“We’ve simply been forgotten”

Twenty fatalities per year

Yet how dangerous is this work really? Is it possible to quantify the severity and frequency of accidents at the Porco mine? As there are no reliable statistics, the hospital is the best place to answer these questions.

Doctor Reyna Paucara Canaza has worked here since 2016, and the figures she shares get under your skin.

She says that every day she treats mine workers with moderately severe to severe injuries.

The most common are brain injuries and back injuries caused by falling stone slabs or falls. In the past four years of her work as a doctor, there have been on average 20 fatalities per year at the mine. The latest time when commodities prices skyrocketed and the mine sought more workers than normal – in 2017 – there was a fatality nearly every week. She frequently treats 15 and 16-year olds and sometimes even younger patients.

The youngest injured mine worker she could remember was 11 years old.

In the cases of the most severe injuries, the doctors are not able to provide any more than first aid using the basic facilities at the healthcare centre in Porco. In such cases, the injured are transferred to Potosí. Unfortunately they also lack equipment and personnel for rescues inside the mine. Injured workers are usually rescued by their colleagues and brought to the hospital in any truck available, and yes, the doctor adds, this can of course lead to additional injuries.

The company Illapa in Porco does run two healthcare centres – which are each equipped with an ambulance. The problem is that this doesn’t help cooperative workers at all. According to an agreement with the state health insurance, “Illapa is not permitted to provide services to third parties”, Glencore writes in response to an enquiry.

Marcela Rojas has been working for the municipality of Porco for a good three years – and during this time she has carried out two detailed studies of the environmental impacts of the mining activities and the quality of the water in the municipality below the mine.

We get off at the village of Sora Molino. Marcela Rojas leads us to the former drinking source of the village: the Agua Castilla river. Now in the dry period it is more a trickle, with a reddish glimmer and foam bubbles.

50 times the permitted maximum

In September last year, at six in the morning Marcela Rojas took samples from the river, which had always been the inhabitants’ most important source of drinking water, and sent them to a laboratory to be analysed. The results were highly concerning. The permitted maximum of zinc traces in drinking water in both Bolivia and Switzerland is 5 milligrams per litre. The water in Sora Molina had 30.6 milligrams per litre – six times the permitted concentration of the metal, which at high levels damages not only plants but human organs. Iron, which is particularly damaging to the liver, was found in a concentration of 8.51 milligrams per litre – over 28 times the permitted maximum of 0.3 milligrams in Bolivia. Manganese, which in high concentrations impacts on cognitive and motor functioning, was present in Sora Molino to a concentration of 5.29 milligrams per litre – over 50 times the Bolivian permitted maximum of 0.1 milligram and over 100 times the permitted maximum in Switzerland.

Last January, Marcela Rojas submitted her report to the department government in Potosí. What has happened since then? “That is what’s frustrating” she says. Only the departmental authorities have the power to impose sanctions and order a plant to shut down for a period, until it is restored. Yet that has never happened.

Once, twice a year someone from the “secretariat of Mother Earth”, the environment ministry, accompanies her on an inspection, and then … nothing happens.

Together with the environmental engineer, we make our way to the few houses in the village that are not dilapidated and are still covered by intact thatched roofs. On a hillside overlooking the village, the remnants of low walls can be seen, witnesses to the terraces that food was once cultivated on. Now nothing apart from thickets grow there. In front of a yard, delicate plants are growing on a small field on which fava beans should one day grow. Lama coats are lying out to dry on a windowsill, a dog is barking somewhere, it’s only people that we don’t see.

We are just about to leave when we see a pickup truck in the distance, driving in our direction. On the back it is carrying a group of men and women dressed in black. They are relatives of 42-year-old Juana Choque, who introduces herself as the “widow of Xenon Cruz”. Her husband died exactly a month ago, aged 46. The grieving family came here to pay tribute to him. Juana Choque gestures to a solitary cross, stuck in the ground between two bushes. “He’s buried here, and this is where I’ll be buried”.

Naturally, this begs the question: who is responsible for the poisoned water in the municipality below the Porco mine? The company Illapa, that mines using machinery and a large quantity of water? Or the poorly regulated cooperatives? In contrast to the cooperatives, Glencore’s subsidiary has a valid environmental licence, says the environmental engineer Marcela Rojas.

However, when Illapa’s documents were audited in March, several problems were identified.

Zinc and lead deposits were not properly covered and some channels which serve to prevent traces from entering the river were missing. In the hamlet Playa Verde, which is located beneath one of the retention tanks operated by Illapa, the authorities tested the water quality following complaints from inhabitants. They found traces of lead, iron and zinc over the permitted maximum levels. And finally the so-called acid mine drainage was insufficiently retained.

When requested, Anna Krutikov from Glencore confirmed the March 2020 audit and wrote that the official inspection report “found no environmental breaches” and that the recommendations for the management of acid rock drainage “have been addressed”. In relation to the water quality she wrote that they were engaging with the municipal authorities “to understand their concerns”.

What is this due diligence worth?

We would have liked to speak to the company’s local management to raise our concerns. Yet a prospective meeting never took place and when we tried our luck at the headquarters in La Paz, on the first day we were told that unfortunately all managers are in meetings. On the second day we were told that unfortunately all managers were working from home and are not reachable. The questions that we submitted in written form were ultimately answered from the headquarters in Zug.

With regard to the agreements with the cooperatives, Glencore’s sustainability head Anna Krutikov, writes to us that Illapa “has no contracts or agreements with the cooperatives”. Once the company “has completed its operations in particular parts of the concession and has no further plans to mine, it must inform Comibol, who may or may not reassign these areas to the cooperatives. The company is therefore at least indirectly involved in deciding where the cooperatives are allowed to work. Numerous ‘socios’ of the cooperatives complain to us that Illapa only leave them ‘la basura’ (the rubbish).

At Fedecomin, the mine cooperatives’ federation, we are told that alongside the official contracts with Comibol there are direct informal discussions and agreements between Illapa and cooperatives. Yet these are often not written down and do not have “any legal status”.

Glencore does not respond to our question on the proportion of the cooperatives’ ore that Illapa purchases, calling it “commercially sensitive” information. However, it states that the purchasing contracts with the cooperatives “are subject to due diligence on commercial, legal and operational aspects, including (…) safety and risks of child labour, in line with the Glencore Supplier Standards. Among other things, these standards include the expectation that suppliers “have zero tolerance for any form of modern slavery, including […] child labour” and that they provide “a safe and healthy working environment, including appropriate Personal Protective Equipment”.

Looking at the circumstances on the ground in Porco, these statements seem downright absurd. Anyone and everyone who looks around in Porco early in the morning or at the end of the working day will see that most of the mine workers do not have appropriate Personal Protective Equipment and that many of them are clearly underage.

You have to ask yourself: what exactly did a due diligence check if it didn’t pick this up?

In terms of the checks at the entrance to the mine, Glencore writes that people who enter the area are registered, and that one of the checks carried out is the use of Personal Protective Equipment. However, Illap has no authority to “force any requirement on cooperative members”.

For its part, in 2019 Sinchi Wayra, the holding company that owns Illapa S.A., reported to the UN Global Compact that it held a regular dialogue with the cooperatives on “important topics such as Personal Protective Equipment, the use of child labour and environmental damage”.

There were also plans to visit the cooperatives to ensure that “they are complying with our conditions”. We do not know whether these visits have taken place. What you can probably say is that if they have, they obviously had the same effect as the dialogue or the well-formulated sentences in the supplier standards, i.e. not much at all.

Hurdles in red tap

We would also have liked to ask Comibol some questions: what is it doing to regulate the lawlessness in the cooperatives? What responsibilities does it consider the firm Illapa to have as operator of the mine?

The endeavour to find answers to these and other questions from the Bolivian authorities is probably best described as a hurdles circuit race. Firstly, we try the regional offices in Potosí, who refer us onto the headquarters in La Paz. We go there. Assessing the working conditions among cooperatives is difficult, and improving them is even harder, we are told by the friendly press officer there. The cooperatives are unfortunately beyond the control of the company and the authorities, he adds frankly.

Yet he isn’t able to tell us anything about contracts or responsibilities in relation to the Porco mine. Those who could are all in meetings for the whole day, he says. We should submit our questions in writing.

After I’ve done that, the situation becomes bizarre. After two days of considerations, the press officer tells us that I should address my questions directly to the president of Comibol. I do this, and finally I receive a letter from the president in which he states that he unfortunately has to request a formal motion to ascertain that I am in fact the person who asked the questions. I give up.

“You can’t live here anymore”

On its sustainability page, Glencore writes: “We uphold human rights and support the sustainable, long-term development of the local communities in which we operate.” It is unclear what specific sustainability efforts Glencore undertakes in Bolivia – the country is simply not mentioned in the Zug-based company’s latest 97-page sustainability report.

Juana Choque, the widow from Sora Molina, has made her verdict. “The company took all of my husband’s strength and threw him away like a dog” she says, “and because of the poisoned water you can’t live here anymore”.