On November 27th, Mariano Abarca Roblero, a community activist known for his opposition to mining, was assassinated in Chicomuselo, a town in Chiapas, Mexico.

Mariano was shot in the head and chest by a man on a motorcycle. He had been abducted in August, and again received death threats in the week prior to his death.  Mariano was one of the strongest activist working against mineral exploitation by the Canadian company Blackfire in the hills around Chiapas, Mexico.

This past August, Mariano was up for charges from Blackfire.  The charges included organized crime.  Because of the vocal international calls for justice, he was freed a week later.  He immediately joined the sit-in with his compadres pressing to get the company removed from the area.

According to data from REMA (Network of Mexicans Affected by Mining - REMA in Spanish), the federal authorities have authorized 54 permissions for mining exploitation to Canadian Companies in their municipalities: to Blackfire extracting barite, gold and antimony in more than 10 concessions; Linear Gold Corp, with 24 concessions, mostly gold and some of them granted for 50 years; Frontier Dev. Group with 12 projects, and also with New Gold Inc. with three concessions and Radius Gold with 7, although apparently these last ones have been withdrawn.

Comments

Written by pelliott on 2009-12-01 18:45:23 Reading this, I'm ashamed to be Canadian.

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