Even Poor Mayans are Crushed by Environmentalists

You thought that eco-activists had the poor and the down-trodden in mind with their “crusades” in favor of native cultures? The environmentalist façade is slipping for all to see if we but open our eyes. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who reports on the Americas for the Wall Street Journal wrote on August 19 about the Canadian gold mining company Glamis Ltd. which has been mining for gold in a remote mountain village in Guatemala. They have brought jobs, training, doctors and community investment to this underdeveloped and impoverished area. The locals are thankful for the work and the good pay in a Mayan region where poverty and the daily struggle to survive are the realities they must confront.

But there is opposition to this progress in the form of a bearded Italian who arranges, through his Mayan underling, for the workers to be intimidated and threatened until they quit their good jobs out of fear. Of course orders are coming from the big city from none other than its big cohune – the Catholic Bishop. They are concerned about the contamination of the area with the toxic substances used to extract the gold. Yes they are concerned alright. They are concerned that the masses of poor in Guatemala (replace this country with any other Central and South American country) will be able to accumulate some wealth, send their children to school, build a better house, buy a television set. They are concerned that they might lose control over the lives of these poor “sheep of the church”.

The religion of environmentalism is the current disguise used to control the indigenous people by keeping them in a state of “nature” thereby depriving them of the means to improve their subsistence existence. This is a prime example of the petty local tyrant who believes he knows better than the poor who have to work for a living and struggle with nature everyday of their lives in order to exist. Now multiply this vision by a million petty tyrants running around the Americas and the world crying that the environment must be saved. From what? From the encroachment of people trying to survive. Nature as is must be preserved, they cry – it has intrinsic value in and of itself. A mountain is supreme over the life a village of peasants (even when the company is being very environmentally conscientious as Glamis is).

If you just took mining for metals and imagined that it was prohibited from now on we would not have iron or steel to make cars, bridges, hospitals or railroads, or copper wire for electricity to supply power to our television sets, computers, lighting, and surgical instruments – the list goes on and on. If you think about it, really think, the only conclusion is not that these environmentalists love nature but rather that they hate modern man and would have us all go back to being cavemen, living like animals. And must I write that living like animals is not as it is depicted by National Geographic in their lovely photos and television specials?

Maybe it’s time for the us to stop being naïve and supportive of environmentalists in whatever garb they appear in: third world priests or university professors or PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Let’s denounce them for what they are: destroyers of human happiness and progress.