Credits: NoticiasAlTiempo
Multinational corporations keep pushing to open new mines, to enrich themselves by exploiting territories and people, and they always bring up the same argument to try and persuade people or governments: building a mine will bring economic growth, development, jobs, investments. But then when these mines are actually built, what always follows is environmental destruction, pollution and serious health problems.
Fortunately, around the world many people are starting to rebel against this, like in recent days in the Dominican Republic where thousands of people marched for almost twenty kilometers toward the Sabaneta dam, one of the country’s main water reserves, to protest against the Romero project of the Canadian multinational GoldQuest. It’s a gold mining project that has been threatening the San Juan area for years. It also risks contaminating the water on which entire agricultural communities depend; and they are absolutely right to worry about this considering that in Bolivia gold extraction has caused mercury pollution in the soil and groundwater. And I find it absurd how every time these companies talk about “sustainable development”, especially considering that mining is one of the most destructive activities: enormous quantities of water consumed, toxic substances used to separate minerals, ecosystems devastated for decades.
All of this to extract gold that will enrich the usual people without giving anything back to the community that suffers the consequences of the extraction. Returning to the protest, thousands of people were even dispersed with tear gas and water cannons simply for defending a water source. In the end however the protest was not useless, president Luis Abinader decided to stop every operation connected to GoldQuest, revoking the permits necessary to proceed with the works and therefore with the mining exploitation. For now, it looks like the people have won.