The creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in 1990 (RBM, by its Spanish acronym) generated the conditions to insert this territory into sustainable development plans. In these plans, conservation policies and discourse on combating climate change enable territorial reorganization of the region.
For Rocío García, an anthropologist from the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, a key criticism of the forest conservation model adopted by the Guatemalan government is that the Protected Areas (PAs) were designed with purely technical instruments—through aerial photographs and satellite images that do not account for the people that live inside them. “As a result, communities became prisoners after the new reorganization. This system causes conflict because it imposes PAs with boundaries similar to those of the farming system—which is what peasant and indigenous communities have been fleeing since the 20th century”.
According to Rocío, the PA model is racist in its inception, because “those who dispossess have economic interests. They see a reserve of future resources in the PAs; and they prefer to believe that inhabitants have just arrived, in order to apply the territorial reorganization law”. They then use this law to justify the forced displacement of entire communities.
The objective of the new rurality is for peasants to no longer be tied to the land for subsistence farming, and instead begin to produce for the market.
The case of Guatemala, Rocío explains, is a clear example of the interrelationship between international environmental policies and the territorial planning policies of the Guatemalan government. According to the Guatemalan anthropologist, hegemonic environmental discourse originated with the 1972 publication, the Meadows Report, also known as The Limits to Growth. The report, commissioned by the Club of Rome (a private association of businesspeople, scientists and politicians), concludes that “in a finite planet, the dynamics of exponential growth (population and product per capita) are not sustainable”.
The concept of “sustainable development” was used for the first time in a 1987 United Nations (UN) report entitled Our Common Future. Five years later, the first Earth Summit was organized by the UN and held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, 178 countries adopted the term “sustainable development” as that environmental safeguard within the development process. The main focus is always on conservation, using the model of Protected Areas.
“This is in line with the territorial planning policies initiated in Guatemala during the government of Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004), called Poverty Reduction Strategies. These policies were a kind of diagnostic at the municipal level, where the aim was to identify the causes of poverty, and the economic resources available in each municipality”, explains Rocío.
The subsequent administration of Óscar Berger (2004-2008) implemented the rural territorial development policy, which was drawn up using a methodology designed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Sustainable Development Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The policy was specifically the work of two consultants, Alexander Schejtman y Julio A. Berdegué, who coined the politics of the new rurality, with the objective of inserting territories into markets using principles of demand.
The objective of the new rurality is for peasants to no longer be tied to the land for subsistence farming, and instead begin to produce for the market. It therefore incentivizes nation-states to reorganize local institutions and impose models of social organization designed to produce for the global market.The Paris Agreement
Global financial institutions, in partnership with development banks from industrialized countries, will have a leading role in implementing the Paris Agreement to combat global warming. Since the 21st Conference of the Parties in December 2015 (COP21), 193 countries have signed the Paris Agreement.
Through investment agreements between these entities and the countries, the goal is to meet carbon emissions reductions targets. Under the Paris Agreement, global warming becomes an economic opportunity, where funding for “adaptation and mitigation” for the climate crisis reduces the environmental problem to a monetary situation. The mechanism also subsidizes “ecosystem services”, creating a global market in which it is cheaper for industries to pay to contaminate than to take real action against the climate crisis.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are the entities responsible for managing the Paris Agreement's financial mechanism. They are also responsible for allocating additional monetary resources channeled toward climate funding after implementation of the agreement on November 4, 2016.
One of the focus areas with the most resources is the reconversion of global energy systems, to transition away from fossil fuel dependence toward intensive production, through “clean energy sources”. The other main portion of financial resources are earmarked to reduce emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation, and to promote “conservation, sustainable forest management and an increase in forest carbon reserves through REDD+ projects”.
Some estimates indicate that international public funding from developed countries could increase to up to US $18.8 billion per year by 2020. Before 2025, the parties to the agreement will set a new collective quantified goal of at least US $100 billion per year, with funding priority given to “developing” countries.
Latin America and the Caribbean are priority regions to implement market mechanisms for forest conservation, as they house 23.5% of the world's forest.
In 2008, the UN-REDD partnership—made up of the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Organization), UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)—launched a financial program to build capacity to implement payments for ecosystem services mechanisms at the country level.
This initiative currently includes mechanisms for the sustainable use and management of forest areas. In Latin America, funding from the World Bank (WB), Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Forest Investment Program (FIP) also support this strategy. Other influential actors include the international cooperation agencies of governments such as Norway, Germany and the United States.
Most of these resources are used in the preparatory phases for REDD+ mechanisms, as the aim is to launch an international carbon credit trading system by 2020. In the case of Latin America, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama began preparing national REDD+ mechanisms in 2012.
The Market Model
After 36 years of internal armed conflict, the Guatemalan State and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG, by its Spanish acronym—organization that grouped together the four largest guerrilla groups) discussed the possibility of implementing land reform to benefit the peasant population. These discussions occurred in the context of UN-sponsored peace negotiations.
But after the peace accords were signed, World Bank policies influenced the strategy, leading to market-assisted land reform. This imposed prohibitions on the allocation of land ownership to groups and peasant communities, despite the fact that in numerous cases they already possessed the lands—many of which had been abandoned forcibly during the war.
At the same time, the Guatemalan government reinforced the prohibition on land titling throughout the RBM. Meanwhile, with USAID funding, it created the “forest concession” model, to assign the management of areas designated for “sustainable development”.
“What they did [USAID] was place an NGO in each concession to provide advice on organization, fund management and legal registration. They provided technical assistance for people to organize, meet with lawyers and attend trainings—in other words, they provided all the training, equipment, and planning. They had to conduct an analysis of the territory to know how much potential it had for both timber and non-timber activities. That's all the information they have to work with. With this information they developed management plans to draw up the logging strategy”, says Rosa Maria Chan, a former Guatemalan official. She believes that forest concessions are community organizations that have protected the region against deforestation.
By 2001, USAID was channeling its assistance through the BIOFOR Project, implemented by Chemonics International—a private company for international cooperation with a presence in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The work of Chemonics instilled a business vision to constantly seek out new market niches and increase forest production. It also proposed a reduction in subsidies and in the number of institutions accompanying concessions—two goals that this and successive projects failed to meet.
Although official discourse talks about respect for the determination of communities operating forest concessions, a 2007 analysis by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) reveals the vertical and paternalistic formula in the relationship between NGOs and communities in Petén.
“The NGOs took on a leading role in the process; rather than accompanying or facilitating, they became service providers...the relationship between communities and NGOs was unbalanced from the start, given that the NGOs were managing and administering the funds, without promoting community building and self-management...the NGOs promoted relationships of dependency in order to justify their existence and continue receiving funding from donors” So underscores the context analysis about the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP, by its Spanish acronym), an umbrella organization for the organizations operating the community forest concessions.
“This model allows NGOs to supplant communities in decision-making spaces, thereby competing with community leadership and limiting access to key information...In some cases, as part of their approach to assistance, accompanying NGOs pressured community organizations to sign exclusivity agreements on technical assistance. Far from facilitating the capacity-building of community members, this was geared toward creating major dependence on the NGOs—which logically generated backlash and confrontation between community groups and the NGOs”.
The case of Forest Services Community Enterprise S.A., better known as FORESCOM, is an example of the imposition of organizational structures that are alien to the reality of communities. As part of the implementation of the BIOFOR project, this entity was created in 2003 to market the wood—a process controlled by NGOs until then.
However, the cost of this institutional design was hard to sustain once BIOFOR ended. So ACOFOP—an organization funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ, by its German acronym)—adjusted FORESCOM's model to preserve it as a business platform. ACOFOP has also received technical assistance from Rainforest Alliance, which places its certification seal on all of ACOFOP's products for export.
According to CIFOR's analysis, between 1989 and 2003 alone, USAID, IDB, KfW (a German development bank) and counterparts in the Guatemalan government directly invested US $92 million in projects in the Reserve. “Of this total investment, only a modest portion directly reached concessionary communities and their organizations. Therefore, the investment did not have a considerable impact on community-building and self-management processes. These resources have only deepened the dependence between forest concessions and NGOs”, the report highlights.
Where are the Forest Concessions?
The Maya Biosphere Reserve is divided into different areas. Official reports indicate that, despite the devastation caused by the oil industry, almost 70% of the reserve's forest cover are in acceptable conditions.
The core area covers 39% of the reserve, and consists of five National Parks and four Protected Biotopes—reserved exclusively for scientific research and low-impact tourism. No new settlements are allowed in this area, and logging and agriculture are prohibited.
The buffer zone is a 15-kilometer strip that extends along the southern part of the RBM and covers 23% of the reserve. Here, the sale of lands, ranching and agriculture are allowed. It is the area with the highest demographic concentration due to the road network, particularly in the part bordering Mexico. This network facilitates entry into all the core areas: Laguna del Tigre, Tikal, Zotz, Dos Lagunas, Mirador-río Azul and Sierra del Lacandón. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, this area “has received almost no investment, and the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) has had very little presence; so by default, the area has no focus on conservation nor any capacity to enforce it”.
The multiple-use zone covers 38% of the RBM and includes the community and industrial forest concessions. It is an “extractive reserve”, where land cannot be legalized, and only “sustainable” activities are allowed through concession—for which it is mandatory to be a legally established local organization.
Forest concessions are not based on ancestral forms of forest resource management; instead, they establish a contract of up to 25 years between the Guatemalan State and a community organization. The community organization is guaranteed the rights to use, access, manage and extract renewable timber and non-timber resources, as well as carry out tourism projects. The property rights in these contracts belong to the State, and they exclude the possibility of sale or transfer of concession rights.
Although 12 community concessions were initially granted in Petén, they currently only operate in nine communities. Two industrial concessions have also been granted to the logging companies, Batel Comercial Ltd. and Gibor S.A. The total concession area is 485,200 hectares.
Taxes
Based on their formation as businesses, each concession is required to pay certifications and taxes. First, they need an international certification validated by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which costs US $4,500 per year to access foreign markets and sell wood with an “environmentally responsible” seal. And every five years, concessions pay US $12,000 for a re-certification evaluation. However, certification alone does not guarantee the communities access to better markets and prices for their wood, especially in the case of the most valuable species.
Furthermore, each concession pays an average of US $16,000 for a forest license (this amount varies based on the number of species they sell). And, they invest US $46,000 annually en patrolling, control and maintenance of firebreaks. They also assume food and fuel expenses for CONAP's monitoring activities, which on average add up to US $11,000 per year.
As for taxes on use and management, each concession pays the Guatemalan government one dollar per hectare managed. Due to the high volume of goods they export, they have also become recipients of credit from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE, by its Spanish acronym)—a regional financial organization that also invests in economic and energy integration projects.
After injections of capital for over two decades, ACOFOP now controls everything—from the productive management phase of forest resources, to their sale on international markets. However, this work is sustained through ongoing technical assistance and funding from foreign NGOs. For these NGOs, the more reflective and deliberate style of community decision-making—which seeks agreement based on group consensus—is not efficient in the business world, which requires quick decisions, information, contacts and high technical capacities.
Under this logic, concessions depend on external agents to complete the cycle of selling their forest resources. In spite of analyses published by consultants to fine-tune the operational mechanisms of forest concessions, a 2016 report by European academics stresses that little has been done to modify these policies in almost ten years.
According to the document, Community Forestry Organisations and Equitable resource management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala, one of the four key issues with forest concessions in Petén “is that decisions are made by accompanying institutions, not by the communities”.
This report also indicates that there is “a lack of space for disagreement or co-production. To ensure the sustainability of community forestry, long-term and collaborative strategies are needed, rather than projects operating in isolation. A history of NGOs working to their own aims has left a short-termist, project-oriented legacy and a dependency culture”, the document states. An Uncertain Future.
Despite business sectors' publicity and praise of them, forest concessions are in danger of not having their contracts renewed after they expire in 2022. This is partly due to the oil industry's intentions since 1997 to expand its area of extraction by almost 300,000 hectares, which overlaps with the forest communities of Carmelita and Uaxactún. The oil industry considers this area to have the greatest potential in Petén, so there are always actors interested in initiating oil activities in the region as soon as the opportunity arises.
In addition to the extractive industry, forest concessions are also concerned about the implementation of the tourism megaproject on the El Mirador site.
The proposed expansion of the Cuenca Mirador Park is a project developed by the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies (FARES), with the support of the Global Heritage Fund (GHF). Its main promoter is archeologist Richard Hansen, founder of FARES, and specialist in archeology of the Preclassic Maya periods.
The proposal aims to cover 2,170 km.² in an area that includes part of the Mirador-Río Azul National Park and the Naachtún-Dos Lagunas Biotope, as well as the territories of six community forest concessions and part of the industrial concession located in La Gloria. According to Hansen, the objective of the project is to protect the territory, which would imply stopping forest concession activities.
At first, the US archeologist's project had the support of the Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage (Pacunam, made up of transnationals of the likes of Wal-Mart, Cementos Progreso, Citigroup and Samsung, among others); however, in the last five years the El Mirador project has sparked heated controversies that have prevented its implementation.
NGOs: A Relationship of Dependency
Between 2003 and 2010, forest concessions in Petén recorded cutting 163,000 m³ of wood for export, mostly mahogany and cedar. As high quality raw material, these products were mostly absorbed by the international market. This means the RBM is Guatemala's largest source of fine tropical woods—which are sent to European and US markets and fetch an average annual income of over US $13 million.
Data from Rainforest Alliance indicate that between 2007 and 2017, forest concessions generated US $55 million from the sale of wood, xate palm, pepper, Maya nut and tourism services, in addition to creating 26,000 jobs. According to information from the US organization, by the end of 2007, almost all of the hectares containing forest concessions in the RBM had been certified, which represents 60% of the land in the multiple-use zone.
These figures are part of the results of the project, Climate, Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG), which was sponsored by the USAID and ended in February of 2018. The project received an investment of US $25 million between 2013 and 2018, and is considered to be part of the preparation phase of the Guatecarbón project—the local version of the REDD+ mechanism for the Central American country.
CNCG is part of USAID's 2012-2015 Global Climate Change and Development Strategy. It was implemented by a consortium of environmental, academic and business institutions led by Rainforest Alliance, in collaboration with the following organizations: Nature Defenders Foundation (FDN by its Spanish acronym, Rainforest Alliance's local partner which co-administers the Sierra Lacandón National Park); the University of the Valley of Guatemala; the Guatemalan Exporters Association; The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund. The objective was to “improve the commercialization of forest products and services in order to strengthen the capacity of forest concessions and the production of timber and non-timber products”.
For ACOFOP, the positive results of these strategies are evident, given the millions in income obtained from the sale of forest products. However, even the RBM's current Master Plan mentions “the ever-present danger that logging activities can eliminate critical components of the habitat with a resulting loss in animal populations”. Likewise, the document mentions the “monitoring of the species, Xate Chamaedorea Elegans and C. Oblongata, whose studies show that they have suffered overexploitation with negative effects on remaining wild populations of these species”.
Despite these warnings, it should be noted that USAID's sales strategy fully matches the objectives that the Wildlife Conservation Society developed in the current RBM Master Plan, which predicts a 50% increase in the export volume of lesser-known wood species by 2021; a 25% increase in the sale of non-timber products; and sale of 25% of the wood with added value, as a result of trainings in carpentry and other trades to work the wood before exporting it.
To this end, the plan establishes that by 2021, in non-concessioned, multiple-use forest areas in the region with productive potential, “there must be some kind of forest product use in order to strengthen conservation [of the area]”. This means prioritizing, among other areas, the “Candelaria Triangle”. This is the region where the Laguna Larga community was located and where three other communities are under constant threat of eviction.
Therefore, these expectations are also in line with FAO studies that indicate that “by 2030, the global consumption of industrial roundwood will increase by 60%, reaching a demand volume of 2.4 billion m³.”
Despite the profits obtained from the concessions, an internal USAID audit published in 2016 reveals deep-seated problems in the planning and implementation of the CNCG project. According to the document, Rainforest Alliance provided erroneous information on certain line items: it inflated the number of jobs generated through “sustainable activities”, by adding almost 24,000 jobs that did not last more than a day; it also counted the same hectares for “organic and sustainably managed” products on numerous occasions, which altered the real number reported.
However, the main problem found with CNCG is that “Rainforest Alliance should have prepared a sustainability plan from the beginning, explaining how the organizations and companies that receive support from the program would be self-sustaining after the program activities have ended. However, two years after the program was implemented, there was still no plan.” Thus, the audit stresses that in the absence of optimal and early planning, “the funds used to help the Guatemalan government and other partners manage the country's natural resources to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change could be wasted.”
A 2016 memorandum from USAID Guatemala director, William Brands, argues in favor of Rainforest Alliance's management, saying that “CNCG's support in developing commercial links for sustainably produced timber and non-timber forest products should not be underestimated. Developing connections with high-value markets in the United States and Europe is a proven method to increase community income and maintain profits in natural resource management. CNCG's support in institutionalizing key national and local policies will help consolidate the project's successes and will increase the Guatemalan government's ownership of these successes”.
Meanwhile, the USAID office in Guatemala claims that Rainforest Alliance's strategy to sustain the conservation work after CNCG ends is based on training local NGOs. These NGOs will assume the management of activities so that they can contribute to Guatemala's national environmental management objectives, while increasing production; and thereby reinforce the dependency relationship between concessions and NGOs, regardless of the term or project implemented.
In the northern lands of Petén, Guatemala, a project is being developed by a group of international NGOs, together with their local partners and the financial support of institutions like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). These NGOs include The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, Rainforest Alliance and World Wildlife Fund. Using a discourse of combating global warming and protecting forests, this project aims to profit from the indiscriminate sale of forests.
The creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in 1990 (RBM, by its Spanish acronym) generated the conditions to insert this territory—which covers 70 percent of Petén department—into national “sustainable development” plans. These plans are based on the exportation of commodities alongside conservation projects, and they exacerbate the seemingly contradictory nature of these initiatives: The Mesoamerica Plan for infrastructure and economic-energy integration with its extractive projects; and its “green version”, the Protected Areas of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Both of these land management models are financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
These models, which advertise “sustainable forest management” projects within the Reserve as conservation success stories, seek to shape the Guatemalan regulatory framework to include a new commodity for export: carbon credits. These credits come from so-called offset projects—in which contamination or destruction of one place is offset with a project in another place that claims to protect a “similar” area, or “recreate” what has been destroyed. This not only allows all industrial activity to continue—as long as its destruction is “offset”; it also causes double land grabbing: in the area of the industrial activity and in the “offset” area.
In a context of growing militarization in northern Guatemala, these plans intend to continue the forced displacement of peasant and indigenous populations who have been living in Petén for decades.
Living Under Threat
"My family began to form this small community", says Ignacio while stubby arms of his young son frolic with his face. The shadow of his house, a precarious palm hut, gives us the space to rest after the tour through the dense forest guarded by the inhabitants of Nueva Jerusalén II, a town located within the territory demarcated as Sierra Lacandón National Park (PNSL), department of the Petén in the north of Guatemala.
“They came out of necessity, and with the hope of getting a piece of land; and we have worked the land in an organized fashion”, says Ignacio, continuing his story while his son rests in his arms. “When it is time to do agricultural burning, we organize into groups and by date and time. We know that nature is important and that we can't destroy it, because we're thinking about the lives of these children”, Ignacio says. He also says it is complicated to live in his community, due to the rough roads that lead to it.
Traveling to Nueva Jerusalen II is treacherous. The Avispa Midia team accompanied a group of peasants making their way through a gap where dirt roads and mud mix—a spot that is impassable during the rainy season. Community members make the trip in groups, which enables them to go down to, and return from nearby towns where they get basic supplies that are not sent to their community. Vehicles commonly get stuck in the thick layer of mud along the path uphill toward the mountain, and are not able to climb further. This includes even four-wheel drive trucks, such as the one used on the occasion with Avispa Midia.
“It has been disturbing to us to see how powerful business sectors have been destroying nature in what they call Protected Areas”
Laguna del Tigre
“Basic services are restricted in all PAs: health, education, food, infrastructure”, says Roberto, who lives within the area demarcated as Laguna del Tigre National Park (PNLT, by its Spanish acronym), which is also within the Maya Biosphere Reserve (RBM). Along with a group of community members from the most diverse villages within the RBM, this young man participates in a training course for community health promoters in El Naranjo, the urban center on the edge of the San Pedro river in the municipality of La Libertad.
In the case of the PNLT, the Guatemalan government signed an agreement with the British-French oil extraction company, Perenco, wherein the company has committed to providing health services for the residents located in the vicinity of its facilities. “They use very strong, bad-smelling chemicals here; they use acids that spread throughout the area and are carried by the wind. In communities like ours that live nearby, most people suffer from intense headaches caused by [these chemicals]. The company's health services are a total sham; it hasn't even provided first aid kits or equipment in the communities. And in some cases the nearest health clinic is 180 kilometers away!” Robert and his classmates report.
“Health is a critical issue in the PAs. It is pretty painful; people die and nobody says anything”, says Robert, who—like the others present—is the only medical care provider in communities where there is no infrastructure, let alone healthcare workers.
Not only are Perenco's activities reduced to a monthly visit with insufficient medicine; the problem is worse in communities near oil wells, due to the contamination. The youth report that “there are diseases that occur only in those areas—such as allergies and throat and ear problems—for which medicine is not available”.
“It has been disturbing to us to see how powerful business sectors have been destroying nature in what they call Protected Areas. After we have been robbed of our lands, they end up in the hands of other people; and legally, they can belong to a company. We are angry that they hassle us about so many things; yet we see the oil bids in Laguna del Tigre, where there is also (oil) palm....Why do they have the right to be here? If they actually are contaminating nature!” ask the health training participants.
“We are living in a critical situation, because we don't have any basic services. We are totally abandoned”, shares Ignacio, a peasant from a community criminalized by the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP, by its Spanish acronym) and conservation NGOs. These institutions use discourse that blames community members for the destruction of the second largest forested area in Latin America.
“It is impossible to live in this situation” decries Ignacio, who—like 60,000 peasants from communities located in the PNLT and PNSL—lives under the threat of being forcibly displaced from his land. Despite having lived in the area for over three decades, well before the RBM was created, they are accused of being “invaders” by CONAP. This institution at one time drew the lines to demarcate these communities through its Monitoring and Evaluation Center.
“They forbid us from building houses. Buying materials and bringing them in is forbidden. Yet they also arrest us if they catch us cutting a palm tree”, Ignacio says. He denounces the fragility of his residence in the Protected Area, and expresses his lack of knowledge about the refined mechanism through which he is being criminalized: the lucrative carbon markets that covet their lands, and the financial strategy that aims to strip community members of their territories—under the pretext of environmental “conservation”.
Displacement: State Policy
On Friday, June 2, 2017, 111 peasant and Mayan Q’eqchi’, Ch’orti, Mam, Achí, Kaqchikel and Xinca families fled their lands in the face of the threat of 2,000 troops from the army and the National Civil Police (PNC, by its Spanish acronym). The troops were headed toward their community—known until then as Laguna Larga—with the sole objective of reducing it to ashes. To this day, 450 forcibly displaced people are living in a humanitarian crisis context on the border between Campeche, Mexico and Petén Guatemala.
The case of Laguna Larga and other forced displacements that have occurred in the PAs show how the Guatemalan State uses violence as a way to resolve territorial conflicts in Petén. Moreover, global discourse on combating climate change reinforces local policies that aim to destroy communities, by labeling them as “illegal”,—all the while ignoring the main causes of forest devastation: oil extraction, organized crime activities, and more recently, the expansion of agribusiness plantations.
The main objective is to prohibit the presence of communities that do not adopt the only model allowed in northern Guatemala: that of the forest merchants.
The Path Toward Conservation
In the far north of Guatemala, on the border of Mexico and Belize, Petén department gained greater relevance to the State with the discovery of oil reserves in the 1960s. The National Enterprise for the Economic Development of Petén (FYDEP, by its Spanish acronym) was created to stimulate the colonization process—and in part to counterbalance Mexico's hydroelectric plant construction projects on the Usumacinta river. This institution completed construction of the first highway connecting the state capital to Guatemala City.
Meanwhile, inequality in the distribution of land and wealth, as well as interference by the US and US-based companies, framed the development of the internal armed conflict in the rest of the country. This led to an exodus toward Petén that lasted for decades. By 1980, the number of land applications from peasants to the FYDEP (which was being funded by USAID in a counter-insurgency context), reached 50,000. However, strict military control over the institution favored the army and landowners on the southern coast, granting them large tracts of land.
Thus, in the second half of the 20th century, the industries that had collected rubber were converted to huge territories used for cattle ranching, monocultures for export, and oil extraction. The Master Plan of the PNLT has identified the latter activity as the main driver of territorial devastation, due to the opening up of roads. 90% of the deforestation in the park has occurred fewer than 2 km away from the roads that the oil company built. Additionally, the drilling of dozens of wells, and spills from pipelines, contaminate the water, air and soil—causing diseases in communities.
These organizations' concept of conservation can be seen as part of the neoliberal model, given the way in which Protected Areas are viewed economically. If the State wants to conserve, it has to pay to do so.
In 1986 FYDEP disappeared. Three years later, the Law of Protected Areas came into effect, and in this framework the RBM was created. The RBM comprises 2.1 million hectares, including what are known today as the PNSL and PNLT. These national parks house rural communities that have been settled there since 1960, and have sustained themselves by growing crops for their own consumption.
“They eliminated the FYDEP in an institutional reengineering process in Guatemala that was promoted by World Bank models. In this transformation, they changed the Petén forest reserve to a Protected Area”, says Rosa María Chan Guzmán, a former cultural and natural heritage official for Guatemala, who is convinced that forest conservation only happens if there is money in it.
Environmentalists and environmental organizations promoted this model before the negotiations and signing of the Peace Accords, which targeted Petén in the demand to allocate lands to hundreds of peasant and indigenous communities displaced throughout Guatemala. In so doing, promoters of the creation of institutions like CONAP discarded the idea of consulting communities already settled in Petén. Meanwhile, the creation of Protected Areas served as an excuse to maintain and expand military presence in Petén, in the name of protecting and defending the environmental heritage.
Meanwhile, since their inception, official institutions tasked with enforcing the Law of Protected Areas have operated on limited budgets. This has led to the proliferation of conservation NGOs to fill the institutional gap.
“These organizations' concept of conservation can be seen as part of the neoliberal model, given the way in which Protected Areas are viewed economically. If the State wants to conserve, it has to pay to do so. The State was clearly not going to have the technical capacity to manage these areas; they were always intended to be transferred to conservation NGOs. One of the first to be created, the Foundation for Eco-development and Conservation (Fundaeco, by its Spanish acronym), is owned by Marcos Cerezo. Marcos Cerezo is the son of Vinicio Cerezo, who was the president of Guatemala when the Law of Protected Areas was passed. This NGO manages geologically strategic areas, where there is gas and oil”,
SAYS ROCÍO GARCÍA, AN ANTHROPOLOGIST FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN CARLOS. SHE DENOUNCES THE IRREGULAR WAY IN WHICH THE MANAGEMENT OF PROTECTED AREAS WAS TRANSFERRED TO PRIVATE INVESTORS, WHO THEREWITH HAVE THE ABILITY TO ADMINISTER STATE RESOURCES IN THE FUTURE.
Free-Market Environmentalism in Petén
“The reconfiguration of capital has an effect on territorial reorganization. Most recently, we saw this with oil palm, but we did not realize that it began early on with the PAs”, stresses the anthropologist García, for whom the creation of the Guatemalan System of Protected Areas, Decree 4-89, is the tip of the iceberg of territorial reorganization in Petén.
The government declared the first Protected Areas in 1956; however, it was after the Law of Protected Areas passed in 1989 that a surge in the creation of similar areas took place. From 1996 to 2009 alone, 120 areas were declared. The system currently has 339 conservation areas covering over 3 million hectares—about 32% of the national territory.
Map of the priority areas for conservation in Guatemala.
The Law of Protected Areas, inspired by conservation models imposed by international agreements, quantifies what can be done on a piece of territory, who can enter, and under what conditions. As such, the model is integrated into the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor proposal (CBM, by its Spanish acronym). Planned since 1992, the CBM has an approximate price tag of $US 470 million, and involves developing national and regional projects in adjacent Protected Areas, on 768,000 km2 of land that contains 10% of the world's biodiversity.
According to Rocío, author of the thesis, “Kaxlan Territory-Q’eqchi’ Territory: Conflict in Protected Areas of Livingston, Izabal”, there are four strategic business aspects to the PAs: a) as a catalyst and guarantor of income from the land; b) as an opening to the market for environmental goods and services; c) as a natural resources reserve for industry and future markets; and d) as an investment in the “symbolic” field, wherein they can capitalize on building an image of corporate responsibility.
Thus, conservation of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is approached as a business. In addition to producing carbon credits from “sustainable development” activities, this conservation establishes land use planning in Mesoamerica based on the environmental goods and services that it wants to extract and protect at the same time.
Ranching Yesterday...What Today?
The road that leads from El Naranjo to the border with Tabasco, Mexico—and which passes through the municipality of San Andrés—is lined with pastures directly in the RBM Buffer Zone. For kilometers, workers and cattle intermingle on farms, many of which comprise several hectares of land and have huge constructions on them.
The route—along which several rural communities are settled, and which is used for migration—is interrupted by up to three military checkpoints. The presence of these checkpoints has intensified abuses against pedestrians since implementation of the Special Jungle Operations Brigade. Funding for the Brigade is part of an extended contract to Perenco, and its main detachment is adjacent to the Xan oil well.
Along the road, one can see the forest degradation caused by ranching, which has destroyed 8% of the RBM since 2000. Part of this expansion has been driven by “narco-ranchers”, who use the profits from criminal activities to invest in huge amounts of cattle—and even oil palm plantations—as a strategy to launder money from illegal activities.
But the development of ranching as a major activity in Petén is not new. It began with the administration in office after the coup d'état of 1954. “From that year onward, the United States government had a strong political and economic influence on Guatemala”, recounts Luis Solano, political analyst and author of Guatemala: petróleo y minería en las entrañas del poder. He underscores the importance of the alliance between Guatemalan politicians and military personnel and US officials—an alliance which allowed them to take over large tracts of land. Solano provides context on agricultural land management in northern Guatemala during the war: “During the counter-revolutionary period, they created parcels of land in response to the interrupted land reform process. Settlers were granted parcels of land, initially in the municipality of Ixcan and later in all of Petén. Over time, many communities chose other forms of organization, such as cooperatives, but later had to leave their territories due to the internal armed conflict”.
After the coup d'état, government policies were created and dictated from the north. One of these policies promoted cattle ranching for export to the United States. Due to its official promotion, ranching destroyed large areas of the rainforest in Petén. This in turn led to the reconversion of territories to other legal and illegal industries—given that pastures are sometimes used as a land use pattern until profitable markets emerge.
“When PAs are installed the intention is to recover the area, however the reality of ranching is already in place. Many people depend on it; ranching is the biggest business for communities, and in legal terms as well”, Solano says. He believes that government and NGO accusations that peasants are complicit in illegal activities are unfounded.
“In the last 50 years, Petén has gone from being an inhospitable area to a region with organized crime, where the Guatemalan State is a participant. It is well documented by the press that the army is really controlling drug trafficking in the country; because criminal organizations would not be able to operate without its support”, says the researcher.
According to a census by CONAP itself, up to 84% of park inhabitants are farmers or day laborers who make a living growing corn, beans and pepitoria (a kind of squash). Between 15% and 24% are ranchers, although most of them have few animals. Large-scale cattle ranchers, those capable of enclosing farms of thousands of hectares, do not live within the Protected Areas. Who is Destroying?
The RBM is one of 610 “Biosphere Reserves” designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). According to UNESCO regulations, this allows for “productive activities with the stipulation that there be a balance among development, conservation, and the adaptive management of areas”. However, as in several Biosphere Reserves in the world, oil activities with high environmental impact also take place in the RBM in Guatemala. These include drilling dozens of wells, refining crude oil in “La Libertad” and laying more than 120 km of oil pipelines.
While the contract to exploit the “Xan” oil field in Laguna del Tigre National Park (PNLT) was, indeed, granted before the region was declared a PA, when the first 25-year concession expired in 2010, an unusual 15-year extension to the contract was signed. This was despite evidence that Perenco's operations in Laguna del Tigre are causing contamination and deforestation, and threatening the most important freshwater wetland system in Central America.
In 2012, former CONAP official Sergio Enrique Véliz Rizzo was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in modifying the 2007-2011 PNLT Master Plan in such a way that it facilitated extractive activity. This modification mutilated the parts that discussed the negative impacts of oil activity in the PNLT, and eliminated the clauses prohibiting the establishment of new oil exploitation within the park.
But the green light for the oil company came from higher up. Despite the obvious illegality of its presence within the PNLT, Perenco obtained the extension on the oil contract due to a direct decision from former president, Álvaro Colom. Colom is currently in pre-trial detention for charges of fraud and corruption during his tenure.
On the edge of the PNLT, within the buffer zone, the Ocultum project is also in operation. The operating company, City Petén, has a contract to explore 39,555 hectares. In the same region, the areas collectively named Cotzal have also been granted to Perenco. The river and lake water systems would be most affected in the event of an oil spill in this area.
The greatest potential risk comes from the pipeline's passage through the San Pedro River, which—in the event of an oil spill—could have catastrophic impacts on the biosphere and human communities. This is especially true given that two sites of special interest are found on this river: mangroves and freshwater coral reefs where mollusks live.
Despite the fact that one of the strategic objectives of the RBM Master Plan was to cease oil exploration and drilling in the PNLT by 2016, this goal is far from being reached due to industry interests. In 2017, the country's oil industry produced 3.5 million barrels, and of that total, Perenco in Petén produced 83.5%.
Other current processes have also come into conflict with communities and RBM-demarcated areas. Such is the case of the expansion of oil palm cultivation. “There was a biological reserve in Sayaxché called the San Ramón farm. Since the 1990s its area has been reduced, and today, its entire perimeter is planted with oil palm. All of those plantations belong to the five largest landowning families in the country”, Luis says. He identifies this as the reason for the total impunity enjoyed by those involved in the appropriation of large tracts of land demarcated as Protected Areas.
“There are signs of oil palm cultivation on the edge of the Sierra Lacandón; as well as south of Petexbatún Lake—where the lands were previously converted from forest to ranching pastures. They burn the forest, and suddenly you see palm trees in the PA II complex, south of Sayaxhé city”,
SAYS ROSA MARÍA.
Community members in the PNLT say they are concerned about the expansion of oil palm plantations in the RBM. Currently, there are signs pointing to the presence of palm plantations in the Buffer Zone, but there is a real concern that they could expand illegally into other areas of the Reserve. If this were to take place, it could have potentially devastating impacts on waterways and wildlife—such as the impacts resulting from the ecocide of the La Pasión river basin in 2015.
“There is already palm in Laguna del Tigre. There are landowners with up to 4,500 hectares who have long-term plans to install plantations near the border between Guatemala and Chiapas”, said peasants from the area who were interviewed anonymously.
Other reports attribute the expansion of the industry to the alliance between drug trafficking and oil palm, as in the case of the La Pujuquera farm. This farm belongs to Oswaldo Bolaños, who was prosecuted in the Unites States for drug trafficking and money laundering. (He was released, however, in 2015.) Testimonies from the area say that palm plantation operations dump chemical waste directly into the Sacluc river, within the PNLT.
“Community members are demanding eviction of the narco-farms, and an end to the menace of large tracts of land being granted to agribusiness for oil palm, teak and melina plantations (timber trees for export)”, affirms Solano. He criticizes the Guatemalan State's inaction of not standing up to those who are truly responsible for the movement of drugs in the region.
“I was in the Sierra Lacandón National Park between 2001 and 2004, and there were signs of drug trafficking”, reports Laura Hurtado, director of Action Aid Guatemala. “All the evidence was there, and the State did nothing. Even the gringos didn't do anything, because there was USAID funding in the region; so they didn't get involved in the issue. Worst of all, there are communities in the same area who are restrained by the Law of Protected Areas, but with rights that were in place prior to the creation of the area. They are facing the threat of likely eviction”, says the researcher regretfully. Despite the fact that the US agency invested over US $40 million over more than a decade, illegal activities—far from ceasing—continue throughout Petén.
“Today we have decided to fight by legal means, and we are ready for whatever it takes to defend our territory. We're not going to let this company in, and there is nothing to negotiate”. —Cirino Martínez Flores
In Oaxaca alone, the Ministry of Economy has issued 322 mineral rights concessions to extract silver, gold, copper, and zinc, among other minerals. In doing so, it has violated the right to previous and informed consultation not only of the Chontal region, but of all peoples in Oaxaca.
At least 16 Chontal communities in the Oaxacan Isthmus that could be affected by mineral exploitation have decided to, by judicial means, impede and prohibit extraction in their territory. The indigenous community of Santa María Zapotitlán, part of the municipality of Santa María Ecatepec, Oaxaca, filed writ of amparoi #1208/2018 against mining concession #238447 and the Mining Law. This mining concession belongs to Minera Zalamera S.A. de C.V., a company in Canadian hands.
The motion was filed in the Fourth District Court in the state of Oaxaca. In doing so, the communities have sued 18 federal and state authorities for granting the mineral concession—valid for 50 years—to Zalamera S.A. de C.V., a subsidiary of the Canadian company Minaurum Gold Inc., which seeks to extract gold, silver, copper, zinc, and lead. Through this legal recourse, the communities have denounced two things: "the unconstitutionality of the Mining Law and the granting of this concession, which is in violation of several rights", stated Armando de la Cruz Cortez, a Chontal lawyer.
Cruz, who is also a coordinator of the NGO Tequio Jurídico, mentioned that the lawsuit also targets the federal government because "the concession was granted by the Ministry of Economy, but it has its basis in the Mining Law". By arguing that resources below the subsoil fall under federal jurisdiction, this law "grants concessions without the authorization of any community authority, and is therefore an act of imposed authority that ignores rights, including international rights, such as the right to consultation", said the lawyer.
Among those being sued are: the Chamber of Deputiesii and the Senate, the President of Mexico through the Ministry of Economy, the Secretary of Governance, the director of the Official Journal of the Federation, the Secretary of Economy, the General Mining Coordinator of the Ministry of Economy, and the head of the Ministry of Economy's Oaxaca branch, among others. "Within these 18 authorities is a portion of the mining sector at the federal level, with the Ministry of Economy and its state representatives at the head. The entire mining sector of Oaxaca has also been sued", added the lawyer.
The suit was brought on December 18, 2018 by the indigenous community of Santa María Zapotitlán, which is part of the Chontal People's Assembly for the Defense of our Territory (Asamblea del Pueblo Chontal para la Defensa de Nuestro Territorio, APCHDT). Two days later, the Fourth District Court granted a "complete suspension”. "This suspension is a preventative measure, but moreover it’s a measure that we consider important. By declaring the complete suspension, the judge has ordered all of the authorities named as responsible to leave things in the state in which they find them. That is to say, they are not to carry out actions that could deprive the plaintiff communities of their property or the possession and use of their agrarian rights—neither partially nor totally, temporarily nor permanently", said Cruz. The lawyer mentioned that, along with the preventative suspension, the judge also ordered the defendants to submit a report in relation to the suit, but the branches of the mining sector in Oaxaca "have responded that it is not their responsibility, it’s the Federation’s”.
For their part, the authorities responsible at the Federal level have responded to the amparo with a complaint (document number 110-02-05 659/2019) in which they argue that the suspension "is inappropriate, because the contested acts are by nature not suspendible". The complaint, filed by Silvia Meneses Gonzales, Deputy Director-General of Litigation for the Office of the Attorney General of the Ministry of Economy, also states that "it is illegal by violation of that decreed by Section II of Article 128, interpreted in accordance with Article 129 Section XIII of the Law of Amparo".
The articles referenced, specifically Article 128, establish that a judge may decree a suspension only as long as the following requirements are met: "II. That harm to the public interest does not result, nor do violations to regulations of public order".
Article 129 states that, among other examples, the following are considered to be instances of harm to public interest or violations of public order regulations: "XIII. Impeding or obstructing the State in the utilization, leverage, or exploitation of the resources over which it has direct dominion, referenced in Article 27 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States". These are the articles the Ministry of Economy is using to appeal for the suspension to be overturned.
"They objected because they think that the suspension affects their rights. First, they're saying that this suspension is damaging to the public interest and they're centering this on the Ministry of Economy's authority to exploit mineral resources by means of its mining concessions. Second, they argue that it's infringing on a law that has to do with public order—they're referring to the Mining Law", stated Cruz.
For the lawyer, "public interest" loses all meaning at the moment "in which an authority grants territory to a private business for its exploitation, because it loses the direct administration of that resource. That interest is no longer that of the nation; it becomes a business's private interest, in opposition to the collective interest of a community. The community's interest ends up being violated by that of the business. The judge has to look at all of this, and is obligated to follow international regulations when issuing a resolution”.
The company, which in this case is the affected party, "had to be notified as well, and was supposed to have issued a report, but up to this moment there has still been nothing from them", he adds.
Cruz condemned the fact that the representative of the Ministry of Economy "is handling not only the defense of the President of the Republic but that of everyone from the Ministry of Economy. But what worries us most is that she's also acting as the voice of the company. It’s worrying that this «Fourth Transformationiii» government has sent us this message—so concretely in this case—when at the same time they say they're looking out for human rights and indigenous peoples in defense of their territory. They're contradicting themselves", said the plaintiff communities' counsel.
The Mexican Congress has also submitted its report, added Cruz: "The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate have said that the Mining Law is constitutional, legal, and doesn't violate any rights or guarantees of any indigenous peoples, and as such, they request that the case end here".
The Common Denominator
Cirino Martínez Flores, a Chontal man, doesn't know much about laws, but along with other campesinos, he was chosen to help with territorial defense by Zapotitlán's community assembly. He tells of how his pueblo decided to organize itself when one of the traditional authorities realized that the mineral rights of this territory had been conceded. "I stand together with the Common Lands Commission to confront this mine", Martínez said with conviction. He is one of the spokespeople of the group of 16 communities from the Chontal People's Assembly for the Defense of our Territory (APCHDT).
As is the case with the majority of villages where this type of license has been issued, the indigenous people of this region received no information, much less any consultation about this concession. "In 2011, [representatives of the mining company] went to the Common Lands Commission and only said that they wanted to do some soil studies; they never said it was for a mine. After they conducted many studies, we became concerned and asked our uses and customs authorities to investigate. That's when we found out about this concession to the Zalamera company", said Martínez.
Minera Zalamera S.A. de C.V. holds seven mineral concessions in Oaxaca's Isthmus region alone, principally for the exploitation of gold, silver, copper, and zinc. In addition to Zapotitlán, there is Jackita in Santo Domingo Zanatepec, San José in the municipality of Ayala, Aurena in Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, Riqueza Marina 1 and 2 in Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, and Riqueza Marina 3 en Santa María Mixtequilla. None of these municipalities were consulted prior to the issuance of these concessions, much less neighboring communities, which would also be affected. There are other companies that also hold concessions. "In this Isthmus and Chontal region, we're talking about more than 60 concessions", stated Tequio Jurídico's lawyer.
Oaxaca is a majority indigenous state. Of the 56 indigenous peoples recognized in Mexico, 16 are found here, with their own forms of government. Around 78% of land in Oaxaca, or 7,359,680 hectares, is collective property in the hands of native peoples. In Oaxaca alone, the Ministry of Economy has issued 322 mineral rights concessions to extract silver, gold, copper, and zinc, among other minerals. In doing so, it has violated the right to previous and informed consultation not only of the Chontal region, but of all peoples in Oaxaca. "We haven't heard of a single one of these concessions being permitted or authorized by the pueblos, and they haven't been informed of potential dangers. Therefore, we think this action is an attack against the constitution itself as well as the international human rights framework, like [convention] 169 of the International Labor Organization, with regard to indigenous rights and culture. And in the rest of the country, this is the common denominator, because concessions have been imposed that violate the fundamental rights of native peoples", argued the lawyer.
Some ten transnational corporations are behind the majority of mining concessions in Mexico, including Minaurum Gold Inc., Zalamera's parent company. This transnational is headed by an experienced exploration and administration team "who has been credited for the discovery of more than 200 million ounces of silver and eight million ounces of gold in Mexico", according to the company's 2018 official report. Their official website shows 12 mining concessions, distributed among Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero, and Morelos. One of them is in the Gold Belt of Guerrero, which in recent years has been one of the main gold producing states. In contrast, this state is also one of the poorest in Mexico, with a high level of violence and social fragmentation.
Mining Fund
Before Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as the President of Mexico, he announced the creation of a mining fund through Graciela Márquez, an official in the Ministry of Economy. Through it, the taxes paid by mining companies would be used to compensate for the damages they caused.
This fund was created with 2013's fiscal reform, during Enrique Peña Nieto's presidency. Mines are charged a special tax of 7.5% of their profits, which goes to the "development" of communities close to mineral extraction. This fund is currently controlled by the Ministry of Economy.
The Chontal people know what the Mining Fund goes to and they don’t agree with what is being proposed. "We know that this program to compensate people and villages affected by mining has been around since before the current government. But it's a strategy that reinforces land dispossession, because these resources are not going to satisfy the many needs of communities. What's more, this resource isn't going to compensate for even a fraction of what a company like this will leave", stated Cruz.
The Chontals have also not been seduced by the prospects of so-called community development proposed to them by several successive governments. "For us as campesinos, development is in our lands, our community, because it's our mother Earth and that's where we work, that's where we live. For us, that's where development is, and we're not interested in what the government thinks is best for us. Because without anyone telling us, we can see: if this mine goes through, what's going to happen to our children and grandchildren? They're going to wipe us out as the Chontal people. We're the ones who are going to be the hardest hit", declared Martínez Flores.
At the entrance to Zapotitlán, there's a guardhouse that is manned so as not to let any strangers into the community. "We're well organized; we're in resistance. We keep an eye on our authorities to make sure there are no negotiations with the government, because the highest authority is the Community Assembly and anyone who sells themselves out will be expelled from the community. Today we have decided to fight by legal means, and we are ready for whatever it takes to defend our territory. We're not going to let this company in, and there is nothing to negotiate. This is already an agreement of our 16 communities that are fighting together", added Martínez Flores.
Whether or not these pueblos win this amparo, this action is a "tool that other pueblos will be able to use to defend their territory, and what we hope is that other pueblos will organize themselves", stated Cruz.
Update: The 13th Circuit Collegiate Court for administrative and labor matters ruled in favor of the community. It declared the authorities’ arguments—complaints about effects on “the social interest”—to be baseless. As such, the suspension remains valid until the amparo is definitively resolved. The community members have to go to court for a process hearing on April 3.
The Nasa are a native people in the department of Cauca [translator: "departamentos" are essentially states in Colombia, translated directly as “department”], in the Andean zone of southwestern Colombia. 27 years ago, these people decided to take the offensive against the industrial production of sugar cane. Currently, the Nasa carry out actions like burning cane fields and then reclaiming the land, as part of what they call "Liberation of Mother Earth". In January 2019, they have been traveling through Mexico and its autonomous movements, where they have learned and shared their experiences.
"We thought that we were alone in the struggle for Mother Earth, but in our first encounter we heard about the struggle of peoples in Mexico and that motivated us to get to know and learn from these struggles", shares a spokeswoman of the Nasa women. She’s part of a brigade that began a tour through Mexico to get to know different autonomous processes, among them the Good Government Councils of the Zapatistas, the forms of government and resistance of peoples in Oaxaca and Puebla, and the Autonomous Government of Cherán, Michoacán, which has expelled the political parties from their territory.
The Nasa have taken advantage of this trip to invite people to their next congress, which will take place August 3-6 in Corinto, Cauca, Colombia, so that other movements can share their experiences. Mexico has become a landmark in Latin America, principally with the call of the Zapatista National Liberation Army [EZLN] to strengthen the autonomy of native peoples and anticapitalist struggle. "We've learned from the Zapatistas that it is possible to move autonomously, for the right to live. We give thanks to Zapatismo because it has shown the whole world that another world is possible. We also thank the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico for having walked the path towards autonomy, and this is a living experience for us", says the spokeswoman.
In her travels through these parts, the spokeswoman of this brigade shares, "I realized that in Mexico they are also taking part in a struggle for life", and "just like us, they have been run over by the state, but they continue forward. So we came to Mexico to learn, but also to share our struggles".
Sugarcane
For the Nasa, Uma Kiwe represents Mother Earth, and in the living memory of her inhabitants, the plunder of their territory by European colonization remains present. "Our grandparents recount that, when the Spanish arrived, most people fled towards the mountains and the flatlands remained in the hands of those men, and today, it's full of sugarcane plantations", says the spokeswoman, who, for safety precautions, only identified herself as a liberator of Mother Earth.
According to a document produced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) called "The sugar cane cluster in the Cauca Valley, Colombia", this valley and certain areas of Hawaii, Peru, and Mauritius are the only four zones in the world where sugarcane can be grown throughout the year. As such, they are considered to be high-yield areas. Sugarcane cultivation is constant in the Cauca valley, and more than 120 tons of sugar are produced per hectare per year. Most of this crop is used to make biofuels. 1.2 million liters of ethanol daily has generated more than $20 million USD monthly for investors.
The sugarcane sector spans 47 municipalities from the north of the department of Cauca, through the central band of the Cauca Valley, to the southern end of the department of Risaralda. There are 225,560 hectares of this monocrop in the region.
"I'm a liberator of Mother Earth, and we are liberating ancestral territories as well as taking back our history and that of our ancestors, like the chief Gaitana (an indigenous woman who led a rebellion against the Spanish between 1539 and 1540), who fought for 120 years, armed, against colonization. From 1971 to 1990, we reclaimed some 200,000 hectares that the colonizers had taken from us",
SAYS AN INDIGENOUS NASA MAN.
The Occupations For Cauca's Chamber of Commerce, one of the constant worries of the sugarcane agroindustry in this region "are the constant occupations of properties by indigenous communities that claim these territories," they warn.
The president of the board of directors of the Colombian Association of Sugarcane Producers and Providers (Procaña), Carlos Molina, states that "what it is that generates this conflict, and what proposals could be made for the government to take measures so that everyone can come out winning, is currently being studied."
The Nasa people, just like the rest of the native peoples and black people of this country, were not recognized as subjects of law, and as such, their territory was not recognized either. It wasn't until 1991 that the Constitution recognized the right of indigenous peoples in Colombia to "exercise jurisdictional functions within their territorial sphere, conforming to their own rules and procedures, as long as they are not contrary to the Constitution", states Article 246.
At the very same time as this recognition, says this Nasa man, "they carried out a massacre on the Nilo plantation where they killed 20 comrades who were taking back their territory”.
He's referring to the massacre committed December 16, 1991, by paramilitaries trying to drive out the indigenous people who were occupying these lands. Jorge Valencia, then proprietor of the Nilo Hacienda, "was an accomplice to the formation of the paramilitary group", denounced Orlando Villa Zapata, alias "Ruben", an ex-paramilitary who participated in the massacre. Once they had murdered the indigenous people and caused their displacement, the group scattered. However, the next day, 5,000 indigenous people occupied the Nilo Hacienda and stayed there permanently.
After this massacre, the government promised to return the plantations to the native peoples, but it was all talk, states the Nasa man. "So the people opted to retake direct struggle, entering the plantations. In 2015 we entered a plantation called La Emperatriz, with the firm purpose of no longer sitting down to negotiate with the government, but to take back our territory and strengthen our autonomy", says this member of the Nasa people.
Autonomy
These people, despite having suffered murders, injuries, persecution, repression, military attacks, judicial attacks, media attacks and threats, appeal to their history, and they affirm that there are no documents that hold that this territory does not belong to them. "We have taken this struggle back up because they've been growing cane for many years and they've cause us a lot of harm. Waiting for things from the government has not helped at all. We are natives of this land and even if they have a document that says it has an owner, that owner just showed up; this territory was stolen and they don't take care of it. They only represent death for our Mother Earth and for ourselves", states the spokeswoman.
The Nasa people have to reconstruct their autonomy. "We're seeing that neoliberalism is the same across all of Latin America, because they are not building life. They're building death. What's more, peace is nowhere to be found in Colombia. Murders of social leaders have increased. In our pueblo alone there have been eight deaths, as well as persecution and harassment", says the brigade.
One of the brigade's objectives is to establish links with other indigenous peoples, but also with students, workers, and other segments of the urban population, to look at autonomous processes and strengthen them. "That's why we're going to keep taking back land. That's why we're going to liberate it, to live together in it and defend life. For that reason, the struggle for land is not a solely indigenous problem or duty, but rather an ancestral mandate of all peoples, all men and women who defend life", they state on the Liberation of Mother Earth website.
Women
This is the first time the Nasa spokeswoman has left her country. She misses her family, community, and food, but understands the importance of these links with other peoples who struggle in the rest of Latin America. That said, she maintains that the main job is with young people and children, because the future depends on them. It is here that the Nasa women have played a decisive role in the recovery of their territory. "We teach our children the necessity of taking back our territory and decontaminating the land, because that is what hurts us as women, as mothers. Because the Earth is a woman and a mother. We go about sowing food crops to the extent that we have cleaned up the land, because this is where life is. It's a big job, because everything is polluted, even the water. So it's taking back our territory, but also taking back life", says the Nasa woman.
"We have to work with the children on remembrance. So that they know why our territory is polluted. So they know that life is in the land. That a salary doesn't make a life. Without water, without land, we won't have life for the future. Our lands have been seized and they are destroying them", she states.
The brigade mentions excitedly that the most radical actions carried out have been to go to the city, where the poorest neighborhoods are, to freely give what they have produced: food. They call this action the March for Life: "This is to demonstrate that the recovery of our territory is for life, not for death. That the land is not there to generate profits", they say. A second March for Life will take place in March 2019.
The fruits of Uma Kiwe that they have decided to offer in this second march are also an offering for the brothers they have lost in the last four years, although to them, they are not dead. They are Guillermo Paví, Javier Oteca, Daniel Felipe, Héctor Latín, Ramón Ascue, and Fredy Yulián. "They're alive, and here they are, tracing out the second march of food for the liberation of Uma Kiwe. They light the way for us", states the movement.
"We have received a lot of abuse and been battered by the government and the rich, for whom our struggle is inconvenient, but as we go about cleaning up this territory, we go about liberating it, and liberating ourselves as well. Because liberation give us autonomy, including in our forms of thought. We are liberating ourselves from capitalism, and that's our struggle", adds the spokeswoman.
Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP) paints a bleak prospect for Palestinian children in revealing that in 2018, at least 56 were killed by Israel. Individuals who witnessed some of the murders have insisted that the targeted children were unarmed and posed no threat to the state or its citizens.
Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli army snipers, drones and security forces across the occupied Palestinian territories. Five of the murdered children were under 12 years of age. In Gaza, 49 children were murdered by Israel in activities pertaining to the Great March of Return protests.
Live ammunition was used by Israel in 73 per cent of the fatalities documented by DCIP, which also recorded “140 cases of Palestinian children who were detained by Palestinian forces.” Israeli forces also arrested 120 children within the occupied West Bank. In both groups, the detained children suffered abuse at the hands of the security forces holding them, whether the PA or the Israeli military.
These tactics show that Israel’s colonial collaboration with the Palestinian Authority is targeting a very vulnerable segment of Palestinian society. What’s more, the killing and wounding of Palestinian children by Israeli snipers at the Great Return March is a direct maiming of the generation which can carry on the anti-colonial struggle.
Citing international law is pointless when Israel, and even the Palestinian Authority, have extended the parameters for an ongoing cycle of abuse against Palestinian children. International law is only relevant when used to point out that violations are taking place and the Palestinians are facing a UN member state which treats international law with contempt, while the international community gives its tacit agreement to the abuse and is, in some cases, complicit.
DCIP’s research establishes the fact that Israel killed an average of more than one child per week in 2018. Earlier shocking official statistics revealed that between 2000 and 2014 Israel killed a Palestinian child every three days on average, for fourteen years. Throughout the year there was ongoing discussion about Israel’s genocidal intent and actions which were mostly discarded due to the monopoly over the term in reference to the Holocaust. Yet, Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” What else is Israel doing to the people of Palestine, “in whole or in part”?
The international community’s responses are so predictable that Israel finds no obstacles in manoeuvring beyond the limits set by international law; it is allowed to act with impunity. The “drip, drip” rate of the killing of Palestinian children and the almost routine nature of their detention sneaks under the radar of human rights violations. As the international community fails to respond to Israeli violations within its established framework, Israel succeeds in bridging the gap between violations and rights.
To speak of Israel’s violations now is, in fact, also to speak of the international community’s irresponsibility. Yet neither are scrutinised and held to account; the result is the regular yet somewhat reluctant citing of what should happen according to international law being juxtaposed against Israeli breaches of the law. Accountability, however, has long since absconded from the scene of the crime. If Israel wants to kill Palestinian children (or women and men, come to that), it will kill because it has decided, quite deliberately, to do so.
Meanwhile, the international community will steer clear from ever associating Israeli actions with genocide, preferring instead to rely on “alleged war crimes”, the perpetrators of which will never be brought to justice. Palestinian children killed by Israel over many years, last year included, have been forgotten by the world.
Laloua Moutbena is one of many mothers from Mauritania, in Northeastern Africa, who is looking for her disappeared children. Her son, Yatoub, left the country one day, fleeing economic crisis and searching for a better life. "He wanted to help his brothers and his mother", Laloua shared in a letter sent to the many mothers in Central America and Mexico who have been searching for their children for more than a decade.
On the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of November, mothers of disappeared children around the world met for the first time in Mexico City. Their shared language was one of pain and the strength needed to keep up the search for their children. They cried, shared, and recognized the fact that disappearances are taking place all around the world, and that this is a systematic issue, with origins in a crisis of the capitalist system.
Nadia Trima, a mother from Tunisia, has been searching for her son Chemami Mehdi Zine for ten years. She says that he decided to emigrate to Italy in search of a better life, but she never heard from him again. "We are searching for our children, the more than 500 young Tunisians who have disappeared. We place the responsibility for these disappearances in the hands of the Tunisian state, and we demand justice", Trima told Avispa Midia.
The organization "France-Americ Latin" has analyzed and documented the causes of migration to Europe, and argues that the economic and financial crisis of 2008, as well as the Middle-Eastern revolutions that began in 2011, generated an enormous wave of migration. As Braulio Moro, a member of the organization, stated, this wave of migration "is termed a 'migration crisis' in Europe, but in reality is a crisis of the European Union."
In 2015, the European countries reached an agreement that pledged to accept only 160,000 refugees. However, two years later, just 20,000 had been settled. Consequently, European, African and Asian organizations requested that the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT), based in Italy, organize a Tribunal on impunity and the violation of the human rights of migrants and refugees.
The PPT has documented the scope of migrant flows, but also the hundreds of deaths and disappearances left in their wake. As Moro, who was a voluntary migrant to France twenty years ago pointed out, "in the first half of 2017, more than 100,000 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe. But we must also take into account that between 2000 and 2017, more than 17,000 men, women, and children died in the Mediterranean Sea, without response by the European Union, which is obligated to offer freedom of transit. Moreover, they are obligated to take them in legally and facilitate their transit, since they are fleeing war, misery, and the crisis that was provoked by the economic policies of the European Union itself."
"For us, the main border is the water, the sea, and there are no precise statistics about the lives lost there, like there are for the deserts of the United States, where people cross illegally", Moutbena noted.
This flow of migrants, with origins in the Middle East and Africa and who are mostly trying to reach Europe, has been classified by the UN as "the worst migration crisis since the Second World War."
Photo by Santiago Navarro F
Central American Exodus
Alongside this European context, the media jumped all over the story of the migrant exodus, primarily originating in Honduras, with individuals joining from countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, expanding this wave of more than ten thousand people who are currently arriving at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana.
The activist and sociologist Marta Sánchez Soler, one of the organizers of the First Global Summit for Mothers of the Disappeared, told Avispa Midia that the specific circumstances of the Central American migration are somewhat different from those in Europe, but that general problem is exactly the same. "The majority are youth who are seeking to escape war, terrorism, gangs, and the economic crisis.”
Soler affirms that migrant flows in Europe and Central America have both been heightened by "persecution and violations of human rights, but also inequality, poverty, climate change, and natural disasters."
Before the Central American Exodus, and after the tragic earthquake of 2010, thousands of Haitians moved to South America, primarily to take opportunities provided by the World Cup and Olympics to perform construction work in Brazil. This wave of migrants was joined by others from Africa, after the restrictions on migration that were imposed by the European Union.
"We had the capacity for about 110 people a day, and we received more than 200. There was no structure, but various volunteer groups formed who could do the work. They slept outside the church, in the streets, so the doors of the church were opened to let them sleep in the great hall of the church. We were with them a few months. We started to call around to various companies, to get people hired in construction or refrigeration, so that they could be placed safely. Some time after, other organizations joined up to take them in, and even the local government began to offer migrant services that did not exist before", Elvira Gonzalez explained to Avispa Midia. Gonzales is a Peruvian migrant who works in the organization Misión Paz de São Paulo, in Brazil. The organization serves to welcome all migrants who come to the house, and Gonzalez was deeply involved in the most critical phase when the first Haitians arrived in the city.
After the coup of 2016, when the elected president of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, was forced to step down, a new economic crisis began, which affected migrants as well as Brazilians. For two years, many Haitians left the country, headed to countries like Canada, Chile, and primarily to the United States. "We don't know how many left, the statistics don't exist, but we know that it was a lot of people. We have information that indicates that many of the people that we hosted were stranded on the Mexican border, trying to cross into the United States", said Paolo Parise, who is one of the organizers of the Misión de Paz. He estimates that at least thirty thousand Haitians arrived at the US-Mexico border in this period.
Photo by Santiago Navarro F
50 million migrants
Andrés Barreda, researcher in the department of economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), notes that migration has been a constant, and that "the largest and most important flow of migrants is towards North America, and has pushed more than 50 million Central American and Mexican migrants in that direction over the past decades, particularly following the signing of NAFTA."
This migrant flow, Barreda argues, "was disrupted following the crisis of 2008, when the contraction of the North American economy meant that it could no longer benefit from cheap migrant labor, and migrants began to turn around. At the same time, the super-criminalization of migrants began, with the application of genocidal policies of control to migrant flows through Mexican territory, carried out by criminal organizations and the drug cartels."
For the UNAM researcher, the problem of migrant flows is being supplanted by other capitalist models, and throughout this, the military industrial complex is present on the border, offering its services to private buyers. "We are in a moment of rupture for a neoliberal politics that continues to fail, because it doesn't function now like it did in the 1990s or even in 2000. Different capitalist models are gaining strength in various countries, or even within a given country, such as in the United States, where some want to follow the same dynamics of globalization, while others look to other exploitative politics based in the construction of national state capitalism. This is taking place in Brazil, China, the US, in Russia, and around the world,” Barreda added.
