por ALFREDO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/EDITOR
Landowners, who rent their land to MINERA FRISCO, the company that operates the famous San Felipe gold mine, are not satisfied with the money they are paid, and want to negotiate a better deal, they say that the legal agreement they had, expired in 2019 “and nothing has changed”, said a woman on behalf of 214 landowners of Ejido Plan Nacional Agrario, a community 50 miles from San Felipe.
FRISCO has a 50 year long federal permit to extract minerals in the area and rents 6 thousand 620 acres to the people who own the land, but they pay 3 million pesos a year (about 149 thousand 500 dollars) for the whole surface, and it is not fair, says the woman who asked to remain anonymous: “we need to negotiate, we are 214 landowners and we want 10 thousand dollars a year for each one of us”.
That would mean about 2 million 140 thousand dollars, which is almost 43 million pesos, which would be an exponential growth to amount they are now getting, which is about 14 thousand pesos for each one, which is less than a thousand dollars.
“We believe that there´s a chance to negotiate, we are expecting an answer from the company, but we haven´t heard from them since last week”, she said, they extract gold, silver and several other minerals, therefore the landowners feel they aren´t getting an adequate deal, and since the contract is expired they demand negotiations to obtain a better deal.
