Peru: arrest of leaders re-activates Cajamarca anti-mining struggle

In a surprise move on March 13, agents of Peru’s National Police arrested three leaders of the struggle against the controversial Conga gold mining project in the northern region of Cajamarca, while charges were announced against some 40 others. Wilfredo Saavedra Marreros, leader of Cajamarca’s Environmental Defense Front, was detained in the southern city of Tacna, where he had been invited to speak by student groups. Nearly simultaneoulsy in Cajamarca, police agents arrested Lucio DĂ­az Chávez, former regional president of the teachers union SUTEP, and CĂ©sar Tafur Tacilla, secretary general of the local construction workers union. Saavedra was taken in police custody to Cajamarca, where he was freed the next morning along with DĂ­az and Tafur. All three are charged with obstruction of public transport in connection with last year’s protest mobilization against the Conga mine, and await orders to appear before a judge. The next day, the Cajamarca branch of the FiscalĂ­a, Peru’s attorney general, released a list of 41 activists facing identical charges—including virtually all the prominent leaders of the Cajamarca protest movement.

Most notable among those on the list are the president and vice-president of the Cajamarca regional government, Gregorio Santos Guerrero and CĂ©sar Aliaga DĂ­az. Santos is the first regional president to have roots in the rondas campesino self-defense movement, and has been a vocal supporter of the protest movement. Also on the list are the regional government’s health director Dr. Reynaldo Núñez Campos, and a Cajamarca city councilor, Elzer Elera LĂłpez.

In addition to Saavedra, an ex-adherent of the MRTA guerilla movement, protest leaders on the list include the activist priest Marco Arana Zegarra of the local NGO Grufides, and his colleague Sergio Sánchez Ibáñez, who had days earlier released a statement critical of the government-approved environmental impact statement for the Conga project.

Also on the list Ydelso Hernándes, a rondero leader and president of the Cajamarca Defense Front, and the leaders of two provincial affiliates of the Defense Front: Jorge Spelucin (San Marcos) and Edy Benavides (Bambamarca). Also named is hydrologist Reinhard Seifert, a German citizen who has lived in Peru for years, and served as an advisor to the Cajamarca Environmental Defense Front. A final prominent name is Carmela Sifuentes, secretary general of Peru’s main labor confederation, the CGTP.

Jorge SpelucĂ­n of the San Marcos Defense Front, who was with Wilfredo Saavedra when he was detained, told Lima’s daily La Republica that Peru’s prime minister and the mining interest that hopes to develop the Conga site were behind the arrests. “This comes from Ă“scar ValdĂ©s with the complicity of the Yanacocha mining company, because they are afraid to the Macro-regional Assembly of social organizations, which we are going to hold unfailingly on March 17 in Cajamarca,” he accused.

The detentions and charges were also protested by Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator, which said they “form part of a campaign against social protests.” Ydelso Hernández, president of the Cajamarca Defense Front and one of those facing charges, told La Republica that protests would be held in Cajamarca “to reject the persecutorial intention by the government and Judicial Power against those who defend water and the right to live in a healthy environment.”

On the day of the detentions, this reporter accompanied Ydelso Hernández to a community meeting at the small village of El Alumbre (Bambamarca district, Hualgayo province), in the zone that would be impacted by the Conga mining project. The area is a puna (alpine plain) some three hours by four-wheel drive from the city of Cajamarca. Before the meeting began, village leaders guided us as we drove over unimproved roads to view the several lagunas (small lakes) that would be destroyed by the mining project. Our two vehicles were followed by a detatchment of National Police in a white pick-up truck, clad in camouflage and black ski-masks.

At the meeting back at El Alumbre, village leaders gathered outside the schoolhouse, where a rudimentary sound system was rigged. Chewing coca leaf and occassionally passing around a bottle of aguardiente (cane liquor) to ward off the misty cold, villagers dressed in traditional ponchos and rubber work boots listened as Alumbre’s mayor and the district and provincial leaders, as well as representatives from several outlying casarios (unincorporated hamlets), each took the microphone to pledge their committment to defend the zone’s waters and oppose the mining project. The proceedings were periodically punctuated by chants of “EL AGUA ES UN TESORO QUE VALE MAS QUE ORO” (Water is a treasure worth more than gold) and “EL AGUA ES POR LA VIDA, NO POR LA MINERIA” (Water is for life, not for mining). At the meeting’s conclusion, the assembled dignitaries were served a dinner of rice, potatos and very tasty fried trout—fresh from one of the lagunas slated to be destroyed by the gold mine.

We were driving through the dusk back to Cajamarca when Ydelso received a cell-phone call informing us of the arrests. By the time we arrived in Cajamarca, a candle-light vigil in protest of the arrests had taken over the street on the north side of the Plaza de Armas, the city’s central square. A line of National Police troops with big plastic shields looked on from the sidewalk on the plaza, but did not interfere. Protesters mobilized again the following day, March 14, marching through the city at sundown—led by a giant banner with the ubiquitous slogan “CONGA NO VA”—before settling in at the same spot for what seems set to become a nightly vigil. The Macro-regional Assembly set for March 17 is to be followed by a renewed protest mobilization in the region, to be initiated on March 22, World Water Day. (La RepĂąblica, March 14; World War 4 Report on the scene in Cajamarca)

See our last posts on Peru and regional struggles over mining and water.


  1. Both sides intransigent in Conga struggle
    Speaking to the Lima daily La Republica March 15, Wilfredo Saavedra predicted: “What is coming is a confrontation, and we have to prepare for this in defense of our rights. To defend our lagunas is a sign of defending life, and on this we can depend.”

    Meanwhile, Carlos Santa Cruz, South America chief of operations for Newmont Mining, told the Cajamarca daily El Regional, “We will expend the ultimate force of energy to see that the project goes ahead.” He blamed the conflict over the Conga project on “rhe absense of the authority of the state” in Cajamarca. He said the company had conducted more than 35 workshops with local residents over the past two years, but that “nothing can function if the authority is not in the middle of the space that exists between the project, the investors, and the populaiton.”

  2. Cajamarca: ronderos detain mineral company’s aid workers
    Members of the ronda campesino (peasant self-defense patrol) on March 16 detained seven workers from the Forestry Development Credit Fund (FONCREAGRO), an NGO backed by the Yanacocha mineral consortium that hopes to develop the controversial Conga mine in Peru’s high Andean region of Cajamarca. Ronderos from the village of Chugur (HuasmĂ­n district, CelendĂ­n province) detained the workers, saying the “educational kits” they were distributing were part of a propaganda effort in favor of the disputed mine project, and that they had entered village lands without permission. FONCREAGRO insisted the workers were not employed by Yanacocha, but the company’s logo is displayed prominently on the NGO’s webpage. The workers were freed the following day, due to the mediation of district authorities and the Cajamarca Environmental Defense Front. Chugur’s mayor, HĂ©ctor Medina, denied press accounts that the workers had been “kidnapped,” and said that the village does not want “tricks or crumbs from Yanacocha.” (RPP, Panorama Cajamarquino, El Clarin, Cajamarca, March 17, Peru21, March 16)