In six years the gold will all be gone

This mining expert shares data and personal experiences to explain in greater detail the problems in the small mining municipality of Santo Domingo, Chontales, which is up against the B2Gold mining transnational. With his permission we added some information from the February 28, 2013, report of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH).

Nomel Pérez Soza

I’m both the son and the grandson of miners, and the child of a mining tragedy. My grandfather, who was born in the indigenous Monimbó neighborhood of Masaya, went to work in the mines of Santo Domingo in 1936; he was only 26 years old at the time. In those days the mining company used a Pelton rock crusher, that machine that grinds rock to extract the gold. Well, it crushed my grandfather, Humberto Sosa. The company said it couldn’t stop the machine because you can’t contain the productive process. It’s the same thing different owners in different times still say: the productive process can’t be stopped for anything. My grandfather’s ground-up body ended up in the waters of Chontales’ rivers, and surely his last resting place was the Caribbean Sea.

The scrip was what got
me involved in the struggle

At that time, and all the way up to 1945, the mining company in Santo Domingo only paid four pesos a week in cash, and the rest in scrip, to be used in the company store. That’s how they paid my dad for years. I worked in the mine as a child, and still have my miner’s knapsack. Then I came to Managua to work as a mail carrier; at 10 ten years old I was the littlest mailman in Nicaragua.

Although I didn’t finish primary school, I won a scholarship and graduated from high school in Costa Rica then earned another scholarship and went to study in Poland. I began to get involved in this struggle by looking at the scrip they paid my dad in the mines, which he had kept. One gets to thinking, watching, feeling that pain… In 1979 I started looking into the history of mining in Nicaragua.

The precursor to Santo Domingo

There are 18 mining districts in Nicaragua, and you’ll find the same names in all of them: Pérez, Benítez, Rojas… I have family in all those places. And in all of them—El Limón, Bonanza, Rosita—you hear the same boom of the dynamite that creates cracks in the miners’ houses.

In November last year a girl who was eight months pregnant was killed when the land under her house gave way and the house collapsed. That happened in the Santa Pancha district near Larreynaga, in León, thanks to the El Limón mine. The girl’s husband survived only because he ran out of the house to see what was happening when he heard a great booming sound and then watched as their house sank into a deep hole, with his wife and their unborn child inside.

The Canadian mining company B2Gold, which mines gold there, denied any responsibility and insisted it was guaranteeing safety in the zone. But when many other women in the area learned what had happened to the girl, they freaked out and started getting on B2Gold’s case, demanding that it ensure their safety by giving them other land to move their houses to, as they were all built on top of tunnels. So what did the government do? It sent in the riot police to silence and persecute them and many of the women ran into the bush to hide. The police arrested the leader of that protest and threw him in jail in Managua. Why so many riot police to repress a women’s protest? Why so much persecution?

When we learned what happened in Santa Pancha, those of us in Santo Domingo didn’t just sit around talking about it. We went to show solidarity with the miners there. We already knew what things are like there: Santa Pancha rumbles at 4 am, midday and 6 pm; all the time, in other words. The houses are full of cracks. What happened there was no accident. The government media said it couldn’t be explained. El Nuevo Diario’s headline was “The earth just swallowed it.” And more than a few said it was God’s will.

The mining company had nothing to do with it?

B2Gold said it had nothing to do with what happened, that gallery number 1, where it was working, is far from where the house sank. But that’s not true. Gallery number 1 is only 80 meters away, and they use gelatinous dynamite there, which has a concentration of power and a shock wave times greater than other dynamite. It caused the house to sink some 45 meters into the ground. That tragedy was due to the mining company’s irresponsibility because it was dynamiting too quickly in succession and without doing prior geophysical studies.

There are those who say that mining today isn’t like before, that now it doesn’t cause damage, that it’s sustainable, responsible, environmentally friendly. False! It never was and never will be. And the repression against the miners’ protests is happening right today, and not only here in Nicaragua. It’s always been like that. Haven’t people read the novel Germinal, by the French author Émile Zola, published in 1885?

The origins of the Santo Domingo protest

After what happened in Santa Pancha, the riot police brought their repression to our municipality as well, on February 9 of this year. But things didn’t start that day. They had begun in September last year, when Santo Domingo began to protest what B2Gold was doing there. Did that company have environmental permits? Had it gotten the consent of the population and the mayor to work there? It had nothing, but it came busting into the municipality and in only 20 days had used its machinery to haul out quantities of gold colluvium from the base of the hill. Gold colluvium is superficial, easy to extract; it’s very rich gold that doesn’t need much treatment. Those people cleared some 21 hectares of land in only 20 days, taking off 56,000 ounces of gold. At today’s high international prices, that amount of gold represents US$106 million. They basically robbed us. That’s where the conflict began.

Santo Domingo has always been a mining municipality; people there live off that activity. There has been mining exploitation there for over 100 years. Santo Domingo’s gold vein is 3 kilometers long, seven times the one in La Libertad. It can be seen perfectly by satellite. This Canadian company wants to exploit that whole vein, and has it all figured out: in six years it will have taken out all the gold. That’ll leave us with nothing: no work, no landscape, nothing.

We have a population of 18,000 in Santo Domingo, at least 3,600 of whom are small-scale miners, known in Nicaragua as “güiriseros.” But ever since B2Gold came in two years ago, it started buying out large numbers of farmers. It gobbled up the properties where there’s superficial gold, where our miners had been working since 1983 and earned a living doing it. In 20 days B2Gold took out colluvium the miners would have taken 20 years to get. Thousands of people were robbed of 20 years of work. People began to ask themselves what they are supposed to do after B2Gold makes made off with all our gold, because gold mining is all these people know how to do; they don’t have anything else. What other alternatives can we offer Santo Domingo’s small-scale miners? None. That’s the origin of this conflict: large-scale mining against small-scale mining; foreign interests against national interests; the big against the little. And among the big, the government is supporting the transnational.

After B2Gold bought all those lands from the farmers it started fencing them off. It privatized Santo Domingo. It even fenced off public rights of way, with armed police and signs that say “Private property,” and “Keep off.” That’s why the conflict blew up. Because suddenly the small-scale miners couldn’t even get in to work, like they’d done all their life. They were accused of invading private property!

The miners fight back

That was why on September 17, 2012, the local miners, accompanied by the population, organized a roadblock to stop the company from continuing to work in that area. They organized under various names: Sector Four, Washers of Barrio Pancasán 1, Washers of Barrio Pancasán 2, Washers of Barrio Carlos Fonseca, the Coffee Grove and the Let’s Save Santo Domingo Environmentalist Movement. The company began to divide them and negotiate separately with each one. And that’s when we saw something really strange: the negotiations between the company and the small-scale miners were “mediated” by none other than Commissioner Major Javier Carrillo, Chontales’ police chief. But he spoke more for the company than for the miners. Also present in the negotiations was Lenín Gutiérrez, the FSLN Political Secretary in Chontales, and Wilber Miranda, the FSLN’s losing mayoral candidate for Santo Domingo in last year’s elections. How was this possible? Then we realized that the mining company had been buying off state and FSLN functionaries and officials to take the company’s side. There had been blatant corruption. Just take a look at this: the mining company has given the judicial branch 50 motorcycles and also computers. They are buying consciences, in other words.

The pressure on the small-scale miners to negotiate was very strong. The government authorities wanted the company continuing its work; they defended it. The company managed to divide the miners; it balkanized the struggle, made it tribal. In the end an agreement was reached with three groups. Three others, the Coffee Grove, the Washers of Carlos Fonseca and Let’s Save Santo Domingo pulled out of the talks, demanding mediation by Santo Domingo parish priest César Augusto León and Municipal Mayor Nelson Álvarez, who had been elected on the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) ticket. Nelson has come to understand the problem of the small-scale miners, having served with and befriended many of them when he did his military service in the eighties. At the beginning he supported them for that sentimental reason, but then he started documenting what was going on, asking questions, listening, and today he’s very aware of the major damage the company is doing to the people in his municipality.

Those who wouldn’t negotiate with the company continued protesting for 105 days, something unheard of in Nicaraguan history. They set up a human roadblock two kilometers outside of Santo Domingo that let everyone through except for B2Gold workers.

“Only workers and peasants will go to the end”
…but with no help from their government

The government couldn’t let this rebellion go on, so on February 9 it sent the National Police to put an end to the protest by force. At 4 in the morning, around a hundred riot police showed up at the roadblock, directed by Commissioner Carrillo. They thought that this last group of rebels would be weak, but to their great surprise it backfired on them, because the people put up a fight. They surrounded that first group of riot police, which scared them, so more had to be sent. Imagine: more than a thousand riot cops were sent to Santo Domingo, and broke up the protestors with a lot of violence, arresting more than 50. There was resistance, so they shot off bullets and tear gas. We reckon that more than 140 people were hurt. Something like a dozen police officers were also injured. The few people who went to the health center to get their wounds treated were turned over to the Police. That’s why the majority fled and hid out in the hills.

Fourteen of the protesters were jailed in Juigalpa while 12 were taken all the way to Managua and locked up in the Police’s Judicial Auxiliary Division installations known as “La Loma” or “El Chipote.” In Somoza’s time political prisoners were held, tortured and killed there, and the cells are currently reserved for highly dangerous prisoners, big-time criminals. Were those protesting miners big-time criminals? We immediately realized that the government did that to break them, to force them to negotiate, to make them stop demanding anything of the company. They kept them isolated 200 kilometers from their families. They mistreated them.

The 12 who were kept in El Chipote prison were released from that torment a month later, although they were still confined to the municipality of Santo Domingo. It wasn’t a negotiation between equals. The plan was to get them to surrender; to renounce their right to protest and to any compensation in exchange for that freedom, which isn’t freedom. Another 26 people from Santo Domingo still have arrest warrants out against them, and a trial is still pending.

So where’s the corporate
social responsibility?

B2Gold says that it practices corporate social responsibility, brings social wellbeing to the population, provides jobs, cares for the environment. That’s all bunk. Santo Domingo has 18,000 inhabitants. Even the environmental impact study they flash around—which is an anonymous unsigned text—says the company has 243 miners and that they’re going to transfer 98% of the mine workers from La Libertad to Santo Domingo, which is logical as they’ve already been trained.

So what jobs does it bring, what social wellbeing? Mining is built on myths, lies, unrealities... What economic benefits are left behind in the municipalities where extraction takes place? Only 1%. Gold will be Nicaragua’s number one export in 2013, and was second last year. That’s very true. But if the mining companies exported $400 million worth of gold last year, only 1% stayed in the country, and it has to be divvied up among the National Mining Commission, the income tax division… But what does the mining company do for the municipality? Nothing! B2Gold’s biggest investment in Santo Domingo is a new building for the mayor’s office, but that building only generates costs, spending and more corruption.

And B2Gold’s environmental
record in Santo Domingo?

The mining companies also say they respect the environment, that they’re environmentally friendly. But, as I said, there’s no such thing as an environmentally-friendly mining company. They’re all harmful. Whether large or small, mining causes irreversible damage to the environment, with the difference that small-scale miners can exploit the gold for 200 years and make a living at it, causing much less damage. Where miners use shovels, the company uses bulldozers. In Santo Domingo, B2Gold is using 45-ton trucks that dwarf me. I’d have to climb onto another man’s shoulders just to reach the top of the tires. They’re taking away our hills, our lands, in those trucks. In six years there’ll be no more gold or anything else, and Santo Domingo will be a desert.

It’s going to contaminate our pure water

Although water is never totally pure, we in Santo Domingo have the best water system in Nicaragua; I think it’s the best water in the country. Our system produces 60 gallons of water a minute and could supply our neighbors in Santo Domingo, La Libertad and San Pedro de Lóvago with only a very small investment.

Now B2Gold’s exploitation work is damaging basin 601, one of the most important watersheds in Chontales. B2Gold is currently mining the gold from above, in open-pit mining, but now they’re going to do underground mining. And that will be the end of Azul. The Azul tunnel, 500 meters above sea level, is a treasure; it’s where our best water springs from. Azul is the gallery of an old mine that began to be exploited in Santo Domingo in 1848, during the California gold fever. The miners of that time left us a source of underground water that’s the purest kind on the planet. Look what a wonder it is: Santo Domingo has a portion of the planet’s 2% of good drinking water. And we don’t want to lose it.

We named that gallery where the water comes from Azul [blue] because it’s sheathed in blue stone: the water oxidizes the stone and has colored it blue. But there’s arsenic in that stone and when the mining company starts using bombs to remove the mud from that gallery in search of gold the water will become contaminated with arsenic and heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cyanide. They’re thinking of starting that in 2015, but they may decide to do it earlier.

The company is trying to buy
everything and everybody

To have a free hand in everything it does, the company has been using perks, bribes, blackmail; it has bought people off. Some people sell themselves very cheap. But I’m very expensive; I cost a fortune, because I know that water doesn’t come cheap. It’s our great treasure, the one we’re trying to save above all, because without water there’s no life. Life was born in water and our water in Santo Domingo has to be saved. There’s a water shortage in La Libertad; the mining there did away with it.

The company has been trying to buy everybody off, and has been appropriating everything. It bought the farmers’ properties, the ecosystem, the basin; in short, it bought our geography. It doesn’t own just the concession; it owns everything.

This company has been super aggressive. Law 387, on mining exploration and exploitation, which was passed in 2001, says that a company to which a concession is given doesn’t own the property. An exploitation concession is different than a property title. The law doesn’t say they can buy the property. But B2Gold did. It paid $4 million for 28 hectares and $7.7 million in all to buy up land. And its suit against the small-scale miners is because it claims to have lost that investment due to the roadblock that went on for so many months, preventing it from working.

Law 387 has two very important articles. Article 42 says that small-scale miners can work the concessions until there is a law that guarantees their rights and a law on small-scale mining. There are still no such laws. The news reports said the small-scale miners were invading B2Gold’s lands because the mining company has its concession there. But it’s the other way around: the miners actually have a concession to work those lands.

B2Gold has taken ownership of everything; it even built a highway to Santo Domingo parallel to the one the government is still planning to build. And it did so without any environmental impact study and without permission. Also with no permit, the company cut down 8,000 trees, deforesting some 18 kilometers between the highway and the municipal garbage dump, which is at the head of the colluvium. It rented the dump for the ridiculous sum of US$2,200 a year. All of this has also been done without environmental permits.

B2Gold only represents loss
upon loss to Santo Domingo

A small-scale miner could get around 18 grams of gold a day out of the colluvium, at 1,500 pesos a gram. Those guys aren’t going to want to go work somewhere else for a salary of 3,000 pesos a month. Never. Besides, they’re all native miners of Santo Domingo. They were born there; that’s the work they’ve always done, the only work they know how to do. And what is B2Gold taking out of Santo Domingo? It takes out 5,000 tons of slag a day. The study it did says that the slag contains only 2.35 grams of gold per ton, but that’s another lie: it contains 57 grams of gold per ton.

Small-scale mining has produced 5 million córdobas a day in Santo Domingo. Five million córdobas! That’s over $200,000, and with the most rudimentary method in the world: a rock tied to a chain and a cross with four terminals that begins to swing inside a recipient and releases the gold. The güiriseros produce more or less 180-200 ounces of gold a month that way. Gold is quoted at $1,700 an ounce in today’s international market, so the miners live well. And they want to keep on living well from the gold they find in the place they were born.

Santo Domingo is like a small New York Stock Exchange. It’s not like it was before, when the people from Santo Domingo didn’t know anything. Now they go on Internet and find out the price. They’re informed; up to date. The small-scale miners are like small stockbrokers in the stock exchange. The price paid for gold in Santo Domingo can be around 97% of the price paid internationally. The difference between the New York Stock Exchange and the Santo Domingo people’s stock exchange is more or less as little as that. They sell the gold to different brokers, of which there are some 50 or 60, who come from Managua, from the Caribbean Coast, from abroad….. There are houses dedicated to that. PRISA is a big gold buyer.

The same monkey with different tails

The Sandinista revolution nationalized the mines and the Chamorro government privatized them again. Our mines were sold for $3 million! And how much benefit have they taken out of them since then?

B2Gold is Canadian; its headquarters are in Vancouver. In 2006 it was partners with Triton Mining and in 2007 bought out Hemco in Bonanza and the mine in La Libertad, and was working the mine in El Limón. Triton Mining S.A. is in Santa Pancha and Desminic (Nicaraguan Mining Development S.A.) is in Santo Domingo… B2Gold, Triton, Hemco, they’re all subsidies of each other. There are a lot of names, but I’m convinced they’re “the same monkey with different tails,” that B2Gold is like the “overcoat” covering them all in Nicaragua.

B2Gold arrived in Santo Domingo in 2009 and in May 2010 President Daniel Ortega came to inaugurate its gold exploitation, accompanied by Cardinal Obando. That day the company gave the President an ounce of gold as a gift.

We can’t let it get away with this

All this company’s illegal action merits a national and international lawsuit because it has twisted the law in its favor or simply ignored it. It didn’t have a permit when it extracted the gold from the colluvium. It only had an exploration study, not an exploitation one, with a simple authorization signed by Hilda Espinosa dated August 2011. And in 20 days, from August to September, it had removed all the colluvium with heavy machinery. It was a totally illegal action; highway robbery. Hilda Espinoza has worked in the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MARENA) for something like 40 years. She’s MARENA’s general director of environmental quality, responsible for giving permits, reviewing environmental impact studies, and conducting evaluations. She’s the big cheese, the experts’ expert. So she’s the one who takes the bullet for this.

We now have all the documentation we need to take legal action in Nicaragua against the company, to file a civil suit and also a penal one accusing it of theft of the colluvium. They’ll have to pay millions in fines, as well as the environmental liability and the socioeconomic liability to the small-scale miners for all the earnings they’ve lost after being evicted from their work and having the colluvium stolen from them, taking away their livelihood. As a son of Santo Domingo my struggle is to file this suit, both in Nicaragua and abroad.

What’s the relationship between
the government and B2Gold?

It was so strange to see FSLN political secretary Lenín Gutiérrez in Santo Domingo while the protestors were in prison in Managua. He came looking for the prisoners’ relatives, advising them to negotiate with the company. He told them that if they gave up protesting, demonstrating, the prisoners would be released. How do we explain that? And how are we to interpret that it was B2Gold’s country manager in Nicaragua, Francisco Venturo, a Peruvian, who phoned up the judge directly to suspend the hearing against the accused? How do we explain that a military officer was in the courtroom intimidating the judge in the first hearing? How is all this possible in this country in the 21st century? In other words, what relationship is there between the government authorities and the company?

The presence of the government and FSLN authorities acting on behalf of the mining company tells us there are plenty of underlying elements we don’t really know about; that people very high up in the government, people with a lot of power, have personal interests in this conflict. That was first seen in Santa Pancha and is being repeated in Santo Domingo, which are similar cases because it’s the same company and because the police and the FSLN’s municipal and departmental political secretaries all intervened in both cases in favor of the transnational.

What we’ve seen in Santa Pancha and Santo Domingo is various branches of the State supporting B2Gold: the Police, which repressed the protestors; the Public Ministry, which accused them; and the judicial branch, which arbitrarily and unjustly remanded them in custody.

It’s now clear to us that the mining company has the government’s support and the government has interests in that company. How else can we explain so much complicity, so much repression? They want to silence us, but we have justice on our side, and we’re not going to remain silent or stop fighting. The struggle won’t end here; we’ll continue. We’ll keep on, and we’re going to stop them from turning our Santo Domingo into a desert.

Nomel Pérez Soza heads the Santo Domingo Centenary Movement.

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