I know thats a strong statement, but its one that holds true after the abundance of information today.
This morning we had a guest speaker from an organization called Otros Mundos (Other Worlds). Our speakers name was Gustavo Castros, and he was nothing short of incredible. His passion in his work was something to be admired, and to be able to spend time with him and hear his experiences and information he was willing to share with us was exceptionally lucky. This organization does many things in areas of issues stemming from electric companies, forestry, and especially mining companies. They do educational work in regards to climate change, agriculture, etc. supporting people who need to develop skills to be self sustainable, and a bunch of other things. They also focus on issues that are not strictly due to climate, they also deal with problems due to poverty, such as alcoholism, post-traumatic stress, in home violence etc. so they had put a new face on to issues stemming from poverty, that it is not only a physical problem, but majorly affects mental health. Now i will warn you, i took 4 pages of notes so i'm going to try and fit in what i can before i go to sleep, so it may be long and confusing and intense because i'm quite tired.
We began talking about different contexts like Chiapas or internationally or communal, either way we were given an idea on what they want to do in all of these contexts. One major part of it is to find alternatives to the distruction that is happening everywhere; Environmentally, personally, financially, etc. They do analysis on situations to diagnose reality, to begin considering what can and can't be done. Structures of the world are in crisis, financial, environmental, food crisis, and its not just them saying that, its the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) are making the same claims (if you don't know who either of those are, i strongly reccomend you do some googling. look for stuff that speaks of distruction and explotation.)
Last week the price of goods in Mexico skyrocketed, (especially cost of grains) Which bings indigenous people farther from survival then ever before. Capitolism is addicted to petrolium and with the raising price, the cost of food goes up, production of transgendic seeds uses oil and so as the gas prices rise, so do costs of food products that require petrolium to be made. So the decision comes down to, Feed Machines or Feed People? We need to break the link between food and energy in order to all stay alive at any reasonable rate.
Has the UN prevented war? Have they prevented hunger? Have they done anything about deforestation? What about controlling the IMF (which has virtually drowned Europe in debt.) Unemployment is increasing at a global level, and fast. Companies move into a country demanding contracts and put people out of work every day.
Example? Black Fire.
Black Fire is a Canadian mining company (from Calgary) who came to Mexico to mine in Chiapas. In the process they managed to pollute the water and tear down forests, as a result children were getting skin infections from the river, mudslides into the river when it rained, cows were dying from drinking the water, people's houses had big cracks in them due to the constant explosions happening in the mine, so what does this mean? Well, it violates human rights. It conflicts with their right for healthy food, water and shelter. Once the communities would stand up for themselves and show resistance to the workers trying to come and go, they were beaten. Black Fire saw this resistance and went to the Government of Chiapas and demanded that action be taken against the community (after all, its cheaper to pay extra police then to lose money from the mining company). A man named Mariano (who was a friend of our speakers) was put in jail as part of the resistance to Black Fire, a national and international campaign was held to release him. The government said to him that they would release him if he would stop the resistance to Black Fire. Mariano called Gustavo and told him "i'm staying in jail, keep up the resistance" After more uproar he was eventually released to only be assasinated 3 months later. (by Black Fire employees) Black Fire was eventually forced to close the mine, but said "Give us 800 Million dollars to compensate for the closure." They claimed lost wages etc. (It probably didn't help that the were mining gold, silver, barita, and any other minerals you can think of) Where is mexico going to get 800 million dollars?
33% of Mexican Land is given to mining concessions in Mexico. 71-75% of the Mining companies are Canadian. Canadian Mining companies are infamous for violations of human rights.
Mariano's son did a tour to raise awareness in Canada, to tell people about the mining companies and the destruction they are causing the world. (another google reccomendaiton is the Tar Sands).
Law C-300 is a law that would cause companies to be responsible for their actions, however the law was not passed and only lost by a few votes, another vote is happening soon.
A mining company uses 250, 000 - 1, 000, 0000 Litres of water every hour. 250, 000 litres can be used by an Indigenous family over a span of 20 years. They also use 6-15 tonnes of cyanide everyday, which ends up in the water and the soil. (A drop the size of a grain of rice can kill a person.)
Free Trade Agreements allow all this to happen because of their modifications. Half of mexican "communal" land is on mining interests such as silver, gold, petroleum, and the rest of it can be used for industrial parks and tourism. NAFTA forced Mexico to change their constitution which then allowed them to privatize what was once "communal" land in order for the Mining companies to be able to buy it.
Mining results in many things, but one that has been overly devastating is deforestation. (i reccomend you look up "carbon dioxide credits" and see what you find.) 50% of our forests have been lost. The jungle we're going to, California wants to buy credits for, which could mean a number of things, but none of it is good. Another issue that is becoming more and more disgusting is dams, 52, 000 dams have displaces 80 million people.
All mining companies that are shown resistance make the offers to be bought out and then they will leave, but its always cheaper to repress people then to buy out the mines.
So what can we do?
I think thats all i can write right now, its all over the place from my note taking but its all something we should be thinking about and be aware of. I have so much to add to this but just thought i would update for the day. We had a second speaker this afternoon but i'm sleepy so i'll write about that one tomorrow.
Also, here is a list of english shows i have seen in spanish.
-lie to me
-CSI NY
-modern family
-Law & Order
-Big Bang Theory
-Criminal Minds
-Wipeout
goodnight! miss & love you all.
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