When in Minero Boleo, do as the mineros do.
Wake up at 5:30, breakfast at 6– beans and tortillas. Sky still dark. Then the sun rises a brilliant blood red over the mine industrial complex as we fill our coffee mugs. From the cafeteria we drive up the mountain and above the sea. Lights from the city-like mine industrial complex burn bright bellow from skyscraper-like holding tanks, steam-spewing chimneys, a whirring desalination plant, and round holding tanks of sulfuric acid that glow softly in the pale dawn light.
We’re not allowed to walk anywhere, only drive. Monstrous drilling machines, trucks, and other contraptions made to tear out an entire mountain on wheels, roam the road all day and night. These machines were not built to watch for gringo pedestrians. So we’re picked up in the morning from our barracks, driven to the cafeteria, and driven back again. We drive to the administrative office to sit in a cold white holding cell for our lectures, then drive to our geologic field site to collect samples, then back again.
We eat every meal in an industrial cafeteria with cavernous white ceilings and a gaudily decorated fake Christmas tree in the corner with brightly wrapped presents. There are larger-than-life posters high on the white walls displaying the mine’s mission and 2014 goals along with epic silhouette shots of miners walking out of tunnels in hardhats, vests and with major swag. We grab a tray and walk down the line to get what the cafeteria happens to be serving. It is always beans. On New Years Day, they served us pork skin casserole, and another day we got pureed squid soup. Humboldt squid– the predatory squid that’s 5 feet long and tend to eat people– are a major part of the area’s fishery.
On mine property, we have a 24/7 dress code: hard hats, steel toed boots, bright orange vests, and long sleeves. All vehicles are required to honk three times before moving anywhere and are required to display a 12 foot tall orange flag stuck into the back. Only the professors are allowed to drive, and if we want to leave or enter the premises, we go through a TSA-style security screening in which we all get out of the cars so they can search them. Of course, security guards reserve the right to breathalyze us at any moment.
But mostly, we’re outside, and we’re pretty lucky. We have a view of gorgeous, rolling desert hills, of elegant pale green cacti, and the blue sea almost everywhere we go. When we’re trapped at our barracks in the evening, we have access to a gym and basketball court with an ocean view. We get to trek down arroyos colored by turquoise, yellow, purple and pink volcanic ash and mineral deposits– and take any rocks we want. We get to see how a mine works from the inside out.
El Minero Boleo is an open pit copper mine, but also mines and processes cobalt, zinc, manganese, and limestone frm the hydrothermal mineral deposits in the surrounding hills. It makes sulfuric acid out of 50-foot-tall piles of bright yellow sulfur shipped from overseas and desalinates ocean water, which it apparently distributes to the town. The mine is in production 24/7, and the lights never go off. But they only need the water at certain times, which means between shifts, the taps run dry. I learned this the hard way on my first day when the water turned off in the middle of my shower, leaving me shaking and soapy in the stall.
Minero Boleo has a multi-cultural history. Everything started when a French explorer spotted some bright turquoise gems– indicative of copper– around 1860. The turn of the century was known as the era of Porfirio Diaz; his era was one of technological development, with an environment favorable to industrial developers from outside of Mexico at the cost of the environment and economic equality. During that time, Europeans were given free range to develop mines in Mexico, as long as they could find the money to dig. The French started the Boleo mine, but they imported Yaqui Indians from the mainland to pull mining carts dressed in loincloths and sandals, shipped Hawaiians from the islands to dive for pearls, brought in boatloads of Chinese to work underground and build railroads, and hired German engineers to build a funicular system of aerial trams to transport material from the hills to the port.
The town of Rosalia grew around the mine, and like every single colonial era mine in Latin America, conditions were far from ideal. Workers and their families received one bucket of water a day, and had to pay for it. The underground tunnels weren’t ventilated, and I’m sure the death toll was high with summer temperatures of up to 120 degrees. But the mine also brought some of the earliest economic development to the area– Santa Rosalia was one of the first towns in Latin America to have electricity. The company created an outpost of French culture with French bakeries (still open in Santa Rosalia) and French colonial architecture like New Orleans. They had a short stint in agriculture, and then realized that nothing grows in the desert.
The momentum carried them on until the 1950’s, when they could no longer compete with other larger copper mines around the world. The mine shut down until the 90’s, when Korean investors brought in new state of the art technology and got everything running again. These days, the purity of the remaining copper deposits is often less then 1% when in the 1800’s it was near 100%, but upgraded technology has made it economically viable.
Today, El Minero Boleo claims to be one of the world’s most environmentally friendly mines, with new infrastructure and projects compliant with environmental regulations from Mexico’s equivalent of the EPA. The most visible and endearing of their efforts is a large-scale cactus transplanting operation. Whenever the mine stakes out a new area to rip apart, the gardening team is there first. They dig up the protected species and re-plant them in shade houses. Once the area is mined, they return the plants to it to “reclaim” it.
To regulate contamination, a decantation system extracts metals from waste material, but contaminants still leach into the soil, drinking water and ocean, especially during floods, which are common in Baja. A couple months ago, a flood related to Hurricane Odile killed El Minero Boleo’s two executive officers.
The Santa Rosalia area gets 4 inches of rain a year on average. Odile went on a rampage along the East Coast of Baja and brought 10 inches of rain to Santa Rosalia in one day. Baja’s dry soil doesn’t retain moisture, resulting in overland flow and flooding. The flood wiped out one of the mine’s shade houses, and flooded the mine’s extra holding ponds, making it impossible to contain future spills. It created canyons. Odile wounded the mine heavily, but didn’t stop there; it decapitated the Corporation. El Minero Boleo’s two executive officers decided to hop across a flooding river, and it carried them away to the ocean.
Apart from hurricane events, the mine’s wastewater discharge is treated and monitored. Scuba divers are hired to swim around the port and make sure fish are doing ok when the waste water re-enters the ocean. According to the head of the environmental program, warm water entering the ocean from the mine is a major issue because changing water temperature can significantly impact a marine ecosystem. Santa Rosalia’s main source of income is sustenance fishing. It’s also an important cultural tradition. If the warm water runoff from Minero Boleo significantly harms marine life, the fishing industry will be in jeopardy.
Here is this mine intruding on the Santa Rosalia community, creating air, light, water and noise pollution, and disturbing an important food source. And what do the locals get in return? Copper. Copper is mostly used for electronics– iPhones, laptops; things that many locals of Santa Rosalia likely can’t afford to own. All of the copper is exported internationally.
The biggest benefit for locals is employment. According to Valente, our official guide for the month, the employment rate in Santa Rosalia was around 48% before the mine opened, and has increased to 98% in the last few years. The fact is, this stuff is supremely complicated. Things aren’t perfect, but at least they’ve improved since the turn of the century.
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