Tambogrande was the starting point. Since the year 2000 when the inhabitants of this region in the north of Peru got organized in a popular consultation to block the mining activities of the Manhattan company, more episodes began to occur.

Seven years later, in a popular consultation in the townships of Pacaipampa, Ayabaca and Carmen de la Frontera, the piuran community (of the department of Piura) was asking itself about the Rio Branco project. Would you like mining activities on your land? Precisely 94.53% of the community yelled back a resounding ‘no’. On September 16th, yet another step was taken: the provinces of Ayabaca, Huancabamba, Jaén and San Ignacio declared themselves areas free from mining.

Peru saw how in the last few years, and thanks to the policies of Alan García, mining concessions boomed, until they covered 16% of the territory. To the north of the country, concessions of these four provinces cover up to 25% of the area and, if mining exploitation projects begin, a major mining district will be created.

The Rio Branco Project, initiated with British funding and currently in the hands of the Chinese complex Zijing, represents all the fears of the population. Ecologically, the mine threatens the zone’s agriculture and the hydrological basins of the Amazon. “Here in Ayabaca we are in the midst of a paradise, in a very healthy environment, where pure and crystal clear waters spring from the mountain range. We decided not to accept any mining activity here”, says Natividad Vicente Gonza, former vice-president of the Rondas Campesinas Provincial Federation and of the province of Ayabaca.

She’s not exaggerating when she describes this region as a paradise. The tropical Andes are spaces with an extraordinary biological richness – that include the fragile ecosystems of the plains and mist forests –, regulating water for the entire region and forming part of the head of the Amazon River, a common asset for the whole of Humanity. Aside from this, the Chinese company was recently fined for the ecological disaster caused at river Ting last summer; the greatest in recent years in that Asiatic country. “If they are capable of contaminating in this way within their own country, it is very likely that they won’t have any compunction to do the same in a country which is not even theirs, such as is the case of Peru and the mining project of Rio Branco”, says David Velazco, director of the Ecumenical Foundation for the Development of Peace (Fedepaz).

These ecological reasons, plus others of a social, legal and economic character, are the ones that spurred the fight of communities in the four provinces. These, supported both by national organizations, Peru’s Northern Border Sustainable Development Front and Muqui (Proposals and Actions Network), and international CATAPA (Belgium), devised an international campaign called "Mining in Paradise? No-go zones for mining", and took their proposal for “mining-free areas” to Congress, supported by congressmen Marisol Espinoza and Wiber Cabrera, last October 25th.

Mining multiplied social conflicts in Peru and produced new debates among the population. Where to allow mining? Are all territories permissible to be exploited? How to stimulate a balanced and productive development? How should we protect hydrographic basins and the fragile territories of ecosystems? What is the role of regional governments? These are all themes that until recently were never part of the agenda of politicians.

In the last municipal and regional election in Peru, on October 3, some government leaders began to speak out on the subject. “Any project requires a social license in order to operate and the ones to grant such a license are the people themselves. At this time, this mining project does not go ahead”, said Javier Atkins in an interview soon after being elected the new regional president of Piura. Public Defensory determined in 2006 that the project would be the cause of violations to the properties of peasants, to the right to determine how to exploit property and to the right to information on the development of activities.
 
The preservation of the environment and of the rights of indigenous people is a common theme for all of Latin America and, especially for the countries that have territories within the Amazonian region. Citizens ask themselves how they should make use of their land and which territories must be kept free from exploitation. And politicians that listen to them, as was the case in Brazil with former presidential candidate, Marina Silva, begin to gain more strength.

It is a matter of accepting the fact that another alternative economic development is possible. “They bring development but only for them, the company, not for us. For us they leave destruction and contamination”, denounces Pascual Rosales, former president of the Rondas Campesinas Provincial Executive Committee of Ayabaca. In the Rio Branco project zone there are several ecological cooperatives and associations of agriculture and livestock producers that promote an alternative and sustainable development. There is also the possibility of ecotourism in a region as rich as the Peruvian tropical Andes; an economic option that would certainly be lost with the beginning of mining explorations.

Aretha Francis is a journalist from Barcelona, post-graduate in Communication of Peace Conflicts. She has worked in the Spanish press and for Italian newspapers. She currently lives in Belgium and takes part in the communications of the campaign "Mining in paradise? No-go zones for mining".