Colombia’s choice, biofuel exports or social justice
By Stewart Vriesinga | CPTnet | 7 July 2011
Christian Peacemaker Jenny Rodriguez and I visited the community of Las Pavas in May. It was good to see them back on their land, where I first met them in March of 2009. The Colombian Constitutional Court has recognized that the community’s claims on these lands have merit, so the likelihood of further displacements seems remote.
However, despite the court ruling, and despite the Ministry of the Environment’s assessment that palm oil cultivation would adversely affect these lands, the palm oil company Aportes San Isidro continues to occupy these lands. Some of its personnel, protected by police, are living about ten meters from the community’s homes. Aportes San Isidro is unlikely to cease its operations until the Colombia legal system annuls its title to the land. Only then can the families of Las Pavas receive their registration as the legitimate title-holders.
Las Pavas bases its claim to this land on the land forfeiture by the previous title-holder and Las Pavas’ right of possession. Under Colombia’s land reform laws, a property owner forfeits title to lands that he or she fails to cultivate or otherwise occupy for an extended period. These laws grant rights of ownership to third parties who have occupied and cultivated such lands (or state-owned lands) for period of five years or more. Under these criteria, the community of Las Pavas applied to the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) for the right of possession back in 2006. The Constitutional Court’s ruling in favour of the community requires INCODER, which so far has denied the community’s claims to the land, to reopen the case.
INCODER has a conflict of interest. It is simultaneously responsible for both land reform and rural development in Colombia. Aportes San Isidro’s palm oil cultivations complement INCODER’s economic development plans for the area, since they are likely to contribute to economic growth by supplying the global demand for bio-fuel. The Las Pavas community’s development plans, on the other hand, focus not on national economic growth, but rather food security, the environment, and the future well-being of the community. These factors could very well make INCODER sympathetic to Aportes San Isidro’s palm oil production, and therefore reluctant to comply with the Constitutional Court’s ruling that requires the reopening of the Las Pavas community’s claims to these lands.
Even so, here in Colombia the return of the community of Las Pavas to its land is described as a miracle. Very few of the over four million internally displaced Colombians have regained access to their land. Indeed, since the new government of Juan Manuel Santos was inaugurated at the start of August 2010, at least eight leaders of displaced communities directly involved in advocating for return of their families’ or their communities’ land have been assassinated, presumably by paramilitary or criminal gangs that benefited from stolen land.
The combined political and legal efforts of a host of national and international allies-campaigns against Body Shop, Daabon Organics helped raise the community’s profile, ensuring that the community leaders were not killed despite threats against them and allowing the community to return to its land. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, unlike the lower courts, aligned itself with the court of public opinion and ruled in favour of the community.
More miracles are required:
The annulment of Aportes San Isidro’s land title, and its removal from the lands in question must follow the Constitutional Court’s ruling; the Colombian authorities must issue land titles to the community; and the community must receive compensation for all the environmental and property damage done by the Daabon and Aportes San Isidro consortium. Only then can the community members begin the work of rebuilding their lives and a better future for their children.
Blood in the Amazon: Brazilian Activists Murdered as Deforestation Increases
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva
Early in the morning on May 24, in the northern Brazilian Amazon, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva got onto a motorcycle near the nature reserve they had worked on for over two decades. As the couple rode past the jungle they dedicated their lives to protecting, gunmen hiding near a bridge opened fire, killing them both.
Brazilian law enforcement officials said that the killing appeared to be the work of hired gunmen, due to the fact that an ear was cut off each of the victims. This is often done to prove to whoever paid for the killings that the job was carried out.
The murder took place the same day the Brazilian Congress passed a change to the forestry code that would allow agribusinesses and ranchers to clear even more land in the Amazon jungle. Deforestation rose 27 percent from August 2010 to April 2011 largely due to soybean plantations. The levels will likely rise if the changes to the forestry code are passed by the Senate.
Ribeiro knew he was in danger of being killed for his struggle against loggers, ranchers and large scale farmers who were deforesting the Amazon. In fact, just six months earlier, in November 2010 at an environmental conference in Manaus, Brazil, he told the audience “I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment. … As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest.”
The life and death of Ribeiro has been rightly compared to that of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, union leader and environmentalist who fought against logging and ranching, winning international attention for his successful campaigns against deforestation. In 1988, Mendes was murdered by gunmen hired by ranchers.
Just two weeks before he was killed, Mendes also spoke hauntingly about the likelihood that he would be murdered for his activism. “I don’t want flowers, because I know you are going to pull them up from the forest. The only thing I want is that my death helps to stop the murderers’ impunity…”
Yet since the murder of Mendes, impunity in the Brazilian countryside has become the norm. In the past 20 years, over 1,150 rural activists have been killed in conflicts related to land. Of these murders, less than 100 cases have gone to court, only 80 of the killers have been convicted, and just 15 of the people who hired the gunmen were found guilty, according to Catholic Land Pastoral, a group monitoring land conflicts. Impunity reigns in rural areas due to the corruption of judicial officials and police, and the wealth and power of the ranchers, farmers and loggers who are often the ones who order the killings.
The recent murder of Ribeiro and Santo combined with the danger posed by changes to the forestry code are devastating indications of the direction Brazil is heading in the Amazon. For some, the expansion of logging, ranching and soybean operations into the Amazon are inevitable steps toward economic progress. But for others, a different kind of progress is necessary if the planet is to survive. As Chico Mendes explained just days before his death in 1988, he wanted to “demonstrate that progress without destruction is possible.”
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Benjamin Dangl is the author of the new book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press). He edits TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. Email Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com
The nuclear lobby in trouble as Germany exits nuclear power
By Andrew McKillop – VHeadline – June 5, 2011
Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised many, and stunned the nuclear lobby in other countries with her May 30th announcement of a complete shut down of all Germany’s reactors by January 1st, 2022. This includes the early shutdown of 14 among Germany’s total of 17 reactors, well before that date. At present, nuclear power covers around 22 percent of German electricity consumption.
The German chancellor has, in nine months, gone from calling nuclear power plants a safe, reliable and economical “bridge” to renewable energy, with her coalition government easing regulatory constraints on extending reactor lifetimes, to pushing the biggest and fastest nuclear exit strategy in any country using nuclear power. The international nuclear lobby, already easing off in its constant PR and advertising effort because of the Fukushima disaster, has reacted in sometimes strange ways to Germany’s historic and courageous decision.
To be sure, critics of the decision can claim it is ‘only political’: Merkel has political rivals among the Social Democrats and the anti-nuclear Greens, and cynics can say her ‘atomic epiphany’ following the Fukushima disaster is simple opportunism…
French reaction to the German decision has verged on the hysterical. German-French relations were already at a low point because of Germany’s refusal to join president Sarkozy’s war initiative in Libya and German trade surpluses with France, which continue to mount. At the highest level, including spokespersons of Sarkozy’s ruling UMP political party, the German decision has been called “betrayal” of France’s claimed leading role in the fight against climate change by massive use of supposedly low-carbon, safe and economical nuclear power.
Critics are however forced to move along to technical, economic and industrial factors which, they claim, will make the Merkel plan both technically difficult and a grave economic handicap for Germany, whose export-oriented, trade surplus economic status is the envy of most other G8 countries, except Japan, envied by the USA, France, UK and Italy. Of these, three are still committed to nuclear power, but Italy has recently decided to abandon any restart or relaunch of nuclear power, and obtains zero percent of its electricity from the atom.
CABLES AND ALTERNATIVE SUPPLIES
The ‘technological challenge’ claim is that Germany must rapidly carry out expansion of Germany’s electricity-delivery network costing at least 10 billion-euro ($14.4 billion), and start work on an even more expensive Smart Grid, as well as import more nuclear electricity from France. While the first two needs are rational, and existed before any decision to exit nuclear power, the need – or even the possibility – of importing more nuclear electricity from France is in fact zero. The reason is simple: French electric power exports are steadily shrinking as France itself imports more and more power. On a year-round basis, France imports slightly more electricity from Germany, than vice versa.
In winter 2010-2011, French net imports of electricity attained 9,600 MW, the output of nearly 10 of its 58 reactors when able to fully deliver their design capacity. This itself is decreasingly possible. EDF’s attempt, in early winter 2010 to operate all 58 reactors simultaneously, under full media coverage, was a failure because several reactors were unable to reach their design capacity. With ever increasing French national power needs to meet air conditioning and cooling energy demand in summer, the country’s ability to export power will continue to decline for years ahead, making it for the least unlikely, and risky for Germany to count on French nuclear electricity to plug the gap in power supplies.
The main claim of non-German critics of the exit plan is that very heavy spending is needed on cables to connect proposed but not planned or funded, new large-scale offshore wind farms, with per-kiloWatt capital costs as high as 5,000 euro ($7,000) excluding power cables. This is of course a very high level of initial capital cost – but is also the same as French nuclear power plants, called ‘new generation’ such as the French EPR being built, very slowly and at extreme high cost, in Finland.
Germany’s large-size offshore windfarms, if they are built, would be located in the North Sea, delivering power to Germany’s ‘manufacturing belt’, located in the south. As the nuclear lobby never fails to mention, offshore windfarms are ‘leading edge technology’ and expensive, therefore making the German exit strategy uneconomic and unworkable, but offshore wind is most surely not the only non-nuclear power supply alternative available to Germany.
Others notably include natural gas-fueled power plants, typically costing less than 600 euro per kiloWatt ($850 per kW), and around $ 1,000 per kW with full carbon sequestration, able to utilise cheap shale and fracture gas and coal seam gas extracted ‘in situ’ without any coal mining operations. Gas turbine plants can also utilise pipeline gas, the costs of which will tend to fall as shale and “frac’ gas, and coalseam gas supplies rise in Europe. Interestingly, French political opposition to shale and ‘frac’ gas development in France, which has very large resources of this gas, is extreme high. The environmental case is showcased, but the rationale is also advanced that cheap gas supplies would menace the credibility and apparent low cost of French nuclear power, by providing a serious alternative.
In Germany, this alternative supply can be drawn on, if necessary by importing gas from neighboring Poland, which has prioritized the national development of shale and coalseam gas. The environmental impacts of shale gas can be compared with those of Fukushima, and presented to the general public.
SUBSIDIZED POWER
Large subsidies or power price support for German industrial users is claimed to be necessary, following the exit decision. If not, this claim goes on, Merkel’s decision to exit nuclear power will stunt growth in Europe’s largest economy, can tilt Germany into trade deficit, raise inflation and trigger a retreat into further debt that will make the euro more certain to collapse. Ironically, it is Germany’s relative economic strength due to its large trade surpluses that presently ‘defends the euro’, far more than fiscal deficit-riddled France with its aging and increasingly dangerous nuclear power plants.
Importing French nuclear power, when or if it might be available would also be expensive. French electric power prices, although well behind German prices, are officially set to rise at least 30 percent by 2014.
The reason is simple: nuclear power plant costs, especially the vast dismantling and decommissioning costs of its increasingly aged – and therefore dangerous – reactor fleet. No firm cost figures are supplied by the French government or its nuclear corporate elite on this subject, but several billion euro per reactor, and a timespan of at least 10 years per reactor, are likely. During this extended period and with no surprise, decommissioning cost will most certainly rise further – inevitably raising electricity prices and/or taxes paid by French consumers, and the price for any consumers of imported French power.
What pro-nuclear critics of Merkel’s decision call her ‘atomic epiphany’ was on one hand driven by the entirely democratic and largely spontaneous wave of opposition to nuclear power, following the Fukushima disaster. In Germany, where 250,000-person anti-nuclear demonstrations are commonplace, ignoring this would be electoral suicide, completely unlike the tepid and ambivalent reaction from France’s supine general public, subjected to constant pro-nuclear bias in all French media, especially the State-owned TV channels and radio stations.
Merkel’s exit strategy was on the other hand also driven by far less-evident and obvious factors, including the 180-degree turn on nuclear power by “Corporate Germany”, or ‘Germany AG’.
German corporate reaction was another surprise to non-German critics. Corporate response to the decision was almost euphoric. Following the Merkel announcement, Germany’s DAX stock market index showed its biggest one-day rise in weeks, May 31st. Explanations may seem complex, because as recently as Autumn 2010 German corporate chiefs were heavily insisting that nuclear reactor operating lifetime extensions must be provided more easily by Merkel’s coalition government. In particular the CEOs of the two largest nuclear power using utilities, E.On and RWE, and the Deutsche Bank president publicly threatened a probable complete halt to corporate investment in alternative energy, if Merkel did not extend nuclear plant lifetimes, and at least as important, if she continued with her government’s plan to impose special new nuclear plant operating taxes.
Merkel’s coalition government had made it clear that in return for longer operating lifetimes, nuclear plant operators would pay new taxes designed to help Germany fight its massive fiscal deficits. These taxes, or nuclear special levy, was set on a base able to reach as high as 2 billion euro per year, which would almost wipe out the overall subsidies received from government, by the nuclear sector. Other than making any increase of the reactor fleet impossible, the sector would also have to shoulder the almost open-ended, but coming costs of reactor dismantling and decommissioning.
By late 2010, the calculations and the negotiating stances of German corporate leaders had therefore changed – well before the Fukushima disaster. This, and rising German popular protests, only triggered the 180-degree changes that were coming.
In brief and like anyplace else, nuclear power is so expensive that Corporate Germany or ‘Germany AG’ seeks any way to get consumers and taxpayers to share the burden of decommissioning and dismantling the country’s aging plants. These are aging in the exact same way as those of France, USA, Japan and UK – the ‘old nuclear nations’ with nuclear plants dating back in some cases to the 1960s. Corporate Germany had already accepted that an improved power network to avoid potential blackouts was needed, especially due to Germany’s burgeoning windfarm capacity and aging power transport infrastructures. Paying for this, and for reactor decommissioning became at least as important to Corporate Germany as power price subsidies to the largest users, especially the very profitable car makers in the south, notably Daimler AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) AG, and their equipment suppliers including Siemens AG (SIE) and Swiss ABB Ltd.
For Merkel, the nuclear exit strategy will be a test case on whether an export based industrialized nation can rely far more on clean energy without eroding corporate production and profit. To be sure, the exporter nation called China with the world’s biggest trade surplus, although busily building nuclear plants, presently obtains an unimpressive 2 percent of its electricity from the atom, proving that nuclear energy is in no way critical and basic to achieving the status of ‘industrial exporter country’
NUCLEAR POWER PROTECTS THE CLIMATE AND SAVES OIL
Especially in France, but not the USA where shale and “frac” gas and coalseam gas already cover about 40 percent of national gas supply, the gas-alternative to nuclear power is especially criticized. Well-known and exaggerated claims for ‘low carbon’ nuclear, versus ‘dirty gas’ are wheeled out on France’s 5 State-owned TV channels almost daily.
Compared with nuclear power which is intensely dependent on oil for mining uranium, shipping and processing uranium into fuel rods, transporting and storing nuclear wastes, building and servicing nuclear plants, and dismantling them, natural gas-fueled electricity produces about the same overall CO2 emission per unit kWh output. The data and analyses provided by defenders of “low carbon nuclear” theses carefully omit the large oil-energy subsidies, and therefore CO2 emissions produced by nuclear power when “full cycle” analysis is made. They of course never mention the open-ended costs, and enduring risks of decommissioned nuclear plants.
Critics of Germany’s exit strategy fail to mention the “cheap gas” alternative to nuclear power, except to claim it is environmentally and climatically dangerous, simply because it is the biggest and cheapest available alternative.
Defenders of nuclear power also make a point of ignoring the drastic environmental damage caused by nuclear power ‘over the horizon’, in low-income African countries, such as Niger, where France sources a large part of its uranium needs. The French semi-private nuclear corporation Areva’s uranium mines in Niger are a copybook example of destroying the environment and exploiting low-paid workers “out of sight – out of mind” in a faraway developing country, with disastrous mine worker health and safety conditions, while claiming this “protects the environment and climate”.
Critics claim Germany must build new and costly high-volume lines to France, to raise imports of nuclear-origin electricity from France’s 58 nuclear reactors. Doing this, Germany would only import unsafe, unreliable, uneconomic, inadequate and environmentally dirty nuclear power supplies from a country that is increasingly unable to satisfy its own national peak power demands, due to its over-reliance on nuclear power.
Critics of the environmental impact of fossil-based electric power (imagining of course that uranium is somehow not a fossil mineral), who loudly defend “clean” nuclear power, like James Hansen, or James ‘Gaia’ Lovelock will of course not be giving their well-paid nuclear pep talks at the edge of Fukushima’s total exclusion zone. This is now being extended due to deadly radiation extending at least 50 – 70 kilometres from the ruined power plants which will spew as much as 50 – 250 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb of 1945, making forced evacuation needed far beyond the initially hoped-for 20 kilometres.
Already, some 90,000 to 125,000 Japanese have been forcibly evicted from their homes, farms and places of work due to “clean, cheap and safe” nuclear power. These Japanese victims of nuclear power can be asked if they think nuclear power ‘protects the environment and mitigates climate change’, in the same way as mass protestors against nuclear power in Germany. The fight against nuclear power has scored a massive victory in Germany.
Background:
German people in unprecedented rebellion against government
By Jane Burgermeister – November 8, 2010
The False Promise of Biomass
Blowing Smoke
By MATTHEW KOEHLER, IAN LANGE and JOHN SNIVELY | CounterPunch | May 5, 2011
Last fall news broke that the University of Montana was planning to construct a $16 million wood-burning biomass plant on campus next to the Aber Hall dormitory. UM officials claimed the biomass plant would save UM $1 million annually and protect Missoula’s air quality by reducing emissions over the existing natural gas heating system.
As interested citizens, we attended the university’s biomass “poster presentation” last December, which, unfortunately, raised more serious questions than it answered. So we continued to ask questions and research the proposal. In March, we even conducted an “open records” search of UM’s biomass project file, pouring over hundreds of documents and emails between UM officials and representatives of Nexterra, a Canadian biomass boiler manufacturer, and McKinstry, a Seattle energy services company. Suffice to say, our records search turned up even more troubling questions, especially related to costs, maintenance and emissions.
As the Missoulian reported last month, information in UM’s air quality permit application to the Missoula City-County Health Department showed that “Contrary to previous claims by UM administrators, the university’s proposed biomass boiler will not reduce emissions to levels below that of natural gas. In fact, UM’s proposed state-of-the-art biomass gasification plant will produce nearly twice as much nitrogen dioxide as its existing natural gas boilers – and in some cases, will release three times as much particulate matter.” The emissions are higher than what McKinstry’s feasibility study predicted.
Our records search also turned up a document showing that the biomass plant would also increase emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds by 40 percent or more over the existing natural gas system.
Obviously, Missoula is prone to severe inversions and air stagnation, especially during winter, when the greatest load would be on the biomass system. We found a UM biomass grant application that stated, “The Missoula Valley’s constrained topography presents ideal research conditions for long term analysis of environmental impacts of efficient woody biomass boiler combustion.” Do we really want to risk Missoula’s air quality for the sake of research?
It’s also been difficult to get an accurate assessment from UM of the biomass plant’s up-front and long-term costs, something all Montana taxpayers deserve. For starters, we noticed in the project file that in April 2010 the cost of the biomass plant was $10 million. By July, the cost went to $14 million. Now it sits at $16 million. UM’s financial pro forma also shows that during the first 20 years the biomass plant would need nearly $10 million for additional operation and maintenance expenses over the existing natural gas system.
The pro forma is also troubling in other aspects. It over-estimates the cost of natural gas, while under-estimating the cost of biomass fuel trucked to campus, especially given rising diesel costs. The pro forma also completely zeros out all natural gas expenses and maintenance costs, even though UM now admits that a natural gas boiler would be used during cold winter days to augment the biomass system, and also used from May to September, when the biomass system is too powerful to use.
Further complicating the picture, UM realized during the permitted process that its existing natural gas boilers are in violation of air pollution limits. The fix will cost around $500,000. And UM’s contract with McKinstry was amended recently, meaning that UM is already contractually committed to McKinstry for $532,000 just for project development.
It is our belief that all of these significant issues need to be fully analyzed and rechecked, not just by the biomass project’s supporters, but also by the Board of Regents, independent of McKinstry and UM. Guarantees of performance by McKinstry need to be carefully scrutinized, as other colleges have paid the price for poorly written contracts or poorly vetted companies.
At the end of the day, Montana taxpayers deserve to see accurate, updated financial information from UM concerning all aspects of the biomass plant, including the initial $16 million price tag and $10 million needed for additional operation and maintenance expenses. And Missoula’s citizens have a right to expect that the University of Montana would not risk Missoula’s fragile air quality by needlessly increasing emissions over present levels.
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Matthew Koehler is executive director of the WildWest Institute; Ian M. Lange is a professor emeritus, Department of Geosciences at the University of Montana; and Dr. John Snively is a retired dentist. All three live in Missoula.
This column was originally published by The Missoulian.
‘Sustainable Rural Cities’, a Nightmare Come True in Chiapas
Biofuel Company Towns
Written by Koman Ilel, Translation by Jessica Davies – Upside Down World – 04 May 2011
More than three years ago torrential rains flooded the northern and central regions of the state of Chiapas. The rain seriously affected more than 1,200 families in 34 municipalities. This disaster, coupled with the inept dredging strategies of the National Water Commission (Conagua) and the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), kept 404 households in 33 villages and 960 hectares of productive land under water for more than three months.Of all those concerned, the community of Juan de Grijalva suffered the worst fate: it was buried by the breaking away of a hill in the town of Ostuacán, in northern Chiapas. Shortly after the tragedy, the government, in the guise of a ‘philanthropic organisation’, held out its hand in solidarity to the people of Juan de Grijalva. Two years later they erected the brand new city of Nuevo Juan de Grijalva, the first Sustainable Rural City (SRC) in the whole of Mexico.
From being a poor village, Juan de Grijalva had become a leading city that had all the services that any Mexican could wish for: decent housing and quality basic services; drinking water; a water purification plant; drainage and sewerage; a waste treatment plant; electricity and public lighting using solar voltaic cells; a communications tower for fixed and mobile telephones; access to the Internet and information networks; a comprehensive basic education centre equipped with advanced technology; kindergarten, elementary and secondary schools; and a Health Centre with expanded services in the area of telemedicine equipment and technology. In addition, the inhabitants of the newly developed city were provided with opportunities for decent and gainful employment. Projects were launched for intensive production such as: greenhouses, nurseries, packing stations for tomatoes, poultry farms and a dairy processing plant. They also started ‘productive reconversion’, which allows residents to keep their land by replacing traditional crops with others of high commercial value.
It all sounded too good to be true. And, indeed, the dream became a nightmare. The city was from the beginning doomed to failure. There was not even the will to make a decent project: the houses are mousetraps, the basic services are inadequate, the health centers do not even have doctors, etc. But beyond these ‘details’, the new town is part of a state-wide program to rearrange the scattered population. As if we were in the sixteenth century, the aim is to create ‘authentic Indian villages’.
An Imposed Project
Under the pretext that most of the villages of Chiapas are scattered and that this high dispersion makes the provision of services and the economic and social development of communities difficult, the Rural Cities Program aims to focus on rural people in small villages. The aim is twofold: firstly, to take the land away from the small farmers (campesinos) and exploit it (with the participation of large businesses) and secondly, to concentrate the inhabitants of several villages in one place to serve as an ‘industrial reserve army’.
The ‘Believing People’ (el Pueblo Creyente) from the parish of San Pedro Chenalhó expressed it in these terms: “We are concerned that the rural cities project has been imposed, and that the people in the communities have not been consulted as to whether they agree with it or not, and if they do consult them, the consultation is based on lies and omissions, the government does not say clearly what this mega project actually brings or whether it is for the good or ill of the people. For example, it does not explain what ‘productive reconversion’ means, or who will be the beneficiaries of this reconversion.
“Rural cities were not invented by the state and federal government of this administration, but have a very long history, going back, for example, to the colonization of Latin America. At that time they were not called ‘rural cities’ but were known as ‘reducciones’, with the aim of making control of the population easier and more efficient in order to collect taxes (tribute), to use the people as labour for mines, plantations (most frequently sugar cane), for the construction of cities for the Spanish, and, of course, for political and military control. It is also true that then, as now, they argued that there would be benefits for the population directly affected, that by concentrating a population they can be provided with access to basic services of potable water, education, health, etc..”
The Wider Context
To address the issue of fighting poverty here in Chiapas, we must analyze the Sustainable Rural Cities in a broader context. On the one hand, in 2008 the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and other Central American countries signed the trade agreement Plan Mesoamerica (a new version of the Plan Puebla Panama). The purpose of this plan is to create an infrastructure and trade corridor that connects Southern Mexico to Colombia, and this area is intended to serve big capital. On the other hand, the political and economic plan of the World Bank, outlined in their report entitled ‘New Economic Geography’, suggests that economic integration is the fundamental way to bring development to all corners of the world. This report emphasizes population density as a key factor for the economic development of any country.
The construction of Santiago El Pinar, the second SRC, clearly unveils another facet of the project: that of a counterinsurgency strategy devised by the Chiapas government against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Located very close to the Zapatista autonomous municipalities of San Juan de la Libertad and San Andrés Sakamch’en, the ‘city’ breaks down the traditional ways of life, and forces people to enter the capitalist mode of production of small businesses oriented towards the external market. Clearly, the Sustainable Rural City is a challenge to the Zapatista caracoles, who have built true autonomous systems of health, education and production. It seems that the government forgets that it is dealing with the same people who took up arms in January 1994, a dignified people and one increasingly more aware.
As we said, so far they have established two Sustainable Rural Cities: Nuevo Juan Grijalva and Santiago El Pinar. There are three more under construction: Jaltenango, Ixhuatan and Emiliano Zapata (and a final one in the process of being built: Copainalá). It is obvious that private interests are a fundamental component of the Sustainable Rural Cities, so it does not take much imagination to realize who the real beneficiaries of this project are. Certain companies (among whom stand out Telmex, Fundación Azteca, BBVA Bancomer, Banamex, Grupo Carso, Farmacias del Ahorro and Coparmex) who operate through their ‘third level’ employees (the governor and his cronies), and certain university institutions (IPN and UNACH ) are the ones who have assessed, evaluated and supported with funding the construction of the ‘self-sustaining cities’. All these have a place of honor on the Advisory Council of the Sustainable Rural Cities.
With even more irony, these companies have their place within the very broad commercial corridors included in the plans of these ‘cities’, in places where little is known about money and where the people are still dying of curable diseases. Now, the residents will not only be free to sell their labour, but they will also be free to obtain un-repayable micro-loans, cell phones, domestic electrical appliances by means of small payments, and other ‘benefits’ that the modern world brings.
No Longer Slaves?
In fact, the two Sustainable Rural Cities are a disaster for their new inhabitants. The plan promoted by the government is solely focused on benefiting the companies involved in the construction of these cities. We all need to inform ourselves about these illusions and publicly denounce the government’s plans.
The Sustainable Rural Cities affect all the communities of Chiapas and are intended to alienate the people from their land, thus making the land available to large multinational corporations who focus on “cheap labour”, destroying ancient farming practices, imposing community development models and forcing the population into the financial circle of capitalism. We conclude with the words of the Civil Society organisation The Bees (Las Abejas):
“We are not the only ones who know that this project [of rural cities] is part of the Mesoamerica Project, previously Plan Puebla Panama. This plan did not start with the bad government of Calderon nor with that of Sabines, but with Salinas de Gortari when he signed NAFTA (the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement) which caused the uprising of our Zapatista brothers and sisters in the year 1994.
[…] Now they say we are no longer slaves, but it is just the same to make us work in their Mesoamerica Project with its plans for mines, sweatshops and plantations, which explains the campaign that the bad government is starting. This campaign is to have what they call ‘productive restructuring’.
“They do not explain much what this means, but we understand that now they do not want us to sow our cornfields (milpa), and our other ancestral foods any longer. They tell us that it is better for us to sow African (oil) palm and pine nuts, the reason they give us for this is to prevent fires.
“But what we see is that with the corn and beans we nourish ourselves; with oil palms and pine nuts they plan to produce biofuels to feed the cars and trucks. Do cars have more right to the food of Mother Earth than we do?”
Article originally published in Spanish by Koman Ilel, 26th April 2011
http://komanilel.blogspot.com/2011/04/ciudades-rurales-sustentables-una_21.html
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See also:
Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency
Corporate Crime of the Century Portrayed as Conspiracy Theory
NPR Ombudsman Says No Response Allowed to Mass Transit Mess Up
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER | May 3, 2011
The NPR Ombudsman says that no response will be allowed to a story about mass transit in Los Angeles.
On April 21, 2011, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a story about how – after a fifty year absence – light rail is coming back to Los Angeles.
NPR reporter Mandalit Del Barco reported that eighty years ago, electric mass transit dominated the city.
“By the roaring 1920’s, more than 1,000 miles of electric trolley lines and train rails ran through the ever-expanding Los Angeles,” Del Barco reported.
But then in the middle of the century, the electric trolley cars disappeared.
Why?
“LA replaced the last of its streetcars with a web of freeways and bus lines,” Del Barco reported. “That led to conspiracy theories that the streetcars were dismantled by private companies who stood to profit – General Motors, Standard Oil and tire companies. That villainous plot figured into the 1988 movie ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.'”
In fact, it was more than just conspiracy theories.
It was an actual federal crime that led to the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit.
The companies involved were indicted, convicted, and fined for destroying the nation’s electric mass transit systems.
Del Barco says she was familiar with the criminal history of the case, but didn’t report it.
We asked the NPR Ombudsman’s office to investigate and issue a clarification – at least tell NPR’s listeners that it wasn’t just a conspiracy theory – that it was an indicted and convicted federal crime.
The Ombudsman office said they would look into it.
Then, late last week, we got an e-mail from the NPR Ombudsman’s office.
“Our office talked to the reporter and editor of the piece,” wrote Lori Grisham of the NPR Ombudsman’s office. “They understand your concerns, but do not believe a correction is warranted. Time is one of the main constraints when it comes to producing a radio story and they were trying to condense a great deal of history into a small amount of time.”
Grisham passed along this from Jason DeRose, NPR’s Western Bureau Chief:
“The piece makes clear there had been better public transit in LA and that it was dismantled. We chose not to describe that demise in detail. There were many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines. We chose to characterize the numerous unproven allegations as conspiracy theories to lead into the Roger Rabbit tape.”
Grisham ends her e-mail: “I apologize that NPR will not run a correction. Thank you again for taking time to contact us.”
And thank you Lori Grisham for looking into this.
But that’s just bad form – and one reason why America is angry with NPR.
We sent you the documented proven history of the criminal activity.
And still, Jason DeRose says that there were “many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines.”
What gives?
This was proven and convicted criminal conduct.
There was nothing unproven about it.
In fact, the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit system was perhaps one of the most egregious – and underreported – corporate crimes of the century.
Brad Snell is also not happy with the NPR Ombudsman’s decision.
Snell is in the final stages of writing a history of General Motors.
It will be published in 2013 by Knopf.
“Under our celebrated system of laws, the US Justice Department’s allegation of conspiracy by defendants General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, and tires by eliminating electric transit was transformed from theory to fact upon their conviction by a Chicago jury in US District Court on March 19, 1949,” Snell told Corporate Crime Reporter. “That judgment was affirmed on appeal (186 F.2 562 (7th Cir. 1951)) and a further appeal by defendants to the US Supreme Court was denied (cert den. 341 US 916), leaving the judgment and convictions in National City Lines as final matters of settled fact and law.”
“In 1990, the Honorable George E. MacKinnon, Senior Judge of the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC, had occasion to review the entire trial record in the National City Lines case,” Snell said.
His conclusion appeared in the Washington Legal Times on May 7, 1990.
“That Chicago trial resulted in criminal conspiracy convictions of the General Motors Corp., Standard Oil of California, and the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. for their concerted effort to replace electric streetcars with buses in numerous large and small cities,” Judge MacKinnon wrote.
“It is not a theory,” Snell said. “These are not ‘unproven allegations of conspiracy.’ It has been settled judicial fact for more than half a century. Beyond a reasonable doubt, as affirmed by the federal courts, and after denial of further review by the Supreme Court of the United States, it is an established and incontrovertible fact that General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire conspired to replace electric transit in cities throughout America in order to effect a monopoly in the sale of buses and related products.”
“To suggest otherwise is to debase and mock our revered and time-honored system of American jurisprudence,” Snell said.
It is unconscionable that the NPR Ombudsman will not even consider running a response.
Russell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.
Biofuel terrorism in Guatemala
By Annie Bird | Upside Down World | 23 March 2011
Internationally-funded Guatemalan bio-fuel interests evict Mayan Qeqchi families from their historic lands, destroying homes and crops, killing one, injuring more, while thousands are without food or shelter. On March 15, 16 and 17, hundreds of security officers from the Guatemalan National Civil Police, Army and Anti-riot Squads entered 14 small Maya Qeqchi villages in the municipality of Panzos, Alta Verapaz, shooting live ammunition and dispersing tear gas.
Reports from the region indicate that police and soldiers were followed by masked and armed employees of the Chabil Utzaj sugar cane company, who destroyed homes and crops. Families pleaded, to no avail, with plantation ‘owners’ and State authorities to spare the crops because they were close to harvest and families would face starvation without their harvest.
In the first community, Aguas Calientes, 72 families awoke at 5 a.m. surrounded by troops. They were given an hour to gather possessions and food. They begged for more time to gather what crops they could, but were not allowed. The day before, on March 14, a delegation from the community had attended a government sponsored negotiation meeting with farm ‘owners’ in Guatemala City, and were given no notice of the pending eviction. Those too slow in the scramble to leave were attacked with violence, resulting in five injured and four hospitalized. Families with registered land titles in a neighboring farm were also attacked.
The next community, of 32 families, was Miralvalle. The eviction began at approximately 10 a.m., and proceeded in a similar manner. Witnesses report that Antonio Beb Ac, a 35-year-old father of three, was shot in the head by anti-riot troops, though justice system authorities, notoriously corrupt in this region of the country, claim he was killed by a rock.
Evictions continued the evening of March 16 in the community of Quinich. On March 17 reports indicate that evictions occured in Semau, Finca Parana, Tinajas, San Miguelito, Los Recuerdos, Bella Flor, La Isla, Santa Rosa, San Paolo, Rio Frio, El Rodeo and 8 de Agosto. Thousands of people, including thousands of children, are camped out many on the side of the roads with no shelter or food, in the rain.
BIOFUEL-RELATED REPRESSION BUILDS ON 1978 “PANZOS” MASSACRE
This is not the first time the landholders who claim to own the land from which these communities are being evicted have called out the armed forces against the communities.
During the military governments ushered in by the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup, a handful of non-Qeqchi families gained access to land and land titles in the fertile Polochic Valley where Panzos is located, in large part through a combination of violence and fraud. The communities did not accept the validity of these claims, and made every effort they could, under military governments, to have their land and labor rights recognized.
One man, Flavio Monzon, who was named as mayor in 1954 by the military government and remained in office for 20 years, is reported by community leaders to have amassed approximately 200,000 acres of land while acting as mayor, including much of the area being evicted today.
The historical tension between the large landholders and the Qeqchi communities culminated in 1978 when, according to testimonies, the mayor and landholders convoked communities to a meeting in the town square on May 29. On approximately May 24, a contingent of 30 soldiers, invited by the mayor and landholders, occupied the municipal hall. Early in the morning on May 29, workers hired by plantation owner Flavio Monzon used a tractor to dig a large hole in the Municipal cemetery.
By 9:00 a.m., hundreds of people from the summoned communities had arrived in the town square of Panzos, to find it surrounded by soldiers and police. The army was stationed around the square and on the roofs of the buildings surrounding it. They had blocked all the exits. At the mayor’s signal, they opened fire on the unarmed crowd. Soldiers went after those who tried to escape one-by-one to kill them. Monzon’s hired workers then used the municipal truck to carry at least three loads of bodies to the cemetery and dump them in the hole they had prepared beforehand. The United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification registered 53 people killed that day. Local people say there were actually many more killed and injured.
Extreme repression continued, with constant kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions of community leaders throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Mass graves are reported in the area where the forced evictions are today occurring, and a torture center used by the military was located that was evicted, Las Tinajas.
Following the Panzos massacre and the ensuing extreme repression, communities abandoned their homes and fled into the mountains, the Sierra de las Minas, surviving unimaginable hardship.
BIOFUELS & MULTILATERAL “DEVELOPMENT” BANKS IN THE POLOCHIC VALLEY: THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE VIOLENCE
Between 1985 and 2005 the situation slowly improved as the nation transitioned into ostensible “civilian” rule, as the international community accompanied the peace process, ending the 36-year armed conflict in 1996. Communities returned to farming lands some had fled from during “the violence.”
Under the framework of the peace accords, a national fund for land was created to provide access to credit to allow rural communities to buy land. Based on a model being implemented throughout Latin America with the goal of facilitating stable land markets, the fund was highly problematic. Nonetheless it was the only apparent alternative for thousands of communities seeking secure tenure of their land.
Throughout the Polochic Valley dozens of communities sent in their paperwork, requesting to buy lands from the land “owners.” By the mid 2000’s dozens of communities believed they were on the brink of gaining security over their lands, when the possibility of massive agri-business profits appeared in the form of biofuels.
Though sugar cane and palm oil producers may argue that their production is for human consumption, the current investment in these sectors is geared toward generating sufficient production to supply the biofuel markets expected to skyrocket as climate change mitigation strategies mandate consumption and subsidize production of biofuels.
WEALTHY FAMILY CONNECTIONS
In 2006, Carlos Widmann, brother-in-law of then recently-elected president Oscar Berger and owner of the sugar cane refinery Ingenio Guadalupe, secured loans totaling $31 million from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) (a smaller version of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank), with which he moved his refinery operation across the country from the traditional sugar lands of the south-west Coast to the Polochic Valley, where the refinery was renamed Chabil Utzaj.
BIOFUEL INTERESTS PROVOKE ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION
The Widmann family was not a traditional landholder in the Polochic, but Widmann brokered deals with the landholders to rent and then allegedly buy the farms. Mass evictions of communities began, in what the Qeqchi farmers describe as being just like the 1980s, when communities were forced to flee to the mountains. Many again were displaced into terrible conditions in the Sierra de las Minas, like in the 1980s.
Between 1998 and 2006, a large landholding family in Polochic of German descent, the Maegli’s, experimented with African Palm oil production, and by 2006 had 5,000 hectares under palm fruit production in Alta Verapaz, and then began rapidly expanding plantations, and therefore also illegally, forcibly displacing small farmers.
Though studies should be undertaken, it was obvious to observers that forests were significantly impacted by this displacement as hungry families were forced to cultivate forest lands either bordering or within the Sierra de las Minas biosphere.
The new palm and sugar cane plantations needed large scale irrigation. Carlos Widmann and his Chabil Utzaj company literally re-routed the Polochic river while the palm oil producers reportedly changed existing irrigation systems connected to tributaries of the Polochic, wreaking massive havoc throughout the region, particularly due to the re-routing of the river.
Each year since 2006 immense extensions of land have been flooded as the river seeks to return to its natural course, flooding out crops and even flooding portions of the large town of Teleman. The river often deposits 60cm or more of sand on top of large expanses of formerly agricultural lands outside of the cane and palm plantations, strangling all crops and trees. Small farmers throughout the region have been devastated, and ecosystems in the Polochic River and Izabal Lake have been devastated. People have been killed crossing the river.
In late 2009, the Widmann sugar cane operation apparently collapsed, and the lands were abandoned. The reasons are not clear. Mayan Qeqchi communities, most having lived and worked (as almost slave-labour) for generations on these lands, then returned to farm the lands, building huts and sowing subsistence, survival crops. In August 2010 newspapers reported that lands and equipment belonging to Chabil Utzaj were to be auctioned by a Guatemalan bank, Banco Industrial, which managed a trust fund set up to facilitate CABEI funds for Chabil Utzaj.
However, a solution was negotiated between Chabil Utzaj and CABEI, in which at the urging of the bank Chabil Utzaj brought on new investors to recapitalize the company. In the region rumors are circulating that cane plantations would be converted to African palm.
In February 2011, local radio stations ran advertisements apparently from Chabil Utzaj calling on former cane workers to illegally evict the families farming the former cane plantations.
GREENWASHING STARVATION AND ENVIROMENTAL DESTRUCTION
Small farmers in the Polochic live from harvest to harvest. When the harvest is not good, families know they must pass a few weeks when food will be scarce because they must buy or forage for it. When a harvest is lost completely, like when the company destroys their crops by provoking flooding, chopping down crops or kicking families off lands, they face starvation conditions, now rampant in one of Guatemala’s most fertile river valleys.
Recent studies have demonstrated that virtually all the families in the villages affected by the introduction of biofuel production spend significant periods of time feeding five to seven people with only five pounds of corn a week, and nothing else.
Claims that the production of biofuel crops (African palm, sugar) generates jobs are false and misleading. While a large number of jobs are generated for labor during harvest, the cane company brought in outside seasonal labors. One reliable source reported that workers had been brought in from Nicaragua.
Most significantly, the only study of production patterns in the region found that other cash crops produced, such as chili and okra, as well as corn and beans, all require much more intense labor than cane or palm, often double or triple work input per land unit, and in this way maintain much higher and more constant employment levels. These crops also contribute to food security and are cultivated by small producers, while the economic benefits are distributed more equitably. This clearly demonstrates that palm and cane plantations reduce employment, income and food security, even though they may raise the national Gross Domestic Product.
WELFARE FOR THE WEALTHY: SUBSIDIZING ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION & RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Biofuels, however, are apparently more profitable for large plantation ‘owners,’ in part because they are being subsidized by Clean Development Mechanism and favorable loans from multilateral development banks.
Between 2006 and today, a handful of cane and palm oil producers have received funding from the CABEI, and the IDB’s (Inter-American Development Bank) private sector lending agency, the Inter-American Investment Corporation. In May 2007, the IDB held its Annual General Meeting in Guatemala City, promising financing for biofuel production through funding projects that had been in the planning for several years.
The Ingenio Magdelena, like the Ingenio Guadelupe, received CABEI funds. The Pantaleon sugar operation, of which the Widmann family is a large shareholder, benefitted from an IDB loan.
Given that both the CABIE and the IDB are government-sponsored and -controlled funding agencies, the fact that close relatives of the then president benefit from these resources raises red flags of corruption and nepotisim. Carlos Widmann’s sister was the First Lady, and Widmann’s nephew, son of then President Berger, was on the board of the Guatemalan bank that facilitated the more than $30 million in CABEI funds.
INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS PROFITEERING FROM RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND PUBLIC FUNDS
But the wealthy and powerful in Guatemala are not the only beneficiaries of the enormous windfalls from the massive public spending on market incentives for initiatives purportedly aimed at curbing climate change or from funding from multinational, public development banks.
Central American corporations are taking on business partners from throughout the region, and stock and bond holders in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia are profiting from this new ’emerging market.’
In 2006, the CABEI, for just the second time in its existence, issued publicly traded bonds, placing $200 million worth on the New York market. Since 2006, CABEI has embarked on an aggressive strategy of capitalizing the bank with series of bond releases sold in the US, Europe and Asia, while prioritizing so called “renewable” energy investments like biofuels.
Multilateral banks have participated in creating a burgeoning new array of “mezzanine” investment funds, in which public funds from the WB and the IDB provide seed capital for investment funds deposited with private investment corporations used to levy private sector investment in the funds, which in turn finances a range of private sector investments in infrastructure and “renewable” energy.
For example, the Central America Mezzanine Infrastructure Fund, created in 2005 with WB and IDB investments, was deposited with the Bahrain based “EMP” investments which was later purchased by a Brunai based investment firm.
In January 2009, the WB and IDB collaborated to create the Latin American Capital Management LLC (LACAM), managed by Reservoir Capital Group, described as managers of university endowments and individual investors.
LACAM is dedicated to sugar cane financing!
The “Clean Development Mechanism”, managed by the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, has certified carbon emissions reduction credits for projects undertaken by cane and palm oil companies to reduce their emissions or generate electricity.
The Extractora del Atlantico palm oil refinery received CDM certification in April 2008; the Agroamerica palm oil plant in April 2009; the Ingenio Magdalena cane mill in July 2009; the INDESA palm oil plant in July 2009; and the Olmeca palm oil plant in November 2009.
Agroamerica and INDESA produce palm oil from the Polochic Valley. In August 2010, INDESA received certification from the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), certifying it as being an ecologically sustainable product.
RSPO certification is being strongly promoted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the WB.
In recognition that biofuel production is devastating environments and communities around the world, the WB and the IDB put a freeze on biofuel loans while they prepared sector strategies. RSPO is seen as a “safeguard” which can separate out the environmentally friendly palm oil; experience in the Polochic Valley shows RSPO is nothing more than greenwashing.
The WB plans to present its palm oil strategy in this month. In May 2010 they held “stakeholder consultations” in Costa Rica with palm oil producers and NGOs. Agroamerica, a Polochic Valley palm oil producer, among other Guatemalan palm oil producers such as Palmas del Ixcan and Agroindustrias Hame, participated. It seems that Polochic Valley palm oil producers are poised to benefit from the WB’s private sector funding agency, the International Finance Corporation.
Defensores de la Naturaleza, a highly criticized environmental NGO that “administers” the Sierra de las Minas biosphere, receives funding from WWF and Conservation International. As part of the “payment for environmental services” scheme they also receive funding from palm oil producers.
USAID sponsored a project to promote “Ecotourism” involving the Defensores de la Naturaleza and INDESA.
Under the new REDD+ initiative, advanced in the Copenhagen COP16 summit, palm oil plantations may be eligible to earn carbon capture credits. In Copenhagen, agreements were advanced to define mandatory national percentages of fossil fuel replacement by biofuels, and for the creation of multinational public funding for technology conversion, which could generate trillions of dollars of potential markets for northern corporations.
These measures will stimulate the expansion of biofuel production on unprecedented levels and strengthen already politically powerful financial and corporate interests in biofuels, some of which appear to have little concern for the real environmental, or human, impacts of biofuel production.
The environmental damages by cane and palm production are already being reported around the world. In the Polochic valley the damages from the destruction of wetlands, the rerouting of the Polochic River and the displacement of families has not been quantified, but observers and communities alike know it is enormous. The corporations earning money through the Clean Development Mechanism and enjoying access to public funds are generating environmental destruction and climate change, not curbing it. It also appears that climate change funds attract investors to initiate these environmentally destructive activities.
WHY DO MAYAN QEQCHI COMMUNITIES THINK THEY HAVE RIGHTS TO THIS LAND?
How communities, who have lived for generations on their lands, are today called ‘land invaders’ and are being charged with trumped up crimes of land usurpation and then brutally evicted by the military, police and private security forces, is the result of a historical process enabled by violence and racism, international investment and by US political and military intervention, and it is ongoing.
In the late 1880s, the Guatemalan government created the National Land Registry. It is not a coincidence that this occurred as the government was promoting international investment to try to boost exports. Around the same time the Guatemalan national army was formed, and from the beginning its focus was controlling the population of Guatemala, enforcing land grants, not defending borders.
The Land Registry allowed people, or communities with existing land titles, most of which had been granted by the Spanish crown prior to Guatemalan independence in 1821, to register them with a centralized national authority. It was established that any lands not registered with the Land Registry were considered to be ‘baldios,’ essentially property of the nation. Anyone could stake a claim on the land by having it measured, and paying a fee to the government. However, laws stipulated that if someone was already using the land, they had prior rights. Over the ensuing years these rights were often ignored, especially in the fertile Polochic valley.
The creation of the Land Registry ushered in a land rush in which outsiders came into the Polochic valley, and by 1915 had claimed over 300,000 acres of land. The Mayan Qeqchi communities, which had been farming the area, became the plantation laborers, following the colonial pattern that tied indigenous laborers to land grants in slave-like conditions.
Large tracts were given to German settlers to begin large scale cultivation of coffee and to US owned banana plantations. The coffee and banana planters had a strong presence, which was followed by an influx of mixed Spanish descent immigrants who also took control of land, usually by a combination of force and fraud.
The 1940s and 1950s were a turning point in the Polochic valley. Many of the descendants of the German planters were expelled during World War II, due to a perceived allegiance to Nazi Germany. The land reform program initiated during Guatemala’s ten year reformist government (1944-1954), and a banana blight, impelled United Fruit Company to leave the area.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Mayan Qeqchi communities and landholders of mixed Spanish and German descent struggled for control of the fertile flatlands in the valley. During most of that time a man named Flavio Monzon served as mayor of Panzos, first named in 1954 by the bloody regime ushered in by the CIA sponsored invasion. During the 20 years he acted as mayor, he and other non Qeqchi families amassed massive landholdings using a combination of fraud and violence.
Elders today describe how, while Mayor, Flavio Monzon offered to help communities obtain registered land titles, they brought him the documentation they had to back up their land rights, and the lands then appeared registered in his name. Sources claim Monzon left office with title to approximately 200,000 acres of land.
During the 1970s, land rights and agricultural worker rights movements grew in Panzos and across Guatemala. By the end of the 1970s, Monzon had turned over the Mayors’ office to Walter Overdick. According to investigations and testimonies from community members, Monzon then took the lead in organizing landholders (of which he was now a major landowner), in close coordination with the Mayor, to put an end to the demands for land titles and better working conditions on plantations.
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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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