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At Any Cost: Big Coal Crushes Fragile Communities in Colombia

AbstractIn this paper I describe the impact of mountaintop-removal coal mining by large international consortia on the local indigenous Afro-Colombian and campesino communities in the department of Guajira in northeastern Colombia. In June 2011, I travelled with a human rights delegation to the most northern region of Colombia where I heard story after story of broken promises, forced displacement, loss of health and cultural identity, and environmental degradation on a massive scale. I spoke with those most directly affected by open-pit mining practices and the collusion of local and regional government officials who have abrogated their human and civil rights protected by the 1991 Colombian Constitution, decisions of the Colombian Constitutional Court, and international accords. Travelling throughout the area, I saw the extent of the devastation and met with leaders of three of the indigenous groups whose ancestral homelands are threatened. I toured tiny, remote hamlets whose residents are threatened with forced relocation as their land is increasingly absorbed by the encroaching El Cerrejon, the largest open-pit mine in the world, and polluted by toxic runoff, air pollution, and enormous mountains of waste called "overburden" that literally surround and poison their communities. In further conversations with labor union leaders who risk assassination for their activism on behalf of the mine employees, I came to understand the extent to which government corruption, local social service agencies, and the armed forces support the multinational corporations' false promises of local development. The result is the systemic, intentional destruction of ancestral lands and ancient cultures along with the gentle subsistence practices of local residents. In pursuit of profits and power, the international mining industry has benefited from its partnership with the weak Colombian government to exploit the most vulnerable and poorest communities in the nation. Yet this is not a problem exclusive to Colombia; rather, it is global in scope and confirms the need to establish an international culture of social justice to protect human rights and foster sustainable development. In June 2011, I also toured some Appalachian communities in eastern Kentucky and met with locals whose health, livelihoods, and ecosystems have also been devastated by this large-scale assault for corporate profit. In this paper I draw some parallels between situations and activism in both nations and give voice to the people whose stories often go untold.To quote Garry Leech, author of The People Behind Colombian Cool: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights, "It's crucial... to realize that whenever... [North Americans] flip the light switch, blood flows along with electricity."1 In a globalized economy of neoliberalism and free trade, the lives of people who are largely invisible in their own nation are inextricably linked to consumers of products and energy in other countries. As part of the tragic tale of the global land grab by foreign investors, the story of Colombian coal reveals the increasing gap between rich and poor within one nation and the growing disparity of wealth and income between rich and poor countries.2 In Colombia it's a story about corruption and complicity at all levels of a government that fails to protect the most basic human rights of its most vulnerable citizens in its haste to curry favor with foreign corporations. It's a story about companies that shear off the top of entire mountains and steal the very patrimony of a nation: its land, minerals, fresh water, and cultural diversity. In short, this is the story of what Tom Butler calls "the deadly legacy of coal."3In June 2011,1 travelled to Colombia and Kentucky with a human rights delegation sponsored by the international human rights organization Witness for Peace and led by Aviva Chomsky and Steve Striffler, college professors who have studied the human and environmental impact of coal mining in Colombia and the Appalachians, organized international conferences highlighting the issues, and published widely on the subject. …