International

Coffee, like gold, sugar and oil, has long been one of Latin America’s major exports, sustaining everyone from independent farmers in mountain regions to corporate bankers in capital cities. Over the last decade, changing climate patterns have intensified droughts and plagues in the region, creating conditions less suitable for coffee production and wreaking havoc on the industry that came to define, even shape, many hillsides in rural Central and South America.

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Governments have been busy criminalizing Indigenous claims to consultation that challenge extractive models of development. Indigenous opposition to extractivism ultimately promotes self-determination rights, questioning the states’ authority over land by placing its sovereignty into historical context. In that sense, Indigeneity is a valuable approach to understanding world politics.

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Goldcorp’s San Martin gold mine in Honduras is one of five emblematic cases in the spotlight at the Permanent People’s Tribunal, celebrating its 40th session in Montreal from May 29 to June 1. Goldcorp’s mine is also one of the case studies examined in a new report on Canadian mining in Latin America. Produced by a working group of Latin American organizations, the report draws on 22 case studies spanning nine Latin American countries to document a litany of harms, ranging from environmental and health impacts to forced displacement and criminalization.

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Gold mining has become a scourge that afflicts most Latin American countries. In some places, a few giant transnational corporations operate. In others, hundreds or even thousands of people crowd into jungle rivers or the guts of mountains for a few grams of gold.

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On the conflicts between the politics of extraction of natural resources among countries led by leftist governments in Latin America, and the politics of Pachamama (Mother Earth), and how indigenous movements have resisted extractivism in defense of their rights, land and the environment.

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