Cover Image: Migrants wait at the edge of the Rio Grande River to cross into the United States in the context of the end to restrictions imposed by Title 42.
The Government of Texas has deployed soldiers from the Texas National Guard to the southern border in order to contain the passage of migrants crossing into the United States seeking asylum.
Hundreds of soldiers were deployed along the Rio Grande River, equipped with a dozen armored vehicles, in an area commonly used by migrants to enter into the United States. The deployment of soldiers takes place in the context of the City of El Paso declaring a state of emergency over the migrant situation.
The Mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, justified the state of emergency declaration referencing the recent decision from a US judge ordering Title 42—a restrictive pandemic-era border policy—to end on December 21.
Texas National Guard soldiers at the border with Mexico. Photo: Gabriela Minjáres
The soldiers belonging to the 606th Military Police Battalion are part of a Security Response Force trained in civil disturbance operations and mass migration response. The Security Response Force “…is used to safeguard the border and repel and turn-back illegal immigrants,” the National Guard said in a statement.
Within the context of border militarization, migrants are overflowing the shelters, being forced to sleep in freezing temperatures in the streets of El Paso as their only option left.
With the emergency declaration, the city has also announced that it will create an operations center and organize a plan to assist and protect migrants from the harsh weather conditions.
While shelters are being set up and expanded throughout the city, the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) has begun to transport migrants in busses from El Paso to New York and Chicago, considered “sanctuary cities” for people on the move.
According to the El Paso Deputy City Manager, Mario D’Agostino, the response to the migratory crisis will remain in effect until the appeal to Title 42, which is currently working its way through the courts, is ruled upon.
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked a federal ruling which called for Title 42 to end on Wednesday, December 21. The suspension will continue while the Supreme Court considers an appeal from Texas and other states who seek to maintain Title 42 in place.
As of publication, Mexican authorities have not commented on the deployment of Texas soldiers to the border of Ciudad Juárez.
On the cover: Explosions at the San Xavier mine, owned by New Gold, on San Pedro Hill, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The Canadian company, which began mining in 2007, calls its work "environmentally responsible mining," despite the fact that its operations displaced most of the surrounding inhabitants. Photo: Aldo Santiago.
Governments across the planet have implemented energy transitions as urgent economic policies to deal with climate change. Although territories and the international division of labor are being reconfigured in several ways globally, the old frameworks of dispossession and theft continue to be reproduced in Latin America.
High temperatures have taken people by storm across the planet. Others have had to deal with catastrophic flooding. Losses range from real estate, to crops, to hundreds of deaths, to entire forests devastated by fire or water. While some have felt this hell firsthand, others remain comfortably distant. The idea that has been sold about climate change or global warming is that the market solves everything, with new production chains of goods and services that are part of what is now known as "sustainable development."
For environmental organizations, governments, academic circles, and the business world, the problem is the old fossil fuel energy system, and so-called “renewable energies” are the solution. In other words, a new assembly line is being laid out in the name of “climate change,” claiming to change everything, so that everything in fact remains the same. As Samir Amin explains, capitalist accumulation—even if it calls itself sustainable—is synonymous with "exponential growth," which, "like cancer, carries death" (Amin, 2009).
These supply chains debut their new “eco-friendly” look, promising to be the solution to climate change while failing to name or question the true reality: a “climatic, systemic, and civilizational crisis,” in Amin’s words, that heaps risks onto those who are already most vulnerable.
Our current society, disciplined for sustainable markets, makes justifications for a "green neoliberalism" that has been privatizing and commodifying common goods such as wind, solar energy, river water, ocean waves, lava from volcanoes—the list goes on.
The discourse on these not-so-new solutions takes different forms across the globe. This reconfiguration of markets and territories is not the same in Europe as it is in Africa or Latin America. Paraphrasing André Gunder Frank, we first need to understand how the rich countries reached their phase of “development” and the countries of the South remained in an eternal “underdevelopment” (Gunder Frank, 2005), which has led supranational financial institutions to describe them romantically as “developing or emerging countries.”
It’s important to understand this historical context in order to track where reconfigurations of green capitalism are already starting to lead, especially when the replacement of the energy matrix is repeating the same dynamics.
Renewable energies not only resort to the old international division of labor—in which some lose and others win and the South produces exclusively for the waste of the global North—but at the same time, they redouble environmental racism towards the South. In our case, this means Latin America, and more specifically Native peoples, Black communities, artisans, and autonomous communities.
Energy for the North
The United States, with only 4% of the world's population—a little over 332 million inhabitants—consumes more than 25% of global energy production. Its oil consumption exceeds 18 million barrels per day.
In 2000, the California ISO—a non-profit public benefit corporation that manages 80% of California’s energy flow—began issuing temporary “flex alerts” at times when electricity demand would outpace supply. The alerts urge businesses, government, and consumers to voluntarily reduce their electricity usage.
The California legislature passed a renewable energy mandate in 2011 stipulating that by 2020, 33% of electricity sold by California utility companies must come from renewable sources. To achieve this goal, however, California would need 10,000 of megawatts of additional capacity, according to a 2009 USAID report.
The report mentions Mexico as a potential source of this additional power, especially Oaxaca, with a production capacity of 2,600 MW—an “opportunity” for Mexican wind energy, in the USAID’s words. However, at the time, the high voltage networks necessary to sell electricity to the US did not yet exist.
Years before the Mexican government, led at the time by President Enrique Peña Nieto, began its Special Program for Energy Transition, the United States had already suggested that Mexico implement an energy reform. The US government argued that, despite sharing more than 3,000 km of border, electricity trade between Mexico and the United States was relatively limited and the advantages of proximity should be utilized.
The Peña Nieto government launched its energy reform in 2013, together with the 2014-2018 National Infrastructure Program, claiming that the main obstacles in the electricity sector were the saturation of transmission lines and the need for “high voltage networks” to connect to areas where renewable electricity is generated.
These transmission lines from Oaxaca have advanced slowly and have not yet met the goal of bringing energy to the US. However, they have been connected to major automobile assembly plants owned by General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and others. Maquiladoras and shopping centers in Mexico, owned by US and European capital, have also benefited. In addition, the first interconnection networks in Baja California were established with the Western Electric Coordination Council (WECC) in California through two private interconnections. The state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) also has seven interconnections with Texas in the northern part of its system. In exchange, Mexico imports shale gas from the US.
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec region continues to spearhead wind energy production, with 28 of the 31 wind farms in operation throughout Mexico. According to the General Panorama of Renewable Energies, these generate a combined total of 7.7 GW.
The wind farm Biìo Hioxo Energía is owned by Gas Natural Fenosa and continues its advance on communal lands in Juchitán, Oaxaca. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
According to data from the CFE, Mexico produced 48,958 GWh of “clean energy” in 2021. Of this, 67.2% came from hydroelectric sources, followed by nuclear power with 23.7%. Geothermal, wind, and photovoltaic power combined made up 9.1%.
Mexico has positioned itself as the second largest producer of solar energy in Latin America, just behind Brazil, with an installed photovoltaic capacity of more than 7 GW in 2021.
Interconnection networks are advancing rapidly in southern and southeastern Mexico, where the Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) administration has focused its stategic work through the Program for the Expansion and Modernization of the National Transmission Network and General Distribution Networks of the Wholesale Electricity Market.
The AMLO government recently established agreements with 17 US companies to increase the production of solar and wind energy. In turn, United States Secretary of EnergyJennifer Granholm stated on Twitter that "Mexico’s sun and renewable resources could power Mexico’s needs 100 times over — not to mention creating whole new clean energy industries."
According to the US Department of Energy, Mexico has enough capacity to produce 24,918 GW in solar energy alone. The Department also states that wind energy production can be increased to 3,669 GW, conventional geothermal energy by 2.5 GW, and hydroelectric energy by 1.2 GW. This would mean installing thousands of solar panels, more wind farms, and other renewable energy generation complexes that would affect hundreds of communities—the same ones that have to pay high costs for energy access.
Meanwhile, interconnection networks are also being built in Central America, claiming to "contribute to the sustainable development of the region" through the Central American Electricity Market Framework Treaty. Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC) member countries have named integration of renewable energies as one of their objectives. These networks connect with Mexico to the north and extend to Colombia in the south.
SIEPAC will make it possible for privately held renewable energy plants to connect to each other through a network financed by governments in the region. Their goal is to insert renewable energy into the regional market, destined for maquiladoras, assembly plants, and extractive industries such as “green mining.”
The Development of Underdevelopment Continues
The Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. (EPRINC), a non-profit research organization focused on energy economics and policy, recently warned that the energy matrix replacement strategy promoted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) was not working as planned. This transition means “halting new investment in oil and gas exploration” based on “a false belief that the world will not require additional supplies of oil and gas in the medium term.” This, along with COVID-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine, has led to an increase in "energy prices and energy poverty," wrote EPRINC spokesman Iván R. Sandrea Silva in a May 2022 report.
Sandrea unintentionally dealt a heavy blow to the argument supporting the economic policies promoted by the UN 2030 Agenda, which aims at a considerable reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 through the replacement of fossil fuels with renewables. He maintained that "even in the best-case scenario of reaching net zero [emissions], over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil and gas will be needed until 2070.”
Sandrea stated that African and Latin American countries should not "[shut] down the hydrocarbon industry," noting that they depend on it for their "economic growth and fiscal stability."
Community protest to demand the cancellation of oil drilling in Zoque territories in Chiapas. Photo by Mexican Alliance Against Fracking. June 22, 2017.
While the countries of the global North rapidly replace their energy sources, Latin American countries will serve as a bridge towards that transition. Not only will we continue to supply fossil fuel energy; we will also have to cede more land to produce green energy and expand mining areas, since we will have to supply aluminum, copper, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel, silver, steel, zinc, and other rare earth minerals for new production chains.
The World Bank estimates that more than three billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed to implement new technologies for wind, solar, and geothermal energy as well as for electric cars.
A fierce dispute has begun within the capitalist class itself to control and manage the exploitation and commercialization of these minerals. During the Security in the Western Hemisphere 2022 Concordia Americas Summit held in July 2022, General Laura Richardson, Commander of the US Southern Command, expressed her concern about the presence of Russia and China in Latin America, stating, “I think they’re there to undermine America, they’re there to undermine democracies.” Richardson reminded attendees that “the ‘lithium triangle’ is in this region. There are many things that this region has to offer.”
Months prior, in a panel talk at the Reagan National Defense Forum held in December 2021, Richardson stated: “60% of the lithium in the world is in the Lithium Triangle; Argentina, Bolivia, Chile. You've got a lot of rare earth minerals, resources and capabilities that in my mind go hand in hand with what the Chinese are doing with the Belt and Road Initiative and expanding their reach into Latin America.”
Lithium is just one of the minerals essential to the new markets, especially for batteries for the electric cars that rich countries think will solve the problem of climate change. This new commodity is an example of how the reconfiguration of green capitalism reproduces the old international division of labor and, at each stage of production, destructive consequences that classical economics calls "market failures" or "negative externalities."
Open pit in Azacualpan, Honduras. Drilling at the site has uncovered geothermal sources that are being developed by North American companies. Photo: Aldo Santiago
While in poor countries electric vehicles are still seen as a thing of the distant future, a record 6.6 million of them sold in 2021 alone in the world’s most powerful economies. More than 16.5 million electric cars are already out on these countries’ roads and this is only the beginning.
The old fleet of internal combustion vehicles will not be destroyed, merely displaced to poor countries such as Mexico and Central America, as has always been done historically with obsolete technology. In the end, the solution presented by the individual car does not solve the problem, but it does represent a new niche of opportunities that take the form of greater "sustainable economic growth." On the other hand, it will continue to reproduce an individualistic, selfish, and competitive society—larger vehicles, including those used for collective transport, only represented 0.3% of global sales in 2021.
According to the IEA, the emergence of this green industry is due to the fact that in 2021, subsidies and incentives for electric vehicles in countries with the greatest economic power added up to 30 billion dollars. The increase in sales of electric vehicles was led by the People's Republic of China, with 3.3 million. 2.3 million were sold in Europe and 630,000 in the US.
“[Electric vehicle] sales are still lagging in other emerging and developing economies, where the few models that are available remain unaffordable for mass-market consumers,” states the IEA report. However, Latin America and the Caribbean make up one of the regions where renewable energy production has accelerated, mainly hydroelectricity. According to a 2019 report by the Inter-American Development Bank, hydroelectric power "provides about half of the electricity of this region and is the main source of generation in many countries," including Paraguay, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Brazil.
With that fact in mind, the cost that users have to pay is far higher than it should be in countries like Haiti, Guatemala, and Honduras, where according to USAID, more than 70% of the population is energy poor. In addition to lacking energy access, they are dispossessed and expelled from their territories. This is the face of the "sustainable development" promoted by governments, academia, and above all, business. The discourse of sustainability is a smoke screen ensuring a new cycle of expansion of capital and this represents an escalation of dispossession. Meanwhile, many sectors of society have been meekly accepting the false solutions that green capitalism is offering.
A Green Economy Stained Blood Red
The Belo Monte project in Brazil, Barro Blanco in Panama, Chixoy in Guatemala, and the San Antonio Hydroelectric Project in Mexico have something in common besides being large-scale hydroelectric projects: murders of Indigenous people have stemmed from all of them. These are just a few examples of the bloodstained projects that have imprisoned and persecuted people and displaced or dispossessed entire communities. The Sustainable Development Goals, bank reports, governments, and businesses do not talk about it.
Indigenous people from the Amazon basin protest in Brasilia against the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on February 8, 2011.
Although it does not name the murders, even the controversial USAID reported in its Trend Analysis 2020-2030 that in 2017 alone, hydroelectric dams impacted 5.7 million people in South America. In addition, dams built to generate “renewable energy” also generate deforestation and negative impacts on a great diversity of species.
If we also consider the environmentalists killed by the other electrical plants and "development" projects in general, we are talking about hundreds of communities affected in the name of "climate change" and the energy transition. There is a reason that for years, the organization Global Witness has consistently ranked Latin America as the deadliest region for environmental defenders. Although renewable energy in the region—mainly privately owned and linked to European and US companies—represents more than double the world average in terms of its percentage on the grid, the results are less than stellar, since “energy poverty still undermines livelihoods in many areas,” according to USAID. We can infer that this energy transition is not about solving the climate crisis and much less about improved access for consumers. It is strictly the continuation of the expanded reproduction of capital.
This new market niche is under dispute by the most powerful countries and companies in the world, including those in the oil sector. So, asking them to include us in their agendas, reforms, or strategic plans is like getting blood from a stone. The underlying logic is still exponential growth.
Instead, we must envision and build alternatives outside this "renewed," greenwashed system. Repurposing technology and producing our own energy, independently of companies and state administration, becomes subversive. We must name the crisis and rethink alternatives from below, outside of what the concepts of "development" and "growth" have led us to believe. The solutions will either be subversive or, with so-called "sustainable development," we will head complacently towards the solutions offered by the green market and remain a disciplined army of consumption. The energy transition does not seek to solve the climate crisis, only to sustain the pace of capital accumulation at any cost.
This past October, United States Senators Ben Cardin and Bill Hagerty sent a letter to the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to issue a complaint about the Honduran government’s repeal, in April 2022, of the law that allowed the operation of Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) in Central America.
The fundamental law allowed for the creation of special zones that operate autonomously from the Honduran government. According to proponents of the law, investors could implement their own administrative systems, governance and laws in the special zones, with the purpose of creating conditions to attract international investments.
The Senators’ letter argues that U.S. investments in Central America “will help alleviate the poverty that encourages illegal migration to the United States” and pressure the Honduran government to respect the “50-year legal stability guarantee that protects U.S. investments,” established in the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).
In contrast, since the passing of the law in 2013, wide sectors of Honduran society have organized against its operation. According to the organization Alternative for Community and Environmental Claims of Honduras (ARCAH), based on more than 70 open town hall assemblies, ZEDES-free municipalities were declared in diverse departments where mobilization for the defense of territory led to the refusal of their installation.
In a response letter to the U.S. Senators, ARCAH maintained that the ZEDES “are a project of aggression against the sovereignty” of Central America, for which the Senators’ petition constitutes “a deeply meddlesome proposal, disrespectful of the internal affairs of the State of Honduras, and only invites the perpetuity of crimes committed by the ZEDES, which include, in the case of their technical secretaries (equivalent to a governor or mayor), for example, the crime of treason.”
The Honduran organization affirms that for more than a decade, “the people of Honduras, even in a period of narco-dictatorship, confronted the ZEDES in a manner that is organized, coherent, appropriate, dignified, legitimate manner, and in full use of their rights,” before the transnationals overtook the Honduran government “to install governance laboratories, without consultation, and it could not be otherwise - what people would consciously say ‘yes’ to the partial or total surrender of their country?”
Pressure
The Senators’ initiative is not the first complaint of U.S. officials over the repeal of the ZEDES. In July of this year, the U.S. Department of State issued an Investment Climate Statement on Honduras, which thoroughly condemned the law’s repeal.
“Their elimination raised concerns in the business community about the government’s commitment to commercial stability and the rule of law”, declares the report, which questions the attitude of Xiomara Castro’s government since it did not try to implement reforms or seek dialogue with ZEDE investors.
According to the department responsible for U.S. foreign policy, the measure contributed to uncertainty about the Honduran government’s commitment to investment protections required by agreements such as the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) between the United States and Honduras and CAFTA-DR.
In response, ARCAH assures that none of these guarantees apply if the sovereignty of Honduras is put at risk, since the Senators, “ignore that the ZEDES fundamental law authorized ZEDES to expropriate Honduran territories.” They also add that “not one Free Trade Agreement applies to the ZEDES, as they are incompatible with the Republic of Honduras’s Constitution, and national and international human rights standards.”
On the contrary, the organization, that co-founded the National Movement against the ZEDES in June of 2021, affirms that these projects have not invested in Honduras, “but have unleashed violence and attacks, including against ARCAH.”
Attacks
Christopher Castillo, general coordinator of ARCAH, has denounced threats against him by police, as well as by board members and executives of different ZEDES projects.
According to a statement from the Peoples’ Human Rights Observatory, the attacks occur in the context of the struggle against the ZEDES, particularly those known as Ciudad Morazán and Próspera, that “ignore the popular decision to repeal the law, which was achieved through the popular struggle of communities and organizations. Therefore, the ZEDES do not want to recognize it, and instead threaten with violent actions seeking to settle in the territories.”
One of the recent attacks occurred at the end of October when ARCAH members were peacefully protesting against Ciudad Morazán, since it is one of the ZEDES projects that has remained in operation despite the repeal of the law that supported them. In addition, there have been threats against the ARCAH coordinator by the founder of Ciudad Morazán, Massimo Mazzone, and other members Jorge Colindres and Carlos Fortín.
Given these facts, Christopher Castillo demanded that Honduran authorities effectively repeal the ZEDES and before local media he insisted that “we cannot allow these businessmen to come only to impose projects that are not development, that are contrary to the will of the people and furthermore that endanger the people.”
Cover Image: Fidencio Aldama (at the far right) together with musicians in the prison of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora.
After a legal process plagued by irregularities, October 27 will mark six years in prison for Indigenous Yaqui, Fidencio Aldama. His ongoing imprisonment was denounced by the Fidencio Aldama Support Group and Los Otros Abo398gadoz who through a communique accused the “anti-Indigenous racism inherent to the Mexican State” for the imprisonment of the political prisoner.
In April of 2018, Aldama was sentenced to fifteen years and six months, accused of the death of Cruz Buitimea Piña in Loma de Bácum, Sonora. Now, after a long appeal process, the courts have confirmed Fidencio Aldama’s conviction, but reduced his sentence to fourteen years.
“We remember that Fidencio’s arrest and continued imprisonment is the result of a coordinated effort between the Mexican State and SEMPRA Energy (via its affiliate in Mexico, IEnova) to impose a natural gas pipeline through Yaqui territory,” detailed the Fidencio Aldama Support Group through the communique released on Thursday October 20.
In 2016, the Yaqui community of Loma de Bácum rejected the imposition of the “Gasoducto Sonora” pipeline project. The response from the state and SEMPRA Energy was violent repression. On October 21, 2016, an attack was carried out against the Yaqui community. A week later Fidencio Aldama was arrested, “unjustly accused,” as the organizations explain.
Los Otros Abogadoz, who are providing legal defense for Fidencio Aldama, announced that on June 17, 2022, a year and nine months after having filed the appeal, the Third Collegiate Court in the State of Sonora resolved the appeal, upholding Fidencio’s conviction.
Afterwards, on August 24, 2022, a ruling was released reducing his sentence to fourteen years in prison. “Faced with this new situation, we cannot remain immobile waiting for Fidencio to serve out his unjust fourteen-year sentence. We must continue insisting and resisting until we can snatch back his freedom,” announced his legal team.
Los Otros Abogadoz explained that they plan to file a new appeal in the hopes that the Supreme Court of the Nation will be the one to resolve the case: “This case is important because it involves an Indigenous person belonging to the Yaqui Tribe who is being criminalized and punished, sentenced to prison for defending his territory by opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline by an international company. This pipeline project puts at risk the lives of the inhabitants of Loma de Bácum, the pueblo where Fidencio lived with his family when he was detained.”
Mutual Benefits Between the State and Organized Crime
For their part, the Fidencio Aldama Support Group contextualized the situation in Loma de Bácum, explaining that since Aldama’s imprisonment it has only worsened.
On July 14, 2021, ten people were disappeared in the Yaqui community while organizing for their traditional festivities in the pueblo. After months of search efforts led by Yaqui women and families of the disappeared, seven of their remains were found and identified. “These disappearances exemplify how organized crime, the state, and corporations mutually benefit from one another, planting terror in Indigenous communities to disarticulate community organization and consolidate projects of capital accumulation and state control,” denounced the group.
At the end of 2021, the Federal Government presented a policy package denominated the “Justice Plan” for the Yaqui Tribe, which the group argues reinforces “the colonial mission of making the Yaqui people and Yaqui territory productive for global capitalism.”
According to the group, this is evident in actions like that of the current Governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo, who recently proposed the designation of a special economic zone in Yaqui territory, destined to facilitate manufacturing industries with cheap Indigenous labor.
In light of the new sentence, the group points to the following people as responsible for the imprisonment of Fidencio Aldama, along with the repression and cooptation that continues in Yaqui Territory: the CEO of Sempra Energy, Jeffrey M. Martin; the CEO of IEnova, Tania Mena Ortiz; the General Director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett Diaz; the Governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo; and the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In the communique they also hold responsible the different judges, magistrates, secretaries, judicial officials, etc. “who have maintained this legal charade against Fidencio Aldama.” Lastly, they indicate that in Fidencio’s legal process, they will likely continue facing “the discrimination of the judicial authorities, who have up until this moment punished the struggle and resistance of a land defender. We will not rest until Fidencio is free, to hug his children and mother who impatiently wait for him.”
In the morning of Monday October 24, a group of thirty people identifying themselves as private security of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) accompanied by state police hung a sign at the entrance to the area known as El Pitayal in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. The sign read, “Property of the CIIT (Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec).”
In a communique from the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), they explained that community members spoke with the delegation demanding that they take down the sign “because these are common use lands” of the Binnizá community of Puente Madera.
However, there was no response. Members of the community removed the sign and set it ablaze. Meanwhile, the government functionaries retreated from the area.
To show their disapproval of the latest encroachments on their common use lands, members of the community installed a highway blockade. “There is the threat of the arrival of the national guard, but as of now we have only seen state police,” members of the community shared with Avispa Midia.
There is a lawsuit in the Local Agrarian Court of Tuxtepec to nullify an act of the assembly on March 14, 2021, where the installation of the industrial park in the common use lands of El Pitayal was approved. The protestors explained: “We have presented evidence to different state and federal institutions of the falsification of signatures, even signatures being used of dead people” in that act.
The assemblies denounce: “Because of our stance of respect for and defense of our territory and common use lands… [we have been] subjected to political violence as an Indigenous community being denied the [economic] resources that we require for the most basic maintenance of our public services.”
In addition, they explain: “[We have been] subjected to harassment, intimidation, and physical aggressions…as well as an ongoing campaign of defamation and criminalization against our representatives, community and regional organization.”
The assemblies demand an end to the criminalization against representatives and inhabitants of the community of Puente Madera, a resolution to the nullity trial in the Local Tribunal Court, and the cancelation of the industrial park in the common use lands of El Pitayal.
Security
The sign that government functionaries sought to hang at the entrance to the common use lands of El Pitayal bore the logo of the CIIT and of the private security company, Duxon. In addition to providing security services, Duxon also provides construction services in infrastructure, energy, development, and technological projects. The majority of their contracts are linked with the federal government.
Cover image: Fires in the Brazilian Amazon make way for the expansion of agroindustry and mining.
After twenty years of back and forth negotiations regarding the specifics of a free trade agreement between the European Union and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur)—made up of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay—European countries have recently intensified efforts to ratify the agreement, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The agreement, signed in June of 2019, was not fully ratified by the countries. At that time, the text was submitted to a legal review and translation, which was to be followed with parliamentary approval by the countries involved.
Different Latin American and European organizations have warned that the terms of the agreement continue the colonial and unequal logic of the international division of labor. That is to say, it stimulates industrial production in Europe while promoting the plunder of natural resources in South America.
Agriculture and mining are the principal sectors to be expanded in South American countries. A study carried out by the organization GRAIN indicates that, with the agreement, there will be growth of at least 540% in the exportation of ethanol, 55% in the exportation of poultry, 60% in coffee, and 50% in beef. All of these products will have zero export tariffs. Minerals like iron will also have tariffs reduced to zero within ten years.
Deforestation in the Amazon
“It reinforces a model of social exclusion and environmental impact, since it involves occupying more and more area and intensifying the use of the areas already occupied,” says Adhemar Mineiro, of the Red Brasileña por la Integración de los Pueblos (REBRIP).
Agriculture and mining are already the two economic activities which “most promote environmental destruction in Brazil, with profound impacts on the human and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities,” says the researcher, Maureen Santos, member of the Grupo Carta de Belém.
In the settlement of Lago Grande—an area of rivers in Santarém in the Amazonian state of Para, Brazil—155 communities live from family farming, fishing, and the recollection of forest fruits. Around 55% of their territory, which was granted to them through the redistribution of lands to small farmers, is now threatened by mining exploitation.
Rosenilce dos Santos, who lives in this territory, says that they are now also suffering pressure from the expansion of soya cultivation. “We are all conscious that the land cannot be sold because it is collective territory. However, grilagem (the illegal sale of land) continues. This has generated conflicts inside families and communities. They arrive to our territory offering hospitals, schools, and roads,” she says.
With the increase in European demand, the plunder of these territories will intensify, “increasing socioenvironmental conflicts,” adds Santos, who is also part of the Federación de Organizaciones de Asistencia Social y Educativa (FASE) of Brazil.
For the Few
In December of 2019, a few months after the agreement was signed by the two blocs, the European Union announced its Green Deal. As the European Union explains on its website, the Green Deal is “a packet of political initiatives meant to place the EU on a path toward ecological transition, with the ultimate objective of reaching climate neutrality by 2050,” and thus fulfilling its commitments under the Paris Accord.
The acceleration of the “energy transition” proposed by the Green Deal, was also seen as a strategy to expand an economy in crisis, which has been made worse by the pandemic. “The transformation of European societies and the economy will be necessary, which must be profitable, equitable, and socially balanced,” says the EU in its documents.
For Mónica Bruckman, a social scientist and coordinator of the working group on geopolitics and regional integration of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), there is a clear relationship between the strategies of the European Green Deal and the provisions in the agreement that the “European Union is proposing to Mercosur.”
In the documents of the Green Deal, access to resources is fundamental, as a question of “strategic security.” One of the requirements to make the transition a reality is to guarantee the supply of raw materials, in particular those raw materials critical for clean technologies, digital, space, and defense uses.
María Leusa Munduruku (center) during the Caravan for Water in Tapajós. She suffered an assassination attempt in 2021 for opposing illegal mining in Indigenous territories. Photo by Ana Mendes/ Amazônia Real
“None of these critical resources are in European territory. They are principally in Africa, and above all, in South America. Thus, access to these resources is an indispensable requirement to fulfill the objectives of the European Green Deal, and that means access to our territories,” analyzes the researcher.
The agreement between the EU and Mercosur opens the doors of the South American countries to European extraction.
While taking into consideration the decarbonization of industry and consumption in the northern countries, “this same process will violently and brutally expand extractive industries in [our] territories.”
A study carried out by GRAIN reinforces the researcher’s findings. “While it is very likely that with this agreement European “green” transportation fuel targets will be met with increased European importations of ethanol and soya, this same process may further drive deforestation and land grabbing in countries like Brazil. It could result in the governments of the EU causing further climate destruction in order to meet their climate targets,” the study says.
According to its documents, the Green Deal seeks the protection of European natural capital, which includes its biodiversity and water resources. Bruckman stresses the outdatedness of this vision from an environmental point of view. “In the 21st century, we already know that the planet operates as a large bloc with its complex but integrated biomes. There is no point in protecting European natural capital if for example the Amazon is not protected because the Amazon is the biome with the greatest capacity to capture carbon on the planet. Protecting European natural capital means protecting the natural reserves and biomes worldwide,” she said.
In Brazil, 87% of the mining area is in the Amazon. The mining sector “is already having a colossal impact on this territory, and it will have an even greater impact in the next 20 years (…). We have a future characterized by global dispute for strategic natural resources, for strategic goods,” says Bruckman.
The researcher warns that the agreement between the EU and Mercosur is not only a commercial agreement, “it has to do with a new world order that they themselves are proposing.”
More Emissions
Unlike the European Green Deal, the agreement does not force Mercosur countries to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement. In spite of citing it, “there isn’t any mechanism or arbitration foreseen in the agreement that forces the countries to fulfill these goals,” Santos explains.
Today Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay are already in flames for growing soya and sugar cane for the European market. The emissions from forest fires or loss of wetlands do not appear in the European climate calculation.
According to the document from the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America, “El comercio entre los bloques aumenta la violencia, las desigualdades, la crisis de los derechos humanos y la emergencia ambienta,” the European Union is the second largest importer of tropical deforestation and associated emissions in the world.
Organizations maintain resistance against the advancement of the mining industry in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by Lanna Ramos.
In addition, it is responsible for 16% of deforestation associated with international trade, and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions from the EU’s food supply derive from imports from Latin America.
With the agreement, GRAIN estimates that greenhouse gas emissions in the countries of Mercosur will increase by one third from trade in just eight agricultural products. More than 80% of these emissions will come from a single product: beef.
Nature-Based Solutions?
Critiques of the agreement not only come from organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Countries such as France have also expressed the necessity for the agreement to obligate the Mercosur countries to fulfill environmental commitments.
The ambassador of the European Union to Brazil, Ignacio Ybañez, said to the media that the European Commission already has the draft of an additional document regarding environmental issues that will be presented to the countries.
However, the document is not public, and its contents are still unknown.
“We do not have access to the documentation being negotiated. Most of the information that we have in relation to the proposals comes from organizations in the European Union who have gained access and informed us. That is an absurdity,” sustained a member of Grupo Carta de Belem.
Santos suggests that one of the subjects that might be included in additional declarations to the agreement is “nature-based solutions” as “a way out of the climate crisis” where the carbon market is the central axis. “I think that this topic is going to become very important, since it is a key idea that the European Union has been defending in global agreements,” she explains.
These solutions were agreed upon between the countries in the climate conferences of the United Nations, the so-called COPs, and are considered by diverse organizations and peoples throughout the world as “false market-based solutions.”
“For us, they are false (nature-based solutions); they put this name on mechanisms that have already existed for 20 years, and which do not provide concrete results to the climate problem,” said Santos.
Beyond Trade
The agreement between the European Union and Mercosur began to be negotiated in 1995, the same year in which the World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded. In this context, the agreement adhered to the agenda of the WTO, an agenda directed toward trade liberalization.
“It includes, among other things, the liberalization of basic services like water and energy; the privatization of public services and the facilitation of European businesses in their management; labor deregulation; deregulation of the financial system; privatization of public banks,” explains Adhemar Mineiro.
Another issue are the purchases made by governments—federal, state and municipal—in the countries of Mercosur. “All of the purchases, for example of food, must be carried out through international bids, giving access to European companies,” which would interfere with, for example, the Brazilian government purchasing products produced by family farming.
Chemical Pesticides: “Double Standard”
The agreement facilitates the sale of pesticides produced by European companies. The taxes imposed on chemical products will be reduced or eliminated by 90%. The European Commission’s forecast is that it will increase exportations by 47.6% of these products toward Mercosur.
At the same time, the European Union reinforced their internal restrictions on pesticides. According to a report in 2019 by the Asociación Brasileña para la Reforma Agraria, 44% of the substances registered in Brazil are prohibited in the European Union. Of the 113 products of the German based company, BASF, 71 of them are approved in Brazil. These are highly dangerous pesticides with 57 of them not being registered for use in the EU.
The Congress of Brazil has greenlighted the use of pesticides prohibited in the European Union.
“The agreement is a double standard, in which citizens of Mercosur are treated as secondary,” Santos said.
The study carried out by Gabriel Cassoti of Amigos de la Tierra Europa, “Comercio Tóxico: a ofensiva do lobby dos agrotoxicos da UE no Brasil,” revealed the extensive lobbying carried out by this sector in Europe and Brazil. It also revealed that the businesses were consulted by the EU so that their demands were included in the agreement.
Today there exists 5000 pesticides being used in Brazil, 1500 of them have been permitted during the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
Substitution
Cars, principally of German origin, will have their sale facilitated in Mercosur countries. “The automobile sector was also consulted so that their demands were included in the agreement,” explains Lúcia Ortiz, of the organization Amigos de la Tierra Brasil.
As part of its strategies to reduce carbon emissions, the European Union established the objective to have at least 30 million zero emission cars in 2030. In addition, it plans to prohibit the sale of vehicles with combustion motors by 2035.
“The European Union, with its renewable energy guidelines, will substitute its gas-powered cars for electric or hydrogen powered cars, and they want to sell us the cars that they don’t use. Meanwhile we export to Europe the minerals necessary for the technology for their energy transition,” said Ortiz.
Uncontrollable E-Commerce
Gabriel Cassoti alerts to a point hardly discussed in relation to the agreement. That is, e-commerce of major digital corporations. The agreement prohibits the taxation of profits from these companies. “There exists a major lobby of the five major companies—Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alibaba—who are amongst the seven largest companies in the world.”
Furthermore, the agreement prohibits the state from regulating the flow of users’ personal data from the platforms; data “that generates very high profits for these companies.”
Expectation
There are certain expectations about the direction of the agreement in relation to the outcomes of the presidential elections in Brazil, which will take place on October 30 between Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The topic was present during the electoral campaigns.
Lula has sustained that if he is elected, he will seek to “improve” the agreement to guarantee that the Mercosur countries can promote industry. However, the European diplomat, Cañas, declared to European media that a possible renegotiation of the agreement “will not occur.”
