Colonialism and the Green Economy: Villagers Defy Pressure to Forfeit Farms for Carbon-Offset
Colonialism and the Green Economy: Villagers Defy Pressure to Forfeit Farms for Carbon-Offset
Sunday, 13 January 2013 08:09 By Daniel C Marotta and Jennifer Coute-Marotta , Truthout | Report
All names are fictitious as sources requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Anonymity and people's requests that no pictures be taken were prerequisites for attaining interviews. No one wanted to go on record in connection to a new, politically charged, government program.
Consuela's identity, like most indigenous farmers of the Americas, is strongly connected to the heirloom maize seeds her family plants on their milpas every year. She is from one of the most isolated parts of Mexico, called Marques de Comillas, within the state of Chiapas. It is bordered to the northwest by the Montes Azules, or Blue Mountains, and by the Guatemalan border on the other three sides. It is a low-lying area dominated by wetlands, tropical forests and mosquitoes and gives way to the Peten rainforest as it sprawls out across Guatemala and northward into the Yucatan Peninsula. Truthout interviewed Consuela as part of an investigation into the growing biofuel industry, and she talked with dignity and defiance about the reasons why she and her village refuse to plant African Palms for biofuels on their land.
Biofuels are fuels derived from plants, with African Palm and Jatropha the two main biofuel crops in Chiapas. African Palm is a plant used widely as a foodstuff, especially in the developing world, while Jatropha is not. While the use of food crops for biofuels has been connected to increases in food prices and shortages, non-foodstuff biofuels should be implicated, too. Productive agricultural land is a scarce resource, and the more humanity relegates to biofuels, the less goes to the cultivation of food.
Biofuels are increasingly being viewed as a "green" source of energy as depleting oil and gas reserves are becoming harder to find and extract. Mexico plans to have 15 percent of its national demand for aviation fuels sourced from biofuels. Additionally, the country is laying the groundwork for a biofuel exporting industry. In Tapachula, an exporting city on the coast, a new industrial zone was created in which a biofuel refinery was recently built. It is sandwiched between a coffee packing plant and an oil refinery.
More:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13763-colonialism-and-the-green-economy-the-truth-behind-the-biofuel-industry