Mexican farmers demand FTSE firm to compensate for illegal mining

Mexican farmers travelled to London to demand that a FTSE 100 company compensates them for illegal mining on their land and explain violence against anti-mining activists.

In 2013, Penmont mining, a subsidiary of Fresnillo, was ordered by an agrarian court in Mexico to pay members of the El Baj o community, co-owners of common land in Sonora, north-west Mexico, for the gold extracted and to restore the land to its original state.

Fresnillo told the Guardian it had complied with the court order by vacating the land and that it had no connection to any violence.

Jes s Thomas, one of the co-owners, said after the meeting: "We have spent eight years trying to get justice for our people." There are tonnes of cyanide in the soil, a lot of animals are dead. I made it clear to them in the meeting that they are in the wrong. They have never said anything in reply, they don't have any answer.

At least the owners of the company now have the right information to decide whether they are going to do the right thing. In 2018, two members of the El Baj o community Ra l Ibarra de la Paz and his wife Noem L pez were killed and disappeared. The president of the community, Jos de Jes s Robledo Cruz, and his wife, Mara de Jes s G mez Vega, were killed last year, and a list of 13 other members who fought against mining was found next to their bodies. Penmont previously suggested criminal gangs were to blame for the violence.

Fresnillio, which became the first Mexican company to list on the London Stock Exchange in 2008, made a gross profit of $936.9 m 788 m last year, according to its annual report.

Between 2010 and 2013 the company extracted 236,709 ounces of gold and removed 10,833, 527 tons of earth, making profits of about $436 m.

A spokesman for Fresnillo said the purpose of the company is to contribute to the wellbeing of people through the sustainable mining of silver and gold. We are proud to have a long series of community programmes across our business because of decades of trust and cooperation.

We are in all our markets and we do not immediately reject any suggestion that we are responsible for the deaths of community members. Fresnillo employees have been victims of continued inter-community violence. Fresnillo has complied fully with the court order and has vacated 1,824 hectares of land, resulting in the suspension of operations at Soledad-Dipolos since 2013.