The following is a press release from the Carrizalillo Agricultural Board. A community encampment outside the Equinox Gold mine has now passed the two-month mark and environmental and agrarian federal authorities have begun responding to the community’s complaints over harms to their lands. They seek to hold the company account for an adequate closure and post-closure program that would include remediation measures, as well as compensation for irreparable harms and assert that the company is putting the wellbeing of the entire community at risk with its self-imposed indefinite suspension of the mine. According to the press release, the company is now suing 125 of their ejido members for supposedly dispossessing the company of its lands.

español aquí

Carrizalillo, Municipality of Eduardo Neri, State of Guerrero, June 9, 2025.

Good morning and greetings from the Carrizalillo encampment with updates about the latest developments in the “Los Filos” project, which since March 31, 2025 is indefinitely suspended. This category does not exist in our regulatory framework unless the suspension is temporary and it can be proven that it is due to force majeure. As far as we understand, not paying rent for the land is not at all a cause for force majeure.

As is public knowledge, the lack of expertise, recurrent racist posture and lack of respect on the part of company employees assigned to establish good-faith negotiations with our ejido, were the main sources of conflict. The state and municipal governments have also participated inappropriately in this conflict, abusing the principal role of public state institutions who should give preference to serve and defend the population and not, as commonly occurs, to give priority to corporate interests. This was more than evident during the mining forum held on May 27 in the city of Chilpancingo, a forum in which the worn-out and stale political discourse in favor of the mining sector prevailed as the only topic of discussion. While they talk and celebrate economic spillover for the business sector, they are silent about the environmental spills, social impacts and labour rights abuses.

By way of summarizing what we are facing, the confrontation between us and Equinox has undoubtedly escalated.

  • Dialogue has completely shut down and will not resume as long as Mr. Ortega and Mr. Vergara remain at the Los Filos project.
  • The company is betting on court rulings and has filed lawsuits, largely concentrated in that filed against our ejido, in addition to 125 individual claims against approximately 125 community land holders. Regarding these suits, and although it may seem like a joke, the company requested precautionary measures to enter our lands, arguing that we “dispossessed” the company of territory. As a means of compensation, the company deposited a bond that, when distributed [to community members], would mean one peso and fifty-eight cents per month to each of us. However, the 12th District Magistrate responded forcefully to the company and its representatives, to whom he pointed out that their bond was a “derisory and even ridiculous sum”, which reinforces what we have been saying for years: Equinox Gold always operates in its own self-interest, while boasting to its shareholders that it acts with corporate social responsibility.
  • Upon receiving the magistrate’s response, the company filed a new appeal and this time the same magistrate granted them the precautionary measures they were seeking, but conditioned these on posting a bond equivalent to the rent that each Ejido member received last year for the rent of their lands. The company, of course, rejected posting the bond, thus disqualifying them for the precautionary measures.
  • At the end of May, the company’s powerful legal team, dissatisfied with the ruling from the 12th District Magistrate for the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal (TUA), filed an action for protection under the Mexican Constitution (#554/2025-IV) with the Second District Magistrate of the Collegiate Tribunal in Criminal and Administrative Matters of the Twenty First Circuit located in Acapulco, Guerrero. The company was unsuccessful in the first phase of the appeal and were not granted the provisional measures sought. Almost immediately, the company filed another appeal against the denial of the provisional suspension registered in file #201/2025 by the Presidency of the Collegiate Circuit Court. A couple of days ago, the company received a response that the appeal was declared inadmissible, once again failing to achieve its goal.
  • We have already begun filing the corresponding counterclaims and will see if we have success. We are encouraged, however, that the company’s approach has simply not worked, given the gravity of its violation.

We assume that the company’s representatives are unhappy with us given these court rulings. But we have nothing to do with these decisions that come directly from judges and magistrates who, exercising their powers and responsibilities, have rejected the company’s arguments.

Regarding another aspect of the issues we face, not in the courts, but concerning procedures and controls, it will now be up to the company to respond and react to the petitions we have made to various federal government agencies, especially those with legal responsibilities over mining activities. Of these we want to highlight that our petitions focus without much fuss on basic things:

  • The federal government is responsible to determine the legality or illegality of the company’s self-imposed indefinite suspension [of the mine] and, if it fines against the company, this will have several consequences. For our part, however, we would like to make it known in Canada and to alert the company’s shareholders, partners, banks and the stock exchange about this given that they should be careful about investing in a company that acts illegally, cheats and breaks laws, putting their investment at risk.
  • A second set of actions that we have initiated against the company, apart from its illegal self-imposed indefinite suspension, once the company determined to halt the mine, the company is required to implement a series of actions by law and according to regulations, including its environmental impact statement that have of course not been carried out. As a result, Equinox Gold is violating a number of procedures, regulations and laws of concern to us related to its mine closure and post-closure program.
  • In this regard, we would like to inform you that last week the Office of Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) undertook an inspection of the mine in response to a complaint filed for environmental damage. We believe that it’s impossible that it will not find evidence of environmental harm, given a wide range of non-compliance with environmental regulations and potential environmental risks in areas that have been abandoned due to the illegal indefinite suspension. Among these high-risk sites is the “powder keg”, which we understood was found during the inspection accompanied by military officials who took the opportunity to review and remove materials and supplies in storage and with which to make explosives. We cannot avoid thinking that perhaps the company left these materials behind in order to provoke an incident that would have many repercussions for our community.

We don’t know what PROFEPA will conclude, but the federal government just has to apply the available legal framework to the company, despite efforts by the company and politicians trying to blame us for potential environmental harms. This week, the company must comply with PROFEPA’s initial recommendations, and if it does not, fines and suspensions will follow and, for the first time, they will see the difference between their miserable indefinite suspension and the possibility if a potential definitive closure.

Last week, the action we requested from the Agrarian Attorney’s Office (Procuraduría Agraria o PA by its initials in Spanish) also began.

  • The demarcation of our agricultural lands is an urgent priority to provide clarity on the location of our common use lands and individual lots. This is necessary in order to make the corresponding claims when the company, by law, has to get back to work and talk with us and with SEMARNAT about the already overdue closure and post-closure plan for the mine. We will focus on the technical and technological aspects needed for remediation and on economic compensation for irreversible harms that have occurred.
  • The demarcation that PA experts are undertaking is a first step to locate the real and legitimate location of our lands, as well as to send a message to the company: it has been violating [closure] rules and procedures for at least 8 months that are laid out in law and the [land use] agreement and that the Canadian company has violated for months.
  • When we state frankly and openly that Equinox Gold is infringing on and violating our rights, this is not a minor assertion, rather the company HAS PUT THE LIVES OF OUR COMMUNITY AT RISK. Without income or remediated land adequate for cultivating, we are thrust into a precarious situation, which we know they will want to solve with handouts of food. Our lawsuit is already underway and the company will be surprised how far we have been gone to denounce their atrocities.

We close by sharing that while Equinox Gold in Mexico is crying over its low production and blames us for its technical problems, it has just reached a merger with another Canadian mining company, Calibre Mining, with which they aspire to become the second largest gold producer in Canada. We know this is no small thing, considering that Canadian companies lead the way in Mexico in the extraction of gold over other countries involved in the extraction of this metal.

We welcome Mr. Blayne Johnson, president of Calibre Mining, and we take this opportunity to tell him that from time to time we will send him message to expose the arbitrary actions of his new partner in Mexico. It would be wise for him to keep a close eye on this part of the business, given how Equinox Gold recently reported that it also fell short of its projected production at its top mine in Canada. The company might be bound to blame you now, as it does here with us.

Sincerely,

CARRIZALILLO AGRICULTURAL BOARD

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