Farmers are risking their lives to fight back against the US-owned factory farms that are destroying Mexico’s water.
Fausto Limon looks at his bean plants, knowing they need more fertilizer, but lacking the money to buy it, in Veracruz, Mexico.Fausto Limon looks at his bean plants, knowing they need more fertilizer, but lacking the money to buy it, in Veracruz, Mexico.On June 20, more than 200 angry farmers pulled their tractors into the highway outside the Carroll Farms feed plant in the Mexican town of Totalco, Veracruz, blocking traffic. Highway blockades are a traditional form of protest in Mexico.
This bitter confrontation and the death of two campesinos is more than simply a bloody tragedy south of the border. It is one more example of the impact U.S. food corporations have had on local farm communities as they’ve expanded in Mexico. That process is felt north of the border as well, in the spread of disease, the displacement of local communities and resulting migration, and even in the national politics of both countries.Granjas Carroll is a division of the huge U.S.
According to Veronica Hernandez, a schoolteacher in La Gloria, another town in the basin, students told her coming to school on the bus was like riding in a toilet. “Some of them fainted or got headaches,” she charged. In 2007, Granjas Carroll filed criminal complaints against Hernandez and 13 other leaders for circulating a petition protesting the conditions, charging them with “defaming” the company.
Small towns also feel the impact. Many of them don’t have public wells or can’t get permission to dig new ones. Water service has been privatized, and private operators get permits from Conagua for commercial use, she charges. The meeting announced the formation of the Veracruz Assembly of Environmental Initiatives and Defense of Life. “We join the cry for justice that resonates throughout Mexico against Granjas Carroll,” its statement said, “a company that for more than 15 years has contaminated the air, soil and water of the region with the complicity of the government.”Local and national environmental groups have different perspectives on how to resolve the water crisis in the Perote Valley.
“Getting rid of foreign companies will be a very long struggle,” Anabel warned. “Maybe they’d go if the water dries up, but in meantime, they’ll be extracting even more of it. So, we want the government at least to stop giving more concessions, especially for mining, and then to go on to cancel the ones already given.” At the same time, she says, “We want a better level of regulation of the use of water. Residents get water once or twice a month, and the companies get it every day.
“AMLO’s economic policies then fostered the development of safety nets for poor people especially, with cash transfer programs, including pensions and education subsidies,” explained Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the Center for Mexican Studies at UCLA, and co-founder of the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales, an organization of Indigenous Mexicans, with chapters on both sides of the border.
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