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A U.S.-tied open-pit mine that has disrupted the culture of native of Azacualpa, Honduras. Photo © MCEA

Readers of this publication are well aware of local battles to protect land, water and air from the profit-seeking of the international mining industry. We are blessed with unimaginable beauty and richness in northeastern Minnesota, and we know that global mining giants like Rio Tinto, Glencore and Antofagasta seek to exploit that richness by any means. 

We know what this tends to mean for communities in the path of their proposals. Our hands are well full here in Minnesota. 

Given this, you might wonder why my organization, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), sent four of its staff to Honduras last year as part of our work. 

Alongside friends from the Sierra Club and the Tamarack Water Alliance, MCEA joined an educational delegation with the human rights organization Witness for Peace for a 10-day tour of the country. 
Why would we do this?

You might have heard a suggestion in Minnesota to the effect of – if we don’t mine for metals like copper and nickel here, we’ll have to mine elsewhere, and that means lower standards for protecting the workforce and the environment. 

At MCEA we question this frame. For one thing, it is a fiction to hold up our standards as the best in the world, when we lack in numerous areas as compared to international best practices. Our 40-
year-old mining regulations currently allow for upstream dams, for example, a dangerous standard that falls short of many jurisdictions (including Ecuador, Brazil and Peru). 

Former MCEA attorney Ann Cohen wrote more about this in her piece, “Let’s Be Honest about Minnesota’s Mining Standards” in the Duluth News Tribune.

We also do not accept the assumptions baked into the mining industry’s rhetoric around the need for certain amounts of metals moving forward. Yes, copper and nickel are useful in our society, and they will be increasingly useful for renewable energy technology, but it’s not nearly so simple as that. 

We’ve not even begun to discuss genuine options for sourcing and conserving those metals, which are far less destructive than new mining – a topic we’ve also written about at MCEA in our web series “Mining the Climate Crisis.”

But, the mining industry is indeed global, and what happens elsewhere in the world does matter here in Minnesota. 

Industry-centered rhetoric about standards and need aside, we at MCEA agree that it’s important for us to be asking questions like: How do we think about mining in Minnesota in an international context? How can we act out of solidarity with mining-impacted communities elsewhere while seeking to protect a livable future in our own communities? 

The invitation to join an educational delegation to Honduras was an opportunity to explore these questions more deeply.

During 10 days in Honduras, we traveled to the east, north and west of the country. We observed a dramatic U.S.-tied open-pit mining operation in Azacualpa that has cut off the community from its neighbors and its ancestors. 

We met with community members around the country affected by land disputes stoked by palm oil firms, mining conglomerates and international tourism – each of which encroaches on Indigenous lands. 

We heard community members testimony about violence, political oppression and fear. We heard of hope, love of the land and dedication. 

We wrote about these experiences in the trip report referenced below.

As we process what we experienced in Honduras, we have been struck that what we were learning was not only about communities “over there.” We see a playbook of an international industry that bears striking resemblance to tactics deployed here – weakening standards, weakening democratic institutions, dividing communities, making promises of economic benefit that fall short. 

The way Hondurans experience this playbook is different from how we experience it, to be sure, but we are not immune.

We are struck also, as a result of participating in this delegation, by the ways in which our own government in the U.S. (and Canada) is directly responsible for many of the challenges faced by Hondurans today. 

We met with lawyers from the new administration who shared with us the challenges of dealing with debt and the legacy of 14 years of narco-dictator rule following a coup in 2009 – a period that human rights observers agree was directly the result of U.S. interventions. 

In other words, we learned about ways in which our own government is responsible for the state of mining regulation in Honduras, even as companies now point to these standards as a reason to mine in Minnesota. 

What happens in Honduras does matter in Minnesota, in ways that might surprise all of us if we allow it. And the truth is much more complicated than the surface claims of a mining industry bent on profit and destruction. 

We have significant work in front of us if we are to protect downstream here and everywhere. And that’s the ultimate point: we are connected. 

We are grateful to the people we met for sharing their stories with us, and invite you to read our full trip report visit solidaritycollective.org and hondurasnow.org. To learn about similar issues in Guatemala, visit rightsaction.org .

To read more about MCEA’s trip to Honduras, visit www.mncenter.org/read-about-mceas-triphonduras. To learn more about the Witness for Peace organization and work in Honduras today, visit www.solidaritycollective.org/ and www.hondurasnow.org/. To learn about similar issues in Guatemala, visit www.rightsaction.org . Thank you to Linda Herron for the invitation to submit this piece.

JT Haines of Duluth is the Northeastern Minnesota Program Director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (mncenter.org). JT is MCEA’s first Duluth-based staff member and now leads the organization’s Northeastern Minnesota program and office. JT has participated in 
several delegation trips to Honduras and Guatemala and is the Director of the 2013 
documentary film Gold Fever.