By Edwar E. Escalante
Andes Libres Foundation Founder and CEO*

Cusco, Peru, October 29, 2007.- A few weeks ago in the peasant community of Ayabaca, in northern Peru, close to the Ecuadorian border, non-governmental organizations (NGO) perpetrated a farce as implausible as their supposed concern for the poor.

This nonsense – a trial referendum regarding the Rio Blanco mining project – has since been promoted as a day of clean civic spontaneity. Nothing could be further from the truth. This action neither comes close to accepted democratic processes, nor does it in any way reflect community sentiments.

The tale of what occurred resembles a sequence of fictional events until the bitter reality of poverty and deceit feverishly rears its head. In short, a well-trained fraternity [NGOs], in order to deceive poor farmers whose lives could improve with the mining project, sacrificed Peruvian development in the name of pure trifle.

Inevitably, non-renewable resources exploitation impacts the environment, but new technologies and corporate responsibility projects minimize this pollution. Thus, when weighing costs versus benefits, the Rio Blanco project still enjoys a large advantage. These benefits, however, were not mentioned at any of the anti-mining “workshops” that only promoted rejection of mining operations. Read article in The Economist

What happened is what always occurs when you let a fox guard the henhouse. Anti-development NGOs led a number of seminars four months prior to the referendum, supposedly to educate the community in the run-up to the referendum. But they never mentioned any economic benefits. Nor did they mention the project’s location, tens of kilometers away from the nearest community.

The consultation was so “democratic” that any dissenting voice was silenced with violence at the hands of NGO members. This was compounded by the fact that Peruvian peasants also have very limited access to information. The only radio frequency available in these remote communities is the Catholic Church’s one. There, broadcasters in cassocks preached an erroneous theology along the lines of, “Say ‘no’ to mining,” also rejecting any contradictory point of view.

If the imposition of ideas, violence against those who disagree, suppression of freedom of speech, and repeated lies until tautology, together sounds familiar, you are not mistaken. The grouping of these tactics would not be complete without the presence of their familiar implementer: an anachronistic left, now tinged with green that enjoys global fame. It refuses to die, and has found its occasional disguise in the environmentalist cause.

According to the infamous organizers of the referendum, Rio Blanco’s opposition to mining reaches 70 percent of the vote. However, these results are invalid due to four irregularities. First, no agency guaranteed the validity of the electoral process; second, the pro-mining campaign was nonexistent; third, NGOs financed the referendum; and fourth, it took place in Ayabaca instead of Huancabamba, the closest province to the mining project.

The Alan Garcia government is aware of the need for foreign investment in his country. Although his administration lacks procedures to deal with NGOs’ dark activities, the president has proposed a law to Congress to declare about 20 mining projects to be of “national interest.”

Garcia’s administration has taken the first step and initiated a dialogue with community leaders in the mining project vicinity. His government now has the responsibility to show these leaders the Rio Blanco project’s advantages. [They already know its disadvantages, courtesy of the NGOs.] If this happens, despite the project’s bad publicity, positive arguments will prevail over the negative ones. This includes NGOs’ fabricated arguments that have been spread so vilely against mining development and economic progress in Peru.

* Edwar E. Escalante is the founder and CEO of Andes Libres, a public policy and economic institute in Cusco, Peru. Edwar is also an economics consultant, and a regular columnist for local and regional newspapers. He has also written for global publications such as Internationally, and for the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER), The Heritage Foundation, and Human Events. Edwar studied electrical engineering at the National University of San Antonio Abad, and English at the Peruvian American Cultural Institute.

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