Green Neocolonialism, Afro-Brazilian Rebellion in Brazil

Por

1 January, 2015

The Afro-Brazilian Quilombola people were forced from their land in Brazil in order to make way for eucalyptus plantations, which produce toilet paper destined for Western markets. But they are resisting by replanting native trees and food crops, and working for a post-eucalyptus reality.

The principal use for the cellulose found in eucalyptus plants in Brazil is disposable paper products, such as toilet paper and paper towels - products most in demand in first-world markets. Yet these types of paper products generate social and environmental impacts in places in Brazil where many communities have never even had access to them.

The region known as Sape do Norte, which includes the cities of Sao Mateus and Conceicao da Barra, in the state of Espirito Santo, in Brazil, has been heavily affected by eucalyptus plantations. In Sao Mateus, for example, the plantations occupy 70 percent of the territory. From Vitoria, the capital of Espirito Santo, to Sao Mateus, a stretch of close to 300 kilometers in length is covered by eucalyptus trees. In some places, small remnants of the native forest and its biodiversity can be seen, but only for a few hectares, quickly passed by in a car.

"There were monoculture plantations in unlikely places, near springs and in zones where aquifers are replenished. The forests along the riverbank were cut down; the path of the water was cut off; lakes were filled in with dirt - and the biodiversity of the Atlantic forests was decimated with insecticides and herbicides."

This area is also a symbol of Afro-Brazilian resistance; it is the land of the Quilombolas. The name Quilombola comes from the Kimbundu language, one of the Bantu languages widely spoken in Angola. Places where rebel or fugitive slaves lived were called quilombo - in hidden corners of the city or out in the countryside. From there the word Quilombola is derived, used in Brazil to describe a rebellious person of African descent.

"Quilombola is a specific type of person of African descent. They were brought from Africa during colonial times like the others, but they refused to submit to slavery and represented Black resistance. They built communities, called quilombos, fleeing from slavery in Brazil, living in isolated communities made up of 20 or 30 families, where they lived autonomously. Their descendants stayed in those in these places," Marcelo Calazans told Truthout. He works with the Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), an organization that has worked for 30 years on issues related to the impacts of eucalyptus cultivation in the state of Espirito Santo.

In Sao Mateus, there was a port where people recently brought from Africa were bought and sold. Many of them fled the ships before they reached the docks. They escaped and sought refuge in the forests.

Slaves were emancipated in 1888, but emancipation was not accompanied by measures that would have permitted Afro-Brazilian communities to continue living in rural zones. A century later, these communities were legally recognized in the 1988 constitution, although it did not guarantee the preservation of the quilombo territories. With or without official recognition, a large number of these communities survived in rural areas, as evidenced by the communities of Sape do Norte.

The machine that cuts down the eucalyptus trees. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F)

It is a forest without flowers, without smells, without animals; not a single bird flies through this place.

In the 1960s, with the arrival of the eucalyptus cellulose extraction industry, the Quilombolas suffered a new blow and families were forced to abandon their land, some moving to the big cities in search of survival, where they ended up in the huge favelas, or slums. It is estimated that before the arrival of eucalyptus, there were around 15,000 Quilombola families. Today that number has dropped to 1,200 families who reorganized themselves into 32 communities in Sape do Norte. These Quilombola descendants are dispersed in communities isolated from one another by eucalyptus plantations, living under the pressure of the cellulose industry and its effects.

"There were monoculture plantations in unlikely places, near springs and in zones where aquifers are replenished. The forests along the riverbank were cut down; the path of the water was cut off; lakes were filled in with dirt - and the biodiversity of the Atlantic forests was decimated with insecticides and herbicides. This in turn made agricultural cultivation impossible, unless pesticides were used," according to Simone Batista Ferreira, a researcher with the geography department of the Federal University of Espirito Santo.

A Global Leader in Cellulose Extraction

The company Aracruz Celulose arrived in Espirito Santo in the 1960s. It was initially made up of shareholders such as Souza Cruz (a subsidiary of British American Tobacco), the Lorentzen family Group - which is connected to Norwegian royalty - and the Safra Group, with each having 28 percent ownership. The Brazilian state was a partner through its purchase of stock through the National Economic Development Bank (BNDE) - now referred to as the BNDES - for a share later reduced to 12 percent. In 2009, Aracruz Celulose changed its name and Fibria Celulose was born, the result of the merger of Aracruz Celulose and Votorantim Celulose and Paper (VCP). Today, Fibria is considered a global leader in the production of eucalyptus cellulose. It is the only company in the global forestry industry that is listed on the Dow Jones index and traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Lifeless Forests

It is a forest without flowers, without smells, without animals; not a single bird flies through this place - a dubious forest, of a uniform green color, full of emaciated trees with thin, tall trunks that look like shaky pillars. In Ecuador, eucalyptus plantations are known as silent forests because there are no birds. In Chile, they are called military forests because, aside from their green characteristic military-uniform hue, the trees are planted in rigid lines. In Brazil, they are called "green deserts" because they contain no life.

Brazil is the fourth largest producer of cellulose worldwide, after Canada, the United States and China. According to the 2014 report on the Brazilian Tree and Forest Industry (IBA), with statistics from 2013, the area where forests were cultivated in Brazil reached 7.6 million hectares in 2013. Eucalyptus represents 72 percent of the total, with a total area of just under 5.5 million hectares. In 2013, 15.1 million tons of cellulose and 10.4 million tons of paper were produced. The industry's objective is to reach production levels of 22 million tons of cellulose in Brazil by the year 2020.

Paper factory in the city of Aracruz. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F)

International Demand

According to economist Helder Gomes, a member of the Alert Against the Green Desert Network, in the 1960s, international markets were under pressure due to increased demand for pulp and paper and the difficulty of widening production in countries where eucalyptus had traditionally been produced. "In the 1960s, studies done by the FAO [UN Food and Agriculture Organization] indicated the difficulty of expanding production in producing countries, due to the availability of land in central countries, the long period of maturation and the pressure from social movements against the rise in contaminating emissions and against the expansion of monocultures," Gomes told Truthout.

This forced international bodies, such as the FAO itself, Gomes said, to begin subsidizing the expansion of forestry programs in countries like Brazil, where there were favorable ecological conditions for the rapid growth of forests, available land, an abundance of cheap labor, and government policies that would benefit and support the industry.

A quilombola house in a reclaimed area. There were eucalpytus plantations here for over 49 years. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F)

Destruction

Aracruz Celulose is directly responsible for the destruction of at least 43,000 hectares of tropical rainforest in the municipality of Aracruz. It is a municipality that, in addition to the plantations, is home to three of the primary factories that process tree cellulose.

"Of the 40 indigenous communities that existed during the first years of this industry, only six remained."

This destruction was documented in an environmental impact evaluation report completed by the Technological Institute of the Espirito Santo State University in 1988, which was required in order for the company to obtain the permits for its first production expansion. According to the report, "through aerial photograph analysis obtained at the start of the 1970s, it was found that 30 percent of the surface of Aracruz was covered by native forests, which were then substituted for homogeneous eucalyptus trees."

Aracruz did not only destroy the forest, but also forced the communities that lived there to leave. "Of the 40 indigenous communities that existed during the first years of this industry, only six remained," said Sebastiao Ribeiro Filho, a lawyer and member of the Alert Against the Green Desert Network.

Toxic Bleach

The chain of production of cellulose, beyond creating homogeneous landscapes, also produces noxious smells. While walking through the city of Aracruz, the air is suddenly filled with an acidic stench. "It's bleach!" said FASE's Calazans, who tells us why it smells like it does. "In order to bleach the paper, millions of liters of chemicals are required, among them hydrogen peroxide and bleach, which are prohibited in many countries. There is no strict regulation of their use. Afterward, the waste goes directly to the sea."

"The World Trade Organization, the World Bank and governments that promote this system, which only a few multinational corporations benefit from, are causing an economic genocide and destroying traditional agriculture, and this means the destruction of entire towns and communities."

According to Luiz Alberto Loureiro, a former employee of Aracruz Celulose, the plantations are constantly attacked by pests and other plant species that have to be combated using chemicals such as Glifosato or Mirex. The insecticide is prohibited in all its formulations and uses because it is harmful to human health and to the environment. "The workers die of poisoning and from accidents, and they don't talk about this," Loureiro said. "Employees don't receive training regarding [the risk of] poisoning and many times they bring their work clothes home and wash them with their children's clothes."

Employment Promises

According to Sebastiao Pinheiro, agronomist and professor at the Rio Grande do Sul University, eucalyptus plantations do not generate employment; they actually destroy the source of employment for thousands of families. "The green deserts do not create jobs. Four hundred hectares of eucalyptus would be required to create one job. In family or small-scale agriculture, 10 people are required for one hectare. The World Trade Organization, the World Bank and governments that promote this system, which only a few multinational corporations benefit from, are causing an economic genocide and destroying traditional agriculture, and this means the destruction of entire towns and communities," Pinheiro told Truthout.

Fibria Celulose company. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F)

Memory of Destruction

"I remember the Atlantic forests. We lived off of agriculture in the countryside, and from hunting. I also remember when the company arrived. The devastation was not tree by tree; it was done using giant chains 100 meters long pulled by tractors, destroying everything in its path. Each link in the chain must have weighed 100 kilograms. There were trees with huge diameters that couldn't withstand the chains," John Ramos de Souza said. He is Quilombola and from the Angelim 1 community. "I saw many monstrous things done by the company. I saw without understanding, without knowing what the consequences would be, and now we are paying the price."

The National Public Ministry, in November 2014, suspended one of the credit lines of Fibria as a cautionary measure. It was the one from the federal government's National Economic and Social Development Bank that went to the Quilombola zone in northern Espirito Santo.

Fibria is being accused of fraud for the way it obtained land for its plantations. According to the lawsuit, at the beginning of 1970, former employees of the company claimed to be small-scale farmers before the state government in Espirito Santo, with the goal of obtaining titles for the "unused" land. Afterward, the employees transferred these property titles for land located between Conceicao da Barra and Sao Mateus, to Fibria. In the majority of cases, the period in which the areas remained legal property of the employees didn't last even a week before they were transferred.

Eucalyptus trees harvested in one day. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F)

Quilombolas Resist Eucalyptus

ARUE Ticumbi. ARUE Ticumbi.
What did the people do wrong?
What did the people do that was so wrong?

These questions are part of a song that was sung by African descendants during the time of slavery and that the Quilombolas of Barra da Conceicao maintain as a tradition in a ritual called Ticumbi. In the song, they ask Saint Benito the causes of all the loss they have suffered: the loss of their land, the forests and the water resources.

Today, the song seems to gain another dimension in Ticumbi master Souza's voice: one of resistance. The culture of his ancestors serves as a point of strength in order to resist new forms of slavery, this time due to the neocolonialism of eucalyptus. "We are communities cut off by eucalyptus and we are here resisting," Souza said.

He tells the story of his father, who, in the 1960s and '70s was forced off his land twice, which is where he obtained subsistence for his family. "The people who claimed to be the owners of the land showed up and pressured us to leave. At that time we were afraid and we left. It was more difficult to confront. And that was how the land was transferred to the company [Aracruz]," he said.

"We have no time to lose. Our path against eucalyptus means returning to the land that belonged to our ancestors and continuing to grow food."

Resistance is no longer sufficient, according to Vando Falcao Souza, John Ramos da Souza's son. Advancing is crucial. "We have no time to lose. Our path against eucalyptus means returning to the land that belonged to our ancestors and continuing to grow food," he tells Truthout.

Angelim 1 is a place of land recovery for the Quilombola families. After the clear-cutting of trees by the company, families returned to the area and began a process of soil regeneration. "After 40 years of planting eucalyptus in the same place, a transition process is necessary. The soil is very dry; it rains and the water disappears. Many said that we wouldn't be able to plant anything, but we are seeing that with patience and a lot of work it is possible. In five years I think we will be able to make it so that the soil is how it was before the eucalyptus were planted," said Falcao.

New plants have already started to flower, and they call them the transition to a post-eucalyptus time. Generally, the transition is started with plants such as watermelon, yucca, pumpkin and beans. "Corn and coffee still won't grow. We are already growing various species of beans and we are starting to sell them in small markets in the community. The goal is to form a sort of cooperative here," he said.

Leaving the Senzalas

A few kilometers from Angelim 1, land recuperation is also taking place in Linharinho. There, the transition effort is to plant according to an agroecological model in order to recuperate the soil, which means planting food crops along with native forest species. "After clearing the land of eucalyptus, the technique is to plant trees from a native forest that are brought from other places, and around these trees, other crops such beans and pumpkins are planted. This is how we are going to rebuild the forest and the harvest at the same time. The process is slow, it will require even six or seven years for the wild animals to return again and for the water resources to recover," Antonio Rodrigues de Oliveira, who is Quilombola, told Truthout.

"What we are doing here is what our ancestors did. They fled from conditions of slavery and created conditions for life in isolated places. They opened clearings and produced from the earth."

Rodrigues says that he arrived in this place with few resources, with only his head held high, his hands, and the necessary courage. "We can't expect anything from the government, or from the corporations, or from anyone. We have to take up the hoe, go into the land, build a hut, dig a well . . . carry water, even push with a donkey if necessary. Never again will we die of hunger . . . no, no, we will not die. We will go slowly because we don't have infrastructure, but we will do it," he said.

He also says that the situation is difficult and he remembers that the company arrived to plant eucalyptus even in the cemetery where his grandparents were buried. "They left us with almost nothing, just some adapted rodents, wild pigs and armadillos living as we lived, migrating and searching for what was necessary to survive." He believes, however, that there is no time to complain; it is time to work hard and rebuild what has been destroyed.

He doesn't hesitate to compare the situation in his community to that of his ancestors. "What we are doing here is what our ancestors did. They fled from conditions of slavery, known as Senzala [the place where slaves were held as prisoners on huge plantations] and created conditions for life in isolated places. They opened clearings and produced from the earth. Here is a Quilombo, the place of liberation," said Rodrigues, who has worked on various plantations and at one point migrated to the city.

Culture of Transition

Within the cellulose industry complex, the number of eucalyptus trees that are harvested every day establishes the rhythm and velocity of production. In order to operate at maximum production levels, a culture of homogenization must prevail. Flat land, long trees that are thin and without branches, and soil free of impediments are key. Here, diversity is an obstacle.

"Perhaps in 100 years, a Quilombola individual will look at the eucalyptus plantation and say that it is a forest, because he won't have the reference of what a native forest is. The cellulose company knows that if this memory is broken, there will be no more problems with resistance."

Joao Guimaraes, also from Angelim 1, tells Truthout that it is necessary to build the knowledge that will allow a cultural shift in the transition to a post-eucalyptus reality. "We can no longer live lamenting the disappearance of the river and the fresh water spring that dried up and the trees that disappeared, the birds that have left. The Atlantic Forest is gone now, and we have to regenerate it. These 40 years of eucalyptus plantations will not be forgotten overnight, which is why we have to work hard, experimenting with how it is that we are going to go about this recovery, with trial and error, in order to build transitional knowledge," Guimaraes said.

The land that has been retaken is part of this process. "These areas are serving so that we can create this understanding of the transition. We live with certain amounts of tension due to the fact that this land is being disputed and they could force us to leave at whatever time the company requests it. But we have no other option. As they advance with their modern machines, our form of insurgence is to plant food with our hoes. It's slow, but we are recuperating the land and our independence," he said.

This is the first generation that is retaking land primarily for the production of food. "It is the memory of the oldest ones that is strengthening our struggle," Guimaraes told Truthout.

The Struggle for Memory

One of the controversies at play is the memory of what the Atlantic Forest used to be and the passing on of this memory to the younger generations. "Perhaps in 100 years, a Quilombola individual will look at the eucalyptus plantation and say that it is a forest, because he won't have the reference of what a native forest is," Calazans said. "The cellulose company knows that if this memory is broken, there will be no more problems with resistance."

The generation of people in the state of Espirito Santo that remember the Atlantic Forest will be gone within the next 30 years. "These people have seen and lived in the forest. If they die and we still have not transitioned beyond eucalyptus back to native forests and traditional agriculture," said Calazans, "it will never happen."

"Memory assures the dream of these territories. The day that memory dies completely, we will no longer be able to think in a post-eucalyptus time," he added. "We have to invest in building understanding of this transition. These next three decades are strategically important in this fight."

Published in Truthout

REDD, Neo-Colonialism in the Land of the Pataxo Warriors

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

14 December, 2014

Redd Pataxo Brasil — Photo by Santiago Navarro F

It’s 5 o’clock in the morning, southern cone time, on Oct. 13, 2014. The Pataxo indigenous people of the far southern region of the state of Bahía, in the northeast of Brazil, form three barricades across the BR101 Highway in the region of Monte Pascoal, in the city of Itamaraju, one of the main roads connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.

They have blocked the highway that runs along the edge of their territory with branches, sticks, and old tires, stopping hundreds of trucks transporting merchandise from transnational corporations. It doesn’t take police long to arrive. The indigenous people are aware of the possibility of repression. Some have painted their bodies with a mixture of colors– yellow, red, black–colors that their grandfathers used to announce war. Others contrast in white, the sign of peace. Indelible colors on the skin of these people, survivors of an unjust war that has lasted for over five centuries.

The atmosphere grew tense as Federal Police came in, although this was no surprise to the Pataxo. They have been long been rejected by cattle farmers, businessmen and people living in cities close to Monte Pascoal–one of the richest areas in terms of flora and fauna in the world. The area conserves what’s left of the Mata Atlántica, a formation of neotropical vegetation present in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

The day they closed down the freeway, many locals openly expressed their hostility. Walking through the streets, you could hear the pejorative comments such as, “These Indians are going to steal all of our land.”

“Since 2010, indigenous people have intensified the re-taking of their lands in a process of self-demarcation,” explains Domingos Andrade, of the Indigenous Missionary Center (CIMI), to the Americas Program. Until recently, indigenous groups possessed 8,627 hectares of land, authorized in the 1990s. But the biggest part of this territory is sand and is not suitable for agriculture.

“The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) just completed a study that ‘confirms’ that these lands are indigenous, but the government has not authorized it. It is a policy of the government not to demarcate indigenous territories because of pressure from agribusiness,”
ARGUES ANDRADE.

Nomacaxhi Pataxo explains to the Americas Program that the town of Pataxo is fighting for the demarcation of its territory. “We want our lands so that our children can live and in order to conserve our culture. The government together with corporations have destroyed the natural environment with their development policies,” he affirms. He is of indigenous descent and lives in the town Boca da Mata, at the entrance of the forest.

What Nomacaxchi does not know is that a few kilometers from there, his relatives from the town Boca da Mata are working on a project that represents another a way to commercialize and exploit the forests. This threat, though less-perceptible than the huge infrastructure projects or like the deforestation for livestock farming, still exists. It is a project in Monte Pascoal for carbon offset credits. When asked about the existence of the project in the region, Pataxo confirms it. “There are reforestation projects carried out by indigenous people with money from the federal government, but we were unaware of the sale of carbon credits.”

These mechanisms are guided by a concept of the forest that is very different than the indigenous one. The indigenous concept takes into account nature’s time scale and knows how to communicate with it. Time for conservation in terms of carbon accumulation is different, has been thought up by the world’s biggest corporations, who are now betting on nature in the world’s principal stock markets, such as Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange. It is they who plan the ways in which the value of biodiversity is calculated, as the number of those who are expulsed or who become refugees in the name of conservation continues to grow globally. It is principally native towns that are affected.

The Conference of the Parties (COP 20), where the world’s governments will continue discussing climate change and solutions to it, is scheduled to take place in Peru in December of this year. The Global Movement for Tropical Forests (MMBT), with the participation of 40 countries, is preparing to present the failures and deficiencies of the REDD and REDD+ programs. Brazil has been one of its principal fields for research, since this country is home to most of continuous tropical rainforests in the world, and contains around 20% of the animal and plant species on the planet.

In 2007 and in COP 11, which took place in Montreal, climate change was considered a central issue and thus it was argued that it was necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program, better know by its English initials as REDD.

REDD is the platform for a new market for the exchange of carbon credits, or pollution permits, by the world’s corporations that produce carbon dioxide emissions. Through the Kyoto Protocol a cap on CO2 emissions was put into place by corporations and signatory countries, however they have the possibility to continue polluting if they invest in what is called Clean Development Mechanisms—such as the controversial wind farms or hydroelectric dams.

Another option that they have is to buy carbon credits from other corporations that are investing in conservation or reforestation programs, such as the REDD program. But to negotiate these types of credits, it is necessary to have intact forests since the trees function as a carbon sink and release oxygen into the atmosphere. The so-alled “pollution permits” allow industries to continue to pollute while “offsetting” their emissions by paying so that in another part of the world they stop cutting down forests and reforest. This is the system created for compensating for CO2 emitted in the production processes of big industry, or by corporate agribusiness or livestock farming.

“There is speculation around the price of these carbon credits in the stock market since they tend to increase when pollution levels increase and the forests are not sufficiently able absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by big industry,” says Winne Overbeek from MMBT.

There are two types of carbon markets: those of enforced regulation and voluntary ones. The regulated market is the one that corporations and governments use and through which, by law, they must report their greenhouse gas emissions. The second is the voluntary market, which includes all the credit transactions of carbon offsets that are not subject to regulatory obligation, with the goal of reducing overall emissions, such as the one in Brazil.

The private sector can buy carbon credits directly from corporate projects or from the carbon funds such as the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund, which includes representation from the capitals of Norway, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, who have mobilized financing for activities that sequester carbon emissions in forest and agricultural systems, such as the new initiative where 280 million dollars have been designated for the so-called, “Sustainable Forest Landscapes,” whose principal objective is to back the productive sector of livestock farming and so-called “intelligent agriculture.”

Monte Pascoal is a small accident of geography, with an altitude of 536 meters, located on the outskirts of the city of Itamaraju, municipality in the state of Bahía, in Brazil. It was the first piece of land seen by Pedro Álvares Cabral in April in the year 1500, when the Portuguese landed on Brazilian soil. According to the official history, the hill is a landmark in the “discovery” of Brazil. For the Pataxo people, who have inhabited this place for hundreds of generations, it marks the beginning of the destruction of their territory.

Nomacaxhi Pataxo, with certainty, affirms that the Pataxo culture was born in this territory. “Our grandparents lived here long before, and it was they who taught us to live with the forest, because it is our house and because it is where we eat. We have been here since before the arrival of the Portuguese.”

Just as first waves of European colonization in Brazil arrived to this particular region, now in this same Pataxo territory, a new type of colonization is arriving with the REDD project. The project for forest carbon offsets has been sold as a pilot project for the financing for the restoration of “degraded” forests through the sale of carbon credits.

The MMBT launched a first report based on a study that was carried out in 2013 about the impact and evolution of the project in the region, carried out by Jutta Kill. According to the MMBT report, the big international conservation non-profit organizations and regional conservation groups have promoted the initiative of designating ecological corridors in the Atlantic Forests, originally proposed by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, with the support of the World Bank. The objective is to create an ecological corridor between the parks of Monte Pascoal and Pau Brasil, some 60 kilometers away from one another, forming the Ecological Corridor of Monte Pascoal-Pau Brazil.

The giant conservation NGOs, such as Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy also participated in the development of a conservation project in this time period and designated funds for part of the initiative. Financial contributions were also received from eucalyptus plantation corporations, Veracel and Aracruz, facilitated by the group IBIO, which has close ties to Veracel, which owns more than 100 thousand hectares of eucalyptus trees planted in the extreme southern part of Bahía. During the 1990s the activities of Veracel were suspended due to their involvement in deforestation activities.

The Nature Conservancy, according to the study, has proposed the inclusion of a carbon offset component of approximately 1,000 hectares in an initiative to conserve a total of 24,000 hectares. In 2008, 17 hectares were restored as part of a carbon offset contract with Kraft Foods, a global food production company and corporate partner of Conservation International. In 2009, a carbon contract was signed for 30 years with Natura Cosmetics, for the restoration of 250 hectares of “degraded territories” which would sequester 316 tons of CO2.

In 2010, the carbon-offset project was announced as the first forest restoration project in Brazil after having received a climate certification called Community and Biodiversity. This standard is used by many REDD projects and others of forest carbon compensation as evidence of the social and environmental benefits that the project supposedly should provide. The Monte Pascoal Forest Restoration project was awarded the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Gold Level. The objective of the CCB standards is to indicate that a project offers other social benefits, beyond the minimum requirements of certification.

What is left for communities?

One of the objectives of this project is to provide “valuable technical skills, employment, and income to local communities,” states the MMBT document. At least three Pataxo towns have been involved in the reforestation project.

Cooplantar–a local cooperative formed with the objective of carrying out the reforestation effort, of planting trees and doing maintenance work for the Monte Pascoal project–plays an important role in justifying the expedition of the CCB gold level certification, states the report. “And while the initiative without a doubt has provided a little bit of training and skills in the planting and maintenance of trees, and, at the beginning, some employment and income, many of the members of the cooperative were unemployed at the time of the research [in 2013], and others had begun to take jobs as day laborers on cattle farms, coffee and cayenne pepper plantations, or in the tourism industry.”

Another problem found by the study is the lack of understanding by the local community involved in the project with regard to the allocation of forests that serve as a carbon sink, their commercialization and who comes out ahead within this market.

The Monte Pascoal project of carbon compensation is linked to the carbon contract of 250 hectares with Natura Cosmetics, according to the information gathered, and can be found currently in the “waiting phase” section. At the completion of the report, only 56 hectares of the 250 that were contracted had been re-established.

The project, according to MMBT, had difficulties when the Forestry Code of the country was modified in 2012, reducing the obligations of private landowners to restore forests. As a result, the owners lost interest in offering their lands to be restored as part of the compensation project.

Brazil in REDD

Brazil is also one of the research fields of the initiative REDDX, which has undertaken a wide range of research around modes of financing the conservation of forests, investment and the commercialization of sustainable forest products. According to the data documented by REDDX, between 2009 and 2011, there was a financing flow for REDD projects in Brazil to the order of $598,604,833 US dollars.

The study generally lays out the most relevant players that structure this flow, including donors such as the World Bank, the UN Environment Program, the multilateral institutions. Resources are channeled through government agencies, as in the case of Germany using the German national development bank KFW, the Agency of German International Cooperation—GIZ, Norway, the United Kingdom—FCO, United States—USAID and private foundations such as Moore, Ford, Packard, Climate Works, Petrobras, among others.

“Most of the money, based on what we were able to map out, goes to consulting companies that do the inventory of carbon in the forests and do the carbon monitoring. The smallest part goes to the communities. Many things are promised in the name of sustainable development, but the experience has been that they are not fulfilled. Indigenous people are not pushed out, they end up as workers in this new marketplace,”
SAYS OVERBEEK.

According to the member of MMBT there is little information about how the articulation between the different actors regarding the implementation of projects works, nor about their results. The REDDX initiative addresses the lack of clarity around the project on its website. “The financial commitments at a high level (multilateral, bilateral, or governmental), continue to be limited in terms of the information regarding exactly how much money is really flowing to the countries, the types of activities financed by REDD+ during this initial period and the organization actually developing and implementing these activities.”

“We are in a transition phase from which the idea of REDD was launched. We calculate that there are between 200 and 300 projects total in the world. They are still pilot projects. We are seeing an effort on the part of governments, corporations and big conservation non-profits to invest more and more in these types of projects in different countries,” says Overbeek, and offers the case of Mozambique as an example. ‘They are already dividing up 60% of the national territory for this type of project. The state of Acre, in northern Brazil, is also organized so that the entire territory is transformed into an area of environmental business services, they are even creating specific legislation for it.”

One thing is certain, assures the member of the MMBT: the position of governments, corporations and non-governmental organizations is to increase investments in these lucrative projects in the forests that still exist around the world.

“They are going to continue earning money in the same way in which they always have, exploiting the nature environment, and on the other hand, continue with the process of the accumulation of these mechanisms of ecosystem services. The prediction is that they will have complete control over the forest areas, including protected areas, the National Parks, Peace Parks, among other concepts that they use.”

The historic caretakers of the forests are the most affected

What the MMBT has observed across the world is a process of the criminalization of small towns and communities of native people that live in the forests. “The use of the forests by the traditional peoples appears in the preliminary studies of the REDD projects across the world as a primary cause of deforestation. Above the levels that have been caused by big corporations,” affirms Overbeek.

Organizations such as WWF, CI, and TNC, backed by the United Nations, encourage conservation in such a way that native people lose their autonomy and self-determination over their own territory. “These organizations are the ones that have driven the policies, along with governments, to create the national parks. These are the NGOs that oversee these projects and they are the ones who end up being the principal actors in this market,” argues the researcher from MMBT.

Jutta Kill affirms that, “Conservation International, for example, has raised over 3 billion dollars, promising to save valuable places. Beyond the conservation of the land, they have been involved in the extraction of petroleum, logging, and development. BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell are represented on their board of directors.”

For a long time, indigenous people have used the method of growing crops best known as itinerant, migratory or nomadic agriculture, or of slash and burn. This form of subsistence agriculture practiced in vast regions and in the vegetation of the forest of tropical rainforests. Indigenous people open a clearing in the vegetation, burning the trees, so that the ashes can be integrated into the soil. “This has been the reason they’ve been criminalized. We at the MMBT have fought hard to denounce this conception of conservation. We have forests because there have been people conserving the forests and they have been the indigenous people, but the non-profit organizations have considered them as enemies of conservation, they have been driven out in the name of conservation.”

Overbeek emphasizes that the principal cause of climate change has been and continues to be the burning of fossil fuels, present in all the chains of production of merchandise. “Deforestation is being used to distract attention from the real cause of the problem, since deforestation is responsible for 15% of global carbon emissions and after this deforestation is agribusiness, real-estate development, and livestock farming.”

For decades, the processes of destruction that the extractive industry and phases of merchandise production produced were called “market failures” or “negative externalities.” “The carbon market and principally the REDD program came about in a context of economic and ecological crises that are one and the same, and do not seek to confront the causes of the problem, but instead see it as an opportunity to continue earning profits,” argues Overbeek.

No response

The Americas Program reached out to Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy to clarify questions such as the implementation of the carbon offset program in the Monte Pascoal-Pau Corridor in Brazil, their operations in Brazil, how they work with indigenous groups in the region of Monte Pascoal, who benefits from the REDD project and if the indigenous groups will be able to use the areas the are being reforested, since they are now natural conservation areas.

Neither of the Brazilian offices of the two international organizations responded to the request, stating that they did not have the time.

Published in Americas Program

As Men Emigrate, Indigenous Women Gain Political Opportunities and Obligations in Mexico

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

30 November, 2014

The emigration of men to the United States threatens indigenous systems of governance in Mexico. When men leave, the weight of activities in small towns falls on women, but despite this women are still fighting for space in the political arena.

The system of "uses and customs" that governs 418 of the 570 municipalities in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico is based on social and traditional political practices in indigenous communities, founded on community work and assemblies that elect authorities, parallel to the party-based election system. However, these practices have faced a persistent enemy since the 1960s: emigration. In a collective system, the continual departure of large portions of a community takes a real toll on politics and lives, and the flow of people away from Oaxacan lands is leaving behind gaps in the towns' social and political organizations.

The Institute for Migrant Assistance (IOAM) estimates that around 2 million Oaxacans live in the United States; the population of the entire state is 3.1 million. In 2010, 98 out of every 100 migrants that left Mexico went to the United States. The figure on a national level is 89 of every 100 individuals. The majority of immigrants are indigenous and work as day laborers in agriculture, construction, domestic service, in restaurants, and as cleaners, gardeners and laborers. They are concentrated in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, San Antonio, San Francisco, Phoenix, Fresno, Sacramento and Tucson.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), of the 570 municipalities that make up Oaxaca, the municipality of San Juan Quiahije in the coastal region and San Bartolome Quialana in the Central Valleys are, respectively, the top two towns within the national context with the highest levels of migration.

"Oaxaca is the second-poorest state in Mexico. The minimum wage in Mexico is approximately 49.50 Mexican pesos per eight-hour day of work. In Oaxaca there are far too many people who earn less than the national minimum wage," according to the Migrant Counseling Center of Oaxaca's website. To make matters worse, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect in 1994, imported corn became 30 percent cheaper than local corn, which is the basis of the indigenous diet. This caused the emigration of small-scale farmers away from rural regions. The result has been the "abandonment of the countryside and rural areas and the loss of cultural traditions," according to the website.

Women from the Mixtec region of Oaxaca on their way to participate in a tequio - unpaid collective work done for community benefit. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)

Political Awakening

Migration away from the region has historically been predominantly male. According to INEGI, of every 10 emigrants from Oaxaca, eight were men. There are many reasons women stay behind. The risk of death in the desert or during river crossings that are required to get into the United States without documentation is one of them. The responsibility of raising children, taking care of the land and providing for the family also fall to women, especially given that they do not always receive remittances from the husband who leaves. This has also brought consequences for women who historically only participated in domestic activities within communities governed by "uses and customs."

"When the men leave, women stay and then begin to fulfill their designated cargos in schools, in community projects, in community service; even the responsibility for the survival of the household falls on women," said Carmen Alonso Santiago, an indigenous Zapotec woman and director of the non-governmental organization Flor y Canto (Flower and Song). For her, the necessity of assuming cargos (volunteer community service positions) and roles within the community is one of the principle ways that women begin to deepen their political participation. In this way, the departure of men brings greater obligations for women, but also opens greater possibilities and opportunities for the strengthening of women's emancipation in communities.

Gaining a Voice

Teotitlán del Valle is a Oaxacan town governed by "uses and customs." It has 8,000 inhabitants with a deeply-rooted tradition of weaving wool. The colorful tapestries and the clothes for cold weather are well-known in different parts of Mexico. Historically, everything was done within an artisan system, from the washing of the wool to the creation of dyes; the tradition is to make natural dyes using flowers, fruit, leaves and tree bark. Things have changed somewhat recently - some weavers use chemical dyes, for instance, but most retain the traditional methods. In large part, pieces are woven to reflect the legends and history of the community. There is no house without at least one loom and the art of weaving is taught to children beginning at the age of 10.

Seventeen years ago, a group of women from Teotitlán decided to form a cooperative, Vida Nueva. "We came together purely out of necessity. We sold our rugs to middlemen, but the pay was very low. We were single women, widows, wives of men who had emigrated. We had to provide for our families," Pastora Gutiérrez Reyes, one of the founders of the cooperative, told Truthout. "There is a lot of emigration. In the 1940s, our grandfathers started to leave, then our fathers, our brothers: The young men finished middle school and then left. Our group formed as a way to find options for work. That's how we started to work in the fields and to weave," she said.

Now, beyond just working in the cooperative, they also participate in political work with other women in the community. "We promote workshops on sexuality, health, self-esteem, and against the use of drugs," Reyes said. "In the beginning of the cooperative they criticized us a lot. Can you imagine a group of women organizing ourselves 17 years ago? Women couldn't even leave the town."

As their work grew stronger, a moment arrived when the women of the cooperative took the initiative to introduce themselves to the local authorities. "Slowly, they began to take us into account as a group of women. We began to participate in the assemblies. Other women began to see our participation. Slowly, more women came, mainly those who had husbands outside the country or who were widows," Reyes recalled. "We are now taken into consideration in the social and political realms. When there are official or political events, we are invited by the local authorities. Women can now have cargos. Men saw how women organized themselves and how their political work has good results. Today, there is a little more equality."

Limited Political Life

The "uses and customs" system has been valorized and defended by communities for centuries. When their territory is threatened, it is defended by men, women, the elderly, even children. But the political participation of women, although it has grown, is still minimal within this system. To get an idea of these low levels of participation in the state of Oaxaca, according to the State Electoral Institute of Citizen Participation in Oaxaca, during the 2014 elections, women participated in "uses and customs" systems at a rate of 1.68 percent and in political party systems at a rate of 5.2 percent.

Carmen Alonso Santiago, the director of Flor y Canto, points out that in different communities, the conditions for women vary widely because everything is based on what is determined by the "uses and customs" of each town. "There are communities where women fight for their rights, and others where they don't as much," Santiago told Truthout. "There are communities where currently it is not permitted for a woman to be elected as an authority and in other communities, there is no discrimination. In others, women are not taken into consideration to even raise their hands in the assemblies and fulfill their role in other ways. But there are other places where for many years women have participated in assemblies, voting and being counted."

Mapping the Participation of Women

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, in its publication titled "Political Participation of Women in Mexico," based on the elections in October 2007, mapped the participation of women in the cargo system in municipalities governed by "uses and customs." This year, 361 municipalities were registered as part of the "uses and customs" system.

The inquiry demonstrates that there are several combinations of criteria that determine which women vote. In 234 municipalities (62.7 percent), all women can vote, single, married and widowed; in 59, women are not allowed to vote (15.8 percent); in 15, only married women can vote; in 5, only widows; in 10, only single women; and in 7, only single women and widows are allowed to vote. Forty-eight municipalities did not give statistics.

Zapotec girl from the valleys of Oaxaca gives a presentation in an event for the defense of native corn. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)

Women are part of the city council - either as members or in some rare cases as mayors - in 21 municipalities (5.6 percent). Only 48 municipalities (12.9 percent) have women members of the municipal administration as treasurers, secretaries, auditors and in administrative commissions, such as those for potable water.

Women participate more as members of committees - they appear in 195 municipalities (52.3 percent) - that have been formed through the initiatives of public institutions, such as the comprehensive development of the family, institutions in the health and education sectors, and in social programs combatting poverty. The participation of women in these types of committees is more readily accepted because they are seen as an extension of the roles women already fulfill in the domestic sphere. As committee presidents, they appear in 14 municipalities (3.8 percent) only.

Women in Cargos

Fifty-six municipalities (15 percent) register that women fulfill obligatory cargos in the following categories: religious and traditional, such as those in charge of the temple, catechists, and sometimes even serving as police, although in only six municipalities are police positions given as cargos to women.

In 64 municipalities (17.2 percent) community serviceis obligatory for women. While cargos are carried out by individuals authorized by the assembly, community service is a one-time activity that the whole community participates in, generally occurring on important days such as during festivals or collective community work (tequio).

In 42 municipalities (11.3 percent), women do services during traditional festivities; in 12 municipalities (3.2 percent) women are the organizers of such festivities. Another 31 municipalities (8.3 percent) decide the community service of women in diverse community tequios, from cleaning public spaces, churches, communal spaces, and as promoters for community programs.

According to the Human Rights Commission's report, the low political participation and presence of women within local government structures can be explained through two factors, and the contrast between the official report and the nuanced personal experiences women describe is marked. According to the report, "The structural nature of this social inequality is reflected in a rate of human development that is almost 15 percent lower than the non-indigenous population, due to the prevalence of 'uses and customs' that exclude the participation of women at high rates."

Furthermore, the report states that women's participation "in public municipal spaces can be seen as an extension of their roles in the private space of home and family, given that their roles are connected to family and procreation: education, health, collective consumption services (mills, milk stores); the same institutions that develop programs for social benefit always require this type of 'participation' by women in the community sphere."

Verónica Vázquez García, a professor in the postgraduate college in Texcoco, Mexico, who researched women's political participation in the system of "uses and customs," wrote, "women realize innumerable tasks necessary for community development, but are rarely recognized and have little decision-making power . . . The traditional gender roles not only do not change, but are reproduced daily. Women rarely rise to positions of power. Much work is needed in order to topple, one by one, these forms of discrimination that are deeply rooted in the political life of each municipality."

Rights Guaranteed by Law

On August 3, 2011, Oaxacan Congresswoman Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, as president of the Directive Body of the State Congress, presented a constitutional reform initiative in Congress that would guarantee the active and passive right to vote for women in municipalities governed by "uses and customs" and would take steps to create a Board of Equality and Gender in all of the state's local councils. The proposal was approved on April 28, 2011.

In the State Congress, of the 42 members of the 61st legislature, only 16 are women and of these, only Cruz Mendoza is from an indigenous municipality that is governed by "uses and customs" - Santa María Guiegolina, in San Carlos Yautepec, Oaxaca.

Cruz Mendoza was elected president of her municipality in 2007 and the results were nullified based on traditional laws that stipulated that women cannot be elected to that position.

Zapotec women from the Isthmus. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)

The Construction of Daily Life

The system of "uses and customs" is much more than a system of cargos, of electing authorities, of decisions made by assembly. It is based on the construction of a daily life in which the role of women is fundamental. "We are talking about their own ways of living in community, of relating to one another, of educating our children, of working the land, of preparing our food, of relating to the natural world, of fighting against those who would exploit our lands. And women are present in all of these processes," Santiago said.

She defined what has permitted communities to maintain their "uses and customs" over time. "I feel that we have deep roots as an indigenous town, which has changed over time, it's true, but that is still very rooted in our values, in solidarity, brotherhood, in community work. And all this is transmitted with education and women are the principle teachers."

Santiago remembers the decisive entry of her grandmothers in the system of "uses and customs" although they didn't participate in the cargo system. "The grandmothers did not participate in assemblies, didn't speak Spanish, but have always been the advisers of the community, with their sensitivity, their intuition," she said. They were sought after to resolve internal marriage problems. They were recognized. When a mayor was elected, the authority came with his spouse, his children, to the house to talk with the grandmothers. And they called other grandmothers who were also highly respected. And the women gave their advice to the mayor and told him how he had to behave.

María Isabel Jiménez Salinas, who lives in the Isthmus of Tehúantepec and is part of the Peoples' Popular Assembly of Juchitán, told Truthout that women, like men, work to sustain life. "Around here, men fish at night, bring the fish in the morning, and women sell the fish during the day. The men rest while women sell the product. And the small-scale farmers work the land and the women make and sell the products."

In the daily life of these communities, there is equal participation of men and women, as in the sowing and in the harvest, Santiago said. The roles of communal living and survival are well-defined. "Now, slowly, political participation is drawing near. It is women who are pushing a process to raise their level of participation."

Communal Lands: Theater of Operations for the Counterinsurgency

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

27 November, 2014

In 2006, a team of geographers from the University of Kansas carried out a series of mapping projects of communal lands in southern Mexico's Northern Sierra Mountains. Coordinated by Peter Herlihy and Geoffrey B. Demarest, a US lieutenant colonel, the objective was to achieve strategic military and geopolitical goals of particular interest for the United States. The objective was to incorporate indigenous territories into the transnational corporate model of private property, either by force or through agreements. Demarest's essential argument is that peace cannot exist without private property.

"The Bowman Expeditions are taking places with the counterinsurgency logic of the United States, and we reported them in 2009. These expeditions were part of research regarding the geographic information that indigenous communities in the Sierra Juarez possess. The researchers hid the fact that they were being financed by the Pentagon. And we believe that this research was a type of pilot project to practice how they would undertake research in other parts of the world in relation to indigenous towns and their communal lands",
SAID ALDO GONZALES ROJAS IN AN INTERVIEW WITH TRUTHOUT. A DIRECTOR FOR THE SECRETARY OF INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS IN THE STATE OF OAXACA, ROJAS ENSURES THAT INDIGENOUS LAWS ARE BEING INSTITUTED AND APPLIED CORRECTLY IN THE STATE.

According to researcher and anthropologist Gilberto López y Rivas, "The agents on the expeditions consider the types of communal property in these lands, both collective and autonomous, to be an obstacle for the development plans currently being very aggressively executed, where there is capital from mining companies, pharmaceuticals, energy companies, among others", he told Truthout. This is despite the fact that these communal lands in Mexico, for example, were recognized after the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and are lands that indigenous communities have possessed since time immemorial.

Geographer and University of Colorado professor Joe Bryan, affirmed in an interview with Truthout, that, as a point of reference in this offensive against communal lands, the Southern Command of the United States military, one of the 10 command units belonging to the US military that are deployed across the world, covers the area from South America, Central America, to the Caribbean. "They have turned their gaze to see that there is no state presence and an absence of private property. They are looking for communal areas and present these areas as belonging to drug trafficking and organized crime groups. In this way the Southern Command is looking to become a partner with the governments and nonprofit organizations in Latin America, and with this in mind, for example, that operation called Continuous Mission - that promotes health services to communities - [is] another way of occupying territories and of counterinsurgency."

As the ideologue of these expeditions, Demarest considers collective land ownership to be the birthplace of delinquency and insurgency, and thus believes that collective property must be destroyed. He graduated from the School of the Americas, which is under the administration of the US Army and was founded in 1946 in Panama, with the objective of training Latin American soldiers in war and counterinsurgency tactics. In recent years, graduates from the School of the Americas have participated in assassinations in Colombia, formed part of the drug trafficking organization The Zetas, in Mexico, and were involved in the coup in Honduras in 2009, as was demonstrated by activists through a School of the Americas Watch lawsuit against the Department of Defense in February 2013. "Demarest is one of the coordinators of these expeditions. He was trained in the School of the Americas, later served as military attaché for the United States Embassy in Guatemala in 1988 and 1991, where a counterinsurgency project was implemented that caused terrible massacres of indigenous populations," says López.

In Oaxaca, a caravan of activists arrives to support those resisting the construction of the wind farm, in the face of more than 500 policemen attempting to take control of the territory. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)

The Counterinsurgency Manual

According to the May 2014 publication of the Army Manual of the United States (FM-3-24, MCWP-3-33.5), which outlines the strategic ways to break up any type of insurgency, in the section titled "Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies," when certain elements within the population grow dissatisfied with the status quo and are willing to fight to change conditions to be in their favor, using both violent and nonviolent means to effect change in the prevailing authority, these are the conditions that lead to insurgencies.

In this same sense, this manual was made to counteract any type of insurgency using different methods and in collaboration with what the manual calls "Unified Action Partners", a collaboration of integrated effort that goes from national companies or multinational ones and government organizations and NGOs, to the presence of intergovernmental organisms such as the United Nations. "Regional organizations like the Organization of American States and the European Union or international organizations like the United Nations may be involved in some counterinsurgency operations. The United Nations, in particular has many subordinate and affiliate agencies active worldwide", states the manual's text.

In Oaxaca, a police officer takes pictures, attempting to document the presence of activists in Oaxaca's Triqui indigenous region. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)

The Counterinsurgency Academy

"Each year the Minerva Initiative, with Pentagon funding, looks to map 59 indigenous towns in Central America and gives prizes to 12 of the 300 projects that are presented. In 2013, it awarded a project that was going to take place in Honduras with the backing of the National Pedagogical University Francisco Morazán, employing as research assistants people of indigenous and mixed descent to map zones of communal property in order to destroy or annihilate them",
SAYS LÓPEZ.

In 2013, the US Department of Defense approved a budget allocation of 1.5 million dollars, with the possibility of increasing it to 3 million, for Jerry Dobson and other researchers to continue with the Bowman Expeditions, now a program with the Minerva research initiative. "The Minerva Initiative is a consortium that moves in relation to the Pentagon's interests and contacts the best universities in the United States and subsumes Latin America Universities that offer to receive funds from the department of military studies of the Pentagon in order to carry out research for the counterinsurgency," explains López.

There are at least 12 research projects with Pentagon financing under the guidance of the Minverva Initiative to collect data for the counterinsurgency effort. "Another project under the direction of the Minerva Initiative is the megaproject of the University of Washington, in collaboration with Harvard, that looks to study the origin, characteristics and implications of political movements in 23 countries, relying on a database of 58 countries provided by the Minerva Initiative, looking to construct a map of the movements in space and time," says López.

In February 2012, elements of the Mexican army enter the autonomous community of Cheran in Michoacan, despite not having permission. (Photo: Heriberto Paredes)

Breeding Ground for Indigenous Movements

The "reforms" recently approved in Mexico, which include the privatization of education and petroleum resources, as well as drastic changes to Mexico’s financial sector, will have a direct impact on more than 80 million Mexicans, especially considering that 40 percent of spending in the public sector is financed using income from Mexican Petroleum (PEMEX). These reforms create a potential breeding ground for the intensification of new social movements in the country. Although usually pacifist in nature, historically such movements have been labeled as insurgent.

In just three federal administrations, almost the same amount of land has been conceded to mining companies as was distributed after the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Over 94 million hectares have been conceded, and a large number of these concessions are located in indigenous territories, where people were not informed of that fact. In December of 2013, Jaime Martínez Veloz, Commissioner for a Dialogue with Indigenous Towns of Mexico, warned that this situation, promoted by the governments of Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox,and Felipe Calderón could provoke social confrontations in the affected regions.

The reform to the hydrocarbon law gives a free pass to transnational corporations looking to expropriate territories, through what is referred to in article 33, for public use - and this includes communal lands. Communities have jurisdiction only of up to 30 centimeters beneath the soil: beyond that, it belongs to the federal government. "It opens the door to the expropriation of lands of course for public utility and even to biosphere reserves, as well as to a series of human rights violations," was one of the positions in the debate over article 33 in the words of Senator Zoé Robledo.

During the first 16 months of the presidential term of Enrique Peña Nieto, these reforms have been accompanied by a rise in the criminalization of activism and social struggle in this country. Disappearances and forced detentions are now "unquantifiable". "From here we say to Peña Nieto that it will not be possible for him to decide for us, because our towns are organized; we have decided that they can kill us, but we are not ceding our land to anyone," says Felipe Flores, who together with other indigenous communities opposes the construction of a hydroelectric dam called La Parota, in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero.

For López, social struggles are taking place in a context of militarization and counterinsurgency, where one sees the presence of an authoritarian state that uses selective violence, as it did during the dirty war in the 1960s and '70s, with enforced disappearances, incarceration and persecution.

In Cherán, Michoacán, La Ronda Comunitaria is an effort that seeks protections for indigenous autonomy, based on the principle, "Only the people defend the people".(Photo: Heriberto Paredes)

Irregular Warfare

Indigenous communities, where one can find the support bases of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico, is a living example of the application of the mechanism called irregular warfare, as it is labeled in counterinsurgency manuals. "It is not low-intensity warfare, but a war of comprehensive wearing-down, which goes from the co-opting of communities with government assistance programs, which according to the counterinsurgency is taking the water away from the fish. But it also creates angry fish who are at the service of the state that then attack insurgent fish, or, paramilitary groups from the same community, who are the ones that perpetrated the most recent attack against the Zapatista Movement, a movement that has not undertaken a single offensive action in the last 20 years, because they decided to opt for the road of support for the autonomy of their communities", says López.

Oaxaca, at Risk for Insurgency

Since the armed uprising of the EZLN in 1994 and since the signing of the 1996 San Andrés Accords regarding indigenous rights and culture, a large majority of the indigenous towns in Mexico have echoed the demands of these accords. Oaxaca, as a majority indigenous state, generated concern for the governor at the time, Diodoro Carrasco Altamirano, and then-president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, who opted to implement a policy of indigenous containment with a series of constitutional reforms elaborated by the Center for Government Studies of Oaxaca. It used the same counterinsurgency tactics implemented by the School of the Americas, which since 1953 and until 1996 had received close to one thousand military police from Mexico to take training courses, principally regarding counterinsurgency techniques, according to one of the chapters of a historical report of the Special Prosecution for Social and Political Movements of the Past (FEMOSPP).

That is why in 1996, due to these counterinsurgency tactics, political actions were implemented across the state of Oaxaca to co-opt and buy off social leaders. Intelligence and paramilitary groups were created, such as the so-called "Delivery Crew" in the Loxicha region, a group paid by bosses whose most important task is betrayal: They turned in presumed guerrilla fighters and tortured, selectively assassinated, raped women and made arbitrary detentions. Of the over 150 indigenous individuals detained during that time, in the year 2012, there were still seven prisoners, known as the Loxicha prisoners.

In 2006, during the term of Ulises Ruis Ortiz, over 2 million people spilled into the streets to ask for the removal of the governor. Since then, counterinsurgency tactics have been constantly reworked in this region of the country. Since this period, the city of Oaxaca is one of the most monitored cities in the world, with C4 intelligence technology, with more than 230 cameras that form part of a Command, Control, Computers, Communications Center (C4), that, among other activities, does not just film and capture information in each of the monitored areas, but is also capable of facial recognition, and of recognizing gestures and physical features, supported by deaf-mute individuals that analyze every movement caught on film.

In a war, battlegrounds are defined and an enemy is identified that must be reduced or controlled. In this case, it appears that indigenous towns have been identified by governments and corporations as a potential enemy - which in turn threatens the conservation of communal territories and autonomous self-governance. Meanwhile, in stark contrast to the bellicose and destructive power of governments and corporations, in indigenous towns' struggles, resistance and community cohesion are the principle weapons.

Soy: Industry’s Miracle Bean in Brazil

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

25 November, 2014

Soy was initially introduced to Brazil as part of a US military aid package. Today, its industrial cultivation results in a number of negative consequences, including deforestation and the expulsion of small-scale farmers from their land.

George Washington Carver, a 19th century African-American scientist, made inroads into industrial uses for agricultural crops, including research on the production of biodiesel from soybeans. The legume arrived in Germany in the 1930s and Hitler used it as a substitute for petroleum. In Brazil, it was introduced during the military dictatorship (1964-1985) as part of a military aid package from the United States. Today, Brazil is the second-largest producer of soy on a global scale, after the United States. This production is concentrated in the hands of a half-dozen corporations, including Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus.

Along the BR-163 highway a lush, green landscape unfolds. It is, however, entirely homogenous; there is no diversity beyond soy plants. On the highway, cargo trucks clump together, demonstrating the productive potential of this region. Cuiaba, the capital of Mato Grosso, with just 480 inhabitants, is the epicenter of soy production in this country. Over 5 million hectares of soy have been planted in Brazil, and this image of abundant production is sold to potential investors in the soy market.

Local politicians are often big soy producers. One case is that of Blairo Borges Maggi, governor of Mato Grosso in 2005, businessman and Brazilian politician. At that time he was known as the "King of Soy," and in 2005, Greenpeace gave him the "Golden Chainsaw" award, due to the monstrous deforestation that his companies were responsible for, to make way for soy production in the Amazon.

"This ancient seed . . . is presented as a clean energy alternative, but it actually destroys biodiversity".

However, Mato Grasso is just the tip of the iceberg. Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world, and soy is being cultivated across all its regions. "This legume is the principal raw material exported from Brazil. Soy is cultivated in all regions of this country. The states with the highest production are Mato Grosso and Paraná, which together produce a little more than half of the country's soy," Sebastião Pinheiro, a researcher and agronomist with the University do Rio Grande do Sul, told Truthout.

The rate of production, incentivized by the Brazilian government, is not surprising. Soy is being used strategically by the food, energy, health and biochemical industries. Through the process of refining soy oil, lecithin, an emulsifier, is obtained, which is often used in the production of processed food products such as hot dogs, mayonnaise, ice cream, chocolate bars, cereal and frozen food. It is also present in products that slow cell damage - and therefore lessen the signs of aging - to such a degree that it is considered a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy.

Soy is also indirectly present on the plates of people worldwide. According to the Association of Soy and Corn Producers of Mato Grosso, in Brazil, 80 percent of soy flour is used as a base for processed animal feed. Vegetable protein is thus transformed into animal protein, and thus soy is present in the production of meat, eggs and milk.

"What is coming in 10 years is a sort of green industrial revolution, where plants will be turned into factories"

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Brazil's national industry produces approximately 30.7 million tons of soy, of which 5.8 million tons go to the production of edible oil and 23.5 million tons go to make protein flour.

According to Pinheiro, it is not that soy itself is problematic, but that the processes of production for soy and its derivatives require huge extensions of arable land, millions of liters of water and the use of pesticides. "This ancient seed will revolutionize the processes of production dependent on petroleum, and capital will shift to those chains of production. It is presented as a clean energy alternative, but it actually destroys biodiversity".

"Green Plastic"

Gustavo Grobo, from the Argentinian group Grobocopatel, known as the "King of Soy" in that country, mentioned in April 2014 that "what is coming in 10 years is a sort of green industrial revolution, where plants will be turned into factories".

Biodiesel and glycerin are obtained from ground soy, together with 10 percent alcohol (methanol). Glycerin is currently beginning to reshape production processes that are dependent on petroleum. Brazil has been one of the countries at the forefront of the production of biofuels, principally from sugar cane and soy. By producing biofuels using soybeans, glycerol is obtained. It is the most recent novelty in Brazil - used principally as a substitute for propane - a resin obtained up until now from petroleum derivatives and used to make polypropolene, forming what's called "green plastic". Polypropolene is used in the production of packaging for food, textiles, laboratory equipment, automobile parts and many other products.

"Soy has become embedded in the petrochemical tree, from food to auto parts"

PINHEIRO ARGUES THAT SOY IS CHANGING THE PRODUCTION PROCESSES THAT ARE DEPENDENT ON PETROLEUM."Soy is the principal export product of Brazil and is strategic because it is being substituted for petroleum in the technological matrix. This petrochemical has been surpassed thanks to biotechnology",
THE AGRONOMIST TOLD TRUTHOUT.

Modern biotechnology uses living systems and organisms in the development or production of useful products, combining the fields of biology, chemistry and engineering. It is applied most commonly in the production of pharmaceuticals, in agriculture, and in the production of industrial inputs. It includes the modification of genes, including the cultivation of cell and tissue cultures, DNA recombination technology and synthetic biology.

Since the peak of petroleum production in the 1970s, and as a result of its subsequent rise in market value, the search for alternatives has become a question of national security in many countries. This is especially true for the United States, which consumes 25 percent of energy produced worldwide, with just 4 percent of the world's population. Petroleum has also been essential for the production of plastic, auto parts and thousands of other products.

"Novartis, Bayer, Monsanto and other corporations have reduced their levels of production of agrochemicals and have instead directed a large part of their investments toward biosynthetic products, which use microorganisms, bacteria and fungi to convert simple inputs into more complex outputs. Systems are dependent on fermentation, on carbon chains or directly on the photosynthesis of the sun", Pinheiro said. They are particularly useful in the development of new pharmaceuticals, medical treatments and vaccines.

Petrochemicals Without Petroleum

The corporation Nova Petrochemicals in Brazil is the first of its kind in this country. It uses new chains of production, principally using soy derivatives to produce impact- and heat-resistant plastics, such as auto parts and construction materials. Nova Petrochemicals is part of the conglomerate Quattor, made up of Petrobras and the Unipar group. In 2010, the company Braskem bought the Brazilian company Quattor and the US company Sunoco Chemicals.

Currently, Braskem is the leader in thermoplastic resins in Latin America and is the third-largest producer on the continent. It has 18 plants in Brazil, and produces over 11 million tons of thermoplastic resin and other petrochemical products. In total, according to the company's website, it manufactures 16 million tons of products in 36 plants located in Brazil, the United States and Germany.

Braskem offers countless products, from construction materials and beauty accessories to air fresheners, solvents and automobile parts. According to the company, these products contribute to the global reduction of greenhouse gases.

"Soy has become embedded in the petrochemical tree, from food to auto parts", Pinheiro told Truthout.

The Biggest Producers in the World

According to an October 2014 report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), global production of soy in 2014-15 is estimated to be 311.2 million tons. Production in 2013 was 285 million tons. According to the USDA data, the United States has projected a production level of 106.87 million metric tons, followed by Brazil with 94 million and Argentina with 55 million. These countries are also the biggest global exporters.

"The three principal soy-producing countries produce 80 percent of global volume, which will mostly be sold to China to fatten chickens and pigs",
SAID MERCI FARIN OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF ESPIRITU SANTO.

However, according to 2014 data from the National Supply Company (CONAB), a public enterprise of Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, the production requirement for such quantities of soy is 30.11 million hectares of land. This "requirement" has led to the decimation of entire ecosystems in order to make way for soy production.

"Bunge, ADM and Dreyfus dominated at least 95 percent of the exports from Brazil, and they are fighting for land in this country in order to be able to plant soy", Pinheiro said.

Ford, Biofuels and the "Green Revolution"

Petroleum is at the heart of the automobile industry, present at every stage in the production chain, but at the beginning this was not a foregone conclusion. As climate change provides the impetus for new models of transportation, an unevolved automobile industry risks stagnation. "Biofuels are an alternative that looks to create a new cycle of accumulation with a new fleet of vehicles built on the logic of clean energy", Pinheiro said.

The green revolution adopted the rationale of the production of food on a large scale in order to counteract hunger and poverty, but none of these social results came to fruition.

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, was the first businessman to apply the moving assembly-line technique in manufacturing in order to produce automobiles on a mass scale. At first, he was very interested in using the fermentation of alcohol and soy biodiesel as fuel for his cars, based on a recommendation by George Washington Carver. However, the Rockefeller family quickly made advances to consolidate their company, Standard Oil (later Exxon-Mobil), revolutionizing that industry at every level. "The technological matrix of oil was imposed by the Rockefellers, both as the principal source of energy in the chains of production and in the daily life in the United States and in the rest of the world", Pinheiro told Truthout.

However, down the line, Hitler ended up taking advantage of the scientific advances of Washington Carver. "Germany has no oil, and Hitler used the studies about soy and started to create petrochemicals without petroleum. From 1930, soy cultivation began across the Austro-Hungarian empire", Pinheiro said.

The first phase of the "green revolution" came about shortly after World War II. William Gaud, the director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), first used the term in 1968. The United States had discovered a way to redirect and use all of the technology developed during the war to produce food on an industrial scale. This system was implemented in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, altering the biological cycles of food production in order to obtain greater quantities in less time.

According to researcher Merci Fardin, this agricultural model consisted of using improved varieties of corn, wheat and other grains, along with huge quantities of water and agrochemicals. "The agrochemicals and all the machinery used in this 'revolution' is an adaptation of the war technology - principally war machinery - that was adapted to convert them into tractors. This gave way to monoculture systems, known as green deserts", Fardin said.

The green revolution adopted the rationale of the production of food on a large scale in order to counteract hunger and poverty, but none of these social results came to fruition. "In the last 50 years, the world became impoverished and experienced famine, and today this famine is administered by corporations, who have gotten rich at the expense of hunger", according to Fardin.

First Interference of the United States After World War II

One of the United States' first interventions in Brazil after World War II was through agriculture, according to Sebastião Pinheiro, the agronomist. The United States introduced cotton, tobacco and improved seed varieties, soy among them. "The United States brought the complete package: the science, the technology and the financing. In an altruistic fashion, it gave all its improved seed varieties of soy to the Brazilian government", said Pinheiro, who argues that the objective at the time was to provide continuity with the plan to reconstruct Europe, which required a source of food that would meet demand from the European population. "The North American proposal would only be completed through the implementation of industrial agriculture in the Southern Hemisphere, which is now known as the breadbasket of the world", Pinheiro said.

"This industrial package called the green revolution was a military strategy".

Later, through the "Brother Sam" operation - the US support behind the military dictatorship of 1964 - 100 tons of weapons and munitions, oil tankers, a fleet of combat airplanes and military equipment were sent to Brazil. The package also included, Pinheiro says, a technology package for agriculture and above all scientific research.

"The military regime in Brazil, instructed in military doctrine by the United States, used it as a pretext to combat Marxist influence, and opened the doors of Brazilian universities to the Rockefeller Foundation, which gave financial donations for the modernization of programs, curricula and training of professors in the United States", Pinheiro said. "It was a type of agreement between the Education and Culture Ministry and USAID, which provided follow up to the research for improving and genetically modifying seeds".

These conditions eventually permitted the concentration of land for monocultures in the hands of a half-dozen companies, Pinheiro said. He added, "This industrial package called the green revolution was a military strategy because all of the agrochemicals were produced in military factories. The principal objective of the dictatorship was to forcibly remove peasants and indigenous people from their lands, in order to concentrate the land in the hands of a few soy, sugar cane and eucalyptus-producing companies, among whom are Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Ford".

The Death of Family Farming

In addition to the destruction of forests, soy production has stoked the large-scale use of pesticides. According to the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, the average consumption of pesticides is on the rise. In 2005, 7 kilograms per hectare were used. In 2011 that level had risen to 10.1 kilograms, an increase of 44.3 percent.

The MST fights for agrarian reform in Brazil, urging implementation of a model based on family farming. Due to this lack of agrarian reform, many peasants have decided to occupy the land. In Mato Grosso do Sul, there are 53 land settlements, the majority connected with the MST - the highest concentration in the country - that are configured like small islands within the green deserts, where diversified agriculture exists alongside the monocultures of sugar cane, eucalyptus and principally soy.

"The way out has been to produce in small quantities, in an artisanal system, gradually working to regenerate the soil".

"We are surrounded by soy, and the poison that is dispersed across the monocultures ends up on our land. You plant a native corn seed, for example, and it doesn't germinate", Sindy Gauber, who lives in the Geraldo García settlement in the municipality of Sidrolancia, in Mato Grosso do Sul, told Truthout. "It is difficult for us to be able to plant without coming into contact with pesticides. Our work to build an ecological and organic production is harmed by these conditions. It will take decades until we can plant the food that we consume in a totally free way".

Beyond this, said Gauber, the few lands expropriated by the federal government to be redistributed to peasant families via a federal program are not productive lands in general, since they have been used up by monocultures.

Gauber says that many families, lacking options, end up abandoning their land in order to work in the monoculture plants. In the settlement where she lives, many families lease their land to agribusiness.

Compounding this situation is the use of genetically modified (GMO) seeds. In Brazil, GMO plantations represent over 50 percent of the territory designated for agricultural activities in the country - and the majority are GMO soy varieties.

Despite the difficulties, Gauber says that the families have created the conditions for resistance by organizing cooperatives and participating in small markets. "The way out has been to produce in small quantities, in an artisanal system, gradually working to regenerate the soil", she said. "This disproportionate war is senseless because really those who feed the city are the small-scale farmers in Brazil. Monocultures are basically for export and for industry".

Depraved Cycle for Peasants

Soy fields and pasture for livestock: This is the monotonous scenery that can be glimpsed along the MS-164 highway, in the municipality of Ponta Pora, in Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border with Paraguay. On the edge of this highway is also one of the biggest settlements in Brazil, taken over by social movements led by the MST in 2002. The settlement, Itamarati, covers 50,000 hectares of land and is home to 3,000 families. Ironically, it used to be a large soy-producing farm. Its owner was Olacyr de Moraes, the largest individual soy producer in the world in the 1980s.

"This disproportionate war is senseless because really those who feed the city are the small-scale farmers in Brazil".

Itamarati has two types of land, spaces for individual plots and collective ones. The individual plots (up to 10 hectares) are home to fruit trees and vegetable gardens; most of these fruits and vegetables are consumed by residents. The 12-hectare plots are for collective production, with irrigation and collectively owned equipment, where food is planted for commercialization.

The community has a health care structure, education, two cooperatives for production development, a small commercial center and even an urban center.

Ariovaldo Ciriaco is one of the settlement's farmers. He grows rice, manioc and peanuts. Beyond food for individual consumption, he also plants soy. "Of the total of 50,000 hectares of Itamarati, close to 20,000 of them have soy plantations", said Ciriaco, who is a member of the Association of Cooperative Farmers and the resistance group El Dorado dos Carajas.

Ciriaco has been living in the settlement since the beginning in 2002, and says that after moving onto the land, his family and other members of the settlement were besieged by the multinational corporations that produce corn, soy and fertilizers. "The discourse that they used was that the use of products [fertilizers, pesticides and GMO seed varieties] would reduce costs and we would have greater productivity. The argument was that, using the best technology, one could work less and earn more money. Afterward, we saw that this wasn't true. For example, in terms of corn, they said that the seeds would produce 160 sacks per hectare, but the truth is they don't make more than 100 sacks", Ciriaco said.

"Those who came to live and work here were either employed by a large farm or in other, smaller areas. We were not accustomed to working with soy on a large scale. So they sold us the package (seeds, fertilizers and pesticides) at expensive prices and with quantities of poison higher than necessary. So today we see the abuses they carried out because of our lack of knowledge", he added.

Ciriaco says that a large number of the farmers ended up in a cycle of dependence on products made by multinationals like Bunge, Cargill, ADM, Bayer and Syngenta. "Their representatives in Brazil even came to us to sell their products. The package is very expensive, so families had to get into debt in order to buy it, and when they harvested, they paid the debt. This cycle of dependence is a huge problem", he said.

The price of soy is defined by the international market, principally by the United States. Yet Ciriaco hasn't lost his energy: His goal now is to grow crops without having to be dependent on corporations and their technology packages. "Our challenge is to stimulate agricultural diversity - invest in alternatives, in order to diminish the dependence on soy".

Correction: The original version of this article read 5 billion hectares of soy had been planted in this region of Brazil. In fact, it is 5 million. Many thanks to the sharp-eyed reader who caught the translation error.

Mexico: Electoral Reform Threatens the Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

30 September, 2014

At the end of May, Mexico’s National Congress approved a political-electoral reform that will organize federal and local elections for the year 2015. Such a reform represents a step backward for indigenous towns in Mexico because it does not consider the way in which they elect authorities through their own system of "uses and customs" legitimate.

Despite efforts by citizens, academics, organizations and indigenous movements, who turned in a series of proposals to senators and congress members from Oaxaca long before the reform was passed, the self-determination of indigenous towns and communities has not been guaranteed.

"By not guaranteeing the right to autonomy and political representation in these towns, the diversity of political organization that exists in this country is being denied," says Aldo Gonzales Rojas, of indigenous Zapotec descent and a director for the Secretary of Indigenous Affairs in the state of Oaxaca, where he ensures that indigenous laws are being instituted and applied correctly. "A legal gap has been created given that this other system exists, but is not recognized. Indigenous communities should have juridical certainty", he continues.

The electoral adviser for the State Institute for Electoral Affairs and Citizen Participation of Oaxaca, Victor Leonel Juan Martínez, also says that the reform throws into question the autonomy of indigenous towns.

"Far from looking to meet with indigenous groups, they look to undermine their collective spirit; instead of establishing agreements, they see them as political clientele; far from constructing a national multicultural project, they seek out factious interests and use the indigenous flag as an instrument for their own ends," he declared during the Thirteenth Session of the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs, which took place in May of this year.

Community belonging to Oaxaca Nochixtlan receive information on how the electoral processes through political parties operate. (Photo: **Santiago Navarro F.**)

In contrast to this situation is the new reform initiative on indigenous rights and culture that is in process in Oaxaca’s state congress. "In Oaxaca’s state congress there is currently a proposal being debated for constitutional reform with regard to indigenous affairs, which would address electoral issues in these towns and guarantee the autonomy of indigenous communities," Gonzales tells Truthout. In this way, "If federal laws do not regulate these issues, we are going to work so that they are regulated in the best way possible in the Constitution and the laws of the State; in Oaxaca, we cannot leave this issue aside."

According to the Federal Electoral Institute, there are no federal level statistics of the number of municipalities that elect their authorities through the system of "uses and customs." The only state in the country that legally recognizes this system is Oaxaca. Of the 570 municipalities that compose the state, 418 elect their authorities through "uses and customs."

First Consultation of Indigenous Towns

To draft the proposal for the reform initiative, the secretary of Indigenous Affairs, a branch of the state government, issued a call for public comment and completed a consultation. Twenty-four regional forums took place with over 5,000 participants, among them 1,500 municipal authorities. There was also a state forum made up of 500 delegates representing each of the regional forums.

At first, indigenous leaders, academics and lawyers worked to create the reform’s fundamental criteria. These three integrated groups completed studies and analyzed national and international laws that have served as references for indigenous processes. From that point, they identified the central discussion points, including: indigenous modes of communication, culture, traditional medicine, indigenous women, community values, governing systems, electoral processes, autonomy, self-determination (in terms of land and territory), state jurisdiction and consultation.

A platform was constructed for each of these themes, and they were subjected to a consultation process. From there, a publication was compiled with these criteria that was sent to community authorities so that they could revise and discuss them. Shortly thereafter, an invitation call was put out in the places where consultations would take place. "They put out the call based on the principle that the state should listen to the towns before making reforms and laws. It is the first consultation that was done for indigenous towns in Oaxaca," says Melquiades Cruz Miguel, head of the Department of Indigenous Intercultural Communication, part of the Secretary of Indigenous Affairs, which also was a participant in the consultation process in the Northern Sierra Mountains.

Once the forums had taken place, a technical committee of experts was created and made up of intellectuals, lawyers and indigenous leaders to convert the results of the consultation into a bill format.

Once this process was finished, a state forum of indigenous towns was convened to ensure that the final version of the document had support. "And, finally, the text was presented to a consulting board made up of intellectuals and indigenous leaders, in order to validate and legitimate the consultation," Cruz says.

The proposal was presented to the governor of Oaxaca, Gabino Cué Monteagudo, in August of 2013. The text passed through the government’s technical advisory board, and in March of 2013, was sent to the state congress to be voted on.

A final resolution is expected in October. "We don’t know if members of congress are going to approve the full reform or an amended version, because - given that it deals with territory, autonomy, [and] indigenous jurisdiction - it affects many interests," says Cruz.

Assembly of communities that listen to what candidates offer in exchange for their vote. (Photo: **Santiago Navarro F.)**

Strengthening of Assemblies

The reform initiative looks from the start to strengthen the interwoven nature of indigenous communities. "Rights for communities are strengthened, and decisions made in community assemblies are recognized to have effects beyond the town, which is to say, the State has to respect their decisions," says Gonzales.

The proposal establishes mechanisms so communities can manage their development plans, put into place actions that they’ve decided on, and evaluate and regulate them. "It is recognized that communities have their own mechanisms, from planning to controlling their resources."

Another aspect of the reform is that it guarantees the right of communities to prior, formal, free and informed consent in the case of administrative actions on the part of municipal and state governments. "It is not easy, but, for example, in cases of land concessions made to mining companies, one of the requirements they ask for is that the change of subsoil use be granted by the municipal authority. The proposal is that this change of subsoil use pass the assembly," he explains.

Cuts to the Proposal

According to Victor Leonel Juan Martínez, before sending the bill to congress, the governor removed two fundamental pieces that had come out of the consultation. The initial proposal would establish an autonomous institute of indigenous Oaxacan towns, an institution that would be fundamental to carry forward public policies. "And when the governor presented [the bill] to the congress, the proposal for the institute was no longer there."

Another proposal that was not accepted completely was one that would establish the possibility for municipalities that are governed by their own normative systems to be able to name their congressional representatives through mechanisms other than political parties.

"There are some actors that have little experience with the subject of indigenous towns, that have fears around the right to autonomy and free determination of towns and try to minimize some of the proposals,"
NOTES GONZALES.

Community resistance to one of 28 wind farms planned for the region known to the state and decides declared autonomous municipality. (Photo: **Santiago Navarro F.**)

Forces within the Dispute

For Gonzales, one fact that should generate more controversy has to do with the political rights of indigenous communities, such as the proposed creation of an indigenous parliament, which he believes most likely will not pass in its entirety. "Certainly something general in this respect will be part of the Constitution."

A reform of this nature has generated vehement dispute within the State, he tells Truthout. "It cannot be forgotten that Oaxaca is essentially indigenous, and the state owes an enormous debt to these towns. The passage of a reform of this nature would mean doing justice. To not approve it would be an injustice. Indigenous towns have been invisible. The liberal state was constructed as an agreement between French and North American perspectives. No one turned to see that indigenous towns also had their proposals."

Limits

Gonzales admits the limitations of the law. "When the reform is approved, indigenous groups will have new legal resources to defend their lands. But it is not simple. There is no oral mechanism [for communicating the existence of the laws], they are not easily accessible, lawyers are necessary in order to access these tools. It will be necessary to go through a trial period."

Cruz warns that the passage of the constitutional reform will not be sufficient if it does not guarantee the operation of new institutions that bring about public policies for indigenous towns. "If this does not happen, the same thing will happen as when the law was passed in 1998: it was inconsequential. It’s necessary to regulate, to define how the laws will be applied, which institutions should manage them and where resources should come from. The work we have to do after the law is passed is much greater. It is necessary to have mechanisms in place so that all of this can get off the ground."

Women caring declared autonomous municipality. (Photo: **Santiago Navarro F.**)

History

According to indigenous lawyer and jurist Francisco López Bárcenas, indigenous towns in Oaxaca have a long history and tradition of defending their rights; they have learned how to work together to have a relationship with the state and the rest of society while maintaining their ethnic identity. This has been reflected in the constitutions and laws that have guided the political life of this federative entity since before the creation of the Mexican State.

"The state of Oaxaca counts among its achievements having been the first of the Mexican Republic to legislate around the issue of indigenous rights, long before the federal government signed the United Nations ILO-Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal towns in Independent Countries in 1989, and prior to the reform of the 4th article of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, where for the first time the pluri-cultural nature of the nation and some cultural rights were recognized, based on the presence of its indigenous towns," says López Bárcenas.

Another important factor was the uprising of the armed movement of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in 1994, comprised primarily of indigenous individuals, which marked a new generation in the indigenous movement in Mexico and across the world.

"It was an important watershed moment for the vindication of the rights of indigenous towns in Mexico and in the world. The EZLN uprising and the San Andrés Accords particularly, regarding indigenous rights and culture, were fundamental factors for the generation of a strong national indigenous movement that made up the National Indigenous Congress, which in turn became a principle representative - together with the EZLN - for the demands of indigenous towns." These are the antecedents that form the basis of the documents of this new reform initiative.

Contradictions

The juridical tools have been important so that towns can be recognized as collective legal subjects. But these communities exist, with or without this recognition, and continue to strengthen their community ties and their autonomy. Those that are disobedient and rebellious will continue to be a minority, but they continue building their daily lives, with or without permission.

"We have our forms of organizing ourselves that are deeply rooted, and what the law says on paper is one thing, but here everything has to go through the assembly, and we will continue living this way because it has worked well for us," says Saúl Aquino, commissioner of communal resources in the Zapotec community of Capulálpam de Méndez.

"Indigenous towns must strengthen their processes of autonomy, preparing new generations for autonomy and not expecting anything good to come from the political class of this country," says anthropologist and researcher Gilberto López y Rivas.

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