The North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee Blog

from: Avi Chomsky

The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights Edited by Aviva Chomsky, Garry Leech and Steve Striffler Publisher, Casa Editorial Pisando Callos July 2007 200 pages ISBN: 9789589799550 USD $12.00 plus shipping Description: This book, as the title suggests, is about the people behind Colombian coal. More precisely, it is about the people behind the coal produced at El Cerrejón, the world’s largest open-pit coal mine, which is located in La Guajira in northern Colombia. The book aims to illustrate how the multinational mining companies that own El Cerrejón profit at the expense of the “people” of the Guajira region whose plight has remained hidden “behind the Colombian coal” that many of us in North America and Europe rely on to generate our electricity. Since the Cerrejón Mine opened in 1983, its operations and constant expansion have forcibly displaced indigenous Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities. The reports and articles in this book, written by various Colombians, North Americans and Europeans familiar with the issue, document this process and the human rights and environmental consequences. This case study illustrates a much bigger problem with the global economy and our dependence, in the North, on the natural resources of the South. It describes the very real plight of people who want nothing more than to defend teh social fabric of their communities and to live their lives with dignity.

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia_coal.htm----------------------------------------
North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee: http://home.comcast.net/~nscolombia/

posted by Alan  # 6:02 PM