Solo se ha llenado el 30% del embalse y las comunidades de la Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé- han tenido que reorganizarse en otros lugares para continuar sus vidas.
For decades, the discourse of “development” has flooded the Latin American region to promote extractive projects of various kinds on campesinos and indigenous lands: open-pit mining, construction of hydroelectric dams and road and energy infrastructure, among many other mega-projects implemented without the consent of the communities.
With the endorsement of global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as investment from private and state corporations, these projects have been violently imposed, leading to the forced displacement of entire communities and the persecution, criminalization and murder of those who resist the devastation of their territories and the environment.
Now, under the pretext of climate change, capitalism presents ideas such as “clean energy” and “carbon neutral”, which promote initiatives that exacerbate dispossession at the global level. With these arguments, echoed by NGOs, governments and institutions such as the UN, the aim is to promote a series of projects that far from questioning the roots of global warming, seek to clean up the image of those responsible for the devastation.
“Our struggle is clearly against all exploitation”, stated the people of Latin America, who witness the negative consequences of “green” projects within the framework of “clean energy” and “conservation” of nature.
Ruins of the Chacté dam workers’ camp. More than three decades ago, the people of Cancuc expelled the workers because they did not have the permission of the communities. Today the land is used for planting maize and coffee plantations. Photo by Aldo Santiago
Avispa Midia, in collaboration with the Chiapaneco Group against the Extractive Model, presents The False Myth of Clean Energy, a documentary that gathers the testimonies of communities that are on the front line against the assault of the green economy, which seeks to put a price on the common goods of nature in Chiapas, Latin America and the world.
Voices from Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico combine in this audiovisual document to disarticulate the deception of the so-called “clean energies”, implemented under the discourse of “mitigation” of the effects of climate change and with negative impacts on the territories.
This documentary aims to contribute to the analysis of the communities for whom the environmental struggle represents an anti-capitalist struggle.
The false myth of clean energy in Latin America
Length: 46 minutes
Interviews: Alcaldía indígena de Nebaj, Asociación de Afectados por la represa El Quimbo, Comunidades afectadas por Hidrosogamoso, Comunidad Lenca de Río Blanco, Comunidad Náyeri de Presidio de Los Reyes, Parroquia de Cancúc, Otros Mundos AC, Centro de Derechos Humanos Digna Ochoa AC, Movimiento Reddeldía de los Montes Azules, Frente Popular en Defensa del Soconusco 20 de junio.
Images and sound: Lucia Ramirez, Juliana Bittencourt, Santiago Navarro, Beatriz Millón y Aldo Santiago
Directed by: Claudia Ramos Guillén y Aldo Santiago
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, two prisoner organizations in Chiapas announced the start of a hunger strike to denounce the lack of medical attention in State Convict Reintegration Center No. 5 (CERSS), located in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
Faced with the vulnerable conditions and deteriorating health of the incarcerated population on top of the inaction of state officials, members of La Voz de Indígenas en Resistencia (The Voice of Indigenous People in Resistance) and La Voz Verdadera del Amate (The True Voice of El Amate) announced that they would go on hunger strike from May 21 until June 5.
Alarm Bells From Weeks Ago
At the beginning of May, the organized prisoners shared their situation through several letters distributed by civil organizations. There have been no advances in case revision or their demand for freedom due to the irregularities and procedural violations in the trials that have kept them locked up.
Already poor conditions have also worsened due to the state’s suspension of visits, to limit contagion. This action has negatively impacted the inmates, as visits from family and comrades were how they received food, medication, and hygiene products, or money to buy their basic necessities inside the prison.
“We can’t fulfill our basic needs because visitors don’t have access, and this penitentiary doesn’t give us soap, toothpaste, or toilet paper”, assertedChiapas’ organized prisoners, facing a situation that’s not limited to this southern Mexican state. According to the 2016 National Survey of the Population Deprived of Freedom, almost 60% of people incarcerated in Mexican penitentiaries have to get hygiene articles by their own means, because the jails don’t provide them.
Despite the restriction on visits, in a communiqué published on May 10, the prisoners emphasized the high risk of contagion due to the guards’ lack of protocols. Guards are relieved every two days and do not have access to sanitary equipment or methods when they interact with the incarcerated population.
“The center lacks medications we need for any kind of emergency. The only thing they give out here is Tylenol,” stated the prisoners. May 14 marked the one-year anniversary of the protest camp they have maintained to demand their freedom. “The government of Chiapas has ignored our demands because we’re victims of torture committed by the Chiapan state prosecution. The government wants to see us die here. Our place is deplorable, but we will continue until we get our freedom, no matter the cost”, they emphasized in their communique.
Actions in Response to the Pandemic
The prisoners justified their hunger strike by the lack of attention given to the health of inmates who show Covid-19 related symptoms, “not even providing medication for the symptoms.”
They also shared their worry over prison officials’ denial of possible infections among their staff, and even of the unconfirmed death of one officer.
Since May 4, the prisoners have been drawing attention to the fact that a diabetic inmate showed symptoms related to Covid-19, and after interacting with other prisoners, was isolated without receiving medical attention.
According to prisoners, this case demonstrates the need to grant house arrest to infected people to avoid risking the health of the entire incarcerated population. As their denunciation states, “The population inside is suffering from fevers, muscle pains, and diarrhea. What we don’t know is if this is the Covid-19 virus or normal fevers. There’s no way to get a Covid-19 test and there are medications for the inmates.” The two organizations emphasized the grave health risks they face, because they have members with hypertension, diabetes, variousinfections, and other ailments that can increase the mortality rate of the coronavirus.
There are more than 200,000 imprisoned people in Mexico, and according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 46% of those incarcerated share a cell with more than five people.
Since March 15, 2019, the organized prisoners have demanded their unconditional freedom due to multiple irregularities in the arrest and trial process. They held a 135 day hunger strike, during which they consumed only water and honey, which has undermined their health and puts them at even higher risk if they get infected with Covid-19.
By May 18, the National Human Rights Commission had registered 120 positive Covid-19 cases in penitentiaries, in addition to 74 suspected cases, 28 recoveries, and 21 deaths.
Barter, an ancestral practice for many peoples, consists in the necessity-based exchange of products, knowledge, or services for different ones. The transaction takes place between goods considered of equal value, without using money. It can happen between neighbors, families, communities, or whole peoples.
Historically, barter has given people access to a variety of products that other regions produce but their own lands do not, due to differences in climate and knowledge.
Although its use declined significantly with the introduction of money and the capitalist system, it never went away. Today, with the crisis provoked by the coronavirus pandemic, it’s having a strong resurgence in many parts of the American continent.
Examples of barter are varied: it’s used in rural and urban zones, between individuals, neighborhoods, communities, or even more officially, with the direction of authorities. These practices are allowing thousands of people to survive and resist amid the pandemic.
Ecuador
Just 15 days after the declaration of a state of emergency on March 16, this ancestral form of exchange has become commonplace between communities in the mountain, coastal, and Amazonian regions.
According to a report by the newspaper El Comercio, faced with the lack of money, mountain communities in Bolívar province are exchanging food supplies with neighboring regions. They send onions, potatoes, carrots, parsley, cilantro, and medicinal plants from the mountains, in return for plantains, oranges, and cassava, crops from the subtropical zone.
“The spirit of barter is that it has to be of equal value. There shouldn’t be mistrust or lingering doubts that one person got more and the other less”, commented Medardo Chimbolema, Mayor of Guaranda. A larger food exchange with other provinces is being planned from there, despite fear in the communities of the possible spread of Covid-19.
In Ecuador some barter has also been coordinated through traditional community authorities. This is how the mountain province of Tungurahua has been organizing exchange with the coastal provinces of Guayas, Esmeraldas, and Los Rios. From the mountains come avocados, figs, tomatoes, chard, spinach, and medicinal plants, while people from the coast mainly send limes, rice, cassava, squash, and plantain.
Barter between provinces arose from the increase in prices at the markets and the complexity of the administrative processes for receiving aid.
When the 2002 economic crisis hit, leaving hundreds of thousands of Argentinians in poverty, bartering knowledge and networks consolidated into 6,000 barter clubs in a web that reached more than two million people.
A credit from the barter club network active in Argentina
Now, under full quarantine, exchange is happening again, as is the case in the small city of Ensenada, populated by lower and middle class families, middle-income workers, and many who live hand to mouth in the informal economy.
Faced with the impossibility of many people meeting in the same place, the participants have had to reinvent things, and so they started using social media. Daniel Branda, who coordinates one of the three barter clubs in the area, says that “in the first phase we shut down everything, thinking we’d be starting back up in two weeks. Later our problem was that people couldn’t gather in the club, because there are 50 participants in each one. So we reactivated barter-by-order”.
Now, members of the group take orders through cell phone messages and deliver them to a meetup point, avoiding gatherings to lower the risk of Covid-19 contagion.
Mexico
In Mexico City, artisans have also fallen back on barter to survive the quarantine, helping each other out. “The situation didn’t allow us to go out and we stayed home during the quarantine, but we couldn’t stay put any longer. We had to go out and find a way to help each other and help other people,” Susana told Efe news agency.
The Mexican craftswoman and her mother commute from Ajusco, where they live in a community of artisans, to the Narvarte neighborhood to offer their crafts woven from palm.
“It’s a simple and humble community where artisans and non-artisans live, but we have all helped each other out. Everything we’re receiving and what we’ve been brought we have shared among the community”, she said.
In San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, a space called El Cambalache has been run for the last five years by a group of women who promote moneyless economies through the exchange of knowledge, objects, and services.
Workshop on food preparation for exchange. Photo: El Cambalache.
El Cambalache is a space where people can attend many different workshops, from health, to embroidery, to permaculture, as well as solicit services like legal consultation and electronics repair, in addition to the exchange of clothes, food, and other basic necessities.
Faced with the health emergency and in spite of the temporary closure of the physical space, El Cambalache is keeping the exchange network among groups and organizations in Chiapas active. They’re also helping build mutual aid networks for food collection and distribution, mask making and distribution, and giving out information about how to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Colombia
“The Muiscas used the name ‘Ipsa’ for the markets where Tunebos, Panches, Sutagaos, Muzos, and other indigenous groups met to exchange goods. Some would bring cotton blankets and mounds of salt, others seashells and feathers of exotic birds, a few with loads of coca leaf and hallucinogens like yopo. Those living in the lowlands would bring cotton which would then be woven by adept artisans in the highlands. After hours or days of travel, indigenous people would meet, barter, and return with things that didn’t grow in their lands”, Germán Izquierdo told the Colombian newspaper Semana Rural.
Covid-19 and the confinement that Colombia is living through have brought back barter to several towns in Cundinamarca. Photo: Julián Galán
In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, barter is becoming important again, especially in rural departments (Colombia’s equivalent of states). In Ubaté, the country’s milk capital, dairy products are being bartered for sugar from the city of Útica. According to Ubaté’s mayor, Jaime Torres, these days most people can’t afford the current price of yogurt. “Moreover, we’re bringing back a lost custom. Many years ago, Zipaquirá and Ubaté exchanged salt for potatoes, milk, and other products”, said Torres.
As Ramiro Lis, from the Association of Ukawe’s’ Nasa C’hab Councils in the department of Cauca, said in an interview withDesinformémonos,“barter is a political alternative for an era like this one (…) Products from different climates are exchanged. Meeting and exchange points are established, in which necessity comes first, not value”.
From the municipal capital of Inzá, also in the Cauca, members of the Juan Tama Association of Councils’ education segment, part of the Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca (CRIC), discussed the work that had been done to get food to communities of indigenous people who had emigrated to the cities of Cali, Bogotá, and Popayán.
“800 families across eight municipalities organized themselves, communally, to send shipments of cassava, plantains, raw sugar, and other items. 3,200 arrobas (36 tons) left in three trucks and a bus,” explained a man named Delio. In exchange, those living in the city sent hygiene and cleaning products that the communities don’t produce on their own.
Both Ramiro and Delio affirm that barter isn’t just about survival; it challenges the capitalist economy: “Barter is a form of solidarity that allows us to strengthen our own economy”.
This March 8, International Women’s Day, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of downtown Oaxaca City to demand an end to gender violence and the government impunity that reproduces it. More than in previous years, the change in the atmosphere of the Oaxacan capital was palpable, not only during the march that began in the afternoon but also in the preceding months, both in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico.
Under the merciless Lenten sun, small groups gathered in parks and markets: grandmothers mourning their murdered granddaughters, students denouncing their teachers for harassment, members of self-defense collectives. They wore purple huipiles, green bandannas and black hoodies. They carried crosses with painted names, collective care protocols and buckets of wheatpaste solution.
By three in the afternoon larger groups made their way to the General Cemetery, where women of diverse ages and gender expressions chanted slogans and unfurled banners. For many it was their first protest, and they arrived in response to a call launched not by political parties, unions or private organizations, but by “organized and autonomous women… without logos, without spokespersons, without leaders”.
In recent months, an intense movement against gender violence has spread like wildfire throughout the country, fueled by the cases of Ingrid Escamilla, Fátima Cecilia Aldrighetti and so many others. In Oaxaca, long-standing struggles by the families of victims such as Dafne Denisse Carreño Bengochea and María del Sol Cruz Jarquín are growing through the participation of Indigenous and trans women, artists demanding justice for the attack against the saxophonist María Elena Ríos, and students denouncing sexual harassment in their high schools and universities.
When the march passed by the Faculty of Architecture of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO), the anger overflowed. Hooded youth built small fires in the street, broke windows and covered the walls with messages blaming the institution for covering up repeated cases of sexual harassment, threats and physical assaults by professors and university authorities.
These accusations were echoed by students from the Oaxaca State High School System (Cobao), who have in recent weeks denounced cases of sexual harassment at the Tlaxiaco, Huatulco, Pueblo Nuevo and Nazareno campuses. Last week, students from the Nazareno campus confronted a computer teacher whom they accuse of harassing female students via messaging apps and social media. While the teacher was temporarily dismissed in light of the allegations in 2019, he was reinstated this year after promising to improve his behavior. Following the students’ protest he was detained by state police.
For one philosophy student from Oaxaca, this International Women’s Day demonstration was notable for a much larger and more diverse attendance than in previous years: “A lot of sectors of the population have joined in that we didn’t see before …. now there are more women from both the lower and the upper classes”, she said in the city’s central plaza, the final destination of the march.
As a circle of women danced with drums and torches, she added: “I’ve seen many of my friends who used to say, ‘No, feminists are radicals,’ and now they say, ‘machete to the macho’.” She attributes this change to the consciousness-raising work that many collectives have been doing in community spaces and on social media, where they share flyers and videos that highlight common forms of gender-based violence.
Doña Elena, who is attending the March 8 protest for the first time, decided to join because she is tired of fearing for her life each time she walks home late at night from one of her several jobs. She is also motivated by the recent loss of her grandson, an event she describes as “a very difficult situation”: “It is a very big pain that has no explanation. That’s why I like to support”, she adds.
This shared pain rippled across a crowd that stretched for blocks and blocks. But so did the shared commitment to lay the foundation for a society in which women and gender non-conforming people can truly flourish.
As I walked away from the plaza fatigue set in, as did an astonishment at the small world we’d created during one afternoon in downtown Oaxaca City. At first it was shocking to see the men. I felt a strong desire to turn the clock back an hour or two. But just as strong was the feeling that the women around me were accomplices—bearers of a collective energy that would not dissipate with the #8M march or the #9M strike but would keep spreading throughout a city and country that have been irrevocably altered.
Leaders of the Tohono O’odham Nation, an Indigenous tribe divided by the US-Mexico border, denounced this week the destruction of their sacred sites to make way for the construction of a new section of the border wall between the states of Arizona and Sonora.
On Wednesday, February 26, tribal leaders from both sides of the border protested at the base of Monument Hill, an ancient burial site where the O’odham used to lay to rest the remains of the Apache warriors they killed in battle. The tribe’s studies also indicate that their ancestors used the site for religious ceremonies.
Not far from the protest, a group of journalists invited by the United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) watched a controlled detonation of explosives. A military explosives expert with the US Army Corps of Engineers told reporters that the blastwould prepare the site for the construction a 30 foot steel wall, part of President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to renovate and expand 175 miles of the border barrier.
“To state it clearly, we are enduring crimes against humanity,” said Verlon M. José, the governor of the Tohono O’odham in Mexico. “Tell me where your grandparents are buried and let me dynamite their graves”.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the chair of the Tohono O’odham Nation in the United States, Ned Norris Jr., testified at a congressional hearing entitled, “destroying sacred sites and erasing tribal culture”. “I know in my heart and what our elders have told us and what we have learned—that that area is home to our ancestors”.
Until the 1970s, the Tohono O’odham—called Papagos by Spanish colonizers—crossed freely over the border between the Unites States and Mexico. But in recent decades the O’odham have watched as an increasingly militarized border has split their homeland definitively in two. Today, some 28,000 members of the tribe live on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in Arizona. Another 2,000 live in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, where the Mexican government doesn’t recognize their land rights.
In addition to being part of the O’odham’s historic heritage Monument Hill is located partially within the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an international biosphere reserve established to protect dozens of endemic plants and animals, including several endangered species.
“It’s heartbreaking to watch them butcher this spectacular national monument and desecrate sacred indigenous lands”, said Laiken Jordahl, an activist with the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that works to protect endangered species. Since 2017, the Center has been suing the Trump administration for environmental and constitutional violations related to the expansion of the border barrier. And since last year, Jordahl has documented the destruction of saguaro and organ pipe cactuses to make way for the reinforced wall, which Trump is rushing to finish before competing in November’s presidential elections.
Jordahl emphasized that some of the saguaros—a protected species that can live up to 200 years—“have been here longer than the border itself. What right do we think we have to destroy something like that?”
In a press release, the Center for Biological Diversity said that to mix concrete for the bollard fence construction crews are pumping water from an aquifer that nourishes a rare desert oasis. According to the Border Patrol’s own data they are extracting an average of 84,000 gallons of water a day from the aquifer that feeds the Quitobaquito Spring.
The pumping jeopardizes not only the spring but also two endangered species that depend on it for survival: the Sonoyta mud turtle and the Quitobaquito pupfish. The spring has also enabled the survival of the O’odham people for thousands of years. In 2019, construction crews working near the spring found what are believed to be human remainsthat date to the classic Hohokam period, between 300 and 1500 A.D.
The Border Patrol disputed the claims of Indigenous and environmental advocates. In a statement, Border Patrol spokesman John Mennell insisted that “no biological, cultural or historical sites were identified within the project area”. In addition, he said that the work teams had relocated hundreds of cactuses within the park, and were only destroying those “determined not to be in a healthy enough state to be relocated”.
Both the cactuses and the O’odham sacred sites are normally protected by U.S. law. However, the Trump administration has waived dozens of regulations to expedite the construction of the border fence, including those protecting Indigenous territories and endangered species. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit challenging the administration’s authority to waive these laws.
And so construction is progressing on a section of the wall that is destined to run along the entire southern edge of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Scientists have no doubt that the barrier will limit the geographic range of critically endangered species. However, its impact on human migration is less certain. In the 2019 fiscal year CBP only reported making 14,265 apprehensions in the Tucson sector, where the National Monument is located, compared to 205,000 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
In an opinion column, Rick Smith, a retired Regional Director of the U.S. National Park Service, questioned the logic of a new border fence. “If the effectiveness of the existing barrier and its impacts have not been disclosed to the public, how do we know that a new border wall is necessary?,” he asked. “What we do know is that a wall will threaten the delicate balance of a critical ecosystem. So is building a wall that may not be successful worth impacting national parks and harming threatened and endangered wildlife? It is not.”
Indigenous communities belonging to the Mayan Peninsular and Ch’ol peoples in the municipality of Calakmul, Campeche, obtained a provisional suspension of the implementation of the Mayan Train project by the Federal Judicial Power on January 14. The communities organized within the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil (CRIPX) had previously submitted a request for protection against the consultation on the Mayan Train project which was carried out by the federal government in November and December 2019.
Fraudulent consultation
In the “amparo” request presented on January 6, 2020, the communities denounced “the simulated and fraudulent indigenous consultation ordered by the federal government and implemented to the detriment of the indigenous peoples of Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Chiapas.
They pointed out that the alleged consultation process was carried out without complying with the international standards of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and, in particular, Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries of the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The ILO agreement establishes that indigenous people, have the right to be consulted in relation to any situation that affects their way of life and the consultation must “give prior notice, be free, informed, in good faith, and culturally appropriate”.
But indigenous groups claim that the consultation was not free, did not give prior notice and was not well informed. “We did not receive detailed information sufficiently in advance, nor was our right to participate respected, since the structure of the forums of the supposed informative phase, dated November 30, 2019, was designed and implemented unilaterally, so its forms and modes were not in accordance with the forms of deliberation and agreement with the communities”.
Likewise, the indigenous communities maintain that “the approval of the project had already been announced through various public channels before the consultation”, and therefore it was not a consultation “in good faith and was not culturally appropriate, given that electoral ballots were distributed to be placed in ballet boxes which does not take into account the forms of organization and decision-making of the community”, they specified.
Responsible parties
In their lawsuit, they hold responsible the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; the director of The National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur), Rogelio Jiménez Pons; the Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, and the General Director of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), Adelfo Regino Montes.
The court grants provisional suspension
In response to the application for amparo, the First District Court in the state of Campeche agreed to grant the provisional suspension.
According to information from the newspaper El Universal, the decision of the First District Court was twofold. Firstly it declared the suspension of the indigenous consultation to be inappropriate because it was already a “done deal”. It also granted the suspension of the railway, real estate and commercial project known as the Mayan Train.
According to the Mexican newspaper, “textually, the agreement with file number 12 / 2020 reads that the suspension was granted so that things remain in the state in which they are, that is, so that the authorities are responsible regardless of the outcome of the consultation conducted in relation to the so-called Mayan Train, refrain from decreeing the approval of such project, or, having been decreed such approval, refrain from acts tending to the implementation of such project”, until it is resolved on the final suspension.
However, Fonatur is denying the existence of the provisional suspension. In a statement, the fund said that it has not been notified of such suspension and that it does not know of any legal procedure that has been taken.
Continued resistance
The communities of Xpujil, Calakmul, celebrated the news and called on the other towns affected by the Mayan Train project to resort to legal means to stop the mega-project. “We are pleased with this decision and we urge other towns in the states of the Republic affected by the Mayan Train to exhaust the jurisdictional path to defend their right to a true consultation, to integrate their lands and territories, and to autonomy and self-determination”.
On the other hand, they reaffirmed their clear intention to continue organizing and resisting to defend their territory.
“We will continue working on legal defense actions, as well as at the organizational level, holding community assemblies in which we provide information related to territory defense. Likewise, we continue to establish alliances with different academic sectors, researchers, social organizations and with the National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) to be held on March 27 and 28 in Xpujil”, they specified.
The next scheduled hearing is set for Friday, February 28.
