New winds blew over Tambograndé

By Liliana Alzamora Flores and Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

TAMBOGRANDÉ, Peru – The 1999 scenario was repeating in 2008 with all the elements setting up the same way, without real leaderships that tried not to repeat the same events causing a struggle that wore away a town. The coming of Araci, a low-budget Peruvian mining company, was similar to Manhattan Minerals, what means undermining and promising more than it really could get.

 

As it’s remembered, the Canadian mining company promised an economic paradise whom already have built their own economic paradise, by using a double rhetoric that ended to insult the intelligence of businesspersons dedicated to agriculture in San Lorenzo Valley.

 

Although the scenarios seemed to change a little, the direction that each actor moved on was outrageously the same because, despite the evidence, nobody seemed to be intended on making the first step and establishing a firm position to defend what they got after June 2^nd, 2002, the day of Tambograndé Town referendum. Every actor was deployed so:

 

A frontlineless leadership

In 1999, the San Lorenzo Valley & Tambograndé Defense Front re-summoned after 16 years, for facing Manhattan and the Peruvian Government. With everything against, it grew up when its main leader, the teacher Francisco Ojeda, became the Tambograndé’s Mayor in 2003, and next to the Technical Board of NGO what were accompanying the anti-mining lobby, it used all the legal allegations in its favor to dismiss the newly alliance of Manhattan and Peru’s Buenaventura, that is still operating in the zone.

 

However, the lack of abilities training of many of the Front members who became municipal officials frustrated the sustainability of promising projects breaking out with the international cooperation, like the Farmer’s House or the Woman’s House.

 

When Mr Ojeda left the local government ending 2006, the new administration decided not to continue the traced line, and what was worst – the Front has passed away. San Lorenzo farmers wanted to apply electroshock therapy to their emblematic organization while a former Ojeda’s ally and Tambogrande’s Mayor in 2008, Segundo Moreno, tried to compose a new version of the same with some agrarian leaders like Users Board and the Mango Growers Association. The problem was the former Front members didn’t recognize legitimacy.

 

The mines continued underground

Araci and Buenaventura were in Locuto Community, at the south of Tambograndé City, because they announced their own presence. When local leaders announced their opposition to their explorating operations, both started to do their work almost in secrecy. Buenaventura continues to come in through the backdoor by using the Old Pan-American Highway, while Araci trie to get the favor of Ocoto Bajo Village.

 

About the first one, we have much available information, especially because of its success in Yanacocha Mine, but regarding the second one, the references we have not necessarily spoke about success. Araci is a low-budget mining company that owns an open-pit mine in Lampa Province, Puno Department, Peruvian Southeastern, where problems with the surrounding communities have been reported because of continuous landslides of one of its open-pit dams, plus the breach of labor benefits due to work accidents, and the unabling of its operations by a Juliaca, Puno-based courtroom, so its work, at least there, was illegal.

 

They told another tale to Tambograndé people – for example, that they already have bought lands, what was half-discarded by Locuto Community where many partners didn’t see good that some leaders accepted the new neighbor, like it was evident in 2008 Farmer’s Day March (June 24^th).

 

After meeting some young people to talk about this apparent success story (they said, inclusive, they were the third most important in Peru, but their miner colleagues denied that), locals claimed on local radio stations that they were trying to start relationships with some communitarian leaders in the same Manhattan-style.

 

The mining company spread flyers in Tambograndé City which the benefits could be read of its activity with the agriculture, using the same format than Manhattan, that currently operates in Turkey as Mediterranean Resources. Eyewitnesses assured that one of the dealers is the brother of a former Manhattan official.

 

The rest

Tambograndé’s Radio La Pionera continued placed like the closest to the ideas of the former Defense Front. However, the travel of its lunchtime newscast’s anchorman to know the Araci investments in Puno filled the audience with doubts, and double-way. To begin, the travel report was very poor and the funding source didn’t set very clear. The anchorman assured it was Tambograndé Municipality, what was confirmed by municipal officials at its time.

 

This disappointed the people because there were many complaints about priorized funds in participative budgets those have not been expended and vanished in some cases despite the law establishes this can’t be. Municipality’s officials accepted they were not working correctly, and that trying to satisfy someones, they ended to anger everybody. As a corollary, the traveler anchorman was invited by one of his La Pionera colleagues to explain better the sightings of his trip, but the invitation was never honored.

 

FACTORTIERRA knows the municipality refused to work with private cooperation organisms, so some of them chose to ally with civil society organizations like farmer women, taking out a little social sustainability to their initiatives. With these new winds, a favorable forecast couldn’t be given, that permitted to preserve the development model what tambogrande fought for seix years.

 

With reports of Aldo Palacios in Tambogrande, the Radio National Coordination in Lima, and Radio Cutivalú in Piura. © 2008 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved.