Orla Mining: Investigate & Clarify

ByLa Jornada Editorial Board

This editorial by La Jornada’s editorial board originally appeared in the April 10, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Editor’s note: You can read our interview with Jaime Pulido León here, a Camino Rojo mine worker and leader of the local chapter of the Los Mineros mineworkers’ union attacked in his home.

According to an investigation by the Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) panel of the USMCA, the Camino Rojo mining company used organized crime to violate the labour rights of its workers and threaten them to desert the National Mining Union, to whose section 335 they are affiliated.

The panel’s preliminary ruling establishes that the mining company, located in Zacatecas, is “directly responsible for employer interference” in union activities due to documented acts of violence and death threats against workers, aimed at forcing them to hand over their collective bargaining agreement to a company-backed “protection” union affiliated with the National Federation of Independent Unions. The U.S. Department of Labor has corroborated that the owner of Camino Rojo, the Canadian company Orla Mining, “hired a drug trafficker to disrupt union meetings with armed individuals.”

However, in Mexico, the Secretariats of Labour and Social Welfare and of Economy deemed the evidence insufficient to link the company to the reported conduct, adding that the mechanism exceeded its scope by attempting to analyze criminal activity. For its part, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Zacatecas stated that it has not yet received any formal complaint regarding the reported events.

The Rapid Response Mechanism panel’s allegations cannot be dismissed or minimized; rather, they compel the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation to determine whether or not Orla Mining or its local representatives colluded with organized crime.

Beyond the political and interventionist uses that Washington may give to the USMCA’s MRR, the fact is that neither anti-union practices nor relations with organized crime are foreign to the operations of mining companies.

For decades, Indigenous communities in the state of Guerrero have suffered forced displacement at the hands of criminal groups that, according to community leaders and human rights organizations, operate as shock troops for mining companies. Similar schemes have been detected in Veracruz, where organized crime has allegedly acted as a “security” or pressure force to silence social resistance against mining projects in exchange for protection money or control of transportation services associated with the mines.

A journalistic investigation links the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to the illegal extraction and export of mercury in the Sierra Gorda region of Querétaro. In Michoacán, since 2014 the federal government has acknowledged that the criminal group Los Caballeros Templarios (The Knights Templar) was earning millions of dollars by extorting protection money from iron ore miners, and some sources claim that this cartel came to control the entire mercury cycle.

Nor can it be ignored that transnational mining companies – whether locally or foreign-owned – cause devastating damage even when they have no connection to crime: they deliberately disregard minimum occupational and industrial safety standards in order to maximize their profits; they steal enormous volumes of water from nature and communities; they poison the land with the toxic substances used in their activities, rendering it unusable for any other purpose; they cause illnesses in people unfortunate enough to live near the mines; and they benefit from concessions and legal frameworks implemented during the neoliberal period with the express purpose of enriching private entities without leaving anything for the country.

In this context, the Rapid Response Mechanism panel’s allegations cannot be dismissed or minimized; rather, they compel the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation to determine whether or not Orla Mining or its local representatives colluded with organized crime. If it is confirmed that the company hired criminals to persecute its workers, it is clear that the sanction cannot be limited to an administrative procedure, as this would allow companies to normalize fines as just another operating cost to be recorded on their balance sheets. On the contrary, the seriousness of the case would require opening criminal cases against all mining company executives involved in dealings with organized crime and permanently prohibiting Orla Mining’s activities in the country.