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[Translation of an article from La Tercera of Santiago, Chile, for March 2. See original here.]

by J. Peña and J. Ramírez

Accidents continue since the rescue of 33 miners from the San José mine last October. Falling slabs, cave-ins and explosions are the most common, according to the Servicio de Geología y Minería (Sernageomin – Geological and Mining Service).

The most recent occurred last Monday when an explosion in the Montecristo mine, located 70 kilometers from Taltal, took the life of 19-year-old Jordan Araya Araya, nephew of Hugo Araya Guerrero, 39 years old, who also worked there.

According to figures from the organization, since Luis Urzúa, shift supervisor of “The 33,” and his team left the bottom of the deposit in Copiapó, eleven deaths have been recorded in ten mining accidents.

Four of these, Sernageomin says, have occurred so far in 2011. Fatal accidents have been reported in the Sonia III, Pirquén El Arrayán, Bellavista and Lautaro Sur-Amolanas mines.

The deaths of mine workers continued last year: 45 deaths in 41 accidents. In 2009, there were 35, and the year before, 43.

“Despite the fact that the accident in the San José mine revealed what is happening in mining, so far there have been no great advances toward finding solutions to the problems we have been denouncing,” said Néstor Jorquera, president of the Confederación Minera.

Atacama has the most accidents

“During the 2010 reporting period, the Atacama region has had the greatest number of fatal mining accidents. Thirteen of the 45 were there, that is, 28.9 percent of all the accidents in the country,” Sernageomin reports.

The fatalities registered so far in 2011 reinforce last year’s figures; four of the deaths were reported in that region.

[Translation of an article from Revistazo of Tegucigalpa for February 28. See original here.]

By Germán Reyes

Non participation in the electoral process until there are acceptable conditions for doing so and a declaration that the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP – National Front for Popular Resistance) is a broad movement for political struggle seeking the transformation of the social structures are some of the agreements reached in the First National Assembly of this social movement, held last weekend in Tegucigalpa. (more…)

An interview with Oswaldo Sevá

[Translation of an interview from Brasil de Fato for Feburary 25. See original here.]

By Spensy Pimentel and Joana Moncau

An engineer with a doctorate in geography, Professor Oswaldo Sevá has been one of the principal allies in Brazilian universities of the social movements in their struggle against large development projects, like hydroelectric plants, mines and highways. These are efforts that he, in his courses at the Universidade de Campinas, calls “current conflicts of primitive accumulation.” The struggle he is most involved in currently is against the Belo Monte mega-plant on the Xingu River, a paradise of bio- and socio-diversity in the middle of the Amazon, now threatened by that project, which dates from the times of the civilian-military dictatorship and was resumed and brought up to date by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since the ‘80s, Sevá has been publishing studies critical of the project, demonstrating its faults and inconsistencies. In the following interview, the professor shows that the current scenario of socio-environmental conflicts has, in reality, a global significance, representing a challenge for the social movements of the entire world. And he warns, “The threat is very serious as well where intellectuals and politicians considered leftists recite prayers from capital’s missal, repeat the ideological mantras of capitalism and use their political and cultural capital to suppress critics and to make those who think independently more tractable, in order to isolate those who simply continue resisting expropriation.” (more…)