Oxfam Partner Honored for Work to Protect the Environment
16 November 2005
Travel magazine recognizes Fr. Marco Arana’s mediation of mining crisis in Peru.
Condé Nast Traveler, a prominent international travel magazine, has cited Father Marco Arana as a finalist for its annual Environmental Award. He was named one of three runners-up in recognition of his important work to prevent mining exploration on Cerro Quilish, a mountain at the center of the watershed for the Peruvian city of Cajamarca.
Father Arana is the founder of Oxfam America’s partner organization in Cajamarca, the Group of Training and Intervention for Sustainable Development (GRUFIDES).
In the 2004, Cajamarca residents took to the streets to protest the proposed expansion of the Yanacocha gold mine to Cerro Quilish. They were confronting a powerful opponent: the Minera Yanacocha company, owned in part by the world’s largest gold mining company, Newmont Mining Corporation of Denver. The protesters objected to gold mining on Quilish on the grounds that it is a sacred place for the indigenous population as well as a source of irrigation and drinking water for nearby valleys and the city of Cajamarca.
Working through GRUFIDES, Father Arana supported a petition calling for Minera Yanacocha to halt explorations on the mountain, and helped broker negotiations between protesters and the company. Oxfam America has funded the work of GRUFIDES since 2003.
In recognition of his work, Father Arana won Peru’s most important national human rights prize in 2004. This year Condé Nast Traveler nominated Father Arana for its Environmental Award, citing his peaceful efforts to resolve the conflict. The winner of the prize was the Congolese conservationist Pierre Kakule Vwirasihikya.
Cajamarca is one of the main tourist destinations in Peru. This is not the first time that it has been a scene of confrontation between local people and foreigners looking for gold. Spanish conquistadors captured the Inca king Atahualpa in Cajamarca in 1531, and held him for a ransom: an entire room full of gold. Although the Spaniards received the gold, Atahualpa was murdered by the conquerors. Five centuries later, Cajamarca is now the scene of the largest gold mine in Latin America, and one of the most profitable in the world.
