Clearing Pizarro

Introduction

In the province of Salta, Argentina, a law in 2003 which removed the protected status from a nature reserve brought about great social conflict. This conflict was part of a wider process, still taking place in Argentina, and it has brought into question the validity of the rural development model. In many provinces of northern Argentina, until not long ago, there were large extensions of state-owned land, where creole and Indian families have survived for decades, living on little more than what nature provided. The presence of the State was scarce, with education and health care often insufficient and inadequate.

The concern was for the precedent that was being established, in that a governmental decision had left a nature reserve and its inhabitants with no public policy to protect them. The government's aim was to sell off the land, disregarding the rights of the people and the ecological damage beyond repair that would be caused. It was this concern that motivated the different institutions to become involved. These institutions took administrative, political, and judicial actions to stop the sale and the clearing operations on this specific piece of land. However, despite their effort, the measures were insufficient or took too long to have an effect, and the privatization process continued to move forward. It was only a dramatic last minute intervention, coordinated by Greenpeace, that stopped the bulldozers and opened a space for dialogue between the provincial and national governments.

A new proposal was then put forward as a solution to the controversy, in which the national government would buy part of the reserve and the provincial government would hand over the other part to create a national park. The goal of this proposal was to avoid the clearing of the scrubland, and to create a protected area where the local population would be given participation in the administration procedures.

In this conflict, each institution had acted according to their competence and possibilities. However, the short- and medium-term strategies were not always agreed upon, and quite often the diagnoses, projections, and assessments were not the same. However, the overall aim of each institution involved—the National University of Salta, the National Human Rights Office, and the National Parks Administration—was identical. This was to protect human and environmental rights of the creole and Wichi populations, for both present and future generations.

Struggle for Survival

What was at the heart of the conflict? Was it the clearing of scrubland for development versus the conservation of a unique ecosystem? These are really abstract ideas: what it was really about was the struggle for survival, a struggle that is often lost by ordinary men and women. What actually happened was that in General Pizarro, a small town 285 km. northeast of Salta city, the provincial government dared to take away protected status from a nature reserve.

General Pizarro, founded in 1936, is a small town with a population of less than 3,000 inhabitants. Some of these live by working on neighboring estates; particularly, the impressive “La Moraleja,” an agribusiness corporation (grain and citric) owned by Spanish investors. A few others are state employees (teachers, nurses, policemen, and public servants), and some manage small businesses. Many people combined these activities with extensive cattle farming in those plots of land, before the provincial reserve was disaffected. In fact, the town itself is in the center of what used to be the protected area.

After the conflict for the land, the people of General Pizarro were left practically empty handed. There are no facilities to receive visitors or passengers nor a gas station to supply fuel to the vehicles that drive along the adjoining Provincial Road No.5. The “improvement” of the road, known by locals as “the soya road,” was the main argument used by the provincial government in all its administrative actions. The Provincial Law 7274, keystone in this conflict, points out in article no. 5: “The total amount obtained from this sale will be deposited in a special account for the specific and exclusive use of carrying out improvements to the provincial roads 5 and 30. Road 5 is also known locally as “the drug road,” due to the number of police operations that have intercepted cocaine shipments coming from Bolivia.

When Justice is Late in the Defense of Human Rights

Throughout this conflict, the National Human Rights Office carried out a number of extrajudicial actions accompanying the Wichi community and the creole populations. It also worked together with other participants, such as the National Office for Citizens Protection, Greenpeace, and the National University of Salta.

Three years went by between the presentation of legal protective action at Salta's Court of Justice and the moment when the National Supreme Court revoked what had been established by the courts in Salta. On September 30, 2008 the National Supreme Court accepted the appeal presented by the Eben Ezer community and the creole population. In their ruling, the judges argued that Salta's Court had “established a solution which was incompatible with the aim of the appeals, the immediate protection of human rights as established in the National Constitution.” In her personal vote, the supreme judge Carmen Argibay argued that while the Wichi community had questioned certain rulings and provincial legislation, because they understood them to be contrary to the rights and guarantees established in the National Constitution, “the maximum provincial court has ignored this situation, offering only clichés to support its claim, and pointing out that it was only invoking matters and procedures of local law.”

In the presentation, the Wichi community had argued that it depended for its survival on the existing natural resources in the sold land. However, the local justice ignored this claim because the stipulated period to contest the procedure was overdue. In its statement, the National Supreme Court considered that “the culture of members of the Wichi communities is that of a particular way of life, particular way of being, seeing and acting in the world based on the close relation with their traditional territory and the resources there to be found.” According to the National Supreme Court, these territories are not only “the main means of survival” of the Indian communities, but they also “constitute an element which is an integral part of their world view and religious belief system, and, therefore, of their cultural identity,” and went on to say that “the guarantee of the Indian people's right to communal land ownership must take into account that their concept of territory is closely related with their traditions and oral expressions, customs, language, arts and rituals. It also includes their knowledge and uses of natural resources, their cooking and clothing, common or unwritten law, their philosophy and their values.”

Finally, the National Supreme Court concluded that Indian rights were the priority to be protected, as “according to their environment, their integration with nature and their history, members of Indian communities transmit from generation to generation this abstract cultural heritage.” They continued: “the importance and fragile nature of the mentioned assets must guide magistrates, not only in issues of substantial law, but also in those related to judicial protection.” Thus, they forced Salta's Court of Justice to issue a new ruling within the law. Nevertheless, these rulings took several years to come into effect, and so other strategies to avoid clearing of the scrub land had to be found.

The proposal for a solution that was agreed by the provincial and national governments had been considered on a number of occasions but lacked the essential political support to put it into practice, especially by the provincial counterpart. There is no doubt that the process of accompanying and advising those involved in the conflict throughout two years was very important. It enabled the people's rights, both Wichi and creole, to become central in the agreed solution. The initial approach of private economic business which benefitted only a few was stopped with all these actions, and the interests of the weakest social players had to be taken into account.

Although the legal precedent established by the National Supreme Court of Justice was essential, in the particular case of Pizarro, this judicial ruling came too late. The clearing would have taken place, and creole and Wichi families would have been adrift, if action had nt been taken to open a channel for dialogue. That experience has raised a number of questions for reflection: What is happening to justice in our country, when mechanisms which should be fast and effective as an appeal for legal protection, take so long to come through? What is the demonstrative effect when local courts, claiming administrative issues, do not rule according to human rights, as established in the National Constitution? Do not circumstances such as these diminish the citizen's faith in justice, favoring other types of direct actions? Is not the right of access to justice being trampled on when such delays occur?

Undoubtedly, the delay in justice is a human rights violation. On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind the value of having persisted in the judicial strategies. These strategies, chosen by the University, the community, and the different institutions involved, avoided the establishment of laws that would legalize the disaffection of protected areas, and, at the same time, established a judicial precedent favorable to environmental and human rights. Furthermore, it makes evident that although our judicial system is flawed, by questioning it and demanding it to work it can be strengthened.

It is only in the last few years that the Indian communities and, to a lesser degree, the other inhabitants of our native forests—the poor creole population—have started to walk the path of using our judicial system to demand protection of their rights. Access to justice without any type of discrimination is still pending in our country. This debt has begun to be paid with the election of a new National Supreme Court with suitable and independent judges, with gender equity (there are women Supreme Court judges for the first time in Argentine history). However, our judicial system still requires enormous transformation to guarantee real access to justice and the protection of human rights.

The University in Defense of Human Environment

On June 28, 2004, the National University of Salta (NUS), through its main board of governors, passed a resolution that rejected “the removal of protected status, the bidding process and sale of plots 32 and 33 by the Provincial Government of Salta,” and instructed their legal council to start actions in order to halt the sale. In its clauses it highlighted: a) the defense of biodiversity in the Chaco scrubland and mountain forest regions, b) the risk for survival of the members of the Wichi community, and c) the need for environmental legislation and a constitutional framework for the protection of the environment and the acknowledgment of the pre-colonial existence of Indian ethnic groups.

From this standpoint, it was considered important to study in depth the problems posed by the provincial government's political decisions. To carry out these studies an interdisciplinary committee was formed with professors and researchers from the university. They travelled frequently to Pizarro together with other professionals and students. After these trips, reports were presented to the university board on the following:

a) The level of deterioration of the Chaco scrubland, and the State's responsibility for that situation.

In January 2006, NUS was invited to form part, as a permanent member, of the advisory committee set up to oversee the agreement reached between provincial and national governments. However, it declined and gave the following reasons:

a) It was incomprehensible that the environmental unit of unbroken woodland had been fragmented.

A National Park as a Solution to the Conflict

The creation of a new national protected area, which includes the Wichi community with communal lands within its jurisdiction, is an unprecedented experience. To this end, a joint plan was designed, oriented toward community development and institutional strengthening, based on the link between humans and nature.

However, until December 2010, only two of the twelve clauses of the agreement had been fulfilled: the purchase of two of the seven plots by the national government, and the assignment of 800 hectares to the Wichi community. Such a delay in complying with the agreement brought about suspicion and disorder.

The case of Pizarro, highlighted as a socio-environmental landmark by many, is the first experience of a protected area being created as the result of a popular demand for justice. Work is being carried out there to manage a protected area that aims to satisfy the socio-environmental needs of the native Wichi and creole populations. This work should establish precedents for the coexistence of habitat conservation and agricultural production, and also as a model solution in case of future actions against the environment.

Throughout the National Park Association's (NPA's) involvement in the area, new hypotheses on how to develop the work continually appeared. Do NPA employees have established and unique roles to carry out? Is the NPA's sole commission that of protecting the environment? Is there only one way to work in this respect? Can you “look the other way” when the socio-environmental interests of the neighbors, related to the use and/or care of natural resources within a protected area and its surroundings, gets more complex? Is it possible to propose a social administration of the territories in the protected areas and its surroundings?

The arrival of NPA to work in Pizarro was marked by questions. However, despite the initial doubts, NPA came up with a new proposal for a possible solution to the socio-environmental conflict: the creation of a protected area with active participation of those involved. This proposal had to take into account the complexity of the legal appeal for protection presented by Salta University, the Wichi community, and the creole inhabitants of Pizarro. Despite this, however, and on a daily basis, we were set on working on social links, to reach the goals of environmental protection and the promotion of the rights of the local Wichi and creole communities.

Protect, For Whom?

To give a brief summary of the relationship between the NPA and Indian peoples, the experience in Pizarro has made it clear that the institution is involved in the rationale of a national State, which, since its creation, has avoided answering the petitions of Indian peoples for the restitution of seized territories.

The co-management and other forms of participation of Indian groups, located in protected areas or surrounding these areas, are embedded in this rationale, in which the national State has the rights and, in each case, grants rights to the community, allowing them to share the administration of something which does not belong to them.

This seems to be the key to an issue, the solution of which is beyond the range of competence of the NPA. This institution must discuss the need to revoke the Argentine National Park law 22351, because its origin is illegitimate, having been passed by a dictatorship, and because it is itself an obstacle to the work of social groups located inside and around the protected areas.

The core question is the very existence of protected areas, at least as they were first conceived, in Argentina. Indian leaders whose territories are within national protected areas question the use of these areas. They state that first, the land ownership issue must be solved, and only then can other issues be considered, such as what treatment should be given to the resources within the protected area.

In the current state of affairs, in which NPA is proposing co-administration without defining land property issues, everything seems to point at the fact that co-administration is just a step on the way to a wider recognition of the pre-colonial inhabitants of the land. However, even that step is quite far from being achieved in all protected areas where Indian communities have a claim on the land as their own.

As a requirement to make progress in the recognition of their rights, native communities must first be aware of their existence. However, they lack information and, consequently, participants in this process have had to endure internal and external pressure, in some cases coming from the political field. In other cases, pressures arise from the lack of definition by NPA on matters which directly affect the protected areas, such as mining, oil extraction, or development of large plantations, among others.

However, for many NPA workers, the presence of Indian or creole communities within protected areas is not only feasible, but also in agreement with current policy. Unfortunately, management is not always coherent, and policies can change frequently. The central question seems to be: who “keeps” the environmental benefits? Who do we take care of the resources for?

Even the Indian leaders who claim territory within protected areas acknowledge the work of NPA. They see that it has created conditions to have one of the most progressive policies in the relationship between state and Indian communities. This strengthens the hope that progress is possible, despite the differences, and that NPA can continue being an example of respect and recognition for these ethnic groups.

There is still a lot to be done. One of the tasks is to understand that territory is much more than just boundaries. In a territory there are histories, rights, connections, and power relationships. And it is the state's obligation to adjust its policies, according to the new legal framework which recognizes the rights of Indian communities and rural inhabitants over these territories.

Conclusions

“Clearing Pizarro” began as a misguided attempt by the provincial government in Salta to sell off land within a nature reserve for quick profit. But it has also become a process to move forward in the relationship between the state and local inhabitants in land rights issues. The role of the NUS and NPA has been crucial in this process.

As a general conclusion, almost as an ethical manifesto, we adhere to the definition of the World People Conference which took place in 2010 in Cochabamba, where the need for the creation of an environmental court is expressed. Environmental crimes must be considered crimes against humanity; ecocides are genocides. Behind every land clearing there are families who have been pushed aside and deprived of their right to their traditional way of life. Those who are destroying our planet should know that at some point in time they will have to answer for their crimes.

This is why we cannot avoid having a political outlook when we work. We choose uncertainty: we choose to work according to our principles, guided by the needs, the problems, and the solutions that emerge from our territory. We choose the high cost of accepting a changing and diffuse reality as the fertile earth where to sow.

Some things to share:

State workers must reflect on their role and the role of the State, understanding the urgency of working together with all the public institutions and different jurisdictions.

In this article we have condensed a number of voices and multiple reflections. It is this diversity that makes it rich. More than a finished text it is intended to be a working document that contributes in improving life conditions for our countrymen and women.

A book, also called Clearing Pizarro, has been published. It can be read in its full version (in Spanish) at <http://www.issuu.com/pizarroapn/docs/desmontar_pizarro>. The book includes a chapter expressing the viewpoint and reflections of the Wichi people, written in both Wichi and Spanish.