Coal Mines and Communities in Colombia: The Salem Connection

 

  

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Presentation by Avi Chomsky, Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies, Salem State College

 

This shows the relationship between the United States and Colombia. The U.S. is heavily arming Colombia, the most violent and dangerous country in Latin America. Most of the victims of violence are unarmed civilians: peasants, indigenous people, labor activists, human rights activists, journalists. Right wing paramilitaries who are linked to the Colombian army are the main perpetrators.

 

The Cerrejon Zona Norte mine in Colombia's Guajira peninsula was developed as a joint venture between Exxon and the Colombian government. It was sold in 2001 to a consortium of three European mining companies: Anglo-American, Glencore, and BHP-Billiton. It is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world, and supplies coal to the Salem Harbor Power Station, among other places. The indigenous Wayuu people of the Guajira peninsula and Afro-Colombian peasants in the region have been progressively displaced over the past 20 years as the mine has been built and expanded. They are seeking compensation and relocation for displaced communities.

 

In the arid northern Guajira, the Wayuu inhabitants live by fishing and herding cattle, goats and sheep.

 

Wayuu dwellings are built of the woody inside stem of the cactus plant. Hand woven hammocks adorn the dwellings.

 

A typical desert dwelling in the northern Guajira.

 

Water is very scarce. When the mining company arrived in the early 1980s, it promised Wayuu leaders that, in exchange for large swaths of Wayuu territory, it would build a water supply for the peninsula. The government declared much of the Wayuu ancestral territory to be "tierras baldias" or uninhabited land, since they Wayuu, despite inhabiting the peninsula since before the Spanish conquest, held no legal documents asserting their ownership of the land. Initially, many Wayuu leaders cooperated with the mining company, believing that it would bring concrete benefits to their communities. Over the years, as promises were unkept and more and more land taken, the Wayuu have tried to use the legal system and community organizations to defend their rights.

 

Wayuu women wear the traditional "manta" or long, brightly colored cotton dress. Remedios Fajardo (seated, left) was one of the founders of the Wayuu indigenous organization Yanama in 1982. Yanama has been struggling for 20 years to preserve Wayuu culture, language, and land rights.

 

In the southern Guajira, which is much more fertile, Afro-Colombian and Wayuu villagers engage in farming and wage labor on ranches and farms owned by wealthy Colombians. The mining company has bought up many of these properties, depriving villages of their livelihoods.

 

The mining complex included a 95-mile railway leading from the mine itself, in the southern Guajira, to the newly-built port on the northern coast. The influx of people brought small commerce along the road bed.

 

The road cut through territory that previously had only trails.

 

Some of the machinery used in the early stages of construction. This, and the previous slides were taken by anthropologist Deborah Pacini Hernandez in 1983, when construction was just beginning.

 

A woman poses next to the tire to give sense of the scale of the bulldozers.

 

Construction of the port.

 

Land being cleared for the mine.

 

Construction workers. Many Wayuu worked in the initial phases of construction, but once the mine came into operation in the mid-1980s, they were replaced by more qualified workers from other parts of Colombia. Today only a very few Wayuu work for the mine. For most, it has meant dispossession, destruction of sacred lands, loss of water supply, and poisoning of their environment.

 

Left to right: Anthropologist Deborah Pacini Hernandez, two Colombian anthropologists, and indigenous Wayuu activist Remedios Fajardo pose in front of the sacred Cerro de la Teta mountain. This mountain was included in the territory that the government ceded to the mining company.

 

A 1982 meeting of Yanama, the indigenous organization that continues to defend land rights, ethnic and bilingual education, and cultural rights of the Wayuu.

 

The mine in operation today.

 

The train carrying coal to the port, today.

 

August 9, 2001. Police fighting residents of the Afro-Colombian village of Tabaco, as they try to force residents to abandon their homes to make room for the expansion of the mine. Residents demanded that their town be "relocated"--that is, that the government and the company rebuild the town in a new spot, allowing the collective life of the village to continue. In May, 2002, the Supreme Court of Colombia ruled in favor of the villagers, ordering the relocation of Tabaco. Activists in Colombia fear that without international pressure, this court decision will not be enforced. In Salem, Mike Fitzgerald, Chief of Operations at the Salem Harbor Station made the following statement: "As a customer, we urge our vendor to enter into negotiations to find a just settlement to this issue."

 

A resident of Tabaco sitting in front of the ruins of her home. August, 2001.

 

Another resident showing journalists what remained of her home.

 

A child in Tabaco tells reporters about the day his town was demolished.

 

United Steelworkers of America activist Glynda Williams describing the murder of two union leaders at the neighboring La Loma mine during her delegation's visit to Colombia in 2001.

 

Demonstration in support of murdered mine union activists.

 

Canadian Shipping Lines boat Sophie Oldendorff delivering coal from Colombia's Cerrejon Zona Norte mine to the Salem Harbor Station.