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Panamá: Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous region at risk of disappearing

Por
Santiago Navarro F
-
Clementina Pérez, sacerdotisa del Movimiento 22 de Septiembre, de la iglesia Mama-Tatda

Photo: Santiago Navarro F.

Translated by Alfie Lake

A few logs and interlaced planks give shape to two walls holding up a few pieces of metal sheeting; this is a makeshift hut. In the background two rickety wooden beds can be seen, along with two indigenous girls. The eldest, a girl of barely 15, pulled a memory out from the nostalgia. “I feel sad, because I can’t live how I used to live before. The company came, dammed the river and our house was flooded”, Elia Eiu recalled, while pointing out the place where her home used to be. In the now-lifeless waters of the river, murky and stagnant, all that can be seen is the top of the occasional palm tree or tree dying below the surface.

The Ngäbe-Buglé are indigenous peoples that reside in Western Panama, primarily in the Veraguas, Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro provinces. Today, the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous territory is in mourning. A rotten stench rises from the depths of what was the ancestral Tabasará River, caused by the methane gas created by the plants and trees that were left underwater after the river was dammed in order to create clean energy through the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project. Barro Blanco has affected more than 170,000 Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous people who could lose their land and their way of life

Also submerged below the water are the petroglyphs from which the sacred writings of this people come. “When the water began to rise, the first level was up to where a petroglyph is located, at height 87; they flooded our sacred writings. The water level continued to go up, and now seven communities have been affected by the project and most of the petroglyphs are underwater” shared Hacket Bagamá, a youth of no more than 15 years who lives in Kiad, one of the communities worst-affected by the hydroelectric complex.

On the 22nd of May 2016, Panama’s National Public Services Authority (ASEP) approved the flooding of the reservoir. The Panamanian company responsible for the complex, Generadora del Istmo S.A. (GENISA), immediately proceeded with the flooding activities without informing local communities. This took place in a wider context where talks were being held between indigenous authorities and the government of Juan Carlos Varela, the current president of Panama. In the face of this situation the indigenous peoples have turned down a potential relocation and moved only a few metres away, where they still face impending danger given that only 30% of the reservoir has so far been filled.

“Before they dammed the river we had no communication difficulties, but now the rivers and the road have been flooded. We are having problems keeping in touch with each other, our canoes aren’t safe because the water is over 30 metres deep. A brother has already drowned because his canoe filled up with water. We can’t wash, a lot of the fish died and the trees were left underwater. This is where we collected water, it’s all very sad”,

SAID HACKET BAGAMÁ.

In the Environmental Impact Study, they claimed there were no people here, that no-one lived here and that’s why they didn’t inform us we were going to be evicted. They’ve already evicted some of our brothers and we don’t know when they’ll try to do the same to us”, said Bellini Jiménez, an indigenous teacher and member of the community of Kiad, in Ngäbe-Buglé territory.

Despite the resistance of the Ngäbe-Buglé peoples, the construction of the complex has been finished and the water level of the reservoir began to rise in August 2016. In total an area of 258.67 hectares has been flooded for the damming-up operation on the Tabasará River. Another 5 hectares will be taken up by the dam, the machine house and other associated works. Every day 28.84 megawatts of energy are generated here which will help, according to Varela, “to increase hydroelectric production and reduce dependence on fossil fuels which are imported to generate electricity, and to meet targeted reductions in CO2 emissions”.

“Almost overnight the government arrived with talk of climate change and sustainable development, and decided to dam our river in order to construct this project. We are peoples that will not back down; we’re not interested in their clean energy, we want our territory to remain just as it is”, said Goejet Miranda, an indigenous member of the community of Kiad and president of the 10 de Abril movement, an organization that came into being in 2007 to fight against the project.

The processes of resistance of the Ngäbe-Buglé peoples predate the fight against the hydroelectric project; since 1945 they have been demanding that their culture and territory be acknowledged. At first an attempt was made to designate them as an indigenous reservation, a model copied from the U.S. that would allow them to maintain their customs, religion and way of life, but they refused to be recognized under this legal status. By means of a variety of actions carried out by these peoples, on March 7th, 1997 Law 10 of Panama’s Constitution recognized the Ngäbe-Buglé territory. The territory is a physically-demarcated area with the nation state, under a regime of self-governance which recognizes the collectivity of land, their indigenous assemblies as a traditional body, the traditional authorities and their customs and traditions.

Since the construction of the Barro Blanco project, not only have the human rights of the indigenous peoples affected in the territory been violated, but the government is breaking its own laws, said Goejet Miranda. “For us, this has been an attack on our lives, our culture and our integrity. Here the rights determined by law were worthless, the law that dictates that we can enjoy our own territory. The government is violating Law 10- why do we have to leave our land?”

The Panamanian government offered work to the indigenous people whose homes were flooded, work that consisted of building their own home in a different place outside their territory. “They want to get us out of here. For us, going somewhere else is like being taken prisoner. It’s the notion of private property that goes against our collective customs. That’s why we’ve never accepted the government’s compensation and we’ll never accept anything that they’re offering, because our land isn’t for sale. We’re going to fight to the end to stop this project”, added the president of the 10 de Abril movement.

The Barro Blanco project was constructed with financing from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), the German Development Bank (DEG) and the Dutch Development Bank (FMO). It will also be connected to the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC) with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). “(…) it’s a good time to highlight that the region now has a robust electrical infrastructure from Guatemala to Panama, supplemented by a connection to Mexico and a planned connection to Colombia. The above will be achieved through a variety of sources. SIEPAC and Central America’s Regional Electric Market (MER) enable the development of larger and more efficient regional generation projects, while facilitating the introduction of a greater number of renewable energy projects (both traditional and non-traditional), thus diversifying the energy matrix”, states the IDB website, the body that has financed 90% of SIEPAC projects.

Panama is a democratic republic with close links to the United States. Its main source of income is the Panama Canal and the railway that both form part of the same complex. In August 2014 the Panamanian government was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Canal and preparing for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP21, which was to take place that year in Paris. It also announced a new energy plan that was beginning to take form in Panama.

“In terms of the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in particular, we are implementing specific programs with the support of the Norwegian and German governments. Likewise, we are putting together a National Energy Plan, which with a state vision will lay down our policies for the decades to come, and define the contribution of the national energy sector to climate change mitigation”.

THOSE WERE THE WORDS OF PANAMA’S PRESIDENT, JUAN CARLOS VARELA RODRIGUEZ, DURING THE UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE SUMMIT HELD IN 2014 AT THE UN’S HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK.

2015 would see the launch of the 2015-2050 National Energy Plan: “Panama, the future we want”, a plan which sought above all to secure international financial capital, arguing that investment levels do not correspond to a period of governance, but rather are capital that needs at least 50 years to remain alive. “Investment for energy production is sizeable and is generally exposed to high levels of risk. The construction of power plants, transmission lines, oil refineries and other sector activities that are necessary to cope with the demand for energy, involve large amounts of capital, often foreign in origin (…) energy policy is an activity that goes beyond the duration of a government’s constitutional term and, for that reason, it must become a State policy”, states the Plan document.

In a similar way, the Energy Plan argues that the construction of infrastructure is necessary to make the switch towards clean energies but, regarding the conflicts that have stemmed from it, “the different members of civil society have to find a point of agreement, given that the energy system will need to be expanded constantly”.

“There is no agreement between the government and the company; it’s an outrage and an imposition. Since 2007, when the government announced the construction of the Barro Blanco project, we’ve been saying that we don’t agree with it. We’ve been fighting it since then. We went to court, we’ve protested, but the government hasn’t listened to us, and it hasn’t consulted us either”, said Bellini. 

According to National Energy Secretariat figures, Panama generates around 70% of its electricity from renewable sources, with a majority of that proportion coming from hydroelectric plants and, more recently, wind energy. Moreover, that figure is expected to reach 80% between 2018 and 2020, with two significant projects: the first will be completed by the U.S. electricity company AES with investment of over $1.3bn; the second involves the Chinese company Maratano Inc., with an investment of $0.6bn.

90% of targeted energy production from renewable sources will come from hydroelectric plants. According to ASEP, since 2015 at least 37 hydroelectric projects have been recorded that are either at the design or construction stage, on Panama’s most heavily-flowing rivers, home to indigenous populations. Another 34 projects are awaiting the approval of permits. The concession contracts last for around 30 or 50 years from the moment the contract is signed.
“This is a war against us indigenous peoples, who have lived for time immemorial on the banks of the rivers. This is a war of banks and capitalists in order to keep on evicting and disappearing indigenous peoples. The rivers have been preserved because we’ve never considered them as a commodity. With their modern lifestyle they’ve destroyed everything, and now they want to take what little we have left away from us to produce clean energy. It’s not clean because it destroys rivers and entire peoples”, commented Bellini.

The Energy Plan is unequivocal by defining that energy consumption in Panama is determined by the service-orientated economic model. In that sense, the Panama Canal is vitally important as it is considered to be an important cog in world trade. However, it is argued that the way of life, copied from the United States, determines energy consumption. “The fact that the United States stayed in Panama for more than 80 years has led the population to imitate the typical North American cultural image and consumer society. This has had an enormous impact on the development approach to be taken, and on the makeup of the Panamanian energy system”, according to the 2015-2050 National Energy Plan.

Dusk is beginning to fall in the community of Kiad and the sky is lit up by stars. There is no electric light here, and never has been. Only one member of the community has a small solar cell, which they use to charge their mobile phones and a few other necessities. Hacket Bagamá says: “We don’t need their energy because it’s generated with the death of our peoples. Their way of thinking is different to ours, they put a price on everything and want more energy to keep destroying Mother Earth”.

Permission to Pollute

At first, the Barro Blanco project was certified as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by the U.N., one of three mechanisms established in the Kyoto Protocol at COP3, held in Japan in 1997. Said protocol was aimed at industrialized countries, which had a target of reducing national emissions for the 2008-2012 period by an average of 5% compared with 1990 levels. To help reduce the costs of complying with the reduction three “flexibility mechanisms” were designated, namely: Emissions Trading (ET), Joint Implementation (JI) for projects in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, and the CDM for developing countries.

With the CDM, investors do not only meet their CO2 emission reduction targets by investing in clean energy in other countries. They also earn profits by selling the energy, while obtaining Certified Emission Reductions (CER), equal to the tons of CO2 that was not emitted. These documents can be sold as carbon credits (better known as pollution permits) to other industrialized countries or companies that have exceed their pollution limits, which can compensate in this way.

CERs are also issued for reforestation projects and conservation areas. According to Panama’s Environment Ministry, in 2014 alone $11.92 million dollars were raised from the sale of CERs “stemming from the generation of wind and water energy, and from reforestation programs and protected areas”. Panama primarily commercializes this type of credit with the same countries that are investing in “clean” technologies: Holland, Spain, Austria and Germany.

Although the Barro Blanco project was stripped of CDM status due to the violation of human rights and the efforts of the indigenous peoples, they will not be prevented from continuing energy production which, above all, will still be considered as clean. “They’ve told us that with the project we’ll get a lot of money for our lands, that we won’t go hungry, that we’ll have medical assistance, but none of that is true. They tried to bribe us with fortified biscuits, and they filled their reports with the two or three people that accepted it, to say that there was support for the children. We aren’t starving to death here and we have our traditional medicine. We need nothing from them. There’s nothing clean about this project, because they came here with lies. That’s why they were stripped of CDM status. This is the government’s and European banks’ war, against us indigenous peoples. As well as all that, they’re trying to con us with the conservation areas”, said Goejet Miranda.

“There are more than 37,000 people living in the watershed, we’re all indigenous and more than 12,000 of us are being directly affected by Barro Blanco. But it’s not only this that will affect us, there are also the protected areas and other projects we don’t understand well, which will affect all the peoples, because they’re attacking us on all fronts”, said Clementina Pérez, a priestess from the Mama-Tatda church, which runs a camp together with members of its community at the main entrance of the Barro Blanco complex, and has been brutally repressed by the police on more than one occasion.

During the Barro Blanco construction process, the Panamanian government and international organizations made progress with the implementation of Protected Areas (PA) management programs in the indigenous communities within the Panama – Atlantic Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (PAMBC). According to the consultancy report for the facilitation of workshops for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), 14 priority protected areas are being planned in the corridor. The Ngäbe-Buglé territory is part of one of the three high-biodiversity macroregions.

Since 2007 the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) has encouraged the Ngäbe-Buglé territory to sign letters of understanding, which ensure their participation and the carrying out of activities within the PAMBC. As part of activities related to the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, agroforestry projects were also put in place in indigenous communities. According to the program, the aim was “to create and strengthen community social capital for sustainable development”.

“They’re considering the Protected Areas around the reservoir so that it doesn’t dry up. As well as Barro Blanco now we have to face up to another conflict: the Protected Areas. This will be another dispute with the government because we’ve got nowhere else to go. The government wants to give us a thousand dollars to maintain ourselves, they want us to move somewhere else with that money. They should tell us where we can buy land with those thousand dollars. And even if it was ten thousand or a million, we don’t want any of it”, said Goejet Miranda, who has participated in a variety of workshops given without knowing the REDD program in-depth.

According to the UN, “the REDD initiative is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests”. This program has lost credibility in the eyes of numerous indigenous peoples across Latin America, as it gives no specific information regarding what carbon markets mean, or the limits that indigenous peoples are subject to by reducing use of and access to their territory, or by turning it into a commodity with ecotourism and conservation projects.

In September 2016, as the second phase of this program, regional forums were held where protocols were applied that have been considered as the “consultation and validation” of indigenous peoples to proceed with the National Strategy for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (NS-REDD+), led by Panama’s Environment Ministry. This program is carried out jointly with the UN and the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), the main financers of conservation projects in the rest of Latin America.

“In reality, we don’t know what lies behind these conservation projects. We’ve been told that there will be money for whichever communities they decide to preserve. But I think that it’s another way of appropriating our territory. As soon as we start accepting that money we’re already selling part of our territory. We don’t need that, because we’ve always looked after our Mother Earth. We know that the climate change problem affects us all, but the problem is in their cities, in their cars, in their way of life, in the capitalist mindset”, said the Mama-Tatda church priestess, who assured that the energy generated by Barro Blanco and conservation won’t provide any benefits.

“The water, the jungle and the animals don’t have a price. Water is a living being”. This energy, said Clementina, “doesn’t benefit us in any way. We’re almost certain that it’ll be used for mining, for the (Panama) Canal, and for the new places where the rich live, for their cars, for the goods of the capitalists. There aren’t any benefits for indigenous peoples. We have to learn to protect ourselves from their words, those words of death, like sustainable development”.

The Ngäbe-Buglé territory is not only threatened by hydroelectric dams and conservation; the region is home to one of the biggest copper deposits in the world, which will need large quantities of water and, of course, energy.

Clementina prays and sings every day with the children, adolescents and elders that have been camped at one side of the entrance to the Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam since February 14th, 2014. On-site they have set up small makeshift roofs where they can rest. The cocoa drink shared among everyone makes resistance a daily ritual. Everyone here has felt the burden of threats of eviction, of repression, but they are still standing; it’s their way of resisting. “We’ve suffered repression at the hands of the government, at the hands of the company, but we’re not leaving until they free the Tabasará (River). We’ve suffered repression because we don’t want this dam, we don’t want mining, we don’t want any projects of death, and that’s why all peoples have been hit hard in Panama. But we’re always alert”, said the priestess.

One of the largest copper deposits in the world is located in Ngäbe-Buglé territory in Panama. The place known as Cerro Colorado, in the east of the country, is home to more than 1,400 metric tons, of which 78% are copper. Another deposit is found in Cerro Petaquilla, a concession owned by Canada’s Inmet Mining Corporation with its subsidiary Minera Panamá. Located in the central northern area of the country, it contains resources of more than two billion tons, of which 5% are copper and 15% molybdenum, with 9 grams of gold per ton. Another is Cerro Chorcha, in Ngäbe-Buglé territory in the village of Guariviara in the Kankintú district. Cerro Chorcha contains 47,000 metric tons, of which 71% is copper, with 8 grams of gold per ton. All these deposits are found in the high jungle, in covered parts of the Central Range.

In northern Panama there is another mining project in the district of Donoso in Colón province, called Molejón. The concession is owned by the Canadian company Petaquilla Minerals Ltd., which has outlined a deposit containing 893,000 ounces of gold. The company has a number of exploratory projects in Panama; its primary asset is the production of the Molejón Gold Project and the company has a presence in Canada, Germany and the United States.

“They say that these mines will bring development, but we’ve been hit by capitalists and their development for more than 400 years, it’s called human rights violation. It’s development that evicts, kills, that discriminates against peoples, and that’s why we don’t accept it. Because it’s another of the ways that they use to try to make us disappear. They’re violating the rights that we’ve earned through our struggles. The laws are made by capitalists and they don’t respect it, our law is to keep areas free, green and preserved. Each and every stone in our territory is sacred, we won’t allow our sacred territory to be destroyed”,

SAID CLEMENTINA.

In February 2011 the then-president, Ricardo Martinelli, amended the Mineral Resources Code which determined that the following people or organizations could not obtain or operate mining concessions: foreign governments or states, or foreign official or semi-official institutions, except legal entities which involve the economic or financial participation of one or more foreign governments or states, or foreign official or semi-official institutions. That is, provided that said entities are constituted as legal persons governed by private law under Panamanian regulation, that they waive the right to diplomatic claims in the concession contract (except in cases of denial of justice), and that they conform to the laws of Panama.

Despite the fact that this reform brought about an increase of between 15% and 20% in profits among the villages bordering the project, which were meant to be collected directly by the municipalities and districts, the initiative caused widespread rejection among the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous peoples. They immediately carried out a series of actions, considering the reform a threat to their rights earned through Law 10 in 1997 which stipulates, among other points, that the state and the concessionary must implement “a communication plan in order to inform the indigenous communities and authorities, so that they can voluntarily express their point of view regarding the mining activity”.

As a result of the protests the state abolished 2011’s Law 8, replacing it with Law 12 dating from March 18th of the same year. Nevertheless, because the law did not take into account the hydroelectric projects in the territory and the surrounding areas, the protests started up again in 2012 leaving one person dead and dozens wounded. A new law was then enacted, Law 11 of March 26th, 2012, establishing a “special regime for the protection of mineral, water and environmental resources in Ngäbe-Buglé territory”, and adding Article 3 which “prohibits the granting of concessions for the exploration, exploitation and extraction of metal and non-metal mining and their derivatives in Ngäbe-Buglé territory, its surrounding areas and the Ngäbe-Buglé communities adjacent to them, by any natural or legal persons, be they public or private, or national or foreign”.

According to the Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Manuel Grimaldo, in Panama there are currently 152 active concessions for the extraction of non-metal materials, and 15 for the extraction of metals. New laws regulating the mining law have been studied since 2016. Meanwhile, Todd Clewett, the CEO of Minera Panamá (a subsidiary of First Quantum Minerals Ltd., listed on Toronto’s stock exchange in Canada and the London Stock Exchange in England) announced that the Cobre Panamá mine would begin exporting the mineral to the U.S., Brazil, China and India at the end of 2017 with an investment of $6.4bn.

“They always play with the law, just like with prior consultation. We don’t want any consultation because there’s simply nothing to consult, our decision is that we don’t want any projects. But, we have to beef up our fight because they’ll keep advancing, with or without our approval. It’s all-out war on we indigenous peoples”, pointed out the priestess.

Effectively, while the people fight against the hydroelectric project, mining is advancing at an accelerated pace. “The work has progressed well, we calculate that copper extraction will begin towards to the end of 2017 or the start of 2018”, explains the CEO of Minera Panamá. Moreover, the construction of a coal power station is almost complete, which will generate 300 megawatts of energy to be used in the operation of the Cobre Panamá mine.

Strength

As with other Latin American peoples, the strength of the Ngäbe-Buglé lies in their spirituality, through their church, called Mama Tatda and created by the native “prophet” Adelia Atencio Bejerano, also known as “Mamá Chí” and “Niña Delia”. It dates back to September 22nd, 1962, when Mamá Chí had a vision that showed her the need to guide her people away from the bad influences of alcohol and other vices that held them in slavery. Since then, they have followed the “Mamá Tatda commandment”.

The religion was formed within the territory by the indigenous people themselves, and boasts a book written in hieroglyphics made up of 145 chapters that deal with issues of everyday life, social subjects, ethics, values, family issues, domestic economy and how to administer justice, among other points.

The young people do not attend government schools given that they also have a manual of script in hieroglyphs, from which they have developed their own writing and school. “We don’t go to the school outside the community, because those that go there change their way of thinking and come back with bad ideas. They think about power, money and selling our Mother Earth. Here our education is with our own parents and relatives”, added Hacket Bagamá.

In the territory’s three regions there are at least 12 schools that operate without any economic resources or material support. The government has tried to provide support for education but they have turned it down. “The government wants us to accept this support, but that would mean us having to let the projects in. Our schools aren’t a religion, they’re an educational system, where we preserve and learn about our language in-depth, that’s how teachers are trained. Our way of life and culture is being lost because of these threats, and because of the brothers that are tempted by the Western vision. Therefore, strengthening our language is important in order to keep existing and for the struggle itself”, said the teacher Bellini Jiménez.

The state has also attempted to implement the Ngäbe language in public schools, something the indigenous peoples have also rejected. “They want to include it as a subject, but in Spanish. How can my language be written in Spanish script? It’ll never be the same. They call it bilingual-intercultural. Our language has another meaning, and in it we store our memory and the knowledge of our ancestors, our main strength”, added Bellini.

The Panamanian government might not stop granting concessions for more hydroelectric dams, wind farms, solar arrays, geothermal plants and, above all, more mining in indigenous territories, because that is how the green economy determines it. And perhaps the only weapon the children, youths, women and elderly people fighting Barro Blanco every day have left is their body, and not feeling fear. Although they don’t appear in the media, they are always waiting for their word to reach other indigenous peoples across the world who are also fighting to defend their land.

“The Tabasará River has been declared the blood of the world’s heart; if the heart stops working, the body stops existing. That’s what’s happening in other countries and that’s why we’re calling on other indigenous brothers to join us in the fight against these projects. Disasters are on the horizon in the rest of the world because the earth is sick, because the Mother is wounded. The caracoles in the seven points of our Mother Earth have to ring out so that we indigenous peoples rise up and stop this disaster. Now is the time to walk hand in hand to stop this monster called capitalism. We don’t expect anything from them, we expect everything from all the indigenous peoples of the world, that’s our strength”, revealed Priestess Clementina.

Letter from Kurdish Women’s Movement to Spokeswoman of Indigenous Governing Council

Por
Santiago Navarro F
-

Translated by El Enemigo Común of congresonacionalindigena.org

For María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, representative of the indigenous people of Mexico and the National Indigenous Congress CNI.

First of all, we want to send our deepest respect and revolutionary greetings to our Mexican sister, from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Sierra Madre mountain range beyond the oceans. Despite the rivers, mountains, deserts, valleys, canyons and seas that separate us, we are indigenous sisters and brothers, no matter what part of the world we are in.

With you, we share our struggle, our resistance against occupation and colonialism, and our dream of a free life, and in this sense, we who belong to the Kurdish Liberation Movement declare that we consider the struggle for self-determination, self-administration and self-defense of the indigenous peoples of Mexico organized in the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) as our own struggle, and we support you on the basis of principles of revolutionary solidarity.

Indigenous peoples are the veins through which the most important social and cultural values of humanity have been transmitted, from the first moments of socialization until our times. Without a doubt, no people is superior to another, but at a time when capitalist modernity is trying to destroy every communal value, indigenous peoples are the safeguard of the social fabric of all humanity. Thousands of years of collective memory resurge in our songs, our rituals, our prayers, our tattoos, our dances and our traditions. And so the struggle for our own identity against the efforts of capitalist modernity to erase the roots and the memory of our peoples becomes the most meaningful of all forms of resistance.

"In Latin America, as in Kurdistan, women are leading this resistance. In our countries, which were the cradles for thousands of years of the culture of the mother goddess, we see that women and life, women and freedom, women and land, and women and nature are inextricably related. In Kurdistan, we express this reality in our slogan “Jin Jiyan Azadî”, which means “Women Life Freedom”.

The bodies and souls of women are the reflection of the universe on the land. Thousands of years ago, during the Neolithic Revolution, it was the women, through their social organization, who led in making changes that enabled the cultivation of the land and the beginning of a sedentary life in harmony with nature. That’s why women were the first to be enslaved by the patriarchal state civilization, which arose as a counterrevolution based on domination, exploitation and occupation.

Parallel to the domination of women was the ever more rapid domination of nature. It was through the oppression of the first form of nature that the second came about, transforming both into the pincers that capitalist modernity used to forcefully exert pressure against historical society, with a greater ability to destroy it. Consequently, legitimate resistance arising in pursuit of self-government, self-determination and self-defense represents the greatest possible struggle for freedom.

We in Kurdistan, enlightened by the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, have developed our own defense against modernist capitalist forces and attacks from the colonialist states that occupy our soil. We want you to know that we continually receive special inspiration from your experiences of self-government, good government and communalism. We hope that our experiences and breakthroughs in the struggle will likewise serve as sources of inspiration for you.

One of the greatest achievements in our movement is the equal participation and representation of women. This was the result of great sacrifices made and intense struggles waged by women, and we finally won equal participation in making all decisions. Not as individuals, but as representatives of the organized, collective will of the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement. This is the way we are taking our place in each and every aspect of struggle. With our system of co-presidencies, established from the ground up, we represent the will of women in each and every decision and develop a democratic kind of politics that goes against all patriarchal, traditional forms of politics. But to be able to do this, it was necessary for us to become an organized force once and for all. Being organized is the most important requirement for winning victories. To the extent that we’re organized, we’re capable of resisting the dominant colonialist system and building our own governmental alternative.

For that matter, organization is our most important arm for self-defense. In the past, many peoples and movements have not been able to attain the hoped-for results because they weren’t well enough organized. It wasn’t possible to transform some historical moments into great victories precisely due to the lack of organization. We may not have reached an in-depth understanding of the meaning and importance of this fact, but we’re now in another stage of struggle. We’re obliged to multiply our efforts to heighten our levels of organization in order to take advantage of this new opportunity to triumph – at a time when the modernist capitalist system is going through yet another deep crisis in its most decisive aspects. History demands it of us. You of the National Indigenous Congress have shown that you recognize this reality by declaring the presidential elections in Mexico a key stage in a process that will result in a rise in your levels of organization.

We, of the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement wish to express our support for your decision, based on the conviction that this goal will be reached and taken to a much higher level, starting with these elections and the strategies developed around them. Our leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned under the harshest of conditions of isolation by the Turkish colonialist state since 1999, made a highly important analysis of this at the end of the twentieth century. Our leader Apo, foresaw that the twenty-first century would be the century of women’s liberation if we are able to grow and decide on our manners and mechanisms of organization. The reason for this conclusion was the evident structural crisis of the patriarchal system, which has been based on our enslavement.

The patriarchal system seeks to overcome this crisis by raising the level of attacks against women to the level of a systematic war. By concentrating its attacks against women the world over through different means and methods, the system aims to cut off the road to liberation that we’ve taken. The murders of women that have reached the level of genocide in your country, and the murders of women leaders in Latin America are the most concrete indicators of this reality. We want you to know that we consider all the women and leaders of indigenous peoples who have been killed by the operative arms of the dominant system as our own martyrs. We are also struggling to make our hopes and dreams reality. Our martyrs never die. We draw force from them, and they are reborn in every struggle we undertake.

In this context, your decision as Mexican indigenous people to name a woman comrade as representative of your will and make her your candidate in the upcoming presidential elections is very significant. As a matter of fact, comrade Marichuy is not only the voice of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, but at the same time, the voice of the women of the world. We want to say that we affirm the importance and value of her candidacy as the representative of peoples denied, women enslaved and thousands of years of ancestral wisdom threatened with disappearance by capitalist modernity.

As the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement, we declare our support and solidarity with the compañera and the National Indigenous Congress, not only at the moment of this electoral juncture, but in the entire struggle that your movement is pursuing. We know that the results of the elections themselves do not matter, that they are only one of the roads that the indigenous peoples of Mexico have taken in this process at this particular moment of struggle. In this light, the victory is already a fact because the modernist capitalist system feeds off of the division of forces and the disorganization of peoples and societies that it aims to dominate, but you have constructed the terrain for success by forging organized unity.

From this point on, it is important not to lose sight of this goal, which is none other than stronger organization. Your triumph will be our triumph. Our struggle is your struggle. We are the brother and sister people of the mountains that have risen from the same deep waters. Even in our different tongues, we share the same dreams, we fall in love with the same utopia, and we resist for the sake of the same love. From here, we send you all the force necessary in this new stage, we greet you with our most genuine revolutionary feelings, and we embrace you with all our solidarity and comradeship.

Coordinating group of the Kurdish Women’s Movement, Komalên Jinên Kurdistan (KJK)
June 7, 2017

Oaxacan Indigenous Communities Resist Megaprojects

Por
Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F
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Traslate by itsgoingdown

The Chinantec people, inhabitants of the Cajonos River basin in the north of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, are carrying out an organizational process throughout their entire territory, the Chinantla, against economic projects that seek to commodify nature as a whole. They are megaprojects such as mining, hydroelectric dams, highways, conservation projects, and, more recently, hydrocarbons. It is not a coincidence Chinantla is considered a priority of economic interest for the Mexican government. It houses the third largest tropical rainforest in Mexico. After the Lacandona jungle in Chiapas, and the Chimalapas in Oaxaca, it is the best preserved and one of the richest in biodiversity. “The Chinantla is a priority area for exploitation because of its wealth, its diversity. It’s part of a strategic Mesoamerican plan that comprises all that is Veracruz, the Chinantla zone, Chiapas and Central America in the so-called Plan Mérida and Mesoamerica Project. The objective of the Mexican government and businesses is to create a corridor for the exploitation of water, minerals, coal reserves, and electricity-generating projects. Here are the plants, bacteria, mushrooms that heal and these are all things they also want to take away”, explained biologist Patricia Mora, from the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Integral Regional Development – Oaxaca Unit of the National Polytechnic Institute (CIIDIR Oaxaca). So much diversity has been in the hands of the Chinantec even before colonization by the Spanish. They resisted with their language and their culture against the Spanish and domination by the Aztecs, and now they are organizing against the wave of exploitation by multinationals in their territory. “In our hands is the wealth that the businesses want, which is why they want us to disappear”, argues Jacinto Flores, an inhabitant of the region and organizing member of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Chinantec Kia Nan Indigenous Force of the Papaloapan Basin.

In the middle of April, the community of Santo Antonio las Palmas, in the municipality of Choapam, set up a space where the communities could discuss the problems they are experiencing with the megaprojects, as well as organizing strategies to fight together. It is the Forum Against Dispossession and Repression, that had its first iteration on April 9 and 10, called for by the CNI in the Papaloapan region.

“We alone cannot face this clash. If we the peoples do not unite, if we do not join together, we will be immersed in slavery or death. If they start, for example, opening mining projects and fracking wells – Mexico must open 20,000 fracking wells – we’ll arrive at the disappearance of the original peoples. There is no other path. We have to organize on a national level, international, to bring the struggle together on a national and international level. Globalize the struggle”,

ASSERTS FLORES.

In 1997, federal and state institutions, among them the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (SEMARNAT), began negotiations with the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), to conduct research in the Chinantla region with respect to its natural resources. Flores asserts that they took an inventory of the mountains, basins, water reservoirs, minerals, animals, edible plants, healing plants, and ornamental plants. “And when they finished their research, which was believed to be for the people, but in the end they were studying what was feasible for the world market”. The objective became clear for the communities years later with the arrival in the territory of the first projects for the commercialization of the water, coal and genetic materials.

There is a project by the Mexican government to conserve about 260,000 hectares of mountains in the region, says Flores. “It is a deception that they are trying to spread that the conservation is for the people. The government is conserving the mountains at the same time it’s putting them up for auction, to see who will pay the most for them. Here we have 13 Chinantec tourist corridors, that’s where the conservation areas are. They’re turning us into criminals on our own territory. We can’t enter the mountains, we can’t draw water that is ours, if so, we are committing a crime”.

At the same time they are taking away the people’s right to subsist off the mountain through conservation projects, the government grants land for mineral exploration by multinationals. In the San Vicente Arroyo Jabali community, for example, they are going to open a mine that contains gold, silver, copper and zinc. In 2008, a company arrived with documents prepared for the people to sign so the mine could open. “They have the deeds ready, prepared. The document talked about a 50 year concession. Close to 26,400 hectares of land span the mine. We resisted and the people of Jabali issued a decision that they would not accept the opening of the mine. They wanted to put the reserve there, but they did not accomplish it, the people of Jabali continue to resist”.

Water, essential for life and increasingly scarce in Mexico, is not lacking in Chinantla, one of the regions in the country with great rainfall. But it is also up for sale. “In the Zuzul region, ejido Vega del Sol, in the municipality of Santa Maria Jacatepec, Pepsi-Cola bought a natural water deposit in the town. In the Naranjal, there is a waterfall that belongs to that town that was bought by Coca-Cola. And the brewers of Modelo are taking ownership of the rivers”, said Flores.

In the lower part of Chinantla, part of the land was leased to a Canadian company associated with the Sabritas company, explains Flores. “In the land, that is community-owned, they are sowing taro, a big sweet potato, so they could utilize them for their Sabritas products. We know that this is just a small step, but after the leasing of the land comes the total dispossession of the rural farmer”.

The exploitation of hydrocarbons is also projected in this region by the federal government, mainly fracking. “Some authorities are already signing projects concerning the exploitation of hydrocarbons. The people do not know what this is all about, they are not being informed. The institutions come and they make them sign contracts, they come with promises, with deception”, says Juan Roque Pérez, a resident of Chinantla and member of the CNI in the Papaloapan Basin.

The government absolves itself of any responsibility of the countryside and transfers it to the companies. “They are the ones that start investing in the fields. Everything is a business for the government”, says Flores. Education is one of the fundamental areas where they are trying to get in. “We have an example in Santiago Tatlepusco. A company came to remodel the school, supposedly the government was going to pay them, but it turned out they did not. The company charged the people for the resources they invested. And now the people are worried. The mayor said that there are no resources. The company says it will expropriate the school”, says Flores.

“Since the arrival of the first inhabitants in these lands, which was thousands of years ago, the first thing they did was try to understand these new lands, nature, and to communicate with her. For example, domesticating maize. Maize was born in these lands. They managed to transform a simple herb into something we can eat. And it turns out that the invaders, beginning with the conquest of Mexico, came and displaced us and took the best from this moment, which were the valleys where maize was cultivated. They displaced the original people to the mountains, like those in Chinantla, in Puebla, in Veracruz. That was a different environment that was even harder and more difficult, with a more inhospitable climate, and there they still planted maize. And now we live in conflict, a kind of war, a war of life against death. These multinational companies see the plants, the air, the water, the subsoil as merchandise. The struggle isn’t for a piece of land, it is the struggle for the life of the native people who have every right to decide how they want to live. When nature is taken as a commodity it is not appreciated, it is not valued, it is mistreated, it is destroyed”,

SAID BIOLOGIST PATRICIA MORA.

“The government and the companies, to placate our struggle and our life as a community, want to intimidate us. There have been 200,000 deaths these past few years because of the war, 32,000 disappeared, during the years of the PAN, PRI, and PRD governments, 237,000 displaced from their communities, according to official figures. To intimidate the population to infuse fear, to paralyze us. They want to prevent organizational processes, they want to break our convictions. They want to take away the idea that we can win, to take away the idea that we are strongest united, as a collective. They want to break our process of unity. They want to control us as if we were an enemy within. Those above consider all the people that are against the system to be enemies. They want to make one feel that all the people that fight back are enemies. They say that we are criminals, that we are subversives. And they justify the repression. They want to transform the population with their collaborators, spies, gunmen”, said one of the members of The Zenzontle of the House of Mexican Peoples magazine. Erica Sebastián, one of the speakers at the forum and also daughter of political prisoner Álvaro Sebastián Ramírez, an indigenous Zapotec from the Loxicha region in the southern mountains, stressed that political prisoners are the consequence of the struggle against the dispossession that indigenous people live through in Mexico. “When we organize as peoples, defend our land, our autonomy, our struggles for what we are as indigenous people, and what they do is repress us, put us in jail, disappear us, murder us”, says Erica.

In the case of Loxicha, precisely because there was a project of political organization in the town, various people were repressed. “In 1996, there were more than 150 indigenous prisoners and because of that we, women, organized to defend our fathers, our husbands, our grandfathers, our brothers. The majority of those imprisoned were men and it is the women’s turn to organize to demand freedom”, she explains.

They succeeded in freeing almost all of them and as of now, after 20 years, there only three prisoners remain, among them Álvaro Sebastián Ramírez. “What we have learned is that we have to be the subjects of our own struggle. What happened to us at one point is that some people wanted to lead us. And the only thing they did was profit and keep the prisoners there because it was convenient. What we have learned is that it does not require leaders. We, those that have suffered from the problem, have to take the fight into our own hands and let it set the course”, Erica shares.

“The CNI is a big house where we assemble all of the indigenous peoples, where we share the pain that every one of our peoples face. Disappearances, kidnapping, murders, imprisonment. In this house we want to give shape to the struggle against the megaprojects that come here, to deal with the big companies, the war of extermination that the Mexican government has declared against the indigenous communities. The government says it’s declared a war against drug traffickers and we say no. It is against the people. Because the ones who are disappearing, being assaulted, are the people, the women, children, young people,” according to Jacinto Flores.

“We are who we are, we walk slowly when we’re in a hurry. We shorten the steps or lengthen them, according to our path. Because this is the pace of the community that we carry. We don’t rush anything, it is merely the time of the peoples. It is time to listen to ourselves, to talk among us, to know ourselves, to get closer, to unify, to reconnect with one another as we are, because it is time for us to sow the seed of unity, of organization to protect mother earth and territory. The territory that is the place where we were born. Where we took our first steps. Where we played, where we learned how to cry and laugh. Where we buried our dead. Like our grandparents said, this is the place where we buried our umbilical cords, where we fell and got up to carry on. It is mother earth, is the territory that is at risk, it is life itself that is in danger from the mining megaprojects, highways, dams, exploitation of hydrocarbons, biosphere reserves. These are projects that threaten the life of the communities in the Papaloapan basin region. Something must be done and that is why we are here assembled, to sow this seed of unity for the protection of mother earth and the territory, with life, for life. The seed of dignity and of justice has to be planted among all of us”, says Juan Roque Perez, CNI member of the Papaloapan basin.

In this first meeting of the forum, 156 attendees gathered, 46 authorities from 24 communities speaking the Chinantec of the valley, Chinantec of ojitlan, Zapotec, Mazatec, Mixtec, Nahua, Náhuatl, Tzeltal, Mixe, and Binizza of the south sierra.

The forum decided on a second meeting for May 20, in the community of San Vicente Arroyo Jabali, located in the Santiago Jocotepec municipality in the state of Oaxaca, where the participants must present the results of the consultations carried out in their communities concerning the proposals for struggle, as suggested and debated in the first forum.

Business under the shadow of the renewable energy sham in Honduras

Por
Aldo Santiago
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“Here we are one Prados” mention its inhabitants in reference to the strength of its organization to halt the incursion of Scatec Solar. Photo: Renata Bessi.
English Translation by Sharon Cowell

Filtering through the branches, the harsh sunlight fails to disturb the happy sounds coming from the crowd gathered beneath the thicket. With a guitar as accompaniment, the old women, children, and men and women of all ages triumphantly roar out the last line of their song:

Constant protests have been going on for more than a year in the Los Prados 1 and 2 communities, with residents opposing investment by the company Scatec Solar and the development bank Norfund. These two Norwegian organizations are leading the assault by corporate interests seeking to profit and plunder common property through misleading claims about how the planet “urgently” needs renewable energies on a massive scale.

The photovoltaic energy project at Los Prados is not the first case in Honduras or Central America where global financial powers have tried to prevail in their eagerness to fully convert the energy generation matrix into one that “respects the environment” and, as they voraciously forge ahead, installing 500,000 solar panels every day around the world in a profitable business worth US$288 billion, it will not be the last.

It is in the south of Honduras, where the departments of Valle, Choluteca and Francisco Morazán are bathed in sunshine, that international organizations, European development banks and corporations from China, the US, Mexico and Germany (to mention just a few countries) are concentrating their investments. Pretending to save the world from an environmental cataclysm, they encourage mechanisms that will enable the world to shift from intensive fossil fuel use to the large scale expansion of renewable energies, without ever questioning what and who this energy is for or who will be affected in the process.
The investment boom in Honduras began in 2013 when legislative reforms started offering tax exemptions to companies generating renewable energy. These incentives led to 34 contracts for solar capture being approved in Choluteca alone, all with joint Honduran and foreign investment.

By the end of 2016, the installed photovoltaic capacity was already generating 10% of Honduras’s electricity, making solar power the country’s third largest energy source after fossil fuels and hydroelectricity. These solar plants will sell all the energy they produce over the next 20 years to the National Electrical Energy Company (ENEE), the latest publicly-owned organization in Central America to be heading towards privatization. ENEE even offers 20-year performance guarantees for internationally funded contracts as well as technically making the country’s entire electricity production available to the regional Central American market.

One of the key sites competing for the country’s potential solar market, which is valued in excess of one billion US dollars, is the Pavana Solar photovoltaic farm in Choluteca. Built by Yingli Solar, the largest solar panel provider in the world, this solar farm is managed by Enerbasa/Lufussa, a Honduran subsidiary that is part of the group of companies owned by Luis Kafie. This is the oligarch who was involved in the scam that cost the Honduran health sector millions and he later used this money to fund part of the electoral campaign for the country’s current president, Juan Orlando Hernández. Genisa is another Kafie-owned company and it was responsible for the social and environmental disaster caused when the Barro Blanco Dam was built and filled on land belonging to the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous people in Panama.

Another company involved in illegal practices, albeit with a lower profile, is Scatec Solar. Currently intent on expanding its presence throughout Africa and Europe, this Norwegian company is behind the project at Agua Fría (Nacaome), one of 28 switching stations that make up the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC). Already operational, having cost US$750m, this strategic infrastructure allows Scatec Solar to control private investment in the large-scale renewable energy projects planned for Central America from Mexico to Colombia.

Scatec Solar is the same company that is determined to drive through the photovoltaic energy project at Los Prados. It will be just one of many hubs that urgently need to be built across Honduras to prepare the country’s infrastructure for the profitable energy generation network and up to US$ 18 billion of investment will be needed by 2020 to transport the energy produced, according to estimates by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), one of the project’s key backers.

To fight this project, the Los Prados residents have set up a community association and a camp at the entrance to their lands. “The country doesn’t get to use this energy as the government exports it. It’s just a business and it doesn’t bring us any benefits whatsoever. Jobs are available while they’re setting up the project but that’s just for a three or four month period. Once they’ve finished putting all those mirrors in place – and they just block the view for everyone – then there’ll just be one guard at a gate. We don’t want this project because it isn’t going to bring us any benefits whatsoever”, Leonardo Armador, the association’s spokesperson, said."When the solar farm appeared in Norfund Bank’s investment plans at the end of 2015, Scatec Solar interpreted the “immediate” go-ahead for construction to start on a project that had been in the planning since 2013 as permission to ride roughshod over any prior consultation with the communities involved and they sent in their machinery on January 4, 2016. Without any warning, they began to strip the area where the solar panels would be installed. “When we saw that they had numbered all the trees because they were going to chop them down, that was when all of us at Prados 1 and 2 got together to protest and stop their machines”, Leonardo explained.

The joint effort by residents of both Prados communities managed to stop the company’s raid on their lands and made it clear that they rejected the project. The peasant farmers then demanded that the company carry out community work as compensation for its actions. In exchange, they agreed to release the machinery they had seized. “They hauled some stuff for us and dug up a stretch of road where we’ll put a drinking water supply and so we reached a settlement that they would sign an ex parte commitment to say they wouldn’t come back with all their machinery because the communities were very unhappy with the situation. And we told them that if they did come back, we’d set fire to their machines”, Leonardo added. The story of how the Prados communities were founded is no different to that of hundreds of others that were set up in the second half of last century when groups of workers and peasant farmers occupied land with a promise from the government that they could access legal ownership of state-owned and communal (ejidal) lands. Like in many other cases, the Prados lands had been abandoned by their owners, large landowners whose ownership was challenged by the people’s demand for land rights, and the land surrounding the farmers’ homes has been used ever since for agriculture, primarily melon production and shrimp farming.

The original Prados settlers were members of organized groups in the Nacaome Valley, such as the Federation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives and the National Peasants’ Association of Honduras. These groups have historically operated almost everywhere in Honduras and they worked alongside the National Agrarian Institute (INA) in the region. However, agrarian reform was a mere sham, having been blocked for years by minority groups with huge economic power, by cronyism that was immune to popular movements and by repression against peasant farmers, and no steps were taken to grant legal certainty to those people occupying and working the land.

"This was all just mountains but we cleared the land and planted maize, beans, watermelons and squash and that’s how all of us farmers got by”, the older residents told us, easily recalling the difficulties faced by those who came to these lands without even having anywhere to sleep. “I now have my land deeds. My land is less than 15 acres but at least I have my deeds. In 1982, the authorities, via the INA, retrospectively granted us permission for our homes, for the first 22 houses built”, one of the farmers explained as she told us the story of how the community grew into one with more than 300 homes."

However, the Honduran state neglected the community and failed, for example, to supply basic infrastructure, leaving the peasant farmers to their own devices. Consequently, the villagers had to rely on their own efforts and support from neighbors to solve their daily problems. “The community also brought in its own electricity supply because ENEE, the national electricity company, does nothing to help around here. In the beginning, only the people living in the first houses built actually had electricity but thanks to our own efforts, the community is getting bigger” said Digna Quiroz, who also pointed out that the solar panels would impact villagers’ health as they would disrupt the local climate.

Despite the fact that peasant farmers have lived on these lands for decades, their tenure is unprotected and since the 1990s, they have been living with the possibility that lands may be given over to private owners. In line with the zeal shown for dismantling legal frameworks and privatizing areas of land and services by nation states across Latin America, Honduras pursued and applied agrarian and municipal reforms as formulated by the World Bank, hastening the invasion of lands belonging to peasant farmers and indigenous peoples at the end of the last century.

The neoliberal policies prevalent in Latin America created the conditions for the impoverishment of peasant farmers and the plundering of their lands, the systematic militarization of territories, and the mass exodus of workers in many of the conflicts happening in the region. Subsequently, these same policies would be responsible for the risk to discourse and the large-scale construction of renewable energy projects in Central America, with this practice merely replacing the “fight against poverty” diktat of the international financial organizations dating back to the 1970s.

Nowadays, it is the “fight against climate change” that is used to justify US$30m loans to Honduras to “mitigate” the effects of environmental disaster and to encourage renewable energies “in countries with limited resources” but this inflow of international funds merely facilitates conditions for land grabbing. Norway is a clear example of this sham, given that it promotes itself as an environmentalist country while seeking to expand the oil frontier in the Arctic.

Admittedly, Honduras has been identified as one of the regions most impacted by climate change, especially in the south of the country, which was hit hard by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the Garifuna region on the Caribbean coast, which has seen the first climate refugees. Coincidentally, however, the tax breaks and incentives for setting up companies in the renewable energy sector, in line with the diktats from international financial organizations such as the World Bank and the IDB, are enabling these companies to ride roughshod over communities and, in the absence of any prior consultation, residents only learn about a project when work starts.

“They’re going to drain the nearby streams. There’ll be no more birds, no more iguanas. There’ll be loads of animals that’ll just disappear from our community. What they actually want is to get rid of the lot of us, once and for all,” Blanca, the association’s legal counsel, told us. “What will we have left to hold onto?” she asked, before blaming party politics directly for being an enemy of the community."

On one of the fronts in dispute, the Los Prados community is demanding that government recognize their representatives, given the systematic refusal at local government level to enter into talks with members of the association who have been elected by the community.

Leonardo, whose opinions about the solar farm have frequently been ignored, talked angrily about the pressure and harassment they have faced from the companies involved while a group of 30 people showed us the camp organization that enables the community to keep up its actions against Scatec Solar. Complaints have flooded into the office of the local mayor, Douglas Vicente, following his repeated refusals since January 2016 to allow the Los Prados community to manage resources through their new association. Oliva is also accused of extortion and of tricking peasant farmers into setting up another campaign group to replace the Los Prados association. “He took advantage of us by taking people away from here, by giving them a bit of money to get them to leave the camp and that’s how they’ll get the project approved. To do that, you have to produce a list and everyone has to either sign or give their identity number to signal their approval. While he doesn’t have any of this, he alleges that he did comply with these formalities,” said Leonardo.

In the nearby city of Choluteca, Denia Castillo, who offers the Los Prados communities legal support, gave us an overview of the Honduran legal framework, the repeated transgressions by those who should be subject to its laws and the difficulties communities have in obtaining land deeds. “We have signed international treaties and agreements recognizing the right of access to land. Legislation, however, remains difficult. The Civil Code lays down the right to property with ordinary prescription and the right with extraordinary prescription. The former is acquired when a citizen uses an immobile asset continuously, peacefully and uninterruptedly for over 10 years and the latter for over 20 years. These legal positions favor our communities but they are not being respected, making access to this right generally quite difficult for our citizens,” Denia explained, casting blame on the unequal Honduran legal system where the scales are tipped in favor of the privileged minority." Although support is provided for in the country’s legislation, in practice only those with money are able to legalize their property deeds. Applications from the communities are simply ignored. The INA, despite being historically responsible for enforcing agrarian reform law, actually obstructs the process and peasant farmers, constrained by having insufficient funds to hire lawyers, find themselves up against red tape. “There are also groups that claim that the peasant farmers already sold their land, basing their arguments on fake documents with forged signatures. Impunity is deeply rooted in Honduras. In cases like these, where the crimes committed could be easily verified, it would not be so easy to deprive peasant farmers of their land if legal assistance were made available. Moreover, existing laws aimed at helping vulnerable groups in Honduras are either not approved or not ratified. Or they are simply repealed. Peasant farmers find it difficult to get legal access to land and all the companies and their projects take advantage of these problems in order to gain easier access to what they need, namely access to land so that they can start work,” said Denia, pointing to the conspiracy between private capital and state institutions that has allowed peasant farmers to be stripped of their lands. There is also the case of a dozen communities in the municipality of El Triunfo that are opposing open-cast gold mining. In one of these communities, Ojo de Agua, the villagers do not have paperwork for their plots. “So workers from the Los Lirios mining company turned up and offered the peasant farmers there free help with legalizing their plots,” Denia claimed. But blackmail was also part of the deal because the workers then pressurized the peasant farmers into selling their lands at a price set by the company in exchange for the property deeds. And if those strategies don’t work, these companies usually resort to harassing and persecuting those that stand in their way, as illustrated by the recent criminalization of six Ojo de Agua residents who, like most of their fellow villagers, have been opposing mineral extraction since 2000. When one examines the situation in the south of Honduras, one starts to suspect that there is a link between the massive investment in the electrical infrastructure and the growth of energy-intensive industries such as the mining sector, which, since the 2009 fall in prices, has been exponentially increasing production in Latin America. The level of territorial control exerted by corporations becomes clear when one looks at the plans being submitted. For example, the Canadian company Glen Eagle Resources obtained permission to manage a 15,000m2 free zone for the tax-free export of minerals from El Corpus, Choluteca.

In communities all across the region there has, consequently, been a growing backlash over the mining expansion and the subsequent increase in residents’ health problems. For example, residents in San Martín held a town hall meeting to voice their opposition to the extractive industry and in Ojo de Agua (El Triunfo), the whole company is against Electrum’s mining project but the North American company remains determined to start operations with an initial US$1 billion investment. “I remember the response given by one of the speakers, who was a member of the Nature Protection Committees. He said that he was opposing mining because his wife had gone blind after washing in water from the mine,” Denia told us. “These people are fighting to defend themselves because their livestock has died, because they have nowhere to plant their crops and because they have to buy water because they know only too well that their water supply is highly polluted, especially after the public ministry’s order banning the use of the water due to high levels of cyanide,” the lawyer argued. There is also the case of the area around El Tránsito (Nacaome), where the open-cast mining industry has set its sights on Cuculmeca Hill. The large number of miner deaths led to mining being closed down in the area but figures issued by the Public Private Partnership Commission (Coalianza) estimate that there are gold and silver reserves worth US$14m in an area of just six hectares.

According to Denia, the decentralized agency Coalianza plays a key part in the institutional machinery that is allowing land grabbing nationwide. Coalianza is notorious in Honduras and is responsible for promoting a joint investment model that the country has been pioneering in Central America since 2010. This global benchmark model, which involves both the public and private sectors in construction works and public services provision throughout Honduras, is used to maximize profit in sectors that were previously publicly owned. Examples include hydroelectric power generation in the Amazon basin countries and even the prison industry in the United States.

Coalianza manages privatization projects linked to the energy sector, telecommunications, ports, health, water, and especially infrastructure construction. The government is increasingly implementing strategies for selling off the country’s common property and natural assets, as illustrated by both the joint public and private investments for programs such as Honduras 2020 and the setting up of Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE), also known as “Model Cities”, which entail one or more countries or corporations being granted pieces of Honduran land to build business cities.

Denia recalled President Manuel Zelaya Rosales’s time in office as a tipping point in the onset of violence against communities because the policy of openness towards peasant farmers and indigenous groups was one of the triggers for the 2009 coup d’état. “When decree 18-2008 was issued, they sought to allow peasant farmers access to legal ownership of their lands. Honduras was in the middle of this process when the coup d’état took place. The coup was really a joint attack by the military and the corporations and it put an end to the struggle which had started in the villages and which would have directly benefited the people living there. The new government simply repealed the decree and repressed any similar demands,” the lawyer told us. “It was the coup d’état that allowed this excessive abuse of our resources by allowing transnational companies and development banks to demand national legislative reforms. In 2013, when the current President was the Speaker of Congress, more than 39 laws were passed, including the mining law and the fishing law, laws that had been stopped by social pressure,” Denia said. “These new laws practically told businessmen that they shouldn’t worry and that everything would be easy for them because they could do whatever they wanted to in Honduras. We have everything ready for you to come over here and invest. The legal system is ready to help you. We have laws in place”, the lawyer remarked ironically, referring to the “agreements” between the State and the corporations that allowed this legislation to be implemented." Against a backdrop of a constant threat of militarization and pressure from investors over the next date for their attempted foray into the Los Prados lands, intimidation by both the state police forces and the privately-owned security services easily turns into persecution and oppression.

While traveling through the area where electricity infrastructure and transmission towers have been installed, members of our reporting team and our local guides were arbitrarily stopped by the police for photographing a Norfund office a few kilometers from the road leading to Los Prados, even though it turned out that the officers had no idea what they were looking for in our car. One of our young guides from the Zacate Grande Peninsula told the officers that he had his ID papers and an IACHR letter granting him protective measures but the officers’ indecisive response made us realize how useless these papers are in practice. Since 2006 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has granted protective measures in 49 cases in Honduras but 13 of these so-called beneficiaries have been murdered.

As a recent report by Global Witness stated, 123 people have been murdered in Honduras for defending their land, common property and natural assets since the 2009 coup. The recurring features of these crimes point to corruption in government circles, which is further exacerbated by corporate greed for mega-projects in the mining, hydro-electricity, luxury hotel and, increasingly, renewable energy sectors.

Despite the criminal networks that link the government, companies and security services being singled out as responsible for homicides, such as that of Berta Cáceres, the coordinator at the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, the level of impunity in the country covers up and even contributes to the fact that the number of homicides is increasing daily. The tragedy, however, is that this situation is not limited to Honduras. By early March 2017, corporate and state terrorism had perpetuated homicides in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia, with the latter reporting 23 homicides during the peace re-negotiation talks.

This context makes it important to condemn the support being offered by international financial organizations for new renewable energy projects, despite the numerous reports of abuses against communities being systematically ignored by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the IDB and development banks such as FMO and Finnfund. It is also worth pointing out, as an aside, that these two European banks were involved in the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, which Berta Cáceres opposed while she was alive.

In the case of the Los Prados project, Scatec Solar intends to fork out US$100m on the construction of the photovoltaic farm. This money will come primarily from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and from Norfund. This Oslo-based bank also gave loans to Ficohsa, the financial group owned by the Atala family, who are accused of supporting the 2009 military coup, under investigation for money laundering in Panama, linked to the diversion of funds from the health sector to the luxury tourist complex at Indura Beach, and involved in investing in Desarrollos Energéticos, the Honduran company implicated in Cáceres’s assassination. In light of this Honduran financial group’s criminal background, questions remain about the apathy and disregard shown by the banks to the crimes facilitated by their investments. Denia, with a particular reference to the legitimacy of the camp at the community entrance, added her voice to condemn the criminalization of communities in Central America. “At the moment, Honduran laws as such help the residents of Los Prados 1 and 2 in their campaign to directly oppose the photovoltaic energy project that is planned for their area. The universal declaration of human rights does, too, because it mentions the right of all citizens to be consulted. In this case, the records granting the project’s environmental license show that villagers were not consulted and that their signatures do not appear on the submissions the company claims were shared with the communities. The villagers are exercising their right and it is a right that has to be respected,” she argued. The process of changing the laws of the country in the wake of the 2009 coup, however, continues, as exemplified by the recent adoption in 2017 of the reforms to the Penal Code. The right to protest by individuals opposed to mega investment projects has been made a criminal offense as such protests are now classified as acts of terrorism. “They have created a legal mechanism to shield businessmen so they can do whatever they want with our country’s resources. And now we have this anti-terrorism law in place and they’re thinking about a sedition crime. This new penal code is laying down much more burdensome reforms and we know that they generally target peasant farmers, trade union members and all those other social movements that have been defending our resources”, the lawyer added.

It is now all change but it is still the same old story. Still rooted in the underdevelopment myth inherited from neoliberal policies, the Honduran state apparatus continues to relax the legal framework in response to capital demands, enabling investors to foray into lands and break up communities as they forge ahead with their infrastructure projects and their new businesses for generating and transporting energy.
In using a development model based on extraction and plundering of common property to the benefit of national and transnational corporations, the Honduran state has itself created the current scenario. The fight by communities like Los Prados helps demonstrate that political discourse such as the renewable energy debate is part and parcel of this very same scenario, namely the “unstoppable” growth of capital, with no alternatives permitted. Even if they do paint it green.

This report is part of a set of issues that will be published the rest of the year, on the context of the climate crisis, militarization and megaprojects in the Mexico-Central America region.

This project is independent and only possible with your support.

Southern Command in Costa Rica: US Occupation Disguised as Humanitarian Aid

Por
Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F
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From the top of the great Talamaca mountain range in southern Costa Rica, you can see the Caribbean Sea and the houses of the Bribri and Cabécar Indigenous groups. According to their cosmology, their ancestors are in every tree, in every river and in every living being found in this reserve close to the border with Panama: The place is sacred. But to the Costa Rican government and the United States Southern Command, its value lies in its mineral deposits and oil.

Costa Rica hasn't had an official army for the last 68 years. However, in 2013, people in the Talamaca region were surprised by the arrival of a helicopter full of uniformed military personnel, whom they immediately identified as being part of the United States Southern Command. The military personnel were playing the role of missionaries, giving Bibles away. However, simultaneously, they were carrying out various military training activities in the area around Alto Cuen, a Bribri community.

"They said they were missionaries, but no one believed them," Bribri tribe member Leonardo Buitrago Morales told Truthout. "We knew they were looking for something more. The truth is that they want our lands and our forests to make money."

In addition to the locals, the organization Ceiba Amigos de la Tierra, which promotes sustainable societies through social, economic and environmental justice, also spoke out against the arrival of the eight military personnel, who carried sophisticated equipment including GPS, cameras, altitude and topography meters, firearms and other weapons. The non-governmental organization even filed a complaint with the Costa Rican government, but "the Public Ministry never followed up on it. On the contrary, the complaint was dismissed", says Henry Picado of the Costa Rican Biodiversity Network.

According to a report by researcher Irene Burgués Arrea, completed with support from The Nature Conservancy, the Talamanca region has been deemed a "priority site" by the US and Costa Rican governments. The Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project plans to build a complex energy infrastructure in this region, including highways and hydroelectric dams. In the Telire, Coen, Lari and Urén Rivers there are 16 hydroelectric projects planned that would affect the ecosystem of the Amistad International Park.

Additionally, studies show that the region is rich in minerals. In 1974, the US-based Alcoa company estimated that there is a 600,000-ton copper deposit in the Ñari River region of the Cabécar's Chirripó reserve. Similarly, in the mid-1980s, the then-named Fischer-Watt Gold Company -- also US based -- analyzed soil samples from Tsuköt and found high amounts of gold, up to 7.7 particles per million.

"Humanitarian aid is just a pretense. They've already constructed a heliport. And local villagers have found tools used by miners. They're carrying stones from our lands", says Rafaela Torres, a member of the Bribri Indigenous group in Alto Uren, a village in the Telire area of Talamanca.

A History of US Involvement

"This isn't the first time that this sort of thing has happened in Talamanca", says Buitrago Morales. Since 2008, helicopters have arrived from the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), which provides health, water and sanitation services to the public and private sectors. "We were surprised once more with the arrival of an helicopter from CRSS", Buitrago Morales continues.

Since 2008, in an operation called the "Puentes de Vida para Talamanca" (Talamanca Bridge of Life) Initiative, 16 Southern Command soldiers in coordination with CCSS have helicoptered in 160,000 pounds of material in order to build suspension bridges in the area. "'Humanitarian aid' has long been shameless. We know that it's a front to conduct mining and oil prospecting", Picado says.

Meanwhile, the CCSS is planning new incursions into the territory. In August 2016, it announced that it would use drones from the US company Zipline to deliver medicine in the Talamanca Health Area and Star Valley. "They called in all the people of the region and told us they'd be using drones, and said they needed our approval to build an airstrip for their equipment", says Buitrago Morales. "They spoke of millions of dollars, but we didn't believe them. They're just interested in our lands. We don't trust the government because it hasn't shown a willingness to support its Indigenous people."

The Role of the US Southern Command in Costa Rica

The governments of the US and Costa Rica do not make plain the ways in which they're targeting Talamanca for transnational economic and military objectives. "They hardly ever make their strategic interests public. But we can tell when there are invaders and strange movements, because we know our territory," Buitrago Morales says.

In 2009, the US Southern Command published a report titled "US Southern Command Strategy 2018: Friendship and Cooperation in the Americas," in which it revealed its plans in Latin America and the Caribbean.

One of its key points is the importance of guaranteeing the supply of fossil fuels in the US to ensure continued economic growth. "According to the Department of Energy, three of the top four foreign energy suppliers to the US are located within the Western Hemisphere (Canada, Mexico and Venezuela). According to the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy, the US will need 31 percent more petroleum and 62 percent more natural gas in the next two decades. As the US continues to require more petroleum and gas, Latin America is becoming a global energy leader with its large oil reserves and oil and gas production and supplies", the report states.

In 1998, MKJ Xploration -- a company that is part of a consortium including the then-named Harken Energy Corporation -- was given the right to explore for fossil fuels in 5,634-square-kilometers in the Caribbean. This included four of the 22 oil blocks that the Costa Rican government had designated for exploration in 1994, affecting part of Talamanca. In 2000, six more blocks were also assigned to the Mallon Oil Company. All three of these companies are from the US.

The United States Southern Command reports that its mission is to "develop … military operations and to promote security cooperation to reach strategic objectives in North America with countries in Central and South America". Its main lines of action, as outlined in an official note by the Latin American division of the US Army, are fighting the war on drugs and terrorism; providing humanitarian assistance; carrying out exercises and operations in collaboration with the Navy; establishing relations between the public and private sectors; and intervening in the theater of security and cooperation; among others.

Fighting "Drug Trafficking and Terrorism"

Ana Gabriel Zúñiga Aponte is the chief of staff of the Costa Rican Presidential House, and her position includes presiding over the Costa Rican Institute on Drugs and dialoguing with Indigenous groups. When asked about the flights and the presence of the Southern Command in Talamanca, Zúñiga Aponte told Truthout, "The United States' collaboration with the Costa Rican government has focused on fighting drug trafficking, crime and money laundering. And in order to be effective in this area, investment in aerial surveillance systems and infrastructure is needed".

According to Costa Rica's US Embassy website, the Central American country received more than $25 million in assistance between 2009 and 2014 to support three priorities: borders, fair trials and "safe communities."

Within the framework of fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, between 2011 and 2016, the Special Intervention Unit of Costa Rica participated in police and military activities called "Fuerzas Comando" along with the Southern Command. In May 2016, on the esplanade of the Marine Infantry base in Ancon, Peru, a military competition began, presided over by the chief of Intelligence and Operations Command Specialties of Peru, Maj.-Gen. Moisés Del Castillo Merino. The event lasted 10 days during which Special Forces of 20 North, Central and South American countries participated, including Costa Rica.

"For more than eight years, the Southern Command has been negotiating with the Costa Rican government, in particular offering international cooperation in the form of humanitarian aid and military training of police forces," Picado says. "This training was put on display by the new government when it repressed protesters demonstrating against the privatization of health care".

The Southern Command took another step to secure relations with Costa Rica in security matters -- particularly in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking -- in 2011, when it financed and inaugurated a new Coast Guard station almost 975-meters high in Puntarenas on the central Pacific coast. The facility includes a new communications center, mooring posts, a maritime mechanics workshop and an extensive dock. "This dock will boost Coast Guard capabilities and increase collaboration between the United States and Costa Rica in the fight against drug trafficking", Col. Norberto Cintron, chief engineer of the Southern Command, remarked at the opening.

According to Zuiri Méndez, coordinator of the University of Costa Rica's (UCR) Socio-Environmental "Kiosk" Program, US vessels are allowed to ship to and from Costa Rican ports seamlessly. "For three years now, the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly has allowed American army fleets to use Costa Rican ports," said sociologist Zuiri Méndez, who has been facilitating organizational strengthening in more than 12 Bribri and Cabécar communities in the Talamanca area since 2008 through a UCR program. "Additionally they can travel unencumbered throughout the country. And they have an agreement with the Ministry of Health allowing their aircraft to fly over all of Costa Rican airspace".

Capitalizing on Disaster

The CCSS and the Southern Command have a team of doctors who visit the village of Piedra Mesa, Telire, in Talamanca every three months. According to the official US Embassy website, these activities have been carried out by the Fund since 2010. "Thanks to the joint work carried out by the Southern Command of the United States, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Security, Governance and Police, and Limón airport authorities, more than 500 residents of Piedra Mesa, Talamanca have received free medical care", the Embassy states.

The Southern Command's most recent opportunity to enter Talamanca's most remote communities was Hurricane Otto, which passed through Costa Rica and Nicaragua on November 24, 2016. A few days later, it had mobilized four helicopters from the First Battalion's 228th Air Regiment transporting food, clothing and medicine to the village of Piedra Mesa, Telire. This humanitarian mission was called "Operation Pura Vida," and involved 16 military doctors, nurses, dentists and other specialists from the Bravo Joint Task Force, which operates from Soto Cano Air Base located in Honduras. Its staff is made up of more than 500 US military personnel and 500 Honduran and US civilians.

US Army Maj. Rosemary Reed participated in the operation, along with engineers and geologists who helped make key measurements to determine the carrying capacity of the rebuilt bridges, note locations and record the extent of damage. "The purpose of the FTC-Bravo carrying out this exercise is to test its ability to react to natural disasters and to interact with the local population in developing relationships with other entities in Central America," claimed Capt. Lettishia Burchfied, the officer in charge of Operation Pura Vida.

However, some advocates don't trust this synopsis of the US's goals in the area. The FTC-Bravo carries out a variety of missions in Central and South America, ranging from supporting US government operations to countering transnational organized crime, as well as providing humanitarian assistance and support around natural disasters and development. According to Picado, the intervention that took place last fall is worrisome because, "It seems more like a pretext, since the effects of Hurricane Otto were minimal in Talamanca. They were almost null, in fact. The most affected areas were on the border with Nicaragua, in the northern region of Upala."

So, why is the US sending significant numbers of people and supplies into the area?

"The Talamanca mountain range is being mapped by the United States to highlight the various minerals and oil that exist in the region," Méndez says. "It's clear that its presence in the region is because of those resources."

The future of the Southern Command in Costa Rica cannot be predicted, but President Trump's cabinet appointees may hold some clues. For instance, President Trump chose retired Gen. John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a position that includes overseeing the enforcement of immigration laws. General Kelly served as chief of the Southern Command between 2012 and 2016, and was responsible for overseeing a rapid expansion of Special Forces in Latin America. He also encouraged and maintained military cooperation with key partners such as Colombia, Honduras and the rest of Central and South America, all within the framework of fighting drug trafficking and illegal immigration to the US.

"This nomination not only leaves the country of Costa Rica, but all of Latin America unsure about how geopolitical elements will play out", Picado says.

US Intervention in Mexico and Central America: The Continuation of a War Economy

Por
Santiago Navarro F
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Translated by Jorge Ramirez and Ismael Illescas

Early in 2017, the United States military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) strategically roamed over tactical points throughout Honduras, Mexico, and Guatemala. At the same time, the newly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, with the possibility of a military intervention if Mexico did not prove it could solve the drug trafficking issue.

The Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is one of six unified Combatant Commands (COCOMs) in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for US military operations, such as the cooperation and the creation of partnerships in a region that includes 31 countries and 10 territories in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

The North Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for the United States' internal defense, and covers Alaska, Canada, Mexico and portions of the Caribbean, including Cuba.

On Jan. 31, the United States Air Force (USAF) Gulfstream IV (C20-F) jet landed in the Navy hangar on the southern border of Mexico in Tapachula, Chiapas. Lori Robinson, head of the US Northern Command, Kurt Tidd, leader of the Southern Command, and Ambassador Roberta Jacobson met with officials from the Mexican Foreign Ministry. Among them was Socorro Flores the undersecretary of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Luis Videgaray, Foreign Minister. According to British media sources, Reuters, attendees asked for anonymity. Among other issues addressed at this meeting were those concerning migration and organized crime.

This meeting was held despite the increasingly tense diplomatic relationships occurring via telephone, between the governments of Enrique Peña Nieto (Mexico) and Donald Trump (United States). The latter demanding that the Mexican president and his country pay for the construction of the border wall. In addition, Trump threatened Peña Nieto by telling him that if the Mexican military could not fight the drug cartels, then he would send troops from his country to solve the problem.

It has been several days since this event, and Trump’s statements appear to be in line with the continuation of military intervention planned before 2010, according to a leak made by WikiLeaks dating back to September 10, 2010, 2010 (Latam) Mexico-100910. The document reveals that an intelligence committee from Mexico and then US ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, held secret meetings at the Pentagon’s Northern Command facilities. On behalf of the United States stood the Department of Homeland Security and representatives of the Air Force. The leak also maintains that the then Commander of the North Command, Admiral James A. Winnefeld Jr., had ordered the evaluation of possible military assistance to Mexico that went beyond the formation of training and exchange programs.

The Mexican president denied that in the conversation with Trump there was discussion about a possible U.S. intervention in the Mexican territory. It seems that Trump’s statements and the last visit of the United States military command in Mexican territory have a broader meaning that requires the participation and cooperation of the government of Peña Nieto. Specifically, for an intervention of American military forces to join the war against drug trafficking and counterinsurgency. Since the leak also claims that Hillary Clinton has compared these events with the war in the Middle East, it follows that the war on drug trafficking in Mexico would have to be considered as a counterinsurgency war.

In the war against drugs in Mexico, where the United States has been involved, the reality cast numbers that reveal that there has been more than 200,000 dead in only one decade, which has been accompanied by the strengthening of organized crime and the increase in the flow of arms and drugs. While these leaders are struggling to exchange their most clever speeches, we know that at least 2000 weapons enter Mexico illegally every day, which involves the stock exchange that is part of the annual $10 billion amassed by the American armaments industry. We must make it clear that arms are goods that fluctuate according to the laws of supply and demand. According to a report published by the Center for Social Studies and Public Opinion (CESOP) of Mexico in 2014, it is estimated that 2000 weapons are brought to Mexico legally through one of the more than one hundred thousand permit holders who sell them in legally-constituted businesses or so-called “Gun shows” that operate along the border of the United States and Mexico. One example is the assault rifle AR-15 manufactured by Smith & Wesson (S&W), the largest firearms company in the United States. It is one of the preferred weapons by the drug traffickers, but also of exclusive use by Mexican and Central American armies. This company trades its shares in the NASDAQ stock market (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) as SWHC. In 2016 alone, it registered 722.91 millions of dollars in its sales. Arms exports from the world’s major industries increased by 14% between 2011 and 2015, in which the United States was the world’s primary arms dealer according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)report published in February 2016.

In addition to the illegal arms case discussed above is the armament bought by nation states. In this regard, Mexico offers an example. Between 2012 to 2015, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto increased the purchase of military equipment from the United States. It acquired airplanes, helicopters, all-terrain trucks and high-powered weapons. This acquisition was made through the Foreign MilitaryIn addition to the illegal arms case discussed above is the armament bought by nation states. In this regard, Mexico offers an example. Between 2012 to 2015, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto increased the purchase of military equipment from the United States. It acquired airplanes, helicopters, all-terrain trucks and high-powered weapons. This acquisition was made through the Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS), worth more than $1 trillion, which has been registered in a report released on 2015 via the Senate Armed Services Committee and the United States Defense and Security Agency (DSCA). This means that the U.S. military industry profits from both sides of the war, from both organized crime and the Mexican government, while more than 200,000 lives lost in this context are regarded as collateral damage, and the people who are forced to migrate are converted to “illegals.”

Thus, in talking about the war against drugs in Mexico and Central America, the flow of arms must be discussed as a fundamental pillar that sustains both organized crime and the war industry.

Another example is the increase in the purchase of arms by the countries of Central America within the context of the war against drug and terrorism. The Central American countries increased their armament and military equipment such as: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. According to data disclosed in the report titled, “State of the Region” of the National Council of Rectors of public universities in Costa Rica, purchases to the United States amounted to 2,015 million dollars in the period between 2004 to 2014. Honduras amassed 75.3% of the region’s total ($ 1,518 million). And Costa Rica, a country without an army, totaled $142.6 million, ranking second.

SIPRI Yearbook 2015.Military expenditure 2004-2014, in millions dollars

In this context, the war on drugs and terrorism throughout Latin America presents itself as the new economic policy dictated by the international market for the military industry. It is adjusted to the guidelines of the United States’ national security, which in turn, is responsible for mega-projects with regional scope such as the Mesoamerican Integration Project. This project has created a complex web of extractivist and special zones where raw materials, freights, goods and services, all circulate, enter and exit. In this complex web, arms and drugs are also included. It is clear that for the rhythm of production to be maintained in any industry, the demands of the market are necessary. For the military industry, specifically, the best demand is found in the context of war, such as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Thus, the possible intervention of the United States into Mexico, has another meaning beyond ending this war. That is, in resolving the war against drugs would also mean the end of the arms market in the region.

With the military intervention in Mexico, the United States would secure its influence with the official presence of the U.S. army, as it has done in the seven countries that make up Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, and Panama). These countries have had the presence of American troops under the framework of fighting against organized crime and terrorism, though this has not meant that good results have been produced.

The same day that they visited southern Mexico, the United State’s military Southern Command and Northern Command, also traveled to Guatemala where they visited the Interagency Task Force (IATF) Tecun Uman. This was created in 2013 with more than 250 military elites to combat drug trafficking, smuggling, and other activities related to organized crime in the border zones with Mexico.
The Southern Command’s visit is not the first time in Guatemala. The first time it did so officially was for the inauguration of the first Interagency Task Force (IATF) Tecun Uman, in April of 2013. It was a demonstration of a continuous cooperation of transnational security between Guatemala and the United States. General Frederick S. Rudesheim, who was the commander of the United States Army South, visited this Central American country in order to give the green light to inaugurate the training of the Interagency Task Force Tecun Uman, in San Marcos. In a press release issued before the inauguration, it was stated that the U.S. embassy had donated to the Ministry of National Defense, which included 42 tactical vehicles like the Jeep J8, that totaled 5.5 million dollars. In addition, 9.2 millions of dollars in personal and organizational equipment and 10.71 millions of dollars in the construction of base operations and logistics.

I

In speaking to Avispa Midia, Luis Solano, Guatemalan journalist and author of “Guatemala Petroleum and Mining in the Entrails of Power,” stated: “The Interagency Task Force are seeking to position themselves in main border centers of Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. We are talking about around seven Task Force formed in and from the United States with infrastructure, institutional scaffolding, and financing by this country.”

Despite the fact that each military Task Force depends on specialized technology such as night vision goggles equipped with heat sensors that have the capacity to view distant objects up to 2 kilometers away, as well as high-powered weaponry and tactical vehicles, drug trafficking activities have not been diminished. Solano suggest that the Task Forces remain contaminated by corrupt government structures that should have been cleaned up with the creation of the first Interagency Task Forces. He continues, “While the fall of Otto Pérez Molina’s government, and all the structures around them, was presented as a process of cleaning key institutions of the State, they are in fact the very same structures as those formed by these Task Forces. No matter how much funding there is, there has been no sort of decline in drug trafficking.”

In Guatemala, a series of arrests and extraditions of drug traffickers have been realized, yet the high command of the army and police forces who are also involved in organized crime have been left untouched. Solano continues, “Yes, there have been a lot of arrests and extraditions, but the structures have not perished, on the contrary, they are reproduced, consequently generating internal struggles. What we can discern from the case of Guatemala is the occurrence of the recycling and changes of those in power over cartels. Also, the State has an important presence and strong influence. Moreover, there are even allegations of the existence of a drug trafficking organization within the police, who is in charge and responsible for seizing cargos and giving them to other cartels.”

IHonduras is a country well known for its rich culture and natural resources, but it is also known for its high rates of killing environmental protectors and the rights of indigenous communities. The case of Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated March 2, 2016 made the world look upon this country. More than 100 activists who have been defending their territories against national and transnational high impact projects were assassinated between the years 2010 and 2016, data that contrast with the increased militarization of this country. Including the presence of the U.S. military that arrived to establish “Order and Peace.”

The South and North Commands had visited this country a day before it landed in southern Mexico. The Honduran and Brazilian ambassadors at the Soto Cano Air Base, which is located in the valley of Comayagua, Honduras, greeted them. 600 U.S. military personnel and 650 U.S. and Honduran civilians operate as a Joint Task Force-Bravo (JTF-Bravo) this base. The purpose of the visit, according to the Fuerza de Tarea, “is to strengthen the rapport between Northern Command and Southern Command over its security interests along the Mexican-Guatemalan border to fight crime.”

Although for the members of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPHIN), which Cáceres founded, the presence of US military on their lands, according to indigenous Lenka José Martínez COPHIN Minutes Coordinator, “has more to do with supporting transnational corporations looting our country and taking over the land for the purposes of monoculture production or for conservationist politics.”

The difficult blow that these members received, as a result of losing one of their principal figures in their struggle, has pushed them to continue with more strength. At the same time, they have recognized the high cost that that their determination can have. José Martínez indicates that “This has occurred before and during the coup d’etat. Members of COPHIN have been objects of espionage. For example, in my own home I have received a lot of anonymous death threats. Juan Orlando Hernández (president of Honduras) is one of the individuals who has great interests in the country and who is placing it in the hands of U.S. and European transnational companies. 35% of the national geography of our territories are already conceded to them. And because of this that he is strengthening the army force. The military police, for instance, has been trained by the United States.” The visits made by the commanders in Central America have strengthened the proposals launched by Orlando Hernández concerning the creation of a multinational force that can fight drug trafficking in Central America since he took office after the coup in Honduras. Yet, it looks like this was not a proposal that came into being only because of the president. Countries across Central America have simultaneously created its Task Force with the assistance and support of the U.S. for precisely similar politics: struggling against drug trafficking and terrorism.

It was in 2014 when the president of Honduras announced the creation and implementation of the activities of the Maya-Chortí Task Force at the border region of Honduras and Guatemala. During the inauguration, the president announced: “We are establishing high-level groups with Guatemala and with the U.S. We work with a high-level security group with Mexico, and with them we are engaged in this process. Likewise, we are about to begin doing so with Panama and Nicaragua, where we have established excellent relationships in matters of security.”

In Honduras, as part of the Joint Task Force-Bravo, exists the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Sout[h] (La fuerza de Tarea de Propósito Especial Aire-Tierra de Marines-Sur), and the president of this country, throughout a series of denouncements of various NGOs and civil society, assured that the sovereignty of his country was not being violated. Orlando Hernandez on April 2015 said, “I want to make something clear, Palmerola (Soto Cano Air Base) is Honduran territory, Palmerola is a Honduran military base and nobody else, let there be no doubt about this to anyone, either in Honduras and outside of Honduras, that it is Honduran territory.”

Apart from from the Joint Task Force-Bravo exists the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-South in Honduras. And despite the series of denunciation of various NGOS and civil society, the president of this country assured that the sovereignty of Honduras would not be compromised/violated. On April 2015, Orlando Hernandez said, “I want to make something clear, Palmerola (Soto Cano Air Base) is Honduran territory, Palmerola is a Honduran military base and nobody else, let there be no doubt about this to anyone, either in Honduras and outside of Honduras, that it is Honduran territory.”

Since December 2012, Dr. Adrienne Pine, professor of Anthropology at American University, has denounced the Soto Cano Air Base, which was utilized for the coup d’etat executed in 2009, and during the government of Manuel Celaya. She states, “the U.S. always says the same thing, that it isn’t our base, and its Honduras’s base and we’re simply invited. We know this to be lies.” Likewise, the professor assures that with her colleague, the anthropologists David Vine from the American University, they have identified, “13 bases or installations within Honduras that are constructed or financed by the United States: Soto Cano; Caratasca, Guanaja, La Venta; Mocoron, El Aguacate, and in Puerto Castilla there are three types of advanced operating bases used for operations in Iraq; Puerto Lempira; La Brea in Rio Claro; Naco; in Tamara there is a training area; and Zamorano is an area for firearms training.

When the indigenous Lenka was asked what he thought about the presence of the U.S. military in his country, he said, without hesitation and with great certainty, that, “like the Zapatista brothers say, it is a definitive war waged against indigenous peoples who they have not been able to exterminate. The presence of the U.S. in Honduras is geostrategic because it seeks to ensure that companies can finish plundering our peoples with the Mesoamerica Project (Proyecto Mesoamérica), but it is also building more bases because it wants to attack other brothers and sisters in the same struggle in other countries in Latin America. If we do not stop these projects, the earth will be end up being assassinated within a period of 30 years because these projects are of death, this is the reason why the Lenka territory is being militarized.”

Martinez is an elder, with great wisdom and committed to his people and their organization. He understands that they can take his life at any moment, but he isn’t afraid. He fears more for those around him in his organization who are much younger, and no more than 20 years old. “We are in the eye of the hurricane of transnational corporations. The government is complying with the United States, the European Union, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. But we have to continue the struggle, with our knowledge and our indigenous wisdom, because this is a war of extinction. For the United States, we as indigenous people represent a danger to capitalism, and we are the enemies because we don’t believe in their discourse of development. It is a development that is responsible for the climate change that our Mother Earth suffers.”

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