September 02, 2006
Rivers of Poison in the Desert: a Visit to Yaqui Country
This June I had the opportunity to travel to the Yaqui Indian pueblo of Potam in Sonora, Mexico, with a group from the International Indian Treaty Council. The goal of the trip was to hold a series of workshops and discussions to help the people of Potam and seven other Yaqui pueblos confront an epidemic of agrochemical poisoning that is literally draining the life from their communities and their culture.
I was invited to join the trip on the basis of my work with Hesperian Foundation developing the booklet Pesticides are Poison. The Treaty Council had been using the booklet in their communities, and this was an opportunity for me to work with them on the ground, and to use some of the educational activities I had written into the booklet.
Over the last several decades, the Yaqui pueblos – small, dusty villages of low concrete and thatch houses – have become surrounded by vast agricultural fields growing cotton and wheat for export. This was the cuna, the womb, of the Green Revolution – when massive technochemical farming became the way to “feed the world”™ (and win hearts and minds to boot) -- and one of the many hidden costs of that effort has been the complete obliteration of a place, and of a people.
After years of living with the effects of chronic pesticide exposure, from aerial spraying and from working in the fields themselves, many Yaquis are becoming sick. More worrisome still, children are being born with all the miserable telltale signs of chemical poisoning, from spinal column defects to weak bones to learning and developmental disabilities.
I will describe one part of what I saw, and did, in Potam pueblo. But for the straight story, as it were, Indian Country Today published an article on the workshops in Potam. And for a better background, in terms of both Green Revolution history and the current toxicological threat to the Yaqui people, Margaret Reeves of Pesticide Action Network, who was at the gathering, wrote a terrifically informative article.
Read the article in Indian Country Today: www.indiancountry.com
Read the article from Pesticide Action Network: www.panna.org
View or download Hesperian Foundation’s booklet Pesticides are Poison: www.hesperian.org
From this point in the story it would seem to be a case of pesticide poisoning we are talking about. But in fact, from a certain vantage point, it all seems to start from the water.
Continue reading "Rivers of Poison in the Desert: a Visit to Yaqui Country"
Posted by jeff at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 31, 2006
In advance of Blue October
This October has been declared Blue October by the international water rights movement, and a series of actions and educational fora are being organized to continue building the global movement for water justice. At the end of the World Water Forum and the International Days in Defense of Water, back in March, I was unable to post a summary. Now, to wrap up some of what came out of those days, and as a prelude ot future postings, here are some articles and reports from the water front:
The WWF was widely considered a failure, while the alternative forum was considered, by all of its participants, to be a huge success. I wrote this article about it for Earth Island Journal, also posted on Hesperian Foundation's website:www.hesperian.info
Here are some articles from daily papers back in March about the water forum and the issues involved:
NY Times:
www.nytimes.com
SF Chronicle:
www.sfgate.com
Here are three reports that have been published in thge last several months on the failures of privatization and the potential for decentralized, locally controlled water infrastructure:
Spreading the Water Wealth, from International Rivers Network:
www.irn.org
‘Pipe Dreams: The failure of the private sector to invest in water services in developing countries’, from World Development Movement and Public Services International:
AND, here, in English is the declaration that came out of the alternative water forum:
Continue reading "In advance of Blue October"
Posted by jeff at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2006
LAST DAYS of THE WORLD WATER FORUM
The last days of the official forum were a whirlwind, and I’ve been unable to post. I’ll try to give a brief summary – admittedly incomplete – of my experience of the forum’s conclusion….In trying to sum up, it will be difficult not to go on at length...so I beg forgiveness in advance for stuffing your mailboxes with, as they say in Mexico, "mucho bla bla bla."
By the end of the World Water Forum – World Water Day, March 22 -- many of the Mexican newspapers had published articles recognizing that it was, overall, a top-heavy event where a lot of money was spent and little was achieved. And many participants seemed to agree. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Ministers of Water, Energy and Environment from 78 countries, and 68 other Ministerial delegations, negotiated the final Ministerial Declaration of the Forum. Rather than achieving “consensus” on the declaration, however, several Ministers -- most notably Abel Mamani, Water Minister of Bolivia – demanded changes or additions to the document. By the closing ceremony of the WWF no agreement had been reached, though a bland and noncommittal document was agreed upon soon after.
The final declaration commits governments to prioritize water and sanitation as aspects of sustainable development; to continue efforts to reach the millennium development goals of cutting in half the number of people without water and sanitation services by 2015; and to commit funds to reducing risks from water-related natural disasters, among other commitments that do little, if anything, to recognize a need for a different approach to the water issue. Recognizing the bland nature of the document, the Ministries of Bolivia and Venezuela lobbied hard to add an addendum – in the Venezuelan Minister’s words, “to add a little salt to a tasteless soup.” Several other governments – Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil, Angola and Argentina have agreed, or nearly agreed, with the contents of the addendum – and at the end of the forum, the sense behind the scenes was that the discussion was more open than closed.
Continue reading "LAST DAYS of THE WORLD WATER FORUM"
Posted by jeff at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
Article on the action in Mexico City posted on Upside Down World
Sadly, I haven't been able to post pictures amidst these dispatches, but good fortune has brought me together with friend, activist and photojournalist Orin Langelle of the Global Justice Ecology Project, who covered the March 16th march with me. Together we've put together an article on the energetic events around the two water fora, and had it published by the fine people at Upsidedownworld.org. You'll find some repetition from what's been said here, but some hot breaking news as well, and some smashing photos, so check it out at:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/
And don't ask me what time of the morning it is here in the humid and noisy wee hours of Mexico City....
Posted by jeff at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
Joint Declaration of Movements in Defense of Water
As the alternative forum draws to a close today, with lingering events around the city, there is a shared sense that the International Days in Defense of Water, with all the distinct events and huge diversity of attendees, has been an extreme success....I haven't posted much on the forum process, as I've been engaged in living it, not reporting it, but groups from far-flung countries -- Colombia, Uruguay, Canada, Ghana, Brazil -- will all be returning home with the sense that a clear-sighted and forward lkooking water movement has been built. In the next days I'll try to give a sense of how this all worked...
This morning I took part in a meeting of the burdgeoning US water movement, with activists from local struggles in New Mexico, New Hampshire, California, Wisconsin and elsewhere, indigenous groups, border activists, and groups working on national policy campaigns, like Corporate Accountability International, Food and Water Watch, Womens' International League for Peace and Freedom, and on and on, together laying plans to bring water rights to the national agenda at the US Social Forum next January (??) and the Border Social Forum in El Paso/Juarez this May, as well as discussing health impact studies, a proposed Coca Cola boycott and other focused strategies to build the movement.
And, after many long sessions of directly democratic process late into the nights and again in the morning yesterday, a document was drafted by the assembled movements at the alternative water forum to declare some basic principles in the global struggle for community-controlled water resource management.....It will soon be translated into numerous languages including English, but the version completed and agreed on today is in Spanish. For those of you who read Spanish, you'll find a lot of interesting points. For those who don't, now's a good time to learn, as Latin America erupts with popular movements and revolutionary fervor....
Luego luego I'll finish up these dispatches with some notes on how the alternative forum worked, the tone and character of the events, and other points of interest....
Continue reading "Joint Declaration of Movements in Defense of Water"
Posted by jeff at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2006
Two venues like two worlds lapping and overlapping in one
In the days that followed, the World Water Forum has carried on inside a massive convention center. Free buses taking delegates to the forum tell the story: I boarded the bus outside the Sheraton – one of Mexico City’s most extravagant hotels, located next to the barbed wire bailiwick of the US Embassy – and I shouldn’t have been surprised when the bus made the circuit of several other luxury hotels picking up handfuls of smartly dressed delegates. To be fair, watershed educators, filmmakers and press from around the global south made up a strong percentage of the crowd on my particular bus. I spoke with an Oxford PhD candidate from San Cristobal, Chiapas, a film critic from Manhattan and two photographers from Angola. Arriving at the Banamex Center where the WWF takes place, we were let off at the security gate where my pass was scanned before I passed through a metal detector and underwent a brief search of my bags before walking into the bright lights and techno-madness of the what seems to be essentially an enormous trade show.
Endless booths, all competing for attention with lights and sounds and running water and posters and flashy models (both live human models of the made-up high-heeled variety and less sexed-up scale models of watersheds, dams and irrigation systems). On display for your high-tech consumer excitement: Water filtration systems, beachy tourist destinations, pumps and pipes and water storage systems, universities and companies and products and products and products. Here and there, amidst the eye candy and bombardment of sound, a handful of stalls promoted rainwater catchment, ecological sanitation, rope pumps and pedal pumps and other locally controllable, sustainable technologies.
The contrast between the WWF and the alternative forum – held in the Telephone Workers’ Union Hall and other peoples’ venues around the City (of which, more later....) – is the contrast between the developed and underdeveloped worlds, between the restless idealists of civil society organizing themselves to promote environmental and social justice and the monied technocratic utopians organized by consumption and circumscribed by capital`s ever forward flight toward bigger better faster finer ways to f*&# the world’s poor.
At least, that’s the feeling I get just at the moment, sitting among the bleeps and echoes and flashing lights of the convention center.
This morning at the alternative forum, the Minister of Water of Bolivia, Abel Mamani, gave a statement about the World Water Forum: “The Bolivian government will not sign the Declaration that comes out of the Forum,” he said. “We have read the draft document, and it says nothing. It doesn’t take a position. It would be good if it said something – even if this something was something we do not agree with. Even if this document came out in favour of privatization, that would be better, because we would know better what we are talking about. But in a moment of such crisis in the world as we are living today, a document that says nothing is the worst outcome we could expect….”
He went on: “Our role as human beings is to take care of the natural world, and for this reason water cannot be treated as a commodity – because then we are not taking care of the natural world, we are taking care of our pocket books.”
“The World Bank says States have no money to fund public water. But there is money. Where is the money? The money is in weapons, in defence, in war. If a proposal to take 2%, 5%, 7% out of defence spending and put it into public sector water, if such a proposal were taken seriously, the problem of public water could be solved tomorrow.”
And speaking of `defense,’ a rare report by AP posted to the New York Times –- the only notice about the events in Mexico City that has yet appeared in the US commercial press, to my knowledge -- tells us this: “Water is so scarce or polluted in some parts of the world that the poor might actually go to war to get their hands on it.” I`ll buy a Cherry Coke with a bendy straw for the first person who can tell me what the HELL that means.
Posted by jeff at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2006
International march in defense of the right to water
The opening day of the WWF was marked by a massive protest march through the streets of Mexico City. In the early evening of March 16th more then 20,000 mostly peaceful demonstrators braved a gauntlet of riot police and a 6.5 kilometer march route in the first ever international march in favor of the human right to water. From the Angel of the Independence in the trendy Zona Rosa neighborhood to the Banamex Center where the WWF was having it opening session, the march grew increasingly diverse and increasingly militant. Families, workers’ unions, popular organizations, sectarian groups, and international activists marched together chanting and singing through the streets in a demonstration that the question of access to water is not a marginal issue in this city of 26 million in a country known to be suffering from water scarcity and water stress. This was very much a march of the people.
Among the workers and families marching, hundreds of youths with masks, sticks, and other black-block accoutrements taunted the police and several small scuffles broke out leading to the arrest, and eventual release of 26 youths allegedly armed with Molotov cocktails.
What the press focused on, not without reason, was the ecstatic destruction of a police car, which represented the entire march on many of front pages the next morning.
(I have a number of good photos from the March, including the violent incidents, but due to technical difficulties, posting the photos will have to wait.....)
Some of the more forceful and creative chants of the march are worth sharing here, in approximate translations:
“El pueblo se cansa
de tanto pinch tranza!”
“The people are tired
Of so much fucking corruption”
“Policia, idiota, a ti tambien te explotan!”
“Police, you idiot, they are exploiting you too!”
And a special favorite, when passing restaurants in the street:
“Mesero consciente, envena el presidente!”
“Waiter of conscience, poison the president!”
Earlier in the day, an event of a very different tone: a group of Hopi Indians had run from their homeland in Arizona all the way to Mexico City, and at noon they arrived in front of the National Museum of Anthropology where they were welcomed by a festive group of Nahuas, Aztec dancers and other indigenas and no-indigenas from all parts of Mexico. The Hopis initiated a ceremony celebrating the sacred nature of water, where indigenous people from many regions had brought water from their homelands and mixed it together in a blessing for all the world’s water.
After the ceremony I interviewed Angel Martinez, a member of the Union of National Water Workers – la coordinadora en defensa del caracter publico del agua. Some of what he shared with me:
“The quality of water service in Mexico is terrible, and you can see it in the high indices of water-borne illnesses and even cancer in every state in Mexico. Apart from diarrheal diseases – the main cause of death in children in every state, we are finding high rates of cancer from heavy metals in the water in quantities that you Gringos would find terrifying…The President of the National Water Commision – CONAGUA – earns $130,000 pesos a year, he lives in a giant house in a wealthy neighborhood, and he has the nerve to tell us ‘the people have to pay a higher price for water services if they want higher quality water.’ Well, if we lower his salary and move him to the neighborhoods where most of us live, we could also improve the quality of water.
The struggle over water between 1918 – the Mexican Revolution – and 1988 was very hidden. The PRI [the government party that ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century] has always used water to divide the people and advance its political agenda. For example, the local PRI government would give one part of a municipality a public water utility ‘for PRIISTAS’ and then tell the rest of the people, ‘if you want water, you can have it, just vote for the PRI.’
“With President Fox the situation remains the same – everything is for sale, and if you want to be part of the power structure, it’s simple – just go along with the politics of selling everything…”
The Coordinadora [Water Worers’ Union] has tried to raise awareness of the water issue by organizing workshops and for a. This January we organized the first Assembly in Defense of of Land and Water and Against Privatization. What is it we hope to achieve? We want to make it known that our water is being privatized in a silent, underground way. It is not lie electricity or oil, where the entire system is simply sold off in the light of day to private companies. In the case of water, CONAGUA gives concessions to industries as part of their manner of working – this is seen as absolutely normal. They will concession a local water utility or a water source to the beer industry, the paper industry, the textile industry and others, and these are not short term concessions – these are concessions that last from 20 to 70 years. Also, the tourist industry, the bottled water industry and others always take precedent over public water utilities.
"The World Water Forum is an event that is attempting to privatize water. The organizers of the WWF think they are coming here to tell Mexico how to privatize water. But what is going to happen is that the Mexican government is going to say, no, let us show YOU how it’s done, without people even realizing!”
Posted by jeff at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Whose Right is the right Right?
TODAY, AS THE WORLD WATER FORUM BEGINS, a large protest march will be held by Mexican and international activists to call attention to the exclusionary nature of the Forum. Here is a press release sent out by the organizers of the alternative forum. After the press release, some commentary….
PRESS RELEASE
MARCH 13th, 2006
International Grassroots Activists Join Forces to Create an
Alternative to the 4th World Water Forum
Hundreds of organizations promote community water events to defend water as a human right
A massive outcry in defense of water for people and the planet is brewing. As
official governmental bodies, influential world players such as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, and some of the largest global water and energy
corporations prepare for the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City, grassroots
organizations are creating an alternative space to hear the voices of people who have been
shut-out of the “official” Forum.
Between March 14th and March 22nd, thousands of people will join open forums,
seminars, workshops, protests and cultural events to defend the fundamental human right
to clean, affordable water. These events call for water to be recognized as part of the
global commons and call for new visions of community and public management of water.
Rallies in Defense of Water have been organized by and for indigenous and
campesino organizations, community groups, human rights groups, academics, trade
unions, students, grassroots organizations, women’s groups, public health advocates, and
social movements from within Mexico. The events highlight the voices of those who face
a dire global water crisis daily - a lack of adequate sanitation, rising water rates, and
displacement from dams. However, many of these communities have successfully built
an alternative vision that puts health and human rights before profits, and they have built
local, community-based institutions to defend this vision.
Unfortunately, few of these institutions, groups and visions are represented inside
the Fourth World Water Forum. International groups have been shocked by the lack of
cooperation on behalf of the Fourth World Water Forum and the Mexican government to
incorporate alternative viewpoints in the program and activities of the official planning.
The Fourth World Water Forum is dominated by corporate interests, North
American and European governments, agencies and international financial institutions.
Despite rhetoric of participation and inclusion, the registration fee of $240-$600 US
dollars excludes public participation at the Forum. International activists have faced a
lack of support from both conference convenors and the Mexican government in
obtaining visas, effectively excluding activists from attendance.
In contrast, private corporations and groups such as the World Water Council
have played a strong role in the conference planning. The Council is a private think tank
headed by the CEO of a subsidiary of the transnational water giant Suez. Conference
convenors have continued to promote privatization, despite numerous examples of
private sector failures over the past year, from Argentina to Bolivia, and community
opposition to private sector involvement.
“Over the last 10 years, the privatisation of water has been a disaster for the
world’s poor – causing rate hikes, poor service, and water cutoffs. The movers and
shakers within the Fourth World Water Forum need to hear from those civil society
groups around the world who have been struggling against the corporate control of water
resources,” says Tamsyn East from the World Development Movement, which has been
fighting European governments who promote privatization around the world.
Because of these failures, international grassroots activists present at the
alternative events have a deep and growing revulsion to any attempts to place control
over water in the hands of transnational corporations, governments and international
organizations. Activists have seen the failure of these global water players to secure the
fundamental human right of safe, clean, affordable water for all.
Rallies in Defense of Water condemn the Fourth World Water Forum for
promoting water as a negotiable commodity to be bought and sold on the international
marketplace. The alternative events condemn the exclusionary nature of the official
Forum. In response and offering a truly democratic alternative, international grassroots
activists are bringing together people from across the world to defend water as a common
good and a public trust for all people and for the planet.
The Mexican movement, Asamblea Nacional en Defensa del Agua y la Tierra y
en contra de su privatización has spearheaded the organizing efforts in Mexico City.
"The Fourth World Water Forum says its theme is "local actions," but they have not even
helped local groups right here in Mexico, the host country, participate. There is an urgent
need to create alternative spaces for groups to express their struggles and solutions," says
Brenda Rodríguez, the spokeswoman of Coalición de Organizaciones por el Derecho de
Agua, which is a founder and active member of the Asemblea.
Continue reading "Whose Right is the right Right?"
Posted by jeff at 06:33 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
Welcome to the Water Wars
The siting of the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City is brilliantly absurd, and absurdly brilliant, for at least two reasons.
First, there is Mexico City itself: a mythic metropolis that represents all of the most intractable ills of the modern mega-city: it is the crime-ridden and corrupt hub of a nation where modernity still sits uncomfortably alongside ancient traditions and lifeways; it is tremendously overpopulated (estimates seem to vary between 8 and 18 and 23 million people, depending on your source and, I suppose, on whether you measure the part or the whole) with a significant portion of the population living in informal slums, and another significant portion living in luxurious mansions; it is incredibly polluted, and set in a deep valley where the smog sits unmoving for days and weeks at a time, turning your skin black with grime by the end of the day; and, perhaps most significantly for the water issue, it is a place where the naturally abundant ground water has been treated to all of the most illogical and massive management errors possible.
Once an island in a vast lake, Tenochtitlan was captured and conquered by the Spanish in 1521. Observers at the time, noting the city’s canals, aqueducts, floating gardens, dikes and bridges, called Tenochtitlan the Venice of the New World. But the Spanish Crown did not want a Venice, nor did they want to recognize a city more splendid than any in Europe – so they used slave labor to fill and drain the lakes, and to raze the surrounding forests. Standing in the Zocalo today, the vast plaza at the heart of the city, you would never dream that this was once an island of floating jungles, rather than an island of asphalt.
In the centuries since, the valley has been paved over and the groundwater drawn down so severely that parts of the city are now sinking at a rate of 20 inches a year. The more water is used, the more the city sinks, and the city is now drawing much of its water from aquifers hundreds of miles away, pumped over the mountains at great cost.
If any urban center represents a failure to cope sustainably with water issues, it is Mexico City.
The other reason why the World Water Forum is perfectly situated here is because prior to becoming the President of Mexico, Vicente Fox was President of Coca Cola Mexico. Thus beholden to the beverage that is second only to water in global consumption – known to the Zapatistas as “the black water of imperialism” – President Fox knows a thing or two about Public-Private Partnerships.
WHAT IS THE WORLD WATER FORUM?
For anyone outside of the Forum, it would be easy to believe that the event -- which will be held March 16 - 22 here in Mexico City -- is a UN-led international forum held for the good of us all. And while the "good of us all" part may be in the rhetoric of the World Water Council, the body in charge of the forum, the issue is much more complicated. Over the course of the week I hope to explore the meaning and the issues behind the Forum as well as to document the alternative events that will be taking place simultaneously and which I -- ever the objective documentary journalist -- will be taking part in.
In essence, this next week in Mexico City will contain two major events -- the World Water Forum itself (WWF), sponsored and run by the corporate water sector, and the Days in Defense of Water, sponsored and run by a coalition of Mexican and international ngo's and civil society groups, many of whom are loudly boycotting the WWF.
Continue reading "Welcome to the Water Wars"
Posted by jeff at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2005
What is Utopia for, anyway?
Back from Ecuador, I have a certain frustration at so many things left unwritten and unsaid in these dispatches...but these notes were far from my primary purpose there, so what's said is said. I would've liked to tell more about the political situation there in Absurdistan, especially as several of the people I spent time with were involved in chasing out the President last April. I would've liked to tell what I know about a huge new US military base being built in the Amazon, to further enforce Plan Colombia and further dominate. I would've liked to describe the commercials I heard on the radio advertising the benefits of the upcoming Free Trade Agreement: "Ecuador is not an island -- Competition is growth, growth is development, development is progress." I would've liked to transcribe interviews I conducted with Adolfo Maldonado and Alexandra Almeira of Accion Ecologica, with Dr. Miguel Sebastian who has studied and continues to study the rates of cancer in the Amazon, with Camilo Santi of the Kichwa village of Sarayacu who are resisting petroleum development at all costs, and with Edgar Isch, the former Minister of the Environment who quit because of the recent government's neoliberal policies and corrupt practices. I wish I could describe what I heard of the Haourani people -- the least developed and most fiercely independent of Ecuador's indigenous groups -- who, the week before I arrived had planted themselves in front of the Environmental Ministry with spears and blowguns and declared war on any oil company that invades their territory. And I would have liked to offer more complete passages about how the People's Health Assembly works, how decisions are made, who is involved, and so forth.
But no time for all that. For those of you in the Bay Area, a few weeks from now you can expect to hear about a few reportbacks by myself and my colleagues at Hesperian Foundation, and our friends from the International Indian Treaty Council and the People's Grocery. Beyond that, I'll leave off with a quote from Eduardo Galeano, regarding all of this:
"Utopia is like the horizon. You walk two steps, and it retreats two steps. You walk ten steps and it retreats ten steps.
So, then what is utopia for? For that -- to make you keep walking."
Hasta la proxima.....
Posted by at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)