Photo: Alfaro Galán

In 2012, the Mexican government had granted rights to 2,173,141 hectares of indigenous territory to transnational mining companies. Indigenous communities have lost jurisdiction over 17% of their lands through mining concessions in the last 100 years, not including hydroelectric projects. The majority of these concessions in indigenous territories were granted by the last two PAN governments under the Salinas government’s neoliberal mining law.

This small table of recent land concessions indicates that the most profitable form of open pit mining is currently gold. In 2009, the global use of gold is spread across private investments (18%), official reserves (16%), jewelry (52%) and industrial purposes (10%).

It is incredible how the fetishism surrounding gold has wreaked such economic, social, cultural, and environmental havoc. As massive industrial mines are exhausted, gold dust or particles are collected in rock or gravel deposits. To obtain tiny volumes of the metal—a medium-depth mine yields just .7 grams per ton removed—large tracts of land must be acquired to explore precise sites of mining interest.

Industrial open-pit mining produces craters. The material removed is placed in large pools, and sodium cyanide, as the cheapest and most “efficient” compound, is used to leach the metal. After various accidents, the use of sodium cyanide in the leaching process has been prohibited in some European countries. The same European companies, however, intend to open a production plant for this highly toxic compound in Mexico. These intensive industrial processes are high risk, and can’t be both sustainable and competitive, as SEMARNAT claims. The environmental scars (including the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity) social scars, and economic scars are long lasting. It is a model that carries high risks for human and environmental health and generates significant amounts of greenhouse gasses without providing any benefit our towns, municipalities, states, and the nation.

Most of the concessions in indigenous territories are in the exploration phase or in search of investors, while 106,833 hectares are already being mined.

According to the mining law, the government is obligated to inform the landowners of its intention to grant a concession and  inquire as to whether there is local interest in exploiting the minerals, and give “preferential” status to these local interests. There are greater instances of illegal concession in indigenous territory concessions, since international conventions for free and informed consent (Convention 169 OIT, U.N. Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Communities and the “Protocol for imparting justice in cases involved the rights of indigenous peoples and communities” in the Mexican Supreme Court) are ignored by the Secretary of the Economy.

Some concessions cover nearly all of the territories of small indigenous groups in the north of the country, including the Kiliwas, Kikapoo, Cucapas, Pimas, Guarijios, and Pápagos–all peoples that are in danger of disappearing. Groups hit hardest are the Rarámuri, (Tarahumaras), Zapotec (mainly in the central valleys of Oaxaca), Chatinos, Mixtecos, Coras and Tepehuanes, and the Nahua of Michoacán. Concessions in these territories total more than one million hectares.

What does the government handing over the country to transnational mining companies mean for indigenous groups? By 2012, the PAN governments had given 31 million hectares to these large companies. Many concessions cover marine areas, environmentally protected areas, indigenous territories, peasant communities, and ejidos. Lands are handed over often without even informing the inhabitants.

This pattern of land redistribution is happening on a global scale. Mining concessions are part of the territorial dispossession of thousands of Mexicans, transferring land to large mining consortia, mostly foreign. For indigenous and peasant communities, the incursion of this type of mining on their lands means no commons to administer, no social relations to establish, no nature to administer, no ancient knowledge systems to reproduce, no gardens to sow, no plants to domesticate.

In short, it means cultural death, generated by the collision between an industrial project of the culture of death and the implicit, regional projects of the indigenous and campesino communities over a given territory. For these communities, it is part of a serious neocolonial process, whereby jurisdiction over lands and lives, over Mesoamerican cultural relations to the land, to the ecosystems, and to natural resources including water are lost.

Original in Spanish here. Translation: Paige Patchin

Five Years Later, U.S.-Backed Legal Reforms in Mexico Show Few Results

It has been five years since Mexican legislators approved a series of changes to Mexico’s constitution relating to security, the justice system, and organized crime. The changes, it was promised, would make the courts system more reliable and open, and protect the rights of citizens. The reforms introduced spoken arguments in trials, the presumption of innocence and an adversarial criminal process, marking what experts call a “paradigmatic shift in Mexican jurisprudence.”

While the new system has support in high places, it also has its detractors, many of whom point out that the legal reforms were “Made in the USA.”

It’s “the Monroe Doctrine applied in our courts, and, in short, all the way to the Supreme court,” according to Francisco Rodriguez, a Mexican columnist.

For Oscar Castrejón Rivas, President of the Lawyers College of Chihuahua, the constitutional adjustments and the changes to the Mexican legal system that they imply have done little to improve access to justice in Mexico. His organization represents eight law associations in Chihuahua State.

“What has happened, in our view as community members from Chihuahua and also as members of lawyers’ forums, is a counter reform, something very distinct from what was promised by Washington through USAID,” Castrejón said during an interview earlier this year.

Chihuahua was a pilot state for the legal reform, which as of June 2012 has been introduced in 20 of the country’s 31 states and Federal District. Since the new Criminal Procedure Code became effective in Chihuahua on Jan. 1, 2007, there have been over 300 reforms to the penal code. According to Castrejón, these reforms have pushed his state’s legal system back into the dark ages.

Castrejón is a busy man, with a practice in Chihuahua City and clients all over the state. I interviewed him as he drove his white Mini Cooper from his office to the nearby city of Cuauhtémoc. I asked him what concretely has changed and he rattled off one example after another.

Because of the reforms, he says, people accused of stealing an item worth less than $25 can be held without bail. Diversion programs were cancelled, multiple sentences were made consecutive instead of simultaneous, and life sentences were introduced. The defense is no longer allowed to see the investigation file before hearings, he says, and eyewitnesses can testify directly in front of prosecutors without a defense attorney present.

“Legislative power and juridical power cozied up to executive power, and they cancelled many of the rights that were originally in the Criminal Procedure Code, and which are in our constitution, basically cancelling out the presumption of innocence, which is the central axis of the adversarial criminal system,” said Castrejón. In addition to making the system less just, he says, the changes have also failed to reduce crime. “Two years ago, that was the argument so that the population would accept these reforms… Two years later, what we see is that crime is worse.”

Management Systems International (MSI), which was contracted by USAID to promote and carry out legal reforms in Mexico, maintains Chihuahua has what is “considered to be the most advanced, progressive criminal justice Code in Latin America.” MSI, using U.S. taxpayer money, sent politicians from Chihuahua to Chile and Argentina to study their justice systems. Both South American countries underwent the transition towards an accusatorial system in the 1990s, funded by USAID, the World Bank, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank.

USAID reports praise the reforms and claim they’re working. But Castrejón isn’t alone in feeling duped by the changes. According to a 2011 study by the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute, “More than half of the respondents —especially judges— indicated that Mexico’s traditional inquisitorial system was both efficient and effective, and at least a third feel that the traditional system was disparaged by a deliberate, negative campaign designed to promote a shift to the new adversarial system.”

The ongoing reforms to Mexico’s legal system represent the most recent development in campaigns that have spanned decades attempting to change the way laws are written and enforced south of the U.S. border. USAID has been sponsoring Rule of Law programs in Latin America since JFK launched the Alliance for Progress at the apex of the cold war. And after more than 50 years of U.S.-designed attempts at legal reform, some experts do not see progress.

“I don’t think there is any evidence that these programs work,” legal scholar and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor Deborah M. Weissman told the Americas Program.

“There’s no doubt that the Mexican legal system needs improvement. Mexicans know that,” said Weissman. “They’re not doing nothing about it. What they’re doing is vastly different than what the United States is pushing on them.” When the reforms started, Mexican jurists felt that the reforms came from the top down, without meaningful participation from local lawyers or judges or examination of existing Mexican Rule of Law initiatives, explains Weissman.

Weissman points out that what the U.S.-backed legal reform programs are doing in Mexico is strengthening prosecutors, and that there is no training for jury trials under the new system. “If you look at the allocation of Rule of Law money; it’s for surveillance it’s for ‘activating’, whatever the heck that means, new prisons in Mexico; it’s for training Mexicans with regard to the adversarial and oral trial systems, yet they do not introduce the jury system.”

A study carried out by researchers working for the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States found that compared with citizens of other countries, Mexicans expressed confidence in the ability of jurors to make fair decisions, and showed willingness to participate as jurors.  “The great majority of Mexicans have also supported the broader application of lay participation in the administration of justice,” reads the study. Regardless, in the U.S. government reports reviewed by Weissman, there is no reference to training or introducing jury trials in Mexico.

U.S. funding for legal reforms in Mexico was integrated into the Mérida Initiative, a U.S. foreign aid package launched in Mexico in 2008 to provide funding and support for militarizing the drug war. In 2009, USAID awarded a $66.3 million dollar contract to Coffey International, the Australian company that owns Management Systems International. The contract, which ends in 2014, was to provide “support for legal reforms” in Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative.

“These Rule of Law programs are always married to military expansion, just like the Merida Initiative,” said Weissman, who notes that Rule of Law programs are a centerpiece of the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual. “You have a Rule of Law program in what is essentially a plan to militarize the drug war. You see that everywhere.”

Weissman, whose detailed examination of the U.S. role in Mexico’s legal reforms will be published next year in the Cardozo Law Review, is skeptical about what exactly the United States has to teach other countries about law. “We are so punitive, and so disproportionate, and so racist, how could we be the model?” she asked.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and independent researcher.  She is regular contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org . See more of her work online at dawnpaley.ca

*Photo by Dawn Paley

Photo: Caracol Producciones

In a historic decision this May, Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice sentenced former dictator General Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for the genocidal massacres of indigenous people in the 1980s.  Many Guatemalans hoped that the judicial process against the top criminals of the country’s “dirty war” would finally bring justice—but ten days after the decision, the Constitutional Court reversed the judgment.

While the Guatemalan people protest this violation of the rule of law, the processes of genocide initiated 30 years ago by Ríos Montt’s massacres continue today by other means.

In the last decade, the expansion of oil palm plantations and sugarcane production for ethanol in northern Guatemala has displaced hundreds of Maya-Q´eqchi´ peasant families, increasing poverty, hunger, unemployment and landlessness in the region, according to a new Food First report by Alberto Alfonso-Fradejas, “Sons and Daughters of the Earth: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala.”

There is a major contradiction here: at the same time that the former General Ríos Montt is convicted for genocide, the Guatemalan government allows the oligarchy, allied with extractive industries, to displace entire populations without concern for the human cost. In many cases, these land grabs result in the murder and imprisonment of rural people who resist the assault.

Genocide against the indigenous peasant population in Guatemala no longer has the face of a military dictatorship supported by the United States. Now it is the corporations, the oligarchy and the World Bank who push peasants off their lands.

In today’s Guatemala, land and resource control is increasingly in the hands of a small oligarchy of powerful families allied with agri-food companies. At the center of this power are fourteen families who control the country’s sugarcane-producing companies (AZAZGUA); five companies controlling the national production of ethanol; eight families that control the production of palm oil (GREPALMA); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF).

Together these powerbrokers are accumulating land and wealth with the support of investment from international institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE). The convergence of multiple global crises—finance, energy, food and environment—has directed corporate investment into land-based resources such as agrofuels, minerals, pasture and food. The situation in Guatemala is extremely violent, part of a global trend where agrarian, financial and industrial interests are grabbing control of peasant lands and resources.

Can land grabs be considered genocide? In many ways, land grabbing is a new form of genocide. Ricardo Falla’s study “What Do You Mean There Was No Genocide?” analyzes the definition of genocide and its characteristics. According to Falla, of the five acts that define genocide, two were most prominent in Guatemala: “the massacre of the members of a group,” and “the intentional subjection of a group to living conditions which will lead to their total or partial physical destruction.”

The first genocide was against the Ixil peoples during the reign of Ríos Montt. The second genocide is enacted today through the privation of the Q´eqchi´ peoples’ means of survival through land grabs. Hundreds of families have been displaced. They do not have land on which to produce food or live, and they are denied their cultural and community identity. These conditions undermine their ability to survive, and lead to their displacement, and in many cases death.

Photo: Caracol Producciones

The historic genocide trial this May came about through the peoples’ long struggle to defend their rights. The Ríos Montt conviction is a condemnation of impunity. The oligarchy did everything possible to impede the trial while continuing to displace the indigenous peasant population with the support of international investment and a legal system that favors land grabbing to the detriment of the people.

On May 20, the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction, with two of the five judges opposing the decision. Pablo de Greiff, UN Special Rapporteur for the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence stated, “No legal decision is inconsequential, even if it is revoked.” The Inter-American Court of Justice issued a statement criticizing the verdict for violating international obligations assumed by the state and preventing the people from seeking justice. Multiple organizations and authorities have spoken out against the court’s decision, arguing that it overstepped its bounds, violated legal provisions, and endorsed the corrupt mechanisms upon which impunity is built in Guatemala. The decision bolsters evidence that Guatemala’s top court lacks political independence and is tied to the country’s economic and ruling elite.

On May 24, thousands of people demonstrated and delivered a letter with more than a thousand signatures to the Court demanding that the decision be reversed. In Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, thousands more marched in solidarity to the Guatemala embassy demanding justice.

If we fail to judge and condemn the massacres committed thirty years ago, what hope is there for the Mayan Q’eqchi’, Xinka, Mam, Kaqchikel and other indigenous peoples currently being displaced and massacred by extractive corporations with the support of the state and international institutions? The people continue to courageously resist and defend their lives, lands and identities. How shall we express our solidarity?

Leonor Hurtado is a fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. A native of Guatemala, she has spent decades defending human rights and indigenous rights, and supporting indigenous resistance to the expansion of extractive industries.

“Maria” and “Tanya” (not real names) from women’s shelter in Nogales, MX
run by Kino Border Initiative. Photo credit: Lisa Sullivan

U.S. militarization of  the Mexico border has claimed 5,000 lives since the late 1990s. The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year on predator drones, bombardier aircraft, black hawk helicopters, sophisticated surveillance systems,  22,000 armed border guards  and 651 miles of steel wall at the border. This has pushed migrants – often fleeing the dire consequences of US economic policy – to take the only remaining passage north: the deadly Sonora desert.

I read the statistics before joining  16 School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) activists on our first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border–before I followed Steve into the Sonora desert to drop off water jugs on migrant trails, before I watched Olga call her  coyote to make sure he’d delivered her son safely, before I conversed with Pedro and tried not to stare at his missing leg – severed by The Beast, the deadly train that migrants hop to travel through Mexico. Before I stood at the wall with Jose Antonio’s mother and wondered why the Border Patrol pumped so many bullets into his young body as he walked along a street in his own city, on the Mexican side.

After this experience, I came to see the urgency of engaging the SOA Watch movement to resist the militarization of our border and its deadly consequences. The story of Maria and Jose and others presented below are a compelling call to action.  There are many things we can do to make a difference—whether it’s taking one minute to email your senator to say no to more border militarization, or reaching out to immigrants in your own community, or joining us at the Stewart Immigration Detention Center during the SOAW vigil weekend in November.

What we cannot do, is to allow this to continue.

Maria’s Story

Maria’s roommates from the shelter in Nogales, Mexico, carried her gently into the room where members of our SOAW Border delegation had gathered to talk to some of the migrants recently deported to Mexico. After five days traversing Arizona’s Sonora desert, her frail and swollen legs had given out, and she was unable to walk. Next to her sat Sofia, able to walk -barely -but with large black and purple bruises on her arms from six days of IV fluids. She was flown out of the desert by a rescue helicopter, unconscious.

Both women smiled shyly, in seeming contrast to their battered bodies and they horrors they had just lived through. Or maybe not.–maybe their smiles revealed an awareness of the sheer miracle of still being alive.

The desert had taken the power out of Maria’s legs, but it did not claim her spirit. Maria told us that once the swelling goes down and her knees are able to again carry her 100-lb body, she’ll head out  to try to cross the desert once more.

I was astonished, having just walked a small piece of that same desert two days earlier. We had gone to do a water drop on a migrant trail with the expert guidance of No More Death’s volunteer, Steve.  This group, along with the Samaritans, makes daily treks into the desert to leave water for migrants. The fact that we picked up more empty jars than we left was testimony that it was fulfilling its purpose: saving lives.

Although I drank water like a camel and knew that an air conditioned van was awaiting me,   I was  utterly depleted after only after three hours in the desert, one of the most brutal in the world.  The desert is scattered with small shrines that mark where dead bodies have been retrieved: 5,000 of them in the past 15 years, plus an untold nuimber more whose named and remains the desert will never reveal. Still reeling from my own mini journey, I asked Maria why take this risk  again? Her answer was one I immediately understood: her children were on the other side.

State-of-the-art military technology doesn’t stop  moms like Maria, even as the industrial military complex falls over itself to gain bids for the extra $6.8 billion dollars the Senate wants to spend for more border militarization. They are willing to risk everything to be united with their children, to put food on their tables. What this militarization does is to push migrants to the deadliest route. Even as overall immigration is waning in recent years, border deaths remain constant.

A hundred years ago, if Maria’s name were Laura Ingalls, her story of braving treacherous lands to forge a new life or reunite with family would have been part of the mythical fabric of our nation. Children in elementary schools would be required to read her tale. One  difference: Laura was stepping into lands never owned by her ancestors , while Maria was heading to land that had long been part of her native Mexico.

But instead of being a heroine,  Maria is a criminal. Today, while Washington debates the decriminalization of some immigrants (after all, our society would fall apart without immigrant workers), quietly, our tax dollars are going to criminalize and  imprison tens of thousands of immigrants in our own communities.

Tax Dollars to Streamline Injustice

We witnessed this public policy schizophrenia in the Federal courthouse in Tucson where 60 immigrants – shackled with chains on their hands and feet, looking exhausted after days in the desert – were paraded in groups of five before a judge, and sentenced to an average of four month in jail. Their crime was entry without inspection.  The whole process, called Operation Streamline, took only two hours and cost tax payers a million dollars. And that price tag is just for one session in one courthouse on one day. The same thing happens in six border city courthouses each week day. And the new Senate bill hopes to triple that.

Immediately after Streamline, the immigrants are escorted to prison, mostly private ones. Schools in the US may be closing, but private prisons, such as those run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), are being opened and expanded at an astonishing rate. This is mostly due to the new trend of massively incarcerating immigrants for the crime of having entered our country through the back door. Fully 60% of Tucson’s federal court time is spent with deportation cases, leaving them unable to adequately deal with serious crimes.

President Obama is currently on track to deport more immigrants during his 6 years – more than 2 million –  than the sum of all immigrants deported in the 100 years from 1892-1997. More than 200,000 families have already been separated by such deportations in the past two years alone.  For those processed through Operation Streamline, first comes prison, then detention center, then deportation.

Maria was lucky to “just” go straight to ICE detention. After walking for five miserable days through the blistering heat of the day and the brutal cold of the night, her coyote’s pick-up never arrived and she ended up in a Border Patrol van. They shackled her swollen  feet and hands and delivered her prostrate to the detention center.  Because she was so thin, her wrists kept slipping out of the handcuffs. She explained she had to continually shove them back into the handcuffs  to avoid being scolded trying to get away by the Border Patrol.

Tragically, the Border Patrol sometimes goes beyond scolding. In October 2012 16 year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was brutally murdered by a US Border Patrol agent, riddled by 13 bullets to the head and back. He was on the Mexican side of the border wall, when he was shot, allegedly for throwing rocks toward the fence. As we gathered with Fr. Roy Bourgeois to give Jose’s family a photo of the cross bearing Jose’s name that Roy carried at last year’s vigil, we realized how impossible it would have been for rocks to even reach over the top of the 30-foot wall perched on top of a 30-foot hill.

In fairness, several of the migrants reported that the Border Patrol had rescued them from sure death. Tanya told us that  the Border Patrol searched all night for her after her husband was able to contact them after she passed out in the desert. Once found, she was airlifted to a hospital in Phoenix. What is clear is that the blame for the rise in deaths in the desert does not lie on the shoulders of the Border Patrol, but on the policy that has shaped it.

So, why do they come at all? We asked the staff of the Kino Border Initiative, whose services include serving hundreds of meals a day to migrants recently deported to  Mexico, and running a shelter for women deported. Kino Education Director West Cosgrove replied that during his 17 years at border cities he has heard multiple versions that boil down to this brief explanation:  We are here because you were there. This was affirmed when Sister Engracia told us that the biggest increase in recent migrants are those from Honduras. They come fleeing the violence unleashed by the  2009 coup carried out by SOA graduates and continued under a regime supported by US military aid.

The biggest way that “we were there” in Mexico is of course NAFTA, the free trade agreement that promised to bolster Mexico’s economy, but destroyed the livelihood of millions of small farmers who couldn’t possibly complete with subsidized giant US agro business. It is no wonder that the wall started to be built in 1994,the year that NAFTA was approved. Maquiladoras from the U.S. moved in, paying wages so low that a community at the Nogales, Mexico  trash dump that we visited included former maquila workers who made more picking trash than working at the factory.

A group of workers from the closed Legacy printer ink factory met with us under a tent they had installed outside the abandoned factory, demanding the assets in lieu of the unpaid wages and severance pay owed by the owner, who closed the factory and hightailed it back to the U.S. and his numerous other businesses.

The School of the Americas has also contributed to the dangers faced by migrants, through their training of elite Mexican Special Forces known as the GAFES. Some of those soldiers deserted the army to become leading members of the Zetas–the hired assassins of a Mexican drug cartel: The Zetas later split off to form their owsn cartel. Migrants passing through the desert must pay cartels to enter and leave the border towns,  and pay   cartel-affiliated coyotes to lead them through the desert. Minimum price for these services: $4,000, per migrant, not including frequent rapes, torture and sometimes death at the hands of the coyotes. Migrants get a $500 discount if they agree to carry a 50-pound sack of marijuana. U.S. border security has been a boom for human smugglers.

The environment is also suffering irreversible damage because of border militarization policies, affecting pristine wild lands, national forests, and refugees for wildlife such as pygmy owls and desert bighorn sheep, contributing also to severe flooding.  In a bizarre twist, Sierra Club activist Dan Millis was charged with littering when distributing water jugs on migrant trails, even though he and other No More Deaths volunteers were simultaneously picking up boxes of trash in the desert. Dan refused to pay the ticket, and was later convicted in federal court. Several months earlier, Dan had discovered the remains of 14-year old Josseline Hernandez who was left to die in the desert while journeying to reunite with her mother in California.

As the Senate brings to its chambers the debate on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform, it is clear to many at the border that this bill is not comprehensive.  The bill does not address the root causes of migration. Nor does it assure respect for the human rights of migrants and families. Before anyone can even qualify for the complex steps to a legal status, “border security triggers” will mandate an additional $6.8 for more border militarization, assuring more deaths in the desert.

At the border of my own country– the United States–I heard some of the most horrific tales of human rights violations that  I have ever heard in my years of traveling  throughout the Americas. But, I also witnessed some of the most moving expressions of solidarity, such as dropping water on a migrant trail in the desert.

Not all of us live in the desert. But we all live in communities that depend on immigrants. As  Isabel Garcia of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos based in Tucson told us, “the border is everywhere”. As migrants die in the desert, more and more local groups are emerging to help save lives and change death-dealing policies. This is a critical time to write Congress, join actions for immigrant rights and justice and speak out for and with the immigrant members of our communities. We can be the water in the desert.

Lisa Sullivan is a contributor to the Americas Program. 

The myth of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Golden Land lives on. But the price to find El Dorado has only increased.

As a resource-rich country, Suriname bills itself to international investors as a modern-day “El Dorado”. Yet many fear the small nation on South America’s Atlantic Coast is selling its wealth at the expense of its people’s health.

In Suriname, mining is slowly turning the country into the poster child for the complex interplay between environmental degradation, human displacement and wreaking havoc on individual and community health.

Among some of the direct health problems are mercury poisoning caused by industrial run-off. But other health challenges, like increasing cases of malaria and HIV rates are also becoming a source of concern.

Latin America’s Forgotten Wild Coast

In conversations with “buitenlanders” (foreigners), the most common and unfortunate reaction to “Suriname” is Suri-what? Where? Suriname lies nestled between Guyana and French Guyana with Brazil to the south. The country occupies 63,675 rugged square miles, nearly 80-percent of which is covered by the Guianas shield rainforest. Most of Suriname’s 560,000 inhabitants live on the Atlantic coast, in and surrounding the capital city of Paramaribo. The rainforests are inhabited by indigenous peoples and Maroons, the descendants of runaway slaves.

A former Dutch colony, Suriname’s linguistic and multiethnic profile often erases the country from people’s conceptual map of South America. In many ways, the country has more in common with the Caribbean. The Dutch-speaking nation is a multicultural patchwork of Creoles, Javanese, Chinese, Maroons, Hindustanis, and indigenous peoples. Despite that Sranan-tongo, a Creole language coined by African slaves in the 17th century, is the official language, ethnic groups speak different languages among themselves.

Suriname produces gold and bauxite, which dominated the economy, and has a nascent oil industry. Mining, the country’s longest-standing industry, began under Dutch colonial rule in the late 19thand early 20th century with U.S. based Alcoa and its subsidiary Suralco. Bauxite, the main source for aluminum, is the country’s leading export.

Gold, however, has gradually become a major attraction. Since the 1900s, prospectors drifted in seeking their fortunes. In 1901, the gold industry in Suriname employed over 5,500 people. By 1903,a railroad was built to link Paramaribo to the goldfields, bringing increased development. After Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975, mining operations dwindled. Then, between the 1980s and 1990s, the country experienced political turbulence, including two military coups that resulted in an 8-year civil war. Regional poverty coupled with an upswing in gold prices worldwide sparked renewed interest in the industry. By 2007, mineral exports including gold, bauxite and oil represented 50% of GDP. Thanks to the mining sector, the country is now ranked as a middle-income country, on par with South Africa, and has one of the lowest public debts in the region.

Mercury Rising

Suriname’s environment and health bear the burden of this prosperity. Inspired by promises of gold, small to medium-scale artisanal mining—defined as “mining characterized by an untrained labor force that uses rudimentary techniques for prospecting, extracting, and processing of gold”—is booming in what once were densely forested areas. For the estimated 20,000 small-scale miners, the preferred method of mining is often hydraulicking. This method uses hydraulic monitors and excavators to spray pressurized water to disintegrate and move sections of the ground suspected of holding gold particles. Once sprayed, this reddish clay mixture is then pumped to sluice boxes, where heavier minerals, including gold particles, are separated from lighter waste minerals. The parts containing gold are then collected and panned with mercury for further processing. At the end, mineral waste is discarded into nearby streams and jungle patches, resulting in water contamination by siltation, heavy metals and mercury.

Exposure to small amounts of mercury can cause serious health problems depending on the type of mercury. In Suriname, most miners are exposed to metallic and vapor mercury. According to a WWF  report, “high-level exposure to mercury vapor, and to a lesser extent metallic mercury, can result in nervous system damage causing tremors, as well as mood and personality alterations. Broad, systemic effects occur on kidneys, lungs, muscle, liver, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal system, and circulatory systems.”

Medical science has documented the negative impact of mercury exposure in Suriname since 2003. Local doctors noticed an increased incidence of birth defects attributable to mercury poisoning in children born to Maroon and indigenous women living near artisanal mining camps. Birth defects included central nervous system problems and stunted limb development.

The WWF designed trainings for gold miners on the use of new and environment -friendly mining techniques in 2006, and the Suriname government passed legislation regulating the use of mercury. Yet, mercury poisoning continues to be a persistent problem among the Wayana people and other indigenous and maroon groups.

Large-scale mines also use dangerous chemicals either. Frequently, they employ cyanide in a closed industrial circuit to accomplish what small-scale miners do with mercury. Leakage incidents are common. In 1995,the Omai gold mine in neighboring Guyana experienced a spill of 800-million gallons of cyanide-laced sediment into one of its main rivers, poisoning thousands of people. As a result, governments environmental protection legislation but it remains difficult to enforce,  especially in the border areas between Suriname, Guyana, and Brazil where many exploration concessions exist.

 Malaria on the Golden Frontier

In Suriname, mining is concentrated along the Northeastern district of Brokopondo, the site of a man-made reservoir, and on the Marowijne River along the border with French Guiana. Along these areas, malaria rates are also the highest.

The recent gold fever has drawn miners from across Latin America. The most visible and well- document migrant miners are Brazilians, known as garimpeiros amongst each other, and “porkknockers” locally. An estimated 8,000 live within the country’s borders. More are thought to drift between northeastern Brazil and French Guiana.

Migration, small-scale mining, and malaria go hand in hand.  Brazilian and Maroon gold miners live in open-air camps without mosquito nets. These camps are located near man-made pools of water from which gold is extracted in patches of newly cleared forest—an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos carrying malarial parasites. The human body can establish some immunity, but high-rates of mobility among mining groups contribute to the creation of endless cycles of “frontier malaria”—malaria fueled by mobility and environmental degradation in the Amazon.

A Global Fund campaign started in 2004 and targeted interventions aimed at Brazilian miners have helped dramatically decrease malaria rates across Suriname. Even so, according to a report released in 2012, 81% of new infections occur among mining populations. Indigenous and Maroon communities with no prior exposure to the parasite are among the most vulnerable to malaria, along with the cooks, truck drivers, shop owners, and sex workers who travel with them.

Money, Sex, Blood: HIV-AIDS

Sex work in Suriname is turning into the most lucrative sector of these attachment service economies,. This has drawn the attention of government officials seeking to increase the country’s tax revenues off the estimated one billion dollars mining brings in each year. In September 2011, the Committee Structuring Gold Sector announced that sex workers operating in mining fields would be required to register with the government and file taxes each year.  However, the risks are quickly outweighing the benefits.

Released ahead of the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. in 2012, the UNAIDS “Together We Will End AIDS” report offered updates on the global AIDS epidemic. Among the most curious pieces of information was the data from Suriname that estimates HIV prevalence for sex workers at 24 percent.

Among the population as a whole, rates of infection hover around 1% for adults ages 15-49. Similar to the rest of the world, male and female sex workers in Suriname are disproportionately affected by the epidemic. In Paramaribo, curb-side soliciting is illegal yet night club-based sex work is allowed and regulated. By law, sex workers are required to register at a local dermatology clinic and get tested for STIs every 2 weeks.

However, regulation and availability of contraceptives are frequently absent in mining camps located in the country’s interior. Miners who hire sex workers often engage in unsafe sex practices that lead to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. While Suriname has made significant strides in increasing the number of persons tested for HIV, HAART and 2nd line ARV regimes, challenges to access lie in the country’s Amazonian topography. Localized prevention efforts led by Maroon and indigenous  women involving plays and dances advocating safe sex are usually the best and only line of defense.

The Promise of El Dorado: Displacement and Degradation

Despite falling gold prices and rising operating costs, gold fever reigns supreme among small-scale miners and multinational mining corporations. On June 6, the Surinamese government and Canadian-based Iamgold Corp signed a deal to expand the country’s Rosebel gold mine—the country’s oldest and most productive mine. Talks are slated to take place with Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp in the coming days to develop the Merian Gold Project.

The latter came under fire in 2009, when the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) warned that the project—located on a 400-square-kilometer area of unprotected rainforest known as the Nassau Plateau—“would destroy habitats that support rare and endemic species including several newly discovered species of catfish, frogs, and a stunning purple toad.” The resolution also stated that, “Mining operations would further encourage the influx of wildcat gold miners in the area, increasing environmental damage and putting pressure on wildlife.”

The most immediate impact of the boom is the displacement of indigenous and maroon tribes. In the 1960s, Suralco forced members of the Saramaka and N’Dyuka tribes off their lands to build a hydro-electric dam and reservoir. A number of displaced families relocated to Nieuw Koffiekamp, which sits on the same gold deposits that feed the Rosebel gold mine. An agreement signed with Alcoa in 2003 to develop the Bakhuis mountains region in Western Suriname for extensive timber, mining and gold extraction projects, caused the displacement of indigenous communities living in the area.

In 1597, British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh referred to Guiana as “a country that hath yet her maidenhead, never sackt, turned, nor wrought.”

The sexualized portrayal expresses underlying colonial aspirations at the core of Europe’s 16thand 17thcentury gold rush. Spanish, Portuguese and British explorers searched for the mythical city of gold believed to be located in the untrammeled Amazonian wilderness. Yet, as one of Raleigh’s contemporaries put it, the reckless pursuit for El Dorado “cost Spain more than all the treasures she received from her South American possessions.”  Raleigh himself led several unsuccessful expeditions on the Orinoco river and into the Guiana shield region comprising modern day Venezuela. Like many before him, he paid a heavy price for his quest, including the life of his son Watt Raleigh, his own freedom, and eventually, his head.

Despite Raleigh’s and countless others’ dire fates, the idea of an untapped and endless source of wealth has proven resilient, drawing ruthless explorers and desperate human beings seeking to better their fortunes.

The small-scale miners working in the informal sector of the economy—whether Brazilian or Surinamese— hardly ever strike it rich. Their meager finds may temporarily alleviate poverty, but at the expense of their health and the environment.

Yet somehow, the old myths persist. And the price of seeking the gold-paved streets of El Dorado continues to be –too often—life itself.

Alexandra McAnarney is a communications consultant and recent graduate from the University of Chicago’s Latin American Studies M.A. Program. As part of her field research, she lived at a migrant shelter along the Mexico-Guatemala border. Before studying at the University of Chicago, she worked as a Communications Coordinator at the Florida Immigrant Coalition and as an HIV/AIDS Journalist in South Florida. She writes for the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org. A native of El Salvador and former resident of Mexico City, her work focuses on migration, youth, gangs, and health and can be found at perishmotherland.tumblr.com – See more at: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8948#sthash.EHrPxWoV.dpuf

Rudolf Kemper contributed to this report.

Worldwide demonstrations against the company took place following the “Monsanto Protection Act” passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March¹  and the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of patents on living organisms² Millions of people gathered across the world on May 25, outraged by the complicity of the governments with the interests of the transnational corporation.

Monsanto has immense power to corrupt. A company that last year grossed more than $14 trillion dollars³ and spent $6 million in lobbying⁴ can be very convincing for the U.S. Supreme Court or the president, not to mention its influence over Mexican government officials and legislators. Portrayed as a technologically innovative company, it is a monopoly whose objective is to control at all costs food agro-food production by diverting laws and manipulating patents to legalize looting peoples and nations.

But the biotech giant, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is in the eye of the hurricane since studies came out recently regarding the dangers posed to human health and life by genetic engineering of food. Last year a study from the University of Caen in France documented the effects of genetically modified (GM) corn NK 603 and the weed killer Round-Up or Faena (glyphosate) on mammals, both products made by Monsanto. Rats fed with these ingredients for two years, in doses equal to their exposure in the environment, developed breast cancer and chronic hormonal, kidney and hepatic dysfunctions, as well as premature death.

Just last April, scientist Stephanie Seneff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an independent colleague, Anthony Samsel, concluded that glyphosate, the most widely used weed killer in the world, interferes with the biosynthesis of nutrients in the human digestive apparatus and is at the root of fatal diseases associated with the western diet: gastrointestinal illnesses, obesity, diabetes, cardiac disease, infertility, depression, autism, cancer and Alzheimer’s.⁶

Concerned for their health and that of their children, Mexican activists in favor of healthy food and in defense of maize and the environment responded to the global call for a day against Monsanto. They organized the “Carnival of Corn” in Mexico City on May 25 and demanded that President Enrique Peña Nieto refuse to be bought or pressured by the agrochemical giant and protect the well-being of the population.

Hundreds of young people from political, social and environmental organizations and artists’ collectives held cultural events and paraded from the Palace of Fine Arts to the Monument to the Revolution. It was a festive atmosphere, with drummers and street theater, music, performance and  dance. Handmade signs ranged from the humorous to the furious: “Monsanto, Go home! (Hell)”, “We are not your f*** scientific experiment”. The most popular hash tag in the social networks was #FueraMonsanto  (#MonsantoOut)

The street festival caught the eye of vagrants and passers-by, attracted by the joy and color of the artistic expressions. The slogans in defense of food and culture broadened the traditional repertory of march chants. “Queremos frijoles, queremos maíz, queremos a Monsanto fuera del país” (We want beans, we want corn, we want Monsanto out of our country”)

Youth comprised the overwhelming majority of participants. Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico-based international think tank the Americas Program, noted “a new generation of activists that reject GMOs and is convinced corporations like Monsanto are a threat–not only to our food but to life on this planet. On the global scale, it’s really important the way in which these movements that started in several countries are finally coming together. In the United States people are beginning to react, there are many grassroots networks. They´re not just NGOs but citizens that are organizing and could even annul the infamous Monsanto Protection Act. It’s a battle that has a lot of symbolism and both sides have a lot at stake.”

Mexico is the global center of origin of maize.  Even so and defying the warnings of scientists, producers and consumers, the past administration of Felipe Calderon authorized open-air cultivation of GM corn in the experimental and pilot phases. In 2011, Monsanto and other transnationals filed for permits to cultivate commercial GM corn on more than a million hectares in Sinaloa and Tamaulipas in the northern part of the country. Apparently the government did not respond to the requests during the allotted time period. But Monsanto raised the stakes this season, applying in March for more than 11 million hectares for commercial cultivation in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango.⁷

Mexican officials and legislators are inclined to favor Monsanto’s petition. Since 2005 they have been paving the legal road for the invasion of GM crops. Only broad and organized public opposition and concerns about the political cost of the move have kept them from speeding up the process.

By organizing from the grassroots, Mexico has made some positive steps forward, including local and national efforts to establish the conditions for food sovereignty,  community seed banks to preserve native seed,  protection and consolidation of production for family and community needs in areas not controlled by Monsanto, and an increase in public awareness of the strategic importance of defending native corn.

For the May 25 demonstrators it’s clear that accepting Monsanto’s designs would be a frontal attack on food sovereignty, conservation of the agro-genetic wealth of Mexican corn varieties, and the right of peasant farmers to maintain their important labor as food producers. In short, an attack on the right to life.

Over this year, actions to resist Monsanto and GM corn have multiplied in Mexico. A nine-day hunger strike staged at the foot of the Angel of independence statue in Mexico City in January by the National Union of Regional Autonomous Peasant Organizations (UNORCA, by its Spanish initials) brought public attention to the demand to block GM corn production. It was followed by a large march on Jan. 31.

The movement Sin Maíz No Hay País (Without corn there is no country), the Mexico chapter of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace Mexico, among others, have made public statements, organization demonstrations and carried out high-impact actions in defense of native corn. Greenpeace recently hung a huge banner reading “NO GMOs” on the downtown monument called the Tower of Light– a structure notorious throughout the country for its scandalous cost overruns and considered a monument to governmental corruption.⁸

The activities have been inspired by deep concerns for the health of the people and the environment, based on verifiable information obtained from careful studies carried out by respected scientists without a conflict of interest.

But the more evidence that emerges showing the dangers or possible dangers of Monsanto products, the more the company spends on efforts to slander the messenger, defame the scientists who carried out the studies and deceive the public. A decent corporation would respond with concern, commission unbiased investigations and withdraw products from the market to protect the population. Monsanto is not a decent corporation. The one merit that can be attributed to it is that it has sparked a dynamic global movement against it that is demanding accountability for who grows our food and how they do it.

Alfredo Acedo is Director of Social Communication and adviser to the National Union of Regional Organizations of Autonomous Small Farmers of Mexico and a contributor to the Americas Program www.cipamericas.org on food and agriculture issues.

FOOTNOTES:

1. http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-grants-monsanto-immunity

2. http://www.eluniversal.com.co/cartagena/economica/corte-suprema-de-estados-unidos-falla-favor-de-monsanto-en-caso-de-patentes-1193

3. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/12/07/opinion/027a1pol

4. http://guardianlv.com/2013/05/monsanto-protested-in-36-countries/

5. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

6. http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=Stephanie+Seneff

7. http://imagenagropecuaria.com/2013/monsanto-solicita-tres-permisos-para-sembrar-maiz-transgenico/

8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a6p58Tbldk&feature=player_embedded

For More Information:

“Mexican Farmers Block new Law to Privatize Plants”, Alfredo Acedo, Americas Program, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6840

“Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push GM Corn in Mexico”, Alfredo Acedo, Americas Program, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4244

“The Fight for Corn”, Alfredo Acedo, Americas Program, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8337

A young man climbs back on the train after stocking up on water and soda. Tancochapa Station, Las Choapas, Veracruz. Photo by Dawn Paley.

One of the women lay face up, her torso cutting a diagonal line across the railway track. The other lay face down, her right leg splayed over the same track at the thigh. Both wore reddish tank tops and pants that went down just below the knee. A police officer with an automatic weapon watched over the bodies.

It was far too late to do anything to help. Little yellow numbers, from one to six, were placed on each piece of ballistic evidence, grim reminders of how Mexico is refashioning its police after the US model.

According to local media, the women were murdered by stab and bullet wounds in the late afternoon on May 30. A preliminary report suggests they refused to pay the quota charged by a criminal group after climbing up on the train. Their bodies were found later that same day just north of the Mexican tourist town of Palenque, in Chiapas.

Both women were from Honduras–Mexicans don’t risk traveling on cargo trains when they migrate through their country toward the United States. Most Central Americans traveling through Mexico do so as undocumented migrants. This means they are not afforded the right to free movement.

If they board a bus, undocumented migrants in Mexico can be pulled off and deported by soldiers at numerous checkpoints dotting northern-bound highways. Without paperwork, they can’t make it past the airport service counter. Thus, the train remains the most accessible means of transport for Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and others who hope against hope they’ll make to the US and find employment.

The double murder on the train tracks in Chiapas took place on the heels of an Observation Mission into the conditions of migrants in southern Mexico, coordinated by the Mesoamerican Migration Movement. The Mission, led by activists and members of the Catholic Church as well as journalists based in Veracruz and Mexico, made its way from Orizaba, in Veracruz state, to Tenosique, a municipality in Tabasco state, which borders Guatemala.

On the last night of the four-day Mission, participants stayed overnight at La 72, a migrant shelter in Tenosique. The shelter was opened following the discovery of the bodies of 72 migrants on a ranch in San Fernando, in the border state of Tamaulipas in August of 2010. It takes its name in honor of the memory of the dead.

A report from the mission was prepared by participants and delivered to four members of Mexico’s senate who visited the shelter on May 28.

“What motivated us to carry out this mission is the tragedy, the new tragedy that came to light through the media in Cosoleacaque, in the community of Barrancas, when the train was attacked,” said Fray Tómas Gonzalez Castillo when the report was presented to senators.

“This tragedy has had aftershocks, just like after an earthquake, just recently on May 14, here in Tenosique, the train was stopped and there were kidnappings, we’re looking after the victims now, though they are not present today for security reasons,” he said.

The report’s final text rejected the official version of events related to the attack on migrants in the evening of May 1in Barrancas, in southern Veracruz. Dozens of migrants were wounded, one seriously, after they were attacked while riding the cargo train.

Members of the state government claimed the migrants were wounded because of infighting between migrants. But when hundreds of people descended from the train and sought refuge in the village of Las Barrancas, they told local authorities that they were attacked on the train related to the payment of a quota.

South of Las Barrancas, in Las Choapas, Veracruz, members of the Observation Mission, witnessed a train passing carrying between 1,000 and 1,500 migrants. As the train stopped and started as machinists added another car, we watched passengers got off to buy food, pop and water from local vendors along the tracks.

Some on the train that day claimed they were told they would be required to pay four $100 quotas to travel through four stations, each controlled by criminal groups. Those who don’t pay are kidnapped and ransomed, assaulted, killed or disappeared.

“Today there’s a lot of death along the train tracks, and we want support as migrants, a permit or something, so that we can follow the path to our dream, our dream is to arrive to the United States and help our people,” said Gustavo Adolfo, a Garifuna man from Honduras on his way up to the US.

“Over the last years thousands of migrants have been disappeared and thousands have died on the trains without their families ever finding out what happened. We are victims, we are kidnapped, and we die as innocents.”

In the places the Mission visited in Veracruz state, church groups and local organizations provide assistance to migrants, including shelter, meals and legal aid.

“The participation of the government, for it’s part, lacks organized, coordinated assistance for people who are migrants,” reads the report. “Among various agencies, the services offered are intermittent, lacking, and in some areas and cases, null.”

Those who have stepped in to assist migrants have also been threatened and intimidated for their work. “Around two years ago there started to be complaints in this region, complaints of human rights abuses thathave been taken to the authorities, and the activists here have received threats for their work,” said José Jacques, a former legislator who took part in the Mission and in the writing of the report.

There was a time when the extortion and murder of migrants was primarily an issue in the US-Mexico border region. Over the past years, Mexico’s southern region has also become a hellish passage for migrants.

The report ends by echoing a general sentiment that “Mexico is a graveyard for migrants.” The appearance of the bodies of two women migrants murdered two days after the document was released is a dreadful confirmation of their conclusion.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and independent researcher. She was the only foreign journalist to take part in the Observation Mission. Find more of her work online at dawnpaley.ca.  She is a regular contributor to the Americas Program www.cipamericas.org

For More Information:

See the report in Spanish here: http://www.movimientomigrantemesoamericano.org/archives/2037/reportemisiondeobservacion-3

“Human Rights  Caravan Protests Migrant Kidnappings”, Christine Kovic, Americas Program, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5267

“Riding The Beast”, Christine Kovic, Americas Program http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5287

What he left unstated is how the two seemingly competing themes are intrinsically linked.

Agreement on Mexico’s NAFTA-Plus Agenda

It was easy for Obama and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to come together on trade and integration issues. Peña Nieto comes from the historically nationalist Institutional Revolutionary Party. Within the party he’s connected to the former president Carlos Salinas, the architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Like his predecessor Felipe Calderon, Peña Nieto has a strong commitment to the neoliberal reforms that the U.S. government and multilateral banks have been imposing on Mexico for years. Unlike his predecessor, however, he has a chance of pushing them through.

During his visit to Mexico, Obama and Pena Nieto committed to deepening NAFTA, although they avoided calling the controversial trade agreement by name. Both are acutely aware that nearly twenty years since its ratification, NAFTA has a decidedly tarnished image among the publics of all three countries involved.

Instead, they announced a binational high-level commission to make both nations more competitive, increase efficiency and security at the border, and further integrate industry.  Obama also put in a plug for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a geographically rearranged version of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas killed by South American nations in 2005. In some aspects, the TPP goes even further in binding governments to corporate agendas than NAFTA.

Obama threw his weight behind Peña Nieto’s reforms, referring obliquely to the education reform that has provoked thousands of teachers to take to the streets in defense of their jobs and the public education system. He also mentioned the crown jewel for U.S. oil companies and Pentagon planners—the privatization of the national oil company PEMEX.

At the joint press conference in Mexico’s National Palace, Obama stated   “I want to commend President Peña Nieto and the Mexican people for the ambitious reforms that you’ve embarked on to make your economy more competitive, to make your institutions more effective. And I know it’s hard, but it’s also necessary. Ultimately, only Mexicans can decide how Mexico reforms. But let me repeat what I told the President — as Mexico works to become more competitive, you’ve got a strong partner in the United States, because our success is shared,”

U.S. oil companies have long been chomping at the bit to share success in Mexican oil resources. For decades, Mexican governments have run the state-owned enterprise into the ground in anticipation of making the case for greater privatization, taxing away funds for even basic reinvestment and maintenance. Peña Nieto denies he’s promoting “privatization” but believes he can pass legislation to greatly increase areas where private investment is allowed.

Obama’s reference to “Mexicans deciding” was carefully calculated. He arrived with a pronounced sensitivity to accusations of intervention; on several occasions, he felt it necessary to state that his government will not impose policies on Mexico. Any perception of U.S. pressure on PEMEX privatization would backfire—millions of Mexicans strongly oppose privatization. Even if Peña Nieto manages to get Congress on board for the reform, popular protests are likely. Even a shadow of a U.S. hand behind the move would add fuel to protests.

The sensitivity also arises from criticisms from both Mexican and U.S. citizen groups that the Obama administration is in large part responsible for the disastrous drug war.

The Obama administration–especially the Pentagon and DEA, FBI, CIA, ATF and other agencies that now enjoy an expanded presence in Mexico–has been watching carefully to see what the Peña Nieto government will do with the drug war morass it inherited. Despite the direct result of 80,000 dead, these agencies hail the strategy as a major advance in bi-national cooperation.

The Peña Nieto government dropped a bombshell just days before the meeting, announcing that all security cooperation with the U.S. government must go through the Secretary of the Interior. The decision effectively reins in U.S. security operations after the conservative PAN party tore down historical limits to U.S. intervention in-country.

This prohibits the now common (and largely uncontrolled and uncoordinated) operations directly between numerous agencies. U.S. government agents have complained the decision will have a chilling effect on U.S. operations in the country, which is probably just what Pena Nieto had in mind.

Direct U.S. involvement in Mexican security has been ramped up, with a huge increase in Embassy personnel, making the U.S. embassy in Mexico among the largest in the world. The range of security-related activities also expanded exponentially. The recent announcement is in line with consolidating the Interior Ministry as an Uber-ministry, which has already absorbed the Ministry of Public Security.

Publicly, Obama accepted the decision. Whether in response to the uncertainty surrounding Peña Nieto’s position or not, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced on April 18 that State Department aid to Mexico was decreasing by $124 million compared to 2012. He described it as a general “downward glide path”—a gradual decrease for both heavily funded Mexico and Colombia. However, Washington insiders say that even some appropriated funds are on ice as the terms of the new relationship are worked out and could be re-channeled. At the same time, security aid to Central America and the Caribbean are on the rise.

Both presidents painted a rose-colored picture of Mexico as an up-and-coming middle-class society that utterly ignored the rise in poverty and inequality, violence and human right violations. The Los Angeles Times coverage of Obama’s speech aimed at young people quoted several students smitten by the U.S. president but stumped by the distance between the his portrayal of their country and their own experience.  According to the Times, they wondered out loud, “what country is he talking about?”

Obama’s pronouncements weren’t just a matter of focusing on the glass half full. If Obama and Peña Nieto were to discuss the serious problems facing the nation, they would have had to confront the criticisms of the same policies they committed to continue.

“This American Moment”

Two weeks after Obama’s return, Roberta Jacobsen and Ricardo Zuniga, heads of Western Hemisphere Affairs for the State Department and the President, respectively, clarified the central purpose of his trip.

“The focus was really on diversification of energy supplies, new energy resources in the Americas, the way in which the global energy map is increasingly focused on the Americas, both in fossil and traditional fuels and in renewables, and new fuels, whether it’s shale oil or shale gas or other things. And so there was a lot of conversation about how to take advantage of this American moment, if you will, on energy throughout the hemisphere,” said Jacobsen.

Zuniga stressed the geopolitical aspect of the visit, “…we see energy as a unifying theme in the Americas, that it’s clearly something that tends to bring countries together because in the Americas you see both vast opportunity and a lot of the continuing challenges. And so bringing those two together and linking them together, and thinking about not just the Americas but the impact of the development in the Americas in the global energy supply and on the global markets is critical.”

Jacobsen noted that,

“The Americas obviously produces more than half of U.S. oil imports, almost one-third of its natural gas, nearly 30 percent of global electricity. And so we look forward to the possibility that in two decades the United States will rely almost exclusively on hemispheric sources of energy. And I think that’s an incredibly important point in terms of shifting strategic partnerships, that all of the countries of the region are feeling that greater importance in some ways because of the global energy map.”

The emphasis on Mesoamerica as an energy source for U.S. over-demand was the central point that the press and pundits largely ignored. It has tremendous implications.

In theory, the idea of helping to develop energy projects, especially clean energy sources, makes sense. But what that means and could mean in practice is far more disturbing. Throughout Mexico and Central American countries energy and mineral development projects are generating conflict and severe violations of human rights, especially of indigenous peoples and the rural poor. Experience shows that foreign policy based on desperately extending fossil fuel consumption and reliance, leads to conflict.  More and more, troops sent out in the name of the drug war are engaging with local communities fighting against displacement caused by energy and other development projects.

As energy sources become scarcer, the social and environmental costs of extraction and distribution rise sharply. By shaping a submissive Mesoamerica into the energy source for the United States, it is those nations and peoples that will assume those costs. The Connect the Americas 2022 initiative, discussed on Obama’s trip includes the prospect of hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. loans and millions in contracts for U.S. companies. Further energy development for U.S. needs would require privatization, and if history is any guide at all, imply displacement of populations often through violence.

The war on drugs provides the cover for sending soldiers and police throughout Mexico and Central America. Every day there is more evidence –local resource battles, Guatemala’s state of siege—that security forces are being used to back up changes in land use, wresting resources from local communities to deliver to large development projects. With a major push to open up energy and other resources in the region, the U.S. plan to make Mesoamerica its new energy platform only intensifies those fears.

Drug War pushed behind the curtain

The few references to the drug war, the Merida Initiative and to a lesser extent the Central American Regional Security Initiative (formerly part of Merida) during the Presidential visit was no surprise. Obama’s security policy in the region has become a major embarrassment.

First, the strategy to physically attack drug cartels and militarize the country has sparked confrontations between the drug cartels, leading to widespread violence throughout the country that claims thousands of victims a year. Second, human rights violations have also risen alarmingly, with security forces involved in torture, rape, murder, complicity and other crimes.

As to the U.S. role, more of the public and even prominent political leaders regard the interdiction and enforcement model promoted by the U.S. as Mexico doing the dirty work of a nation obsessed with the both consumption and prohibition. U.S. involvement in the Mexican drug war is increasingly seen as a vehicle for U.S. politicians, advisers and agents to define and implement their own security priorities in Mexico.

During Obama’s visit, the leaders agreed in public to reorient the strategy to reducing violence rather than stopping drugs. It remains to be seen if that focus will be reflected on the ground, for example, in a decrease in DEA activity and an increase in social programs.

Central America was just as complicated for Obama when it came to defending current U.S. drug war priorities. When he arrived at the meeting of Central American heads of state, he faced leaders with major doubts about the strategy. Guatemala’s President, Otto Perez Molina, has called for a discussion on legalization. And he is not alone: the Organization of American States issued a report calling for discussion of legalization of marijuana and other alternatives to the drug war.

Meanwhile, in the United States, public views toward the most consumed illicit drug, marijuana, do not support the nation’s expenditures in marijuana seizures and arrests. There’s a general trend to greater social acceptance of marijuana use, a trend that has also been expressed in the legalization of use for medical purposes in 18 states, regulated use in two states and polls showing that a majority favors ending marijuana prohibition.

Desperate to show some justification for a drug war that has devastated producing countries, U.S. government agencies and allied think tanks have made the claim that consumption has declined. The statement is flat-out false. The government’s own National Institute on Drug Abuse survey shows an increase in illicit drug use among teens.

In the case of marijuana, use went up from 32% of those surveyed in 2008 to 36% in 2012, with a similar decrease in those who felt smoking marijuana was risky.

Instead of vowing to revamp the strategy in the midst of these contradictions, Obama said little about the drug war in public in Mexico or Central America. Press releases regarding the Central America meeting stressed programs for youth, prevention and blocking precursor chemicals and mostly ignore trafficking.

Threats and Promises

There is no doubt that recasting Mexico from a national security threat to a partner would be a positive and long-overdue step forward. The way in which Mexico has been portrayed as a threat—as a source of spillover drug violence, a failed state, a home to terrorist migrants, etc.—has distorted reality and devastated the bi-national relationship. On his trip Obama stated that the U.S.-Mexico relationship “must be defined not by the threats that we face but by the prosperity and the opportunity that we can create together.”

It’s just not clear that the shift is genuine. Aid to both Mexico and Central America continues to be heavily skewed to the drug war, including military and police aid, and training programs and “institution-building” among judiciary and penal institutions to support U.S. counternarcotics objectives. While State Department aid to Mexico may decrease somewhat, Department of Defense aid is growing and in Central America security aid is slated to rise 20% over already rising 2012 levels, as noted at the first SICA-North American Security dialogue held in Washington days before Obama’s visit.

A serious shift would require dramatically rechanneling security aid to social and development goals. It would require focusing on unmet responsibilities at home to stop arms flows and money laundering, reduce corruption and reduce the market for illicit substances through regulation, prevention and treatment. It would mean revamping economic policies that have led to the crisis in youth unemployment and lack of education in the region, to assure a future for youth instead of spending U.S. taxpayer dollars for at-risk youth who were placed at risk in part due to our policies. It would mean fixing trade and labor policies to ensure that working people are able to meet the needs of their families.

Nothing really changed on Obama’s three-day trip to the region. The effort to spin a new relationship built on shared interests left more doubts than optimism. The emphasis on economic ties rang hollow due to the absence of any mention of the relationship between those policies and the security crisis. Downplaying security when in fact it is still the central aspect of the relationship raises concerns about what’s below the shiny surface of the photo ops.

Laura Carlsen is director of the CIP Americas Program in Mexico City www.cipamericas.org