country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these
resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come. (Brookner 2013)
This quote by Edward Zwick, director of the award-winning movie Blood Diamonds (Brookner 2013; Wikipedia 2018a), shows that valuable natural resources
won from mining, i.e., “. . .the extraction of ore, defined as rock from the earth’s
crust containing valuable minerals. . .” (The Canadian Encyclopedia 2018) can cause
serious problems. Although this movie is set in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where the
De Beers mining company – once founded by the British racist Cecil Rhodes
1 with
whom Adolf Hitler would identify later on
2 (Waterman 1996; Goldschein 2011;
Parkinson 2015; Wikipedia 2018a) – is trying to whitewash the dirty image of the
diamond industry by a certification app tracing the origin of diamonds (Stoddard
2018; Allen 2012), mining problems are restricted neither to Africa nor to blood
diamonds.
Although mining is necessary to win essential major sources of energy and
materials, it involves serious risks concerning all pillars of sustainable development,
i.e., the ecological, the social, and the economic pillars, often causing significant
damage to the natives of the affected countries who once owned the land. Apparently, the indigenous people of countries affected by mining activities recognized
these risks already back in 2002, putting severe restrictions on mining in the
Indigenous People’s Plan of Implementation on Sustainable Development (Tebtebba
2002; Schwarz-Herion 2007, with further references).
Latin America has quite a record of problems around mining. This includes not
only the violation of federal and state laws by some mining companies, e.g., Minera
San Xavier (MSX) in Cerro de San Pedro, Mexico, which is infamous for endangering historic heritage, cultural and environmental goods, as well as human health
by cheap technology (Guadalajara 2010; Vargas-Hernandez 2007), but also several
disastrous accidents (Hernandez 2010).
Severe mining disasters in Latin America include (1) the August 2014 disaster in
Mexico, where Grupo México’s subsidiary Buenavista del Cobre Mining Company
polluted Mexico’s public waterways, and (2) the mining disaster in Minas Gerais,
Brazil, from November 5, 2015, where two ruptured dams caused a dramatic
chemical contamination in the nearby regions (Wilton 2015). These two disasters
will serve as case studies to highlight certain risks of mining and to figure out some
preventive measures to avert such disasters in the future.
Before taking a further look at the two mining disasters mentioned above, it may
be interesting to provide a short overview over the history of mining in Mexico and
1 Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner established a Jesuit-style secret society (Brown 2016) called The
Round Table – associated with appeasement initiatives involving the Duke of Windsor, Mrs.
Simpson, and Hitler – from which the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), a British
foreign intelligence arm, better known as the Chatham House, and its various branches including
the Council on Foreign Relations would emerge later on (Murava 2016).
2 This is not too surprising as Adolf Hitler who was indoctrinated at the British Military Psych-Ops
War School at Tavistock, Devon, England, in 1912 has been controlled by British intelligence ever
since as revealed by intelligence insiders (Smith 2018; Hallett 2006).
18
O. Schwarz-Herion and A. Omran
resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come. (Brookner 2013)
This quote by Edward Zwick, director of the award-winning movie Blood Diamonds (Brookner 2013; Wikipedia 2018a), shows that valuable natural resources
won from mining, i.e., “. . .the extraction of ore, defined as rock from the earth’s
crust containing valuable minerals. . .” (The Canadian Encyclopedia 2018) can cause
serious problems. Although this movie is set in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where the
De Beers mining company – once founded by the British racist Cecil Rhodes
1 with
whom Adolf Hitler would identify later on
2 (Waterman 1996; Goldschein 2011;
Parkinson 2015; Wikipedia 2018a) – is trying to whitewash the dirty image of the
diamond industry by a certification app tracing the origin of diamonds (Stoddard
2018; Allen 2012), mining problems are restricted neither to Africa nor to blood
diamonds.
Although mining is necessary to win essential major sources of energy and
materials, it involves serious risks concerning all pillars of sustainable development,
i.e., the ecological, the social, and the economic pillars, often causing significant
damage to the natives of the affected countries who once owned the land. Apparently, the indigenous people of countries affected by mining activities recognized
these risks already back in 2002, putting severe restrictions on mining in the
Indigenous People’s Plan of Implementation on Sustainable Development (Tebtebba
2002; Schwarz-Herion 2007, with further references).
Latin America has quite a record of problems around mining. This includes not
only the violation of federal and state laws by some mining companies, e.g., Minera
San Xavier (MSX) in Cerro de San Pedro, Mexico, which is infamous for endangering historic heritage, cultural and environmental goods, as well as human health
by cheap technology (Guadalajara 2010; Vargas-Hernandez 2007), but also several
disastrous accidents (Hernandez 2010).
Severe mining disasters in Latin America include (1) the August 2014 disaster in
Mexico, where Grupo México’s subsidiary Buenavista del Cobre Mining Company
polluted Mexico’s public waterways, and (2) the mining disaster in Minas Gerais,
Brazil, from November 5, 2015, where two ruptured dams caused a dramatic
chemical contamination in the nearby regions (Wilton 2015). These two disasters
will serve as case studies to highlight certain risks of mining and to figure out some
preventive measures to avert such disasters in the future.
Before taking a further look at the two mining disasters mentioned above, it may
be interesting to provide a short overview over the history of mining in Mexico and
1 Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner established a Jesuit-style secret society (Brown 2016) called The
Round Table – associated with appeasement initiatives involving the Duke of Windsor, Mrs.
Simpson, and Hitler – from which the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), a British
foreign intelligence arm, better known as the Chatham House, and its various branches including
the Council on Foreign Relations would emerge later on (Murava 2016).
2 This is not too surprising as Adolf Hitler who was indoctrinated at the British Military Psych-Ops
War School at Tavistock, Devon, England, in 1912 has been controlled by British intelligence ever
since as revealed by intelligence insiders (Smith 2018; Hallett 2006).
18
O. Schwarz-Herion and A. Omran