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Health or jobs: Peruvian mining town at a crossroads

Photo: Ernesto Benavides / AFP

| By AFP | Carlos Mandujano |

The Peruvian mining city of La Oroya, one of the most polluted places in the world, is seeking to reopen a heavy metal smelter that poisoned residents for almost a century.

The Andean city, situated in a high-altitude valley at 3 750 meters (12 300 feet), is a grey, desolate place. 

Small houses and shops — many abandoned — cluster around towering black chimneys, surrounded by ashen mountain slopes corroded by heavy metals and long devoid of vegetation.

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In 2009, the gigantic smelter that was the economic heartbeat of La Oroya went bankrupt, forcing residents to leave in droves and bringing local commerce to its knees. 

Since 1922, the plant processed copper, zinc, lead, gold, selenium, and other minerals from nearby mines.

If the metallurgical complex reopens, as announced by its new owners in October, it could breathe life back into the economy.

“The large majority of the population is eager and has waited a long time for this to start up again, because it is the source of life, the economic source,” said 48-year-old taxi driver Hugo Enrique.

But at what cost?

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A lifetime of disease

In 2011, La Oroya was listed as the second-most polluted city on Earth, falling into fifth place two years later, according to the Blacksmith Institute, an NGO which works on pollution issues.

It was in insalubrious company, rubbing shoulders with Ukraine’s nuclear-sullied Chernobyl and Russia’s Dzerzhinsk, the site of Cold War-era factories producing chemical weapons.

According to the International Federation for Human Rights, in 2013, 97 percent of La Oroya children between six months and six years of age, and 98 percent between age seven and 12, had elevated levels of lead in their blood.

Manuel Enrique Apolinario, 68, a teacher who lives opposite the foundry, told AFP his body has high levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium.

Residents had “gotten used to the way of life, surrounded by smoke and toxic gases,” he said.

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“Those of us who have lived here for a lifetime have been ill with flu and bronchitis, especially respiratory infections.”

Another 100 years?

The foundry was opened in 1922, nationalized in 1974, and later privatized in 1997 when US natural resources firm Doe Run took it over.

In June 2009, Doe Run halted work after failing to comply with an environmental protection program and declared itself insolvent.

Now, despite years of residents accusing Lima and Doe Run of turning a blind eye to the harmful effects, some 1 270 former employees want to reopen the smelter next March — with the vow not to pollute.

Luis Mantari, one of the new owners, who is in charge of logistics, said the plant would operate “with social and environmental responsibility.”

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“We want this unique complex to last another 100 years,” added human resources boss Jose Aguilar.

The company has stockpiled 14 million tonnes of copper and lead slag waste waiting to be converted into zinc.

“Those of us who fought against pollution have never opposed to the company working. Let it reopen with an environmental plan,” said Pablo Fabian Martinez, 67, who also lives near the site.

For many, though, the decision comes down to pure pocketbook issues.

“I want it to reopen because, without the company, La Oroya lost its entire economy,” added Rosa Vilchez, a 30-year-old businesswoman. Her husband left to work in another city after the closure.

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Respect health

In 2006, La Oroya residents sued the Peruvian government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for allowing the company to pollute at will.

Hearings began in October with the court sitting in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, and residents recounted how they struggled with burning throats and eyes, headaches, and difficulty breathing.

Others told of tumors, muscular problems, and infertility blamed on pollution from the smelters.

The commission found last year that the state had failed to regulate and oversee the behavior of the mining company and “compromised its obligation to guarantee human rights.”

“We are aware that the metallurgical complex is a source of employment. We don’t deny that,” said Yolanda Zurita, one of the litigants, who plants trees to counter the pollution.

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“But it must respect the population’s health.” 

International

Former President Alberto Fujimori, admitted to a hospital for probable tumor in the tongue

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, 85, was admitted to a clinic in Lima and will be operated on for a probable tumor at the base of the tongue, his daughter Keiko Fujimori reported on Monday.

The former president (1990-2000), who received a humanitarian pardon in 2017 and was released at the end of last year, has received cancer treatment for an injury to the oral area in the past and has had recurrent medical attention for the same reason.

Precisely, his medical record was the reason for former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to grant him the pardon before he served 25 years of sentence for crimes against humanity.

Last night, on behalf of his family, his daughter and former presidential candidate reported on his account on the social network X that his father was admitted to the Delgado Clinic in Lima to prepare him and perform a surgical intervention related to his tongue injury.

He added that the medical report literally specifies that Fujimori has “an Ambulatory Presumptive Diagnosis of malignant tumor at the base of the tongue with probable right cervical metastases.”

In this sense, the also leader of the Fuerza Popular party announced that they will carry out an examination under general anesthesia and biopsy in the operating room for their father.

“The objective of this intervention is to perform a biopsy that allows us to confirm the exact nature of that disease. The results of the biopsy will still take several days,” he said.

He stated that his father and his family trust that he will be able to “overcome and recover” and thanked the prayers of those who appreciate his father.

In recent weeks, the images shared on social networks show the former president walking through the streets of Lima with people in his care and receiving in a good mood the greetings of his supporters.

Likewise, Fujimori opened a YouTube channel where he reviews his management by the government and in the last of his deliveries, last Friday, he denied that he had transported drugs on the presidential plane, as it emerges from a judicial process that recently expelled his children, and asked his followers not to be “poononed” by his “enemies.”

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International

Police enter La Sorbonne to expel dozens of pro-Palestinian students

The riot police entered the Sorbonne University of Paris, the most emblematic in France, to expel dozens of pro-Palestinian students who had settled in the main courtyard of the building next to the Pantheon to protest the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip.

The police intervention, which took place without incidents and without the reporting of arrests, at least at first, happened after another blockade on Friday by about 200 university students from another prestigious university center, Sciences Po in Paris, also in protest against what they called “the genocide suffered by the Palestinian people.”

The Sorbonne, created in the 13th century, is an emblem of the university and French culture through which famous figures (Pierre and Marie Curie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Pasteur or Victor Hugo, among others) have passed as students or professors and was one of the main centers of the revolution of May 1968.

Jacques, a Sciences Po student who went to the Sorbonne on Monday in solidarity with the protest of his colleagues there, told EFE that the mobilization was a response “to the genocide that Israel is committing, with the complicity of (Joe) Biden and (Emmanuel) Macron.”

“We are going to close ranks against repression,” said the university student, alluding to police pressure in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the investigation for apology of open terrorism against a prominent left-wing leader, Mathilde Panot, for a controversial statement published after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The young man denied that there is a political manipulation of these mobilizations by Panot’s party, the Unsubmissive France (LFI), the main leftist formation in the Assembly.

“We are the young people who direct the protests. Whoever says otherwise is wrong. The majority are not affiliated with a specific party,” added Jacques, who promised to “continue with the mobilizations,” as at Columbia University, in the United States.

In addition to Panot, the Franco-Palestinian jurist Rima Hassan, a candidate for the European elections, has also been summoned by the police for advocacy of terrorism.

The controversial statement of the head of the LFI in the Assembly described the Hamas action of October 7 as “an offensive by Palestinian forces” and was paralleled with “the intensification of the Israeli occupation policy” in the Palestinian territories.

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International

Desertions in the Russian Army in Ukraine are growing, according to Kiev’s military intelligence

The number of desertions is growing in the ranks of the Russian Army in occupied Ukraine, according to information published on Monday by Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR).

“The desertions increase among the armed formations of the southern military district of the Russian occupation army,” reads the GUR note. “In total, more than 18,000 Russian soldiers have voluntarily left their military units in this district,” the text adds.

The territories occupied by Russia in the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporiyia and Kherson are included in the Southern Military District of Russia.

According to Kiev’s military intelligence, about 12,000 of these deserters belonged to the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces, which participates in hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

Information recently published by the Russian dissident media Mediazona estimated the total number of convictions for desertion handed down by Russian courts at 7,400, since the partial mobilization decreed by the Kremlin in September 2022.

They also alluded to the “record” number of Russians who evade military service and are asking for asylum in Western countries.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff today reported massive Russian casualties and losses in the last 24 hours, after a week of Russian advances in Donetsk that has led the Army to recognize that the situation has worsened on the east front.

According to the last military report, Russia suffered more than 1,300 casualties during the last day, a figure substantially higher than those reported in previous days.

In addition, Kiev claims to have destroyed 37 Russian artillery systems in the last 24 hours.

Today, the “most complicated situation” for Ukraine occurs in the areas of Pokrovsk and Kurajiv, northwest and southwest respectively of Avdivka, which was occupied by Russia last February.

Ukrainian troops in this area have delayed their defensive line in the face of constant Russian attacks.

The head of the Army, Oleksandr Sirski, has highlighted the intensity of the fighting in the Khasiv Yar area, a town located about ten kilometers west of the occupied Bajmut, which is, according to Kiev, a Russian priority objective.

Despite these advances, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, assured on Monday from Riyadh that the war against Ukraine launched two years ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “strategic debacle” for Russia.

“The last thing I’m going to say about it is that if you take a step back and analyze it, I think this aggression by Russia has been a strategic debacle for Russia,” said the head of American diplomacy at the special session of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which ends today in Riyadh.

For Blinken, “as a whole, Russia is weaker economically. He is weaker militarily, given the destruction of so many of his forces. And it is weaker diplomatically in much of the world, not in everything, but in a large part.”

In this sense, the Secretary of State pointed to China as a country that is not supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia, but is providing “incalculable support” to its defense industry, through the sale of microelectronic products, machine tools and optics.

Blinken acknowledged that the increase in Russia’s production capacities is something that Europe is “deeply concerned about turning against it” once the war in Ukraine is over.

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