Mining and Ecuador

"Correa minero el agua primero"

This is a picture of graffiti down the street from my house in Cuenca. It is about the controversial topic in Ecuador of mining. It basically translates as Correa, (the president of Ecuador) you miner, put the water first! The topic of mining is so important to Ecuador because on the one hand, it provides income for the country, but on the other, it pollutes and destroys the environment of Ecuador and causes all types of health problems for the citizens. As a class, we have researched this topic quite thoroughly. For anyone's personal interest, a few documentaries on the topic include: "Under Rich Earth" and "Crude". Each of these documentaries strongly depicts the environmental damage which leads to serious health issues for the local people.  

Early on in our trip, we visited Carlos Zorilla's farm, which was about a 2 hour bus ride, and an hour hike from a small village called Junin. Carlos's farm was high in the mountains in an ecosystem called the cloud forest. Both Carlos and the community of Junin are interviewed in the documentary "Under Rich Earth", which is actually about copper mining in Junin. 

Mining for petroleum and copper is such a hot topic in Ecuador because it destroys large areas of land and ruins the water here. With polluted water, entire ecosystems fail. Indigenous communities who got their drinking water straight from local rivers became very sick with stomach cancer and other diseases because of the contamination in their water supply. It is truly a sad story, and "Crude" has interviews with some of the effected communities if anyone is interested in seeing the environmental and health damages yourselves.

On a global level, the world obviously depends on petroleum for our means of transportation, and copper is always used in our technology, both of these products are precious to the world. The high value of these products causes the moral dilemma for Ecuador: choose economic profit, or the health of citizens? It makes me proud to see the public out-speak of graffiti relating to mining and the environment all over the cities of Ecuador.  

"Water or Gold?", "Live Yusani"