Gold Mine Threatens Peruvian Community

A community in Peru is speaking out about the threat to their livelihood posed by the Canadian company, Manhattan Minerals, which is working to develop a gold mine in Tambogrande, Peru. The woman in the video below expresses her fears about the mine, which are not unfounded. Here’s an excerpt from a report Friends of the Earth did about the Yanacocha gold mine in the Peruvian Andes,

“Had they just shot me in the head, I would have felt better. Nothing could be worse than seeing my daughters suffer and hear them tell me about the tremendous pain in their eyes, their backs, their heads, day in day out. What can a father say to his sick children? How can I explain that the world’s richest gold mine sitting on that mountain does not want to help us?”
-Alfonso Charrasco, more than three years after the mercury spill that forced him and his family to flee their birth village.

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