On January 7, in Maracaibo, indigenous, peasant, neighborhoods, unions, fishermen, and NGOs in the Environmental Federation of Zulia, have agreed to develop a wide, open and dynamic organization that channels the rejection of the Venezuelan people to the threats to freshwater sources in the country. The new organization that seeks to bring together the citizens' initiatives for protection of water will be called NATIONAL FRONT FOR THE DEFENSE OF WATER AND LIFE.
On the basis of general purpose of defending the aquifers and the ecosystems on which life depends on our country, the immediate objective of this front is the protection and defense of the Sierra de Perija, whose ecological integrity and water reserves has been violated for years due to exploitation coal carried out by transnational corporations, in accordance with the Venezuelan state.
Today, Perijá danger that recent mining expansion plans CORPOZULIA-Carbozulia increase the destruction of the ecosystems of the north-west of Zulia where the main sources of fresh water sourcing Zulia populations, which, is also inhabited by the Wayuu indigenous ethnic group who are engaged in agriculture since time immemorial.
The urgent need to create this channel of popular participation was due to the acceleration Carbozulia and the Ministry of Mines, has given new coal plans and public statements CORPOZULIA President, General Carlos Eduardo Martínez Mendoza who recently in defending the coal business, it also launched unfair attacks on environmental efforts on behalf of the Sierra de Perija. Also, the General Martinez, in an effort to give priority to coal mining in the Sierra Perija, has dismissed the importance of the Kyoto Protocol recently signed by Venezuela, under which Venezuela, together with the countries of the world community agreed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to reduce land warming and global climate chaos caused by the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal.
Besides this, there is widespread alarm among members of the Wayuu indigenous farming communities of the Sierra de Perija, the imminent increase in coal mining in the area Guasare and opening of new mines in the basins of the rivers Cachirí, Socuy and Mache, drew the attention of people caring and sensitive as these indigenous communities would be subject to expulsion from the land where their ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years, as evidenced by its Aboriginal sacred sites and archaeological sites found there there, and would be severely polluted rivers, and finally decreased.
The tension between the locals grows rapidly due to the pressures that transnational companies are putting CORPOZULIA, with support from local politicians subordinate to mining interests, against indigenous people and their leaders opposed to coal mining.
Not surprisingly, these attitudes of political irresponsibility of some ombudsmen address ecological problems in Venezuela, since last year intellectual Luis Britto García published an article entitled intellectual Manifesto and creators against water privatization in Venezuela [April 2004] where, no less, denounced the imposition of the FTAA with "their dictates of unrestrained privatization of water, ponds and lakes" by passing a law by NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, "Organic Law of Public Property Estate" and then said: Venezuela's fate depends on one thing: the President Hugo Chávez Frías , who constitutionally should deny the promulgation of the law that privatized unconstitutionally our rivers, lakes and lagoons.
Recalling the Bolivarian thought originally, we hold with all responsibility that any social process is justified if it contributes to undermining the ecological basis of life on the planet. Needless to point to the enormous illusions that, for years, have hosted the hearts of Venezuelans in pursuit of a self-management model of human development and humanist ideology alien to the parasite and ecocidal technologies underlying the primary-exporting rentier economy, predatory natural resources and destroying the livelihoods of traditional folk, beyond our historical identity as Latin American people , and also outside stimulus and encouragement of new clean technologies and popular, not oppressive, harbingers of a new model of civilization harmony with nature and conducive to the solidarity and sensitivity of all living species on Earth.
We call upon all sentient beings of Venezuela and the world, grouped into this major initiative of solidarity and defense of the Sierra de Perija, Water and Life in Venezuela, the National Front for the Defense of Water and Life.
declare:
Leocenis
Oswaldo Garcia Torres Felix Ferrer
José Alberto Zuleta
Leyda Urdaneta Enrique Márquez: Claudio González
Hines Henry Parra Jorge Ramón Oller
Munizaga
Waldo Rios Rosa Elio
Ríos Beatriz Portillo
Lusbi
Reiny Beth Nava Héctor Torres Arciniegas
Daniel Rojas Carmen Salazar Castro
Yudith Sonia González Juan Herrera
Elpidio González
Soon more information here!
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Venezuela - January 2005
Webmaster: Environmental Federation of Zulia.
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