Lawmakers in El Salvador recently voted to reintroduce industrial mining in the country, ending a 2017 landmark ban that has protected freshwater and public health.
President Nayib Bukele has advocated for the return of mining despite the unpopularity of the industry in El Salvador, arguing that it will bring in billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs.
The government will have at least 51% control over every mining project while also being in charge of oversight, causing concern from environmentalists that it will be hard to challenge projects that aren’t being carried out responsibly.
Lawmakers in El Salvador have voted to reintroduce industrial mining in the country, ending a landmark ban that was meant to protect freshwater and public health.
The law, pushed through just days before the end of 2024, gives the government control over the country’s massive gold reserves, which have gone untouched since 2017 due to a nationwide ban on extractives.
For many conservationists, this marks a major step backwards in the fight to protect El Salvador’s fragile ecosystems.
“It’s an absolutely disastrous decision,” said Luis González, advocacy director for the Salvadoran Ecological Unit, an environmental NGO. “[The mining ban] was established after years of struggle, but also because it was technically and scientifically proven that mining is an unviable activity in Salvadoran territory due to the environmental, water and population conditions.”
The law received 57 votes in favor and three against, passing just days before the end of the 2024 legislative session despite polls showing that mining is deeply unpopular in the country. Around 60% of Salvadorans think the country is unsuitable for mining and over 78% believe living near a mine to be “very dangerous,” according to one survey.
The legislative assembly voted on the mining law in late December. Photo courtesy of Asamblea Legislativa.
Mining creates a new revenue stream for the government, which has been looking to show the IMF and other international backers that the country is economically stable enough to pay back loans.
Preliminary studies of a small area of the country found approximately 50 million ounces of gold worth over $1.3 billion. Mining it could also create thousands of jobs and finance new infrastructure projects, President Nayib Bukele said in an X thread.
“We are the ONLY country in the world with a total ban on metal mining, something that no other country applies,” Bukele said in the thread. “Absurd! This wealth, given by God, can be harnessed responsibly to bring unprecedented economic and social development to our people.”
The government has the option of working with foreign companies to carry out the mining projects but will retain a majority stake while also being in charge of oversight. Critics say so much government control will make it hard to challenge projects encroaching on wildlife, freshwater sources and local communities suffering negative health impacts.
Officials who voted for the law argue that government control is designed to prevent private industry from taking advantage of El Salvador’s natural resources. The country has one major watershed, the Lempa River, that provides over 60% of the country’s freshwater. Cyanide and other chemicals commonly used in mining could lead to a water crisis if not dealt with properly.
“As a country, we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, where these types of activities are left to the discretion of companies that seek profit and don’t care about the wellbeing of the people,” Deputy Elisa Rosales said in a legislative press release.
The General Directorate of Energy, Hydrocarbons and Mines didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
Resistance to mining
Activists have been concerned for years that Bukele would reverse the mining ban.
In 2021, he created the General Directorate of Energy, Hydrocarbons and Mines and joined the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, a group that helps countries meet their sustainable mining goals.
Last year, residents in the department of Cabañas said they’d been visited by foreigners interested in buying land. The area underwent mining exploration during the early 2000s but never broke ground.
Five anti-mining activists, known in the country as “water defenders,” were arrested in 2023 — a case that outside observers have called politically motivated due to the defenders’ leading role in getting the 2017 mining ban passed.
The defenders were also part of a resistance group during the country’s civil war, allegedly participating in a kidnapping and murder in 1989. They were found innocent last October but will face a retrial following an appeal by the Attorney General.
Protesters outside of the legislative assembly. Photo courtesy of Cripdes
“They find this case that’s super weak, and in the end, that has sort of fallen apart. No evidence, no anything,” said John Cavanagh, senior advisor at the Institute for Policy Studies, who noted that the case could be meant to silence and intimidate future anti-mining campaigns.
Bukele is one of the most popular presidents in the world, with an approval rating of around 90%. He’s eradicated gang violence and brought in foreign investment. But the unpopularity of mining may pose new political challenges for him, Cavanagh said. Unlike in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, mining isn’t accepted as the norm by agribusiness, tourism and other sectors that would be affected by pollution.
The Catholic Church was one of the most outspoken groups when mining was banned in 2017. Ahead of the vote on the new law, the Episcopal Conference of El Salvador published a statement expressing concern about the return of mining, saying that it was in favor of economic development but not at the expense of people’s health. Cavanagh said the church could start organizing educational campaigns against mining.
Other observers said they expect communities with known gold deposits, including in Cabañas and Chalatenango, to fight back against development once it starts.
“We have to continue resisting an activity that is detrimental to the environment, to water, to the health of the population,” González said. “It’s truly regrettable, because this will further damage an ecosystem that is already damaged, already mistreated, already degraded, which will undoubtedly generate disasters in the medium and long term.”
Banner image: Protesters outside of the legislative assembly. Photo courtesy of Cripdes.
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In 2024, Latin America continued facing chronic issues of deforestation, ecosystem contamination, violence, habitat loss and political turmoil.
Changes brought on by presidential elections in several countries have not brought on significant changes for the environment, at least not yet, with effects still to be seen in the years to come.
Increased criminal activity in the region remains a serious obstacle to conservation work, endangering local and Indigenous communities, while highlighting governments’ inability to tackle narco-trafficking and its associated consequences.
Throughout a year in which Latin America saw elections in six countries and prepared for the biodiversity COP16 in Colombia, the region continued its struggle with extreme weather events, criminal activity threatening ecosystems and development encroaching on communities and wildlife habitats. At the same time, community efforts toward conservation, environmental justice and implementation of nature-based solutions kept up. Below we selected several key stories we reported on last year – they are good opportunities to refresh one’s memory about what has happened, but also set our expectations for the issues carrying on into 2025.
Political change across the region
In El Salvador, the re-election of Nayib Bukele posed environmental concerns, as his agenda prioritizes development, security, and attracting foreign investments over the country’s natural assets. In 2017, El Salvador was the first country in the world to ban mining but fears that Bukele would reverse that ban have since become a reality.
In Panama, presidential race winner Jose Raul Mulino has stated he didn’t have plans to re-open the Cobre Panama mine, but his plans are also more focused on job development and infrastructure than on environmental issues. Last year, the government’s relocation of the island community of Gardi Sugdub – a first for the country – highlighted Panama’s tangible struggle with climate change impacts.
Families are migrating from Gardi Sugdub, a tiny island belonging to the Indigenous Guna Yala people of Panama, packed with houses to the edge of the water, due to sea level rise. Image by Michael Adams via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
Mexico’s election of its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has brought hope that more of the country’s environmental issues will get attention from the government. Sheinbaum is the former mayor of Mexico City and an environmental scientist by trade. She co-authored the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, yet her campaign has been light on rigorous environmental policy, some critics have said. As the successor of AMLO, her support of the controversial Tren Maya and oil giant Pemex has raised red flags about her commitment to conservation and the energy transition.
Venezuela’s electoral campaign, with Nicolas Maduro’s victory still highly contested, had little space for environmental issues, even though the country has plunged into a crisis so severe that many observers have called it an ecocide. Mining has torn through the Amazon Rainforest. A neglected oil industry has polluted the coast. Protected areas are plundered for their timber and exotic species. Funds for scientific research have all but dried up. Funds for park guards have dwindled, as well.
Bolivia has been hit the hardest, with more than 7 million hectares (17 million acres) of forest and natural vegetation scorched by late September. This made 2024 Bolivia’s worst year for fires on record. There were three times more fires in Bolivia in 2024 than in previous years, devastating biodiversity and Indigenous territories.
Brazil, home to 60% of the Amazon, also faced extreme fire activity. In the Brazilian Pantanal, more than 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) burned by October, marking one of the most destructive fire seasons in recent history.
Peru has also declared a state of emergency in six regions as fires spread across the country. By late September, the fires had killed 20 people, injured more than 160, and burned more than 12,300 hectares (30,400 acres) of natural vegetation, while severe drought in the Amazon left several Indigenous communities isolated. Meanwhile, Colombia reported 44,000 hectares (109,000 acres) destroyed by fires in September alone. In Mexico, heat waves have also had severe impacts: by August 2024, the country had recorded at least 125 heat-related deaths and 2,308 cases of heat stroke, along with power outages, wildfires, and mass die-offs of threatened howler monkeys.
The Amazon has experienced its worst fire season in 19 years, while Pantanal wetlands have already burned 15% of its area. Image courtesy of Fernando Donasci/Environment and Climate Change Ministry.
In early 2024, Venezuela experienced record-breaking fires. Apart from the highest number of fires in any January and February for the last two decades, wildfires continued into early May, devastating national parks and affecting the capital of Caracas. To that point, up to 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) of land appear to have already burned, experts estimated.
Mining, energy and infrastructure projects expanded
In Bolivia, lithium extraction has brought on new issues for communities neighboring the industry. In Salar de Uyuni, a lithium plant opened in 2023 has been using untested equipment and has been possibly mismanaging its use of freshwater, raising concerns for residents about whether the Bolivian government can responsibly manage the rapid growth of the industry.
In Nicaragua, despite US sanctions, harmful mining has continued unabated. Between 2021 and 2023, the amount of Nicaraguan land concessioned for mining more than doubled, from 923,681 hectares (2,282,465 acres) to 1.8 million hectares (4,447,896 acres), according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Mining concessions now take up around 15% of the country’s total land area.
In Colombia, approval of the $420.4 million Alacrán mining project in northern Colombia has alarmed residents, who say they might lose their food and drinking water to unregulated pollution, causing them to relocate to other parts of the country. In Guyana, a series of ongoing road projects traveling over 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital of Georgetown to the city of Lethem, in the south, are supposed to improve access to more rural parts of Guyana while facilitating international trade, most notably with Brazil. But the project also crosses sensitive wetlands and Indigenous communities, raising concerns about how the government will manage future development there.
Plant of Bolivian Lithium Deposits, in Uyuni. Photo: YLB.
Earlier in the year, Mongabay reporter Maxwell Radwin and videographer Caitlin Cooper embarked on a journey aboard the Tren Maya, traveling from Cancún to Palenque and back, on a mission to uncover critical issues associated with the rail project, including impacts on communities and ecosystems.
Criminality encroaches on ecosystems
In Ecuador, an investigation by Mongabay and Codigo Vidrio found that for the last seven years, the Los Lobos criminal group has become deeply entrenched in illegal gold mining across all of the country’s provinces, taking over the mineral’s supply chain. The group that has entered even protected areas, has spread fear among local and Indigenous communities.
The Maya Biosphere Reserve, which stretches 2.2 million hectares (5.3 million acres) across northern Guatemala, has seen a wave of land invasions in 2024 in areas that have historically not faced threats of colonization. As new trails open up and fires spread, officials have raised concerns not just about deforestation but about potentially losing control of the area altogether.
In Colombia, the Chinese-owned Buritica gold mine lost control over 60% of its operations as its tunnels have been invaded by informal miners associated with Colombia’s largest criminal armed group, the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), also known as the Gulf Clan. Armed groups have increasingly gained power in the country: one report found that one of Colombia’s biggest active FARC dissident groups, the Central Armed Command (EMC), controls much of the Amazon rainforest in the departments of Guaviare, Meta and Caquetá.
The Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. Large-scale deforestation in the region has been linked, in part, to narco-trafficking, say experts. Image courtesy of CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
In the Peruvian Amazon, cocaine has gained more ground. According to official data from MAAP, the surface area of coca production in Peru is increasing, particularly in the central Peruvian Amazon, along the Andes Mountains in the regions of Ucayali and Huánuco, leading to further threats and killings of Indigenous leaders. At the same time, experts have warned that organizations associated with the drug trade have diversified into mining, logging and land-grabbing enterprises, redrawing the map of criminal networks in Latin America.
Green finance has also continued stirring controversy. In early 2024, a Mongabay investigation revealed that several companies registered in Latin American countries claiming to have U.N. endorsement have persuaded Indigenous communities to hand over the economic rights to their forests for decades to come. Indigenous communities in Peru, Bolivia and Panama were promised jobs and local development projects in exchange for putting on the market more than 9.5 million hectares (23.5 million acres) of forests. The U.N. entities cited by the companies have rejected any involvement.
Conservation efforts carry on, despite obstacles
While Latin America might be battling many chronic issues, it still abounds in stories about conservation successes and new solutions to older problems. In Beni, Bolivia, a new approach to ranching has succeeded in bringing more sustainable practices and helping regenerate native grasses in the local savannas. In Peru, conservationists have come together to help protect the critically endangered Lima leaf-toed gecko (Phyllodactylus sentosus), which lives in Lima’s archaeological sites, while in Iquitos, communities are struggling to protect turtle species from illegal trade and local culinary traditions.
Illegal bird traders have aggressively sought out the red siskin for more than a century. Image courtesy of SRCS.
Research has shown that in Ecuador community-led conservation initiatives were more effective in curbing páramo loss than state-protected areas, while in Guyana, local Indigenous communities have set up a conservation zone for the rare red siskin (Spinus cucullata) finch to protect it from illegal trade and habitat loss.
Banner image: Mist rising from the Amazon rainforest at dawn. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.
In Colombia’s Buriticá municipality, a gold mine owned by Chinese company Zijin has become a hotspot of environmental damage, criminal activity and conflict.
Zijin announced earlier this year that it had lost control of 60% of its mining operations to the illegal miners, who have taken over the mine’s tunnels or collapsed them.
Illegal mining has expanded in and around the mine, with miners using mercury, explosives and heavy machinery to extract gold, contaminating ecosystems and threatening the geological stability of the area.
The illegal miners flock here from around the country, and are associated with the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), also known as the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal armed group.
Nearly 100 underground tunnels, running a combined length of more than 84 kilometers, or 52 miles, crisscross and plunge into the depths of the mountain that hosts the Zijin gold mine in Buriticá, northeastern Colombia. Since 2021, those tunnels have been invaded by informal miners associated with Colombia’s largest criminal armed group, the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), called the “Gulf Clan” by the government, who are digging their own honeycomb of tunnels into the same massive gold deposits.
Confrontations between the informal miners Zijin security personnel have at times escalated into underground gun battles. And as the mine acts as a magnet for increasing criminality, both social and environmental destruction have followed.
Residents describe the situation as “a ticking ecological time bomb.” Some say they worry that the thousands of poorly constructed tunnels built by the informal miners are in danger of collapsing the mountain entirely — a fear also expressed after investigations by the Mining, Environmental and Agrarian Office of Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office.
Concerns over contamination
In a public statement from July, the AGO warned that illegal mining is creating “grave environmental consequences” that include “structural geological risk to the base” of the mountain where the Zijin mine is located.
“All mining, legal or illegal, contributes to ecological damage, and potentially threatens water tables via underground aquifers, causes deforestation and in turn these phenomena threaten biodiversity,” Oscar Alejandro Pérez-Escobar, a Colombian researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the U.K., told Mongabay. “The region where Buriticá is located is among the most biodiverse in the Andes.”
But illegal mining is often more damaging than licensed commercial mining operations, because the miners don’t follow state-imposed practices that include basic ecological and safety guidelines, he said.
Mercury used to agglomerate gold has contaminated the local water table. Image by Fabio Nascimento.
Many of the informal mining operations that have sprung up around the mine use mercury as an agent to extract the gold deposits from the ore, as well as explosives to create tunnels or erode mountain faces, and heavy machinery to clear forest for strip-mining.
These illegal underground operations also damage the water table in the region through the use of chemicals and by leaving mining waste, or tailings, in poorly constructed tunnels that stretch deep into the mountain range in which they’re constructed.
“This is incredibly concerning,” Pérez-Escobar said, noting that any toxic materials left in the tunnels “will immediately end up in the water table. The tunnels are dug directly through natural subterranean aquifers in the mountains.”
“Heavy metals left over from mining, or used in mining processes, such as mercury, make their way up through the water table, into the food chain, and threaten flora and fauna alike,” he said. “This eventually becomes a poison for every living thing in the region.”
Mercury, which causes neurological damage in humans, including developmental problems in infants, has been detected in residents of other regions of Colombia where illegal mining has long been prevalent.
A 2017 study by the country’s environmental ministry in the municipalities of Segovia and Remedios found “high levels of mercury” in the breast milk of nearly 12% of lactating mothers. The government of Antioquia department, where the two municipalities are located, didn’t immediately respond to questions sent by Mongabay about whether similar studies had been conducted or were planned in Buriticá.
The Zijin mine operator has also been accused by the informal miners of intentionally dumping “toxic sludge” in tunnels in an attempt to deter illegal miners from entering. The operator has denied the accusations.
A growing minefield
The Zijin mine sits on the largest known gold deposit in South America, an estimated reserve of more than 300 metric tons. The Chinese mining conglomerate that operates it calls it “ultra high-grade” and the country’s “first modern underground mine.”
But amid growing tensions with some local community members since the mine opened in 2020, the Chinese company has been the target of protests and road blockades by informal miners in the region.
The mine was initially built following surveying by Canada-based Continental Gold between 2016 and 2019, which discovered the gold deposits in Buriticá. In 2019, Zijin Mining Group, a multinational Chinese conglomerate, acquired 69.28% of Continental Gold’s shares and took over the Canadian company’s operations in Colombia.
Buriticá, Colombia, has seen a boom in mining, as it sits on the largest known gold deposit in South America. Image by Joshua Collins.
Juan Guillermo Pineda is a firefighter who has lived his whole life in Buriticá. “The illegal miners dump the bodies of those who die in the Zijin tunnels,” he told Mongabay over coffee in the idyllic town square. “They know they’ll be found there. So we come to pick them up, identify them, and then notify the families. If there are any families.”
Pineda adds that “We used to all be farmers here. But the kids here aren’t interested in that. Why would they want to poke around in the dirt when they earn 20 times as much looking for gold?”
Previously, the Gaitanistas didn’t have much of a presence in the municipality, despite having effective control over the region. But after Continental Gold’s discovery, things quickly began to change.
“A lot of people started arriving here from other mining regions in the country [in 2020],” said an activist and social leader who asked for anonymity, citing safety concerns. “People started to come here from dangerous places, like Segovia,” a mining town in northern Antioquia where the Gulf Clan maintains a strong presence. The region has a murder rate eight times higher than the national average.
“And now everyone has to pay EGC,” the activist said. “But the extortion isn’t the worst of it. Informal mining has exploded, and deaths have come with that.”
Zijin invested heavily in infrastructure and mining titles in the region. After operations became increasingly dangerous, in 2024 the company filed a lawsuit against the Colombian government. It sought $500 million in damages under Colombian-Canadian trade agreements, claiming Colombia had failed to guarantee basic security for its investment.
In June 2024, Zijin publicly declared it had lost control of more than 60% of its mining operation, as tunnels had been taken over or collapsed by informal miners, while two employees had been killed and dozens more injured. In the same statement, the company announced that it had recorded “2,260 explosions using improvised artifacts” and “a total of 2,450 shots fired” during confrontations with illegal miners within its tunnels in 2023.
“The Canadians dressed up the mine, claimed it was safe, and walked away with a nice paycheck,” said Luis, a mid-level manager for Zijin’s operations in Buriticá. He asked that his last name be withheld because he doesn’t have authorization to speak on behalf of the company. “It isn’t the Chinese company’s fault the problems started right afterward.”
Juan Pineda, a local firefighter, says that miners are working in dangerous, often deadly conditions. Image by Joshua Collins.
But Zijin’s lawsuit against Colombia is “unlikely to succeed,” said Adriaan Alsema, executive editor of South America-focused news portal Colombia Reports, who has reported on similar legal battles in the past. “The fact that Buriticá rests in a region firmly controlled by EGC is public knowledge. Government lawyers are likely to argue that it was a lack of due diligence on the part of the international conglomerate that is to blame, not Colombian security forces”
Alsema added that “No one is forcing the Zijin mining group to conduct operations here.”
Since 2020, when the Zijin mine opened, Colombian authorities have deployed 50 police from the National Unit Against Illegal Mining and Terrorism (UNMIL), who provide 24-hour security inside the mine, and hundreds of uniformed officers in the regions around Buriticá, where the illegal tunnel entrances are located.
“It hasn’t been enough,” said the activist. They added, however, that many of the informal miners being blamed for environmental and social problems are victims of the organized crime dynamic as well.
Most informal miners there are young and come to Buriticá from all over the country, searching for what seems to be a surefire way to make money.
“These kids are locked underground for weeks. They have no cellphone service, no entertainment,” the activist said. “So a lot of them turn to cocaine or other drugs to aid with the tedium of the work.”
They work shifts of 20 to 30 days locked in the tunnels. Although they can order food and even drugs from those who manage the illegal mining operation, they must pay out of their earnings.
“Some of them, if they’re unlucky, end up in debt,” the activist said.
But more often, miners who are paid based on the amount of ore they extract by the “investors” who oversee the illegal mines, can earn five to six times the monthly minimum wage in Colombia — currently around $360.
“Sometimes, if they strike a rich vein, they can make more though,” Pineda said. He described the work as incredibly dangerous, with workers drowning in floods in badly constructed tunnels, asphyxiated from a lack of proper ventilation, crushed by tunnel collapses that are either unprovoked or triggered by explosives used in mining operations.
“If someone is working in an adjacent illegal tunnel when Zijin workers are using explosives, it can burn all the oxygen in the air for hundreds of meters,” Pineda told Mongabay. “Informal miners have died not even realizing they are suffocating.”
For Luis, the Zijin mine manager, the solution is “a purge.” “Security forces need to clear out all of these strangers who come here and commit crimes. If Zijin leaves, the mine will just become even more of a magnet for armed groups,” he said.
But the activist said the solution isn’t that simple. “You can’t put these kids in jail for accepting an opportunity to improve their economic situation that they view as legitimate,” they said. “They are victims of the armed conflict as much as anyone else. And Zijin, despite their claims otherwise, knew the situation they were getting into.
“They just thought the profit would exceed the risk,” they added.
The departmental government and the Attorney General’s Office have launched programs in cooperation with Zijin to formalize illegal miners in the region, who must undergo environmental and safety training to be granted licenses.
Hugo Valle works as a subcontractor in the program to help the illegal miners enroll. “Mining has to be done in a responsible and sustainable manner,” he told Mongabay. “[President Gustavo] Petro has made environmentalism one of the primary goals of his administration, but we see no presence from the national government.
“Tons of illegal explosives and mercury are entering our town,” he added. “And this industry, carried out by thousands of [illegal] miners, also increases deforestation. They need wood to build their operations. We have already identified two species of trees near extinction that exist only in this region.”
Pérez-Escobar, the ecologist, spoke of a “strong link in Colombia between conflict and environmental destruction. Many times it is the human cost that is more visible,” he said.
“But environmental damage is often less immediately visible and may take decades to repair.”
Banner image: Buriticá is among the most diverse regions in the Andes. Image by Joshua Collins.
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Migration in the Colombian Amazon was not a state project but a consequence of the army’s armed conflict with the FARC and the emergence of drug trafficking that grew in its shadow.
Although the peace process began in 2017, changes that have occurred since then have given rise to new criminal groups after the guerrillas were eradicated.
Although the Guiana Shield has escaped large-scale deforestation, the region is home to tens of thousands of wildcat gold miners exploiting mineral resources in the thinly populated hinterlands of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
The modern history of internal migration in Colombia began in a manner that was not unlike the processes organized by the governments in Brazil and the other Andean countries in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, that process was derailed first by a civil war and subsequently by the production of illicit drugs, largely because of tactics pursued by the Fuerzas Armada Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The conflict effectively suppressed state infrastructure investment while freezing land acquisition by middle-class families and investors. At the same time, however, it fuelled the migration of displaced peasants, who opted to cultivate coca under the protective umbrella of the FARC.
The conflict officially ended in 2017 via the so-called Peace Process, which brought momentous change to the Colombian Amazon. The FARC no longer exists as an organized military entity, but it has been replaced by criminal groups composed of demobilized guerillas and militia members. Unfortunately, the state has not established a meaningful presence in the region and the cessation of hostilities has triggered a land rush supercharged by the drug trade and the cattle industry.
Two young people ride a motorbike on the street that divides Tabatinga in Brazil from Leticia in Colombia. Crime rates have risen sharply in the region. Image by Ivan Brehaut.
Migratory pathways
Before the civil war, the administration of President Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–1970) created the Instituto Nacional de Colonización (INCOR) in an attempt to respond to the demand for land by the rural poor. The strategy was supported by multiple grants from The World Bank, including The Caquetá Land Colonization Project, which sought to expand, organize and support the spontaneous colonization process of settlers moving from Huila in the previous two decades. Unfortunately, these were not particularly successful, although the government support consolidated the now-predominant cattle production model.
Caquetá was both a source and a sink of refugees in the 1980s, as people moved within the country to escape violence. During the 1990s and 2000s, the department was a net source of migrants, as an estimated 100,000 people were forced to vacate approximately 450,000 hectares (1.11 million acres) of land. Many moved to Bogotá. As of 2020, the department of Caquetá had a population of about 300,000 inhabitants, 99 per cent of whom were descendants of immigrants who had moved to the region in the last fifty years.
A similar history explains the settlement of the Colombian Putumayo, which occurred originally in conjunction with the advent of oil exploration and was fed by the movement of individuals from the adjacent Andean highlands. Although cattle ranching occupies the largest area, deforestation was largely driven by coca cultivation during most of the 1990s and 2000s. As in Caquetá, ranchers consolidated smaller landholdings that were originally created by coca farmers.
A section of cleared forest in the Colombian Andean Amazon, in the department of Putumayo. Image by Natalia Pedraza.
Migration into Meta and Guaviare in the 1990s and 2000s was almost entirely linked to the production of coca leaf and efforts by the FARC and other militias to extend their influence over the landscapes at the edge of the agricultural frontier. Successive waves of peasant settlers have occupied the landscapes surrounding Parque Nacional Natural Sierra de la Macarena, which the FARC has used as a staging area and refuge since the 1960s.
Their operational tactics changed in the 1980s, when they embraced the illicit drug trade as a source of revenue and actively protected peasant farmers growing coca leaf. Roads did not exist in the forest frontier, nor was it advantageous for coca growers to colonize landscapes accessible by vehicular transport. Consequently, the coca growers and the influence of the FARC expanded by using forest trails and river networks.
The peace process has radically changed this dynamic. Land speculators are financing the relocation of small farmers, who are encouraged to ‘move on’ as their original holdings are consolidated into cattle farms that are now accruing value as the region opens to investment. The central government hopes to limit development in the buffer zones around both Macarena and Chiribiquete national parks, and has limited its infrastructure investment to a limited number of major arteries; however, the local officials and land speculators have been building secondary and tertiary roads at an alarming rate.
Chiribiquete supplies 60% of the surface water in the entire Colombian Amazon. Image courtesy of the National Natural Parks System of Colombia.
Venezuela and the Guianas
Successive Venezuelan governments have viewed the natural resources of the Guiana Shield as an economic asset that should be used for national development. This strategy was formulated in the mid-twentieth century and led to the creation of a state-owned enterprise, the Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), to develop mineral and hydrological resources. This decentralized, state-owned conglomerate was established in the 1960s and created a variety of subsidiaries dedicated to the mining and processing of iron ore and steel, bauxite and aluminum, and the development of coal and hydropower energy. The state’s presence was further consolidated in the early 1970s, when President Rafael Caldera (1969–1974, 1994–1999) built a modern highway through the southeastern Gran Sabana region to connect with BR-174, which linked Venezuela with the Brazilian Amazon.
Originally, most of the CVG subsidiaries were efficient producers and competed successfully in international mineral markets; however, their viability as business enterprises declined as their mines aged, industrial assets depreciated and national competitiveness eroded because of mismanagement. The administrations of President Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and his successor, President Nicolás Maduro (2013–present) bankrupted most of these state-owned business enterprises. Nevertheless, migration into the region has continued because of the allure of the ongoing gold rush, facilitated by the military authorities who now oversee development in the southeastern state of Bolívar.
Guyana and Suriname are coastal countries with historical and cultural ties to the island nations of the Caribbean. Economically they are very dependent on their mineral resources, and they apparently view their Amazonian territories as a natural resource to be exploited when opportunities present. Neither country has designated large areas for protection, and their indigenous territorial systems are relatively small. Most land is held in an unallocated forest reserve. The government of Guyana recently has sought to develop an international transport corridor that would link the emerging agricultural landscapes in Roraima, Brazil, with port facilities in Georgetown. This could change the land-use dynamic along that road as settlers create outposts to provide key services to the transport sector.
The borders among Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana have been managed diplomatically among the colonial powers and the independent states that succeeded them. None of these states seems genuinely interested in colonizing their interior provinces. The border between Venezuela and Guyana is the only remaining contested terrestrial border in the Western Hemisphere. The long-simmering dispute over Guyana’s mineral-rich Essequibo region, which never led to armed conflict, flared up again following the 2015 discovery of an offshore oil deposit potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The floodplains of the Andean piedmont and certain geologically defined landscapes on the Brazilian and Guiana Shield attract tens of thousands of wildcat miners, who employ placer mining technology that is particularly destructive and extraordinarily toxic. Credit: IBAMA & Vincius Mendonça, CC BY-SA 2.0, Flickr.com Ryan M. Bolton, Shutterstock.
Migratory pathways
The Guiana Shield has escaped the large-scale settlement and deforestation that characterize both Amazonian Brazil and Andean countries. This does not mean, however, that it has not been impacted by migration. The region is home to tens of thousands of wildcat gold miners exploiting mineral resources in the thinly populated hinterlands of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. These miners are a combination of local inhabitants and fortune-seeking immigrants, mainly Brazilian, whose numbers fluctuate in response to changes in the price of gold. The Suriname government estimates the country has about 20,000 small-scale mining operations, each of which probably employs between five and ten individuals. Most mine owners are native-born Maroons who employ thousands of Brazilian garimpeiros.
It is difficult to know precisely what is transpiring in Venezuela because of the chaotic governance that has characterized the country for the last decade. According to 2011 national census, the municipality of Sifontes had a population of 51,000, but recent reports suggest that this number may have surged to more than 400,000 by 2016. The gold mining region is controlled by the military, which operate numerous mines via joint ventures with Venezuelan businesspeople.
Many of these immigrants may not be gold miners, however, but individuals importing scarce goods from Brazil or seeking to emigrate. At the end of 2022, approximately 70,000 Venezuelans were living in Roraima and Amazonas, with some 33,000 in makeshift shelters and camps. Most, if not all, survive by working in the informal economy.
Banner image: A canoe of Indigenous design in Colombia. Image by J.J. Javier via Nia Tero.
“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).
To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here and Chapter Five here.
Chapter 6. Culture and demographic defines the present
In Ecuador, the main areas of colonization were a north-south corridor along the base of the Andes and the Sucumbíos-Orellana quadrant, the country’s major oil-producing region.
Since the 1970s, populations in both areas have grown significantly. The Andean zone went from 160,000 inhabitants to more than 520,000 in 2017; in parallel, the population in the provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana increased from less than 12,000 to more than 350,000.
Colonization also led to the invasion of lands of the indigenous Shuar, which prompted an unusual effort on their part to protect their territory. Today, the area specializes in cattle production and seeks to establish a niche market for high-quality beef for the domestic market.
Throughout most of the twentieth century, the Ecuadorian authorities pursued a geopolitical strategy that reflected a long-held conviction that they were cheated out of large territories in the Western Amazon. Most of their claims were adjudicated in favor of Peru and they were on the losing side of border disputes in 1860, 1903 and 1941. Consequently, successive governments were intent on not losing another square meter of what they fervently believed was their national territory, a policy that led to the construction of several highways and deliberate policies to foster migration into their lowland provinces.
Peru and Ecuador resolved their differences in 1998, after another border dispute, via an arbitration process coordinated by the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and the United States. In the process, the countries established paired national parks on both sides of the border, and an ambitious IIRSA-sponsored initiative was launched to provide Ecuador with direct access to the Amazon waterway at Puerto Morona. The resolution of the border conflict and the much-improved transportation infrastructure opened up the Cordillera del Condor to large-scale mining operations operated by Canadian and Chinese corporations.
The road network in Amazonian Ecuador closely corresponds to the petroleum pipeline system, partly because the government promoted settlement along service roads during the 1970s. Data sources: GEM (2023) and RAISG (2022).
Migratory pathways
Migration into Amazonian Ecuador has occurred via four highway routes that connect urban centers in the Andes with a town or small city in the lowlands; from north to south, they include Quito to Nueva Loja (E10), Ambato to Puyo (E30), Cuenca to Macas (E40) and Loja to Zamora (E45). These roads channeled migrants into two major colonization landscapes: a north-south corridor along the base of the Andes, and the Sucumbíos-Orellana quadrant, which is also the country’s primary oil-producing region. The population along the piedmont grew from about 160,000 inhabitants in 1970 to more than 520,000 by 2017; simultaneously, the inhabitants of the Sucumbíos and Orellana provinces increased from fewer than 12,000 to more than 350,000.
Most communication was up and down mountain valleys between individual highland and lowland population centers, but eventually these communities were linked by a rudimentary north-south highway (Route 45). Multiple roads extended east into the Amazon lowlands, including one along the border to Tiwinza, a military post on the Santiago River, and an alternative route from the north to connect with Puerto Morona on the Morona River.
This latter route caused significant encroachment by Colonos on traditional lands of the Shuar Indigenous people in the 1970s and led to an unusual effort on their part to protect their land. This occurred two decades before Indigenous organizations launched their campaign to promote communal tenure regimes, and Shuar families had no option but to apply for legal title using the administrative procedures of the national colonization agency. This obligated them to deforest small plots within the larger landscapes of their traditional territories.
In 1997, the government allocated funds to improve infrastructure, with the modernization of Route 45, now known as the Troncal Amazónica. Settlement along the highway and into the Amazonian lowlands occurred mainly in the 1970s via development initiatives organized by a regional development entity (CREA) with financing from the IDB. The area now specializes in cattle production and seeks to establish a niche market for high-quality beef for the national market.
A researcher sets up a camera trap in Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Image by Jeremy Hance & Tiffany Roufs.
Migration into the southern sector was supported by a regional development organization, but most immigrants came on their own. They included Indigenous Quechua speakers, as well as Ecuadorians of mixed racial heritage, all of whom encroached upon the traditional lands of the Shuar. The super humid climate and rolling topography make intensive cultivation impossible, and the principal economic activity is raising beef and dairy cattle.
In contrast, colonization of the Sucumbíos-Orellano quadrant reflects a proactive settlement policy implemented by the central government after the completion of the highway between Quito and Lago Agrio in 1967. The military government declared Sucumbíos a ‘zone for migration and expansion’ in 1972 and sent teams of surveyors to lay out transects of fifty-hectare plots (250 meters by 2,000 meters) for distribution to new arrivals. The network of nearly identical landholdings was established along a rapidly expanding secondary road network, which was created to support the feeder pipelines that carry crude oil to pumping stations in Lago Agrio.
The soils in the quadrant are relatively fertile, which has allowed for the development of a diverse assemblage of productive systems, including food staples and cash crops such as coffee, cocoa and palm oil. Like other colonization schemes of the 1970s, poor infrastructure and inadequate public services led to widespread disenchantment, and many farmers abandoned their farms. Simultaneously, oil field workers filed claims to acquire plots or purchased abandoned farms from people seeking to leave the region. Many owners adopted a beef production strategy that allowed them to meet the legal requirements for a land claim, but which could be managed by an absentee owner. Consequently, the ethnic makeup of the quadrant is relatively diverse.
The government now seems dedicated to promoting the development of Amazonian Ecuador by embracing the intensification of agricultural production on previously deforested landscapes, while promoting a diversification of production strategies. The government continues to build new oil pipelines and access roads as it expands into new production fields in previously remote landscapes in and around Yasuní National Park. The government’s insistence on developing these assets is highly controversial and a source of conflict with Indigenous groups, particularly the Waorani, whose ancestral territory lies over Ecuador’s most valuable oil reserves.
“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).
To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here and Chapter Five here.
Chapter 6. Culture and demographic defines the present
Foreign investors in Honduras have “extraordinary privileges,” allowing them to sue the government for reforms that affect their investments, hindering public interest legislation, a recent report has found.
Honduras faces billions of dollars in lawsuits from corporations, many tied to controversial investments made after the 2009 coup, creating a deterrent effect on the government’s ability to make sovereign decisions and making it the second-most-sued country in Latin America over the period of 2023 to August 2024, after Mexico.
Some local communities in Honduras are divided over foreign investment projects, with several expressing resistance due to concerns about their impact on the environment and land rights.
Honduras’ recent energy reforms and mining bans are facing backlash and legal challenges, as foreign corporations resist changes aimed at protecting natural resources and human rights.
Foreign investors in Honduras enjoy “extraordinary privileges” that hinder the government’s ability to implement reforms that could benefit human rights and the environment, a report has found. These advantages allow corporations to sue the Central American country for policy changes that allegedly harm their investments using controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, resulting in a surge of lawsuits amounting to billions of dollars.
The report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Transnational Institute, TerraJusta and the Honduras Solidarity Network reveals that the impact of these legal disputes creates a “chilling effect,” otherwise known as a “deterrent effect,” in which the state may be discouraged from enacting public interest legislation due to the costly risk of liability under investment agreements.
“The lawsuits directly undermine the government’s ability to listen to local communities and make sovereign decisions about protecting their land and resources,” Karen Spring, coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network and co-author of the report, told Mongabay.
Honduras has faced 19 claims over the past two decades, 14 of which have occurred since 2023. The chart highlights the various sectors involved and the legal pathways investors have used to file these lawsuits. Image via ‘Corporate Assault on Honduras’ report.
The ISDS provision allows private sector lawyers to determine whether countries are treating foreign investors fairly. The report says that many lawsuits in Honduras stem from companies that made questionable investments after the 2009 coup d’état, with around a third of the investments facing significant resistance from affected communities.
ISDS is a controversial mechanism that companies across the world are increasingly using to sue governments for policies that may impact their profits, often with harmful consequences for environmental protection and human rights. In a 2023 report, U.N. human rights rapporteur David Boyd described ISDS as “a major obstacle to the urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises,” noting that such cases contribute to a “regulatory chill,” discouraging governments from enacting stricter regulations.
“These [lawsuits] are an incredible amount of money that would absolutely erode what Honduras has available for health, education, infrastructure and other public investments,” Jen Moore, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the report, told Mongabay.
A $10.8 billion lawsuit
The island of Roatán is at the center of the largest pending lawsuit against Honduras, sparked by government reforms to the employment and economic zones (ZEDEs) that threaten the U.S.-based Honduras Próspera’s “startup city” project. Established in 2013 to attract foreign investment, ZEDEs operate under the Honduran Constitution but enjoy extensive legal, tax and administrative autonomy, a situation that has fueled significant controversy.
During President Xiomara Castro’s electoral campaign before she was elected and took office in January 2022, she vowed to eliminate ZEDEs. Her promise led to their repeal in 2022 and a Supreme Court ruling in September that declared them unconstitutional, a decision applicable retroactively back to 2013.
The island of Roatan is at the center of a $10.8 billion lawsuit against Honduras, after the government vowed reforms of Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs). Image by Michelle Raponi via Pixabay.
“Justice for the Honduran people,” Castro wrote on X in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, “means not selling off pieces of our territory nor privatizing our sovereignty.”
Próspera ZEDE is an economic development zone in Honduras created to attract investment and boost job growth. It functions as a free trade zone with government oversight but is managed by the private company Honduras Próspera Inc. through a U.S.-based system. The setup encourages both local and international businesses, with more than $120 million in U.S. private investment reportedly drawn so far, according to a Próspera statement sent to Mongabay.
The project has become a source of division. Some members of Crawfish Rock, a community of a few hundred people in Roatán, were unaware of what a ZEDE was before development and consider it a dispossession of land, according to the report. Social tensions have risen between supporters of the projects and those focused on protecting the environment, Spring said. Meanwhile, Honduras Próspera said in a statement sent to Mongabay that support for the ZEDE outweighs opposition 4-to-1, claiming opposition comes from a “tiny, politically connected elite” within the community.
President Xiomara Castro came into office in 2022. Since then, she has sought to make social and environmental reforms, but has been met with billions of dollars in lawsuits from corporations alleging that the policy changes impact their profits. Image via Honduras government.
The impact of government reforms on existing ZEDEs is still unclear, but they have already faced a costly backlash. Honduras Próspera, which has invested significant sums into the project and has a 50-year legal stability guarantee, is seeking to sue the government for unfair treatment, claiming $10.8 billion, plus costs, which amount to at least $5 million per lawsuit.
In an emailed statement to Mongabay, Nick Dranias, the general counsel of Honduras Próspera, predicted thousands of human rights complaints may be filed to challenge the ruling, along with numerous trade treaty arbitration claims.
“Honduras remains the master of its fate,” he wrote. “If Honduras proceeds with what clearly constitutes indirect expropriation of investments, and the violation of the human rights of thousands of Honduran workers and international investors, just compensation is what will be due.”
A procession of lawsuits
In the past two decades, corporations have filed 19 ISDS cases in Honduras, with nearly all of them in the last two years. In 2023 alone, Honduras faced nine claims, and by August 2024, another five cases had been added, coinciding with Castro’s administration. This made Honduras the second most sued country in Latin America over that period (after Mexico). The 15 pending lawsuits total nearly $14 billion — about 40% of Honduras’ 2023 GDP — posing a significant threat to one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
Claimants, primarily from the U.S. (four), Europe (six) and Latin America (nine), including Panama, Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia, are mostly in the finance, real estate, energy and transportation sectors.
The report describes these lawsuits in Honduras as “mafia-style” and links them to the concept of “odious debt,” which holds that debts acquired from prior problematic regimes shouldn’t burden the people.
“It’s unfair that Hondurans should have to pay for these bad deals and bad policies that were struck under such irregular and corrupt and repressive circumstances after the military [regime] back in 2009,” Moore said.
Recent energy sector reforms
In 2022, Honduras passed a new energy law that aims to increase state control over the electricity sector that has been dominated by political-entrepreneurial groups since the 1990s and help reduce soaring energy prices, among the highest in Latin America.
These reforms, however, generated uncertainty among private energy generators over future energy production, prompting Norwegian investors Scatec, Norfund and KLP to file two lawsuits against Honduras related to the Agua Fria Solar Energy Park in Valle and Los Prados Solar Energy Park in Choluteca, totaling together $400 million plus costs.
The report states that the Los Prados project was rejected by the local population, and community leaders have faced persecution and criminalization for years for their opposition to the solar park. Furthermore, locals complain of environmental damage and restricted access to their land and crops due to hostility in the area.
Despite long-standing resistance, local activists in the Guapinol community face powerful opposition from the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares. Image by Fernando Destephen/Contra Corriente.
One local woman was cited in the report as saying that the solar companies Scatec and Norfund “buried the water sources. That’s been the hardest part for us — there’s not enough water to bathe, especially with all the heat here.”
Denia Castillo, a lawyer with the Network of Women Human Rights Defense Lawyers (RADDH), who is working with communities impacted by the solar projects, told Mongabay that negotiations between the companies and the government focus on lowering tariffs rather than canceling the contracts altogether. So far, RADDH and local communities have filed 33 complaints against public officials, citing alleged irregularities in the approval process for these contracts.
According to Castillo, the communities call for cancellation of the contracts and oppose the project. “The people feel completely let down by the government because it has not wanted to listen to them, but [instead] it is negotiating with the company,” she said.
Scatec, KLP and Norfund didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
A delayed ban on open-pit mining
As part of Castro’s green agenda, she announced in early 2022 that no new permits for open-pit mines would be issued. This common mining method involves digging large holes and can devastate ecosystems by clearing vegetation and displacing soil. A month later, the Secretariat of Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Mines (SERNA) declared all of Honduras free of open-pit mining and pledged to review, suspend and cancel related permits.
Yet despite the government’s announcement, Canadian mining company Aura Minerals, with controversial operations in Honduras, noted in a press release that SERNA’s minister later clarified that the government would focus on unregulated mining, allowing companies with valid operating permits to continue their activities. In response to Mongabay’s request for comment, the company replied, “Aura Minerals states that its Minosa [a subsidiary of the company] operation in Honduras holds all the necessary licenses and permits to operate and maintains its activities are in compliance with current legislation.” The extent of the mining ban remains uncertain.
Experts in the report suggest that the shift from an outright ban to allowing exceptions may be due to weakening commitments to avoid potential lawsuits. To date, the mining industry has not made any arbitration claims at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICDID) against Honduras in relation to the country’s policies on open-pit mining.
“A threat is sometimes as effective as an actual arbitration suit,” Moore said. “It makes public officials think twice about whether or not they would follow through on a [reform] decision.”
According to the report, this could be behind the delay in halting the open-pit iron oxide mine and associated installations linked to the Inversiones Los Pinares mining company (previously known as EMCO Mining and owned by EMCO Holdings) with operations in Tocoa in the department of Colón.
Killed on September 4 this year, Juan Lopez was an environmental defender who opposed mining in the Tocoa region. Human rights organizations, such as the UN and Frontline Defenders, have demanded a full investigation into his death. Image via Frontline Defenders.
The Los Pinares mining operations in Carlos Escaleras National Park have been accused of causing water shortages and pollution in the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, vital for 42,000 people, and endangering local ecosystems, according to the humanitarian organization Trócaire. Trócaire also links the project to human rights abuses, including the killing, criminalization, and imprisonment of community members defending their water sources. This includes the recent killing of local environmental defender Juan López, who was shot dead in September. Following his death, U.N. experts called for an independent investigation into potential involvement by businesses and politicians.
López was one more victim in a string of killings of activists in the region. There have also been at least 32 people criminalized by Inversiones Los Pinares for defending Carlos Escaleras National Park, according to an Amnesty International report.
“It’s … absolutely scandalous that asymmetry between corporate power and what people have access to, to defend their very basic rights,” Moore said. “It’s just so starkly on display in this case and with this slew of arbitration cases since 2023.”
EMCO Group (to which Los Pinares belongs in the iron and steel division) didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment for this story.
Next steps
In February, Honduras began its exit from the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which handles the suits against the country — a move praised by researchers who argue ICSID membership isn’t essential to attract foreign investment.
Experts argue it’s not enough. The report calls on Honduras to revoke investor privileges in treaties, laws and contracts and fully repeal the 2013 constitutional reforms that enabled ZEDEs. The authors also contend it’s unjust for the Honduran people to bear the cost of compensating transnational corporations amid widespread local resistance.
“[The ISDS mechanism] is a system that should be abolished,” Moore said. “It is catastrophic for policies and decisions in the public interest, in the interest of affected communities, and that repeatedly is serving very narrow profit-based interests of investors at the expense of people.”
Banner image: The Carlos Escaleras National Park has long been at the center of community efforts to protect it from mining activities, which has reportedly caused environmental damage and led to social conflicts and violence. Image via the Comité Municipal para la Defensa de los Bienes Comunes y Públicos de Tocoa (Municipal Committee for the Defense of the Common and Public Goods of Tocoa).
For more than fifteen years, traditional communities in Serro, Minas Gerais, have resisted the entry of iron ore mining on their territories.
Serro is located in a region where several major rivers meet; the integrity of ecosystems is vital for people’s water resources and food security.
Activists fear that, if approved, iron ore projects will not only cause irreversible socioenvironmental impacts but set a precedent for a dangerous iron ore race in Serro. Besides iron ore, the area concentrates deposits of bauxite, manganese, quartzite, and other minerals – many located next to traditional communities.
The two companies pursuing mining in the area have had their licensing processes suspended in October 2023 after a community appeal to the Federal Court of Minas Gerais. The entities are required to carry out consultations with communities, respecting the principle of free, prior and informed consent.
SERRO, Minas Gerais — Nature has always been intrinsic to life in Queimadas, a quilombo community located in an environmental buffer zone where the Cerrado and the Atlantic forest meet.
But when Brazilian mining company Herculano Mineração announced its plans to extract iron ore nearby, the community felt their ecological way of life was at risk. “They said they would go ahead whether we liked it or not,” says Valderes Quintino, 25, the community leader, about the company that first approached him in 2018.
Since then, people in Queimadas have denounced mining companies applying for licenses for violations and irregularities against the community; they fear that if candidate mining projects ever get the green light, a mining race would start in Serro, while permanently damaging the region’s ecosystems and local livelihoods. Alongside other quilombo communities, Queimadas created a resistance front against the advance of mining, while advocating for their land and its environmental conservation.
Part of a region considered the “water tank of Brazil,” where the Jequitinhonha, the Doce, and the São Francisco rivers meet, the municipality of Serro is part of the Pico do Itambé State Park, the Águas Vertentes Conservation Unit and the Serra do Espinhaço UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Its historical center sits about 5 kilometers from the potential mining site of Herculano Mineração.
In 2018, Herculano Mineração announced its plan to extract 1 million tons of iron ore annually for 10 years. Its potential mining site covers approximately 865 hectares (2,139 acres), and is located about one kilometer from Queimadas.
Another mining company, Ônix Mineração, arrived in Serro in 2021 when it first requested licenses to explore iron ore about 4 km away from Queimadas. Ônix aims to extract 300,000 tons of iron ore annually for 9 years on an area of about 400 hectares (988 acres).
Thanks to Queimadas’ environmental heritage, matriarchs like Maria das Dores, 54, can feed their families with organic crops like bananas, yuka, and tomatoes. She says the impact of iron ore mining risks permanently affecting Queimadas’ peaceful existence. Image by Beatriz Miranda.
Iron ore exploitation may cause “immeasurable loss” for Queimadas, Juliana Deprá, activist for Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM by its Portuguese acronym) who works closely with the traditional communities of Serro, told Mongabay. Impacts include a rise in violence, worsening air quality, a population boom, real estate speculation, and rural exodus, Deprá says.
“Serro’s water collection happens below the area where Herculano aims to settle its operations. There is a risk that the project will compromise the hydric security of the entire population,” Matheus Mendonça Leite, lawyer of the Federation of Quilombo Communities of Minas Gerais State N’Golo, told Mongabay. Leite adds that the contamination of local ecosystems can threaten the subsistence and food security of the Queimadas people, most of whom rely on subsistence agriculture.
“I won’t be able to continue producing good quality cheese,” said Valderes Ferreira, 54, a cheese producer who raises cattle and grows fruits.
According to Deprá, the mining projects can open a precedent for a dangerous extractive race in Serro, whose territory abounds in quartzite, manganese, and bauxite, minerals demanded by the global commodities.
Since the quilombo community of Ausente, also in Serro, learned that a company was interested in the bauxite deposits in their territory in August 2024, local leader Luciene Campos, 31, says they need to be more cautious and keep strangers out of the community. The company, EDEM Projetos, had already tried to set up a meeting with people in Ausente, Campos told Mongabay.
The women-led agroecological culture is a key organizing pillar of the Ausente Quilombo community. Aware of the mining impacts, they refuse to let a bauxite company impact their territory and way of life. Image by Daniela Passos.
Ausente, a community of around 80 families, is also known for its agroecological traditions. Their women-led agroecological gardens are key for income generation and food security.
Communities like Queimadas and Ausente, Campos said, became “a stone in mining’s shoe.” Fighting the mining companies is the only way to preserve the ecological way of living which she and her community are so proud of.
“When our traditions are strong, we don’t let outsiders dictate what we want. We know what is right for us and what we want to preserve,” says Campos.
A magnet for mining interests
While Serro remains a municipality free from active mining projects, its creation is tied to the minerals discovered in the region in the eighteenth century. With the depletion of most of the local gold and diamond deposits in the early twentieth century, Serro’s economic elites turned to ranching and crops. The iron ore race re-started in 2008 when authorities granted MMX Mineração the mineral rights to extract iron ore next to Queimadas. MMX sold its mining rights to the British multinational Anglo American, but the latter didn’t get the environmental permit and in 2018 sold its mineral rights to Herculano Mineração.
Specialized in iron ore and manganese ore, Herculano Mineração’s client list includes major commodity companies, such as Vale, Glencore, and Cargill.
Herculano Mineração is the closest any company has ever been to extracting iron in the area, say people in Queimadas, who also complain about alleged irregularities and violations against their community.
Supported by the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining, Queimadas residents demonstrated in front of the Federal Court of Minas Gerais in October 2023. In this event, judges determined the suspension of Herculano’s licensing process. Image by Daniela Passos.
“The dust made us cough like dogs,” Ana da Cruz, 71, a resident of Queimadas, told Mongabay. Cruz explained that the dust came from a road that, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was built for iron ore transportation. In February 2023, the community denounced the illegality of the road to Serro’s public prosecutor’s office. Part of the road was paved only a few kilometers from Cruz’s home.
According to Leite, even though approved by the State Institute of Forests and implemented by Serro City Hall, the road favors the neighboring projects of Herculano Mineração and Ônix Mineração.
In October 2023, after an appeal by local quilombo communities, the Federal Court of Minas Gerais suspended both Herculano and Ônix licensing processes until the companies carry out consultations with the community of Queimadas, respecting the free, prior and informed consent principle. Even so, Cruz says she feels betrayed and disrespected by the companies, and fears for her community if the firms ever start operating.
“I just don’t know what will become of us,” she worries, looking out at her large garden, where she and her husband use agroecological practices to grow coffee, beans, yuka, and medicinal herbs, among other crops.
Communities accuse irregularities
A 2023 report released by the movement against mining in Serro denounces irregularities in the way Herculano has cleared hurdles for its iron ore project. The report states that the document authorizing the iron ore road (issued by the State Institute of Forests) misconsidered all its potential environmental impacts.
From the report, it appears the same authorization document was signed in October 2022 by a lawyer who, six months later, was hired by Herculano Mineração. In its reply to Mongabay’s request for comment, Herculano did not respond with regard to this matter. The City Hall of Serro, which, according to the report, authorized the State Institute of Forests to issue the road permit, responded that its position has been made clear on previous occasions in the public sphere.
The same document shows that, since 2018, Herculano Mineração has granted financial benefits to Serro’s economic elites, such as Serro’s Industry and Commerce Association and the Cooperative of Rural Producers, to garner support for its mining business.
In response to Mongabay’s request for comment, Herculano Mineração stated: “Herculano Mineração informs that it does not comment on the status of administrative licensing processes underway, which is the responsibility of the competent organs. However, the company confirms that the licensing process for the Serro Project is underway. Herculano Mineração believes in the legislation, in the organs involved, and in the quality of the studies it has submitted. Herculano Mineração has complied with all the legislation requirements to get the licenses for its project from the competent bodies.”
Artisanal cheese-making is a family tradition that Valderes Ferreira learned from his father. Ferreira fears for the quality of his cheese, which relies on the Queimadas hydric resources that could suffer mining waste contamination. Image by Beatriz Miranda.
After analyzing reports presented by Herculano and Ônix, environmental specialists from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Anthropology Association stated that data was inconsistent, insufficient, and lacked adequate methodology to measure the potential socio-environmental impacts.
Serro activists claim that mining and public interests became mixed during the term of the current mayor, Epaminondas Pires de Miranda. Activists claim he took a stand against mining in his 2020 campaign, but signed a compliance letter for Herculano’s Serro Project in February 2021, three months after his reelection. Serro’s City Hall did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
“Supported by local politicians, powerful farmers, and businessmen, the mining industry enjoys solid influence in decision making, both in the executive power and the courts,” Leite told Mongabay.
Conflicts within the community
Aligned with the local elites, the mining industry, Leite claims, has been doing what it takes to advance its interests, including the use of violence.
“Now and then, we see a drone flying over the community. Company representatives prowl around the community by car, looking for our leaders. They also approach Queimadas people on the streets to “buy” them with artesian wells or job offers,” Valderes Quintino told Mongabay.
He is assisted by a governmental protection program since he received a death threat from a local farmer. The episode happened in April 2023 when representatives from Herculano and Ônix, along with supporting landowners and city councilors, intervened during a Queimadas community meeting with Public Prosecutor’s Office staff.
Both MAM and N’golo have complained that Herculano Mineração has carried out defamatory campaigns against supporters of traditional communities’ rights, including Leite, Deprá, and Karine Roza, a former Serro city councilor who, in 2022, approved an amendment to recognize a local river threatened by candidate mining projects as a Subject of Rights.
Valderes Ferreira in the Queimadas community. Image by Beatriz Miranda.
“Sometimes, if people in Serro know you are against mining, you can be kicked out of a store,” Quintino said. The advance of mining has not only stirred tensions within Serro’s overall population but also divided the region’s quilombo communities. “Mining easily puts people against each other,” he told Mongabay.
While most people in the quilombo communities are against mining, Arlei Ciano dos Santos, 33, argues that the minority who supports it does not understand the destruction it may cause. “Some people are convinced that mining ‘will create job opportunities, will bring progress and money to the community,’” said dos Santos, who manages the association of Vila Nova quilombo, also in Serro. Several Quilombo residents who support mining refused to talk to Mongabay.
The resistance carries on
More than fifteen years after the first company showed interest in Serro iron ore, quilombo communities and their network of supporters (which includes lawyers, researchers, and several social movements) still hold the advance of mining in Serro.
At the same time, Herculano states that it “reiterates its deep respect for traditional communities and has been discussing the Quilombo Communities Component Study for the Queimadas community with INCRA (Land Reform Institute) and SEDESE, the entities responsible for the issue.” The company also stated that it “has no reason not to remain confident that the project will be approved.”
Both Herculano and Ônix Mineração are required by the courts to hold public consultations with the community of Queimadas before environmental licensing can proceed. It appears that both Herculano and Ônix held public hearings in June and August 2024, respectively, to further discuss their iron ore projects with the Serro population.
To preserve their ways of living and territory for future generations, communities have no option but to fight. “We fight today so we can be alive tomorrow,” says Quintino.
Banner image: Proud of her agroecological garden, Ana Cruz, 71, fears for her family’s health and subsistence if companies start extracting iron ore near the Queimadas community. Image by Beatriz Miranda.
