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Movimiento No a la Mina

Abstract

In Esquel, a mountain town in Chubut, the installation of mega-mining projects has been resisted for almost two decades. The resistance is led by the community, which has developed diverse strategies to put limits on the successive attempts of extractivist advances that the large transnational mining corporations and the different governments have systematically promoted, in a siege that seems to have no end.


 

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Movimiento No a la Mina, Movimiento popular chubutense

The popular movement known as "NO TO THE MINE" was born in Esquel, a mountain town in the province of Chubut, in 2002, when a transnational mining company wanted to set up a large-scale mining project with the use of chemical substances in the Esquel Cordon, which is only 6 km from the town. Initially, a couple of professors from the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco became suspicious of the process the company would use to exploit the minerals, investigated and shared the information with the rest of the community.  From then on, the consequences of this type of exploitation were discovered and the Assembly of Self-Convened Neighbours for NO TO THE MINE of Esquel was created.  This horizontal and diverse collective, made up of neighbours, residents, settlers and native peoples, generated different mobilisation actions that allowed them to win a popular consultation, which took place on 23 March 2003 and had a result of 81% in favour of NO to the mining project.  As a result of this popular victory, the mining company withdrew, but since then the siege of the mining companies in Esquel and the rest of the Chubut territory has not ceased and, as a result, popular mobilisation has been sustained and increased, and actions to resist the mega-mining extractivism promoted by successive governments have diversified.  Currently, there are assemblies throughout the province that since 2012 have formed the Union of Community Assemblies of Chubut (UACCH).

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