Latin America Case Study

The purpose of this essay is to examine the impact of Canadian mining corporation’s operations within Latin America using various case studies of individual mines. It will be found that these corporations are in a relationship of exploitation with the neighboring communities surrounding their projects, and cause much more damage than benefits for recipient countries. An analyzation of the Canadian government’s actions, environmental impacts, and human rights abuses that have been caused by Canadian mining projects will validate my argument that these projects are exploitive rather than development oriented. The following paragraph will provide a brief history of Canada’s involvement with mining in Latin America.
A substantial debt crisis in the 1980s caused great economic instability in Latin America when debts owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) exceeded what countries could repay (Gordon and Webber 2008:66). The IMF and WB used the dire circumstances in Latin America to entice governments to undergo neoliberal structural adjustment to their economic policies, removing trade barriers with the Global North (ibid.). Alongside the removal of trade barriers, Canada also became involved in free trade agreements with Mexico and the United States with the ratification of …show more content…
According to the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, mining generates more toxic waste than any other economic sector (Urkidi and Walter 2011: 683). Many of mines operated by Canadian corporations are gold mines, which employ the usage of cyanide filtering to extract the most resources, albeit at the price of a higher environmental impact (ibid.). A case study of the environmental impact of a gold mine located in Guyana will be used to exemplify the type of impact that these mining practices can