Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

It is a habit of the oligarchy to take refuge in a military camp and ask the Generals to move on their behalf. This is what Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López did on Tuesday morning, on the last day of April. López fled house arrest to join Guaidó in the vicinity of the Carlota military base in Caracas (Venezuela). This is not the first attempted military coup, with the political leadership of the oligarchy begging for the men in green to set aside the Constitution. Roberto Micheletti drove to the Honduran presidential palace in Tegucigalpa on the back of a tank in 2009. The oligarchies of Thailand and Pakistan have also recently begged the army to depose an elected head of government and produce councils of peace and order, words that are emptied of meaning in this context.

By nightfall, it was clear that the coup – one of many attempted in Venezuela – had failed. This was despite the clear support delivered to Guaidó by the United States and by the Lima Group, set up in 2017 to overthrow the government in Venezuela. What prevented the coup – despite the difficult conditions inside Venezuelan society – was the mass mobilisation in the streets. I recall seeing some of these rallies earlier this year, the people determined to protect the sovereignty of their country, determined to allow the Bolivarian process to stumble along against all odds. It is this that continues to prevent – for now (as Chávez would say) – the victory of the oligarchy and its outside backers.

The Lima Group comprises most of the right-wing Latin American political forces. But it has one unusual member, one who has been at the forefront of its efforts – Canada. Why is Canada, otherwise so particular about putting forward a face of liberalism and decency, at the lead of trying to overthrow a government by force?

A close look at Canada’s government and its business interests reveals something quite different than the casual liberalism of its reputation. In 2017, three Canadian professors – Shin Imai, Leah Gardner and Sarah Weinberger – released a study called The ‘Canada Brand’: Violence and Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America. They show that between 2000 and 2015, at least 44 people had been killed as a result of violence around Canadian-owned mines in Latin America. The stories are chilling, the violence routine and deadly.

There is a very high correlation between the lands that mining companies want and the lands that are controlled by indigenous communities. This is the case from Chile to Guatemala, from Canada itself to Papua New Guinea. Canada’s Cameco, the world’s largest uranium company, will begin to mine in the lands of the Tijwarl community – an aboriginal people in Western Australia. Protest upon protest has not awakened the Australian public to the dangers posed to the Tijwarl community, nor has this stopped the hand of the Australian government. They are determined to mine for profit. Vicky Abdullah, a Tijwarl leader, tells us (in the video below) that the mine will ruin ‘mother earth’.

Our Briefing opens with Barrick, one of Canada’s largest and most influential companies. The ‘violation’ that we detail is its role in rape, violence and arson at the North Mara Mine (Tanzania), at the Durban Roodepoort Deep Mine (South Africa) and at the Porgera Gold Mine (Papua New Guinea). These, and many more, are a series of criminal acts, tragedies for the people multiplying as the indifference of capitalism runs roughshod over their hopes.

Decades ago, John Bita – a poet from Papua New Guinea – wrote Song of an Old Woman on Bougainville (1971):

Weep weep let us weep.
Weep weep let us weep.
We thought it was merely a stone
We thought it was merely a stone
But it carried away our wealth.

Warmly, Vijay.

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