In 2001, Father Marco Arana of Cajamarca, Peru, founded the Group for Training and Intervention for Sustainable Development (Grupo de Formacion e Intervencion para el Desarrollo Sostenible – GRUFIDES). GRUFIDES helps community leaders and local residents to monitor environmental impacts in their communities, and to take peaceful action to protect their environment and their livelihoods. Father Marco received a 2005 Conde Nast Award for his work to protect Cerro Quilish (a sacred mountain and important water source) from being mined by Newmont as part of the Yanacocha mine expansion. Father Marco received a 2005 Conde Nast Award for his work to protect Cerro Quilish (a sacred mountain and important water source) from being mined by Newmont as part of the Yanacocha mine expansion.
Journey Herbeck of the Greengrants staff interviewed Father Marco on April 24, 2006, when the latter was visiting Denver for events surrounding the Newmont Mining Corporation’s annual shareholders meeting.
Q: How did you get your start in working for sustainable development?
A: Well, I was a rural priest, and I was trained to do the work of the Church as well as social work. But I was sent to a very poor region, and clearly the people wanted to know about God and the Church, but they did not know how to read. They wanted to come to church but many of them were sick. So, before long, they were asking us for a lot of different kinds of help in their communities: they asked for help regarding their health, reforestation, education. I decided, with two other priests who lived in the community, to respond to the necessities of the community, and we understood that we could not preach the teachings of the Church and help the people with their faith without also helping the people improve their lives. We started to help improve the conditions of the schools, and we helped the women start a few small restaurants because the nutrition of the people was not too good. I spent a lot of my time getting involved with these things.
When the mine arrived, we noticed that the people were getting pushed off their land, that the water was becoming polluted, the people’s rights were being violated. Because of this I wanted to listen to the community and try to realize that in this case my job as priest was to preach the life of God to the poor people of the community in such a way that shed some light on the fact that the economy and social injustices were interfering with their right to live.
Little by little I noticed that the problem was very complicated, and I realized that it involved not just one little piece of land, one canal, or just one river, but rather the entire region. At this point the Bishop wanted me to leave the region for a time because he did not want any problems. During the time away I used the opportunity to study more and return to school, and in the meantime, even though I was not living in the community, the people with whom I was in contact continued to tell me of their problems and ask me for help.
Q: How did GRUFIDES form?
A: The people continued to ask me for help. By this time I had graduated from college, and I met many students who wanted to do something for justice and development in the region but did not have a way in which to organize and get support for their work. Some of them were students of law, engineering, economics, and sociology, and they told me, “Marco, we can work together, we can help ourselves together”
The university did not have many options for them to do this, so when they finished their studies in 1999 we decided to form GRUFIDES. One of our first tasks was to bring electricity to some poor rural communities in the region. When this worked, we did a study that brought in the participation of more poor communities in the region to do a bigger electrification project that was funded by VIT, a department of the government. We worked on this for about half a year, and instead of dispersing the profits among ourselves, we used it to buy things we needed like a desk, a telephone and a used truck so that we could get to the smaller communities.
Then a community asked us to bring electricity to its high school, and so we worked with the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation to accomplish this. After this the community wanted to continue learning more things about environmental education so we started a program for the rural teachers that lasted about three or four years, and during this time we trained many teachers. Then the people continued to ask about the themes of water and mines and soil, and the conflicts that occur within these subjects. During a year and a half we worked on this project, concentrating on mining and other subjects such as human rights, environmental rights, and maps of natural and social resources. And with this project GRUFIDES was able to enter very strongly into the mining debate.
After this, little donations began to come in, which helped a lot since before we did not even have enough money to make a phone call. A Swiss man who was a teacher at the church gave us a hundred dollars so that we could finally be able to start using our phones! (Laughs). Later he sent us $5,000 and we were able to buy a desk, a computer, order internet service that we had not had before. When we became a solidified group we then received funding from a Canadian organization, but the mining organization pressured the Canadian government and in the funds were cut. Later Global Greengrants Fund provided small donations two or three times, and then Oxfam aided us for a year and a half, but I am not sure if they will continue to do so.
Q: How have the funds from Global Greengrants helped GRUFIDES?
A: The funds from Greengrants have helped us with very pressing needs. For example, we had a need to defend community rights—there were community leaders who had been thrown in jail because they had demonstrated against the mines. Beforehand there hadn’t been a way to support them, pay court and lawyer fees and transportation fees so that they could get to their trial. GGF funds have been used to help us defend our community leaders.
The next time Greengrants helped us, the funds were used to cover a gap we had due to the cut-off of the support from our Canadian funder. We had the funding one week, then they cut it the next, and we were stuck with bills that we owed to our legal defense team but all of a sudden had no way to pay. Greengrants enabled us not to abandon the people for what could have been months.
The best thing about Greengrants funds has been that, although they are small grants, we are able to use them for very diverse purposes. In other words, we do not necessarily have to do a huge project and wait a long time for funding; the funds can be used for immediate necessities.
Q: Do you find the grant process fairly hassle-free?
A: Yes. There are a few forms you must fill out, and you must justify your reasoning, but the funds are great because they are used for the necessities of the towns and communities, not to create more red tape within our organization. When funds are from big institutions, they require a lot of bureaucracy and needless administration. I think that the funds from Greengrants are great for the needs of the people.
Q: What are GRUFIDES’ plans for the future?
A: We have some huge problems right now. We do not just have one huge mine project but instead we have many. Our region is so rich in minerals that the pressure from mining companies is huge. Due to this, there are a lot of communities in the region that are coming to us for support to defend themselves from the mining projects. And these communities are often times very far away. Sometimes it takes a day and a half by car to get to them because the roads are so bad. Other times it’s necessary to go all the way to the coast and then up a different road to avoid the mountains.
We are trying to find ways to strengthen community groups in each town because we want to help each region without becoming a huge group with enormous bureaucracy. We want to maintain the profile of an organization whose focus of importance is action and people. We want to help the people who work. We want to help them gain the things they need. There are other NGO’s working in the area, but many of them work in connection with the mine or must do what their funding organizations want them to do, whereas we want to work according to the will of the people. We want to work on what the people tell us to work on so that we can concentrate on their needs. We want to work for the people’s autonomy and self-determination so that they do not have to work at the volition of the NGO that needs to do this and this and this because of pressure applied by their financial supporters.
Another problem we have is that one of our goals — generating international pressure for the creation of an independent environmental monitoring department in Peru — is very difficult to attain. However, it’s urgent to do this. We think that we have to use many resources, ranging from technical studies to arranging dialogues between those involved in the issues, but also in the area of social pressure so that the businesses and the governments begin to understand the determination of the people. There is a lot of pressure for mining expansion, and GRUFIDES wants to continue to work in favor of the people who stand to be hurt by these expansions.