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.

The Last Chance

Recent decades have brought losses for Mexico in development, national dignity and social justice. These losses have touched by the whole nation, its people and Mexico’s modern history. I would like to paint a positive picture, but no other conclusion can be reached given the circumstances, not even with the most optimistic of attitudes.

It is enough to look at the number of Mexicans living in poverty: over 50 million. And the number of the rich and very rich, who barely exceed 300 families, and among them, the 30 supposed owners of Mexico. Or the numbers of dead and disappeared in the absurd war on drugs trafficking, who between them amount to over 150 thousand people. Or the rates of unemployment, with over 14 million job losses across formal and informal employment. Or levels of corruption, both inside and outside government, that are difficult to calculate but reach hundred of billions of Pesos. Or equally, the real loss of the rule of law in fundamental areas such as the impunity under which all sorts of crimes are committed, both common law and white collar crimes executed by well-off people who break the law and are even congratulated for doing so.

Or the figures for Mexican migrants to the United States who go in search of the work they are unable to find here, who number more than 30 million people according to dramatic real-life evaluations which include both previous migrants and those who are leaving today, who together constitute a new migrant country. This is on top of the losses of opportunities to positive human development, which equally can be measured in millions. A truly bleak panorama.

The last decade in particular has been harmful for Mexico and for Mexicans. No one with even the slightest awareness of social reality can suggest that these last twelve years have brought progress and economic and social development. On the contrary, all the evidence and real-life hard facts show us that we face a serious national disaster under the conservative governments led by the National Action Party. What Vicente Fox’s government did and what Felipe Calderón’s continues to do is to devalue the public sector and seriously damage the country’s image abroad, bombarding the population with dishonest fantasies about the real state of the economy, with the complicity of the most powerful media outlets that are duly aligned with what they falsely call a national project. They infuse all their messages with the fear of change, an irrational fear of things being better, but true transformation can only be achieved by ceasing to reject the new and by fighting for a fairer model of economic and social policy.

The best way that we Mexicans can move forward, if we are to change the way things are, is simply via legal means and especially by way of elections, bravely standing together to rebuild our country instead of being scared of change. In 10 days we will cast our votes. Contrary to what some surveys have exaggeratedly claimed, this election is not yet decided. It was not decided beforehand when the possible presidential candidates started campaigning, nor is today, faced with the evidence of new public demonstrations which have been recorded among voters, in large part in response to this new media campaign which would have us believe that the 1 July election has already been won by a wide margin.

But in this strategy of injecting insecurity and uncertainty into society, such adjustments to electoral preferences are not registered by the media who prefer nothing to change in our country and want everything to carry on like it is today. They no longer even play at Gatopardo, that is the practice of always making small changes so that everything remains the same, instead they invent and broadcast, veiled by very dubious surveys, when the massive popular vote has not yet taken place.

This is our last chance. The last one we have to replace a mistaken vision that would hold us on a path to ruin. Either Mexico regenerates itself or we are in for an even darker, more destructive and bleaker period than that of recent lost decades. In these elections, like in none ever before, the country’s future is truly at stake. Either we fearlessly decide our own destiny and choose the path of profound change in the country’s political, economic and social structures, or the interests of a few will hold the huge majority in a state of fear. This is essentially what is at stake in the national debate and at polling stations.

Faced with this outlook, all that remains to be said is that enough is enough of Mexicans being manipulated. We were previously manipulated through the buying, coercion and co-opting of votes, today it is through the manipulative use of television and other media, which answer to the interests of those individuals who want Mexico to carry on with its ruthless exploitation of human labour, low salaries, growing unemployment, insecurity and the impunity of the powerful people and their criminal acts. Mexico must change. It is unacceptable that we should elect the bad guys because they are familiar and the good guys are forgotten because they spring from the conscience of a people who have taken on massive challenges in the past and have overcome them, always with new hopes for a better future.

We muse lose the contemptible fear of change. Over 2 thousand years ago, the Roman poet Horace said: He who lives in fear will never be free. Today, we Mexicans are facing our last opportunity. Either we change the path to disaster we are on, or we will destroy our great country even more.

Agents of Change

12 years ago, in 2000, when the PAN (National Action Party) came to power, all Mexicans asked themselves if in that election they had made the right decision for the future of Mexico, having lived through a period of inefficiency and arrogance under the PRI (Industrial Revolutionary Party) government.

Now, 12 years later, the major error that we made in electing a conservative, reactionary party full of incompetent, mediocre corrupt politicians with no social, legal or moral sensitivity is blatantly clear.

Mexico is currently experiencing one of the worst periods in its history. Widespread corruption, neglect of the population’s problems and needs, rising unemployment, both open and hidden, with 14 million people out of work, and an absurd war on organised crime that lacks strategy, vision and alternatives, is condemned to failure, and has meant the death or disappearance of over 150 thousand people.

It is now clearer than ever that Vicente Fox Quesada, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and their accomplices and collaborators never had an adequate strategy or any nationalist interest in putting Mexico and Mexicans first.

For them it is simply a case of unreservedly handing over the country’s natural resources, since today over 25 percent of the country has been given away in concessions to mining companies and the extractive industry who monopolise and speculate with land to their own ends. The servile appeasement of foreign and national business interests and the loss of sovereignty mean nothing to these governments. What is more, they believe and are convinced that they have acted correctly. They have no shame, but this does not bother them, and they try to convince the population by using the media to contaminate the minds of Mexicans.

The cynicism that prevails in government prevents them from seeing that they themselves are the origin and the centre of the wrongs of these 12 years, with their boundless personal ambition and their lack of principles and values. Even more importantly, however, is the constant violation of the state of law and the perversion in the application of justice for their benefit and that of the people who act in complicity with them, businesspeople, organic intellectuals, unethical media, unscrupulous politicians and all the flora and fauna of corruption. As a consequence, we now see the destruction of the national system, as well as the negation of a future filled with hope, justice, dignity and happiness for current and future generations.

But today, thousands, even millions of students and young people who are prepared and conscious, who have woken up and are disillusioned with the current situation, have denounced these abuses that have built up over time. Their expression of dissatisfaction has coincided with that of the unions and free workers who have been fighting for democracy for many years and demanding an end to the impunity surrounding the serious and profound violations committed by governments in the last 30 years.

This new movement of young people in society must grow stronger every day, demanding a radical move away from this economic and social model that exploits the population and our country’s natural resources.

They can certainly count on the unconditional solidarity of the majority of independent, democratic and respectable intellectuals and journalists, of the working class in rural areas, in industry and in services, of honest politicians and businesspeople in Mexico and abroad. Nonetheless, they must absolutely not lose their drive, enthusiasm and true desire for change and transformation towards a fairer, safer, freer and more democratic society.

Together, we and those young people are the new actors and agents of change. Let us not lose the drive or the opportunity so that in six years, if we get there peacefully, we will not feel the same regret of not having correctly chosen the government that we need. Let there be no repetition of the negative and contemptuous statement that the people gets the government it deserves; that is an insult to the intelligence and the moral and human integrity of the Mexican people.

Young people burst onto the public scene when they quickly deduced from the positions of the political parties in power and their allies that those people saw the electoral process as a simple exercise that would conclude with the announcement of their supposed victory. Their enthusiastic participation is a warning that this will not be the case, because students are demonstrating strong morals and values that have not been seen for years, which must be used to build an element of fundamental stimulus for all social and political forces, and for the members of society who long for substantial change.

Listening attentively and calmly to the call of young people is, right now, a priority for the whole country, so that we might obtain the results proposed by this sensitive sector of Mexican society. They want no more blood to be spilled, no more violations of the state of law, no more attacks on their own future and the future of all Mexicans.