brief increase in commerce/human traffic is not worth the long term loss.
The sun doesn´t stop for 12 hours straight on Huasco Valley summer days so locals spend a few hours a day lounging at the river pools.
Every kid we spoke with said they swim at least once a day. Maybe that´s why every kid we spoke to was strongly against the mine.
Grapes grow here like kudzu in the southern US. Many small family farms still exist, some of them exporting to the US.
The sun doesn´t stop for 12 hours straight on Huasco Valley summer days so locals spend a few hours a day lounging at the river pools.
Every kid we spoke with said they swim at least once a day. Maybe that´s why every kid we spoke to was strongly against the mine.
Grapes grow here like kudzu in the southern US. Many small family farms still exist, some of them exporting to the US.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Day 5
Tonight we are heading up to Laguna Grande. We plan to explore higher elevations for a few days. We are waiting for Barrick to grant access to Pascua Lama mine.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Days 2-4
We met Sergio in Los Perales, a small town in the green ribbon that makes up the Valle del Transito. We met him after asking a couple men along the road where he lives - "at the sign for avocados." We found the "Hay paltas" (palta=avocado) and walked down the shady drive to the little concrete house with a covered, tile-floored patio. Shade means everything here. Second only to water. Sergio greeted us and we began explaining our presence and interests. His two children, age 5 and 11, bathed in the narrow concrete canal below the patio. She had little green chunks smeared in her hair - avocado shampoo.
Sergio is the president of the Estancia Huascoaltino. This refers to a farming community of members living in the Estancia - like a county. Huascoaltino lands extend into the cordillera to the Argentina border. He got out maps, including a large one with crayon markings indicating the areas of gold exploration. Pascua Lama was not the only one. There are also Valeriano, Pachui/Chollay, and the big Morro project, recently bought by Extrato Corporation.
Sergio is strongly against Barrick. According to Sergio, the only meeting he had, as representative of the Huascoaltino Community, with them ended with Barrick asking what they wanted. Sergio said the community wanted only one thing... for Barrick to leave. Barrick ultimately put together an outline of the benefits for the communities. The Huascoaltino were not interested.
The Huascoaltino native lands once covered a much larger area than they now do. Through complex secondary titles, the government sold large easterly chunks (where the gold belt lies) to Barrick and others.
Knowing Sergio´s stance, we spent yesterday walking through Los Perales. Everyone we met, with the exclusion of one bar owner (basically the only bar, in the nearby town of Transito), was against the mine. They fear contaminated water and most of them had never met a Barrick representative.
Next, we head back into the valley and will attend the monthly community meeting tonight followed by a more focused meeting on Sunday led by a Spanish ecologist who will use evidence from other mines to educate the locals on potential hazards. From there we'd like to get higher in the valley to see the areas affected.
Sergio is the president of the Estancia Huascoaltino. This refers to a farming community of members living in the Estancia - like a county. Huascoaltino lands extend into the cordillera to the Argentina border. He got out maps, including a large one with crayon markings indicating the areas of gold exploration. Pascua Lama was not the only one. There are also Valeriano, Pachui/Chollay, and the big Morro project, recently bought by Extrato Corporation.
Sergio is strongly against Barrick. According to Sergio, the only meeting he had, as representative of the Huascoaltino Community, with them ended with Barrick asking what they wanted. Sergio said the community wanted only one thing... for Barrick to leave. Barrick ultimately put together an outline of the benefits for the communities. The Huascoaltino were not interested.
The Huascoaltino native lands once covered a much larger area than they now do. Through complex secondary titles, the government sold large easterly chunks (where the gold belt lies) to Barrick and others.
Knowing Sergio´s stance, we spent yesterday walking through Los Perales. Everyone we met, with the exclusion of one bar owner (basically the only bar, in the nearby town of Transito), was against the mine. They fear contaminated water and most of them had never met a Barrick representative.
Next, we head back into the valley and will attend the monthly community meeting tonight followed by a more focused meeting on Sunday led by a Spanish ecologist who will use evidence from other mines to educate the locals on potential hazards. From there we'd like to get higher in the valley to see the areas affected.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Day 1
We´re in La Serena trying to coordinate who to meet, when, where, etc. La Serena is about 5.5 hours north of Santiago along the Panamerican Highway. It´s very dry up here with a rugged, salt-sprayed coastline, some long sweeps of beach with good surf and a few very local towns where Chilenos on summer vacation run across the street in bathing suits on their way to boogie board. It gets dark around 9pm.
Planning has been difficult as it is hard for our sole contact, the Black River First Nations representative, Don Clarke, to get in touch with Diaguita locals. We´re finally making headway after receiving the name and location of a man in El Perales, a small town in the Valle del Transito. Apparently we can drive into the town and just ask for him, it´s that small. So we´ll leave La Serena soon, drive north to Vallenar, then east into the valleys draining the Andes and the Pascua Lama site.
Also in the emails was a response from Ron Kettles, Barrick´s Project Manager at Pascua Lama. He asked which publications we represent and indicated he had only been aware of a tour for Huascoaltino (Diaguita) leaders to see the site and understand Barrick´s water protection intentions. He said he could only arrange a brief tour for us and that we wouldn´t see anything interesting, with no villages in the site. He said flatly that there would be no ¨treks¨ on the property because the requisite medical services could not accompany us. This is not good. We want to get into the site - there is no infrastructure currently, just Andean high country, a few roads, and a base camp. Physically, it should be no different than traveling in the adjacent, open high country. Only this part is not open. Hopefully, we will work something out.
So we´ll meet Sergio in Valle de Transito. We could spend a few days exploring the upper elevations of the concerned watersheds.
Planning has been difficult as it is hard for our sole contact, the Black River First Nations representative, Don Clarke, to get in touch with Diaguita locals. We´re finally making headway after receiving the name and location of a man in El Perales, a small town in the Valle del Transito. Apparently we can drive into the town and just ask for him, it´s that small. So we´ll leave La Serena soon, drive north to Vallenar, then east into the valleys draining the Andes and the Pascua Lama site.
Also in the emails was a response from Ron Kettles, Barrick´s Project Manager at Pascua Lama. He asked which publications we represent and indicated he had only been aware of a tour for Huascoaltino (Diaguita) leaders to see the site and understand Barrick´s water protection intentions. He said he could only arrange a brief tour for us and that we wouldn´t see anything interesting, with no villages in the site. He said flatly that there would be no ¨treks¨ on the property because the requisite medical services could not accompany us. This is not good. We want to get into the site - there is no infrastructure currently, just Andean high country, a few roads, and a base camp. Physically, it should be no different than traveling in the adjacent, open high country. Only this part is not open. Hopefully, we will work something out.
So we´ll meet Sergio in Valle de Transito. We could spend a few days exploring the upper elevations of the concerned watersheds.
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