2012 Administrative Complaint by Artisanal Miners against B2Gold

According to an interview conducted with a representative of the Humboldt Centre as part of The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil project, in October 2012, two groups of small-scale artisanal miners, El Cafetal (The Coffee Plantation) and Sector La Cuatro (Sector Four), filed a complaint with the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA), with a copy to the Office of the State Prosecutor (PGR) and the National Police, demanding compliance with Article 43 of the Special Law on Mining Exploration and Exploitation (No. 387), which allows artisanal miners to operate on 1% of all mining concessions granted to industrial, large-scale mining companies.

The municipality of Santo Domingo has a history of small-scale artisanal mining. It is the second most important economic sector, next to agriculture. As such, a significant portion of its population rely on mining for their economic livelihoods and are not strictly opposed to it in general. However, there is community opposition to large-scale industrial mining based on concerns regarding environmental damage and destruction, a lack of transparency and access to information from the municipality and the company (B2Gold), and the rapid depletion of mineral sources relied on by artisanal miners (Humboldt Centre, “Estudio de Caso”). 

A meeting was held between Humboldt Centre and the municipality regarding this complaint (Interview with Humboldt Centre, 2017). However, neither the artisanal miner groups nor the Humboldt Centre received a substantive response from MARENA or the Office of the State Prosecutor (PGR) to their 2012 complaint.