Don’t be fooled by claims of “clean coal” as a means of feeding US energy consumption. Aside from the environmental destruction caused by coal mining, there are human rights issues that are seldom even made part of the dialogue. The coal industry is vehemently re working the image of coal to depict an available and affordable source of clean energy. But we know that the displacement of the Wayuu of Bahia Portete, and of other Colombian groups from La Guajira region, is directly related to the extraction of coal from their traditional lands. BRIDGES has joined with others to form this Opposition COALition to address violations committed against the Environment, Human Rights and Social Justice as a result of the extraction and sale of coal.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE COAL

Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the hemisphere, and also the country with the highest levels of official and paramilitary violence, including forced displacement, killings of journalists, trade unionists, and human rights activists.

Foreign corporations are some of the major beneficiaries of this situation, and multinational corporations control Colombia’s two largest exports, oil and coal, much of which comes back to U.S. markets. Most of the coal goes to supply power plants in Massachusetts and the southeastern U.S., including the Salem Harbor and Brayton Point power stations in Massachusetts.

Colombia’s coal comes from two of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world: El Cerrejón, begun by Exxon in the 1980s and now owned by a consortium of European-based companies, and La Loma, owned by the Alabama-based Drummond Company. Both of these mines export large quantities of coal to the United States, and both have been accused of serious human rights violations.