Argentina

Has mining infiltrated universities?

Hernán Scandizzo

21/01/2010

Opinión

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Three Argentine universities last year rejected the use of public funds generated by mining, sparking a nationwide debate on whether to use money stemming from the lucrative, but environmentally questionable industry.

Opponents of using these funds argue that mining companies could try to play a role in curricula, while others say the money could help cushion school budgets.

Throughout 2009, 26 departments at the state-run National Universities of Córdoba, Río Cuarto and Luján rejected the use of mining funds. The calls were initiated a year earlier by the Esquel site of the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco," which turned down these funds.

When doing so, the advising council of this university, a public institution, highlighted that Esquel had rejected large-scale mining because of reported environmental damage, which it first signaled in 2003, when more than 80 percent of the community rejected gold mining at a nearby pit. The council added that the university was not alien to the local population´s will.

Currently, mining-generated funds at the National Inter-University Council, which coordinates policies for 40 state-run universities across Argentina, total 50 million pesos (US$13.2 million).

Amid growing opposition to open-pit mining in the Andes over the past eight years, the distribution of 36.8 million pesos ($9 million) from the Yacimiento Minero Aguas de Dionisio, or YMAD mine among the state-run universities caused an outcry from some parts of the academic community.

Origin of the funds

The gold-copper reserves of Aguas de Dionisio were discovered in 1948, and were taken over by the local Catamarca government, the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán and the central government, for which they created the mining company, known as YMAD. During the sweeping privatizations early in the 1989-99 government of President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-99), YMAD was sold off to Minera Alumbrera Ltd., a holding of Swiss mining giant Xstrata Plc, which held 50 percent; Canadian miners Goldcorp Inc. with 37.5 percent and Yamana Gold with 12.5 percent.

Four percent of the mine's revenue was destined for the state-run universities.

Over the last decade, reports surfaced of toxic chemicals and spills from a 316-kilometer tubes that runs to Tucumán province.

Rejecting funds

On June 10, Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel sent a letter to the inter-university agency and to presidents of each of the state-run universities, urging them to reject funds that "come from the destructive and contaminating activity that every day causes more human rights violations for populations" near the mines.

Raúl Montenegro, an evolutionary biology professor at the Cordoba university and president of the Foundation for the Defense of the Environment, argued that the mine required 95 million liters of water a day to operate in the semi-arid region.

Accepting money from large-scale, open-pit mining could threaten the rights of local communities, said Mirta Antonelli, a philosophy researcher at the Cordoba university.

This "goes beyond environmental impacts to the nucleus of social fabric, cultural diversity, human rights and the psychological suffering of the local residents," she told Latinamerica Press.

But not everyone in the universities opposes funds from mining. "Not incorporating this money in the budget — which, as all money, could be considered dirty, since we're talking about the mother of products from the capitalist system — would logically lead us to renounce the very budget for public universities, which, as we all know, is composed of funds coming from very questionable activities," Hugo Trinchero, dean of the Philosophy Department at the University of Buenos Aires, said in a statement in August. "For example, the money that comes from soy production."

Jair Zolotow, president of the University of Buenos Aires´ Social Science Department´s Student Center, the only department that rejected the funds at that university, said that while the money is part of the 20 percent the state receives from the mine, "accepting it is a form of legitimizing business activities and allowing companies to end up setting the agenda in lesson plans."

Source: Latinamerica Press: http://www.lapress.org/index.asp

https://www.alainet.org/es/node/138957