“We will defend this water with our lives.”

—Julio Marin, President, Regional Coordinator of Watersheds
Affected by Mining in Cajamarca (CORECAMI)

Stop Gold Mine Expansion / Peru - Victory

In less than ten years, a rural agricultural and dairy producing region in northern Peru has been overwhelmed by a multinational mining operation whose four open-pit gold mines are the most profitable in all of South America. Spread across 25,000 hectares (63,000 acres) of mountaintops, the Yanacocha Mine is already the world's second-largest gold mine, and it intends to keep growing. The joint-venture company owns mineral rights to an additional 125,000 hectares including Mount Quilish, the main source of water for the city of Cajamarca.

At the mine sites, huge piles of low-grade ore are soaked in a toxic cyanide solution that leaches out the gold and silver (see box). Although Yanacocha managers claim cyanide and other toxic metals cannot escape the mine site into the watershed, mining expert Dr. Robert Moran says, "all the sites I've ever worked at experience some degree of leakage." Mine contamination has already resulted in three major fish kills in area rivers and trout farms.

"People are troubled about their future and a heavy cloak of anxiety and profound concern darkens the spirit of the place and threatens any meaningful sense of well-being….There is general agreement that the current situation in Cajamarca is unsustainable from a social, economic, and environmental perspective," states the report of an expert mission sent to the region by the Ombudsman's Office of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank. The expert team visited Cajamarca in response to two formal complaints filed by Cajamarca citizen groups.

The first complaint demands investigation and reparations for mercury poisoning that affected up to 300 villagers in June 2000. The mercury leaked from a Yanacocha Mine truck, contaminating a 40-km. section of highway, including three villages. The kilometer section of highway, including three second complaint demands company accountability for many negative social, economic, health and environmental impacts on the community. Demands include higher prices for land purchases, public access to monitoring of water and air quality, ecosystem preservation, health services, and citizen participation in all these activities. Number One among these demands is no further expansion.

Saving Mount Quilish (keeLEESH) is the greatest concern for the city of Cajamarca. Its 130,000 residents (plus 300,000 in the surrounding areas) depend on water from Mount Quilish for drinking and agriculture. The Yanacocha Mine already owns almost all of Mount Quilish and refuses to relinquish its right to mine the mountain. The IFC, which owns 5% of shares in the Yanacocha Mine and provides additional loans, also refuses to define Mount Quilish off-limits; it only says that Peruvian and IFC standards for environmental impact studies and public consultation will be applied.

For Cajamarca citizens who are already embattled against the huge, powerful mine, this is insufficient assurance. They know the terrifying history of toxic spills at gold mines around the world, including the Romanian spill this year that killed fish along 250 miles of the Danube River and tributaries. They know that similar indigenous communities in Indonesia, Nevada, Southern California and the Philippines are protesting environmental and human rights abuses of Newmont Mining Corporation, the major shareholder in the Yanacocha Mine.

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