The genesis of the Tambograndé Issue

Since 1532, the history of Piura was not seen too shocked by a global impact event like the history of this town in San Lorenzo Valley.

 

TAMBOGRANDE, Peru – The most heart-breaking and baffling tale done about the history of this community is, no doubt, a Canadian Journalist’s who approached like a researcher and became one of the main keys for the world to understand the facts in its right perspective.

 

Coming next, we transcript the first minutes of the multi-awarded documentary Tambogrande – Mangos, Murder, Mining produced by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd, and what sets the causes of almost all the problems that led in social conflicts along the Peruvian territory.

 

If when you’re reading those lines, you can’t hold your emotion, just imagine what we felt who lived the whole story on live when we watched and listened to the Stephanie’s accented Spanish, something that was ever screamed out but that nobody dared to carry on until the end.

 

By Stephanie Boyd for Guarango Film and Video

 

The Ranbo President

When I came to Peru in the 1990s, to see the news was like following up a neverending soap opera. Every episode had the same hero, the Rambo President Alberto Fujimori who used the brute force to smash the terrorism and to save the country’s economy. Who put on his way was defamed, threatened, bribed, jailed, tortured, or killed at night.

 

The romance flourished between the brave leader and the foreign mining companies, lovers signed by the destiny, united by their neo-liberalism craving. Meanwhile to the rest of us, the extras in the show, they said that gold rivers were to squirt and that everybody would live happy  in the new… Eldorado.

 

The gold fever

It’s 2000, and the gold fever already began. But not everyone is happy. Thousands protest around Peru. We look for a man – Godofredo García Baca, a farmer from Piura, who dares to challenge the mining gods and to say he prefers the fruits instead of gold. We want to film him today but his followers look at us suspiciously.

 

It’s useless I show my press-ID. They think I’m a spy sent by a Canadian mining company. I’m a Canadian and I’m accostumed to be haven wide-open arms everywhere in the world. Why are they so angry at me? Shouldn’t they be happy about gold was discovered under their lands? Won’t the mining bring the longed for prosperity? My Peruvian partner and I decide to go and to research it.

 

 

© 2001 – 2006 by Asociación Guarango Cine y Video. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced under the authors authorization. Additional lead-copy by FACTORTIERRA.