- Canadian mining company Equinox Gold has failed to implement a closure process after its land use and social-cooperation agreement with the Carrizalillo ejido in Mexico’s Guerrero state ended on March 31.
- It instead announced the indefinite suspension of its Los Filos mine, which the country’s agrarian attorney and legal experts say is not permitted in Mexico.
- Prior to the termination date, representatives of the ejido told Mongabay the company carried out a smear campaign to pressure them into signing a renegotiation proposal which they rejected because of its unfair conditions.
- Meanwhile, members of the ejido who rely on rent payments from the company to survive, have not received any compensation from the company and cannot return to their agrarian way of life because the mine occupies most of their land and the few available areas are contaminated.
This is the third part of a three-part series on underreported issues involving Canadian mining companies and Indigenous peoples or local communities. Read part one and part two.
Ever since March 31, members of the Carrizalillo ejido — an area of communal agricultural land — in Mexico’s Guerrero state have found themselves in a state of uncertainty. Their communal lands remain in the hands of Equinox Gold, despite the expiration of a land agreement which allowed it to operate the Los Filos open-pit mine. The future of the lands and a river contaminated by the mine in the past is also in question.
Miguel Angel Mijangos Leal, an advisor for the Carrizalillo ejido, is worried, he told Mongabay by phone. “The people can’t be without land to farm,” he said.
After the community repeatedly rejected the new conditions proposed by the Canadian mining company to renew its land use and social-cooperation agreement, which included cutting land rent payments to the community, no other agreement was reached. According to Mexican law, the company should have initiated a closure process, which it has not yet done, said legal experts. Instead, it announced the indefinite suspension of the mine. Víctor Suárez Carrera, the country’s agrarian attorney and the founder of the National Association of Rural Commercialization Enterprises (ANEC), whose office has been supporting the ejido, told Mongabay this is not permitted.
“This very provision of the indefinite suspension of activities is only provided for in the Mining Law for reasons of force majeure, a situation that hasn’t occurred. But it’s precisely a resource that the mining company Equinox Gold is resorting to in order to evade its responsibility,” Suárez said. “We’re already working with the Ministry of Economy and the General Directorate of Mines to avoid this subterfuge by the company to evade its responsibility.”
While the mine remains in indefinite suspension, the community said it is not receiving any rent payments from the company which occupies most of the land. They are unable to return to their agrarian way of life, locals told Mongabay, because the available areas are contaminated by arsenic and other heavy metals.
Equinox Gold did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication. On its website, it said that it has been engaged in collaborative discussions with the three communities that host the mine — Carrizalillo, Mezcala and Xochipala — since November 2023 and, although long-term agreements were subsequently ratified and signed with the Mezcala and Xochipala communities, “to date, Carrizalillo has not signed a new long-term agreement with the Company.” Much of Carrizalillo is taken up by the mine and faces significant health impacts, while the other two communities are able to make a living through agriculture and still benefit from employment by the company.
Meanwhile, distrust in the company is growing in Carrizalillo.
Suárez said he believes the company implemented this suspension to generate internal conflict, given that more than 750 mine workers have been laid off, including some from other communities. “The mining company Equinox [Gold] is betting that the social discontent over the closure will be directed against the Carrizalillo ejido and that, after that, the communal land will be defeated.”
Sources said the Canadian mining company is also part of a smear campaign against the ejido to pressure them to agree to the terms of its renegotiation agreement. Mijangos and other community members showed Mongabay multiple threats that he and dozens of others have received stemming from their advocacy. Several of the threats have attempted to link them to organized crime groups in the state, they said.
“It has put us in a position of increasing precautions, of being more alert, of increasing security at home and on the road,” Mijangos said. “I literally can’t go to the ejido anymore.”
Members of the community have set up a 24-hour camp outside the gates of the mine to demand compensation, environmental restoration and adequate mine closure. But the company has not yet publicly communicated their closure plan.
The contamination
Before the first mining company arrived in 2007, Carrizalillo was an agrarian community that for many generations survived by products like pumpkin seeds, which are widely consumed in Guerrero and sold at high prices.
The first mining company to approach the Carrizalillo community was Canadian Goldcorp Inc. in 2007. At the time, it was one of the most dominant gold mining companies in Latin America and was seeking to expand its operations by developing an open-pit mine on the ejido’s agricultural lands.
Its only legal option was to enter a land use agreement with the community and, in 2008, the Los Filos mine began its operations. The mine was sold unexpectedly to another Canadian company, Leagold Mining, in 2015 and, five years later, it was purchased by Equinox Gold.
“At this point, the land was in a critical state, not only because there was a severe water shortage due to the disappearance of the springs,” said Mijangos. Studies revealed that the water of the Mezcala River that the community depends on was contaminated with aluminum, arsenic, iron, manganese, nickel and lead, as its water passes through the mine.
The water used by the community and the company runoff from the watersheds into the 770-kilometre (478-mile) Mezcala River, also known as the Balsas River, one of the longest rivers in Mexico. It nurtures diverse ecosystems, such as tropical dry forests, wetlands and agricultural lands and supports millions of people who depend on farming and fishing in the region, as well as hydroelectric dams. Jaguars (Panthera onca), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and various bird species, such as the vulnerable military macaw (Ara militaris), also depend on the watershed for their survival.
A recent study into the conservation status of 51 amphibian and 155 reptile species found in the Mezcala River, such as the endemic Kropotkin’s leaf-toed gecko (Phyllodactylus kropotkini) and Pueblan coral snake (Micrurus pachecogili), highlighted several conservation challenges in the basin, including pollution.
A community health study published by Source International in 2015, before Equinox Gold purchased the mine, found widespread health problems among the Carrizalillo population. It argued this was caused by contamination in drinking water and heavy metals in the dust from the mine. The most common issues were premature births, miscarriages, respiratory problems and eye damage.
Mijangos said that the community live less than 400 meters (1,312 feet) from the mine’s leaching pad and between 900 m (2,952 ft) and 1.5 km (0.9 mi) from the dynamite zone of the mine’s pits.
“Because of the proximity of the mine, the dust generated by mining operations comes towards the town and the gasses generated at the plant are also pushed towards us,” Antonio Hernandez*, a representative of the ejido speaking under a pseudonym due to fear of threats from the company, told Mongabay over a phone call. “The pollution is very noticeable.”
As part of the social cooperation agreement, Equinox Gold was required to provide medications and treatments for conditions caused by the company’s pollution. However, residents told Mongabay that these were not always accessible. “When they signed the agreements, the company almost always failed to comply with at least half of the clauses of the social agreement,” said Mijangos. “They didn’t deliver medications on time or delivered them at a surcharge double what they could buy on the market.”
Others also said everyone in Carrizalillo has a family member affected by mining. Mongabay did not receive a response from Equinox Gold regarding these claims.
On April 29, the company announced on its website that it had opened a new health center in Carrizalillo. “Equinox Gold is deeply committed to continuing our efforts to positively impact the communities in which we operate, and the new Carrizalillo Health Center is a testament to that dedication,” it said in a press release.
Hostile negotiations
As they began to approach the end of the latest agreement, the company presented the community with a new renegotiation proposal which included a 63% reduction in land rent payments and a condition to extend the next contract for 20 years.
Before, the ejido received 189.6 grams (6.69 ounces) of gold per hectare (76.7 g (2.7 oz) per acre), which was around $13,924 (about 227,000 pesos) in 2024. Now, the company offers them 70.8 g (2.5 oz) per hectare (28.3 g (1 oz) per acre), a 64% reduction. Considering the increase in the value of gold and changes in currency values, this is equivalent to $7,144 (about 140,000 pesos) in 2025. Without the reduction, the community would have received $19,118.5 (about 374,316 pesos) in 2025.
The Carrizalillo community rejected the proposal, arguing that the rent for their land should correspond to what would otherwise be obtained from the production of corn, beans and pumpkin on 1 hectare (2.47 acres) of land. “The company’s demands to lower the land value by 63% meant that the community would be left without those lands in production, which produce about 170 to 180 thousand pesos [about $8,688 to $9,199] worth of corn, beans and pumpkin seeds,” Mijangos explained.
Community members told Mongabay it also rejected the company’s request for a 20-year agreement, rather than the 6 years they agreed to previously, because they have often had to adjust conditions due to the company’s non-compliance and complications with shifting management teams. “The [community] don’t like the idea of signing for a long period because they know the straitjacket is very difficult to remove,” Mijangos said.
The company also wanted to include two other nearby communities, Mezcala and Xochipala, under the same agreement as Carrizalillo that they rejected because the other communities do not live as close to the mine, can continue with agricultural production while the mine operates, and do not suffer from the same health problems as the Carrizalillo community do.
Escalation
About a month before the termination date, community members told Mongabay many of the ejido members most visible in the renegotiation process began to receive threats over the phone telling them they had to sign the agreement. Although there is no evidence that these threats came from the company, the ejido members blame the company because they have never received threats of this nature before.
“Of course, the company doesn’t do it directly,” Suárez told Mongabay. “And, of course, the company won’t accept that this was an action instigated by the company. But it’s entirely coincidental that all of this happened during negotiations to continue the agreement and intensified when the ejido opposed signing the agreement.”
About 250 people from Carrizalillo worked at Los Filos while it was in operation, but they have all lost their jobs.
In early February, the community’s leadership called on the company to stop using threats and coercive tactics to force the community to agree to its conditions. Community members told Mongabay the company has blamed them for the company’s low productivity in the past and has dismissed mine workers from Carrizalillo for participating in protests against the company’s decisions.
In termination letters seen by Mongabay, the company blamed the individuals for attacking the company’s interests and its operations “in order to inflict the greatest possible damage and obtain undue benefits through extortion.”
Since Feb. 23, more than a dozen community leaders from Carrizalillo, their family members and a community advisor have received death threats from unidentified people through social media and by courier.
“They didn’t just target the ejido representatives; they targeted many of our [mining] colleagues and personally the threats were very direct, saying this problem had to be solved, no matter what,” Gonzalez said.
When the agreement concluded, the company announced the indefinite suspension of the mine. In Article 31 of Mexico’s Mining Law, the only suspension permitted is a temporary suspension for technical and economic reasons. “There’s no such thing as indefinite suspension,” Beatriz Olivera Villa, member of the collective Cambiémosla Ya and director of the civil society organization Engenera A.C., told Mongabay over WhatsApp messages.
Meanwhile, the community is in limbo.
“We’re sort of stuck,” Gonzalez said. “The company isn’t moving. We want our lands as they were before so we can continue to work and labor as we did, peasants who plant and survive. We could get by with the harvest we used to get but not now. These lands are dead. We can’t produce as much as we used to.”
On April 1, the community set up a 24-hour camp outside the gates of the mine and called for negotiations over compensation, environmental restoration and adequate mine closure. Suárez and Olivera said the company has an obligation to close the mine now that the agreement has ended.
Members of the Carrizalillo ejido told Mongabay the company has not responded to their requests to discuss a post-closure plan.
Banner image: Graphic by Emilie Languedoc/Mongabay with images courtesy of Miguel Angel Mijangos Leal.
Citations:
Lemos-Espinal, J. A., & Smith, G. R. (2025). The Richness, Similarity, and Conservation Status of the Herpetofauna of the Balsas Basin Biogeographic Province of Mexico. Diversity, 17(1), 44. doi:10.3390/d17010044
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