The Democracy Center http://democracyctr.org/dc_old Wed, 26 Apr 2017 23:57:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4 Damming Dissent: How An Italian Multinational Is Persecuting Environmental Defenders In Colombia http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/damming-dissent-how-an-italian-multinational-is-persecuting-environmental-defenders-in-colombia/ Mon, 23 Jan 2017 17:13:38 +0000 http://democracyctr.org/?p=7817 here ]]>

The practices of an Italian multinational in Huila, Colombia, exemplify how the criminalization of activists is increasingly used to end dissent and real democratic participation in Latin America. We have a live campaign underway in relation to this case.  Find out more. 

 
By Philippa de Boissière and Thomas Mc Donagh. Originally published in Open Democracy. También en español.

“EMGESA ’s strategy is to stop this resistance, because the whole department of Huila is rising up against dams, against fracking.”
– Miller Dussan

In his late sixties, Miller Dussan is an affable, well-respected Colombian academic and community leader. Yet on 6th February 2017 the father of two will appear in court to face one of two legal charges that could see him locked behind bars for up to twelve years. Miller’s alleged crimes stem from his committed defense of Colombia’s main waterway in his native region of Huila and the livelihoods of those that depend upon it. His accuser, EMGESA, is the local subsidiary of Italian multinational energy giant ENEL.

EMGESA is the operator of the Quimbo megadam project that Dussan, together with local communities in the province of Huila, has been tirelessly resisting for nearly a decade. It is clear to those fighting this battle that the court charges are a powerful weapon which the corporation is using to try and break that resistance.

Now, instead of dedicating his energy and resources to community organizing, Dussan spends most of his time defending his name and reputation in the public media and in the courts of Colombia.

The story of the Quimbo dam and what is happening to Dussan now is an increasingly familiar one across Latin America and elsewhere, of corporations and governments clamping down on dissent by criminalizing public protest. It is yet another example of how corporate power attempts to trump people power, using criminalization as a tactic -one of many – to stamp out dissent and real democratic participation.

The Quimbo dam – A brief history

Plans for the Quimbo hydroelectric dam were initially shot down in 1997 over a series of ecological, economic and technical concerns. The impacts of stemming the flow of the Magdalena river, Colombia’s most important waterway – which assessments had indicated would displace and destroy the livelihoods of farmers and fisherfolk and put the region’s food security at risk – were deemed too high a price to pay. But ten years later, like a plot from a zombie blockbuster, the Quimbo dam project was resuscitated and forced through planning processes by the government of President Alvaro Uribe. So numerous and glaring are the exceptions that have been granted in favour of EMGESA that the megadam’s very legality remains in question.

By 2012 the predicted dire impacts of constructing the dam were becoming reality.  So much so that a coalition of residents, government and civil society bodies declared a humanitarian crisis in Huila. Nearly 1,500 people have been evicted to make way for the dam, many forcibly and without recourse to compensation. The project has destroyed thousands of hectares of the most agriculturally rich lands in the region and pushed families into economic vulnerability and food insecurity.

Environmentally, the toll is just as devastating. The project not only floods part of an Amazon Reserve, it is a climate disaster. EMGESA’s failure to comply with regulations to remove biomass from within the reservoir has turned it into a methane time bomb as a result of rotting vegetation.  Methane is 86 times more potent a greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide in the short term.

In classic corporate spin, EMGESA’s own locally distributed radio program and newspaper paint a very different picture of el Quimbo, promising vast improvements in the wellbeing of ordinary Colombians through the provision of energy to the national grid. However, you don’t have to look too hard at the facts on the ground to see that the purpose of the project was never to serve ordinary people. Colombia already generates more energy than it consumes and President Santos’ vision for ‘development’ is hinged on the expansion of extractivism. Rather than connecting more families to the grid, the energy from el Quimbo is destined to meet the energy demands both of the export market and of new fracking and mining projects domestically.  While major hydroelectric projects are often sold as clean, green energy – this is dangerously misleading when their real beneficiaries are extractivist multinationals such as Drummond, Pacific Rubiales and Anglogold Ashanti.

Local resistance

The people of Huila take to the streets. Authors´photo. All rights reserved.

National frameworks designed to uphold human rights, including Colombia’s very own Constitution, have systematically failed to protect those living in the shadow of the megadam. International agreements, such as those ratified between Colombia and the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) have done no better in the face of Enel’s private interests.  Given the failure of both national and international safeguards, local communities were left with no recourse but to exercise their democratic rights by organising locally. The Association of those Affected by the Quimbo Dam, (ASOQUIMBO) is a collective of farmers, fisherfolk, academics, labourers and local families, formed in 2009.  Elsa Ardilla, former President of the association, explained that communities felt that they had been left with no choice but to take action when it became clear that ‘consultation’ processes were a mere formality, not actually designed to take local opinion into account. Ardilla, like Dussan, also faces criminal charges at the hands of EMGESA.

Over the past three years ASOQUIMBO has combined direct action tactics, such as public mobilisations and regional strikes, with more institutional approaches including testifying at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Despite this opposition the Quimbo dam began flooding the region’s richest agricultural land in June 2015 and began generating its lucrative energy output in November of 2015 – over a year and a half late and US$256 million over budget.

Although ASOQUIMBO has not managed to block the dam’s construction, it has been successful at mobilizing broad social sectors against further extractive projects in the region. This effort has achieved numerous successes, including the election of a candidate with a strong position against the construction of new mega dams as new governor in the regional elections in late 2015, as well as the establishment of a Roundtable on Environment, Water and Territory with the aim of reviewing mining and energy policy regionally.

Miller Dussan has been at the forefront of this effort. He has been spokesperson, president, and one of the driving forces behind ASOQUIMBO since its inception in 2009.

But these successes in local organizing have come at a high price.

Together with Ardilla, Dussan is accused of obstructing public roads and affecting public order – a charge that carries up to four years in prison. According to Dussan, these charges relate to a January 2012 mobilisation that was organised by a broad range of affected social sectors – not just ASOQUIMBO- to protest damage made to a local bridge by EMGESA.

Dussan also faces a second charge for allegedly instigating the occupation of land owned by the corporation, a charge that carries a sentence of up to eight years in prison. According to Dussan’s lawyer, these charges relate to land occupations by small farmer communities in 2013 as part of a protest against forced displacement and in order to demand just compensation from the corporation.

The court cases and the potential of up to twelve years in prison now hang like a dark and threatening cloud over Dussan and ASOQUIMBO.

Criminalisation of protest as corporate strategy

While EMGESA’s persecution of Dussan through the courts is causing him and his family high levels of personal stress, the resistance leader is clear that this is about much more than him. “Their strategy is to stop this resistance, because the whole department (of Huila) is rising up against dams, against fracking”.

Indeed, more and more people across the region are connecting the dots between individual megaprojects and the overall extractivist model that they form a part of.  As well as the localised protests against the Quimbo dam, there have been several regional mobilizations and days of action against this and other extractive projects including mining and fracking – one of the most recent of which mobilised over eight thousand people in the towns of Pitalito, Garzon and Neiva in 2016.

Dussan’s lawyer, German Romero, also sees the criminalization of protest as a very deliberate strategy designed to quell dissent. According to Romero “in Colombia this is a recurring practice by multinationals…they associate themselves with powerful groups of lawyers and with sectors close to economic and political power…that are trying to affect the human rights work of social leaders or to break their organizations….It’s basically a strategy of terror, fear and repression that corporations have been involved in more and more when they feel under pressure by successful social leaders working in defence of human rights”.

The extent of the chilling effect on social protest has particular nuances in the context of Colombia – a country with some of the highest rates of both internal displacement and killings of environmental defenders in the world. The risks to prominent social leaders go way beyond attacks on their public reputation, or even their freedom. The heightened public profile and the association with criminality also bring risks to one’s safety.  According to the UN High Commission for Human Rights, fifty-seven social leaders were murderedbetween January and November 2016 in Colombia. That’s a rate of more than one every week. Many of these were social leaders defending their territories against extractive projects.

Dussan has raised these issues in previous conversations with us. “All of this has consequences here in Colombia for one’s personal security. People start to say that you’re a criminal. If somebody decided to kill me, people would say that they killed him because he was a criminal.”

Despite the dangers, civil society in the province has taken a firm stand in support of Dussan. Institutions ranging from the city council of the region’s capital Neiva to the Association of University Professors (ASPU-HUILA) of the Southern Colombia University have publicly come to his defence, calling for a halt to the ‘unjust and irregular charges that are being made against him by the Multinational EMGESA’.

Genuine justice: holding multinational corporations to account

Taking action with affected community members. Authors´photos. All rights reserved.

Although frontline land and climate struggles are being fought within communities, they are far from ‘local’. The struggles of ASOQUIMBO in Colombia, of Berta Caceres’ COPINH in Honduras and countless others represent the first line of resistance to an international raid on resources across Latin America and the Global South. The corporate players heading up this assault are causing irreparable damage to cultures, ecosystems and the climate. The bounty from these raids – the minerals, crops, grabbed land and water, fossil fuels – serve to fund lifestyles of conspicuous consumption among the world’s rich minority which stand in stark contrast to those of the people resisting such assaults.

On the 6th February, Miller Dussan and Elsa Ardilla will be back in the dock to face ENEL-EMGESA’s charges. Their liberty and personal safety hang in the balance as a result of these attempts to repress their work in defence of their communities.

Dussan’s story vividly illustrates the power imbalance at the centre of struggles for land and environmental justice. It also points to two potentially important roles for international solidarity.

The first is to deepen our collective understanding of judicial persecution and the criminalisation of protest more broadly as one of many corporate strategies being used to undermine community resistance. In Dussan’s own words “if they put me in prison, others are going to stop going out to protest”.

The second is to take the struggles of local communities to the seats to power of those who benefit most. Distance and anonymity are factors that allow corporations like ENEL to disassociate themselves from such cases and to present themselves as responsible corporations in their home countries. As such, one essential role of international solidarity must be to bridge that distance and to remove that anonymity.

To begin with, the names of those being pursued through the courts, and of those whose blood is being spilt in the quest for cheap raw materials, need to be hung around the necks of corporate CEOs such as Francesco Starace of Enel.

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Persecución y represión de defensores ambientales en Colombia http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/persecucion-y-represion-de-defensores-ambientales-en-colombia/ Mon, 23 Jan 2017 17:10:32 +0000 http://democracyctr.org/?p=7825 ]]> Las prácticas de una multinacional italiana en Huila, Colombia,  ejemplifican cómo se utiliza cada vez más la criminalización de los activistas para acabar con la disidencia y la participación democrática real.

Philippa de Boissière y Thomas Mc Donagh. Publicado en Democracia Abierta – also in English.

Comunidades locales organizadas. Fotografia del autor. Todos los derechos reservados.

La estrategia de Emgesa es parar la resistencia, porque ahora todo el departamento (del Huila) se está levantando en contra de todas la represas, en contra del fracking.
– Miller Dussan

Miller Dussán es un carismático y muy respetado académico y líder comunitario colombiano. Sin embargo, el 6 de febrero de 2017, este dirigente de 67 años de edad y padre de dos hijos, debe presentarse ante un tribunal para enfrentarse a uno de los dos procesos legales, que sumados podrían derivar en su encarcelamiento por 12 años. Los supuestos crímenes por los que se acusa a Miller provienen de la defensa comprometida del principal cauce de agua en Colombia ubicado en su región natal, el departamento de Huila, y de los medios de subsistencia de aquellos que dependen de este cauce. Su acusador, EMGESA, es la filial local de la gigante multinacional de energía italiana, ENEL.

EMGESA es la empresa operadora del proyecto hidroeléctrico El Quimbo, al que Dussán, junto con las comunidades locales del departamento del Huila, han resistido incansablemente durante casi una década. Es claro para aquellos que luchan que los procesos judiciales son una poderosa arma que la corporación está utilizando para tratar de romper esta resistencia.

Ahora, en lugar de dedicar su energía y recursos a la organización comunitaria, Dussán pasa la mayor parte de su tiempo defendiendo su nombre y reputación en los medios de comunicación públicos y en los tribunales de Colombia.

La historia de la represa de El Quimbo y lo que le está sucediendo a Dussán es una historia cada vez más común en toda América Latina y en otros lugares, en donde las corporaciones y los gobiernos reprimen la disidencia criminalizando la protesta social. Esto es otro ejemplo de cómo el poder corporativo intenta sobreponerse al poder de la gente, utilizando la criminalización como una táctica – de entre muchas otras –  para acabar con la disidencia y la participación democrática real de la población.

La represa de El Quimbo – una breve historia.

Inicialmente los planes para la represa hidroeléctrica de El Quimbo se vinieron abajo en 1997, debido a una serie de preocupaciones ambientales, económicas y técnicas. Se consideró que los impactos de represar el caudal del río Magdalena, la vía navegable más importante de Colombia, eran demasiado altos, pues los estudios indicaban que se desplazarían y destruirían los medios de subsistencia de los agricultores y pescadores de la zona, poniendo en peligro la seguridad alimentaria de la región. Sin embargo, diez años más tarde, como si se tratara de una película de zombies, el proyecto de la represa de El Quimbo fue resucitado y viabilizado forzosamente por el gobierno del entonces presidente Álvaro Uribe. No obstante, han sido tan numerosas y evidentes las excepciones que se han concedido a favor de EMGESA, que hasta ahora todavía sigue en duda la legalidad de la mega-represa.

Para el año 2012, los graves impactos previstos de la construcción de la represa se estaban convirtiendo en realidad. Fue tanto así que una coalición de residentes y representantes de organizaciones de la sociedad civil y de algunos organismos gubernamentales, declaró una crisis humanitaria en el Huila. Casi 1.500 personas habían sido desalojadas para dar paso a la represa, muchas por la fuerza y sin recurrir a compensación. El proyecto ha destruido miles de hectáreas de las tierras más ricas para la agricultura de la región y ha llevado a las familias a una situación de vulnerabilidad económica e inseguridad alimentaria.

En términos ambientales, el daño es sencillamente devastador. El proyecto no solo inunda parte de una Reserva Amazónica, sino también significa un desastre climático. El incumplimiento por parte de Emgesa de las regulaciones para retirar la biomasa del interior del embalse lo ha convertido en una bomba de tiempo de metano debido a la descomposición de la vegetación que quedó bajo el agua. El metano, como gas de efecto invernadero (GEI), es 86 vecesmás potente que el dióxido de carbono  en el corto plazo.

Siguiendo un clásico comportamiento corporativo, el programa de radio y el periódico difundidos localmente por EMGESA, pintan un cuadro muy diferente de El Quimbo, prometiendo grandes mejoras en el bienestar de la población a través de la provisión de energía a la red nacional. Sin embargo, no se tiene que indagar mucho en los hechos  para entender que el propósito del proyecto nunca fue servir a la población. Colombia ya genera más energía de la que consume, y la visión  de “desarrollo” del Presidente Santos depende de la expansión del extractivismo. En lugar de conectar a más familias a la red, la energía de El Quimbo está destinada a satisfacer las demandas energéticas tanto del mercado de exportación como de nuevos proyectos de minería y fracking (explotación de hidrocarburos mediante la fractura hidráulica) en el país. Aunque los grandes proyectos hidroeléctricos a menudo se venden como energía limpia y verde, esto es peligrosamente engañoso cuando sus verdaderos beneficiarios son multinacionales extractivistas como Drummond, Pacific Rubiales y Anglogold Ashanti.

Resistencia local

La población del departamento de Huila toma las calles. Fotografia del autor. Todos los derechos reservados.

Los marcos nacionales diseñados para defender los derechos humanos, incluyendo la propia Constitución de Colombia, han fallado de manera sistemática a la hora de proteger a los que viven bajo la sombra de la mega-represa. Los acuerdos internacionales, como los ratificados por Colombia en la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) de las Naciones Unidas, tampoco sirvieron de nada  frente a los intereses privados de ENEL. Dado el fracaso de las salvaguardas nacionales e internacionales, las comunidades locales no tuvieron más remedio que ejercer sus derechos democráticos mediante la organización local. La Asociación de los Afectados por el Proyecto Hidroeléctrico de El Quimbo (ASOQUIMBO) es una organización creada en 2009 y formada por campesinos, pescadores, académicos, trabajadores y familias locales. De acuerdo a Elsa Ardilla, ex presidenta de la asociación, las comunidades no tuvieron  más remedio que actuar cuando se puso en evidencia de que los procesos de “consulta” eran una mera formalidad, y que no estaban diseñados realmente para tener en cuenta la opinión de la población local. Ardilla, al igual que Dussán, enfrenta cargos criminales impulsados por EMGESA.

Durante los últimos tres años, ASOQUIMBO ha combinado tácticas de acción directa, como movilizaciones públicas  y huelgas regionales, además de otras iniciativas con enfoques más institucionales, incluyendo una intervención en la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.

A pesar de esta oposición, la represa de El Quimbo comenzó a inundar las tierras agrícolas más ricas de la región en junio de 2015, y comenzó a generar su lucrativa producción de energía en noviembre de 2015, con un atraso de un año y medio y 256 millones de dólares por encima del presupuesto original.

Aunque ASOQUIMBO no ha logrado bloquear la construcción de la represa, ha tenido éxito en la movilización de amplios sectores sociales contra nuevos proyectos extractivos en la región. Este esfuerzo ha logrado numerosos éxitos, incluyendo la elección de un candidato opositor a la construcción de nuevas represas como nuevo gobernador del Departamento de Huila en las elecciones regionales de  finales de 2015. También se ha creado una Mesa sobre Ambiente, Agua y Territorio, con el fin de replantear la política minero energética en favor de la región, que no afecte medio ambiente.

Miller Dussán ha estado a la vanguardia de este esfuerzo. Ha sido portavoz, presidente y uno de los impulsores de ASOQUIMBO desde su creación en 2009. Pero este éxito en la organización local le está costando un alto precio. Junto a Elsa Ardilla, Miller Dussán enfrenta cargos que pueden llevarlo a prisión durante 4 años. Según Dussán, estos cargos se remontan a una movilización llevada adelante en enero de 2012, y que fue organizada por una amplia gama de sectores sociales de la región afectada -no sólo ASOQUIMBO- para protestar por los daños causados en un puente local por parte de EMGESA.

Dussán también se enfrenta a un segundo proceso, supuestamente por ser autor  intelectual de promover invasiones de tierras en localidades de EMGESA, un cargo que lleva una sentencia de hasta de 8 años. Según la defensa de Dussán, estos cargos se remiten a las ocupaciones de las propias tierras por parte de comunidades campesinas en 2013, como parte de una protesta en contra del desplazamiento forzado y con el fin de exigir una justa compensación de la corporación.

Esta posibilidad de ser condenado – sumando los dos procesos – a una pena de hasta doce años de prisión, significan una dura amenaza en contra Miller Dussán y por consiguiente en contra de ASOQUIMBO.

Criminalización de la protesta social como estrategia corporativa

Tomando acciones con los miembros afectados de la comunidad. Fotografia del autor. Todos los derechos reservados.

La persecución de EMGESA a Dussán por medio de los tribunales está provocando en él y en su familia altos niveles de estrés y preocupación personal. Sin embargo, el líder de la resistencia tiene claro de que esto va mucho más allá de él. “La estrategia de EMGESA es parar la resistencia, porque ahora se está levantando todo el departamento (del Huila) en contra de todas la represas, en contra del fracking”, afirma.

En efecto, cada vez más personas en toda la región están relacionando cada uno de los megaproyectos individuales con el modelo extractivista general del que forman parte. Además de las protestas territoriales en contra de la represa de El Quimbo, se han producido varias movilizaciones regionales y jornadas de acción en contra de otros proyectos extractivos, como la minería y el  fracking, siendo una de las más grandes una reciente movilización llevada adelante el 2016, y que contó con la participación de más de 8000 personas en Pitalito Garzón y Neiva, Huila.

El abogado de Dussán, Germán Romero, también considera que la criminalización de la protesta social es una estrategia diseñada deliberante para acallar la resistencia. De acuerdo a Romero “En Colombia existe una práctica recurrente de las empresas […] que se asocian directamente con grupos de abogados poderosos y con sectores de poder tanto político como económico […] que buscan afectar directamente el trabajo de liderazgo social de los defensores del medio ambiente y de los derechos humanos.  Tratan de romper las organizaciones […] fundamentalmente es una estrategia de terror, de miedo y de represión , y en Colombia las empresas han ido cada vez más lejos, cuando se sienten acorraladas y presionadas por parte de los liderazgos sociales y de defensa de los derechos humanos.”

El alcance del efecto paralizante sobre la protesta social tiene matices particulares en el contexto de Colombia, un país con una de las tasas de desplazamiento interno y asesinatos de defensores medioambientales más altas del mundo. Los riesgos para los líderes sociales prominentes van mucho más allá de los ataques a su reputación pública, o incluso a su libertad. Elevar el perfil público de estos líderes, y asociarlos con la criminalidad y la delincuencia, también implica riesgos a su seguridad. Según el Alto Comisionado de los Derechos Humanos de la ONU, 57 líderes sociales fueron asesinados entre enero y noviembre de 2016 en Colombia. Esa es una tasa de más de un asesinato por semana. Muchas de las víctimas eran líderes sociales que defendían sus territorios de los proyectos extractivos.

Dussán ha planteado estas cuestiones en una entrevista. “Todo esto tiene consecuencias aquí en Colombia para la seguridad personal. La gente empieza a decir que eres un criminal. Si alguien decidiera matarme, la gente diría que lo mataron porque era un criminal”, afirma.

A pesar de los peligros, la sociedad civil en el departamento de Huila ha tomado una posición firme en apoyo a Dussán. Instituciones que van desde el consejo del Municipio de Neiva hasta la Asociación de Profesores Universitarios (ASPU-HUILA) de la Universidad del Sur de Colombia se han manifestado públicamente en su defensa, pidiendo que se detengan los “cargos injustos e irregulares que se están imputando en contra de él por la multinacional EMGESA”.

Justicia verdadera: Responsabilizar a las empresas transnacionales

Aunque las luchas en defensa del territorio y el clima se dan dentro de las comunidades, éstas están lejos de ser “locales”. La lucha de ASOQUIMBO en Colombia, la del Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH)  al que pertenecía Berta Cáceres, y muchas otras, representan el frente de la resistencia hacia una incursión internacional que busca saquear los recursos en América Latina y el Sur Global. Los actores corporativos que dirigen este asalto están causando daños irreparables en las culturas, ecosistemas y en el clima. Los beneficios de estas incursiones -los minerales, los cultivos, la apropiación de la tierra y el agua, los combustibles fósiles- sirven para financiar los estilos de vida y de consumo suntuosos de una minoría enriquecida en el mundo, que contrastan con el de las personas que resisten a dichos  asaltos.

El 6 de febrero, Miller Dussán y Elsa Ardilla volverán al banquillo para enfrentarse a los cargos de ENEL-EMGESA. Su libertad y seguridad personal están en juego como resultado de estos intentos por reprimir su trabajo en defensa de sus comunidades.

El caso de Dussán ilustra claramente el desequilibrio de poder en las luchas por la tierra y la justicia ambiental. También nos muestran dos importantes  roles que la solidaridad internacional puede asumir.

La primera es profundizar  nuestra comprensión colectiva de la persecución judicial y la criminalización de la protesta como una de las muchas estrategias corporativas que están siendo utilizadas  para socavar la resistencia de las comunidades. En las propias palabras de Dussán “si me meten en prisión, otros van a dejar de salir a protestar”.

La segunda es llevar las luchas de las comunidades locales a los lugares en donde se encuentra el poder de quienes más se benefician. La distancia y el anonimato son factores que permiten a corporaciones como ENEL disociarse de estos casos y mostrarse como corporaciones responsables en sus países de origen. En ese sentido, un papel esencial que debe jugar la solidaridad internacional es el de cerrar esa brecha y eliminar el anonimato de las corporaciones.

Para empezar, los nombres de aquellas personas que están siendo perseguidas mediante procesos judiciales en  tribunales  y cuya sangre está siendo derramada por la incesante búsqueda de materias primas baratas por parte de las multinacionales, tienen que ser confrontados públicamente a los directores corporativos, como Francesco Starace de ENEL.

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How One Urban Activist Community in Bolivia Thrives on ‘Abundance For Everybody’ http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/how-one-urban-activist-community-in-bolivia-thrives-on-abundance-for-everybody/ Thu, 07 Jul 2016 10:04:06 +0000 http://democracyctr.org/?p=7789 ]]> By Sian Cowman. Originally published by Resilience.org.

La Casa de los Ningunos (The Nobodies’ House) is tucked away at the top of a flight of 39 steps on a steep cobbled street in the heart of the world’s highest capital: La Paz, Bolivia. The project brings together the dreams of a group of young people in an experimental community.

The name Los Ningunos comes from the poem Los Nadies by Eduardo Galeano – Los Ningunos are the have-nots, those seen as ‘nobodies’ by society at large. This community is re-imagining economic and social relations to help build a world where the ‘nobodies’ are no longer marginalized.

So many of our relationships are driven by money, devoid of generosity or love – shopping in huge supermarkets with automated checkouts, working at jobs we don’t love nor believe in, eating our meals surrounded by strangers as we rush to the next task. These dynamics are part of our daily lives, but are caused by how our society is structured. The Casa is a glimpse into a different vision and approach – one that puts people and happiness first, seeks to live more in balance with the earth, and to address the root causes of the climate crisis.

Three people permanently live in the house right now, and there are many more people who consider themselves part of the community and regularly work in the house. Quoted here are Ángela, Ariel (known as Apniuq), Fabrizio, Gadir, and Yumey, educated urban activists in their late twenties and early thirties who have all worked in fields related to environmental and social justice.

The experiment of the Casa offers us three fundamental lessons on how to build people-driven alternatives to a money-driven society: the power of food, the subversiveness of community, and what a local economy looks like when profit isn’t the main driver.

The Power of Food

It’s Thursday morning in the Casa de los Ningunos, and the community is exploring its full potential to reach out to their neighbors. Everyone is gearing up for the weekly Comida Consciente (Conscious Food) lunch – a locally-sourced, natural, vegetarian meal prepared for up to 80 people.

A team of Comida Consciente chefs occupy the large, well-equipped kitchen all morning; you can hear the music and laughter coming from the open windows. Members of the community prepare tables and chairs for the guests in the Casa’s ample indoor shared space and out in the garden.

A recent lunch featured a ‘conscious’ version of fast food – vegetarian, homemade burgers and oven-baked fries. Another meal was cooked in a solar oven. Many dishes feature sabores ancestrales – ancestral flavors – Bolivian traditional foods that have been losing ground to fried chicken and rice, such as quinoa, cassava, corn, fava beans, and plantain.

They also serve ‘forgotten fruits’ such as uchuva (cape gooseberry or goldenberry), pomegranates, guava, and pacay (ice-cream bean). Fruits or grains are made into natural drinkssweetened with chancaca, raw unrefined cane sugar.

At the Casa, the Comida Consciente lunches open up discussion amongst attendees about how to make healthy and environmentally wise food choices and how our food choices are part of the causes and consequences of the climate crisis.

And the issue is not just about how we consume food but also about completing the circle by taking back power over producing our own food. The Casa has its own vegetable garden and holds weekly community work sessions called Manos a la Tierra (Hands to the Earth). Yumey leads this activity, and for her it is a powerful way to create a deep awareness of where our food really comes from: “When you do this work, only then do you value producers, people in the countryside, who live from this. We pay so little for something that takes so much work…For me, working with the land is a way of healing, to raise people’s awareness. They understand much better where food comes from.”

From the first lunch three years ago attended by only a few people to today’s long queue every Thursday, the power of food to reach out to people is evident, as Apniuq notes, “It’s the issue of food, because all of us eat. You can use food as a tool to spread ideas. Eating is a basic need of the human being.” And the idea of Comida Consciente has spread – there are now weekly lunches in other Bolivian cities.

The Subversiveness of Community

The people who come to Comida Consciente might otherwise grab a bite in a restaurant where they don’t know where the food comes from, don’t know any of the people who cooked the meal, and don’t know anyone else they’re eating with. In contrast, the communal lunch and the many other events at the Casa are about connecting people, about sharing, and about making lifestyle choices that take other people into account.

Activities in the Casa range from workshops around sustainability, documentary screenings, activist meetings, barter and exchange markets, a gratiferia (a ‘free market’ – bring what you want, take what you want), local food markets, theatre rehearsal, and yoga and dance classes. These events draw in diverse attendees for diverse purposes, but a common thread between them all is the welcome people receive in the Casa, a welcome to be part of the community.

Every week many young people come to the Casa, some are travelers passing through, some are regular helpers. But they all support the Casa with their work, drawn by the magnetism of community – they feel connection with others, a sense of being part of something bigger, in a way they don’t in their job, their school, maybe even their family. And they will leave with a deep question inside: why doesn’t it feel like this always?

For Angela, the key is about transforming the nature of the relationships: “Community is about love. When you work with people you love the work has a different meaning….here we are building different relationships; the intention is very important. After this experience I couldn’t work another way.”

The idea of building different ways of working together through community was not present when the project first started over three years ago. These concepts were integrated after two members of the Casa travelled to Portugal to visit the Tamera community. They came back from that experience enthused with the idea of community as way of building alternatives to the causes of climate change. Tamera was originally founded in order to develop ‘a non-violent life model for cooperation between human beings, animals and nature.’ The idea is that the tangible practical work of living sustainably goes hand in hand with the intangible, more internal work of changing societal structures within ourselves.

One of these entrenched societal structures is the favoring of the individual over the collective. Apniuq explains, “In the wide view, of global community, it’s about thinking about the common good over your own personal gain. This doesn’t mean I let go of my individuality.”

This is the subversiveness of community: the power that we have against societal structures which focus solely on money and personal gain is our ability to create alternatives which draw people in. ‘Alternatives’ are not just about creating different options; they’re a way of taking power away from the status quo and slowly undermining it. In a world where individualism is encouraged and rewarded, working in community does just that. It creates networks of support between people that strengthens us beyond anything money in the bank can do – being able to fulfill our needs through collaboration with others.

A Local Economy Not Solely Driven by Profit

On any given day, those who contribute to the Casa are working away at all the jobs that need to be done for the project to function: cleaning, working in the veggie garden, cooking, doing admin work on the computer, managing the planning process for Comida Consciente Thursdays, or organizing workshops or classes in the Casa’s large sala.

One of the goals of the Casa de los Ningunos is to find new ways of shaping economic relations, which means everyone’s work should be valued. Those who live in the Casa earn Bolivia’s minimum wage of around $240 per month, no matter what they ‘do’.

The wage isn’t high, but as Ángela explains it is enough because: “I don’t have to pay rent, I don’t have to pay internet, water, electricity, all of that is included. In that sense I earn well, I don’t need more. The idea of the Casa has never been to profit.”

While developing an alternative economy, the Casa has no choice but to operate with money in order to pay the bills (members are buying the house with payments over time). But a big part of their economic ethos has to do with living and working in community: the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocity is a moneyless exchange that goes beyond barter – it is giving for the common good and trusting that you will receive in return, also known as the gift economy. It’s not about expecting an immediate exchange.

Recently the Casa ran a three day workshop on regenerative sustainability. Even though the 40 participants paid to attend the workshop, the Casa itself did not make any profit -the money went to cover the costs of the facilitators and Comida Consciente meals for participants. But as the workshop covered natural building and soil enrichment techniques, the Casa got a new handmade abode and timber structure to use as a food kiosk, and a newly fertilized vegetable bed, additions to the project that go beyond profit.

And while participants gave a monetary retribution for the workshop, they gained more than just the knowledge from attending a class. They left the Casa with a deep sense of connection to others – a knowing that there are others who share similar visions for a different world. As one participant at the workshop, Lis, said: “I feel that the dynamics in the workshop left people with something inside them, not just in their heads, but in their hearts.”

As Fabrizio explains, the idea of the reciprocity economy is to build networks that are resilient to crises: “One big group can help along many small groups, and when these small groups grow, they will also be able to help along many other small groups, so the functionality of the reciprocity economy is to weave networks.” This is precisely what events like the sustainability workshop do, weave networks and connections between people.

Community Values bring Wellbeing, and Challenges

It’s not a coincidence that the Casa exists in Bolivia. Bolivia is a country hotwired by its culture to live in community through values such as reciprocity. For example, in rural indigenous communities, land is traditionally held collectively and the cultivation of crops is shared. Many of these community practices are founded in the concept of Vivir Bien, “living well”, an indigenous philosophy that has now become known globally. The basis of Vivir Bien is that our wellbeing is not measured by the accumulation of material goods, but about fulfilment of our material, spiritual and emotional needs in a way that is balance with others’ needs and with the earth. In many ways the Casa is a modern urban version of long-standing Bolivian community principles.

Of course, the community at the Casa is not without substantial challenges. The Casa has to balance developing alternative economic relations such as reciprocity while also generating conventional income. They do this by taking on Comida Consciente catering contracts outside the Casa, and they receive a grant from a friend of the project who administrates a foundation. While this could be seen as a contradiction to their reciprocal values, it reminds us that building these kinds of alternatives is a process, and what’s important is that the process is moving in the right direction. Projects like the Casa often have no choice at the beginning but to have one foot in the system, and one foot in the alternative. The point is to be constantly seeking to shift the balance away from the status quo.

The status quo – a society based on profit and competition – has led us to this point of urgent climate crisis. “If we look at climate change as a consequence of structural problems, then we have to go to the root of the structures, step by step. And this project for me has been a very important step towards that root,” says Gadir.

To move towards an alternative to the status quo, we need people to live out these ideas to show their desirability and viability and draw others in, like at the Casa. It’s not about everyone being so inspired by the Casa that they decide to live in community. It’s about taking the important elements: valuing relationships and connections with others as a way of fulfilling our needs, and working with others in a collaboration that’s not based on money, and integrating them into our daily lives.

Operating with reciprocal values in a capitalist economy brings inevitable challenges and compromises. Yet the Ningunos have persevered, and the work they are doing is opening up the cracks and letting the light in – not only about the injustices of the status quo, but about the possibility of changing it. And while living in a capital city can provoke more compromise, it can also provide more opportunities to show more people that a different way of living and relating is, indeed, possible.

Explore the microsite: ‘Abundance for Everybody’

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One woman’s victory against a mining giant in Peru http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/one-womans-victory-against-a-mining-giant-in-peru/ http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/one-womans-victory-against-a-mining-giant-in-peru/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:09:08 +0000 http://democracyctr.org/?p=7776 ]]> Máxima Acuña has just won the Goldman Prize for her resistance against a gold mine – but why are women’s bodies on the frontlines of resistance to extractivism?

By Sian Cowman. Originally published in New Internationalist

Este artículo también se publicó en español en SubVersiones.org

Máxima Acuña, a farmer from Peru’s northern highlands, recently won the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize. NC under a Creative Commons Licence

 

Máxima Acuña, a farmer from Peru’s northern highlands, recently won the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for her resistance against the mining consortium Yanacocha in Cajamarca, Peru.

At the prize acceptance ceremony in San Francisco on 18 April, in lieu of a speech Máxima sang her story: ‘Because I defend my lakes, they want to take my life.’

Yanacocha is the largest gold mine in Latin America and fourth largest in the world, operating since 1993. The mine is now owned by the USNewmont Mining Corporation, a Peruvian mining company, and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

Gold mining causes ‘toxic mine drainage’ – when you break up rock that’s been underground for a long time chemical reactions cause it to release toxic metals and acids. And at Yanacocha cyanide-laced water is usedto separate the gold from the rock.

Locals have been complaining for years of contaminated water and the disappearance of fish in the rivers, lakes and streams. Reinhard Seifert, an environmental engineer who spent years investigating the effects of the Yanacocha mine on the area’s water quality found traces of lead, arsenic, cyanide and mercury in the drinking water, linked to the rising rates of gastrointestinal cancer amongst residents of Cajamarca.

One Woman’s Story of Resistance

In 2011, Yanacocha bought up lands in Cajamarca in order to expand their operations into a new mine, Conga. Yanacocha claims legal ownership of Máxima’s land while Máxima says she never sold any of her land to the company, and the land deeds bear her name.

Quoted in these pages in 2012, Máxima said: ‘I may be poor. I may be illiterate, but I know that our mountain lakes are our real treasure… Are we expected to sacrifice our water and our land so that the Yanacocha people can take gold back to their country? Are we supposed to sit quietly and just let them poison our land and water?’

The Conga mine had plans to dry up five lakes, including the one that Máxima’s land borders. It became the highest profile environmental conflict in Peru amongst an estimated 200 such conflicts in 2012, with several deaths of defenders at the hands of the police.

In 2012, Yanacocha sued Máxima and her family for alleged illegal occupation of their own land, and the court ruled in Yanacocha’s favour. The judge sentenced four members of the family to suspended jail sentences, which were then overturned in December 2014 with a verdict that saw Máxima victorious against Yanacocha’s claim to her land.

The family had already suffered numerous eviction attempts and physical violence on their property, and after the 2014 verdict things intensified. On 3 February 2015, agents from the Peruvian police special operations division and private security forces destroyed parts of Máxima’s house that were undergoing construction. One year later, and the family was still suffering intimidation: on 5 February 2016 Máxima’s home was again stormed by security forces, this time to destroy her crop of potatoes.

But since then, the company has said ‘We do not anticipate development of Conga for the foreseeable future,’ a statement which has been hailed as a victory for Máxima and those who are resisting Conga.

What Does Extractivism Mean In Latin America?

Sadly, this story is not unique to Cajamarca. Mining for minerals such as gold, silver and copper is common across the continent – Latin America consistently tops the global list for mining exploration, and in 2014 had one of the largest shares of total global exploration budget, at over 26 per cent. Fossil fuel extraction shows a similar picture. In 2011, the Latin American Energy Organization released figures that placed Latin America as the region with the second largest oil reserves after the Middle East, with 20 per cent of global reserves.

This kind of mining and fossil fuel exploitation is referred to as extractivism in Latin American contexts. It is the base of many Latin American neoliberal economies such as in Peru and Colombia. In countries like Ecuador and Bolivia, it’s referred to as neo-extractivism – when government taxes from extractive activities are invested into health and education programs.

But the meaning of extractivism is not just about extraction: it is also about the conditions under which extraction takes place, and in whose interests. In Latin America, the conditions are often situated within a rural and/or indigenous context. This means communities in these areas live principally off the land and are subject to the forces of nature to access water and grow crops, forces of nature that become distorted by extractive activities and ever more sharpened by climate change impacts.

Why Does Extractivism Affect Women More?

Because of socially assigned gender roles, women are often the principal caregivers of the family – responsible for growing or providing food – in the kinds of community contexts where extractivism usually takes place. And so when water is contaminated and/or scarcer, women feel the negative impacts more. The declaration from the 2014 Gathering of Women against Extractivism and Climate Change in Ecuador said that ‘the impacts of extractive activities alter the cycle of the reproduction of life, whose regeneration falls on the shoulders of women.’ The altering of natural cycles, such as the contamination of water near the Yanacocha mine, manifests as more work in women’s lives.

The impacts of extractivism on women not only include an increased burden to the work women do to provide food and water to their families, but permeate deep into the social fabric of communities. At the gathering on extractivism in Ecuador, women gave testimonies: ‘When the mining and fossil fuel companies come to our territories they cause huge problems, they break the social weave and replace it with conflict in families, division in the communities, and confrontation between us.’

In these situations, the gendered divisions of labour show up in starker relief as men take on jobs in the industry. The local economy now revolves more around the masculinized wage labour in the mine and reduces importance of the shared economy of caring for the practical and emotional needs of the community. The existing gender divide of labour creates power imbalances, worsened by extractivism: as ‘women’s work’ mostly goes unpaid, the waged work in the mine that men can access lends increased power to men’s voices in the community (though they also suffer from extractivism in a dangerous, unhealthy, exploitative workplace).

Extractivism breaks the social fabric of communities in other, more violent, ways. As respected Uruguayan environmental analyst Eduardo Gudynas writes: ‘There is no such thing as neutral or inoffensive extractivism…Violence is always present in one way or another, ending up affecting above all the weakest, the local communities, especially campesino small farmers and indigenous groups.’

The violence permeates the entire community, but affects women particularly because of gender-based violence. Melissa Wong Oveido, a representative of the Latin American Union of Women (ULAM, a regional network of women affected by extractive activities and policies), quoted in El País said:

‘In Latin America psychological, physical and environmental violence against indigenous, rural and Afro-descendent women on the part of extractive industries is on the rise. Women are dispossessed of their lands; they are victims of sexual abuse and trafficking.’ 

Rising Up In Resistance

With the upswing in extractive projects in Latin America and its negative impacts on local communities there’s been a corresponding rise in socio-environmental conflict on the continent. Resisting extractive projects is a dangerous business, and more land and environmental defenders died in 2014 in Latin America than anywhere else in the world, with 88 out of 114 total recorded deaths.

More and more women are joining and leading resistance movements: and as women, this comes with certain risks linked to their gender. In a comprehensive 2015 report (PDF) on criminalization of women environmental defenders in the Americas, the authors state that:

‘In all of the cases presented women suffered an attack linked to their gender: rape threats, public shaming linked to sex and sexuality, harassment of several types, and infamies against their honour. These attacks prevent women from developing their activism in surroundings favourable to the rights of people, of territory, and of nature.’

It might not be immediately apparent why the intimidation in Máxima’s case is particular to her being a woman. But when women resist extractivism, they become easier targets for retaliation by those in power. For example, they are less likely than men to have the resources to deal with court cases – as Máxima herself has said, she is illiterate. For a woman who doesn’t have the title deed to her land, as Máxima has, the outcome is likely to be dispossession. And much of the intimidation that Máxima has suffered focused on destruction to her home and crops – women’s traditional domain, and Máxima’s source of income.

Violence Against Women Is Linked To Violence Against The Earth

Women feel negative impacts of extractivism more because of their roles as caregivers. But there are more subtleties at play here: why are women obliged to take care of the family, the home, the sick, and children? Similarly, why is the earth obliged to be a provider of ‘environmental services’; to give up its buried riches to profit transnationals? The logic of exploitation of women’s work and of the earth is the same: they are resources to be profited from. The struggles of women to free themselves from the cycle of unpaid labour as caregivers are linked to the struggles to protect the earth from desperate over-exploitation.

There is another subtlety. Extractivism is inherently violent, and tears not only at the earth but at the fabric of whole communities. Women already experience everyday gender-based violence, which is exacerbated by extractivism with impacts such as sexual harassment from migrant workers. But when women resist in their communities, the violence they already face increases: it is used as a tactic against them.

Máxima’s refusal to bow to the intimidation she faces because of her struggle only increased the violence against her. But she, like so many women, is not going to give up the fight. Máxima’s connection to her land underlies her decision to fight the corporation. As she said to El País: ‘I won’t be quiet. I know they’ll come after me and they’re going to disappear me. But on the land I was born and on the land I’ll die.’

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For Indigenous Peoples, Megadams Are ‘Worse than Colonization’ http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/news/for-indigenous-peoples-megadams-are-worse-than-colonization/ Mon, 14 Mar 2016 16:24:19 +0000 http://democracyctr.org/?p=7750 ]]> These mega-projects expropriate land, spoil environments, and pollute democracies. Berta Cáceres gave her life resisting them.

By Philippa de Boissière and Sian Cowman. Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus.

COPINH participating in a march against a U.S. military base in Palmerola, Honduras, 2011. (Photo: Felipe Canova / Flickr)

Early in the morning of March 3, Berta Cáceres was assassinated as she slept.

A world-renowned environmental activist, Berta had been a driving force in protecting the lands and waters of rural communities in Honduras. Among the many victories of the organization she founded was the delay of a megadam project on the Gualcarque River that could be disastrous for the indigenous Lenca people living there.

Berta is not alone, nor is her story unique to Honduras. Across the Global South, mega hydroelectric projects are expanding — driven by governments and multinationals as a source of cheap energy, and branded by international institutions as a solution to poverty and the climate crisis.

But despite claims that they create clean energy, dams often have devastating impacts. They can displace communities, destroy the local social fabric and spiritual ties to land, lead to privatization of land and water, and generate food insecurity. Often used to power mining and fossil fuel extraction, they’re part of a system that damages the ecosystem and advances climate change.

Increasingly, communities throughout Latin America have been resisting these projects. Some have succeeded in protecting their territories in the face of violent repression. Yet when these groups go so far as to speak out about the root causes of the projects — corporate greed, unfettered capitalism, political impunity — they, like Berta, may be targeted and killed.

Megadams and Neoliberalism

International development banks and transnational corporations are pushing an expansion of mega­hydroelectric dams at a rate never seen before. In Honduras, the Agua Zarca dam that Berta fought against is far from the only project: The Lenca people alone are facing the prospect of 17 dams being imposed within their territories.

This picture is being replicated across the region. In Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos’ master plan for the strategic use of the Magdalena River calls for adding 11 to ­15 megadams to those already in operation. In Peru, former President Alan Garcia made the construction of 20 megadams along the Marañon River into a national priority with the signing of a single decree in 2011.

Overall, 829 hydroelectric projects were approved in South America during 2014, with a total investment of $22 billion.

The power and resource grab going on throughout Latin America has roots stretching back to Spanish colonization. The river Gualcarque — with its deep spiritual significance for the Lenca people — was famously defended against Spanish invaders by indigenous resistance leader and hero, El Lempira. Although the form has evolved, the struggle against powerful foreign forces in the region has continued to this day.

Conquering not with swords and horses but with a ruse of “corporate social responsibility” and market-based mechanisms, the plunderers of the 21st century are bolstered by a deepening and globalized neoliberal agenda. The package of privatizations, deregulations, and loosening of restrictions on trade and finance prescribed under the “Washington Consensus” for global trade — widely implemented by institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the 1990s — tipped the balance of power towards the interests of corporate global elites.

In Honduras, market-oriented principles reached a new extreme following the U.S.-backedmilitary coup in 2009. The new de facto government immediately overhauled Honduras’ legal frameworks in a bid to create favorable conditions for foreign investment. In practice, the sweeping changes — ranging from enforcing eminent domain to repealing laws preventing the construction of dams in protected areas — were intended to facilitate the rapid and cheap transfer of the country’s natural wealth into global markets.

Berta was highly critical of the coup and of the subsequent handover of the country’s wealth. “There are a projected 300 hydroelectric projects planned,” she said in a 2015 interview with El Tecolote. “We are a small country with many riches. To give 30 percent of the territory to the transnational mining companies is worse than the colonization of 500 years ago. And, they do it with impunity.”

The explosion in the number of megadams under construction in Latin America follows a decade-long hiatus in the World Bank’s hydroelectric strategy — a pause that was prompted by social protests.

After being rebranded as a “clean energy” solution to the climate crisis, however — a position amplified by industry representatives at the Paris climate talks last December — the megadam staged its comeback. Taking advantage of the new business opportunities created to respond to the climate crisis, corporations are now being effectively bankrolled by UN-sponsored market solutions such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

But mega hydroelectric projects are anything but clean. In tropical regions like Honduras, they are a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane. Moreover, mega hydroelectric facilitates the extraction of fossil fuels, such as coal and fracked gas, as well as other minerals. In Peru, as in Colombia and Brazil, mega hydroelectric dams are being brought online with the express intention of generating cheap energy for extractive industries.

This unprecedented expansion of mega hydroelectric power is increasingly generating resistance. Berta’s fight against dams is being repeated in community after community in Latin America.

Resistance in Rio Blanco

To defend the territorial rights of indigenous and campesino people against logging and other extractive projects, Berta cofounded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH. For over 20 years, COPINH has been a major player in resisting Agua Zarca, and in 2015 Berta was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her role in that effort.

COPINH and local communities have pursued formal routes of resistance against the dam. Yet their calls for prior, free, and informed consent as required by international law have not been heard. Cases brought to the Honduran courts denouncing the illegality of the dam were also not pursued. The imbalance of power between the industry and local communities is evident: While Agua Zarca’s backers benefit from police protection, the communities’ legal cases against the dam lapse. In these situations — a story repeated throughout Latin America — affected communities are left with little choice but to take direct action.

In 2013, defying a military lockdown of the area, the Rio Blanco community took a stand. They maintained a road blockade that prevented machinery from reaching the dam site for over a year.

In clashes with police and paramilitary guards hired by the corporation, Tómas Garcia was shot several times at close range by a soldier. Garcia died instantly, and his son was left injured. The activist’s assassination brought the number of deaths suffered by defenders against the Agua Zarca project to three.

In a video made for the Goldman Prize ceremony, Berta explained how Garcia’s death prompted increased local resistance during that conflict. The resistance prompted Chinese Sinohydro, the largest dam builder in the world, to pull out of the project. That accomplishment “cost us in blood,” Berta said. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation also pulled its investment from Agua Zarca.

This was a temporary victory, however, because threats against the defenders failed to abate. In an interview with El Universo newspaper in 2015, Berta said: “I never doubted I would continue the struggle despite the threats; they even gave me more resolve. Today we are receiving death threats not only against me, but against other compañeros.”

With Latin America being the most dangerous region in the world for environmental defenders, Honduras tops the list.

Berta Cáceres founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. (Photo: Goldman Environment Prize)

 

Challenging the Powerful

Berta’s resolve to continue resisting led to her voice being prominent on the international stage. In conversation with the Guardian in 2015, Berta asserted:

“The political, economic, and social situation in Honduras is getting worse, and there is an imposition of a project of domination, of violent oppression, of militarization, of violation of human rights, of transnationalization, of the turning over of the riches and sovereignty of the land to corporate capital, for it to privatize energy, the rivers, the land; for mining exploitation; for the creation of development zones.”

Publicly calling out the dirty politics, human rights abuses, impunity, and systemic drivers behind the dam made her even more of a threat to the powerful actors involved. Her supporters have no doubt that’s what led to her death.

“We know very well who murdered her,” COPINH said in a statement on March 3. Speaking of the Honduran government, corporations, and financial institutions backing the Agua Zarca dam, COPINH wrote, “their hands are stained with indigenous blood and with the blood of the Lenca people.” In a statement, her family concurred: “Her assassination is an attempt to end the struggle of the Lenca people against exploitation and dispossession of their territories.”

The repression in Honduras is the kind of backlash to resistance all local communities face as extractivism and mega hydro expands across Latin America.

Some examples will show the scope of these killings.

Before the 2014 climate talks in Lima, Peru, four indigenous environmental defenders in the Amazon were murdered for protecting their territory from illegal logging. “Edwin Chota had received numerous death threats for his resistance to the criminal gangs who were gutting his community’s forests,” reports Global Witness, “but his appeals to the authorities were ignored.” The loggers are reputed to have connections to the government.

Similarly, indigenous tribes living in the area of the Belo Monte megadam in Brazil have been resisting the dam for decades. They’ve suffered threats of imprisonment, police violence and militarization of the area, killings of defenders, and sexual abuse. There have been a number of legal cases made against the dam that have gone nowhere.

And the megadam El Quimbo in Colombia has provoked strong resistance from local communities — who in response have faced assaults and arrests at protests, and violent evictionsfrom their homes.

Accompanied by militarization, privatization of land and water, violence, and power imbalances in the judicial system, megadams are a symptom of a new form of colonization. The resistors who have died throughout Latin America have been doing the same thing Berta did: challenging the powerful.

The Fight Continues

Opposition to dams isn’t only taking place in dispersed communities. It’s also spurred a global movement.

The effort officially began 19 years ago. On March 14, 1997, representatives of affected peoples from 20 countries assembled in Curitiba, Brazil to take part in the first International Meeting of People Affected by Dams. Recognizing a common struggle — one that transcended different economic and political contexts — activists decided that the Brazilian Day of Struggles Against Dams would be globalized. And so was born the International Day of Action for Rivers and Against Dams, held annually on March 14.

This new international platform aimed to make visible and to connect the diverse struggles taking place across the globe to protect rivers and the communities that depend upon them. But for those losing their homes and sovereignty to megadam expansion, these battles are fought not once a year, but on a daily basis.

The need for international action against megadams has been underscored by Berta Cáceres’ murder. Following her example, there’s an urgent need for global activists to continuously and vociferously denounce the mega hydroelectric dam complex — calling it out as a false solution to the climate crisis that it’s helping to drive. Berta not only put her body on the line to protect the rivers, lands, and communities she felt a part of. She also went beyond her own community struggle, relentlessly shining a light on the global dynamics of power that lay behind local injustices.

Like transnational corporations, resistance movements are strongest when they connect beyond fenceline struggles. Berta’s strength of resistance and international perspective posed a threat to a development paradigm based on the enrichment of global elites — so much so that the forces pushing that agenda felt it necessary to take her life.

But there can be no silencing of a movement. As those celebrating Berta’s life cried just days after her murder, “Berta lives, and the fight continues!”

As of this writing, Gustavo Castro Soto, the only witness to Berta’s murder (who himself suffered two gunshots) is still being held by Honduran authorities for questioning. Please sign the petition calling for his release and safe passage out of Honduras. Additionally, organizations and activists across the world are calling for an independent investigation into Berta’s murder and an end to the ongoing criminalization of members of the COPINH. Please add your voice here

This article was originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus.

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{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_3_0": ["/maxima_retouched.jpg 3180w, http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/maxima_retouched-340x255.jpg 340w, http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/maxima_retouched-680x510.jpg 680w, http://democracyctr.org/dc_old/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/maxima_retouched-264x198.jpg 264w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3180px) 100vw, 3180px\" /><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">M\u00e1xima Acu\u00f1a, a farmer from Peru\u2019s northern highlands, recently won the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize. NC under a <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/\" target=\"_blank\">Creative Commons Licence</a></p></div>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>M\u00e1xima Acu\u00f1a, a farmer from Peru\u2019s northern highlands, recently won the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for her resistance against the mining consortium Yanacocha in Cajamarca,\u00a0Peru.</p>\n<p>At the prize acceptance ceremony in San Francisco on 18 April, in lieu of a speech M\u00e1xima\u00a0<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orxv3jPsOgM\">sang</a>\u00a0her story: \u2018Because I defend my lakes, they want to take my\u00a0life.\u2019</p>\n<p>Yanacocha is "], "copyright__copyright__copyright": ["", "", "", "", ""]}