Minerales Córdoba, a subsidiary of a Canadian company whose shareholders are the U.S. multinational Ivanhoe Electric and the Chinese JCH Mining Management, plans to develop the San Matías mining project in Puerto Libertador, in northwestern Colombia. A major problem is that part of the territory where it plans to build the large open pit mine overlaps with land legally claimed by thousands of farmers and indigenous communities who were dispossessed as a result of the armed conflict.
Before he was killed on Sunday, October 16th, 2022, journalist Rafael Emiro Moreno had requested information from the Colombian State about the environmental licenses of mining companies present in southern Córdoba and had denounced that some of these – especially in his native Puerto Libertador – were violating the rights of local communities.
With the aim of continuing Rafael’s work and furthering his claims of possible abuses by this industry in his region, the teams from the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) and Cuestión Pública – in alliance with 13 other Colombian and foreign media led by Forbidden Stories in what we called The Rafael Project – investigated in depth an investor that has arrived to this corner of the Colombian Caribbean in more recent years: Minerales Córdoba, the Colombian subsidiary of a Canadian mining company.
In its own name and in that of other companies that later became its shareholders, Minerales Córdoba has been taking control of the largest number of mining titles in the region, totaling at least 23 titles. We were able to establish that some of the territories covered by the titles granted to this mining company are simultaneously being claimed by indigenous, Afro-descendant and farming communities, according to the rights granted by the ambitious peace policy initiated by Colombia a decade ago to repair the victims of its internal armed conflict.
During that conflict of over half a century, these communities were victims of heinous crimes including displacement, dispossession, homicides, and attacks, and are now demanding that their lands, taken by violent groups, be returned to them. This could create new problems going forward, especially if the copper mine advances on these plots or collective territories before a judge rules on the restitution processes of those who claim to be their rightful owners. If this happens, their owners would face yet another hurdle in their struggle for reparations, having in some cases already spent more than twenty years away from their land.
This journalistic alliance also documented that, while Minerales Córdoba’s exploration titles were being quickly approved, authorities failed to legalize the extraction rights of 332 families of artisanal miners who have been living of gold extraction in one of those mines, El Alacrán, for 45 years. Instead, authorities labeled them as sympathizers of a criminal group in the region. When the traditional miners protested, the Colombian state prosecuted their leader and destroyed their installations.
A new mining fever in Puerto Libertador
At the time of writing, the National Mining Agency has granted 104 mining titles -polygons where exploration activities can be carried out with a view to extraction- to national and foreign companies and to individuals, in the southern municipalities of Córdoba, Montelíbano, Puerto Libertador, San José de Uré, Tierralta and Buenavista. The Mining Cadaster, operated by the same entity, registers 538 applications for new mining titles. Puerto Libertador alone, where Rafael Moreno lived, has 50 active mining titles and 283 applications.
Large-scale mining in southern Córdoba began in 1980 with coal exploration and extraction and continued over the next ten years with the ferronickel bonanza at Cerro Matoso mine. In the 2000s a gold rush came that continues to this day, and in recent years a new protagonist has emerged: copper.
Unlike neighboring countries like Peru or Chile, Colombia has been slow to explore its potential to extract copper, being only the 44th largest producer in the world according to the national mining association. This changed in 2021, when the government promoted a shift towards copper, which it described as ‘the mineral of the energy transition’ due to its conductivity as well as its growing global demand.
“We want to become the third largest copper producer in Latin America,” announced President Iván Duque at the time. His successor Gustavo Petro, highly critical of coal and oil, continued that policy and is encouraging entrepreneurs to seek in-demand minerals which he described as ‘strategic’, such as nickel, lithium, cobalt, coltan, manganese, and copper, which is used to manufacture electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. There is already one copper project operating in Chocó and at least seven more in various stages of planning throughout the country.
An analysis by this journalistic alliance of Mining Cadaster data showed that Minerales Córdoba, owner of the San Matías copper project, is the leading company both in active titles and applications for new titles in that area. In a questionnaire sent to the company together with El Espectador, to find out their explanations to questions about the mining project, Minerales Córdoba responded that they do not intend to turn it into the largest copper mine in Latin America. “This is a small-scale initiative in the global context. However, it will undoubtedly be key to the current government’s just energy transition policy in Colombia, since our project is a copper project, one of the strategic minerals of the energy transition,” they said.
Copper entrepreneurs
Although not well known in Colombia, Minerales Córdoba S.A.S. is at the forefront of one of the most ambitious mining projects in the country: the San Matías copper, gold, and silver mine, which revolves around El Alacrán deposit and three other smaller deposits called Montiel Este, Montiel Oeste, and Costa Azul.
It is a project that the company considers promising, not only because it covers some 20,000 hectares of land and contemplates extracting between 20,000 and 40,000 tons of copper per day, but also because – according to the company’s website – it is located “in a mining-friendly jurisdiction” and has “excellent infrastructure”, including its proximity to two other open pit mines in operation, the national power grid, and paved roads.
Registered in Medellín on April 18th, 2011, Minerales Córdoba is part of a complex corporate architecture involving at least nine companies based in Colombia, Canada, the United States, China, and Barbados.
The Colombian company is a subsidiary of Cordoba Minerals Holdings Ltd, registered in the Caribbean island of Barbados, which in turn is a subsidiary of Canada’s Cordoba Minerals Corp, according to the Chamber of Commerce records of the Colombian company.
Cordoba Minerals Corp, named after the department in Colombia where its flagship project is located, is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Calgary. Its largest shareholder, with 63%, is the U.S. company Ivanhoe Electric Inc. according to its 2022 financial statements. Registered in Delaware and also located in Vancouver, it is a mining company with a dozen copper and gold projects in the United States, Peru, Ivory Coast and Papua New Guinea. According to Cordoba Minerals documents, it is “the company’s main source of financing”.
Those same reports list I-Pulse Inc. as the entity that exercises ultimate control over Cordoba Minerals, after High Power Exploration Inc. (HPX) – another company linked to the same business group – transferred its rights and assets to Ivanhoe Electric in April 2021.
The visible face behind I-Pulse and Ivanhoe Electric, is board of directors member Robert Friedland, an American mining and technology tycoon. Friedland, who lives in Singapore and was Steve Jobs’ university mentor, is known as “the king of junior mining” for his track record of discovering, developing, and selling mining projects around the world. His business group today has an extensive investment portfolio, including copper, nickel, cobalt, scandium and platinum mining projects in South Africa, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even a film production company that has been behind blockbuster movies such as Crazy Rich Asians. Several of his companies are named after Ivanhoe, the knight from Walter Scott’s romance novel. According to Forbes, his fortune is estimated at $2.8 billion.
In December 2022, Cordoba Minerals announced that it had reached an agreement with the Chinese company JCHX Mining Management Co. Ltd. for a subsidiary of the latter to control half of the shares of CMH Colombia S.A.S. This Colombian company, in turn, will become the owner of El Alacrán mine, as reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The amount of the sale would be US$100 million, according to documents from Cordoba Minerals and Ivanhoe, in a transaction expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2023.
JCHX is a private Chinese company listed on the Shanghai stock exchange, has more than 7,000 employees and specializes in the design and construction of mines in China and other countries such as Zambia, Tajikistan, and Laos. JCHX and Ivanhoe Electric had already done business before, since a subsidiary of the former has been a subcontractor of the latter in the Kamoa-Kakula open pit copper mine that it operates with the Chinese miner Zijin Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. JCHX also owned a one-fifth stake in Cordoba Minerals at the end of 2022 and its chairman, Peng Huaisheng, is on the board of the Canadian company.
While Govind Friedland, geologist and son of tycoon Robert Friedland, chairs the board of Cordoba Minerals, Australian lawyer Sarah Unita Armstrong-Montoya, who has held various management positions at Ivanhoe Electric, is listed in various roles in at least four companies related to Minerales Cordoba S. A.S, including president of Cordoba Minerals Corp, president and legal representative of Minerales Cordoba, vice president of High Power Exploration, and board member of Cobre Minerals, CMH Colombia and Exploradora Cordoba SAS.
Minerals in Córdoba
Between 2011 and 2014, Minerales Córdoba concentrated many mining titles in the south of Córdoba through the absorption of other companies that owned them or through alliances in exchange for shareholdings thus integrating them into its flagship project.
Mining experts interviewed by this journalistic team in Córdoba tell us that the company obtained several mining titles to develop a large-scale gold project, known as San Matías, as company documents and the Mining Cadastre show. Its mining project is right on El Alacrán hill, where for years local and indigenous miners have carried out artisanal extraction. Although their culture and survival have revolved around this trade for 45 years, today their work is not covered by mining titles recognized by the Colombian government, as it can be verified in the Mining Cadastre and in the responses these communities have been getting from State institutions. For this reason, 500 of them joined together in El Alacrán Miners Association to request the national government to formalize their work.
In these same years, in addition to Minerales Córdoba, companies outside the region with different names and apparently unrelated to the multinational’s subsidiary, obtained titles relatively quickly on and around the territory of the traditional miners.
For example, in June 2009, an alliance of three companies and one person obtained mining title III-080021 to explore and extract gold for a term of 29 years: Sociedad Ordinaria de Minas Omni (Omnisom), Javier Aníbal Rojas Parra, Cobre Minerals S. A. S. and Compañía Minera de Córdoba S.A.S and Compañía Minera El Alacrán S.A.S. Over the following seven years, according to information from the National Mining Agency, three of those holders relinquished their rights until Cobre Minerals S.A.S. was left as the sole holder in 2017. This company is part of the same business group as Minerales Córdoba: its sole shareholder in May 2021 was CMH Colombia S.A.S, the company destined to assume 100% ownership of El Alacrán mine, according to Cordoba Minerales’ documents.
When asked why they decided to create Minerales Córdoba S.A.S. if they had already obtained the title in the name of Cobre Minerals S.A.S. in 2009, the company responded that it was due to management decisions based on their strategic objectives and market conditions: “The creation of Minerales Córdoba S.A.S. and obtaining the title to the El Alacrán project through Cobre Minerals S.A.S. are part of our business strategy and long-term vision”.
In turn, Minerales Córdoba obtained six mining titles between 2012 and 2015. These titles are LEQ-15161, LEB-08491, LCP-08142, LCQ-16171, LG6-08061 and LJT-10551 which, according to its 2011-2012 financial statement report, integrate the so-called “Córdoba Project”, which “occupies a total area of 25,791 hectares between applications and contracts”. The document states that these mining concessions are in Puerto Libertador, in the districts of Juan José, San Juan, La Rica, Santa Fe Las Claras (Río Verde) and Villa Nueva.
This information is revealing because the Colombian State entity in charge of supporting farmers’ restitution requests (Land Restitution Unit-URT), was only able to go to several of these places and start the administrative procedures nine years after the restitution process began, because the public forces considered them unsafe, as informed by the Director’s office of the URT in an interview with CLIP. Last year, the few cases that were beginning to be studied there were suspended due to security concerns, as data obtained through a request for information shows.
In May 2011, Minerales Córdoba formalized a deal with two other mining companies: Minatura Colombia S.A.S. and Proyecto Coco Hondo S.A.S., which transferred their mining titles in exchange for a shareholding, according to the minutes of the Chamber of Commerce of the owner of the San Matías project. In the case of Minatura, title H16-15311 overlaps with the Zenú indigenous reservation of Alto San Jorge.
In January 2014, Minerales Córdoba absorbed another mining company, called Sabre Metals Sur S.A.S., in exchange for a shareholding, as recorded in a Chamber of Commerce minute of the first company. As a result of this operation, Sabre’s mining titles became dual ownership with Minerales Córdoba in the Mining Cadaster, as occurred with titles JJ9-08092X and JJ9-08093X. As with Minatura, in the case of Sabre there are two mining title applications, OG2-081012 and 0G2-082410, which overlap with the Alto San Jorge indigenous reservation.
This collection of titles and applications for new mining titles, headed by Minerales Córdoba S.A.S., is explained in its president Sarah Armstrong’s statement to different media outlets. In an interview granted to Valora Analitik last December, she assured that “(…) we are currently developing the most extensive drilling campaign we have done in Colombia, with the objective of determining the scope of the mine and the potential for future extraction with more specific information for the feasibility study and the environmental impact study. We have made satisfactory progress in the first phase, exceeding 26,000 meters drilled with very positive results that show a favorable horizon, as we have not only been able to confirm the information contemplated in the pre-feasibility study, but we have also evidenced that the quality and grade of copper found in the area is higher than expected”.
When asked if it is the company’s practice to apply for or access mining titles through various companies and individuals, such as the case of El Alacrán title III-080021, and then head the title through the merger of these companies or the transfer of rights, the company said: “This is not a practice that we have carried out. While it is true that consolidation of mining titles through various companies or individuals is a common practice in the mining industry, specifically junior exploration companies, by acquiring majority ownership of the company, Ivanhoe Group received companies and an already consolidated project.”
This journalistic team also asked Minerales Córdoba about the companies Minatura Colombia S.A.S., Proyecto Coco Hondo S.A.S., Sabre Metal Sur S.A.S, and the corporate structure of Minerales Córdoba S.A.S, declared in the Superintendence of Companies, to which it replied: “The companies mentioned are not shareholders of Minerales Córdoba S.A.S. These companies were liquidated by their then shareholders before Ivanhoe Group acquired the projects in Colombia, which completely disassociates us from them. Currently, Minerales Cordoba S.A.S. is under a situation of control with respect to Cordoba Minerals Corp, which controls Cordoba Minerals Holding Ltd, which in turn, has direct control over Minerales Cordoba S.A.S. and Exploradora Cordoba S.A.S. This situation of control has been declared before the Superintendence of Companies and registered with the Chamber of Commerce as a business group”.
Tension at El Alacrán
While Cordoba Minerals’ businesses flowed abroad, in Puerto Libertador, in March 2021, the National Police evicted local miners from El Alacrán Mine, accusing them of carrying out illegal extraction and of being “instrumentalized by the Clan del Golfo “, as published by the Carabineros and Environmental Protection Office of that institution in its Twitter account.
It was not the first conflict nor the first time their leaders were stigmatized as criminals. In 2015, Farli Eliécer Velásquez Patiño, the leader representing local miners in talks with the company, had been captured under similar allegations. Velásquez, president of the village’s Junta de Acción Comunal, regained his freedom for lack of evidence against him. But he had already spent five months in prison.
Tensions in El Alacrán village date back to 2012, when local miners saw that Minerales Córdoba came to take samples in the field. They do not understand how their 332 families, some 1,250 people who depend on artisanal gold mining, are being persecuted and have not been protected by the State with titles formalizing their legitimate activity.
Concerned about title III-080021 of Cobre Minerals, the Asociación de Mineros del Alacrán filed a tutela action against the Comptroller General of the Republic and the Ombudsman’s Office for failing to provide a substantive response to their request for information, inspection, and oversight of this mining title. After being denied in first and second instances, the action was selected by the Constitutional Court for study and resulted in judgment T-095 of 2015. The ruling of the highest court in Colombia ordered the inspection of the title and ordered the mining and environmental authorities to advance studies to formalize the activity of the association of small-scale miners.
Through a request for information, this journalistic alliance had access to the follow-up procees carried out by the Prosecutor (Procuraduría) General’s Office for Environmental and Agrarian Affairs on the compliance with the orders of the ruling. In their responses, the National Mining Agency and the Deputy Ministry of Mines only answered about the meetings they have held between the mining company, the authorities, and the community of El Alacrán to inform or mediate, but without providing a solution for the local miners.
“In these meetings, the Directorate of Formalization has made known the existing tools in the regulatory framework to carry out the extractive activity, including those referring to mining formalization and operations under the protection of a mining title”, the then Vice Minister Sandra Rocío Sandoval Valderrama said to the Procuraduría, and explained that they are looking for alternatives to settle the interests between the mining company that has legal titles and the artisanal miners.
For the Association of Miners of El Alacrán, compliance with the sentence has been limited to an interpretation of the Mining Code of 2001: “The sentence had the order to generate welfare to the mining area of El Alacrán, the tranquility that this mining community could continue to work in a place where they have worked for many years”, said to CLIP Farli Eliécer Velásquez Patiño, the leader of the Association of Miners of El Alacrán. Then – the leader said – the Ministry of Mines sent some technicians to make visits, but they didn’t return after the protests. “We are in the fight for this company to comply with the rights of the inhabitants of El Alacrán mine and its surroundings and there is always a risk for social leaders,” said Velásquez.
This year a conflict may break out again in El Alacrán. If the environmental license is granted to Cobre Minerals, the San Matías project could begin extraction. “At this moment there is tension because the company is in the assembly and construction phase, but in order to move forward with the extraction project it must carry out an environmental impact study and it has not submitted it,” assured a public official familiar with the process. When reviewing the follow-up reports that the Attorney General’s Office has made on this title, the National Environmental Licensing Authority (Anla) reported in August 2022 that on title III-080021 “there is no environmental license application filed, nor is there an environmental management and control instrument issued by this National Authority for the aforementioned project”.
Regarding the licence, the company replied n writing to the Rafael Project that they have not yet started the process “as we are in the process of collecting and preparing the necessary information for the presentation of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). We are not currently at a stage where we need to obtain an environmental licence”. The explained thar “in order to start construction and assembly work, the Programme of Works and Works (PTO) and the corresponding environmental licence must be approved. Even so, the dialogue processes are and have always been a fundamental part of our daily work and constitute the heart and nerve of our operations, which is why they are a constant and uninterrupted action with all the villages that are part of the project’s footprint and impact¨.
The community is concerned about the impact of the copper and gold exploitation of San Matías, according to what Zenú and El Alacrán Miners Association leader said to us. Records of the National Mining Agency in 2018 show that title III-080021 had set exploration phase between 2013 and 2020, construction and assembly phase between 2020 and January 2023, and extraction phase from this year to 2043.
Israel Manuel Aguilar, the highest traditional Zenú indigenous authority of the Alto San Jorge Reservation, understands the concerns of the residents of El Alacrán because of their previous experience with Cerro Matoso. “El Alacrán mine has some very contaminating minerals such as pyrite, chalcopyrite and arsenopyrite, which are very risky and which the people do not know about”, he said in a video interview with CLIP reporters. “Copper oxide is an element that affects human beings and that, if exploited in this area, could affect three important tributaries: San Pedro River, which provides drinking water to Puerto Libertador, and Valdés stream, which in turn falls into El Salado stream and flows into the San Pedro before reaching the urban center”.
Aguilar fears a repetition of the history of environmental impacts already left by open-pit ferronickel mining in southern Córdoba, which the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed through ruling T-733 of 2017. (See the story in El Espectador by this journalistic alliance).
With Minerales Córdoba the communities have already had difficulties: “They say that their project is fine with the community, when it is not”, explains the Zenú leader. “Despite the dialogue, there is no compliance with the commitments on the employment of unskilled labor, nor on the repair of roads. The Puerto Libertador-Alacrán road is deteriorated”.
Minerales Córdoba’s version is different. “The El Alacrán Mining Project will be developed with the implementation of world-class prevention and mitigation measures”, the company said. “Once the environmental licence is obtained, an Environmental Management Plan will be carried out that will include the recovery and compensation of more than 400 hectares corresponding to environmental liabilities generated by mining activities carried out by third parties in the past with low standards”. The company also said that their “actions and proposals are and are built with the participation and active involvement of the communities, listening to their wishes and expectations, and bringing them to a point of viability”.
A contradictory State
In addition to the conflict with artisanal miners, another storm is brewing over the San Matías project. At least three titles and 15 applications for new titles from Minerales Córdoba overlap with lands claimed by farmers, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian people victims of the Colombian armed conflict, as this journalistic analysis of the Mining Cadaster and information from the URT. Several of them have been patiently processing, before the State, the restitution of their lands taken from them with violence, as they are entitled to do under the Victims and Land Restitution Law promoted by the government of Juan Manuel Santos in 2011 and which is part of the broader project of the peace agreement with the extinct FARC guerrillas.
This ambitious reparation policy is the result of a dramatic reality: more than 8.4 million people – one in seven Colombians – have been forcibly displaced throughout the country, according to the Single Registry of Victims. In total, 8 million hectares were taken from them, adding farming plots and collective territories belonging to ethnic minorities, states the report of the Truth Commission resulting from the 2016 peace agreement. By December 31st, 2020, six months before the Law expired, the process had managed to return 163,000 hectares to 32,000 legitimate owners, but the number and complexity of the processes led to the task, originally scheduled to end in 2021, being extended for another decade.
The State took a leading role in documenting the legal cases through an agency created for that purpose, which is the aformetioned Land Restitution Unit (URT), and has accompanied the dispossessed farmers and ethnic peoples in presenting their claims before specialized judges and magistrates. In these claims, victims have encountered a contradictory State that, on the one hand, supports them in recovering the usurped lands, but often slows down these processes when other government institutions allocated those same lands for economic projects, without consulting them, arguing national and strategic interest.
The San Matías project, for example, is one of these economic projects of national and strategic interest. In its responses, Minerales Córdoba said that “because of the significance of our initiative for national productivity and competitiveness, the National Mining Agency (ANM) qualified El Alacrán as a Project of National Interest (PIN), which will also represent income for public finances, through royalties, and for the entire value chain that the operation demands. We have always worked hand in hand with communities, entities, the Ministry, the ANM, the Ombudsman’s Office, the government of Córdoba and other authorities, and we are making positive progress in the consolidation of a key project for the department and the country in general”.
In the south of Córdoba: local communities have learned, during the restitution processes, that the National Government has given mining permits for companies to explore part of the territories they consider to be their collective property. In the meantime, several of their leaders have been murdered and many of their families have been displaced from their homes once again. In addition, criminal structures in the region, such as the Clan del Golfo and remnants or dissidents of an old front of the demobilized guerrillas, the 18th Front, have prevented them from entering or leaving their lands. On other occasions, clashes between criminal groups or between criminal groups and the security forces have confined them for weeks in their villages, preventing them from going out to buy food and medicine.
Mining in territories claimed by the Zenú for restitution
The Alto San Jorge Indigenous Reservation, of the Zenú people, has its territory dispersed in seven properties totaling 960 hectares between Montelíbano and Puerto Libertador. Its inhabitants are descendants of the indigenous people who forged a 20,000 square kilometer network of canals and dams to control agriculture, a hydraulic system so complex that it is considered one of the greatest engineering milestones in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish, and which appears on the back of the 20,000 pesos bill.
It took the Zenúes of Puerto Libertador and Montelíbano 16 years of paperwork before the Colombian government recognized their collective ownership of these lands in 2014. To achieve this, according to Zenú leader Israel Aguilar, 4,600 indigenous people had to march to denounce “environmental pollution and health problems of the Zenú population located in the area of influence of the Cerro Matoso mine”, where the Australian company has been exploiting ferronickel since 1996.
For some years now, the Zenú of Alto San Jorge have been demanding the restitution of their collective lands as victims, as Jhenifer Mojica, director of Ethnic Affairs (DAE) of the Land Restitution Unit, explained to this journalistic alliance. As documented by this institution, the government granted a mining title in 2008, when both Iván Darío Rodríguez and Eduardo Montalvo Santana, authority and chief sheriff of the Alto San Jorge Reservation, were murdered. This journalistic investigation was able to determine that it was title H16-15311 granted to the companies Cámara Minera de Colombia S.A.S, Minatura Colombia S.A.S and Minerales Córdoba to explore for gold.
This overlap is not isolated. At present, the Mining Cadaster registers five other mining claims overlapping 551 hectares of the Alto San Jorge reservation, most of them as follows: 255 hectares in claims OG2-082410 and OG2-081012 in the name of Sabre Metals Sur S.A. S; 148 hectares in claims RKO-08531 of Minerales Córdoba and 144 hectares in claim THD-08031 of Peonias S.A.S. S; 148 hectares more in application RKO-08531 of Minerales Cordoba and 144 hectares in application THD-08031 of Peonias S.A.S. If the title and the new applications in progress are added, at least 63% of the Alto San Jorge reservation has mining claims.
In theory, companies are obliged to consult the communities living there, and mining titles do not become an acquired right until an environmental license is granted and a concession contract is signed to allow extraction. This often the seed of conflicts that escalate rapidly and in which the State is often absent, as explained by social leaders in the region.
“Since the large-scale mining projects began in Puerto Libertador, there has been no structural change regarding the application of prior consultation by the companies”, Zenú leader Israel Aguilar told this alliance. “In 2010 we expressed our dissatisfaction with the lack of investment, because the communities were being used and underutilized. We denounced increases in cancer cases, damage to medicinal plants and contamination of rivers. All the wealth was being taken away”, he explained.
For its part, Minerales Córdoba assures that in this territory they have carried out the respective processes of prior consultation, “in accordance with the timetables established by the authority and agreed with the communities, with the accompaniment and monitoring of the National Authority for Prior Consultation (DANCP), local authorities and the Ombudsman’s Office, with its delegate for Collective and Environmental Rights”.
Embera Katío land claim overlaps with mining titles
According to information from the Restitution Uni (URT), the Embera Katío people of the Quebrada Cañaveral Reservation and Ancestral Territory of Alto San Jorge are claiming 4,618 hectares distributed among a reservation and some twenty other communities in the municipalities of Montelíbano, Puerto Libertador and San José de Uré. Although the indigenous people have been asking for the recognition of their territory and the constitution of the pending reservations since 1978, the government granted three titles to mining companies between 2006 and 2015. During that time, the indigenous people suffered displacements due to clashes between the security forces and the Farc guerrillas, as well as fumigations with glyphosate on their territory.
This case, already before a judge since December 2019, involves three mining titles. This journalistic investigation was able to confirm that the two most recent ones, LEB-08491 and LCP-08142, were given to Minerales Córdoba S.A.S in 2012 and 2015, respectively under Puerto Libertador’s jurisdiction. According to fieldwork conducted by the Restitution Unit, these titles overlap with the Dopawará and Nejondó communities, which are part of the twenty villages that make up the Quebrada Cañaveral Reservation. The 2012 title was granted when the municipality was receiving indigenous people displaced by constant fighting between the Army and the FARC.
Due to the negative impact that other mining companies have had on the territory, the communities are now concerned about the expansion of Minerales Córdoba in Puerto Libertador. With just the three titles granted to Minerales Córdoba (and another one to Cerro Matoso), the government has titled 525 hectares of Emberá Katío territory for ferronickel, copper, and gold extraction projects.
In addition, according to information provided by the Restitution Unit and which can be verified in the Mining Cadaster, there are 18 additional mining applications, mostly from Minerales Córdoba, which involve at least another 3,700 hectares of ethnic territory. This means that, if the titles and applications are added up, 91% of the ethnic territory would be projected for mining. This distribution of mining titles occurred when the Emberá Katío were suffering violence. In addition, prior to the decision, no entity informed them or gave them the opportunity to freely evaluate it, a right given to ethnic peoples by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) of the United Nations, to which Colombia is party.
A third restitution case reported by the Restitution Unit, the largest in extension, is that of the Embera Katío people of Alto Sinú, Esmeralda and Cruz Grande. Almost all of this 123,000-hectare reservation is located in Tierralta and to a lesser extent in Ituango, in the neighboring department of Antioquia, and 98% of its territory is within the Paramillo National Natural Park, as can be seen in the open data portal of the National Land Agency.
Although this reservation does not present major overlaps with mining titles and applications, given the prohibition of large-scale mining in National Parks, the Restitution Unit was able to document that in January 2020 two applications for mining titles were filed with the National Mining Agency. One of these applications, made by the company Ubeda S.A.S., overlaps by 3,565 hectares with the ethnic territory. According to the Single Business Registry (RUES), this company is engaged in gold mining and cancelled its registration due to a merger with another company.
The new Colombian government, which took office in August 2022, is committed to accelerating the collective land restitution processes of ethnic communities. According to Mojica of Ethnic Affairs of the Restitution Unit, of 804 territories claimed by victims in the ten years since the Law, there were only 24 sentencings in 28 territories when they arrived in October 2022.
“We are eliminating the barriers that existed for accessing rights, seeking to repair environmental damage, guaranteeing prior consultations and the possibility for communities to return to their ways of life”, Mojica told this journalistic alliance. “The issue is that companies, which make investments in this type of conflict zones, must act with due diligence, qualified exempt from guilt. That is to say, it is not enough that they do a title study or consult the authorities, but they must demonstrate that they acted diligently to avoid benefiting or profiting from areas where there was conflict”.
Minerales Córdoba said that it has no knowledge of the ethnic restitution cases, but that the company’s “current investors at the time of the acquisition of its shareholding carried out due diligence on all mining title applications in Colombia”.
For the indigenous people, large-scale mining is a way to “bleed the land dry”. The Restitution Unit has documented that the Emberá Katío, for example, question how after the ‘kapunia’, as they call the non-indigenous, usurped part of their territory with coca crops, drug trafficking activities and illegal mining, they now have to face the claims of mining-energy projects. They also question the incoherence of the mining plans in the face of the implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement, which gave special protection to the ethnic peoples who suffered the conflict and planned a pilot program to put into practice what was agreed precisely in the south of Córdoba. The Embera Katío of Alto San Jorge called it “Dayirara Ewari Joma Baita”, “survival of the families over time” in the Ebera Bedea language.
Other mining and restitution conflicts
Thousands of farmers who lost their private farms to violent groups are also demanding their land to be returned, backed by the Victims Law. In these municipalities, the paramilitaries of Córdoba, commanded by the brothers Vicente and Carlos Castaño, set up their headquarters and from there, between 1989 and 2003, committed 23 massacres, dispossessed many farmers, and committed many other crimes that left at least 202 victims, according to data from the National Center of Historical Memory (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica).
Two thirds of the 2,982 plots of land claimed by farmer victims of the armed conflict are in Valencia and Tierralta, according to URT data. The rest are distributed among San José de Uré, Montelíbano and Puerto Libertador. In these same municipalities the State has granted 104 mining titles, half of them in the land of the murdered journalist Rafael Moreno.
Afro communities, whose collective territories are recognized through community councils, equivalent to the figure of reservation for indigenous peoples, also seek restitution of their collective lands, according to URT information. Although their requests are still incipient, in San José de Uré, for example, the community councils Bocas de Uré Eduardo Marcelo and Comunidades Negras de Uré also warn about the advance of mining in their territories.
The paradox is that, while large-scale mining advances without major obstacles, the Córdoba Territorial Land Restitution Unit is obliged by law to wait for favorable security conditions, certified by the Armed Forces in the area, to be able to go to the field to document the individual requests of dispossessed victims. According to its records, the URT achieved security clearance to enter Valencia in October 2012 and Tierralta in March 2016, but has had to suspend work in some areas due to violence by Clan del Golfo.
Where possible, the URT achieved 582 sentences of restitution of farms to their owners. For the 517 restitution requests in Montelíbano and Puerto Libertador, the Land Unit obtained security clearance in some townships only until June 25th, 2020. However, in 2022 the work was suspended due to the upsurge in violence. In San José de Uré the victims submitted 391 applications, of which 165 are under study despite the fact that there was a massive displacement near the urban center in 2020.
“We are making every effort to move forward with restitution in southern Córdoba, even in the midst of these conditions that the department has,” Dina Montalvo, director of the Córdoba Territorial URT, told CLIP. She explained that they are looking for people to be able to return to their farms and start producing again, in addition to studying restitution requests on the ground, both individual and ethnic.
What is difficult to explain is how mining companies are entering these municipalities under such dire security conditions.
At present, a third of southern Córdoba is already projected for mining development, as visualized by a map from the Institute of Intercultural Studies of Javeriana University of Cali, which crosses various sources of information on territory and environment with data on mining titles and applications updated to 2018.
With the exception of Buenavista and Valencia, the images show a higher density of overlapping mining titles and applications over Puerto Libertador, San José and Montelíbano, including the buffer zones of Paramillo Park. Tierralta, on the other hand, has a kind of shield against these mining claims because a large part of its territory is within the Nudo del Paramillo Park, where mining is prohibited.
At least four sources, who did not want to reveal their names for security reasons, claim that the mining companies pay extortion to Clan del Golfo in order to operate in the area. “Otherwise –said one leader interviewed for this story –they wouldn’t even be able to show their faces here. How else do you explain that they never had their offices blown up, nor their machines, never an attack against them, while hundreds of us fell or had our land stripped from us?”.
Minerales Cordoba said they also face security issues. “We have not been exempt from extortion attempts, which we have denounced to the competent authorities and we have been the object of intimidation and attacks for not acceding to these demands. All of the company’s actions are subject to and supported by the highest Canadian legal standards and conform to the Colombian legal framework”.
In 2023 Puerto Libertador will receive 12,2 billion pesos (about 2.6 million dollars) in royalties for the current extraction of coal, gold, and other minerals in its territory. However, people’s lives are not improving. Out of its 35,000 inhabitants, more than half of the population cannot even meet their minimum needs for a dignified life, such as safe housing, drinking water and sewage, education for children and health care. Nor has the violence stopped. The rush for the wealth being distributed has brought about concentration of public contracting on a few hands, sometimes with family and friends of local officials and public works that are not always finished. (See our stories on public contracting in Southern Cordoba)[MR1] .
Last March, Puerto Libertador, along with other municipalities in southern Córdoba and the neighboring Bajo Cauca region of Antioquia, suffered the so-called “mining strike“, which was characterized by road blockades, attacks on vehicles, confinement of the population and restrictions on food supplies and transportation for 20 days. As protests took place, artisanal miners such as those of El Alacrán were demanding the formalization of their activity, while facing food shortages due to the violence exercised by Clan del Golfo and the ensuing militarization of the region.
The indigenous people fear that the industrial mining of El Alacrán would not bring them the longed-for riches, but rather would end up dispossessing them of their territory, as some of their leaders have said to our reporters.
Cordoba Minerals has now 23 of the 50 mining titles which have been given in Puerto Libertador, as explained in this investigation, which as the company said, will bring, many resources to this town. Rafael was the canary that died crying out, trying to make sure that present and future riches would in fact reach his fellow citizens.
Research: Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística, CLIP and Cuestión Pública
Data engineering: Rigoberto Carvajal and Armando Mora
Production: Luisa Fernanda López and Adriana Kong
Web development: Diego Arce
Illustrations: Miguel Méndez
Design: Heidy González Suárez
Audiences: José Luis Peñarredonda, Martha Irene Sánchez y Laura Sofía Polanco
Social media: Natalia Gómez Quesada
Translation: Matías Godoy Ronderos
Legal review: El Veinte
The Rafael Project is a collaborative investigation lead by Forbbiden Stories in which 30 journalists participated across different platforms, including el Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística – CLIP and Cuestión Publica, supported by La Liga Contra el Silencio