According to environmentalists, the Southern Peru Copper plant emits 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into Ilo’s air each day--as much as 15 times the limit alllowed for smelting plants in the U.S. The pollution is causing severe respiratory problems among people who live in the city. On the days when the air is especially bad, hospitals and clinics are filled with coughing, wheezing and vomiting patients. The sulfur dioxide emissions have ruined agriculture and fishing in the area.
The operators of the smelting plant have also destroyed a 12-mile stretch of coastline by dumping 30 million metric tons of untreated mining wastes into the ocean every year. A recent New York Times article (12/12/95) described the surreal scene on the devastated beaches of Ilo: "A narrow stream of blackened water flows into the ocean while a bleak terrain of slate-colored silt stretches in both directions, reflecting fluorescent hues of green, yellow and blue."
The three U.S. corporations that control Southern Peru Copper--Asarco Inc., the Phelps Dodge Corporation and the Marmon Group--make enormous profits from their operations in Peru. In 1993, Southern Peru made a net profit of $43.6 million from $450 million in total revenues; the following year the figures shot up even higher to $110 million in profits.
The owners claim that the plant conforms to environmental standards in Peru. But multinational corporations make investments in oppressed countries like Peru--where the local ruling class is closely tied in with imperialism--expecting that they can get away with much more blatant environmental outrages than they can in the rich countries. The British capitalist magazine Economist wrote in September about the recent rush of foreign capital into mining operations in Peru and other countries of the Andes: "This opening to foreign investment has come at a time when environmental pressures are making mining increasingly difficult and costly in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States. Mining firms from these countries have needed little prompting to look abroad."
Southern Peru Copper callously denies that the plant has caused any health problems in Ilo. Hans Flury, the company’s vice president for legal affairs, said that Southern Copper has never received any complaints from its 2,000 workers. This alone, he claimed, was "proof" that there is no problem with the environment.
The New York Times article described what was uncovered when a reporter talked to the workers themselves: "But in several early morning interviews with Southern Peru employees waiting for company buses to take them to their jobs, dozens of workers said that they and their families suffered respiratory problems, including difficulty in breathing, coughing up heavy mucous and vomiting in reaction to the smelter’s smoke.
"The workers, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said they had reported these ailments to supervisors to no avail. They said they continued to work for Southern Peru because there were no other jobs available."
When asked about the health problems, Flury’s answer was: "I don’t live in Ilo so I don’t know. I have not been there on one of those smokey days." If this capitalist executive had been an officer at a death camp in Nazi Germany, he probably would have claimed that he knew nothing about the mass murder of Jews since he did not live there.
Southern Peru has set up an enclave of ranch homes in the hills of Ilo for foreign engineers and executives and their families. This company town has the look of a wealthy U.S. suburb, in contrast to the poverty of Ilo’s neighborhoods. Still, the smoke from the plant often reaches the hills, and the residents of the company town have to wear masks when the air is bad. But as a Peruvian woman who works as a maid in the home of one of the American families pointed out, "they are comforted by the fact that they only have to spend a few years here and then they move back to the States to clear their lungs. We are not so lucky."
One U.S. business man was quoted earlier this year as saying, "Peru keeps getting better and better." The question is: "better and better" for who? For investors and corporations from the U.S. and other imperialist countries, Peru is "full of opportunities" right now to make huge superprofits. The Fujimori government’s "privatization" program offers state-owned companies and factories for sale to investigators at bargain basement prices. Foreign mining corporations have staked claims on millions of acres of Peru’s land. In 1993 Newmont Mining, a U.S. based multinational corporation, invested $37 million in the Yanacocha gold mine in northern Peru. Newmont recouped its entire investment in just six months, and the mine now produces $90 milliion worth of gold a year.
The "economic recovery" has benefited a small number of rich Peruvians, but it is based on the quicksand of foreign capital investments. The peso crisis in Mexico showed how hollow such "development" really is. Billions of dollars left Mexico almost overnight, and the Mexican people were hit with massive inflation that sent the price of basic necessities sky high. There are already signs that a similar crisis might hit Peru. Peru’s trade deficit grew to $1 billion in 1994. Peru now owes over $22 billion to foreign lenders, and its debt will grow another $2.4 billion this year. In 1995 the Peruvian gevernment will pay imperialist lending agencies $1.04 billion in debt payments--that’s $87 million a month, or nearly $3 million a day.
For the majority of people in Peru, the "economic recovery" has meant nothing but hardship, hunger and pollution. The Fujimori regime has carried out massive cuts in employment, wages and government subsidies. Nine out of ten Peruvians are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they don’t have enough work to be able to really support themselves and their family. Even those who have jobs are finding it harder and harder to survive. Since 1990 wages have stayed the same or been cut--at the same time as government subsidies that helped pay for electricity, gas and basic foods like milk have been slashed. Extreme poverty is growing, and one out of every three people living in Lima now eats in soup kitchens.
In the countryside, where the poverty is even deeper than in the cities, many peasants are being driven off their land and into urban slums. Sixteen million Peruvians--70 percent of the population--suffer from poor nutrition. Chronic malnutrition has risen to 90 percent in some rural areas.
Because of this whole situation, labor costs in Peru are very cheap for the imperialists--they have a large pool of desperate and impoverished people to draw from. To put it another way: The suffering of the oppressed people is what makes Peru so "attractive" to imperialist vultures.
The example of Ilo shows how the imperialist drive for profits is causing severe enviromental damage in Peru. In 1994, Indians in the Peruvian rainforests filed a $1 billion suit against Texaco for dumping millions of gallons of oil into rivers over the last 20 years. The Peruvian government has allowed Mobil Oil to conduct exploratory drilling in the Madre de Dios region, home to one of the world’s most biologically diverse tropical forests. The area has also been opened up to logging and gold mining. The Bay of Paracas is a rich coastal reserve where large schools of fish, millions of migratory birds, colonies of marine mammals and endangered species like the giant sea turtle and the Humboldt penguin can be found. The Bay is now being ruined by industrial pollution from fishmeal factories, which discharge their waste directly into the water.
The people of Peru and other oppressed countries need development--but they need development that really meets the needs of the masses and society as a whole, not development based on the profit drive of the imperialists. The only way this can happen is if the oppressed people make revolution and seize power for themselves. The reactionary state must be overthrown, the imperialists completely driven out and a whole new society must be built.
This is the kind of revolution that is being carried out right now by the Communist Party of Peru. They are leading the poor peasants and workers of Peru in a revolutionary armed struggle--a people’s war--to put an end to a situation where poverty and repression rules the day.
The Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru (USA)
PO Box 1246, Berkeley, California 94701
415-252-5786 * Fax: 415-252-7414