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“No more palm trees… No more palm trees!” pleaded Elizabeth Chen, sitting on her arid patio, describing how the rivers and streams that previously provided her water have dried up or become polluted with oil. Palm trees, or African palm crops, are expanding around them. All at the expense of the forest.
Chen, 50, is the leader of the Carolina community, part of seven villages in Chisec, Alta Verapaz department, where Industria Chiquibul has been accused of causing fish kills in the Sacred River over the past decade. The Roman River has dried up and become polluted to the point where the water is no longer drinkable.
In 41-degree temperatures on a late May afternoon, she described how their lives had changed since the palm trees came into their territory, alongside planters filled with flowers, cocoa and aloe vera, bracing for a long, dry summer.
“In the years when there were no palm trees, there was water. Now, there is only land. People are digging more and more wells, but they can’t find water. In the communities without palm trees, it does rain,” he lamented.
That afternoon he cried as he remembered how he had nearly drowned a week earlier in a river two hours away. He had gone there to wash his clothes because the water had dried up around him. As he was unfamiliar with the area, he took one wrong step and nearly lost his life.
“I was washing the last remaining load of clothes that day when a whirlwind suddenly hit me. My daughter raised her hands for help. A boy like you ran over and offered his hand to me. I managed to grab two fingers and that way I saved myself. I went there out of necessity because we no longer have water here,” he said.
pollute
Seven Q’eqchi’ communities that draw water from the San Roman River have reported contamination of the river with palm crops since 2017. These areas include Esperancita del Río, Yalmachac, Tierra Negra I, Arenal II in Carolina and Santa María Setzul, Alta Verapaz in Chisec and Tezulutlán II, Petén in Sayaxché, with a total of 3,441 residents affected.
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That year, dead fish were found floating on the surface of the Tezulutlan II River, and Industria Chiquibul, a company specializing in palm plantations, was blamed.
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Residents reported that the water smelled like “rotten eggs,” that fish were swimming erratically and surfacing for oxygen, and that the water looked cloudy and even brown.
At that time, analysis by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MAN) found nine dead fish species and detected foreign elements in the natural body of the river.
In the conclusion, the Maan noted that it was common to see organic matter dragged into the riverbed during the rainy season and warned that the deaths could have occurred because “there is an African palm crop around the community that is designed to grow large-scale oil palm production and some small maize crops.
Some communities, such as Tezulutlán II and Esperancita del Río, stopped using the water because the simple act of bathing in it caused pimples on their skin.
“Whenever it rains, Chiquibul Industrial Company takes this opportunity to discharge waste into the river, including the workers’ domestic garbage. We became aware of this because the smell of the water changed, it became smelly and could no longer be used,” said Ana María Yat, an ancestral authority of the Rio-speaking community.
In 2019, pollution worsened again, with community members reporting fish kills and changes in water color in the river for a second time.
In 2017, the community filed a complaint against those responsible for the pollution of the river, but it was rejected by the Ministry of Public Affairs at the end of last year. The argument of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is that, despite the conclusions of MARN, the study did not clearly determine the cause of the fish deaths.
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The effect of palm
In response to this question, Chiquibul Industries assured in an email that Public Square There is a “complex process Wastewater treatment»And conduct two half-year analyses, in the rainy and dry seasons, to “maintain better control”.
However, a recent study by the Institute of Natural Sciences and Technology (Iarna), titled “Protection and Respect of Water Rights and Defense of the Environment in the Northern Lowlands of Guatemala,” concluded that rivers located in the region, in areas with African palm or after palm plantations (postpalma), show “poorer water quality than rivers with natural forests.”
The analysis was conducted at six points in the San Román River sub-basin, which includes San Román Las Mercedes II, San Román Buenos Aires, San Román I, El Huangte, El Limon, and El Shuco.
The rivers with the worst water quality were the San Román Buenos Aires and San Román Las Mercedes, which are used for laundry, dishwashing, bathing and community human consumption. Both pass through African palm plantations and reported terrible and very bad categories in the measurement index, which refers to extremely polluted waters.
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Additionally, herbicide and fungicide concentrations in the El Shuco and San Román Las Mercedes II rivers were reported to exceed the EU drinking water limits.
According to the study, all samples containing pesticides corresponded to land uses with palm trees and behind palm trees, rather than areas with forests.
Among the herbicides detected in the rivers was 2,4-D, which is used to control broadleaf weeds and has been used on a variety of crops since the 1940s.
There is no scientific consensus on the health effects of the herbicide, although studies have linked agricultural workers exposed to it to an increased risk of cancer in the lymphatic system, according to the federal Toxic Substances Administration and the U.S. Agency for Disease Registry.
Although some agencies have not classified it as a carcinogen due to lack of information, other entities such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer have indicated the carcinogenic potential of 2,4-D to humans.
Public Square Details of the investigation were shared with MPs, who asked the Office of Social Communications why the investigation had not progressed despite studies showing contamination and health risks, but no response had been received by press time.
Everything has changed
According to the latest vegetation cover and land use map of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (Maga), in 2020, the area under palm cultivation in Chisec and Sayaxché was 68,949 hectares, more than a third of the national planted area.
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The area of land covered by palm trees in the region is so large that if one stands in the upper part of the neighboring village, the eye cannot see where the palm trees end. Stretching towards the horizon, large tracts of green land are covered with this monocrop for oil production.
According to the community, this expansion has come at the cost of deforestation, pollution of rivers and extinction of species that originally inhabited these areas.
«When we entered the community in ’93, the place was beautiful. There were streams and water. Now, everything is dry. Our crops and crops are dying, ”said Nicolás Sotz, 72-year-old spiritual director of Tezulutlán II, a rural community in Sayaxché, Petén department.
To reach the Sotz home, you first pass through the Esperancita del Río village in Chisec, where a sign at the entrance warns that the community’s land may not be sold to “foreigners.” Another sign says that the San Roman River is a subject of law and has a life like a person.
For the Q’eqchi’ Maya, forests and water represent more than just means of production. They are viewed as legal subjects, like people, and maintain a respectful relationship with their natural environment.
«The river means life to the community. Without water we cannot survive, it is the life of the town and the community. ”Sautz insists while placing the staff in the living room of his house, which makes him an ancestral authority. Behind him, as if to confirm what he is saying, there is an altar, in front of which he prays every day not to lack water.
Seven communities and villages explained this relationship with the natural environment in a 2020 request for precautionary measures to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to guarantee the rights to water and health, and they are protected from the risk of criminalization.
The request was made through the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, but according to the legal team assisting the community, they were assured that when the current lawyer, José Cordova, took office, the information was no longer updated to the IACHR. This made it impossible for them to obtain preventive measures. There was no response from the current government. Public Square As to why there was no follow up.
In 2020, MAGA reported that Petén and Alta Verapaz had 111,866.78 hectares of African palm. However, the ministry reported that the two provinces have a total of 210,650 hectares of land with characteristics that favor the expansion of this monoculture. This area is almost double the current area of palm trees.
Diagnoses like these incentivize palm growers to expand their plantations. Industrias Chiquibul, for example, admitted that it plans to “carry out a small organic increase”, without specifying how much, and assured that “before any change in soil type, an environmental analysis will be carried out to determine if the plot to be planted could present any risk of deforestation”.
However, residents of palm-growing communities, who link the crop to the destruction of rivers and forests, have warned that from now on they will not sell their land and will resist the expansion of monocultures.
This was announced by Santiago Carr, an ancestral authority, member of the Community Movement for the Defense of Water and one of the denouncers of pollution, standing in front of the San Román River.
What motivated them to fight was simple, he said.
“We defend rivers, but rivers defend us by giving us life.”
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