Just returned from a long day traveling
around Villa Ahumada, about 130 kilometers south of Juarez experiencing the
water/land crisis in this municipio that I was told is the largest in Mexico –
and probably the poorest, said my traveling companion from the municipio’s
water committee.
I don’t doubt that it is the largest, but certainly not the
poorest – at least in the last decade when the Mennonite communities began
migrating to the intermontane desert plains her from Cuauhtemoc, where the
Mennonites have run out of land for their children and grandchildren. Drilling
to unprecedented depths, the Mennonite colonies have established might
agribusiness enterprises even as the drought intensifies.
Momento. I intended to start this
posting with the link to my new Truthout article on drones. Several folks wrote
me to ask that I include the link as soon as it was published (today). Here it
is:
Predator
Drones Stalk the Border without Budget or Strategy
And then I get several media calls and
queries about my drone research – when all I really want to do is to start
telling the story of climate change, water crisis, and land use patterns in
northern Mexico – which may seem much less important that having more Predators
set to patrol U.S. borders. But I don’t think so. It is my increasing
conviction that we – it is certainly true for me – get caught up in stories and
issues that distract us from the much more important and inevitably more
complex issues.
Tomorrow morning I will be joining a
five-day cabalgata, starting at the Benito Juarez ejido in Buenaventura and
ending at the Palacio de Gobierno in Chihuahua. Not one of those traditional
cabalgatas celebrating Pancho Villa and beer. Leading this march a caballo to
Chihuahua will be some of the family members of the middle-aged activist couple
that were shot a quemaropa last
October.
Ismael
Solorio and Manuelita Solís were the local leaders of the el Barzon network of
small farmers in Chihuahua. I didn’t know them but I participated in a Barzon
action on July 2, when they and more than three hundred farmers from the
Namiquipa, Flores Magon, Buenaventura and Villa Ahumada municipios met to
peaceably and successfully obligate a group of Mennonites to shut down a well
drilling operation. I was there to report and chronicle this action, which
because of the armed intervention of two rogue police (armed with Ar-14s)
marked the literal start of the water border war in northern Mexico. I
participated only I the sense that the shooting began when these officer
criminals rushed into to attempt to grab my camera, which I held on at they
pulled the camera strap and was only able to retain the camera when the Barzon
men and women (none of whom were armed or even aggressive) surrounded me and
pulled me away – which so angered these ruffians that they began shooting in
the air and at our feet.
You
may begin to understand why I am not so dedicated to my drone research – even
if they are named Predators.
The
murdered activists were involved in the campaign to close illegal wells that
are threatening the livelihoods, indeed the survival of the communities of
small farmers and ejidatarios in the Carmen water basin. But they were mostly
active in opposing the drilling operations (more than four hundred exploratory
drilling operations of Cascabel, part of the Canadian mining company MAGSILVER.
Molly
Molloy posted a piece on the La Frontera Google Group immediately after the
assassination last October, referencing a 2009 murder of the widely respected
Barzon and Agrodinamica Nacional leader Armando Villareal Martha in March 2008:
While
I am linking, if you want to see more about the state-Barzon tensions as this
cabalgata sets out to set forth their demands regarding the water crisis, you
can check out these Youtube news links;
Denuncia Barzón tortura a dirigente de
Benito Juárez
Amenazan y golpean a dos barzonistas policías
estatales
I well know that we can’t be involved in
all the important issues of the day, especially when they don’t directly
concern U.S. policy. But I believe the water tensions in Chihuahua underscore
social-justice issues that do deserve the close attention of those of us
concerned with border and U.S.-Mexico relations. What is more, it is my sense
that the incipient water wars south of the border should alert us to the kind
of social, economic, cultural, and political tensions we will be seeing on our
side of the border before too long.
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