This add up to the 2 million hectares that the government declared strategic mining zones in different parts of Colombia and to 17 million hectares also destined for mining in the Amazon.

“If you add everything up they want to leave 50% of the country to mining activity. If you add oil extraction, dams, agrofuels, we won’t have a country to live in”, activist Tatiana Rodriguez from CENSAT-Friends of the Earth Colombia, told Real World Radio.

“This is not promoting development or wellbeing, but it is crushing our autonomy, our right to decide over our territory, or protecting and prioritizing our water”, she added.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said in his election campaign that he had “five locomotives of development” for the country and the main one was the mining-energy one. “They are handing over the territory to transnational corporations”, said Rodriguez. In Colombia, one of the countries with the world’s greatest biodiversity, Santos’ project is a “radical attempt to restructure our territory. We are concerned”.

The first “National Day of Action: For Life, let’s Stop the Locomotive of Development” was organized on August 1st with events in over 15 cities of Colombia. The event was promoted by the Colombian Network Against the Big Transnational Mining (RECLAME) made up by non governmental, indigenous, African-Colombian organizations, students, workers, trade unions, etc. The activity was supported by the Workers Central, Unión Sindical Obrera (a trade union of oil workers) and the National Union of Coal Workers.

The day of action was aimed at supporting the protests that take place in different parts of Colombia against mining. The aim was to join all the struggles in one day. There were marches, fora, screening of movies and other activities in Bogotá, Medellín, Riohacha, etc.

Rodriguez said there are several ongoing socio-environmental conflicts in different parts of Colombia. Coal extraction projects in the north are particularly worrying.

As in other parts of Latin America the projects are run by transnational corporations such as South African company Anglo Gold Ashanti, British-Australian corporation BHP Billiton and British-Swiss Xstrata. There is no large scale mining but small and medium scale mining.

Rodriguez said the struggle for water is the main focus of the people who resist mining, but also the protection of the soil, land and autonomy. “People have no chance to determine the use of land. Even small scale miners are feeling displaced because they know they don’t have a role to play” in transnational large-scale mining, said Rodríguez.

Photo: http://censat.org