A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - What war against gold mining in French Guiana? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The deliberately provocative question aims to stimulate reflection and 
move beyond a simplistic, dogmatic answer. Regarding war, even the 
greatest libertarian thinkers have not always managed to maintain a 
clear position, as exemplified by Pierre Kropotkin and his Manifesto of 
the Sixteen of 1916, which supported the war against German imperialism. 
On the question of French Guiana, reading Carlos Taibo's work on 
overseas anarchisms[note]reveals that libertarian propaganda can spread 
throughout the world without guilt, provided it decolonizes itself. ---- 
The indigenous people of French Guiana are dying ---- In French Guiana, 
gold has always stirred intense passions, consuming both people and the 
land. Today, approximately 10 tons of gold (at over EUR100 per gram) are 
extracted each year by up to 10,000 garimpeiros, illegal gold miners, 
mostly Brazilians. A peak in the number of
illegal placer mines (gold mining sites) was reached in February 2026, 
according to state-run aerial surveys of the forest: 189 placer mines 
where, after clearing the forest with chainsaws and heavy machinery, the 
garimpeiros, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, leach the soil 
using monitor lances that project high-pressure water from nearby 
streams. The earth becomes mud, and the gold is collected on sloping 
boards, then amalgamated with mercury, which is readily available in 
neighboring Suriname. The earth, now liquid and containing countless 
quantities of heavy metals-including mercury, in addition to that of 
anthropogenic origin-flows into the waterways. The suspended matter 
makes the rivers turbid, preventing any aquatic life. The mercury, now 
methylmercury, is transmitted to the fish and poisons the Indigenous 
children and pregnant women who have traditionally consumed them. The 
presence
of the gold miners generates arms and drug trafficking, prostitution, 
and deadly score-settling. The canoes supplying the camps (electronics, 
generators, tools, food, etc.) harass the Indigenous villages with their 
noise, day and night. The inhabitants are threatened; their traditional 
way of life, rooted in the forest, is endangered: the water becomes 
deadly, game dwindles, hunted by the garimpeiros, as do the pigments 
used in traditional arts, which become increasingly scarce with each 
deforestation. The indigenous people of French Guiana are dying out, 
many turning to alcoholism or joining new American evangelical churches: 
the suicide rate among the Wayana people of the Upper Maroni, caught in 
a profound identity crisis, is 10 to 20 times higher than that of 
mainland France.

So, what is the State doing?

A legal action has been initiated by environmental associations and 
representatives of Indigenous peoples, seeking recognition of the 
State's culpable failure to combat illegal gold mining and demanding 
increased human and material resources. One of the primary demands, made 
with a heavy heart, is to increase the number of soldiers and gendarmes 
assigned to this specific fight. Indeed, faced with the threat, the 
State is doing far too little: the EUR70 million allocated annually 
pales in comparison to the EUR600 million of Operation Sentinelle, which 
has become ineffective; the 350 soldiers and gendarmes deployed daily in 
the forest are a paltry number compared to the 3,200 law enforcement 
officers deployed on March 25, 2025, in Sainte-Soline.

After the administrative court rejected the associations' appeal in May 
2026, the Wayana traditional chiefs of the Upper Maroni wrote to the 
prefect of French Guiana in a threatening tone, forbidding him from 
setting foot in their ancestral territory unless a genuine war was waged 
against illegal gold mining. Meanwhile, on the Upper Oyapock, the Teko 
and Wayampi chiefs of Camopi also indicated their intention to wage war, 
stating that their people have waged such wars for millennia to survive.

It goes without saying that the Wayana villages of the Upper Maroni have 
far more progressive forms of governance than the communes of mainland 
France: while relationships of domination, power, and money are not 
absent, decisions are, for example, often made following a process of 
direct deliberation involving all interested inhabitants, under the 
tukusipan, the village's main shelter.

Whether these same inhabitants wish to take up arms against the gold 
miners, or whether the State should do so in their place, can be 
unsettling for the dogmatic, anti-militarist anarchist. Would a war 
solely dedicated to protecting their health and environment be just? For 
some twenty years, and before the State launched its Anaconda, Harpie, 
and Harpie II operations, the indigenous people of the Oyapock and 
Maroni rivers had already attempted to organize their own defense: 
exchanges of gunfire with the garimpeiros (illegal gold miners) or the 
installation of cables across rivers to block passage were moments of 
intense conflict with the prefecture and the gendarmerie, who cried 
foul, claiming they were disturbing the peace. The indigenous people 
know the forest far better than the soldiers of the 9th Marine Infantry 
Regiment (9e RIMA) to the west or the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e 
REI) to the east, and even better than the mobile gendarmerie. Some are 
integrated into the armed forces as canoeists and reservists
. Shouldn't they be the ones waging this war? But with what means?

The only other solution proposed by the State, besides war, is, 
unsurprisingly, neoliberalism, through increasing the number of mining 
permits granted to legal gold miners who would occupy the land in place 
of the illegal ones. But these "legal" miners destroy the forest just as 
much, since, according to a report by the French National Forestry 
Office (ONF) released to the public in 2026, three-quarters of them 
commit violations of mining and environmental legislation.

Other paths may be possible:

improving living conditions in the Brazilian Northeast, the region of 
origin for the vast majority of gold miners; hiring illegal miners in 
useful jobs in French Guiana; outreach and mediation missions between 
the miners and the local communities to help them understand each 
other's problems, etc.

But can these measures be implemented urgently, and are they viable for 
10,000 garimpeiros fleeing poverty, indebted, or under pressure from 
Brazilian mafia factions, when paid jobs for the equally or even fewer 
indigenous population are sorely lacking, and when meager family and 
unemployment benefits are consumed by alcohol?

The French overseas territories, still not legally, economically, or 
morally decolonized, seem to be a relatively blind spot in anarchist 
discussions. How can libertarian activists respond to the indigenous 
population's cry for help? If the option of armed struggle is 
ideologically unacceptable, what concrete solutions can be implemented 
to urgently end this health, environmental, and cultural catastrophe?

Antoine Le Scolan
Individual 973

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=9201
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