Judge for yourself if you want to take action. In the Valle de San Felix,
the purest water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a
most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it.
Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide
the second largest source of income for the area. Under the glaciers has
been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at
these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers – something never
conceived of in the history of the world – and to make 2 huge holes, each as big
as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine’s rubbish tip.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold. The
operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is
George Bush Senior (what a surprise eh? ). The Chilean Government has
approved the project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn’t
started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution.
If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of
specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the2 rivers so
they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the
use of cyanide and sulfuric acid in the extraction process. Every last gram
of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left
with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water
and the resulting illnesses.
The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been
forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior.
Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from
international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile.
(article found at: http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/pascualama.asp)