Minera Argenta, the Argentine subsidiary of the Vancouver-based mining company Pan American Silver Corp., announced on Dec. 21 that it was suspending its Navidad silver mining project in the southern province of Chubut and would close its offices in Puerto Madryn and Trelew. The principal reason for the suspension was the failure of the province's governor, Martín Buzzi, to get the legislature to back his plan to circumvent Law 5001, which bans open-pit mines and the use of cyanide in mining operations in Chubut. Residents of the province had organized popular assemblies to oppose Buzzi's plan; dozens of mining opponents were injured when construction workers attacked them in Rawson, the province's administrative capital, on Nov. 27.

Peru's Minister of Mines and Energy, Jorge Merino, assured international investors Dec. 21 that his government will make every effort to see the controversial Conga and Tía María mining projects move forward in 2013. The two projects, in Cajamarca and Arequipa region, respectivamente, have both been suspended after campesino protests.  The pledge is part of the Ollanta Humala government's plan to attract $10 million in mining investment in 2013, $10 million more than this year. Merino also vowed to build new compression plants to expand the capacity of the trans-Andean Camisea gas pipeline from 1,200 cubic feet to 1,600. (El Comercio, Dec. 21)

On Dec. 19, some 6,000 campesinos and their supporters filled the streets of Chiclayo, capital of Peru's northern Lambayeque region, demanding the repeal of the National Water Authority's resolutions  089-2012 and 090-2012, which authoritize La Zanja mining company to begin dumping waste water in the canyons of La Pampa and El Cedro, inland across the border in Cajamarca region. These canyons empty into the Río Chancay, which flows back into Lambayeque (where it joins with the Río Reque to meet the sea near Chiclayo). The rally concluded at the Lambayeque regional government headquaters, where representatives of different organizations making up the Lambayeque Unitary Struggle Command (CULL) delivered a message to regional president Humberto Acuña Peralta, demanding that he take immediate action to protect the waters of the Río Chancay.

Traditional authorities at the Aymara community of Mallku Khota in Bolivia's Potosí department declared two technicians from Canadian mining company South American Silver to be fugitives from justice for failing to to follow through on pledges to provide a payment of two thousand abode bricks each as a fine after they were found to be "spying" on community meetings. "We lament that they have not complied, despite their commitment, and despite guarantees from the national authorities," said community leader Leonardo Montaño. "This implicates that the Political Constitution of the State is not being complied with."

Ejidatarios (communal peasants) from the community of Salaverna, in Mexico's north-central Zacatecas state, have partially shut operations at a gold mine owned by magnate Carlos Slim, in protest over the destruction of natural resources and health risks to local residents, according to Edith Ortega González, local director of the activist network El Barzón. Ortega said six of the campesinos have formed a permanent plantón, or protest vigil, at the gates of the Frisco Tayahua mine, "in defense of their land." She said state and federal authorities had "abandoned" the community, in Mazapil municipality, while dynamite explosions and other mining activity cause landslides on the slopes above the ejido (communal land-holding). Several homes were damaged in a Dec. 6 landslide, and the mining operations have also released toxic gases, Ortega said. The explosions in the area remain ongoing. Ortega added that there is a title despute to the land-holding, and many of the campesinos have already abandoned the ejido. The 40 or so who remain "run the risk of being violently evicted by the company's gunmen." (OCMAL, Dec. 26)

Rafael Arcangel Quispe Flores, leader of the Bolivian Aymara organization CONAMAQ this month denounced President Evo Morales before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and also before the seat in that city of the International Labor Organization (ILO), whose convention 169 outlines the responsibilities of states to indigenous peoples. Quispe especially stressed the situation at the TIPNIS indigenous reserve on the edge of Bolivia's Amazon, threatened by a pending road project. (De-Bolivia, Dec. 5)

On Dec. 15 in the city of Cajamarca, Peru, unknown persons broke into the house of attorney Mirtha Vásquez, a director of the NGO Grufides, a leading voice in the struggle against the controversial Conga mine project. One day earlier, the truck of Sergio Sánchez, a member of the Grufides team, was vandalized; five weeks earlier, the home of another Grufides activist, Ivett Sánchez, was similarly broken into. The incidents follow a report in Revista Caretas after Arana was assaulted by police during protests in July that the National Police had dispatched units of the Intelligence Directorate (DIRIN) to tail him. (GRUFIDES, Dec. 17)

According to Argentine environmentalist groups, dozens of opponents of large-scale mining projects were injured when hundreds of construction workers attacked them at the provincial legislature building in Rawson, the administrative capital of the southern province of Chubut, on the late afternoon of Nov. 27. At a press conference held the next day in the offices of the Chubut Education Workers Association (ATECH), local activists charged that the attack had been carried out by members of the Workers Union of Construction of the Argentine Republic Union (UOCRA) contracted by Chubut governor Martín Buzzi, of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), and federal legislative deputy Carlos Eliceche. UOCRA general secretary Gerardo Martínez is said to have worked as a secret agent at the Campo de Mayo military base during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.