An International Observer's Account of a Local Vote in Rio Blanco, Peru

By Brant McGee, Counsel (2007), Environmental Defender Law Center

As counsel for EDLC, I was invited to serve as an international observer at a vote on mining activities in three communities in northwestern Peru held on September 16, 2007. The subject of this local vote was an open pit copper and molybdenum mine, known as the Rio Blanco project and proposed by Minera Majaz. The invitation came from Ulises Garcia, the son of Godofredo Garcia, an engineer and community leader who was murdered around the time of the world's first local vote on a mining project, held in Tambogrande, Peru in 2002.

I joined several dozen Canadians, Europeans, and Latin Americans who had traveled to Peru to serve as international observers. Most were fluent in Spanish. We gathered in Piura two days before the vote. There the local Catholic Archdiocese fed and housed us in a large compound where we received our initial orientation on voting procedures and the political climate.

The National government opposes a vote

Peru's President Alan Garcia had conducted a vociferous daily campaign against the vote, calling it a "foreign conspiracy" and telling the country that it was organized by "communists"- a frightening label in a nation still recovering from a long civil war against a Maoist insurgency. The president had also attacked the vote as "illegal," and the national election authority denounced the local officials who sought the election.

Several days before the vote, the national election commission had ordered the seizure of election documents, and local police near Tambogrande seized two boxes of printed ballots from officials on a bus. The next day, the international observers went to the local office of the National Police to seek the return of the ballots. Several hours later, the local prosecutor ordered the release of the boxes and formally stated, in a three page legal document, that he had no legal authority to retain them. Our presence did not contribute to that decision but it probably accelerated the actual release of the boxes.

The day before the vote

The international observers were divided into three groups to cover each of the widely scattered communities involved in the vote. For my group it was a six hour bus ride up switchbacks and steep but cultivated valleys to Ayabaca, the largest of the towns, located at over 8,800 feet in elevation. When we arrived the afternoon before the election, the town square was filled with people who had walked or ridden crowded buses and trucks for many hours in order to vote. The most common poster declared "No Me Mientos" (Don't Lie to Me), an apparent reference to the company proposing the mine. At the local headquarters of one of the many anti-mining NGOs present that day, we listened to a speech from an elected leader about the importance of the vote and the necessity of non-violence.

Three busloads of heavily armed National Police had arrived minutes before and the townspeople were agitated and fearful about potential intimidation or violence. But negotiations later that day between town officials and the National Police resulted in an agreement that the police would stay away from the soccer stadium where the voting was to take place, and allow local groups to provide security for the voters. This agreement was welcome news to those who had feared that a police presence would intimidate some voters because of the history of violence by the National Police throughout Peru.

Most of the thousands of people from the villages slept outside in the cold that night at the town square or at the entrance to the soccer stadium where the voting was to take place the next day.

The Vote

Early the following morning, we made our way through the throngs into the stadium, where large bamboo mats had been used to create more than seventy voting booths around the perimeter. Each small voting district (between 120 and 250 eligible voters) was represented by a space with a table and three chairs at the front, and a child's school desk facing the back wall to allow privacy in marking one's ballot.

1 2Next Page »

An Observer's Account

Most of the thousands of people from the villages slept outside in the cold that night at the town square where the voting was to take place the
next day.