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ARGENTINA: Local Opponents of Mine Sued by Meridian Gold

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 15 2007 (IPS) - Residents of Esquel, a city in the southern Argentine province of Chubut, who have been opposing a proposed open pit gold mine for five years, have been sued by the company promoting the project for leaking its strategy to change the community’s mind about the mine.

“They’re trying to persecute and harass us and demoralise our resistance, but we won’t give up,” Gustavo Macayo, one of the six Esquel residents being sued by El Desquite mining company, an Argentine subsidiary of U.S.-based, Canadian-owned Meridian Gold, told IPS.

The lawsuit was lodged in Buenos Aires courts two years ago. On Tuesday the parties were summoned to a failed conciliation hearing.

“Now that the conciliation has failed, we asked the judge today to hold an oral trial hearing. We’ll wait and see what he replies,” the company’s lawyer, Miguel Sarrabayrouse, told IPS on Wednesday.

“The judge was clearly sympathetic to the environmentalists’ cause, so we don’t know whether he will call a trial, or whether he will repeat his former view that no crime was committed,” he said.

“Gaining access by illegal means to private information or documents breaks the law on confidentiality,” Sarrabayrouse maintained.

The hearing did not make much sense, he commented. “The harm has already been done, and I see no possibility for conciliation. The judge, surprisingly, talked about avoiding litigation, avoiding a conflict in which everyone would be the loser, but I don’t think there’s any chance of a settlement,” he said.

Macayo, the lawyer for the Esquel residents and the only one of them present at the hearing, said that “in general it was good, because it allowed us to explain our position and have a judge listen to us.”

The provincial government of Chubut granted a gold mining concession to El Desquite in 2002. The ore was to be mined by the open cast method, only six kilometres from Esquel, a city of 40,000, and cyanide leaching was to be used to purify the gold.

In response, the community created the “Self-Organised Assembly of Esquel Residents” which held demonstrations in the city and persuaded the city government to call a non-binding referendum on Mar. 23, 2003, in which 81 percent of voters said “No” to the mine project.

The mineworks were suspended, but the company never abandoned the project.

In 2006 the courts enforced a legal injunction requested by a resident, which put a stop to the mineworks until the company had prepared an environmental impact study and presented it in public. But the original concession has not been revoked, and El Desquite maintains its offices and storage facilities in Esquel. Moreover, the legal action it has just taken indicates that it is determined to go ahead with the project.

Also in 2005, the Esquel Residents’ Assembly held a press conference and released recordings of a meeting of El Desquite shareholders, members of the board, and consultants, which took place in Buenos Aires in September 2003, six months after the referendum.

The meeting was held behind closed doors in a hotel in central Buenos Aires, and company representatives and their public relations consultants discussed strategies to change the unfavourable attitudes towards the mine in Esquel, by contracting respected residents to be opinion leaders, capable of persuading hardliners.

Other suggestions were providing “social benefits” for residents, and holding meetings, interviews and sending reports to national and provincial political leaders, in order to secure their public support for the project.

To win round the residents, El Desquite advisers recommended coopting prestigious non-governmental organisations such as the Wildlife Foundation (FVSA), Citizen Power (Poder Ciudadano) and the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), in order to counterbalance the voices of opposing organisations “like Greenpeace.”

“It would be important for developing our strategy to contract them for certain activities,” said a consultant who suggested contacting FARN, headed by “a man of prestige, constitutional lawyer Daniel Sabsay,” according to the recording of the meeting that was released by Esquel residents and was never denied by the company.

“I was never contacted,” Sabsay told IPS, clarifying that he and FARN are opposed to the mine. “I was in Esquel and was very critical of the lack of environmental impact studies, the secrecy in which information was kept, and the tremendously destructive techniques they planned to use,” he said.

In 2005, FARN acted as “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) in the case to stop the mine project. Such a role is that of a third, non-litigant, party that offers an opinion to help solve a case.

On that occasion, FARN observed that the project had not fulfilled current regulations for environmental impact studies and mechanisms for social participation.

Sabsay said the release of the recording by the residents was justified. “They are defending themselves as best they can from a strategy to buy their goodwill,” he said.

“The Esquel community acted firmly on this issue, and in spite of all the threats it maintained a united front. I think it is disgraceful that the company should continue its strategy of confrontation,” he said.

At the recorded meeting, consultants recommended hiring survey company Catterberg y Asociados, which conducts preelection polls, to gauge opinions about the mine in Esquel.

“We will use the survey to find the breakpoint between those to whom the environment matters even if they are starving, and those to whom money and economic benefits come before environmental issues,” said a survey consultant presenting the plan to the company.

After that, one of the participants asked if then-governor of Chubut Carlos Maestro should be advised that the survey would apparently be carried out by his administration, although it would be paid for by the mining company.

The survey company replied that it had no objection to informing Maestro of this.

“My concern is that the information that we’re going to try to turn this community around may get out on the streets,” an executive said prophetically.

In their legal deposition, litigation lawyers for El Desquite acknowledged the meeting as a fact.

“The actions complained of are part of an obvious and aggressive campaign to harm the prestige and interests of the company,” they alleged.

After the setback of the referendum, the company had decided “to improve its communications policy” with the help of consultants who would help it to fight the “lack of information” in Esquel, and “the malicious misrepresentation of information,” they said.

Esquel resident Silvia Pérez told IPS by telephone that the recording was sent from Buenos Aires, although she did not reveal the source. “We didn’t steal any information, nor did we violate any confidentiality. We just received the recording and released it, because they were talking about us,” she said.

El Desquite’s lawyer admitted that the recording could have been sent to the residents by someone from the firm providing audio at the meeting, but he considered that when they released the contents they became a party to the crime.

On Feb. 4, over 400 people carried out the 61st protest against the mining project, Pérez said.

Using the courts to stop social action “is a new way of discouraging protest and teaching demonstrators a lesson,” sociologist Maristella Svampa told IPS.

“Putting protesters on trial is a practice that began with the state, and now it’s a recourse used by multinational corporations too,” she added.

On Monday the mixed foreign and national capital construction company Koad initiated legal action for damages against two residents of a Buenos Aires neighbourhood, who are leaders of an organisation protesting a large construction project which lacks an environmental impact study.