“We want to fish in our river, we want to bathe in the river, I don’t want to see my mother crying because the river is contaminated and dirty”.
These are the words of Miguel, a boy who lives on the banks of the Nanay River, in Peru, contaminated with mercury to extract gold, and oil, left by the dredges of mining companies. While the pandemic alerts and its new variants have humanity on tenterhooks, the extractive activity, mining, oil, timber, does not stop.
Miguel was born and raised on the banks of the river, his grandfather taught him to fish, and from fishing they feed their family, and not only that. The river has deep connections with the sacred, with the spiritual force, with everything created. The river communicates and reproduces life, the river connects and now, the river kills.
It kills the skin, it kills the organs, it gives diarrhea and produces other diseases, such as hunger, if there is no food, or if the water that wets the crops, is toxic.
From here, food is sent to other areas of the country, since, with the pandemic, it has been absolutely proven that rural work, agriculture and family enterprises sustain the cities and generate food security. Threatening the life of the river, the basins, the banks, the land it nourishes, puts us all at risk.
And there are many people suffering because of extractive activities, mining, is an extremely toxic, harmful, lethal activity that kills land and water, makes people sick, corrupts local powers, destroys organizational fabrics. It is an economic activity that sustains inequality in the world: it generates greater wealth for those who have access to the extraction of these resources in a rigged way, because in all countries, laws and regulations have been fixed, and collective rights have been passed. The profits that are so much talked about with deceit, are not invested, not even in basic rights for the surrounding population. Defenders have been persecuted and murdered, entire populations have been buried, hundreds of people have been poisoned.
That is why Miguel suffers, that is why his mother worries, that is why the future is threatened.
From the Churches and Mining Network, we invite you to hold Miguel’s hand, and that of so many children, women, men, who fight every day for justice, who defend the Common Home of all. In these times of pandemics, where inequality, poverty and hunger are becoming more terrifying, this firm commitment to the defense of Mother Earth, of the communities that suffer because of “that development”, is urgent.
“Comfort, comfort my people. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and tell it with a loud voice that its struggle is over” (Is 40:1) is the cry that demands from us coherence, courage and decision for concrete actions that denounce the pain and generate hope from resistance and collective organization.
We need a prophetic and coherent church that seeks new forms of articulation in the face of neo-colonialism, impositions and violence that occur in so many places. Within the Church, religious life, bishops, entire dioceses, fraternal networks of the universal church in Europe and North America, the JPIC Commissions, continue to unite commitments and objectives to confront an extractivist capitalist model that has already been denounced as causing death.
The Divest in Mining Campaign is promoted by the Churches and Mining Network. Divestment is a concrete tool to confront this extractivist economic model that generates devastation of the Earth and people. From the Churches and Mining Network and the Campaign, we want to accompany faith-based organizations in their commitment to fair finance and provide advice, technical tools and concrete alternatives to achieve a transformation within the churches. It also seeks to advocate and make visible the violations of rights and environmental impacts generated by mining and to make the life and demands of people and nature heard. Join us!
Contact us: iglesiasymineria@gmail.com
