Choropampa: The Price of Gold (2003, 75 minutes); Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining (2007, 85 minutes). Two documentaries by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd, distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, www.frif.com
In 1999, between the camera flashes of a reelection campaign, Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori explicitly supported a Canadian company’s plans to dig a massive gold mine directly over Tambogrande, an agricultural community on Peru’s northern coast. A year later, a truck traveling to the active Yanacocha gold mine in the neighboring mountain region silently spilled 332 pounds of mercury along 25 miles of highway, including the unpaved roads of Choropampa, a small market town on the mine’s outskirts. For residents of both Tambogrande and Choropampa, these events marked the beginning of lengthy and anguished entanglements with the transnational mining corporations that make Peru the world’s foremost gold producer.
This troubled relationship is the subject of two documentaries by the team of Stephanie Boyd and Ernesto Cabellos. Choropampa: The Price of Gold, released in 2003, documents the effects of a mining disaster and the town’s efforts to attain justice. Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining, released this year, follows a farming community’s activism against a mine proposed on its doorstep. The films are fairly good, barring several unoriginal directorial decisions, and they offer undeniably compelling accounts of how the global can become painfully local.
Both contextualize their stories within the corrupt political climate of the Fujimori government’s final years. The atmosphere is highly favorable for the dealings of transnationals eager to extract minerals from Peruvian soil. In press conferences and on the campaign trail, Fujimori extols the virtues of exploiting resources and signs pacts to increase mining activity (while his officials arrange secret payoffs to ensure desirable judicial rulings), deepening what the filmmakers describe as the “never-ending soap opera” between business and government. While Fujimori makes the front page inaugurating new enterprises, residents living on top of gold deposits and in the shadow of working mines face daily challenges to their livelihoods.
The residents of Choropampa become the focus of brief media attention after the devastating mercury spill of 2000. Adults and children endure the effects of mercury poisoning (which damages the nervous system and is particularly harmful to children), suffering rashes, chronic pain, headaches, and vision problems, among other ailments. But when journalists grow bored of covering their story, the town is left to fight for justice on its own. The film follows the villagers’ efforts to secure adequate medical treatment and compensation in the face of the indifferent Yanacocha mine (owned by Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation, Peru’s Buenaventura, and the World Bank) and the Peruvian state.
The cloudy circumstances surrounding the spill and its cleanup complicate the community’s activism. The documentary presents evidence of collusion between health care providers, Yanacocha officials, and the national government. The doctors at the town’s health clinic, funded by the mining corporation, deny all accountability and even accuse spill victims of falsifying symptoms. The government ignores the reports of its own health department, which called for residents of the contaminated area to be evacuated. As the filmmakers amass their evidence, it becomes clear just how isolated Choropampa is: Government interests are so intertwined with the continued success of the Yanacocha mine that virtually all channels of support and redress are closed off.
Indeed, the town’s isolation is a powerful obstacle to achieving any semblance of justice. As state indifference becomes apparent and the Yanacocha mine’s public relations campaign ends, the community becomes increasingly divided and action is stalled. The mine quietly undercuts organized efforts, and the town’s 26-year-old mayor proves an ineffective leader, easily befuddled by Yanacocha’s smooth-talking delegates. Confrontation between frustrated residents and police yields no results, and we leave Choropampa without a shred of hope that the town will attain justice, let alone satisfactory compensation.
Presenting a decidedly more optimistic view of the power of local mobilization is the team’s most recent documentary, Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining. Residents of Tambogrande find their land and crops of mango and lime threatened by Manhattan Minerals, a Canadian mining firm that has earmarked 25% of its future profits for the Peruvian government. Manhattan’s goal, to open a gold mine virtually on top of the town center, sparks immediate protest from residents fiercely proud of their work and community. The history of Tambogrande helps explain the force of this pride: Once desert, this now fertile territory was gradually irrigated into an agricultural paradise by settlers’hard work.
Faced with the loss of their historic livelihood (Manhattan would sink a giant pit over a third of the town’s center, give every remaining house a free paint job, and become a major competitor for the region’s water resources), Tambogrande’s residents, led by the charismatic Godofredo García Baca, mount a protest campaign. Marchers descend on Lima, carrying mangoes and chanting “Agro: Sí! Mina: No!” To catch the attention of cynics, residents use humor and dance in their marches—protesters dressed as limes, one of the region’s principal crops, carry signs reading “Ceviche en Peligro! Sin limón no hay ceviche” (Ceviche in danger! Without lime there is no ceviche).
The movement is joyfully energetic, but not without moments of crisis. A rally outside Manhattan’s barracks turns violent, ending in the burning of several buildings and the corporation’s forced expulsion from the town. Soon after, leader García Baca is murdered on the road to his house by a masked figure. As the town grieves, a new leader steps in, urging the town to choose peaceful resistance. Residents take their protest to the ballot box, holding a referendum that resoundingly rejects Manhattan’s plans. Through successful organizing, the town blocks two government hearings required for Manhattan to proceed. Tambogrande is victorious.
The filmmakers’ goals, to show both the devastating effects of neoliberalism and the triumphs of small communities combating it, are rooted in an examination of the local politics involved in global industry. Boyd and Cabellos use similar tactics in both films to draw sharp contrasts between the global forces of transnational corporations and the local struggles of the people featured. They juxtapose corporate videos and televised press conferences, accompanied by ominous music, with testimonials and protest footage, constructing a clear separation between the two sides of the debate. In this respect, the filmmakers tend to ignore or oversimplify the ways in which the global and the local are interwoven, and to some extent construct idealized visions of the featured communities.
Residents of Choropampa, for example, attempt to sue Newmont in a U.S. court, transgressing their assigned geographical space and role as purely “local” actors. Yet no mention is made of how villagers made contact with the U.S. lawyers representing them. (The case seems to be finally reaching the Colorado Supreme Court in 2007.) In Tambogrande, some of the featured farmers cultivate fruit for foreign markets, mirroring the export-based economics so evident in gold mining; this too goes without comment. No exploration is made into the labor practices or export contracts of the area’s larger agricultural enterprises, nor is the farmers’ environmental impact addressed. In their attempts to celebrate their subjects’ efforts, the filmmakers stray toward mythologizing the communities’ experiences.
Despite their limitations, the films serve an important function. The testimonial footage of community members stands as a forceful and moving argument against the mocking paternalism of mining executives and the facelessness of company shareholders. Interviews, archival footage, images of protest marches and blockades, and coverage of town meetings document the collective efforts and opinions of local residents, providing further evidence of the growing rejection of neoliberal corruption throughout Latin America.
Fujimori did not stay in Peru long enough to see Manhattan’s project rejected; he fled to Japan in late 2000 to avoid prosecution on charges of corruption, human rights abuses, and election fraud. While his successor, Alejandro Toledo, billed himself as a man of the people, he continued Fujimori’s corporate-friendly policies, endorsing Manhattan’s proposal in Tambogrande. With the reelection of Alan García, who has transformed himself into a free marketeer, it seems likely that the government will continue to work closely with transnationals to extract even more gold, unless communities like Tambogrande organize to stop them.
Corinna Zeltsman is a writer and printer living in New York. She is a former NACLA staff assistant.
