Maxima Acuña, the Peruvian campesina who just won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, continues to face harassment including her home being shot at for her resistance against a copper and gold mine threatening to displace her from her land, local media reported Monday.
ANALYSIS:
Facing Violence, Resistance Is Survival for Indigenous Women
Acuña, a subsistence farmer who has refused to give up her territory to U.S. mining giant Newmont, reported that gunmen opened fire at her house while she was away to receive the accolade and her husband was home alone.
The activist, whose resistance has successfully halted Newmont’s plans to open the US$4.8 billion Conga open-pit gold and copper mining project for the “foreseeable future,” interpreted the attack on her home as an ongoing effort to intimidate her and her family.
“Up until today I find myself threatened, the companies has not calmed down,” Acuña told the Peruvian television program Cuarto Poder. “Since 2011, I have been struggling against Newmont, and they have only come to mistreat me, beat me, my life is threatened.”
Despite the harassment, Acuña has vowed to continue her fight to protect her land and the local ecosystem from mining exploitation.
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One of last year’s winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, renowned Honduran Indigenous leader Berta Caceres, wasassassinated March 3 after receiving repeated death threats and other harassment as a result of her resistance against a hydroelectric dam and other projects threatening Indigenous land and rights.
Many human rights defenders have expressed horror over the fact that even widespread international recognition could not protect Caceres from a fatal assault, whileattacks on environmental activists, especially Indigenous leader, are on the rise globally.
According to a report by Global Witness, Peru suffered nine killings of land and environmental activists in 2014. Seven of the victims were Indigenous people.
In the northern highland area of Cajamarca where Acuña’s farm is located, almost half of the land has been handed over to mining corporations under the neoliberal policies that have vastly expanded mining concessions in Peru over the past two decades.
The proposed Conga mine project would threaten the local ecosystem with contamination of the cyanide-leaching open-pit mining process and transform at least one local lake into a waste pit.
Acuña’s fight has been an inspiring story as a victory for small Indigenous farmers against transnational corporate power.
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