PUBLIC STATEMENT AGAINST “INVESTING IN LATAM MINING” SUMMIT

PUBLIC STATEMENT

AGAINST “INVESTING IN LATAM MINING” SUMMIT

In front of the extractivist blindness of the authorities of Latin America and especially of Chile, which has led them to hold in our country the «Investing in Latam Mining» Summit, an event that brings together the main mining investors and ministers of the region, To make feasible projects in our countries; The undersigned organizations and communities declare:

1. We repudiate events promoted by the Ministry of Mining and the transnational mining guild that operates in Chile, which only seek to continue exploiting our territories, to consume and to contaminate the little water they have left us – so scarce that it barely reaches to ensure our life and of the ecosystems we inhabit -, further stress the energy matrix with insane projects such as Punilla or Alto Maipo and criminally polluting as thermoelectricity, in addition to tearing the social fabric as it happens in all localities where mining is imposed.
2. It is not necessary to make summits to see how to treat the communities so that their projects could be possible, we need to just leave our peaks quiet, stop massacring the sources of our waters, stop desecrating our sacred spaces, stop serving the continent on a tray to the mining banquet. The chemical long scale mining will no longer have in our soils social license to operate.
3. The government of Chile has been signing a series of trade agreements to shield the mining business, and in an absolutely irresponsible manner President Bachelet has imposed to sign 12 Free Trade Agreements, without consultation of citizens and only months after fulfilling her mandate. This summit is a fatal corollary of these efforts. Chile can not continue to be the battlehorse of the transnational mining companies on the continent, because we already know that the progress they bring is blind, short-term and suicidal, and the experience of seeing our soil destroyed daily and with impunity, must serve to this madness to stop, not to deepen it.
4. For years we have been suffering from the impacts of mining and mining culture that comes with it: death, pollution, corruption, Human Rights violations, consumerism, destruction of families, drugs, prostitution… nothing to be proud of. We are told that we are a mining country, but we say we are a mined country. Having a soil rich in minerals is a blessing and a huge responsibility, not a pretext to pass over us. If we have delayed in understanding it as a society, now it is time to take charge.
5. The Summit «Investing Latam Mining» is not welcome from the territories that suffer the mining or its threat. That is why we call for this July 11 at 12:00 a.m. in the outskirts of the Sheraton hotel in Santiago to show our repudiation against this culture of death and once again claim our collective commitment to life.

We live other forms of development, we demand that they be respected and we invite more wills to make them possible!

Undersigned by: