Among the conventional wisdom that we hear everyday in the business press is that developing countries should bend over backwards to create a friendly climate for foreign corporations, follow orthodox (neoliberal) macroeconomic policy advice, and strive to achieve an investment-grade sovereign credit rating so as to attract more foreign capital.
On October 15th, La Mesa Nacional Frente a La Minería Metálica en El Salvador, also known as El Salvador's National Roundtable on Mining, won the
Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award awarded by the Institute for Policy Studies for their fight against mining in El Salvador.
As the international community's attention is fixed on the coup and crisis in Honduras, another Central American country fights the constraints and inequalities caused by flawed free trade agreements between the United States and the hemisphere.
They may have torn relations and be at constant loggerheads, they may have wildly contrasting political cultures and leaders, but Colombia and Ecuador do have at least one thing in common: they both appear destined to become major mining countries.
They also have both been slow developers on the mining front, lagging behind countries like Peru and Chile. In 2008, while mining accounted for 7.3 percent of Peru’s GDP and 6.7 percent of Chile’s, the figure for Colombia was just 1.5 percent, and even lower for Ecuador. Both countries, though, have significant mining potential.
SHUSHUFINDI, Ecuador - Mention to Anita Ruíz the name of the giant oil company Chevron, and she trembles with rage. At her wooden hut here in the Amazon forest, where oil-project flares illuminate the night sky, she points to a portrait of her youngest son, who died seven years ago of leukemia at age 16.
"We believe the American oilmen created the pollution that killed my son," said Ms. Ruíz, 58, who lives in a clearing where Texaco, the American oil company that Chevron acquired in 2001, once poured oil waste into pits used decades ago for drilling wells.
Reporting from Coca, Ecuador -
Abel Garrido has just struck oil and he's not happy about it.
Using a tree branch, the weathered farmer probed the edge of a
pond that his cattle use for drinking water and soon turned up the
smelly black sludge that he says has killed much of his livestock and
sickened his family.
"I've lost 30 cows," Garrido said. "I cut them open and their insides are black."
Paying the medical bills to treat his three children for skin cancer has cost him his meager savings.
