Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’

[Catherina]

Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’
April 25, 2013


Chile’s government told to stop allowing firms to exhaust water sources with little regard for local people

More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations protested in the Chilean capital, Santiago, this week to demand that the state regain control of the management of water, which was privatized by the then dictatorship in 1981.

...

The demonstrators delivered a letter to President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were due not only to persistent drought but to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the binational mining treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

...

The movement is fighting for the repeal of the water code, adopted by the 1973-90 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which made water private property by granting the state the right to grant water use rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity. The code allows water use rights to be bought, sold or leased, without taking into consideration local priorities for water use, the organisations complain.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/apr/24/mining-logging-chile-without-water

[BethanyQuartz]

1. Everything enacted under dictators needs scrutiny

And rollbacks for the most part. You can't expect any people to honor agreements made under anything but a real democratic system. That includes in America although it's more subtle here.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Pinochet had absolutely no respect for the land and its inhabitants in Chile

to have thrown open the doors to multinational mining and logging, with no strings attached whatsoever.

Together they raped, plundered, exploited the country, the people, the environment and its essential flora and fauna.

Now we learn, so much later, the mining and logging interests still continue their savage, crude rape of the land and the inhabitants all these years later, operating like diseases, only there to degrade and destroy, even as the people and animals and environment steadily suffer.

What a system. Only the elite benefit, and they do so knowingly, fully aware of the tragic sacrifice they are forcing everyone, everything else to make for their benefit.

It's good to know Camila Vallejo has undertaken a commitment to correcting this crime against human beings, against the life of the planet. This is a far, far more intense effort than the ones she has already confronted, which were actually dangerous for her health, as well, considering what we know the fascists will do to remove barriers to their dirty lust for power. Hope Camila can throw some weight into this struggle which means everything to so many.