Canada's government and mining industry has blood on its hands when it comes to the spiraling violence and repression in Mexico. | Photo: Reuters
By Harsha Walia, teleSUR, June 28, 2016
President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Enrique Peña Nieto will meet for their “Three Amigos” Summit Tuesday amid escalating political violence against teachers in Oaxaca.
Teachers in the dissident CNTE union protesting education reform are part of broader movements opposing the tentacles of World Bank-backed neoliberal privatization of the energy, health, telecommunications, education, agrarian and fiscal sectors in Mexico.
Last week’s massacre against teachers led by militarized federal forces—who receive funding from the U.S.’s Merida Initiative—resulted in nine murders and mass arrests. Two years ago, the disappearances of 43 students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa after being attacked by police and gunmen shook the international community. Across the country, families search for their loved ones with over 27,000 forced disappearances. According to the national statistics institute, on average seven women are killed every day and 63 percent of women face gender violence.
The violations of human rights across Mexico under Peña Nieto, however, are not simply an issue for Canadians to be concerned with “over there.” Mexico has been a laboratory for the neoliberal Washington Consensus since the 1980s, and the violence occurring in Mexico is also connected to Canadian policies.
Since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, trade and border policies continue to be synergized between the three countries. The Security and Prosperity Agreement, for example, called for expedited means of resource extraction, secure borders against “organized crime, international terrorism, and illegal migration”, and coordination amongst defence forces.
“It is important to be clear that Mexico is not a failed state. Without a doubt, it is a state that has failed the people, as states do,” author Dawn Paley writes in her groundbreaking book,” "Drug War Capitalism." “But it has absolutely not failed at fulfilling the duties of a state in the system of global capitalism.”
In particular, the neoliberal freedom for Canadian mining capital to cross Mexico’s borders stands in sharp contrast with the restrictions against those unfree Mexican migrant workers whose precarious labor secures corporate profits within Canada.
Canadian Mining in Mexico
In 2012, Canadian companies were responsible for three-quarters of the total foreign mining-related investment in Mexico. Of a total of 293 foreign-owned mining companies operating in Mexico, a staggering 204 are Canadian.
This is not a coincidence.
Canada’s lax corporate tax laws and nonexistent enforcement for human and environmental rights violations abroad provide an enormous incentive for corporations to register in Canada. Three-quarters of the world’s mining firms are based in Canada.
The political struggle against Canadian mining in Mexico has intensified over the past decade. Since 2004, Indigenous Zapotecas in Capulalpam have opposed the Natividad mine first operated by Canadian-based Continuum Resources. They asserted that the land was taken without their consent and that mining operations resulted in water contamination with levels of arsenic and lead higher than national standards. As a result of ongoing resistance, mining production at Natividad was temporarily suspended in 2007.
Since 2005, residents in the southwest of Oaxaca have been opposed to another Canadian-based mining project by Fortuna Silver and in 2009 300 Zapotecas temporarily shut down the site. After three years of escalating intimidation and violence by government and pro-mining supporters, three anti-mining activists were killed, including vocal opposition leader Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez of the Coalition of United Peoples of the Ocotlán Valley who was shot seven times by a police officer. In 2009, Mariano Abarca Roblero, a prominent opponent of Canadian mining company Blackfire Exploration, was murdered in Chiapas, another victim of violence serving Canadian capital.
Goldgroup, operated by Vancouver-based Timmins Gold Group, began exploration in Veracruz 10 years ago for two open pit mines. Local residents report intimidation and threats. According to activist Beatriz Torrez Beristain, “They told us they were afraid, that they'd been intimidated and felt forced to sell their land.”
Two years ago, the Nahua Indigenous community of Zacualpan declared they will prohibit mining activities on their lands and waters and are now defending Zacualpan from Canadian mining company Teck Resources. More recently in the so-called Guerrero Gold Belt, mining workers at a Torex Gold Resources site were kidnapped and three workers from notorious mining giant Goldcorp’s Los Filos mine were killed.
Refugee Exclusion and Worker Exploitation
While Canadian capital flows freely, those displaced by violence face fortified borders. On the eve of the Summit, Monday’s announcement by Trudeau to lift visa restrictions on Mexican visitors does little to alleviate the barriers faced by asylum seekers. In fact, if the number of asylum seekers from Mexico exceeds 3,500 annually, there will be a partial re-imposition of the visa requirement by Canada.
In July 2015, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that this list is unconstitutional because it denied some refugees their full legal options. Despite this, the current Liberal government continues the practice of using the discriminatory DCO list. A report released last week by the University of Toronto's International Human Rights Program chastises Canada for violating international legal and human rights obligations by keeping Mexico on the DCO list.In 2013, the former Conservative government implemented the Refugee Exclusion Act that discriminates against refugees based on their nationality. Over 40 countries are currently on the “Designated Countries of Origin” (DCO) list and designated as safe, essentially making it impossible to seek asylum. Mexico, a key trading partner for Canada, is on the DCO list. Canada fast-tracks deportations to countries like Mexico on the DCO list by forcing shorter timelines for processing, denying the right to appeal, and restricting legal avenues.
Canada’s exclusionary refugee policy has resulted in the deaths of at least two Mexican migrant women. In 2012, 24-year-old Mexican asylum seeker Veronica Castro was found with a bullet in her forehead after immigration authorities deported her back to Mexico. One year later, Lucia Vega Jimenez committed suicide in an immigration detention center just days before her pending deportation.
While shutting the door to Mexican asylum seekers, Canada relies immensely on Mexican migrant workers. For example, under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, Canada brings in approximately 18,000 Mexican farm workers every year. Migrant workers are indentured to a single employer, don't have guaranteed access to social services or labour protections despite paying into them, work long hours and are often paid less than minimum wage. The denial of permanent residency is precisely what makes migrant labor precarious and exploitable by big business.
As former migrant worker Noé Arteaga puts it, “Everyone should have access to the same basic protections. Everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. Canada has created the laws that have allowed for the exploitation of migrants in the first place. It is time that the government becomes accountable to migrant workers and ends this system of labour apartheid.”
Shamefully, Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program is actually seen as the "managed migration model" to implement around the world, including in the U.S.
Solidarity Across Borders
As elites across the three countries solidify the policing of territorial borders, expropriate Indigenous lands and resources, and protect exploitative social and class relations through neoliberalism and state violence, our relationship across borders can forge new solidarities. As the revolutionary National Indigenous Congress and Zapatista Army for National Liberation write, “(I)n the face of the storm that is upon all of us, knowing that a storm, in addition to its turmoil and chaos, also makes the ground fertile where a new world is always born.”
Harsha Walia (@HarshaWalia) is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Indigenous Coast Salish Territories in Canada. She has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements for 15 years. She is the author of Undoing Border Imperialism.
Posted July 5, 2016