Day 2 - Palo Ralo

At 7am the Caritas minibus arrives to take us to the Siria Valley, a two hour journey from Tegucigalpa. We drive up steep and narrow roads to leave this city which is built in the crater of a 700m mountain range.

Our First Stop is Palo Ralo, the village which was moved to accommodate the mine. 13 families were relocated, nearly 8 years ago now. Some, including Olimpia Arteaga, an elderly single parent who is now a grandmother, still have no proper title deed to her house or land. ‘My home is all I have,’ says Olimpia. ‘Yet I have no security to that.’ A further complication: according to Caritas, the boundaries of the mining concession are not exactly clear, and when the company, Entre Mares leaves, within the next three years, the mining concession becomes once again property of the government. Of course, even with the proper legal title deeds, the current 1998 Mining Law allows access anywhere in the country for mining operations.

The Environmental Committee of the Siria Valley are next on our agenda. President Martin Erraza welcomes us warmly, and Secretary Carlos Amador directly addresses Alexa McDonough, as a representative of the Canadian Parliament, the home country of Goldcorp, parent company of Entre Mares. Carlos asks her to transmit the committee’s five demands to the company, and the Canadian government:

• Compensation for local residents whose health has been ill affected by the pollution caused by the mine;
• Local water supply should be cleaned up;
• The area should be reforested with species native to the region, that were there before the arrival of the mine;
• The people of Palo Ralo should all be given legal title deeds;
• Local farming lands should be cleaned up so that they can be farmed again.

Alexa tells Carlos and the Committee of a growing worldwide movement whereby people are demanding further accountability from extractive companies operating in the Global South. She explains the Canadian Roundtables on CSR and their recommendations for Canadian companies overseas. Unfortunately, some sectors are resisting this initiative.

‘However, the Canadian population, political parties and civil society organisations are working together to tell corporations that their resistance is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to the Canadian people, to the British people, and to the human family.’

Steve and Keith give House of Commons baseball caps to Martin Erraza and Rodolfo Arteaga; they ask for a translation of the House of Commons logo and are plainly delighted.

Our Next Stop: the San Martin Mine and meeting with Entre Mares managers. We embark on an air-conditioned company bus for a tour of the mine given by Manager Eduardo Villacorta, flanked by South American geologists and environmental specialists.

They take us to see the vast pits that will eventually be filled in at closure of the mine, the heap leeching pads where cyanide is sent to extract gold, and a series of ponds where the gold extract is sent. The company is at pains to show that there is wildlife and natural vegetation in the area despite the mining activity. They take us to Terra Rosa, a former pit which has been reclaimed and replanted, and where they have set loose deers, snakes and iguanas native to the region. The company has an unnerving habit of filming our every move. We take our own photos and have the Caritas photographer with us. The 90 minute visit under a hot sun is obviously designed to impress, and it does; however, none of us has any technical expertise in mining operations.

Back at the company office, we are welcomed into an air conditioned lecture theatre, with ice cold drinks on offer. We, the delegation, plus the Canadian trade official Mark Strasser, and a British diplomat who has been dispatched from the embassy in Guatemala, are all assigned places at the front of the room. Our ‘audience’ is bizarrely made up of local community members, and people known as ‘promoters’, who are sort of grassroots PR agents for the company within the communities. (Siria Valley Environmental Committee members had previously told us how such ‘promoters’ are instrumental in efforts to oust the legally constituted community organisation that is critical of Entre Mares.) For the first time in Honduras, we have simultaneous translation, exactly as it is done in Canada, which gives George, Julia and I a rest from translating. Company officials embark on a slick power point presentation. These modern facilities are in stark contrast with the previous visit to local communities and indeed, to the Spartan and cramped government offices in Tegucigalpa we have visited.

After a long preamble, Villacorta gets down to the point: Entre Mares does not accept the validity of the government fine of one million lempiras (US$55,000) recently imposed for arsenic and cyanide pollution, the water tests were not properly done, he says. The government has not been transparent. As for the current government tests to determine whether local skin, respiratory and gastric tests are linked to the mine, Entre Mares says samples were not properly taken. Caritas tells us later that the company did not even witness most of the sample taking procedure.

Why, we ask, would the government want to discredit Entre Mares? There is no clear answer to this.

Entre Mares has appealed the government pollution fine. It is clear that the government will have to go to court and win a case that is bound to be a legal and political minefield if it wants the company to pay. If that happens, Villacorta says, ‘we will pay, but under duress.’

The delegation has just seen another example of why Canada needs to regulate its extractive companies in their overseas operations.