Chile

News release from the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), Santiago Anti-Pascua Lama Coordination, the Northern Chile Environmental Network, and the Huasco Valley Defence Council: Protests against Barrick Gold’s massive Pascua Lama project are taking place in the southern cone timed to coincide with the company’s Annual General Meeting in Toronto. In Buenos Aires, Santiago, San Juan, and Vallenar, communities are demonstrating against Barrick’s impacts on nature, people and democracy. They have released this open letter written to the attention of Barrick Gold’s shareholders.

Watershed, a documentary by Lauren Rosenfeld, intimately captures agrarian life in the heart of the Andes Mountains and portrays the struggle of a Chilean farming community to preserve its culture, land, and water rights. Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold mine owned by the Canadian Barrick Gold Corporation, is the first of many projects under construction in the Cordillera between Chile and Argentina.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is visiting Chile to mark the tenth anniversary of the Free Trade Agreement between the two nations. Representatives from Chilean civil society asked the Canadian embassy in Chile to facilitate a visit between the Prime Minister and communities affected by Canadian mining companies. Their request has been denied.

Oruro, Bolivia, March 9-11, 2007

This past March 9-11, representatives from civil society organizations and churches throughout Latin America met to share and discuss the situation of environmental injustice which communities and organizations are confronting as a result of the activities of transnational mining corporations.