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The Curse of Copper (Trailer-11mins.)
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The Curse of Copper (Feature-34mins.)
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No Means No
The Community Speaks (excerpts from the film) 

Armando Castellano
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Auki Tituana
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Diocelina Flores
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Hernando Pereira
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Juana Enriquez
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Lorena Cavajal
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Norma Bolanos
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Respect
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Way of Life
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Film Release: May 4 2006
Get the Facts

The story of the Curse of Copper takes place in an area known as Intag, Ecuador. This region is one of the world’s ten most threatened biodiversity hotspots meaning that thousands of its 10,000 species of plants are already extinct and only 7% of the forest’s original area remains intact. One of those areas is the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, on the border of which Ascendant Copper Corporation proposes to construct an open-pit copper mine.

Exploration for metallic minerals began in the Junín area with the arrival of Bishimetals, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, in the early 1990s. Junín is a community located in Intag, Cotacachi County. Bishimetals paid little attention to the laws of Ecuador and faced fierce community opposition, which eventually resulted in a huge protest and the burning of the Bishimetals mining camp in May 1997. Eventually Mitsubishi abandoned its plans to build the mine and the local government passed an ordinance declaring the whole of Cotacachi an “Ecological County”, thereby banning mining activities in the region.

Despite this, in August 2002, two mining concessions in the Intag were secretly auctioned off by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Energy and Mines to a private trafficker in mining concessions. These rights were subsequently sold to Ascendant Holding Ltd. in 2004, and transferred to Ascendant Copper Corporation (ACX), based in Vancouver, Canada, in October that same year.

Since this time the communities of Cotacachi have fought to up-hold their Ecological Ordinance and resist the encroachment of Ascendant Copper on their lands. In doing so, they have attracted the support of people around the world as well as several international organizations including Friends of the Earth, Mining Watch Canada and Rainforest Concern.

* Winner for Best Independant Film, 2007 International Wildlife Film Festival

What You Can Do click here

Join the 'No Means No to Ascendant Copper in Ecuador' Campaign click here

Letter to Ministers of Foreign Affairs & Minister of International Trade click here

Mining Resistance in the Intag click here

Chronology of Events click here 

Letter to Mr Rodriguez, Minister of Energy & Mines click here

Letter from the Ecuadorian Minister to Mines to Ascendant President Gary Davis Eng (.pdf) , Original (.pdf)