“Dispossession just began, and it’s going to last a long time”: Raúl Zibechi

Por

4 July, 2023

^{Translated by Elizabeth L. T. Moore}

The dispossession war lived by the peoples of the world has just begun and is going to last a long time. The alarm was sounded by the Uruguayan writer and activist dedicated to working with social movements in Latin America, Raúl Zibechi, during the Encuentro Internacional El Sur Resiste, in the Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral (Cideci), in Chiapas. “For all [the capital’s] progress, there’s still a lot of land that it doesn’t control, that’s why I say dispossession will go on for a long time.”

In countries where studies have been done about land ownership, he says, it’s been shown that 40%, that’s 4 in every 10 hectares, still are not in the hands of the oligarchy, nor corporations, nor the major capital.

Brazil is one case. Very rigorous analyses exist, he says, that reveal that 40% of land in the country are from agrarian reform, from Black and Indigenous peoples, land that is reserved by the State as natural parks or natural reserves, land of small farmers, along with land where there are traditional fishermen.

There are countries that surpass the 40%. One example is Colombia. “The native peoples have a third of the land recognized by the Constitution, in addition to the land where there are Black communities, the natural reserves. In Colombia it’s probably more than 50%,” he analyzes.

The dispossession wars are integral to capitalism. “Capitalism today can’t live without these wars. Capitalism today can’t act without violence against the communities. It is necessary to dispossess, they have to kill, they have to murder; and, because of this, militarism is here to stay.”

The left had always “mistrusted the military, but now the progressives of Latin America defend the armed forces.”

Mexico is the most brutal example of militarization, he says, when it gives the armed forces responsibility for the construction of major works. And this is happening in Argentina, too. “The Armed Forces couldn’t go out in public because they committed genocide during the dictatorship, and now the progressive government of Argentina demands that eight large extractive companies militarize, something that no government, nor the Right, has been able to do.”

In Colombia, where there’s a new progressivism with the Gustavo Petro government, an alliance has already been made with the United States Armed Forces to “defend” the Amazon.

Drug trafficking today is also systemic, he analyzes. “The time is coming in which drugs and the capital are entangled. Drugs and the State. Drugs and the Armed Forces. At which point it would be very difficult to establish a line, draw a border and say ‘This is drug trafficking , this is the bourgeoisie.”

Therefore the diagnosis of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) of the Cuarta Guerra Mundial, which has been done for more than two decades, “seems to us totally accurate and totally correct; a dispossession war is being lived against the communities to ‘clean’ the territory, and remodel it to the image and likeness of the capital’s interests.”

Maintain the fight

Zibechi has understood his whole life that at the basis of peoples autonomy was communal land. “And, of course, communal land is really important, it’s fundamental for there to be communities in resistance,” he says.

But today he understood, he says, that the basis of communal land and autonomies is the spirituality of the peoples. “Spirituality is what lets us sustain ourselves in the fight for a long time; the main victory is we’ve been here for 500 years. And we may have to endure another 500 (years) more.”

There’s a story that Subcomandante Marcos writes, a dialogue with the old man Antonio, that says the struggle is like a circle. “It starts in one place but never ends. What does this have to do with spirituality? If the struggle never ends, it means that there’s no final objective, the seizure of power. There’s no final victory. There’s no final triumph.”

The idea of a final triumph, he says, is a very Catholic, Christian idea, incorporated into the social fight. “If the fight is a circle that never ends, spirituality is what sustains us for this long time.”

The Internacional Comunista speaks about the last fight. “The last fight is entering the palace, taking power. And it’s considered that taking power is synonymous with doing the revolution. Thanks to the native peoples and thanks to contributions by EZLN, today we know that there’s no last fight, but a circle.”

The writer says it’s necessary to overcome the political calculation idea of cost-benefit, the political pragmatism. “Because if not, we’re always going to be returning to this capitalistic ideology, these capitalistic values, that are central to the rule.”

Zibechi cites as an example the armed conflicts of Guatemala and El Salvador. “We see how on top of the fight of the native peoples a vanguard apparatus was mounted and this vanguard - of white, academic men - acted in a way, as we tend to say, pragmatic. At a certain point, it did a cost-benefit analysis, as capitalism does. And they did it and they negotiated, in a deplorable situation, because nothing changed.”

To overcome the logic of pragmatism, the peoples spirituality is central, he defends. “If we want to be true rebels, fight for true change, we have to overcome this calculated logic, which is always individual.” He goes on: “Spirituality puts us in another place, non-material, profoundly human to be able to go farther than material contradictions.”

Everything “we see today is what comes from a giant storm, which is already underway, a hellish earthquake over us. We can’t construct material barriers against that.”

“We can unite and give a hand and hand ourselves over to life and to Mother Earth, with the hope that she will show us the way.”

Resolution Pending in Case of Miguel Peralta Betanzos

Por

Nolan Peltz

5 June, 2023

^{Cover photo: Family members of Miguel Peralta demand an end to the political persecution against him, and freedom for the political prisoners of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón.}

Miguel Peralta’s freedom hangs in the balance. Indigenous Mazatec, community organizer, anarchist, Peralta is one of thirty-five members of the community assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón who have faced political persecution and/or imprisonment following violence in the Indigenous Mazatec municipality in 2014.

On December 14 of that year, a campaign of cacique repression and terror came to a head when the community assembly was attacked by an armed group as they gathered to elect a municipal authority in the town center. The ensuing violence left various people injured, and shortly thereafter, one person was pronounced dead in uncertain circumstances.

The repression immediately followed. Thirty-five members of the community assembly were charged with different crimes related to that day’s events. The charges don’t correspond to those responsible for the violence, but rather signal out those who have actively participated in the community assembly, resisting cacique and political party influence, and fighting for autonomy and collective decision-making.

Currently, eight members of the community assembly remain imprisoned in different prisons in the state of Oaxaca: Herminio Monfil, Jaime Betanzos, Fernando Gavito, Alfredo Bolaños, Omar Morales, Francisco Durán, Marcelino Miramón, and Paul Reyes, the majority of whom have been held for years without a sentence. In addition, thirteen active arrest warrants against members of the community assembly remain, including one against Miguel Peralta, who has already received a condemnatory sentence of fifty years in prison.

Imprisonment and Persecution of Miguel Peralta:

As an active member of the community assembly, and a vocal opponent of the cacique-political party influence in Eloxochitlán, Miguel Peralta was swept up in the wave of repression following the events on December 14. Peralta was detained on April 30, 2015 in Mexico City, nearly five months after the attack in December of 2014. He was held incommunicado for nearly 20 hours before eventually being booked in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca on charges of homicide and attempted homicide. From Tlaxiaco he was transferred to the prison in Cuicatlán, Oaxaca.

On October 26, 2018, after over three years in prison awaiting a verdict, Miguel Peralta was sentenced to fifty years, thirty for homicide and twenty for attempted homicide. The sentence was handed down by Judge Juan Leon Montiel of the Mixed District Court of Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, in what Miguel Peralta’s support group has argued to be a clear case of judicial corruption. He was the first of the thirty-five charged from Eloxochitlán to actually receive a condemnatory sentence.

Following an appeal from his legal team, that fifty-year sentence was thrown out as Peralta was not afforded his right to be present at his final hearing. Miguel’s second final hearing was held on September 19, 2019. That day he released a statement launching a hunger strike demanding his freedom:

“Once again I use my body as a weapon of struggle against injustice. Starting today…I will stop consuming food. Hunger strike menu: My breakfast, a snack of patience. My lunch, a buffet of resistance. My main course, solidarity. My dessert, freedom.”

*^{Protest in front of the courthouse in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, during the final hearing of Miguel Peralta, September 19, 2019.}*

On October 14, 2019, after growing calls from the streets for his release, and almost a month without eating food, Miguel was absolved of both charges and released from prison in Cuicatlán. He had spent just over four years and four months in prison.

Over two years later, following an appeal from the accusing party, Peralta’s freedom was again revoked on March 4, 2022, and an arrest warrant issued for that same fifty-year sentence. His freedom was overturned in the Third Criminal Court, by the Magistrates Humberto Nicolás Vázquez, Sonia Luz Ireta Jiménez and Sofia Altamirano Rueda.

On August 25, 2022, his legal team filed an appeal to this latest resolution. Initially, on March 1, 2023, the appeal was assigned to Judge Elizabeth Franco Cervantes in the First Collegiate Court of the State of Oaxaca. On May 26, 2023, a new judge was appointed to the case, C. Victor Hugo Cortes Sibaja. According to the law, the judge has 90 business days to rule on the case, which puts the legal time frame to rule on the appeal sometime in the coming months.

Cacique-Political Party-State Power

The case of Eloxochitlán and Miguel Peralta exemplifies the unmistakable links between local caciques, political parties, and state power. The Zepeda family, including Manuel Zepeda Cortés and his daughter Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, have been the backbone of this force.

At the beginning of 2010, with the backing of the political party Convergence, Manuel Zepeda Cortés launched a campaign for municipal president, handing out political gifts, buying votes, and making political alliances in order to capture power. In the elections of November of that year, Zepeda won the municipal presidency with a third of the votes. Contrary to custom in the community, Zepeda refused the integration of the municipal government with the second and third place candidates, seeking supreme power in the community.

Over the course of his three-year term, Manuel Zepeda carried out a campaign of repression against members of the community assembly, seeking to disarticulate the community organization which threatened his hold on power. Zepeda was also involved in the extraction of sand, gravel, and rocks from the local river to benefit his companies, along with those of his allies. Furthermore, he left an account of more than 20 million pesos missing from municipal coffers.

On November 24, 2014, Manuel Zepeda and his group occupied the municipal palace, running out the newly elected municipal president and establishing themselves in power in the community. Their principle intention was to avoid being held accountable for the disappearance of municipal funds. The occupation of the municipal palace led directly to the attack on December 14, 2014.

Taking advantage of the political persecution against members of the community assembly, along with the disarticulation of the community fabric as a result of the repression, Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, the daughter of Manuel Zepeda Cortés, made her way into power. In a community election completely foreign to the traditional decision-making forms in the community, Zepeda was elected municipal president of Eloxochitlán in April of 2016, taking power in 2017.

However, in a clear sign that her intention wasn’t to serve the community of Eloxochitlán, but to use the public position as a political trampoline, Zepeda postulated for state congress as local representative for the political party MORENA, winning the election in July of 2018, and taking power in November of that year.

During her three years in office, Zepeda also served as President of the Permanent Commission of Justice of the State of Oaxaca. As Miguel’s lawyer suggests, “In that position, Elisa had relations with the District Attorney, with the Public Prosecutors’ Offices, with judges and magistrates of the State Judicial Power.” She was rubbing shoulders with the very same people who would overturn Miguel’s freedom not long afterwards.

*^{Graffiti in the streets of Oaxaca City. Courtesy of Noticias de Abajo ML}*

Following a loss in her reelection bid in June 2021, Zepeda had already established her position in the MORENA political party apparatus. She was appointed the Secretary of Women of the Salomón Jara government which took power in Oaxaca on December 1, 2022. From these various public positions, Elisa Zepeda has flexed her political power and judicial connections to maintain the repression and persecution against members of the community assembly.

The ongoing repression and persecution of members of the community assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón exemplifies not only the corruption of certain public officials, but a more general hostility of the Mexican nation-state towards Indigenous communities. Through local caciques, State power is able to disarticulate community organization, struggles for self-determination and territorial defense. And through State power, caciques acquire the economic and political resources to dominate their communities and scale the structure of state power. In this case, all these forces intersect in the figure of Elisa Zepeda, and the political party MORENA.

Neither Condemned nor Persecuted: Actions for Freedom

In April of 2023, the Support Group for the Freedom of Miguel Peralta launched a solidarity campaign, “Neither Condemned nor Persecuted: Actions for Freedom,” demanding the revocation of the fifty-year sentence against Miguel Peralta and a sentence of complete freedom. The campaign also seeks to draw attention and support to the eight remaining political prisoners of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, along with other struggles against prisons and state repression both nationally and across the globe.

Heeding the call for solidarity, Indigenous Yaqui political prisoner Fidencio Aldama released an audio statement from prison in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora expressing his solidarity with Miguel Peralta. In the statement, Aldama, who is spending fourteen years in prison for resisting the construction of a natural gas pipeline in Yaqui territory, makes the connection between his case and that of Miguel Peralta’s:

“In the face of this sentence and political persecution, I want to express my solidarity with my compañero Miguel Peralta, calling on everyone to resist this case of injustice. His case is similar to mine. For the defense of our territories and self-determination, our customs and traditions, they unjustly imprison us. They do so to intimidate us. Through the intervention of those in power, and the corruption linked to them, those allied with money can carry out their objectives.”

Political prisoner support groups and independent media projects are organizing a collective radio transmission on June 3, 2023, with the intention of shining light on Miguel’s case, and articulating different cases of political repression and persecution. That same day, Miguel Peralta’s support group is calling for solidarity actions. Their message is clear: Revocation of the fifty-year sentence! Absolute freedom for Miguel Peralta!

In Chiapas, people denounce counterinsurgency, displacement and State collusion

Por

Ñaní Pinto

25 May, 2023

^{Cover image: Jeny Pascacio}

^{Translated by Elizabeth L. T. Moore}

Large-scale, intermittent forced displacement; forced disappearances; land divestments; assassinations; torture; espionage and criminalization of social protests are just some of the serious human rights violations that are happening in multiple localities in Chiapas.

That’s the evidence provided by a report from the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (CDH Frayba) titled “Chiapas, a disaster between criminal violence and State collusion.”

The document, which includes an analysis of situations registered between 2020 and 2022, highlights the increase of violence due to the existence of groups that use weapons for social, political, economic and territorial control in multiple of the southeastern Mexican state’s terrains.

As a continuation of a counterinsurgent strategy, criminal and paramilitary group operations adds to impunity encouraged by State actors, remilitarization of territories and confirmed espionage carried out by the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena) in Chiapas.

In this context, the human rights organization expresses its concern about the role of the Mexican military as the main perpetrator of crimes against humanity, just as it’s currently integrating “a super-power with the possibility of controlling all the social spheres and leaving the doors open for a neo-development and authority government to exercise power.”

According to CDH Frayba, this scenario is happening at the same time that the current administration is requiring a governmental economic policy which seeks for the Mexican State to promote territory reconfiguration through megaprojects to exploit natural resources.

The report says the Mexican State is found stuck in geopolitical interests seeking to impose infrastructure for the development of projects that look to take geostrategic advantage of natural goods. For this reason, among the violence strategies is the creation and administration of tension and conflict, starting from wasteful spending and the imposition of new forms of community organization, through social programs that involve organizational models in communities proposed by external people.

Counterinsurgency

The CDH Frayba emphasizes that, during the period covered by the report, an increase in aggressions against communities and Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) support bases was recorded, due to an open dispute for control of the land recovered by said organization in 1994.

According to the human rights organization, this “exemplified how the counterinsurgency is operating toward the Zapatista project; the aggression and harassment committed by corporate organizations aligned with the State are diverse; just as for a territory reconfiguration from the project, the backbone of the current federal administration, Sembrando Vida.”

In agreement with the analysis, Sembrando Vida newly creates conflicts and tensions to confront villages and communities among whom fight for control coming from the right of autonomy and self-determination, without State intervention, and who seek access to the earth’s resources from monetary government support.

“The result is an irresponsible action by the federal government upon introducing a program that demands the requirement of legal land property in a region so fragmented and politically divided as the state of Chiapas,” the report states.

The document establishes that the objective of Sembrando Vida is imposing a new paradigm for territory reorganization, and control of the land and the individuals through registration, imposing external techniques and dynamics on the communities that don’t correspond to their needs.

Furthermore, it’s concerned with the creation of a parallel structure, to remove power from local authorities; “It’s a considerable threat against all the organizations in resistance that oppose government programs, to be self-sufficient, independent and, precisely, not controlled.”

Displacement

The report highlights that, among the phenomena with the deepest worsening in the State is internal forced displacement. “The dynamics show particular violent ways that involve patterns of local action and everyday links to territorial control, in good measure exercised from community structures, by armed groups and sectors of regional politics that they direct and support,” the document details.

In the period from 2010 to October 2022, the CDH Frayba registered the forced displacement of at least 16,755 people. It highlights that, from 2021 to present, in the border zone with Guatemala there are at least 2,000 people, members of 400 families, that abandoned their communities due to the violence generated by the dispute for territorial control by criminal groups.

The document highlights that the difficulties related to the municipalities of Frontera Comalapa, Chicomuselo, La Trinitaria and Comitán, which are used as routes for drug transfers, human trafficking and sexual slavery; vehicle robberies, weapons dealing and kidnapping; along with being routes for the transit and movement of migrant people originating from Central and South America. “The substantial earnings that are generated in the southern border are of international significance, being the most important for the country, for which, the war between criminal groups to occupy these strategic municipalities does not let up.”

In Mexico, Mining Law Reform is “Half-Baked”

Por

Renata Bessi

19 May, 2023

_{Cover image: Open pit of the Anglo-Canadian mining company Newmont-Goldcorp in Zacatecas. Photo: Adolfo Vladimir}

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published, on May 8th in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF), the reforms to the Mining, National Waters, Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection, and Prevention and Integral Waste Management Laws, approved on April 28 by the Plenary of the Senate of the Republic.

While the changes were celebrated by many environmental activists and organizations, the agrarian lawyer who is part of the legal team of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), Carlos González, classified the reforms as “half-baked.”

“There is no room for half-measures. A deep and committed policy is needed. It is necessary to commit ourselves in a serious and decisive manner. Because humanity and life on this planet are really at risk,” he declared during the International Meeting The South Resists, at the Indigenous Center for Integral Training (Cideci), in Chiapas.

One of the “half” changes is the reduction of the duration of mining concessions from 100 to 80 years. The original text of the reform, sent by the Executive for approval by the Congress of the Nation, had previously provided for the reduction to 30 years.

“The President sent to Congress an initiative that, it must be said, contained important elements to restrict mining activity and to put limits on mining companies,” admits the lawyer.

However, the bill reached the Chamber of Deputies and was stopped. “Negotiations began with the Mining Chamber. Lobbyists from the Canadian government came. And the initiative was changed,” he says.

At this moment the President of the Republic is distancing himself from the legislative debate, he pointed out. “He got Covid-19 and the debate in the press was whether he had passed out or not, while this important mining initiative was being torn apart. They didn’t defend it, neither the president, nor those who represent him,” he added.

Contrary to the initial text, it was accepted that mining companies may continue to use the working water by simply giving “notice to the National Water Commission (Conagua) and that the rights for that water are granted” as stated in the text of the reform.

“When there is a mining operation, what happens is that the ground is broken, but when the earth is furrowed by water veins, these waters are released and this is the working water. And it is this water that the mining companies take advantage of and will continue to take advantage of without a concession,” explains González.

The percentage of the mining companies’ profit to be allocated to the communities was reduced from 10% to 7%. This percentage is on the amount that is fiscally proven by the mining companies. “Now we are going to ask if a cartel that is mining in the south of Jalisco, in Michoacán, in Colima, in Guerrero, in Oaxaca is going to pay taxes. They don’t even need a concession to operate,” the lawyer points out.

Another change is that concessions may include two or more minerals or substances, while the previous proposal allowed the mining of only one mineral. The objective was to have greater control over the production of resources.

The reform does not apply to concessions already granted, so only future permits will be subject to the new rules. Existing concessions total 120 million hectares, equivalent to 60% of the national territory.

More Control

The reform removed the preferential nature of mining over any other use or utilization of the land. Thus, the exploration, exploitation and processing of minerals will no longer be imposed over any other activity that the communities are developing in their territory, be it housing, agriculture or forestry. It also prohibits concessions in protected natural areas.

Another positive change was the end of the “free land” figure. Under the old law, “with the exception of the areas considered as mining reserves, which are very few, the entire national territory was considered free land. The first one to arrive and bid became a concessionaire,” explains Jorge Pelaez, coordinator of the Legal Clinic for Environmental Justice at the Ibero, member of the Cambiemos la Ya campaign.

The coordinator explains that the Mexican Geological Service (SGM) is strengthened by granting it a monopoly on exploration to the detriment of private companies.

However, “the person who has information from which it can be inferred that in an unassigned or concessioned lot there are minerals or substances that are not strategic or reserved to the State, can present it to the Secretary (of Economy) so that it can determine the advisability of ordering the Mexican Geological Service to carry out the exploration,” says the text of the reform.

The SGM may enter into a collaboration agreement with such party for the exploration of the lot, with a term of up to five years. If it is determined that there are usable minerals, a bidding process may be carried out to grant the concession.

It also becomes mandatory to consult with the peoples and communities before granting concessions on indigenous territories. Lawyer Gonzalez maintains that what exists in terms of the right to free, prior and informed consultation is contradictory jurisprudence and case law.

“One day they favor the people, the next day they do not. They have turned it into the main right of our peoples. This is how they have presented it: the right to consultation over the rights that are substantive, the right to territory and the right to autonomy. The right to consultation is an adjective right. Its central purpose is to allow States and business corporations to reach an agreement with the peoples to implement policies that are in their interest,” analyzes the lawyer.

Mining companies will also have to submit to Semarnat a mine restoration and closure program, a requirement that did not exist in the old law.

Important for the economy?

The Cambiemos La Ya (Let’s Change it Now) campaign made a study in the public reports of the Ministry of Finance on the economic, financial and debt situation, since 2019, of the mining sector. “The contribution that the mining sector has to public finances is minimal,” says Beatriz Oliveira, who is part of the campaign.

In the year 2019, the percentage of tax collection of the mining sector with respect to the general collection in Mexico as a whole was 0.13%. In 2020, it was 0.32%. In 2021, 0.97%. “Mining in general, with all the tax contributions it makes does not reach 1% of all federal government revenues,” Oliveira argues.

In relation to income tax, in 2019, it contributed 1.41% of the total collected by the Mexican state. In 2020, 1.37%. In 2021, 2.86%. “There is also no substantive income tax contribution,” Oliveira comments.

A mining company pays to the public treasury per hectare, to have the right to mine, 8 pesos for the first year. Second year, 12 pesos. “That’s what the law says,” says Oliveira. The maximum is 176 pesos.

Poverty

As for what is considered local development, of the 21 municipalities that are classified as gold producing centers, in 10 of them the population lives in conditions that exceed the national poverty levels, as revealed by the data presented by Oliveira.

They promised to get Argentina out of poverty with fracking; now they’re poorer

Por

Santiago Navarro F

1 May, 2023

^{Translated by Elizabeth L. T. Moore}

Patagonia, southern Argentina, ancestral territory claimed by the Mapuche village and fought-over by transnational companies that combust hydrocarbons. Even though the land is quite far from the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, energy price volatility has put them on the geopolitical map for being the second world reserve of unconventional gas and fourth in crude oil of the same origin.

Here, almost 28 thousand m³ of oil and 44 thousand m³ of gas is extracted daily, even though almost nobody talks about the impacts it leaves on the communities that live in this area.

It was in 2019, in a civil court in Santiago de Chile, when the Mapuche village presented cases of environmental damage and violations of human rights in Argentina by the exploitation of oil and unconventional gas, extracted by the method known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a technique that, according to the Instituto Argentino del Petróleo y el Gas (IAPG), has been used in the country since 1959.

Fracking consists of injecting additive fluids at a very high pressure to generate cracks in the bedrock, thus allowing the hydrocarbon to flow to the well. The mixture is “basically formed by water (more than 90%) and some sand,” announces the IAPG platform.

The country’s Ministerio de Economía has documented, this year in 2023, in its report Argentina Productiva 2030 Plan para el Desarrollo Productivo, Industrial y Tecnológico, that “in an unconventional well, 60 million liters of water and 10 thousand tons of sand are injected.”

Three years after the Mapuche village’s complaint, between March 29 and April 5 of this year, various environmentalists from the Tribunal Internacional de los Derechos de la Naturaleza conducted an inspection in the Neuquén and Río Negro region, where Cuenca Neuquina is found, that makes up the main hydrocarbon producer of the country, better known as Vaca Muerta. The delegation managed to verify and document several environmental impacts and human rights violations that fracking has caused.

One of the main problems the delegation has focused on has been water use. Environmentalists warn that the region is already experiencing a water crisis, when barely five of the 31 companies that have concessions in the the region are in the exploitation phase. Meanwhile, this year the demand for water could possibly double. Furthermore, this is added to the storage of the toxic waste left by the extraction of these energies.

Environmentalists have registered the presence of oil landfills, trash containers and mountains of waste accumulation, products of drilling the wells, which do not have any security measures. This has led observers to conclude that the authorities are complicit.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, there are institutions in charge of controlling all these activities. But they’re on the edge, or they’re total accomplices of what’s happening. It would be enough to look at the open-air landfills of accumulated petroleum,” said Alberto Acosta, former presidential candidate of Ecuador, who has also been part of the environmental delegation in Neuquén.

Since 2020, the Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas has promoted before the law an order to enter the plants where they are depositing the petroleum waste from Vaca Muerta. It criminally accused the company Comarsa for accumulating and concentrating toxic waste in its installations. It denounced petroleum companies like YPF, Shell, Chevron, among others, for producing these residues in the drilling marks.

Among the irregularities the lawyers registered, they found what they classified as “petroleum trash.” Trash that, they declared in a statement, “contains radioactive remains and heavy metals. Also found was ground contaminated by petroleum, liquids with oil and liquids with petroleum, whose origins are not found registered.”

The spokesperson of the Argentinian lawyers, who has also joined the delegation that has reviewed the south of the country, affirmed/stated/claimed that only the company Comarsa, between 2016 and 2019, assembled/gathered around 720 thousand metric tons of toxic trash in open-air.

Acosta, the Ecuadorian, has warned that what’s currently happening on these lands is a huge social environmental disaster. “This region is literally drying up. A region where rural inhabitants, above all, the indigenous Mapuche villages, are being robbed of the rivers. The rivers are disappearing and that water goes to extractivist activities,” the Ecuadorian affirmed and added that “only a well can use up to 90 million m³.”

The observer team concluded that “what’s more, the Mapuches were not consulted, even though the country ratified Convenio 169 of the OIT which establishes the requirement of free and informed enquiry and the need for consent from indigenous villages. Not only that, they’ve been victims of other forms of violence. They even try to deny their ancestral presence in said territories,” it recorded.

Furthermore, it’s not just the use of millions of cubic meters of water, but also the quantity of toxic chemical products that are filtered from the well and affect the flow of underground water. “Añelo (department) is one of the clearest examples. It’s the petroleum capital of the region, and water can’t be consumed there,” says the first recommendation conducted by the members of the Argentinian government delegation.

The observers have also documented a large quantity of seismic movement in the area, highlighting furthermore that cancer indications are on the rise, just like diseases caused by heavy metals in the blood.

More petroleum to get out of poverty

When the exploitation of Vaca Muerta was beginning, they promised there would be energy autonomy, external debt and poverty in the country would be over. One decade later, in Argentina “40% of the population lives in poverty, at least 4 million people live in destitution, which represents 8% of the population,” detailed Natalia Greene, secretary of the Tribunal Internacional de los Derechos de la Naturaleza.

The same discourse gained strength again in 2023. The country’s Ministerio de Economía clearly affirms in its document called Plan para el Desarrollo Productivo, Industrial y Tecnológico 2030 that “the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine has opened a new opportunity for Argentina to earn participation in the global energy markets. The maturation of the Vaca Muerta oil field coincides with this setting,” through which it will be possible to generate quality jobs and lower poverty.

It even justifies the exploitation of the Cuenca del Neuquén, considering that this gas is considered clean and necessary for the so-called energy transition. “We’re sure it’s possible to double exportations: the energy transition brings us a favorable backdrop so we can develop the potential Vaca Muerta exporter, of low-emission hydrogen and minerals like lithium or copper,” points out the development plan.

The environmentalist Greene strongly affirms that these discussions that justify extractivism to deal with poverty, “that run across Latin America from top down, from north to south, from east to west, are always false.”

Court

This court made up of prominent figures in the care of the environment was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 2014 as a space of civil society that judges the cases of violation of rights of nature and environmentalists. In this way, it considers Nature as a legal subject with rights equal to humans.

Those who join the court have traveled various countries documenting and denouncing the affectations to nature, mainly, the conflicts caused by the exploitation of hydrocarbons and megaprojects.

In this instance, they’ve traversed not only the area exploited by fracking in the Argentine Patagonia, but also they’ve joined government representatives, oil companies, social organizations and communities affected by the activity.

The environmental delegation will present a report that will be analyzed by a panel of more than 60 judges that make up part of the court, elected by their career path, like the Hindu doctor, physicist, philosopher and writer Vandana Shiva, to present the relevant recommendations.
Although it’s not binding, it is a precedent to be consider by the rulers in office. “We hope this sentence serves, in one sense, to provoke society’s conscience, to mobilize in something the conscience of the rulers, which is often difficult, if not impossible. Above all, we hope that it will serve as an element for the communities’ struggles”, said the Ecuadorian economist Acosta.

Over two years since his illegal detention, demands grow for the freedom of Zapatista political prisoner, Manuel Gómez Vázquez

Por

Ñaní Pinto

24 April, 2023

Autonomous authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government (JBG) of Caracol IX, denounced the unjust imprisonment of Manuel Gómez Vázquez, member of the support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). He was detained illegally on December 4, 2020, and remains imprisoned in CERSS No. 16, in the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.

According to a statement from the Zapatistas and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), the detention of Manuel Gómez was carried out by an armed civilian group, and is an act of criminalization for his adherence to the EZLN.

Gómez Vázquez is a 22-year-old Maya-Tseltal campesino, originally from the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipality (MAREZ) of Ricardo Flores Magón, located in Nuevo Jerusalén, in the official state municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.

“The truth is, they’ve come after him for being a Zapatista. For the bad governments being a Zapatista is a crime that is punishable by slander, persecution, imprisonment, and death,” the autonomous authorities emphasized in a public statement.

After more than two years of arbitrary detention, in a press conference on Tuesday April 18 in the offices of Frayba, human rights defenders explained that Gómez is “falsely accused of homicide after violent events which took place in the ejido El Censo, in the municipality of Ocosingo.” In the press conference they also described how the member of the Zapatista support bases has been a victim of torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment.

Fabricated Case File

In a communique released in March of this year, Frayba explained that on December 4-5 of 2020, violent events left four people dead in the ejido El Censo, in the municipality of Ocosingo. “The prosecutor’s office didn’t carry out a thorough or scientific investigation. Rather, they pinned the homicide on Manuel who at the time of the events was at home with his family,” explained the human rights center.

For their part, the authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government shared that they’d carried out an investigation of the events confirming Manuel Gómez Vázquez’s innocence. However, in spite of “the official authorities of the ejido El Censo knowing that the accusations against the compañero Manuel Gómez Vázquez are a lie, they are afraid to say so because they are being threatened with death by the families of the killers,” denounced the Zapatistas.

According to authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government, the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office, a wing of the State Attorney General’s Office, “fabricated the case file with false evidence already disproven by the municipal agent.” These statements support those made by Frayba in March, when they explained that the prosecutor’s office lacks the evidence to accuse and maintain Gómez Vázquez in prison.

“The prosecutor’s office fabricated evidence, not presenting the supposed witnesses to give their testimonies, which has resulted in the oral hearing being postponed. There are no autopsies for the homicides, and the state judiciary has exceeded the limit on preventive detention, which in no case should exceed two years,” Frayba contextualizes.

The Zapatista authorities maintain that responsibility for the illegal detention of the member of the Zapatista support bases lies with the governor of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, and the municipal president of Ocosingo, Jesús Alberto Oropeza Nájera, both belonging to the political party MORENA.

“We know well that they are against us because we are Zapatista support bases, they unjustly imprison us…they are devastating the community, dividing the lands. They are destroyers of our community. What happened to the president saying first the poor? First they are trampling on and killing us, the poor,” sustained the autonomous authorities.

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