focus on amigos de la tierra argentina
Meet Friends of the Earth Argentina
Raquel Schrott at a
rally to defend Mapuche territoriesIn 1998, a Friends of the Earth representative visited the high school where I was studying and invited me to join a group of young people who were concerned about environmental problems in the neighbourhood. Since then, many people have joined Friends of the Earth in Buenos Aires. I met Friends of the Earth Argentina campaigner Ezequiel Miodownik there, and on March 2003, after a seven month engagement, we got married, united by the same struggle and by the same idea that things could be different.
a connection with the earth and its people
Three years ago we began to work with indigenous peoples and small farmers, trying to understand their connection with the earth and their fight to preserve it. They are excluded from a global economic system that oppresses, displaces or kills anyone who opposes it. Meanwhile the rest of society fails to recognize the existence of indigenous people and imagines that the ¨campo¨ - the countryside - is a land far away from the cities that is only useful for growing food or building weekend houses.
From the beginning we worked collectively with other social movements, small farmers, unemployed and indigenous people’s organizations. We always tried to listen, and then listen again and again. Only after hearing their stories in their own words would we speak, and begin to build a movement together.
communication
We also believed that it was necessary to break the information barriers built up by corporate mass media. We met up with the guys from Indymedia (argentina.indymedia.org) and developed a new environmental section on the Indymedia Argentina site. There, any organization or individual can publish their news. The collective tries to show how environmental and social struggles link together with local, regional and global perspectives.
We also found a really interesting and useful tool in the Real World Radio ( www.realworldradio.fm ) initiative developed by FoEI, Redes/AT and AMARC. We believe that Real World Radio could enable greater interaction and co-operation between Latin American groups. It is a powerful way of spreading news and linking similar conflicts across Latin America.
farmers and indigenous peoples
In Argentina indigenous communities are threatened by mining, oil and dam projects all at the same time, while others are brutally evicted by landowners. For example, in the province of Santiago del Estero small farmers have organized themselves into the Movimiento Campesino de Santiago del Estero or MOCASE, a member of the Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org). They are defending their land and food sovereignty as a way of life, for themselves as well as for their sons and grandsons. They have been intimidated, threatened with death, subjected to illegal action by the authorities and pursued by landowners who employ paramilitaries to force them not to claim or defend their lands.
rally to defend the
mapuche territories
Since September 2003, after being violently evicted from their lands in the province of Salta, the Ava Guarani community of El Tabacal has been fighting for the return of their land. No one was spared from the police batons, even pregnant women and children. Along with other local social organizations we are working on a campaign to support this community in their struggle for land rights.
Recently, other nearby communities have also been evicted by the same corporation, their houses and farms destroyed by bulldozers and then burnt.
From the beginning we have received a lot of help through the FoEI cyberactions and the FoEI web team, spreading news of the situation around the world and pressuring the corporation and the mass media. Now members of the community are here in Buenos Aires to prepare support actions while their families are resisting in the woods.
Earth and life run through the veins of these small farmers and indigenous people, and as they walk the slow steps of great wisdom and resistance, we try to walk beside them, building the movement together.
