Meet the Guy Who Helped Save a Town from Actual Gold Diggers
Credit to Author: Vlad Marko Tollea| Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:21:13 +0000
This article is courtesy of VICE Romania
It’s a cold March evening when I join a young man pushing a baby stroller up a narrow snowy street in Roșia Montană, a remote village in Transylvania, Romania. It’s not easy, as he lives on a hill, and the higher we go, the thicker the snow gets. The baby seems to be having fun at least, unbothered by the barks of village dogs.
The three of us eventually reach the man’s wide front-yard. I look above to the fir trees and down onto the town below, and I think to myself that this guy did the right thing, defending this town from being changed forever by a bunch of gold diggers.
Because that’s what both the village and the man next to me are famous for in Romania. Six years ago, Tică Darie, just 18 years old at the time, took on the Canadian mining conglomerate Gabriel Resources, which wanted to open the world’s largest gold quarry right here in Roșia Montană – a project that would have involved the use of thousands of tons of cyanide, causing severe damage to the local environment.
While he had no campaign headquarters or a specific ideology, Darie was certain that he wanted to revive the village through environmentally-friendly policies. He remembers being disappointed when his flyers and posters weren’t ready during the first two weeks of campaigning. But also because, as he canvassed from gate to gate, a lady grabbed a rock and chased him off when she heard who he was.
At the end of a tough campaign, he came third, with 106 votes. The top two, representatives of the largest parties in the country, scored 891 and 222 votes respectively.
For now, at least, the Roșia Montană mining project seems completely blocked. However, if the project is revived again, as it has been many times over the past years, Tică Darie is ready to fight back. He came to Roșia Montană to stay.
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.