Peruvian President announces end of protest against mining company Las Bambas

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced Monday that the inhabitants of Chumbivilcas in the Cusco region lifted the protest measure that was active for eleven days against the Chinese mining company MMG Las Bambas, in the southeast of the country.

“Today, thanks to the dialogue between the premier, Guido Bellido, and our sisters and brothers from Cuzco, the 11-day strike in Chumbivilcas was lifted,” Castillo informed through his Twitter account.

The President added that “together with the people, our Government renews its commitment to creating peaceful solutions to social conflicts. Let’s unite for Peru!”.

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In the same sense, Bellido informed that they would install a dialogue table “in which we will address each request to give them a solution”.

“We have reached this agreement with the presidents of the communities and the defensive fronts. That is the commitment”, said the Prime Minister after visiting Cusco accompanied by the Ministers of Agrarian Development, Víctor Maita, and Energy and Mines, Iván Merino.

TEN DAYS OF PROTESTS

Farming communities near Las Bambas went on strike to obtain a reversal of a decision that had declared the communities’ roads national highways in the Cusco region, giving the green light for the mining company’s heavy vehicles to travel.

The protesters argue that they were not consulted on the law and are demanding compensation and indemnification for environmental damage and payment of mining easement fees.

Last week, the secretary of the Front for the Defense of the Interests of the province of Chumbivilcas, Wilber Fuentes, announced that the protest would last at least until August 4, waiting for the change of government to take place.

193 SOCIAL CONFLICTS

The Las Bambas controversy in Chumbivilcas is just one of the 193 social conflicts inherited by the Castillo and Bellido government, according to the latest report of the Ombudsman’s Office, which details that most of the cases have to do with socio-environmental issues, mainly due to mining-related conflicts.

Las Bambas, transferred in 2014 from the Swiss Glencore to Chinese-owned MMG for some US$10 billion, is located in the province of Cotabambas, in the Apurimac region, at an altitude of 4,000 meters.

Since then, the passage of trucks through the surrounding communities, which was not initially foreseen in the project, has been the cause of conflict, with periodic protests that had serious violence peaks in which four people died between 2015 and 2016.

The deposit has reserves estimated at 6.9 million tons of copper, of which 452,000 were extracted in 2018, accounting for 2% of the 20 million tons produced globally and 18.8% of the 2.4 million tons contributed by Peru, the world’s second-largest producer of copper, silver, and zinc.