FACTORTIERRA

Local el Niño's heavy rains smashed the place where a mine was almost to drill.   By Liliana Alzamora and Nelson Peñaherrera   TAMBOGRANDÉ, Peru - Santa Cruz hill, now in the middle of the town, was in prehistoric times a dome volcano. Its red soil, rich of cooper, is the evidence of a hot past. Nowadays, any volcanic activity happens in or around but the people. Only a decade and a half ago, many opposed to a proposed open-pit mine that implied to remove the so-called Old Town, Tambogrande downtown actually. Seen from the top of Santa Cruz Hill in a usual summer, Tambogrande looks like invaded by a green tide by the east, the North and the West - San Lorenzo Valley Colonization, the main mango and lime production area in Piura Department , at Peruvian Northwestern. The Old City remains there after the population defeated the formerly called Manhattan Minerals Corp., today renamed as Mediterranean Resources . However the green tide was not completely gre...

Time to travel? FACTORTIERRA delivers an automatic tool to do your own forecasts.     Why should you spend your next vacations in Piura Department , Peru? First of all, the diversity of landscapes from the sea level to the snowless Andes that will give you different choices, from adventure to extreme passing through experiential. And maybe the most interesting insight is the constant weather – temperatures as well as feelings use to be nice along the year, especially since April to December… unless you want to enjoy our summer since January to March.   However, before to book your trip, or if you are up to take the plane (or the bus), it’s necessary you learn what the weather conditions are for your chosen destination. That’s why in FACTORTIERRA, we have checked out not only the most popular touristic places but others we have highlighted with our tourism tag on this blog, or our #visitPiura hashtag on Twitter. So here we have them classified by eco-regions ...

TAMBOGRANDE, Peru – On June 2, 2002, nearly 40,000 people voluntarily participated in a non-binding local referendum to express their opinions on mining activities throughout the Tambogrande District, including the agro-exporting San Lorenzo Valley and the dry forest in the Locuto Community .   98% of the valid votes were against mining, which dealt a blow to Manhattan Minerals Corporation (now Mediterranean Resources), which had the concession to exploit three deposits between the City of Tambogrande and the Community of Locuto, as it evidenced a lack of social license . The Vancouver-based company had repeatedly claimed it had the support of the local population.   The impact of this exercise in democracy was such that it was replicated in Esquel (Argentina), Sipacapa (Guatemala), and three districts in the highlands of Piura (Peru) between 2003 and 2007, with similar results.   In the case of Tambogrande, following the referendum and the boycott b...