04222
May 12, 2004  

Push comes to shove 

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LA OROYA, Peru — Members of a Presbyterian Church (USA)-supported citizens’ group in this mountainous community are facing renewed threats and physical assaults as they press a Missouri mining company to abide by agreements it has made with the Peruvian government to clean up its operations.

     Movement for the Health of La Oroya (MOSAO) members were attacked and pummeled with rocks on April 14 by five busloads of Doe Run smelter employees outside the National Congress in Lima, where the group was invited to testify by the Congressional Environment and Ecology Commission. The commission was hearing a Doe run request for a fourth delay, this one of five years duration, in the effective date of a 1997 agreement it made with the government to reduce its emissions of lead into La Oroya’s air and water.

     Health officials say 100 percent of La Oroya’s children suffer from lead poisoning, with levels far exceeding allowable levels under Peruvian law.

     “Doe Run is for the fourth time attempting to avoid responsibility and delay necessary actions which would reduce chronic industrial lead poisoning in the children of La Oroya,” said the Rev. Elinor Stock of Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery’s Joining Hands Against Hunger (JHAH) group, which supports MOSAO.

     The headquarters of the Doe Run Co. is in suburban St. Louis.

     JHAH is an international partnership project sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

     “The situation in La Oroya is quickly becoming more violent,” said the Rev. Hunter Farrell, a PC(USA) missionary in Peru who works with MOSAO. “We are deeply concerned about this situation and have requested official police protection for MOSAO members. We are also calling on the Doe Run Company to intervene, because we believe that Doe Run has the power to stop this senseless violence. The problems of La Oroya are long‑standing and complex, and they require careful study, considered reflection and open communication by all parties,” he said.

     Peru’s minister of energy and mining, Jaime Quijandria, said last week that the smelter must comply with its original agreement, which calls for modernization and pollution abatement.  

     Doe Run Peru has invested just $40.3 million of the $174 million required to implement the pollution-control agreement, despite a large increase in lead prices since last year.

     The Ministry of Energy & Mining office recently appointed a MOSAO‑recommended “coordinating committee” to study mining- and smelting-related issues in Peru. Two Doe Run officials, but no citizens’ representatives, were named to the committee.

     In addition to the April 14 attack in Lima, Farrell said, MOSAO members have been threatened with death if they continue to press Doe Run to clean up its La Oroya operations. Two other MOSAO members have been labeled “troublemakers” and gangsters” in leaflets distributed  by Doe Run workers. Newspaper ads have leveled similar charges.

     Farrell asked all Presbyterians for their prayers.

     “Pray with us against violence and fear,” he said, “and for a reasonable and lawful approach to solving La Oroya’s problems that respects the dignity of all of La Oroya’s people.”