Everyday Activist - Marmato

Posted on Saturday, April 04, 2015 at 01:00 AM

Review: Marmato

Movie Review by Everyday Activist, CalgaryMovies.com

If you’re heading out to Banff to watch Tashi and the Monk on April 11, 2015, Marmato is also screening. Not as many people saw this film as it wasn’t on the main schedule at the Banff Mountain Film and Book festival, but as a festival volunteer, I watched it in November 2014.

Marmato, a gold mining town of 8000 people, had miners making a decent living working in traditional underground mines. When the price of gold rose to over $1000 an ounce, the community caught the attention of international mining juggernauts. Canadian mining companies are ready to level the mountain in order to start an open pit operation to facilitate gold extraction. To do that, the entire town, which is directly on the mountain would have to be relocated. Lawrence Perkes, a Canadian contractor featured in the movie, has worked on mining projects in Central and South America. He states, “They are going to take this whole mountain down. I have seen it before and it will happen here. This town is finished”.

The documentary follows the lives of different people as the Canadian bid for the mine starts to take shape. We see the usual tactics of companies promising pretty things including new back packs and school supplies for the children, while buying up the local rights. Many of these mines end up being illegally mined, for people to still make a living. The government sides with the Canadian company, so it sends in the troops to keep the locals away from the mines and minimize the protests. Soon dynamite is banned, forcing locals to cook up their own chemicals to explosives.

I’m glad Marmato made the encore performance for the festival as this is a Canadian issue that not many people are aware of. As a film, it was good, though with the amount of different people in the movie, the overall message didn’t come through as well as it could have. I liked the use of graphs showing how the gold prices affected both the company and the community activities. Most of the film revolved around the socio-economic and social justice aspects of mining, though parts touched on the environmental costs as well.

It’s rather counterintuitive to think about an American film maker taking 6 years to document gold mining in Columbia, including the injustices of a Canadian company in South America. When there’s money to be made at the tune of 20 billion dollars, Canadian mining companies are often found guilty of violence and oppression in many parts of the world. Having worked in a coal mine and a father who still works in one it’s hard to watch how Canadian mining companies treat people in other countries. For more information on those activities, Mining Watch (http://www.miningwatch.ca) is a great site that keeps tabs on what goes on in the Canadian Mining industry domestically and abroad.

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