Water or Gold? Eternal question nags Ecuador tribes

Yahoo – AFP, Santiago PIEDRA SILVA, September 14, 2019

View of Quimsacocha where indigenous water rights are under threat from
expanding mineral exploration (AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

Quimsacocha (Ecuador) (AFP) - The indigenous people of Ecuador's wind-whipped alpine tundra of Quimsacocha face a stark choice, according to their leader, Yaku Perez.

"We have to decide between gold and water," he tells activists at a meeting held to oppose a landmark mining project.

"What do we prefer, companeros?" demands Perez, his voice rising.

He knows there's only one answer, and they shout back in unison: "Water!"

Ecuador's government has put its weight behind a giant gold-silver-copper mining project in the wild, high grasslands of Quimsacocha.

Quito has conceded half Quimsacocha's 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) to Canadian miner INV Metals to develop a near billion dollar mine deep underground.

Indigenous people share a traditional lunch in Quimsacocha, Ecuador

(AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

The Loma Larga project is due to begin production in 2021 and would mean thousands of jobs.

For local indigenous communities however, the sweeping, cloud-scraping grasslands of Quimsacocha are a sacred, vital source of water.

'We can live without gold'

Perez, his Canari Quechua people and other indigenous communities are fighting the Loma Larga mine every step of the way.

In an unprecedented popular consultation held in March, local municipalities rejected mining in the southern Andes.

Perez sees local referenda "as the way for Ecuador to be declared a territory free of metal mining and its water sources and fragile ecosystems."

Community leader Yaku Perez, who is leading the indigenous struggle against

the threat to water resources posed by mining companies in Ecuador's high 

grasslands (AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

Just 3,200 hectares of the Quimsacocha is under protection, forming part of a biosphere reserve.

The government, anxious to develop its mineral resources, is hoping the Constitutional Court will block further popular consultations and demonstrate the legal protections necessary to attract mining sector investment.

"Mining, wherever it goes, generates dispossession of territories, violence in the community, destabilises democracy, generates institutional corruption, pollutes the waters and poisons the rivers," says Perez.

"It takes the meat, and leave the bone, but the contaminated bone."

Yaku Perez drinks water from a river in Quimsacocha 

(AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

Perez says this standing on the grassy bank of the Tarqui river, which hurries down from here to the city of Cuenca and into the Amazon.

Squatting, he scoops a palmful of cold clear water to his lips.

"We can live without gold, but without water, never."

'Defending the water'

A lawyer, Perez sees himself as a defender of the Quimsacocha and says he has been jailed on four occasions for "defending the water."

High on the tundra, he vaults a fence surrounding the mining concession. Others with him cut through chains blocking a narrow road, a symbolic gesture in a constant war of attrition with the mining company.

For indigenous communities the sweeping, cloud-scraping 

grasslands of Quimsacocha are a sacred, vital source 

of water. (AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

"We are not going to allow the miners here," said Maria Dorila Fajardo, a 60-year-old indigenous woman wearing a traditional large red skirt, her head covered with a wool hat.

A large blue sign with white lettering says: "Private Property. No Entry."

"This is not private property," Perez fumes. "This is communal property. We have deeds dating back to 1893, our grandparents bought all this land.

"We don't want to cultivate it, but keep it as the natural reservoir it is."

The government in Quito expects GDP to grow from 1.6 percent to 4.0 percent by 2021, boosted by mineral exploration.

An Ecuadorean indigenous woman stands in protest outside a mining 

concession in Quimsacocha, Azuay province, Ecuador (AFP Photo/Rodrigo BUENDIA)

Resource-rich Ecuador will receive about $554 million from Loma Larga, according to official figures.

"Mining is like a mirage. They give us money for a little while and later that money evaporates," says Perez.

"It goes up in smoke. It's bread today, but hunger and desolation tomorrow."

'Can't be called water': Brazil marks two months since dam disaster

Yahoo – AFP, March 23, 2019

Researchers collect dead fish from a retention membrane installed at the
Paraopeba River, Brazil, to try to retain mud, after the collapse of a dam (AFP Photo/
DOUGLAS MAGNO)

Juatuba (Brazil) (AFP) - Brazilian fisherman Jose Geraldo dos Santos uses a long pole to push his boat down the reddish-brown Paraopeba River, taking care not to splash himself with water he says is toxic.

Two months after an upstream tailings dam owned by mining giant Vale burst, spewing millions of tons of minerals-laced sludge across the countryside, the 67-year-old says the river is too polluted for fishing or even for his animals to drink.

So contaminated is the tributary to the Sao Francisco River -- the second longest in Brazil -- says dos Santos, that he has been advised to not even "step in the mud."

"The researchers who came here said it will take eight to 10 years (for the river to recover)," says dos Santos, who lives about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the village of Brumadinho in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, which was engulfed by the waste unleashed by the January 25 dam rupture.

Emergency crews continue the slow process of picking through the mud looking for bodies -- at least 210 people were killed and 96 are missing.

In the meantime, Vale, government agencies and environmental groups are still assessing the impact of one of Brazil's worst industrial disasters on water quality downstream.

Researchers collect dead fish from a retention membrane installed at the Paraopeba 

River, Brazil, to try to retain mud, after the collapse of a dam (AFP Photo/DOUGLAS 

MAGNO)

Some of the findings differ dramatically.

"It's so dense and thick that it cannot be called water," says Malu Ribeiro of SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation in a video released by the non-government organization to highlight the damage to the Paraopeba.

Before the dam collapsed the water was "crystal clear, full of fish," says Ribeiro.

"I've never seen that color."

'Serious pollutants'

The disaster was the second involving Vale in three years in the mineral-rich region. The company has tried to contain the contamination by installing barriers to stop poisonous material reaching the Sao Francisco, hundreds of kilometers downstream.

So far, Vale says, its water quality analysis shows toxicity levels near the dam are "below the legal limits for mining tailings" and are "not harmful to health."

And its technicians predict that sludge from the dam would "not reach the Sao Francisco," Vale said in a statement Friday.

But SOS Mata Atlantica's latest data show high levels of toxic waste are already present in the key waterway and that the source is the dam at Brumadinho.

Various samples taken from the upper reaches earlier this month show concentrations of copper, iron, manganese and chromium that exceed the maximum limits allowed by Brazilian law.

So contaminated is the tributary to the Sao Francisco River says fisherman Jose 

Geraldo dos Santos, that he has been advised to not even "step in the mud" (AFP Photo/

DOUGLAS MAGNO)

"These are serious pollutants," says Romilda Roncatti of SOS Mata Atlantica.

But Brazilian authorities say the tailings have not spread more than one kilometer downstream and blames the increased turbidity on heavy rain.

"It's normal at this time of year to find high levels of some elements like iron or manganese -- these two elements always have higher concentrations during floods," says Eduardo Viglio of the Geological Survey of Brazil, which is tasked with collecting data on minerals and water resources in the country.

The government agency's own testing shows oxygen and acidity readings are also "normal," he adds.

That is cold comfort for dos Santos, who says increased pollution in the Paraopeba has deprived him of an income from fishing.

"The people who handle water treatment have said we can't use the water," he says.

"This place is no use to me."

Related Article:

Brazilian ndigenous community threatened in aftermath of dam burst

Brazilian indigenous community threatened in aftermath of dam burst

Yahoo – AFP, Rosa SULLEIRO, February 1, 2019

An indigenous woman of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae community crying as she looks out
over the Paraopeba river, filled with mud after a disastrous dam collapse in Brazil's
Minas Gerais state (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

São Joaquim de Bicas (Brazil) (AFP) - In her 88 years, Antonia Alves has seen much hardship as a member of Brazil's indigenous community, whose people have often been driven from their ancestral lands over conflicts with farmers and loggers.

Until a few days ago, she had never seen an entire river die right before her eyes.

This is the unthinkable ecological nightmare her people are facing, however, after a dam storing mining waste collapsed in Minas Gerais state in southeast Brazil, engulfing the village of Brumadinho, where 110 people have been confirmed dead.

Another 238 unfortunates are still missing, hopes of their recovery all but gone in the toxic wave of sludge that engulfed them, suffocating everything in its path to the Paraopeba river.

The brown waters, which reek of dead fish, reached as far as Nao Xoha, a village sheltered by the Atlantic rainforest 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the burst dam.

Alves and her small branch of the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae indigenous people settled in the forest a year and a half ago, relocating from their strife-torn ancestral lands in the north to live in nature according to their customs.

"It is very sad because we lived off the river," said Alves, her face lined by age and sun, head crowned with a band of white and purple feathers.

A member of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae community carrying a cooking pan along a
path through the forest (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

"We bathed there, took our water from it, washed our clothes there and fished from it. Indians live from fishing and hunting."

Alves' neighbor Jocelia Josi describes the stench as she pulled dead fish from what formerly an important tributary of the Sao Francisco, the longest entirely-Brazilian river.

'Village of resistance'

"Now we don't have any more food from there," said the 46-year-old, who is waiting for her daughter and three-month-old grandson to return from the state capital Belo Horizonte, where they were evacuated after the disaster.

It is lunchtime in Nao Xoha -- which means "warrior spirit" in the community's native tongue -- and Alves and her husband Gervasio, a serene elder of 93, are waiting for their daughter to finish cooking outside their modest hut.

But today is no normal day. Nothing has been normal here since Dam Number 1, owned by mining giant Vale, burst last Friday, dramatically changing the lives of the 27 families living in the village.

Nao Xoha lacks its own medic, but a doctor has checked up on the 15 people who were not evacuated, and volunteers have brought supplies to the community, which always lacked electricity and now has no water.

Hayo Pataxo ha-ha-hae, the 29-year-old leader of the indigenous community, 

looks at the Paraopeba river, filled with toxic mud from the Brumadinho dam

collapse, where his community used to catch fish to eat (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

To reach the village, visitors have to cross a railway line where cargo trains pass and then enter the verdant Atlantic rainforest.

The dam breach unleashed a torrent of almost 13 million cubic tons of mud that swept across the countryside before reaching the river.

But its impact spreads even further than the vast scar of mud that rescue services are probing for the bodies of the missing.

The government of Minas Gerais has warned that the metal-tainted waters present a health risk and organizations like the WWF have said the environmental impact will be felt for years to come.

"They have taken away part of our reserve, killed a part of it, but we are a village of resistance and we will get over this," said community leader Hayo Pataxo Ha-ha-hae, who sported a head dress made of palm fronds.

"We will carry on even if the river has died. Nature depends on us to preserve it."

'Lack of respect'

He had just attended another meeting with FUNAI -- the Brazilian government body responsible for indigenous peoples' interests -- and said it was too early to determine what action the community would take against Vale.

He simply insisted that his people would resist, and defend their traditional lifestyle, just as they have for centuries.

A dead fish in the waters of the Paraopeba river, near the town of Brumadinho where 

a dam full of mining waste collapsed on January 25 (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

"It shows a lack of respect towards us", said Tahh'a, a well-built watchman aged 55, his frown wrinkling the black paint on his face.

"The biggest loss for us is the fish, because we are not permitted to hunt around here," he said, holding a pointed stick in his hand, a machete dangling from his hip.

While the full extent of the environmental impact remains unclear, the precedents are not encouraging.

No one here can forget the destruction of the Rio Doce river, also in Minas Gerais, which was devastated by the collapse in 2015 of the Mariana dam, the biggest environmental disaster in Brazilian history. That barrier was also jointly owned by Vale.

"I want to tell not only Vale, but also our leaders, to punish those guilty of doing this to our indigenous nation, together with the farmers and the families who lost people," said 29-year Hayo.

"How many more people have to be killed before the justice department takes notice?" he demanded.

"It is very sad," added Alves. "When are they going to clean up the river? When will there be fish in it again?"

Related Article:

UN shines spotlight on dying indigenous languages

More than 160,000 evacuated in deadly LatAm floods

Yahoo – AFP, December 26, 2015

People sit outside their house at a flooded area in Falcon, 42 km west from
Asuncion, along the Paraguay-Argentina border on December 26, 2015
(AFP Photo/Norberto Duarte)

Asuncion (AFP) - More than 160,000 people have been driven from their homes in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in some of the worst floods in decades, which have left at least six people dead, authorities said Saturday.

The areas hardest hit in the week leading up to Christmas were in Paraguay, where four people have been killed by falling trees. President Horacio Cartes has declared a state of emergency to free up more than $3.5 million in disaster funds.

The intense rain storms, caused by an unusually strong "El Nino" pattern, have forced 130,000 Paraguayans from their homes, authorities said. In the capital Asuncion, thousands were temporarily without power.

Emergency personnel were carrying out rescue and evacuation operations, said David Arellano, the head of operations for the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN).

"We cannot abandon the thousands of families who each year are affected by flooding," Cartes said in his Christmas message.

El Nino is the name given to a weather pattern associated with a sustained period of warming in the central and eastern tropical Pacific that can spark deadly and costly climate extremes.

Last month, the UN's World Meteorological Organization warned the phenomenon was the worst in more than 15 years, and one of the strongest since 1950.

People affected by floods set up improvised shacks in Falcon, 42 km west from

 Asuncion, along the Paraguay-Argentina border on December 26, 2015 (AFP

Photo/Norberto Duarte)

In northeastern Argentina, two people were killed and about 20,000 were evacuated from their homes by flooding caused by a rise in the level of the Uruguay River, authorities said.

Entre Rios province was the worst off with about 10,000 people displaced, most of them in Concordia, a city of some 170,000 located on the banks of the river where officials said it was the most serious flooding in 50 years.

Uruguay, which borders the river, has declared a state of emergency in several northern departments. As of Saturday, about 9,000 people were forced from their homes, according to national emergency officials.

And in Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday flew by helicopter to survey the damage in southern Rio Grande do Sul state, where about 9,000 people have been displaced by flooding in recent days.

The federal government has released $1.7 million in emergency funds for the affected areas.