Illegal Mining Presents Golden Opportunity for Mexico Crime Groups Patrick Corcoran - InSight Crime
go to original September 29, 2016

A prominent Mexican activist turned government official recently called attention to the ties between organized crime and the nation's mining industry, sounding an alarm that has grown increasingly loud in recent years.

In an early September public event concentrating largely on the 1994 Chiapas uprising, Jaime Martínez Veloz, head of the official Commission for the Dialogue with Indigenous Peoples (Comisión para el Diálogo con los Pueblos Indígenas) and a longtime advocate, blamed Mexico's mining industry for strengthening organized crime.

Martínez Veloz's agency, which operates as part of the Interior Ministry, has long made the mining industry's potential for harming Mexico's indigenous communities a priority. In 2014, it issued a report decrying the extension of tens of thousands of mining concessions over the past 20 years, thereby threatening many rural communities near the facilities.

Martínez Veloz's focus on the danger of the mining industry's ties with organized crime is more novel, however, and it is part of a growing chorus; government officials, activists, and investigators have all noted with alarm the increasing control groups like the Zetas and the Knights Templar (Caballeros Templarios) have over mining interests in Mexico.

For instance, a lengthy April report (pdf) by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime details the phenomenon's evolution in Mexico and other Latin American countries. The authors estimate that 9 percent of Mexico's multibillion-dollar gold industry is the result of illegal production, while mining in five different states - Chihuahua, Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, and Tamaulipas - is controlled by criminal groups.

Criminal influence over mines comes in many different forms. Often, gangs will demand extortion payments from local and multinational mine operators in exchange for allowing them to work their concessions. In other cases, criminal groups will take full control over a mining operation, using it both as a source of revenue and as a mechanism for laundering money. The groups that reportedly rely on mining include nationwide giants like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, and more regional powers such as the Knights Templar, the Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos.

Specific examples of the growing ties between legitimate miners and criminal groups have filtered out with increasing frequency. In 2015, mine owner Rob McEwen admitted to the Associated Press that he cut deals with Sinaloa criminal groups after one of his operations was robbed. In 2014, a Coahuila coal mine owner suspected of laundering money for the Zetas through his facility was murdered outside his home.

Read the rest at InSight Crime

Related: Protesters Block Access to Mexican Mine Owned by Goldcorp (Reuters)

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