Lots of U.S. activists I know are targeted by ridiculous federal legislation like the Animal Enterprise Terror Act, are watched and infiltrated by Joint Terror Task Forces or watched by corporate private security keeping “tabs” on anti-corporate campaigns. And while this targeting can have serious repercussions, it’s rare in recent U.S. history that you see activists targeted for assassination by anti-activist forces (although I do fear escalating violence in Appalachia around mountaintop removal.) In the past few months, anti-mining activists in El Salvador and Chiapas have been threatened, attacked and assassinated by reactionary groups in their communities.
Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, a Salvadoran anti-mining activist, was the third victim of such violence the Cabañas Region of El Salvador where communities are campaigning against Canadian mining company Pacific Rim. She was eight months pregnant and the shooting also wounded her two year old son.
Dora’ murder comes six days after the fatal shooting of Ramiro Rivera Gomez, Vice President of the Cabañas Environmental Committee, who had survived being shot eight times in August this year. In June, another environmental campaigner, Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, had been tortured and killed. Many other members of the community have received death threats, including youth workers and journalists for the local community radio station Radio Victoria, and the local priest Father Luis Quintanilla narrowly escaped an attempted kidnapping.
In Chiapas, Mariano Abarca led a campaign to kick Canadian mining companies out of Mexico until he was gunned down in front of his home in Chicomuselo, Chiapas in November 2009.
In the U.S. and Canada, our ability to campaign and do direct action is a privilege which we take for granted. We often worry about an arrest going on our permanent record, or paying too big a fine, or spending more than a night in jail. But in Latin America, communities standing up to injustice and environmental destruction are literally risking their lives to protect their communities, the planet and the people living on it.
Most of the companies that communities in the global South are campaigning against are based in the global North, don’t you think it’s time we pushed the envelope with our privilege?
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It is unfortunate that companies that used to operate here moved to other regions of the world when pressure was exerted on them in Canada. Normally when extreme pressure is exerted on a mass the mass changes shape. I believe that rather than exerting pressure at one point and not others a unified front must be established. As is stated in the article the people in other parts of the world are willing to give up their lives to get the point across. Why aren’t we doing the same to Canfor( a Finnish company) for clearcutting our forests and protecting their own. My father was a Faller in the forest industry when the government mandated clear cuts in BC. Pressure at the horse’s ass may not reach the horse’s head. I believe head offices and home countries of companies working abrtoad is where the focus of protest should be. Interfering in daily operations only causes hard feelings on site and the decision makers smile, drive home comfortable with the fact that the angry people are half a world away. So by working together and focusing our energies where they will do the most if not only good will we be able to change the way the people making the most money think about the situation. As we have seen in the banking industry the people being paid large salaries for large responsibilties are throwing their responsibilities on the shoulders of others. So why are they being paid? These millions would go a long way to those that require so little. The ones on the ground, the people willing to give anything for what is right and just. 10,20 or 30 years ago it wouldn’t have been possible but now it is. Thank you all for your efforts. Later.
Is the message from environmental movements “Don’t use any of the earth’s resources”?
Is another cause for the environmental movement to revoke the jobs of everybody else, while they are employed but consider theirs a just means of employment?
Did Pacific Rim withdraw from Canada due to environmental destruction pressure, or do they mine for gold wherever the gold may be?
Credible, honest answers to these questions are pertinent in order to understand the issue’s to determine the focus and right way to go about getting resolution at best or compromise at least. If we cannot work together as Phil points out there will be no hope for co-operation or civility. Emotions have to be checked and rationalized with fact; government fed alarmism only convolutes the issues and divides the people. We need to address the government agendas and flaws first.
I feel astonished to learn environmentalists may be killed by others!
They’re doing the jod which is to help us ,all of us !