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In Peru, A 'Long March Of Sacrifice' To Protest Mining Damage

CERRO DE PASCO — More than 2,000 children in Peru's Pasco region have blood lead levels far higher than what the World Health Organization says is a safe range for children, and at least 70 of them are suffering from resulting physical illnesses and disabilities, Lima-based daily El Comercio reports.

The culprit is mining, and to protest the environmental and physical damage that it has wrought on their city, 58 activists from the central Peruvian city of Cerro de Pasco recently began a long "march of sacrifice" to the capital of Lima, 320 kilometers away. Cerro de Pasco is the region's capital and has been a center of global silver production since the Spanish colonial era.

The primary goal of the march is to pressure the Peruvian government to provide medical care to the children and to open a clinic to treat those suffering from mining-related illnesses.

Cerro de Pasco is home to a large open pit polymetal mine, and the Pasco region is rich with mineral deposits.

El Comercio writes that a local construction company stored hazardous residue from open pit mining for several years, contaminating local communities in the process. The Peruvian Health Ministry announced in a press statement that it treated 250 children from Pasco, but the Pasco Regional Hospital's director said that none of the patients showed signs of lead poisoning.


The villagers, activists and environmentalists will continue the march nonetheless and plan to reach Lima by Oct. 3.

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Ideas

Populists With A Plan: Welcome To The Age Of Reactionism

Right-wing reaction to the globalized, liberal order is starting to look less dispersed and more systematic, like 20th-century political movements like socialism and communism.

Photo of Bolsonaro Supporters Storming Congress

Supporters of former Brazilian President Bolsonaro clash with mounted police in the capital.

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — In a 2018 text published in the International Studies Quarterly, academics Joseph MacKay and Christopher David La Roche asked why there was no "Reactionary International Theory." In December of that year, speaking with Crisis journal, I myself stressed that beyond Europe and the United States, international reactionism was taking root in Latin America. Then in 2019, "Reactionary Internationalism" and the philosophy of the New Right were the subjects of another paper by Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen.

As an emergent trend, the "reactionary international" is worth considering.

This international is comparable in scope to 20th-century currents like the Communist International, Socialist International and Christian Democrat International. While those were prominent in Europe, the new reaction has emerged most emblematically in Anglo-American countries and remains a solidly Western phenomenon. Its expressions in peripheral countries, eastern Europe or Latin America have effectively adopted its mainstream proposals.

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