Dominican Republic Cane Cutters & Haitian Garment Workers Meet to Voice Their Own Demands

Dominican Republic Cane Cutters & Haitian Garment Workers Meet to Voice Their Own Demands

By One Struggle

On what I earn, I can’t afford shoes… We are poor, poor, poor. There are days we go to bed without food. – Batey worker from the film, “The Price of Sugar”

In the sugar plantations or bateyes of Dominican Republic, cane cutters often work barefoot. They can’t afford shoes. They can barely afford food, for that matter, despite the fact that they often work a minimum of 12 hours a day, doing the back-breaking work of cutting sugar cane by hand.

On the other side of the border that divides Hispaniola, Haitian garment workers in Port Au Prince recently blockaded a Korean factory because of bounced paychecks. For years, Haitian garment workers have been fighting wage theft and to be paid the inadequate legal minimum wage – still not enough to live off of.

Whatever the product is – the pair of pants, the t-shirt – we are the ones producing it. We labor hard, and don’t get paid. – Haitian garment worker of SOTA in Port Au Prince

This week Unión De Trabajadores Cañeros De Los Bateyes (Union of the Bateyes of Sugarcane Workers) and Sendika Ouvriye Takstil ak Abiman (SOTA) (Union of Textile and Garment Workers) will meet to discuss their common struggles against exploitation.

Specifically, they are meeting about recent actions of the DR government to strip people of Haitian descent of their citizenship. This has mostly affected the poor – cane cutters, street vendors, and service laborers. In bringing attention and their perspective to this struggle, the groups’ intentions are to put down false divisions of racism and nationalism, with the goal of working together against their common enemy – the Haitian and Dominican ruling classes.

cañeros

SOTA is affiliated with the autonomous workers’ organization, Batay Ouvriye (BO) (Workers Fight), which will host a series of meetings, a press conference, and direct action in Port Au Prince.

According to one of the event organizers, “They will be three Haitian cane workers, one Dominican cane worker and the coordinator of the union. The presence of the Dominican cane worker is to deny the nationalist option and to put the class situation in concrete relief, in contrast to the bourgeois organizations here who pretend to defend their ‘compatriots.’”

There is a long history of animosity between Haiti and Dominican Republic. Both nationalism and racism are deep rooted. The DR won its independence, not from European colonialists, but from Haiti. Since then, Haitians living in the DR have faced discrimination, and thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were massacred under Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

In 2013, the Dominican Supreme Court retroactively withdrew citizenship from anyone born in the DR to undocumented immigrants, with the provision that persons who submitted the proper documentation could apply for legal residency. The deadline for this application was summer 2015. However, many who submitted this paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in fees, never received any notice or proper documentation from the government. Thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent left the DR, or were rounded up and dropped at the Haitian/Dominican border, often without being able to gather their belongings or to alert their families.

So now, there are hundreds of thousands of people rendered stateless, living in temporary shanty-towns along the border. They’ve been told that if they get documentation proving their country of origin from the Haitian government, then they can apply for Dominican citizenship or work visas. In fact, the Haitian government was paid by the Dominican government to facilitate this process, but Haitians living in limbo on the border have seen no results from this transaction.

Another issue affecting cane workers and low-wage laborers is that for years many paid into social security in the DR. Once they stopped working, they apply for their pensions, submitting the required paperwork to DR government and received nothing. Or, if they’ve been deported, they have no means of claiming their pension either.

This situation is not just about racism or nationalism. It is an issue of the ruling classes of both countries exploiting and stealing from the poor and working class. This summer, many demonstrations were held, especially in New York and Miami, with calls for travel boycotts against the DR and urgent appeals to avert a humanitarian crisis. Most of these demands have been voiced from people outside of the DR/Haiti, or removed from the exploitation of the bateyes and the temporary shanty-towns.

The aim with this series of meetings between workers from both countries is to bring attention to calls and demands led by the workers and people directly affected by these struggles. These are the people whose demands should be amplified, and calls for action should be followed.

photo1rd

Here in the U.S. we use Dominican sugar in our coffee every day. Our clothing is made in sweatshops, often sewn in Haiti (thanks to HELP and HOPE Acts). Capitalism and imperialism give us no choice, no say in how goods are produced. Our sugar and our clothing are the results of wage theft and a politic of misery for the working class in dominated countries. Boycotts and conscious consumerism pretend that with our purchasing, exploitation can be ameliorated. In reality, it is merely shifted to another part of the world.  We need to understand the dynamics of capitalism/imperialism, its inherent exploitation, and we must address these issues from the interests of the working class. Who better to lead this effort than the workers themselves?

 

 

Read more at One Struggle

Why Is the Paris Climate Deal a Fraud?

Why Is the Paris Climate Deal a Fraud?

By Jerome Roos / ROAR

World leaders are congratulating themselves on a set of promises they will never be able to keep without taking on the immense power of the fossil fuel industry.

World leaders and the international media are hailing the deal struck in Paris as a “major leap for mankind” in the fight against climate change, but there are many reasons to remain deeply skeptical. Three stand out in particular.

1) NO ACTIONS, JUST WORDS

To begin with, the climate deal contains a lot of pretty words, but no commitments to concrete actions. Nowhere in the agreement do governments stipulate the steps they will take to meet their ambitious target of keeping global temperatures “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

This target can only be met if 90 percent of the world’s remaining fossil fuels are kept in the ground. By mid-century, the 195 signatories would need to have achieved a near-complete decarbonization of the world economy.

This would in turn require a rapid and wholesale shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources. Yet the agreement does not contain any concrete road map on how to bring about such a radical transformation. The words “fossil fuels”, “oil” or “coal” are not even mentioned in the text.

Instead, world leaders have agreed on a voluntary system whereby countries are required to submit emission reduction plans which are then reviewed every five years, with the aim of speeding up reductions over time. These targets are not legally binding, however, and even if they had been, there would be no way to enforce compliance.

James Hansen, the leading ex-NASA climate scientist, is clear in his assessment:

It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will continue to be burned.

2) THE NUMBERS DON’T ADD UP

But let’s assume for a moment that governments really do live up to the letter of their agreement and reduce emissions in line with the pledges they have made under their “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).

Even if all individual pledges in the INDCs are met, the world would still be on course for an average global temperature increase of at least 2.7°C — an amount widely considered by scientists to bring about a catastrophic destabilization of the global climate and planetary life-support systems.

Assuming an even more optimistic scenario in which governments were to take their collective 1.5°C pledge seriously and adjust their INDCs in line with this goal, the climate change that is already locked into the system as a result of past emissions will make this target next to impossible to reach.

As Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford University, notes: “Human-induced warming is already approaching one degree and is predicted to be at 1.2C by 2030, so 1.5C will be a challenge.”

To meet the 1.5°C target, a tremendous amount of resources would have to be made available — both to fundamentally transform energy, transport and agricultural systems in the advanced economies and to help the poorer countries “leapfrog” the transition to a post-carbon, renewable energy future.

Here again, the numbers fall hopelessly short. Rich countries have pledged to raise $100 billion for investment in green energy in developing countries, but it is not clear how this money will be raised — and the amount remains woefully inadequate at any rate.

The $100 billion pales in comparison to the United States’ $600 billion annual military budget, or the trillions upon trillions spent — without second thoughts or public oversight — on bailing out banks. The contrast in these numbers shows where the real priorities of rich countries continue to lie.

3) CORPORATE POWER REMAINS UNCHECKED

Preventing catastrophic climate change is impossible without keeping the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and any attempt to keep fossil fuels in the ground will inevitably involve a head-on confrontation with the fossil fuel industry, whose extractive business model would be completely destroyed by any meaningful transition towards a post-carbon economy.

A post-carbon future would mean no more gasoline-fueled cars by 2050, no more coal-fired power plants, no more fracking, no more oil-fueled ships and planes, no more tar sands and offshore drilling, no more gas lines — nothing. Deforestation would have to be brought to a complete halt and methane emissions would have to be drastically reduced, requiring far-reaching limits on the growth of animal agriculture.

Yet in a capitalist world economy that thrives on cutthroat competition between companies and nations alike, world leaders will be hard-pressed to forsake their access to cheap energy, cheap food and cheap building materials — even if they have formally “agreed” on reversing the consequences of such cheap resources for the climate.

Governments worldwide still spend an estimated $5,300 billion per year on various (direct and indirect) fossil fuel subsidies. This would all need to be cut and moved immediately towards research, development and deployment of renewable technologies. Yet where are the commitments to do so? They are nowhere to be seen in this text.

This climate deal has the mark of the fossil fuel industry stamped all over it. By failing to commit to concrete actions and a clear, enforceable road map, by fudging the numbers and not committing sufficient resources to an immediate and wholesale energy transformation, and by systematically refusing to tax carbon and take on the immense power of the fossil-fuel industry, world leaders have signed an accord they clearly cannot keep.

The sentimental liberals among them may be patting one another on the back today, announcing this “historic compromise” to the press with tears in their eyes, but humanity — and the world’s poor above all — will be paying the price for their collective failure to move beyond empty gestures.

The task now falls upon the social movements to confront the immense power of the fossil fuel industry on the ground. Every new coal mine, every new oil well, every new gas pipeline will be one too many. If none of them will stop this madness, it will have to be us. The situation is now critical.

At least this accord will give global legitimacy to the radicalization of the climate justice movement and the intensification of our struggles from below.

Jerome Roos is the founder and editor of ROAR Magazine, and a PhD researcher in International Political Economy at the European University Institute. 

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Will Falk: Pinyon-Juniper Forests: The Oldest Refugee Crisis

Will Falk: Pinyon-Juniper Forests: The Oldest Refugee Crisis

Editor’s Note: this is the second of a multi-part series of pinyon-juniper deforestestion.  The first part can be found here.
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
Featured image by Max Wilbert

My thoughts race with yesterday. My friend Max Wilbert and I left Park City, Utah in the pre-dawn bitter cold crossing the Wasatch Mountains that form the eastern edge of the Great Basin. The drive west from Salt Lake City on I-80 is disorienting. We began the journey with the radio on. We both became too frustrated by news of another politician refusing to accept refugees, so we turned the radio off to watch the land as we traveled.

Interstate 80 took us past the sites of some of the West’s most destructive extraction industries including Kennecott Copper’s Bingham Canyon Mine. The Oquirrh Mountains stand tall on the Salt Lake Valley’s west side, each peak a majestic testament to the forces of beauty who formed the Great Basin.

Each peak, save one.

With the destruction of the mountain peak and subsequent release of heavy metals, the Bingham Canyon mine is responsible for the deaths of countless migratory birds and their homes

The Bingham Canyon Mine – the continent’s largest open-pit copper mine impacting close to 80 square miles in the Salt Lake Valley – ripped one of the peaks off to disembowel copper from the land. Not far past the pit, stretches the mine’s smelting and tailings pond. The pond, which seems big enough to be called a lake, runs parallel to the Great Salt Lake, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most significant migratory bird habitats. At some places, tailings water sits merely yards from the Great Salt Lake. Mining activities and the tailings pond release selenium, copper, arsenic, lead, zinc, and cadmium into the Lake. With the destruction of the mountain peak and subsequent release of heavy metals, the Bingham Canyon mine is responsible for the deaths of countless migratory birds and their homes including wetlands, marshes, other freshwater wildlife habitats, and freshwater ponds.

After we drove by the casinos in Wendover and the brothels in Ely, we spent the day on the southern slopes of Spruce Mountain walking through a pinyon-juniper forest clear-cut. We met up with biologist and Great Basin expert, Katie Fite, who narrated the history of environmental degradation in the region.

Today, after the travel, seeing the clear-cut, and hearing about the tragic history of the Great Basin, my head is reeling. I crave time and space. I crave simply to locate myself.

The trunk I lean against is the trunk of a tree lost in another clear-cut. I do not want to see clear-cuts anymore, so I face away from the carnage. Behind me are the scattered corpses of pinyon-pine and juniper. Many of these trees were two or three hundred years old and had watched countless of the Great Basin’s arid summers and bitter winters. The pinyon-pines had offered up their delicious nuts to birds like turkeys, Clark’s nutcrackers, Steller’s jays, scrub jays, and pinyon jays as well as wood rats, bears, deer and humans for centuries.

Cave Valley.

Cave Valley.

With my back turned to the clear-cut, the wide, clear sky, the drama tracing the sharp mountainsides, and the seemingly eternal evenness of the Cave Valley floor creates a vastness that overpowers any inclination I possess towards my own importance.

I am so small here.

I want to pray, but I hesitate because I wonder what relationship I have earned with life here to engage in sincere prayer. I wonder how I must appear to the trees. With my white skin, European genealogy, dark beard, and heavy boots, I must look like so many of the settlers who have damaged this valley before. Have these forests suffered too much trauma to welcome people who look like me? Surely, their most effective survival strategy must be to shut me out.

I want to ask this valley what I can do for life here. I remember that prayer need not involve asking for anything. I sink into the twigs and frost on the ground where I sit. I try to seep into the valley letting myself spill across the landscape.

I remember a strange sensation I experienced not long ago driving through Price, Utah – coal country. Driving parallel to a long stretch of train tracks, through dynamited rock formations, I thought of the Irish – my kin – who must have been involved in building the railroads that lacerate open lands across the West. I asked aloud about what it must have been like for a young Irishman, no older than me, who was asked by his family to leave home and seek work in America because they could no longer feed him. I asked how strange it must have been for him to stand on the docks at Cork wondering if he’d ever embrace his mother again. Then, to pause in the oppressive Utah sun considering the same embrace while digging graves for his friends after a dynamite accident – all in the course of a year.

I feel a sense of ancestral guilt here in Cave Valley knowing that those same railroads opened up Nevada’s remote places to the cattle and sheep grazing destroying the land. Even so, I want to ask this valley what I can do for life here. I remember that prayer need not involve asking for anything. I sink into the twigs and frost on the ground where I sit. I try to seep into the valley letting myself spill across the landscape. I wish the wind would carry me through the sage brush and up the slopes into the living pinyon-juniper forests. The wind stirs. Wind is an invisible being only coming close to being seen when it dries my eyes out, or dances with the trees.

The contrast of the wind’s chill and the sun’s warmth is a sensuous experience of the purest kind. I grow bold. I ask the valley what it wants me to know.

I ask the valley what it wants me to know. As the question forms in my consciousness, the blue wings of a pinyon jay catch my attention.

As the question forms in my consciousness, the blue wings of a pinyon jay catch my attention. The jay is flying swiftly through the clear-cut. She seems aware of her vulnerability with no cover in the void. She lands on a stump, searches around, and pulls up a pinyon pine cone. She shakes it and pecks at it with her beak, but finds no nuts. She pulls another cone up, and again finds no nuts. I watch her fly from stump to stump, felled trunk to felled trunk, and still she finds no nuts. Finally, the voices of my companions returning from their hike carry over the ridge line. The pinyon jay darts quickly across the open and back into the living forest finding refuge in standing pinyon pines and junipers.

Pinyon Jay. Image by Robert Harrington.

Pinyon Jay. Image by Robert Harrington.

I was asked by my friends to write about pinyon-juniper forests because they are being clear-cut by the Bureau of Land Management, but before I wrote about them, I knew I needed to visit the forests in an effort to understand what needs to be said. Of course, my prayer was answered. Life speaks in patterns. When a story-teller sits down to communicate her experiences in a manner that will make sense to her listeners, she may recognize those patterns and hear life speaking there.

My trip to pinyon-juniper forests in Nevada began with news of the refugee crisis. The journey continued past places where mining destroys the homes of migratory birds, fish, and so many others who depend on the precious-little freshwater near the Great Salt Lake. From there, I witnessed the ruins of pinyon-juniper forests. Not only are these forests populated with ancient, hardy trees who generously offer their pine nuts and juniper berries, but the forests are home to an estimated 450 species of vascular plants and over 150 vertebrate species. Birds live there. Wood rats live there. Deer live there. Elk live there. The Shoshones, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, all live there. All these non-humans and humans are made into refugees by the clear-cutting of pinyon-juniper forests just like the lone pinyon jay I was shown when I asked what I needed to know.

When we peer into the past with Earth’s memories, we see thousands of years of refugees. … Countless species call the world’s forests home, so when we witness deforestation, we are witnessing a refugee crisis.

The recent news on the refugee crisis encourages us to think only of boats filled with human refugees sinking on the way to Europe. These events are most tragic and the refugee crisis is by no means new nor is it limited to humans.

When we peer into the past with Earth’s memories, we see thousands of years of refugees. We see 80% of the world’s forest cover lost to deforestation. We see countless animals fleeing the thunk of axes as blades sink into the living flesh of trees. We see birds circling their young in nests built in quivering branches as we hear the hungry buzz of saws and the sickening crack and snap as trunks break. Countless species call the world’s forests home, so when we witness deforestation, we are witnessing a refugee crisis.

We see more than 75% of the topsoil that existed worldwide when Europeans first colonized North America is now gone. We watch as the plows rip through the skin of the land and the world’s forests to make way for the cultivation of annual crops. Subsistence farming is responsible for 46% of world deforestation, while commercial agriculture is responsible for 32%.  Another way to say this is countless species have their homes destroyed so that one species – typically a grain – have a place to thrive.

Ripping metals from the earth creates refugees out of those who call the ground and dark subterranean regions home.

We see 60% of the world’s major rivers fragmented by dams and diversions (PDF). Some of the world’s greatest rivers such as the Nile, the Indus, and the Colorado no longer flow to the sea. For aquatic life, a dam is often an impenetrable wall. We see salmon wanting to return to their spawning beds, wanting to return home, so badly they batter their heads against concrete walls. They struggle so fiercely against the dams river water turns crimson with salmon blood. Dams isolate communities and keep non-humans from coming home as surely as the Berlin Wall of the Cold War separated Germans or the border fences in California, Arizona, and Texas alienate Americans, Mexicans, and indigenous peoples from each other.

While Earth remembers a refugee crisis thousands of years old, the Great Basin’s memories are full of relative peace characterized by humans like the Shoshone, Goshutes, and Paiutes among others living sustainably taking only as much as the land freely gave.  It was the discovery of a great silver lode in Comstock, Nevada in the 1850s that brought European settlers en masse and started the refugee crisis in the Great Basin.

Ripping metals from the earth creates refugees out of those who call the ground and dark, subterranean regions home. Additionally, silver is extremely difficult to smelt requiring huge amounts of charcoal produced from burning huge amounts of local pinyon pines and junipers at high enough temperatures to separate silver from the stones it clings to so desperately.

Pinyon-juniper deforestation sends 150 vertebrate species fleeing from their cut homes while 450 plant species have no legs to run with.

I used Ronald Lanner’s statistic in my first essay on pinyon-juniper forests, “An Ancient Vision Disturbed,” but the quantity of trees destroyed for silver mining in Nevada is so staggering the statistic needs repeating. Lanner explains in his brilliant work, The Pinon Pine: A Natural and Cultural History: “A typical yield of pinyon pine was ten cords per acre, and a cord made about 30 bushels of charcoal. So, the furnaces of Eureka, working at capacity, could in a single day devour over 530 cords of pinyon, the produce of over 50 acres. An additional 20 acres a day were being cut to provide cordwood for the mills. After one year of major activity, the hills around Eureka were bare of trees for ten miles in every direction. By 1874, the wasteland extended twenty miles from town, and by 1878 the woodland was nowhere closer than fifty miles from Eureka.”

With the Great Basin experiencing over 50 acres of pinyon pine devoured by silver mining furnaces in Eureka per day, thousands of non-humans were made homeless by silver mining in Nevada each day, too.

Pinyon-juniper deforestation sends 150 vertebrate species fleeing from their cut homes while 450 plant species have no legs to run with. Ancient pinyon pine and juniper trees continue to grow their roots deeper and deeper into endangered ground. They’ve felt their kin cut and cut again. They’ve felt the jays fly away, the rabbits scamper into the brush, and the deer sprint from the axemen.

In the Great Basin, refugees beget refugees. European settlers who physically performed the most destructive job were in many cases refugees from war and economic crisis in their homelands.

European settlement brought populations of humans that the land simply could not support naturally. All those people had to eat. So, cattle grazing was introduced to the semi-arid lands of the Great Basin. It wasn’t long before cattle ate away native grasses and destructive, invasive grasses were imported to support cattle populations. The ranchers became jealous of pinyon-juniper forests and a new motivation for deforestation led to more of the forests being cleared.

In the Great Basin, refugees beget refugees. European settlers who physically performed the most destructive job were in many cases refugees from war and economic crisis in their homelands. My ancestors, the Irish, endured centuries of British domination and a wave of Irish fled starvation when the Great Famine struck Ireland a few years before the Great Basin was settled. Many Irish were involved in building railroads and in mining in Nevada. Richer European settlers – the mining bosses and ranch owners – possessed too much capital to be thought of as refugees in the traditional sense, but they demonstrated a certain spiritual disease produced by the belief that humans can safely take more from the land than the land freely gives.

Exploitation of the land initiates a cycle of violence that is pushing the world to near total collapse.

These European refugees forced the Great Basin’s indigenous peoples into becoming refugees in their own homelands. Lanner describes the violence visited up the Shoshone near Austin, Nevada. The mining and urban activities in the area quickly consumed huge tracts of pinyon-juniper forests which served as the Shoshones’ primary winter food source. With their food depleted, the Shoshones were forced to work for wages in the only two industries operating in Nevada: mining and ranching. “The more these food sources were destroyed, the more dependent the Indians became on wages; and the more they engaged in lumbering and ranching for white men, the more they destroyed their food sources. By the time the bubble burst in the 1880s and 1890s when the mining industry collapsed, the pinyon groves were gone, the valley grasslands were fenced for cattle, and much of the old culture was forsaken.”

As these memories should demonstrate, the exploitation of the land is the source of the oldest refugee crisis. Exploitation of the land initiates a cycle of violence that is pushing the world to near total collapse. Some human cultures have literally eaten themselves out of house and home and continue to require new lands to fuel their way of life. As wider and wider swaths of land are destroyed, communities are encountered that refuse to vacate their homes. But, those who exploit  the land gain short term advantages over those who refuse to exploit. Those who refuse to exploit are forced from their homes or killed by weapons made possible by the exploitation of the land and their homes are devastated by technologies similarly made by possible by exploitation.

When the exploiters destroy the possibility of relationship in their minds, they destroy their possibility of belonging, spiritually, to the land. They become refugees.

Spiritual refugees flow from and are created by the land’s exploitation. Before the land, human, and non-human others can be exploited, the exploiters must convince themselves they are somehow superior to these others. The possibility of relationship between exploiter and exploited  is forsaken.

The exploiters no longer view mountains as powerful beings patiently watching time pass over the land; mountains are viewed as simple piles of dirt. Animals are no longer treated like relatives capable of teaching humans great lessons; animals are treated like unthinking, unfeeling bags of meat. Rivers are no longer recognized as great dancers, twisting, turning, and writhing in their long beds; rivers are viewed as puddles of water to be drained for farming. When the exploiters destroy the possibility of relationship in their minds, they destroy their possibility of belonging, spiritually, to the land. They become refugees.

In living, and in dying, pinyon-juniper forests offer more to life than they took away. They do not exploit, they do not force others to be refugees. They stand, hardy and still, completely confident in their own belonging.

Pinyon pine and juniper trees are intimately familiar with the refugee crisis. Yet, they cannot flee for refuge themselves. They also offer a lesson for solving the refugee crisis. Pinyon-juniper forests, in simply existing, are inherently beneficent. By simply growing, they sequester carbon and aid in slowing climate change. By simply seeking to reproduce, they create food for countless others. When they die, naturally, their wood become homes for birds, rats, and other animals. In living, and in dying, pinyon-juniper forests offer more to life than they took away. They do not exploit, they do not force others to be refugees. They stand, hardy and still, completely confident in their own belonging.

 

Resource Exploitation in Guatemala Abuses Women’s Rights

By teleSUR

Women from various Guatemalan communities struggling against resource extraction projects often face repression, criminalization, and violence.  Mining projects and resource extraction in Guatemala exacerbate the discrimination and violence that women face in all areas of Guatemalan society, Rights Action Director Grahame Russell told teleSUR English Thursday.

“Repression and human rights violations caused by global mining operations in Guatemala have added negative effects on women in general and indigenous women in particular,” Russell told teleSUR English.

Russell’s comments come after human rights defenders slammed Guatemala’s widespread resource extraction on Wednesday for violating human rights, especially the rights of women, who often face attacks, sexual violence, and social and political repression for their work defending land and natural resources.

“Participants in the ‘We are Rights Defenders’ Forum.”

“Participants in the ‘We are Rights Defenders’ Forum.”

Women from various communities struggling against unwanted resource extraction projects throughout the country gathered in the capital Guatemala City to discuss the repression, criminalization, and violence disproportionately faced by women rights defenders, especially indigenous women, Prensa Latina reported.

Among the representatives were women from the community of La Puya, in central Guatemala, where they are key leaders in the blockade against the construction of a gold mine and central to the movement’s strategy of nonviolent resistance.

ANALYSIS: Facing Violence, Resistance Is Survival for Indigenous Women

The women called attention to the links between violence against women and the development model in Guatemala based on privatization, mining extraction, and exploitation of natural resources.

“When repression is committed by mining company security guards, soldiers, and police, rape and sexualized violence have also been used against women and girls,” said Russell. “When communities suffer health harm due to mining contaminated water sources, women and children suffer the consequences most.”

Forced displacement can also disproportionately impact women, Russell explained, as men sometimes accept low-paying mining jobs in exchange for their land behind the backs of women.

“For the rights of each one of the 58 million rural women in Latin America.”

“For the rights of each one of the 58 million rural women in Latin America.”

According to women’s organizations present at the event, a femicide is committed in Guatemala every 10 hours, and one in every 10 women experience some form of gender violence. Guatemala, along with neighboring Central American countries El Salvador and Honduras, are among the worst countries in the world for gender violence and femicide.

Guatemalan activist, feminist artist, and politician Sandra Moran explained that women rights defenders regard women’s bodies, land, nature, history, and memory as all “territories in dispute,” Prensa Latina reported.

ANALYSIS: Femicide in Mesoamerica Persists as Systemic Gender Violence

According to Moran, violence against women “is a mechanism and effect of structural, patriarchal, capitalist system,” and this violence is used by the state to “control resistance, alternative proposals, and to maintain control over the bodies, sexualities, and lives of women,” she told teleSUR English earlier this year.

The activists’ message echoed the findings of a recent report by the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Humans Rights Defenders, which found that women defending land and territory in the face of mining operations and other projects between 2012 and 2014 were the most vulnerable among all women rights defenders in Central America and Mexico to gender violence, including harassment, abuse, assassination attempts, and other attacks.

“Thirty-two women human rights defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2014. We do not forget them nor will we stop asking for justice.”

“Thirty-two women human rights defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2014. We do not forget them nor will we stop asking for justice.”

“It is extremely difficult to hold mining companies or government authorities, including police and soldiers, accountable — both in Guatemala and in Canada and the U.S. where most companies are based — when they carry out mining-related repression in general, let alone when it has doubly negative impacts on women and girls. Mining companies operating in Guatemala benefit from and contribute directly to the reigning impunity and corruption,” said Russell, referencing the precedent-setting case attempting to hold Canada’s Hudbay Minerals accountable in Canadian court for the rape of 11 indigenous women.

IN DEPTH: Women Resist

The call for more attention to be paid to the plight of women rights defenders comes ahead of the conclusion of the COP21 climate summit in Paris, where organizations and activists have slammed the draft deal for being weak on human rights protection and the recognition of indigenous communities in the context of climate change.

According to Global Witness, Guatemala is one of the 10 most dangerous countries in world for land and environmental defenders.

Translating the Language of Imperialism

Translating the Language of Imperialism

By One Struggle

That country is poor.

Translation: Your country had bountiful natural resources until we beat the hell out of you and stole everything.

Their government is incompetent. They are unable to govern themselves.

Translation: We invaded you, killed a bunch of you and set the rest at each other’s throats, and installed a dictator who’s helping us steal everything. But it’s your own fault that your country is a mess.

The US helps people all over the world.”

Translation: If you don’t want our products or loans because they’ll ruin your economy, we’ll twist your arm until you take them. We’ll charge you for interest, inputs and maintenance far beyond the value of our original ‘assistance,’ and label ourselves saints and you ungrateful.

2013-04-26-here-to-massacre-you

Developing nations should be integrated into the global economy.”

Translation: First we’ll steal all your natural resources and destroy your economy, and then when your people are starving we’ll give them sweatshop jobs in our factories.

We pay low wages but their living expenses are lower so it all works out.”

Translation: I’ll tell that lie to pacify domestic consumers, but really I don’t care if you starve.

Okay, their lives are hard, but they should be grateful we gave them a job.”

Translation: You have no right to dignity, safety, to send your kids to school. I need that extra profit to pay for my fifth mansion in Switzerland.

We are bringing democracy to the world.”

Translation: We’ll crush you.

Without our help, they’d fall apart. They need us.”

Translation: We don’t produce anything, but we’re violent sociopaths loaded up with guns and nuclear weapons, so we’ll keep on sucking your blood as long as we can get away with it. If you ever stop us, we’ll die.

Buffalo Field Campaign: Update from the Field

Buffalo Field Campaign: Update from the Field

By Stephany Seay / Buffalo Field Campaign

Buffalo are still absent here in the Hebgen Basin. Patrols are conducting daily recons, searching through the buffalo’s migration corridors, but the gentle giants are keeping themselves out of Montana and, consequently, safe from the killers.

Along Yellowstone’s north boundary, in the Gardiner Basin, buffalo haven’t been so lucky. Another eight buffalo have been killed by Confederated Salish & Kootenai (CSKT) hunters who are “harvesting” ecologically extinct wild bison because they have a treaty right to do so. We would suggest that the CSKT and other tribes who hold treaty rights to the Yellowstone region also have a right to healthy, viable populations of wild bison on all federally unoccupied, unclaimed lands. And we would further suggest that the Interagency Bison Management Plan, which is driving the destruction of America’s last continuously wild buffalo herds, is not only violating the lives of wild buffalo, but violating treaty rights as well.

A bull bison approaches a relative's remains, near Beattie Gulch, in the Gardiner Basin.  Buffalo have intense family ties and deeply mourn the loss of those whom they love.  Photo by Stephany Seay, Buffalo Field Campaign. 

A bull bison approaches a relative’s remains, near Beattie Gulch, in the Gardiner Basin.  Buffalo have intense family ties and deeply mourn the loss of those whom they love.  Photo by Stephany Seay, Buffalo Field Campaign.

Most of the recent killings in Gardiner took place right outside Yellowstone’s boundary at Beattie Gulch, which is a tight bottle-neck corridor that the buffalo attempt to use to make it to other lower-elevation habitat in the Gardiner Basin. Hunters literally line up and wait for buffalo to cross the line from Yellowstone, where they can then be shot. Hunters and bison “managers” are aware that bison will seek the assumed safety of the Park when groups are shot at in this area. We have frequently seen hunters shoot into large and small groups of buffalo here, and the buffalo’s response has been to turn around and flee into the Park. This, according to Yellowstone, causes hunting to not be “effective” at killing enough, which, in turn, triggers Yellowstone’s response to initiate capture-for-slaughter operations. At the last Interagency Bison Management Plan meeting, some tribes had agreed to occasionally withhold from hunting right at the Park boundary to enable at least some buffalo to migrate to other expanses of habitat. Of course, these buffalo would still be pursued and eventually killed by hunters. The CSKT, who have killed the most through hunting this year and in years past, also hold an agreement with Yellowstone National Park to ship buffalo to slaughter. Since the CSKT also ship buffalo to slaughter, it’s not really in their interest to allow the buffalo to move further into the Gardiner Basin.

BFC’s Gardiner patrols have also reported that hunters from other tribes hunting under treaty, who normally start their seasons later in the winter going into early spring, have been arriving to Gardiner. With Yellowstone threatening slaughter, hunters are anxious to kill as many buffalo as possible before capture for slaughter begins. For the buffalo, it doesn’t matter if they cross the Park boundary or not, as they’ll likely be killed either way.

Many thanks to our friend and Gardiner resident, Fred Baker, for sharing this image with us.

Many thanks to our friend and Gardiner resident, Fred Baker, for sharing this image with us.

 

The killing of the buffalo, whether it’s through “hunting” or slaughter, is all part of the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP), which was crafted for the benefit of livestock interests, not buffalo.  Even those hunting under treaty rights are being used by Montana’s livestock interests, and consequently, the IBMP, to facilitate the destruction of the buffalo and to prevent them from restoring themselves in Montana and elsewhere. Whether the excuse for these fatal tactics is brucellosis or population control, neither are based on reality, they only serve a political agenda. The IBMP exists because Montana livestock interests sued Yellowstone for “allowing” wild bison to migrate into Montana, and because of a law crafted by the livestock industry —  MCA 81-2-120 — which places the Montana Department of Livestock in charge of managing wild bison. One industry’s intolerance is driving a national treasure towards the brink of extinction. We know you care deeply about wild bison, and one of the single most important things you can do is to help repeal this law. Contact Governor Steve Bullock today.

Wild is the Way–Roam Free!

–Stephany

Buffalo Field Campaign’s Mission:  To protect the natural habitat of wild migratory buffalo and native wildlife, to stop the slaughter and harassment of America’s last wild buffalo as well as to advocate for their lasting protection, and to work with people of all Nations to honor the sacredness of wild buffalo.