"Choropampa: The Price of Gold and Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd"
Zeltsman, Corinna
Choropampa: The Price of Gold (2003, 75 minutes); Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining (2007, 85 minutes). Two documentaries by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd, distributed by First Run/Icarus...
...this too goes without comment...
...No exploration is made into the labor practices or export contracts of the area’s larger agricultural enterprises, nor is the farmers’ environmental impact addressed...
...The filmmakers’ goals, to show both the devastating effects of neoliberalism and the triumphs of small communities combating it, are rooted in an examination of the local politics involved in global industry...
...The cloudy circumstances surrounding the spill and its cleanup complicate the community’s activism...
...The documentary presents evidence of collusion between health care providers, Yanacocha officials, and the national government...
...The movement is joyfully energetic, but not without moments of crisis...
...Residents of Choropampa, for example, attempt to sue Newmont in a U.S...
...court, transgressing their assigned geographical space and role as purely “local” actors...
...The films are fairly good, barring several unoriginal directorial decisions, and they offer undeniably compelling accounts of how the global can become painfully local...
...Choropampa: The Price of Gold, released in 2003, documents the effects of a mining disaster and the town’s efforts to attain justice...
...As the town grieves, a new leader steps in, urging the town to choose peaceful resistance...
...The case seems to be finally reaching the Colorado Supreme Court in 2007...
...The doctors at the town’s health clinic, funded by the mining corporation, deny all accountability and even accuse spill victims of falsifying symptoms...
...Boyd and Cabellos use similar tactics in both films to draw sharp contrasts between the global forces of transnational corporations and the local struggles of the people featured...
...The atmosphere is highly favorable for the dealings of transnationals eager to extract minerals from Peruvian soil...
...The film follows the villagers’ efforts to secure adequate medical treatment and compensation in the face of the indifferent Yanacocha mine (owned by Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation, Peru’s Buenaventura, and the World Bank) and the Peruvian state...
...Despite their limitations, the films serve an important function...
...Tambogrande is victorious...
...A year later, a truck traveling to the active Yanacocha gold mine in the neighboring mountain region silently spilled 332 pounds of mercury along 25 miles of highway, including the unpaved roads of Choropampa, a small market town on the mine’s outskirts...
...To catch the attention of cynics, residents use humor and dance in their marches—protesters dressed as limes, one of the region’s principal crops, carry signs reading “Ceviche en Peligro...
...In their attempts to celebrate their subjects’ efforts, the filmmakers stray toward mythologizing the communities’ experiences...
...Mina: No...
...he fled to Japan in late 2000 to avoid prosecution on charges of corruption, human rights abuses, and election fraud...
...Soon after, leader García Baca is murdered on the road to his house by a masked figure...
...Both contextualize their stories within the corrupt political climate of the Fujimori government’s final years...
...Manhattan’s goal, to open a gold mine virtually on top of the town center, sparks immediate protest from residents fiercely proud of their work and community...
...Yet no mention is made of how villagers made contact with the U.S...
...Residents of Tambogrande find their land and crops of mango and lime threatened by Manhattan Minerals, a Canadian mining firm that has earmarked 25% of its future profits for the Peruvian government...
...For residents of both Tambogrande and Choropampa, these events marked the beginning of lengthy and anguished entanglements with the transnational mining corporations that make Peru the world’s foremost gold producer...
...lawyers representing them...
...In this respect, the filmmakers tend to ignore or oversimplify the ways in which the global and the local are interwoven, and to some extent construct idealized visions of the featured communities...
...Marchers descend on Lima, carrying mangoes and chanting “Agro: S...
...Fujimori did not stay in Peru long enough to see Manhattan’s project rejected...
...The history of Tambogrande helps explain the force of this pride: Once desert, this now fertile territory was gradually irrigated into an agricultural paradise by settlers’hard work...
...As the filmmakers amass their evidence, it becomes clear just how isolated Choropampa is: Government interests are so intertwined with the continued success of the Yanacocha mine that virtually all channels of support and redress are closed off...
...In press conferences and on the campaign trail, Fujimori extols the virtues of exploiting resources and signs pacts to increase mining activity (while his officials arrange secret payoffs to ensure desirable judicial rulings), deepening what the filmmakers describe as the “never-ending soap opera” between business and government...
...Presenting a decidedly more optimistic view of the power of local mobilization is the team’s most recent documentary, Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining...
...But when journalists grow bored of covering their story, the town is left to fight for justice on its own...
...The mine quietly undercuts organized efforts, and the town’s 26-year-old mayor proves an ineffective leader, easily befuddled by Yanacocha’s smooth-talking delegates...
...With the reelection of Alan García, who has transformed himself into a free marketeer, it seems likely that the government will continue to work closely with transnationals to extract even more gold, unless communities like Tambogrande organize to stop them...
...Adults and children endure the effects of mercury poisoning (which damages the nervous system and is particularly harmful to children), suffering rashes, chronic pain, headaches, and vision problems, among other ailments...
...Residents take their protest to the ballot box, holding a referendum that resoundingly rejects Manhattan’s plans...
...Two documentaries by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd, distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, www.frif.com In 1999, between the camera flashes of a reelection campaign, Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori explicitly supported a Canadian company’s plans to dig a massive gold mine directly over Tambogrande, an agricultural community on Peru’s northern coast...
...A rally outside Manhattan’s barracks turns violent, ending in the burning of several buildings and the corporation’s forced expulsion from the town...
...As state indifference becomes apparent and the Yanacocha mine’s public relations campaign ends, the community becomes increasingly divided and action is stalled...
...They juxtapose corporate videos and televised press conferences, accompanied by ominous music, with testimonials and protest footage, constructing a clear separation between the two sides of the debate...
...Interviews, archival footage, images of protest marches and blockades, and coverage of town meetings document the collective efforts and opinions of local residents, providing further evidence of the growing rejection of neoliberal corruption throughout Latin America...
...Without lime there is no ceviche...
...While Fujimori makes the front page inaugurating new enterprises, residents living on top of gold deposits and in the shadow of working mines face daily challenges to their livelihoods...
...While his successor, Alejandro Toledo, billed himself as a man of the people, he continued Fujimori’s corporate-friendly policies, endorsing Manhattan’s proposal in Tambogrande...
...This troubled relationship is the subject of two documentaries by the team of Stephanie Boyd and Ernesto Cabellos...
...The government ignores the reports of its own health department, which called for residents of the contaminated area to be evacuated...
...Through successful organizing, the town blocks two government hearings required for Manhattan to proceed...
...Faced with the loss of their historic livelihood (Manhattan would sink a giant pit over a third of the town’s center, give every remaining house a free paint job, and become a major competitor for the region’s water resources), Tambogrande’s residents, led by the charismatic Godofredo García Baca, mount a protest campaign...
...The residents of Choropampa become the focus of brief media attention after the devastating mercury spill of 2000...
...Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining, released this year, follows a farming community’s activism against a mine proposed on its doorstep...
...Sin limón no hay ceviche” (Ceviche in danger...
...In Tambogrande, some of the featured farmers cultivate fruit for foreign markets, mirroring the export-based economics so evident in gold mining...
...Confrontation between frustrated residents and police yields no results, and we leave Choropampa without a shred of hope that the town will attain justice, let alone satisfactory compensation...
...Indeed, the town’s isolation is a powerful obstacle to achieving any semblance of justice...
...The testimonial footage of community members stands as a forceful and moving argument against the mocking paternalism of mining executives and the facelessness of company shareholders...
Vol. 40 • July 2007 • No. 4
