Richard Fifer's blacklist

Richard Fifer's blacklist
blacklist by Petaquilla, comment by Eric Jackson

Petaquilla is a place, but it's also a name attached to a group of several companies controlled by one Richard Fifer, the corrupt former governor of Cocle, who has a vast mining concession in northern Cocle and western Colon provinces. There are about 20 villages in this area, the most convenient access to which is over a road that the Fifer's companies control, and at which there is a gate staffed by one of those companies.

It has been revealed that Petaquilla has issued a blacklist of one organization and nearly three dozen people, mostly activists or journalists, most of them loosely affiliated or identified with the Catholic left or with environmentalist organizations.

When it originally put up its gate, Petaquilla argued that it was for public safety. However, it was first used to exclude environmental investigators.

The Petaquilla project has been the occasion for a struggle within the Catholic Church as well, with the hierarchy supporting Fifer in his illegal open pit gold mine that has no environmental permit and is fouling the neighbors' water. The church has removed missions that have been identified with the local residents who oppose Fifer's ecological crime wave and prohibited the use of church properties for gatherings of neighbors opposed to Petaquilla. Given the very incomplete inclusion of environmental activists and journalists who have criticized, opposed or reported unfavorably about Fifer and his companies, and the list's extensive inclusion of prominent figures on the Catholic left, there is reason to suspect that there was clerical participation in the compiling of this list.

Petaquilla's blacklist, with its several errors and in its Spanish original, is as follows:

MINERA PETAQUILLA NIEGA EL PERMISO A LAS SIGUIENTES PERSONAS

Abdiel Augusto Patiño
Bernardo Miranda
Blas Julio
Enilda Sara de Yánguez
Evidelio Adames
Frenadeso
Germán Zúñiga
Héctor Endara Hill
Ignacio Iriberri
Jesús Ruiz
Jorge Aguilar
José del Carmen Yánguez
José del Rosario Garrido
José González
Julio Yao
Lubianka María Katsudas Valderrama
María Muñoz
María Virginia Almanza
Mariano Mena
Maribel Cuervo de Paredes
Miguel Angel Idalgo
Nemesia Herrera
Paco Gómez Nadal
Paula Mora
Porfirio Sánchez
Raúl Leis
Venancio Fernández
Yacarta Ríos

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