Synopsis
Mirage of El Dorado leads us into the mountains of northern Chile, where the devastating operations of Canadian mining companies threaten a fragile ecosystem in one of the driest parts of the globe. This « political cowboy flick» follows the pitched battle between a farming community in the Huasco valley and Canada’s mining giant Barrick Gold with its sidekick Noranda (now part of the Suisse corporation Xstrata). It’s a battle fought high in the Andes cordillera where farmers and local representatives fear the ravages of open pit mining operations in a place where a fragile system of glaciers feeds the rivers that flow into the farmlands built out of the advancing Atacama desert.
A word from Tënk
In 2004, Martin Frigon directed the documentary Make Money, Salut bonsoir! (Environment Award 2004 at the FFPE), a film that examines the impact of the closure of the Noranda mine on the community of Murdochville in the Gaspé Peninsula. Committed as he is and knowing the exodus of the mining company to Chile, Frigon decides to track it down in the Chilean Andes to discover Barrick Gold's disputed copper and gold mine project: Pascua-Lama. There, the same reality: short-lived jobs, irreversible damage to the environment, lung diseases and tons of cyanide, lead and arsenic that will be left in the Chilean soil.
During this journey, we discover many people who are opposed to the exploitation project: "Open-pit mining is the worst thing that can happen. The transnational mining companies are terrible because they take advantage of the absence of laws to destroy everything they can. And all this circus and legal loopholes allow these things to happen." As a result, people in communities affected by mining and development are filled with bitterness and powerlessness in the face of the arrogance and dominance of mining companies. At a meeting at Barrick Gold's headquarters in Toronto, founding president Peter Munk dared to tell his members: "God did not create deposits in the middle of Manhattan or Paris, but rather decided to put gold in isolated communities. The arrival of responsible and transparent mines like ours in these areas creates thousands of jobs to escape the cycle of poverty."
Fortunately, after several years of legal challenges and public protests, the Chilean government ruled in 2021 that the Canadian mining company must close the Chilean portion of its mine. An unprecedented victory for those concerned about the environmental impacts of mining.
Christian Mathieu Fournier
Filmmaker
