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Esta empresa no nos va a mover de nuestras tierras. Vamos a resistir con todas nuestras fuerzas.
Nadie nos va a mover de aquí. Aquí es donde nací y aquí es donde moriré. No quiero una casa de lujo, ni comodidades.
Quiero lo mío, mis raíces, mi río limpio, el aire puro, mis árboles nativos ...".
(Nicolasa)
I
find myself in Ralco Pueblo after a week as a volunteer for the
resisting Pehuenches in Alto Bio Bio and I sit in what some people might
call a diner, waiting for a completo (a hot-dog with everything
on it), a coke and…. Moriah.It’s
raining outside and the wind pelts the sheet metal roof above my head with
its incessant waves of anger.I hear
the sound it makes and my body shutters; everything is wet and cold.Moriah
is my friend and partner in this my adventure up the glorious Andes Mountains
to Alto Bio Bio.I barely knew Moriah
before these past few weeks.We met
briefly in Berkeley a few months back where I learned that she was going
to be here in Chile around the same time I was.In
Santiago, a call I had made to her eventually led to a night of salsa dancing
in Providencia.If there’s anything
I truly lack, it’s definitely salsa dancing skills, a fact that didn’t
seem to bother Moriah in the slightest.Making
up my own moves turned out, in the end, to be only half the fun; the other
half was reserved for the pleasure of hanging out with the two spanish-touting
Germans who had come along with us.With
a pair of drunk and crazy Germans, you’re guaranteed an interesting night.
Moriah
and I got separated a few days back when she agreed to stay with Berta
Quintreman on her land.No one had
wanted to stay with the Mapuche woman and it would perhaps be an understatement
to say that this had disappointed her tremendously.Moriah
and I, along with four other voluntarios, had stood silently as
she scolded us all for wanting to leave Mullegue, the sector in Alto Bio
Bio where she lives.We had been
staying at her sister Nicolasa’s house, helping with the farm maintenance
that had been entrusted to our leader Arturo while they were both away
in Santiago attending a protest march and a radio station interview.Because
the indian woman was preparing us each cheese sandwiches as she yelled
at us, it was hard not to feel guilty for wanting to bail.Personally,
I had my reasons for wanting to leave.I
needed to see the other so-called campamentosde resistencia (resistance
camps), which included the one in Palmucho.This
was the volunteer’s camp that had the most people and I had decided the
day before that it would be important for me to experience the life there.That
was the reason behind my reluctance to offer my labor to Berta.It
would have been an experience to remember, but it wasn’t in the cards for
me as I had limited time.The rest
didn’t want to stay because they had heard horrible stories about Pehuenche
women and their wooden sticks.“This
can’t be!”, she began again.“So
many of you, and not a single one is staying to help me, I have a lot of
things to do on my land, I am a small woman and I need help!”Once
again, nobody had said a word.Shaking
her head, she continued.“You people
always go down to help Pancha, no one ever stays with me!”Finally,
after making sure Berta had a bed for her to sleep in, Moriah agreed to
stay and help her with the farm.I’d
say that we were all secretly thanking her for that one.She
would later tell me of her one-of-a-kind experience with the soft-spoken
woman who has by now become, along with her sister Nicolasa, an international
symbol for environmental and human rights groups all over the world.After
a few days alone with Berta, Moriah would eventually meet me here in Ralco
Pueblo, in this very diner.
“Diner”
is perhaps a slight overstatement.This
is more a boliche (store) that sells lunch food.Churascos,
completes, coffee, beer, and pisco are a few of the items on the chalkboard
menu behind the counter.There are
bathrooms in the back just beyond a picture of Pamela Anderson, almost
naked in a shrinking bikini above the hallway; her barbed wire tattoo barely
visible in the grainy photograph.These
bathrooms are honest in that they don’t pretend to be sanitary.Adjacent
to the hallway, in a television viewing area with a couch and some chairs,
the family that owns the place is glued to a telenovela.They
would later invite me to watch with them and, in return for their kindness,
I would accidentally drop the provided ashtray onto the floor, a shattering
move that would cost me five hundred pesos.Five
hundred pesos was an amount, which, although exchanged for less than one
dollar at the airport, feels like twenty of them to a backpacker.A
Sky Tv satellite dish is perched on the roof and it seems to be holding
on strong.The globalization of corporate
culture turns out to be weather proof.
I
look at myself in the large mirror that makes up the far wall.Even
though my hair is thick and greasy, my hands torn asunder and my entire
body covered in what I think are flea bites (although they could be anything
really), I feel as clean and healthy as ever.My
skin is brown, my face is scruffy and my throat hurts when I swallow (this
latter one I owe to some heavy smoking in the past few months; Chile, if
you notice on the map, is one big cigarette and this kind of thing tends
to happen).IfI
look like I’ve been yanked out of civilization for a few weeks, this is
because I have been.Yanked by my
desire for adventure, partly, but overall I think that a story is what
I’ve been after.This story has no
ending as of yet, but someone is definitely telling it.In
fact, many people are telling it.To
some it is a story of great technological achievement and a welcome sign
of progress, a monument worthy of children’s books.To
others, a story of Chile forging ahead into the twenty-first century, and
perhaps one where the country finally gains acceptance into the first-world
club.To some others it is a long-awaited
story about development and modernity.To
a few it is a story about the impotence of Chilean law and democracy, and
to another few, a story about the impunity of transnational development
projects.To the volunteers, it is
the story of an ongoing fight against globalization and the unaccountability
it fosters.To me it is a story of
absurdity, a world turned upside down.A
story about money, that in its desperate quest to reproduce, will take
on a life of its own by stirring ideas and people into a dance of cultural
and ecological insanity.This money
has stirred me into action as well, but I have not received any of it in
the form of a paycheck.I have worked
hard for something bigger than money, an idea alien to most.
The
next day I will find myself at a pharmacy in a bustling city called Los
Angeles, purchasing a variety of products over the counter after a quick
diagnosis from the licensed “health-care” attendant behind the cash register.The
diagnosis?I’m dirty and covered
in bug bites.I will also buy some
pills for allergies.It’s a bit of
a set back for me that I seem to be allergic to the entire south of Chile.The
pills do the trick though.These
Nastizol pills dry up my nose so much that it’s hard to breath through
it.Although I can only guess at
the olfactory experience that these allergies have deprived me of, at least
I know that I will have engraved forever in my memory the soothing sounds
of the glorious Bio Bio river as it cuts like a knife through the mountain,
as well as the awe-inspiring sight of the glorious and endless universe
of stars that the night sky provides me and the feel of the earth falling
through my fingers.
The
cigarette felt good, Belmont lights…“box”.Designer
summer packets in bright blue.I
could have collected all the six designs that have been released by now,
all of them involving sunny beach images of attractive white women in small
bathing suits frolicking about, their shiny teeth exposed.What
these scenes have to do with smoking is beyond me at the moment.My
coke has arrived and it’s very cold.This
is usually a good thing during the summer in Chile where temperatures can
hover at around 40 degrees centigrade, except that at this moment I am
bordering on freezing.My clothes
are drenched because, earlier that day, I had made a mad dash through the
pelting rain towards the Palmucho kiosko where the microbus
was scheduled to pass at 10 am.Nature
hadgiven me its temporal beating.The
kiosko
is there because a new market has arisen in the area.Palmucho
is where most of the work on the Ralco dam is being done.A
small community of workers, engineers, scientists and company management
has been erected and the kiosko owner is managing a lucrative business.It
sells a variety of consumables and offers a few services like laundry.Because
it is very close to the Palmucho resistance camp where I stayed for a few
days, this is also the place for the volunteers to purchase cigarettes
and take a look at the daily newspaper.The
lady who runs the store is extremely amicable.On
a few occasions, we would talk to her about the dam and its environmental
and social implications.Further
down the road an Endesa sign instructs workers to respect transit guidelines.In
green, the last directive reads: CUIDE EL MEDIO AMBIENTE (protect the environment).
At
that very kiosko, which I had sought for the temporary shelter it
afforded me, I had the pleasure of talking to an ex-army engineer hired
for Ralco.I played the role of an
interested backpacker; I labored to appear as if in awe of the massive
project.He was eager to catch the
bus to return to the city to see his family; he seemed to bless the rain
for the opportunity it had given him to return home.He
assured me that with the rain, no work would be possible.I
couldn’t help but notice, as he spoke these words, two workers in raincoats
cutting trees and digging holes on the other side of the road.Apparently,
weather does not stop Ralco; the workers are sent into the freezing rain
regardless.We talked a little about
the work, the hours, the pay, and also about the Pehuenches.The
answers that he gave about the latter were the standard ones.The
affected Pehuenches were given better land in exchange for their traditional
ones and the others would benefit from the advances that Endesa is bringing
into the area.“Without Endesa, the
Pehuenches wouldn’t even have access.This
road used to be a horse trail, now look at it!”He
added with precision that without Chileans, the Pehuenches wouldn’t even
have agriculture.At that instance
I came to understand something about Chileans.They
have this most amazing ability to speak of the things that are completely
outside their range of knowledge with absolute conviction.
The
one word that seemed to resonate the most in our conversation was “jobs”.It’s
no secret that the dam is creating jobs.Jobs
that the Chilean government needs to control a large section of the population
that is currently unemployed.For
evidence of the incredible demand for work, one does not have to look far.One
can see makeshift tents set up in the perimeter of the Palmucho work settlement.These
Chilenos
are
not here to enjoy the outdoors, they are here to wait for work and they
are serious.Unemployment in Chile
is high and although the American strategy of putting the unemployed in
jail is also used here, the infrastructure necessary for such a solution
does not yet exist. Work must
be created.The Ralco hydroelectric
project is sometimes defended by this appeal to the issue of jobs.The
irony is that because of this shortage of jobs in Chile, and the general
absence of labor laws and representation, companies like Endesa (controlled
by Endesa-Espana) are in a position to hire workers for the minimal salary
of 150,000 pesos a month while offering very little in terms of benefits
or protection.Many also respond
to indigenous rights activists by claiming that the dam even employs Pehuenches.This
is certainly true.Many of the most
dangerous jobs are indeed reserved for the original inhabitants of this
land.But many defenders of the project
seem to forget that the building of the dam will provide jobs only until
it is built.Only a handful of engineers
will be needed to operate the hydroelectric system once (or if) it becomes
operational.Meanwhile more than
90 Pehuenche families will have been left without their traditional lands,
coerced into inferior parcelas and unknowingly hooked up to the
global market as marginal, utility-paying members.One
is allowed to wonder what benefits could possibly come out of a road that,
although wide and relatively even, winds and bends under a man-made lake
that covers 647 hectares of land.
It’s
freezing cold and it’s still raining hell outside. On the television screen,
a rerun of Friends.I can barely
see the large grazing field that seems to be the center of this town.Every
once in a while a herd of sheep moves over it, but not today.It
is too cold and wet.Moriah and I
walked across this field exactly a week ago where we met Cristian and Jaime,
two “rastas” waiting for a ride up to Mullegue.Because
we were on the same adventure, we decided to team up for the hitchhike
up the mountain valley.That morning
we were feeling discouraged and thought that we would never make it to
Ralco Lepoy to offer our labor to the resisting Pehuenches.Fortunately,
after a few looks of indifference from Endesa vehicles, a civilian pick-up
truck drove us to a lake-side resort not far from hydroelectric Pangue,
the first in a series of Dams planned for the Bio Bio river inaugurated
by then president Eduardo Frei in 1996.We
learned later that the driver of the truck was the owner of the resort.One
of the things that caught my attention about the lake was how unnatural
and out of place it looked.I was
shocked to see, for example, the tops of huge pine trees, barely visible
on the surface of the lake.They
appeared to be frozen, as if by terror, in an eternal, last-ditch effort
to breath.More depressing is how
the river up stream seems to linger in a limp state of melancholy as it
feeds its once vibrant currents into an ugly greenish backlog of what is
now called Pangue Lake.For a lakeside
cabin with a view of this man-made, environmental catastrophe, one may
wonder why anyone would give our friend the resort-owner any money at all.
A
kiosko
owner provided us with the next leg of the tour.30
kilometers upstream and the Bio Bio River finds itself unexpectedly diverted
into a mountain by a large and obtrusive tube.400
meters downstream from this, the river reemerges allowing the necessary
dry land for engineers to orchestrate the erection of the hydroelectric
dam Ralco, the second of such projects planned for Alto Bio Bio, scheduled
to be finished in early 2003.The
massive cement wall that will block and filter the energy out of this most
powerful river will be 155 meters tall and 370 meters wide and will flood
647 hectares of land, forming a lake that will not only destroy the local
flora and fauna and change the sediment content of the river downstream
(with further cultural and environmental consequences), but also force
385 Pehuenches from their ancestral lands.84
of the potentially affected families have accepted what are called permutas,
agreements of land exchange, while seven have not.These
seven families, headed by the Mapu Domuche Newen (women with the power
of land), have refused to sign any agreement with Endesa and have been
very public about their fight for justice.The
most famous of these women are the sisters Nicolasa and Berta Quintreman
who have, along with the other members of Mapu Domuche Newen, received
numerous international awards, including the Petra Kelly award (When the
sisters were receiving their award in Germany in November, Endesa took
advantage of their absence to divert the river in preparation for the construction
of the massive wall), and have been quoted countless times in the leading
national papers as saying, “solo muertas nos sacaran de nuestras tierras
ancestrales!” (Only in death will they take us from our ancestral land).
The Pehuenche people were never consulted in the planning stages for either dam and were only approached, individually, by Endesa when the time came for the so-called land exchange negotiations.These negotiations were, essentially, processes of coercion, designed to convince the Pehuenches that they had no real choice, or rights, in the matter and that the economic benefits of relocation would outweigh its cultural and spiritual costs.To many, the idea of cash and pick-up trucks, a few of the things offered to secure agreements, proved to be deciding factors.Many of the things that have been introduced into the Pehuenche culture by the market, including alcohol, have the collateral effect of transforming the physical manifestations of money into units of coercion.One only has to see the eyes of a recently paid Pehuenche as he gleams over the variety of products at the local store to see the effect the market has on him.Not only does this process succeed in incorporating the Pehuenche into the system, it does so by transforming the male Pehuenche into a passive consumer of alcohol.Stereotypes of lazy Mapuche men who force their wives to do all of the work are a product of this market reality.
Many
of them, because they couldn’t read, were basing their decision to relocate
on verbal promises made to them by Endesa; promises that, because of their
culture and its dependence on the positive correlation between word and
act, were taken at face value. Those who could read were misled by the
frequent use of unintelligible legal jargon.Many
of the families that have already relocated are beginning to realize that
they have been lied to by Endesa.One
of the properties purchased by Endesa in anticipation of the Ralco project
and its relocations, El Barco, has proved to be too cold for farm animals
to survive.Some of these families
are planning to return to their lands in Ralco Lepoy.There
have even been accounts of permuta signings where Endesa representatives
would take Pehuenche men out for a night of drinking that culminated in
the signing of the contract.There
are even reported cases of Endesa representatives offering much needed
health care service in exchange for signatures.
Interestingly
enough, the indigenous law of 1993, requires that a government organization
called CONADI, the body set up to enforce the legislation and to promote
the development of indigenous communities, approve any land exchange agreements
involving indigenous communities.Furthermore,
the law also states that development projects involving indigenous lands
must have, for their legal authorization, all of the permutas from
all of the affected landowners signed and approved.There
are seven land-owning Pehuenche families that have yet to sign a permuta,
which means, simply enough, that all of the permutas are not signed.Only
the water from the river itself could be clearer than this fact and yet
the Ralco dam is halfway complete.The
legitimacy of CONADI has also been called into question because of their
unusual hiring and firing practices.In
April of 1997, the director of CONADI Mauricio Huenchulaf, along with two
other indigenous members, was relieved of his position by the Chilean government.His
replacement, Domingo Namuncura, would later also be relieved of the same
position the following year along with two other CONADI representatives
Milene Valenzuela and Cristian Vives.What
these people have in common is their outspoken opposition to the permutas
associated with project Ralco.CONADI,
even though it lacked all of the Ralco permutas, approved the project
in January of 1999 with one Rodrigo Lopez, a non-indigenous representative,
as director.
The
first thing you will notice when you enter the town of Ralco is that there
is a control de carabineros, a police control, which every vehicle
has to visit before continuing on East into the Andes.The
carabineros
are Chile’s internal military force.Under
Pinochet’s military government, it was the carabineros who were
given the task of controlling dissent in the poblaciones (working
class, marginal neighborhoods).In
fact, the chief of the carabineros was officially recognized as
the fourth head of the military Junta that took control of the country
in 1973.Little has changed in terms
of their duties.It is not uncommon
for the carabineros stationed here to demand from visitors, including
backpackers, personal identification information as well as vehicular registration.
The
police control is here because, in the eyes of the Chilean government,
indigenous communities represent a clear and present danger to national
security, meaning capital security.They
must be controlled.The heads of
Mapuche organizations do not consider their constituents to be Chilean
even though the government has never recognized a Mapuche Pueblo.This
proves a problem for the government because if there is a huge sub-population
that doesn’t identify with the nation of Chile, it can’t create and reinforce
within this population the much-needed cultural correlation between national
development, meaning the success of foreign and national capital, and nationalist
sentiment (ideology).Under the Pinochet
regime, this problem simply didn’t come up because everyone was simply
declared Chilean and no indigenous population was recognized at all; military
oppression took care of the rest.The
concertacion,
however, does recognize the Mapuches as a separate ethnicity and therefore
is forced to mitigate and manipulate the political situation accordingly,
with the help of the press of course.This
recognition on behalf of the government has, to say the least, proved troublesome,
but the concertacion needed the indigenous support at the time of
democratization and therefore granted the highly organized indigenous communities
important rights.This goes back
to the Pacto de Nueva Imperial where the concertacion promised
to honor the cultural diversity of the nation and to recognize the historical
debt owed to the Mapuches.Ironically,
a year after this pact, in 1990, the government authorized the construction
of the hydroelectric dams in Alto Bio Bio.And
this is where the truth comes out.Legislation,
pacts and jargon aside, the Chilean government plays handmaiden to foreign
and domestic capital.The protection,
the rights, the laws, and the government organizations turn out to be more
of a public relations smokescreen designed to secure the continuing economic
stabilization of the region than the manifestations of a democratic society.The
police controls in the region de la Araucania and the region
del Bio Bio are there to protect a huge investment from a highly organized,
and pissed off, sub-population.
With
its seemingly endless natural resources, the economic interest in this
region is obvious.In fact, the
entire south of Chile has become a veritable goldmine for Chilean and foreign
corporations that have been enjoying the various water, land and mining
concessions granted by the government since the seventies.The
economic development encouraged by the neo-liberal policies espoused by
the Chilean government since the shock treatment of the Pinochet regime
has penetrated the regions where the Mapuche live and has seriously affected
their well being, both economically and culturally.The
economic productivity, in fact, has many Chilean and foreign economic experts
hailing Chile as the economic miracle of South America.A
recent portfolio book seeking foreign investment, and put out by CORBIOBIO,
presents the Bio Bio region as a collection of natural resource-based exporting
firms; any social and cultural observations are reserved for the section
on investment risk.Little attention,
however, is paid to the collateral damage of this export-based development.So
much of this industrial activity is taking place on Mapuche lands that
intellectuals on the left refer to it as the second conquest, the reference
being to the second conquest since the Chilean government “pacified” the
region in the late eighteen hundreds.The
idea of masked, “radicalized” Mapuches occupying land owned by logging
or agricultural firms in protest scares the living daylights out of anybody
interested in making money in the area.The
Mapuche believe that this land is theirs and are mobilizing in response
to the economic marginalization thrust upon them by the high-density industrial
development in the area.In essence,
these mobilizations are being carried out in response to industrial encroachment
and the living conditions it creates for them.This
is why there are so many of these police controls in the south of Chile.The
Ralco Project must be seen as part of this development frenzy and the resistance
to it as part of the growing reaction on the part of indigenous communities
who are finally saying “ya basta!”
With
the rastas, Jaime and Cristian, we finally made it to Nicolasa Quintreman
country where we were welcomed not by Nicolasa, but by an extraordinary
man named Arturo, a 28 year-old revolutionary a toda raja.His
standard outfit consisted of a blackt-shirt
with an assemblage of holes, jeans with cargo pockets, black combat boots
up to the knees and a machete.His
machete was a prized possession for him and we could tell immediately.Every
Endesa worker knew him by this machete.He
was known, quite simply, as the guy with the machete.His
face is clean-shaven except for a long strap of chin hair that extends
towards the ground and his smile is missing a tooth, courtesy of a neo-nazi
santiagino
he exchanged a few gestures with.His
hair is short and thick, his eyes gleam as they re-live the stories he
tells.
When
he is not working the earth or diving from rocks into the fast-moving Bio
Bio, he is slanging through one crazy, and almost unbelievable,
story or other in which he is resisting what he considers to be a world
gone mad.In fact, whenever he is
present, it seems as if he is the only one who knows how to speak.His
psychological power is felt by the rest of us almost immediately; he wins
you over in a few seconds and you never stop listening…and laughing.He
has the most amazing control over Chilean slang and, although at first
you can only conclude that you don’t understand half of what he is saying,
you really do.It’s a mistake to
think that you don’t, or can’t, because he says it with more than just
the words.Arturo is a revolutionary
that knows his audience and understands his place in, and his influence
on, the world.Whether or not his
character could be considered mainstream, his actions and words are in
strong correlation with our beliefs and principles.He’s
been fighting Ralco since November of last year, helping the seven Pehuenche
families that remain to resist Endesa.He
seems to transform the beliefs that I only hold in my private mind into
real actions that move the world outside.A
week from today in Concepcion, Arturo will be arrested and charged with
disturbing the peace after chaining himself to a flag pole by the neck
in protest against Endesa and the Ralco hydroelectric dam. (La Tercera.Febuary
6, 2001)
On
the current political agenda is the occupation by 20 Pehuenches of the
Quepuca Estadio cemetery, located in the Loncoche area in Alto Bio Bio,
30 minutes above the sector known as Palmucho.This
cemetery has become a unifying symbol of resistance for the Pehuenche,
more so lately due to the uprooting and vandalism that has been discovered
there by volunteers following the work Endesa contratistas did in
the area.The destruction that I
witnessed reflects the carelessness and indifference of the Ralco project
as a whole, but it has also helped the resistance.There
are only seven Pehuenche families left in the areas that will be inundated
by the projected dam and they have only the immediate support of the volunteers
and themselves to rely on.Other
celebrated environmental and human rights groups that denounce Endesa’s
multi-million dollar project do so from afar and, aside from filling their
pockets with award money, they fail to assist the committed, and uncompromised,
volunteers who are working on the ground and who have a real chance of
stopping Ralco.The destruction
of the sacred cemetery has proved key because it has mustered support from
neighboring Pehuenche families not directly affected by the scheduled lake.This
has, once again, drawn national attention to the area.This
latest move is aimed at achieving historical and archaeological recognition
for the cemetery.If not by appeals
to human rights and the environment, then perhaps the dam will be snuffed
by a city archaeologist with a hat.In
today’s Chile, very unlikely.
In
fact, in today’s Chile, the one thing that could stop the dam, public outcry,
is far from becoming a reality in relation to the project.With
Pinochet’s arrest and his pending trial, you’d think that Chile’s collective
memory of a time where people discussed politics openly would awake from
amnesia, and that perhaps Chilenos would again be interested, and
not afraid, to fight against the trampling of human rights.Sadly,
today’s national media depict Mapuches as violent terrorists who have been
misguided by foreign intellectuals and report nonchalantly about the mobilization
response of Chile’s interior army, the carabineros, to deal with the “crisis”.This
is part of the reaction against the mobilization of the highly organized
Mapuches and in defense of the economic investment in the area.This
media creation of terrorist Mapuches only exacerbates a general feeling
of determinism about the fate of the as yet to be recognized pueblo Mapuche
and reinforces the apathy and apolitical nature of a population that has
been scared into submission by more than 28 years of military rule.Many
of us on the ground are still waiting for a second marcha del no;
perhaps it would be a good protest march that many of the volunteers think
would be appropriate for this lucha against the Endesa project.
Every
piece of machinery and every truck that makes its way up the road to the
construction site is one more reminder that the rule of law in Chile can
be ignored and that the concertacion government pays absolute deference
to foreign and domestic capital and the impunity they wield.Meanwhile
the volunteers are cut off from the organizations that can produce public
outcry in Chile.Mainly because these
organizations are not interested in stopping the project.The
only ones who do seem interested are the resisting Pehuenches and the volunteers.It
is the volunteers who coordinate everything, including the current occupation
of the cemetery.They are the ones
who have informed the families about Endesa’s progress (although, the ear-shattering
explosions in the middle of the night are signs of progress that don’t
need diffusion), coordinated the necessary moves and transported families
to the sites of protests.
Many
of these volunteers, who are mostly students from Concepcion and Santiago,
feel that their efforts are futile.It
is easy to lose sight of the goal of stopping Ralco when you are knee deep
in the shit that you have been sent to collect to prepare the soil.Because
the families who are resisting have little physical and moral support,
it is important that these volunteers be here.Without
their support, the Pehuenche families would not be able to resist Endesa.The
daily farm maintenance work that is required is not easy and many complain
that the Pehuenches themselves are not grateful of the time and work that
they put in.Most other volunteers,
however, don’t take what could easily be construed as rudeness on the part
of some of the Pehuenches seriously.They
understand that this “rudeness” which has, by now, been immortalized on
national television, is a product of the disbelief that the Pehuenches
hold towards winkas (Europeans, Mestizos,etc) and their absurd behavior.Nicolasa
Quintreman, for example, simply can’t conceive of the idea that a person
could lack what she considers to be the most basic knowledge available
to humans: knowledge of the earth and its fruits.It
wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to adopt this Pehuenche perspective in order
to curtail the winka cultural delusion which holds, among other
things, that blocking one of Chile’s most important rivers with a huge
cement wall represents progress.
The
frustration felt in the main campamentos de resistencia (Palmucho
and Loncoche) regarding the state of today’s Chile is enormous.It
is mammoth frustration.The traditional
methods of resistance are not working because the indifference in Chile
has reached levels of perfection.Chileans
don’t care about what’s going on Chile.They
feel content sitting down with a piscola after a long day’s work,
watching the nightly shows on television and maybe an empanada or two on
the weekend.They don’t need anything
else.I hear as Arturo argues with
Rodrigo at a meeting.Rodrigo argues
that their role is one of assistance and that direct intervention could
backfire politically.Arturo reminds
everybody that although he is the first one up in the morning for the every-day
work crucial for the resistance, he is here primarily to stop Ralco and
all that it stands for.In a brief
sermon, Arturo discusses more “hands on” ventures including one that involves
an early morning
kultrun drum sabotage mission designed to scare
the shit out of Endesa contratistas working on the giant wall below.
In a letter to president Lagos, Kativska Alejandra Alveal Rodriguez, a nurse who vistited Ralco Lepoy, writes:
Por
las consecuencias culturales, ambientales y socials irreversibles que implicaria
la construccion de represas en Alto Bio Bio, hoy Central Ralco, le pido
desde el presente y hacia el futuro, que escuche este humilde mensaje inspirado
desde lo mas profundo de la tierra mantilada que pide ser escuchada, paralice
la destruccion de nuestra madre tierra.
The renewed
socialist responded with a Christmas card.
When
Moriah finally arrived, I gave her a hug and we were soon off riding the
kindness of a truck driver towards Los Angeles.I
would later return to Alto Bio Bio alone.On
the one-dollar microbus ride up the mountain, I sat on a bag of flour next
to a pair of chickens in a box.The
bus stopped next to a Caterpillar construction machine and the two locals
on the other side of me stared in awe at what, to them, was a divine creation.I
remember feeling sad at the display of sheer ignorance I was witnessing.Here
was a machine brought by Endesa to destroy one of the most beautiful places
on earth and the people who live here are paying deference to it.A
few minutes later, as it was bending around a curve, the bus turned upside
down for an instance.No one noticed.
Anthony Rauld