CRM - Empowering Leaders - Gold Mine of Tears

GOLD MINE OF TEARS

Ministry Division: InnerCHANGE
Location: San Francisco, USA
Staff Members: Nate & Jenny Bacon, Jose Penate & Celida Aceves

It is amazing to me how ministry on the streets of San Francisco can lead to insights on global politics and economics, and a greater sense of God’s heart for the world.

As you know, for the past 13 years, the largest focus of our ministry in San Francisco has been with Latino youth who
get caught up in the worlds of gangs and drugs. For nearly 10 years a steady stream of young people have come to the
U.S. from one particular town in Honduras, and its surrounding villages. They come on freight train, risking life and limb (some as young as 11 or 12), and cross the border illegally. The lion’s share of these young people end up selling crack cocaine on the streets of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Vancouver, Canada.

Their primary motivation for coming to the U.S. is to send money home to their families who are dirt poor. They come
from El Porvenir, in the Francisco Morazan province of Honduras, an area of extreme poverty, where the majority eke out a living in subsistence farming.

They often begin selling drugs in order to pay back the debt owed to those who trafficked them across the border. Unfortunately, once having been caught up in the dark world of the drug trade, and faced with the immense challenge of finding “legitimate” work without legal status, most continue to sell crack in order to send money home. Because of the dynamics of the street economy, an increasing number also end up joining gangs.

While talking to a young Honduran named Ovando a few months ago (whose cousin "Alfredo" lives in Casa San Dimas, our transitional home), I discovered something new about El Porvenir. When Ovando shared it with me, I was angered to the point of tears. Right outside of their hometown, there is a literal gold mine.

Ovando told me that the Entremares Gold Mine was established five years before. He shared with me the devastation this mine has brought to his people.

School children have begun to lose their hair for no apparent reason, and babies are being born with skin diseases. The mine has brought massive deforestation, and consumed the water supply, drying up the wells of poor farmers throughout the area. Open-pit mining techniques involve the use of millions of gallons of water, mixed with arsenic, forcing the poor to purchase water or to use contaminated water from local streams. The poorest are unable to purchase water. It is believed the contaminated water is to blame for the heart-wrenching health effects on infants and children.

So who gets the gold?

Entremares is owned by a U.S. - Canadian Mining Company called Glamis Gold, Inc. In 2002, the Entremares mine produced roughly $32 million in gold. The average Honduran earns roughly $900/ year. The disparity is tragic, and in my mind, criminal.

At one time, foreign mining operations were required to pay 25% tariffs to the Honduran government. But just weeks after Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the worst natural disaster ever to hit Honduras, the "General Mining Law," under the influence of multi-national mining corporations, was passed quietly one night while all the attention was focused on the disaster. Now only 1% of the earnings from the mine remain in Honduras.

It is so tragically ironic, that with a gold mine in their own backyard, young people from El Porvenir continue to migrate northward and cross our borders, hoping to help their families survive.

This is as a moral issue. As Christians we value life from conception to natural death. In Matthew’s gospel, the life and treatment of the poor is the ultimate litmus test of our faith. "When I was hungry you fed me... [or]... you gave me nothing to eat." (Mt 25: 35, 42)