Excellon Resources Inc. : Trapped in Lies

Modern, democratic societies and efficient governments that strive for fairness have the political, social and moral obligation of guaranteeing the wellbeing and happiness of the great majority.

The conflicts at La Platosa mine and La Sierrita common land, both in the municipality of Bermejillo, Durango, are indicative of a corporate attitude which should not be tolerated in Mexico from any company, whether backed by Mexican or foreign capital, whose business is the extraction of non-renewable natural resources, such as metals and minerals. The conservative governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón have freely handed out concessions to these companies, thereby mortgaging land use in Mexico: 26 per cent of  Mexico’s land is in the hands of mining companies that, barring notable exceptions, pillage those resources instead of exploiting them rationally, and abuse the mining workforce. These conflicts are present across the country, for example the case of the Wixáritari indigenous people in their sacred lands, and that of Minera San Xavier in San Luis Potosí, among others.

In 2008, Excellon Resources de México, a company backed by Canadian capital, signed a co-responsibility and cooperation contract with ejidatarios (the rights holders of communal lands) at La Sierrita and the workers at the La Platosa mine. This contract established beneficial actions for the population using the common land, such as the installation of a water treatment plant: this would enable the campesinos to re-use waste water for agricultural purposes, because mining operations use water to clean the minerals extracted but leave it contaminated and unsuitable for human consumption and agriculture.

Excellon Resources never complied with the contract, instead they have persistently and arrogantly violated it, carrying out exploration on land not included in the signed document and thus causing significant environmental damage. And, furthermore, they have refused outright to dialogue and negotiate with campesinos and workers, who they deceived when they included them as partners in the company.

These contract violations have gone to foreign authorities, specifically in Canada, because tribunals in Mexico do not deal sufficiently with matters relating to the mining companies. The Canadian Labour Congress, the organisation MiningWatch Canada, the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Mexican National Miners’ Union have acted in solidarity with the campesinos and miners of Bermejillo. The complaint that these organisations made in 2011 to the Canadian Council for Corporate Social Responsibility in the Extractive Sector about Excellon’s violations was ignored by the company, who refused to enter into the good-faith dialogue that was proposed.

What is more, on Thursday 5 July Excellon Resources blocked the free choice of workers from section 309 of the National Miners’ Union, when they carried out the recount where three associations were fighting for their affiliation, two of which were invented by the company. The company threatened to sack workers and their leaders, used corporate terrorism and violated the Federal Labour Law and jurisprudence 150/2008 of the National Supreme Court of Justice, which establishes that worker recounts for tenure must be secret, free and have security guarantees. Threats of violence, the use of groups of thugs, armed with clubs and stones, who were sent to the La Platosa mine in Bermejillo, vote buying and corruption meant that the voting was totally rigged. Both the company and the Durango state Local Council for Conciliation and Arbitration turned a blind eye to the electoral register of unionised workers presented at the recount, which included six trusted Excellon Resources employees who never should have been there, much less voted on an issue that is the sole responsibility of the workers who are members of the union organisation.

In the face of this result and the violations of the contract between Excellon and ejidatarios and workers, these two groups peacefully took the mining installations, demanding that there be no further attacks on the interests of ejidatarios or workers. The company’s stubborn bloody-mindedness in the face of those groups is what gave rise to this miner-campesino movement, which will not back down until justice is reached. The company has mentioned that within a few days it could run out of material for its grinders, but this is the result of its irresponsibility, as is the fact that on Friday 13^th its shares had fallen by 10 per cent on the Toronto stock market TSX:EXN.

Consequently, it is clear that cynicism and exploitation cannot not be accepted as forms of government or as a permanent business strategy, because one day we will wake up with our country on the edge of a profound social crisis. John F. Kennedy put it very well: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Ambition, greed and corruption must come to an end, and it is only by punishing violations of the law, like those of Excellon against ejidatarios, with exemplary punishments and the withdrawal of concessions, thatwill we achieve the atmosphere of peace necessary for work and development in our country. An investigation must establish whether behind this company there are Mexican politicians or civil servants who are promotion the violations of the part of Excellon, because otherwise there will be no way to understand this unnecessary provocation and conflict.

Enough is enough: either Mexico changes with the new government, or this government will be fully responsible for future crises, which will be worse than those provoked by the National Action Party over the last 12 years, given that popular discontent is at breaking point. We Mexicans must not tolerate further mediocrity or the exploitation of the masses by a few individuals. We must put an end to the passivity and conformity that, if allowed to continue, will drag the entire Mexican nation down even further.

The Desire For Change

Demand in Mexico for a drastic change of in economic and social policy, for a move away from the model that currently causes so much suffering, is louder than ever today due to recent public events. These latest events do nothing to stifle the intensity of the nation’s outcry. On the contrary, with every day that goes by the need for a radical transformation in the economy and in politics becomes more pressing, and we must move in the direction that the majority of society demands and requires.

The country’s needs for economic growth and social development cannot merely be satisfied by modifications to the democratic content of the political system or the electoral process, however necessary such changes may be. This is because political progress cannot be democratic if it fails to encompass the transformation of existing absurd economic and social structures, which should be designed to favour the interests of the great majority and to remedy the nation’s real difficulties.

This is something that the governing elites who have dominated Mexico and other countries over the last thirty years have refused to understand and much less to accept. The serious economic and financial crises that many European countries are suffering today, along with the United States and other highly developed nations, for example in the Middle East and Arabic countries, all have in common a policy of disregard for the human rights of their people, workers and social organisations. This situation favours the minute but powerful nuclei of economic and financial vested interests that hide behind the false and arrogant image of so-called market forces.

This kind of politics is one of the fundamental reasons behind the state of economic and social chaos that has prevailed in Mexico for at least the last three decades, with over 50 million people living in poverty, a contemptuous concentration of wealth and corresponding inequality, and brutal public insecurity fed by the inept war against organised crime. This war, if you look at it carefully, is clearly the brainchild of that antisocial and antinational politics based on the pretence of solving social conflicts using soldiers, prisons and repression, without dealing with the deep-seated causes of this explosion of delinquent violence.

For the last five government terms, firstly under the three presidents De la Madrid, Salinas and Zedillo, then under the National Action Party’s Fox and Calderón, Mexico’s powerful economic and political elites in have devoted themselves to pillaging the nation, showing not a trace of consideration or political shame. Without exception, any effort on the part of these governments or their corporate accomplices has been determined by the intention to favour the interest of a few instead of that of the majority. Mexico has slipped down this path, sinking further and further into disaster.

For me personally, and for the social forces we dialogue with, this desire for a radical change of economic and social model in Mexico is stronger than ever. Nothing and no one will make us renounce this right to true national progress. Political and judicial persecution have neither weakened us nor made us desist from taking this grand vision of historical progress forward, and they will never succeed in doing so in the future.

Our political behaviour has been determined by this task which truly liberates the strengths and the creative spirit of a population as intelligent and generous as Mexico’s. In seeking to free ourselves from the neoliberal strategy we have approached all political decisions that we come up against with full awareness of their risks and dangers, because this is the most important battle that can be fought in Mexico today.

Neither the demoralisation of some others nor the fear of change will ever be able to annul this effort. On the contrary, we have redoubled our demand for a path of fundamental progressive changes, and we will continue to do so, no matter what mediocre politicians or short-sighted businessmen might think of our social or political action, or what they might think in the future. What the nation urgently needs is to bring together all our will and strength to achieve a radical transformation in the unfair and antisocial model that currently governs the Mexican economy.

If other Latin American countries have achieved this, there is no reason why we should not  do the same, particularly since we were the ones who historically opened up this path in the region. Those nations, along with others elsewhere in the world, are freeing themselves from ideological and social yokes and beginning to walk in the proper historical direction for their people and their situations, regardless of the threats and dangers that they will come up against or are already experiencing.

Mexican politics should serve the major objective of freeing us from the wealth-concentrating economic and social strategy that oppresses us, prevents us from moving forward and stops us creating solid bases for real development, more jobs and rationality and justice in production and labour relations. It also prevents us from creating the conditions that would enable the economic, political and social dignity that all Mexicans deserve. In present terms no other task is more important than this if we want a future of progress, wellbeing and freedom.