by Todd Gordon
These were encouraging signs for Canadian and foreign capital, inspiring Canadian ambassador Cameron Mackay to express, in a gushing op-ed piece in a major Honduran daily, how “pleased” Canada is “to see Honduras under the leadership of president Porfirio Lobo.”234 Reproducing the new economic model in the face of resistance has been enabled by the impunity with which state and military forces have been able to carry out systematic abuses of the human rights of the Honduran population. The Canadian state’s response to these violations has paralleled its position on Honduran democracy more generally of late.
Canadian capital has considerable influence in a number of Honduran industries, and this is likely to grow further over the next several years. According to Ambassador Cameron Mackay, by the summer of 2011 Canada had over C$750 million in investment in Honduras—a considerable jump from Statistics Canada’s pre-coup 2007 (the last year for which data is available before the coup) figure of C$105 million.235 The three most prominent economic sectors for Canadian investment have been mining, maquilas (regulation-light industrial manufacturing zones with low-wage, non-union, and predominantly female labour), and tourism. The growing influence of Canadian capital has not been embraced by Honduran workers, nor communities affected by the social and environmental costs of mining and tourism. Prior to the coup these groups were already organizing against Canadian companies, and the political context of post-coup Honduras has made the human rights and environmental situations more challenging for some Hondurans. The experiences of Honduran maquila workers and mining- and tourism-affected communities offer a clear, and disturbing, illustration of the implications of the coup and the expansion of Canadian capital in the country.
Mining
Conflict surrounding mining has been a central feature of Honduran political life since the late 1990s when a new mining law was implemented and Canadian companies began investing. As a result, while Goldcorp, despite strong resistance to its operations, has managed to develop its San Martin open-pit mine, stability has been elusive for the industry.
Pedro Landa is a leading environmental activist in Honduras, with particular expertise in the mining industry. We talked with him for over an hour in his Tegucigalpa office in late June 2011. According to Landa, Canadian mining companies, already the largest investors in that industry, have signaled they could spend between C$700 million to C$1 billion over the next several years with a new law in place that provides predictability and security for their investments.236 Landa pointed out that the majority of the more than 160 licensed exploration concessions that are awaiting approval to proceed are owned by Canadian companies.
Even before Zelaya’s election, however, mining exploration began to stall in Honduras. Mining companies and the existing mining law were targets of fierce criticism from social movements and communities adversely affected by mining activities. An executive with the Canadian corporation Maverick, for instance, complained of harassment from local communities opposed to its activities, referring to protesters as an “eco-cancer,” while Canadian gold mining giant, Goldcorp, was the target of strong community opposition as well (discussed further below).237 The mining law in place in Honduras at the time of Zelaya’s election had been introduced in the aftermath of the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, at the behest of the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank, as part of their efforts to compel Latin American countries to open their natural resource industries to foreign investment. The natural disaster and its deleterious economic impact were used to push through a law with little public debate, and it was widely seen as favourable to mining companies rather than the communities in and around which the mines were located.238 In 2007, in the context of growing public concern about the ecological consequences of large-scale mining (all of which was foreign), the Honduran Supreme Court determined that thirteen articles of the law were unconstitutional, among them, the termination of environmental impact studies prior to the granting of concessions. The Zelaya administration, which initially gave space to the industry to develop reforms to the law, responded to the industry’s failure to do so and to persistent public concerns about mining with a unilateral proposal for a new law in April 2009. The proposed law would have prohibited open-pit projects and the use of heavy metals like cyanide for refining—a move that no doubt failed to earn the president any fans in the industry.
The Zelaya administration also rejected Canadian mining giant Goldcorp’s closure plan for its San Martin mine, which had been criticized by community activists for failing to take adequate steps to clean toxins from the local water system.239 The stasis had grown and the industry was in limbo. Zelaya’s proposal for a new mining law, however, did not see the light of day. The coup and the repression that followed changed the balance of forces in Honduras between capital on the one hand, and community activists, on the other. This did not translate into a new law immediately following the coup, however. Pedro Landa argues that the industry and its political supporters moved cautiously on this front, knowing that large-scale mining was still a sensitive issue in the country (including with some members of congress), and the industry had been publicly identified in Honduras and internationally as a strong supporter of the coup.240
Canada nonetheless had its sights on a new mining law favourable to Canadian companies. As early as a year before the coup, in fact, Minister of Interational Cooperation, Bev Oda, met with represenatives of a Canadian company active in Honduras, Yamana Gold, and discussed their frustration with the mining regime and the growing anti-mining sentiment.241 The Canadian government had no faith in Zelaya to address Canadian capital’s concerns by this time. The new Lobo government, however, with its favourable orientation toward foreign investment and friendly relations with the Harper government was viewed as a useful interlocutor. Landa also points to the influence of the mining industry on the political process in Honduras after the coup. He notes that industry representatives from the Asociación Nacional de Minería Metálica en Honduras (National Association of Metal Mining, ANAMINH) acted as advisors to the Micheletti government and subsequently served on a mining commission under Lobo. The commission was instrumental in the development of the new law that would be introduced into Congress in 2012.242 The general political environment in post-coup Honduras, then, provided a reasonable basis for confidence within the industry and the Canadian government regarding the possibilities for a rebirth of mining in the country.
This sentiment is captured in a report on bilateral commercial relations with Honduras produced in the Latin American and Caribbean Commercial Relations section of FAIT: “Given the new [Honduran] government’s openness to foreign investment and desire to establish clearer regulations for the extractive sector, we expect to see renewed interest in new investments in Honduras among the Canadian mining community.” 243 In fact, according to Landa, there were 168 exploration licenses that had been approved in Honduras before a new law was in place, the majority of them Canadian.244
After Lobo’s June election, then, Canadian officials swung into action. The first visit to Honduras following Lobo’s inauguration by Canada’s Minister of State for the Americas, Peter Kent, included meetings with Canadian mining representatives and Honduran political leaders. The embassy promised the mining industry to work on its behalf and arrange meetings with key Honduran political leaders, exploiting its efforts to undermine Zelaya and support the isolated and illegitimate Lobo government. In late May 2010, for instance, ambassador Reeder and CIDA head Daniel Arsenault accompanied Canadian mining executives from Breakwater Resources and Aura Minerales in a series of “high level calls” on Honduran political leaders, including the Conservative President of Congress, Juan Hernández, President Lobo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mario Canahuati, and the Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Rigoberto Cuéllar Cruz, “helping them pursue their commerical interests in Honduras.” Arsenault happily reports that Hernández “was well disposed to Canada and to our investm
ent posture in the country,” while Lobo and his cabinet ministers “wanted to encourage more foreign investment to Honduras as a means to create jobs.” There with a purpose, and seeing an obvious opening from Honduran leaders, the Canadians did not mix their message. Arsenault reports that “we were facilitating private sector discussions with the new government in order to promote a comprehensive mining code to give clarity and certainty to our investments.”245
“The Canadian investor message,” Reeder remarks in a communiqué regarding the meeting, “was that we [sic] were prepared to consider new mining investments in the country. President Lobo and his Minister of Mines have publicly pointed to this visit as an important vote of support.”246 And that support will not go unrewarded. “There appears to be,” Arsenault observes, “a political opening in Honduras to advance discussions on a comprehensive mining code.” Unmentioned in the Situational Report from which these quotations are drawn, but obvious to any Canadian diplomat or mining leader working the Honduran political machine, is that the “political opening” is a direct result of a military coup and bloody repression. The Situational Report notes as well that Reeder asserted that the Canadian government expects Canadian companies to “abide by good CSR practices,” a rote mention in such discussions—raised with a nod and a wink—with little implication for Canadians beyond the PR exercise it represents, its meek utility even more obvious when measured against the actual practices of Canadian companies.
Confidence buoyed by the meeting, the Canadian mining executives graciously offered to assist with the writing of a new mining law that is “comparable to what is working in other jurisdictions.” When the Honduran interlocutors welcomed the offer of support from the Canadian executives, the latter subsequently went about identifying, through consultations with representatives from the World Bank and IMF, a mining policy “resource” (i.e., an advisor)—with whom they met several times first to “ensure our ‘ideologies’ aligned”—to propose to the Honduran Congress. When later approached for financial support for the writing of a new mining law by Breakwater Resources, the embassy and CIDA in Honduras replied that given CIDA’s existing commitments it would not be possible, but that they should approach instead the CSR Centre for Excellence in the Canadian Institute of Mining in Montreal (an organization of professionals working in the mining industry that received funding from FAIT), which if needed will give the the process of influencing a new law a veneer of CSR.247
One option, CIDA and the embassy suggest, is for Canadian mining representatives “to contribute to the costs of the consultant/development of the bill, but that the interlocutor or lead on engagement with the Honduran Congress be the CIM…This would remove your company from a direct role and present the CIM as the interlocutor.” Another angle they propose is to use “the FIDE, the Honduran agency promoting FDI in Honduras,” as “the lead interlocutor with the Congress to facilitate a consultant’s services to help in drafting the law, but with funding for this work provided to the FIDE from the mining sector unless the FIDE has their own resources.”248 The Canadian strategy, then, was to have the Canadian mining industry finance the writing of a new mining law behind the scenes to its own benefit.
Embassy support for a new mining law did not end there. An email written in March 2012 by a staffer with the Canadian mission serving Honduras suggests, without going into the details, embassy support going back to the early days of the Lobo regime. “Given that Honduras has not had a modern [redacted] mining law for a long period of time, the embassy for the past two years have [sic] been working actively with Honduran government to promote a modern, competitive and transparent mining law.”249 The Honduran media also reported in early 2012 after an initial draft of the law was completed that Honduras had an agreement with Canada to use Canadian funds in order to contract a consultant to make sure “that the experiences of Canada are also reflected in the law.”250
A congressional commission to study a new mining law was established in the autumn of 2010.251 The Commission initially presented itself as seeking the perspective of different Honduran actors, including environmentalists. Some environmental groups initially agreed to participate in the Commission, but eventually withdrew after deciding their concerns about large-scale mining were being ignored. The commission finished its work and the final version of the proposed law was put forward to Congress in early 2012 without input from actors outside of Congress and the industry.252 According to a number of community, social movement, and human rights organizations that issued a joint communiqué when it was made public in January, the law fails to address the key concerns that critics of the industry have been making in Honduras: it continues to permit controversial open-pit mining; it does not protect access to safe water in communities near developments; it contains loopholes that will enable foreign companies to limit their tax payments; it lowers requirements for the granting of concessions; it restricts public access to information on mining plans and activities; it fails to ensure binding community consultation, only requiring consultation for production licenses and not exploration; and it commits to processing the exploration projects that were halted by Zelaya’s moratorium.253 The law, in other words, establishes an extremely favourable environment for Canadian and other international capital, and in doing so will inevitably lead to an intensification of social conflict.
Goldcorp’s recent history offers a useful lesson in the impact of large-scale industrial mining in the Honduran countryside. Operated by Goldcorp subsidiary, Entremares, the San Martin mine in Honduras’ Siria Vally was operational from 2000–2007. It faced opposition from the start. Activists with the Siria Valley Defense Committee blame Goldcorp for polluting the local water system and poisoning inhabitants of the Valley. They point to deforestation, the diversion of natural waterways, the construction of roads, the starving of small farmers of scarce water resources (it used betweeen 757 and 1211 litres of water per minute to extract gold) and a concomitant end to food security for the peasantry in the region.254 Goldcorp and the Honduran government deny that San Martin has harmed the environment or the people of the Valley, but scientific study of the water used for human consumption in two of the Valley communities found levels of arsenic, lead, and hexavalent chromium well above the World Health Organization’s acceptable levels.255 That same study also found high levels of lead and arsenic in the blood of ten people tested in the communities.
Under pressure from the Defense Committee’s international campaign against Goldcorp, the Honduran Ministry of the Environment responded by conducting its own study of blood and urine samples from sixty-two children and adults in 2007, while a former Honduran medical examiner and a former Special Attorney for the Environment were hired by Goldcorp to observe the process. However, both the Ministry of the Environment and Goldcorp sat on the results for almost four years. In April 2011, results for the tests of arsenic, mercury, and lead levels in the blood, but not urine, were released. The Ministry of the Environment’s own study found that forty-six of sixty-two people tested had “dangerously high levels of heavy metals poisoning in their blood that would have required immediate and sustained medical treatment back in 2007.”256 Ongoing clinical studies by Tegucigalpa-based Dr. Juan Almendarez “have revealed serious skin and hair loss problems, respiratory track, nervous system and eye problems—all of which can be attributed to contamination by heavy metals that are dangerous to the health of the present and future generations.”257
Community activists report that representatives of the Honduran government were visiting the homes of the sixty-two individuals tested, attempting to get them to sign confidentiality and waiver agreements while offering to take them to a hospital in Tegucigalpa.258 Clinical examination of test subjects revealed “hyper-pigmentation, coordination problems, and pins and needles,” which Almendarez argues are “indicative of chronic arsenic and lead poisoning.”
The Honduran state, however, continued to play down the extent of contaminatio
n and refused to seek meaningful redress, while Goldcorp engaged in denial—as peoples’ health deteriorated. In fact, it appears that Goldcorp and the Honduran state may well have known and covered up since at least 2007 information about health problems created by the mining company’s cyanide-leaching open-pit mine: the San Martin mining concession contained a clause requiring cancellation if there is harm done to water and air quality and the national ecological system. But the Siria Valley Defense Committee increased its pressure on the government to take action—pointing to dead cattle and increasing incidences of hair loss, skin rashes, and miscarriages in women besetting their community—and brought international attention to the struggle against Goldcorp.
The poisoning is unlikely to stop with the closure of the mine, a process initiated in 2008. According to Paul Younger, a Professor of Geochemical Engineering at Newcastle University in England who studied the closure plan in 2008, acid drainage from San Martin was causing heavy metal contamination that will last for more than a century. Another later study by Younger’s Newcastle colleagues Adam Jarvis and Jaime Amezaga, “found evidence of ‘severe’ contamination in the form of highly acidic and metal-rich water from the mine site flowing into a stream used by villagers for agriculture and domestic purposes.”259 All of this together demonstrates that Canadian promotion of CSR amounts to little more than propaganda. The Canadian government has not publicly criticized Goldcorp on this issue; it has instead remained silent. Nor has the Canadian government found it necessary to assist those in the community suffering from the effects of exposure to lead, arsenic, and contamination of their water systems.
