In April 2010, as the Bolivian government hosted the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Tiquipaya, movements within the country pressed for a forum to talk about these how the environment is treated within the country. The tens of thousands of summit attendees had their conversations structured around 17 working groups or “mesas” (literally, tables) on topics from ºthe root causes of climate change” to forests to the rights of Mother Earth. The Bolivian indigenous federations CONAMAQ and CIDOB proposed Mesa 18, an eighteenth working group on domestic environmental problems in Bolivia.
As the summit approached, they and the government got into a very public dispute with the over whether it would be included. Officially, the five Pact of Unity organizations—including CONAMAQ and CIDOB—were co-hosting the Summit, and they met to formally approve the structure of the meeting. Nonetheless, Evo Morales and the Foreign Ministry vetoed any discussion of “internal matters” in an official track. “I don’t know why we’re talking about Mesa 18,” Foreign Minister Choquehuanca blistered as the press questioned him about the issue.
In the end, Mesa 18 was held two blocks outside the gates of the Universidad de la Valle campus, separate and apart from the official sessions. CONAMAQ, four smaller indigenous organizations, one campesino federation, and the Landless Workers’ Movement joined environmentalists and academics to organize two days of sessions before an audience of hundreds of people. Dozens of community groups presented their experiences and concerns about the impacts of “the extractivist development model based on the export of hydrocarbons, hydroelectricity, mining, agribusiness, and lumber” (in the words of a Mesa 18 promotional flyer). These conversations took place in a room with simple concrete floors, a borrowed Brazilian restaurant. Many of the sessions were offered twice, first at the Water Fair commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Water War and again in Tiquipaya.
Called the “rebel” session by the press, Mesa 18 drew a spotlight on the “double talk” of the government, as critiqued by leaders like CONAMAQ’s Rafael Quispe: “This government speaks of respect for Mother Earth, but it simultaneously pollutes the land, and there are the cases of Corocoro, Mutún, the San Cristóbal [mining] company, and projects like Cachuela Esperanza [a planned hydroelectric dam], which also damage the Earth.” Like its official counterparts, Mesa 18 consisted of dozens of short presentations on environmental threats, projected on a screen. A small team compiled the issues presented and formulated a resolution on behalf of the gathering. They declared, “the development plans of these governments, including Bolivia’s, only reproduce the developmentalist schema of the past” and called instead for “the peoples to decide directly the destiny of their natural wealth in accord with their own organizational structures, their self-determination, their own norms and procedures, and their vision of the holistic management of their territories” (my translation, see text below). Outside Mesa 18, participants covered a brick wall with placards in preparation to march. Each detailed a different environmental crisis or contradiction. Unlike the official sessions up the road, these results were not included in the Tiquipaya People’s Accord that concluded the week, but the collective document advanced the same environmental critique, denouncing “mega-infrastructure projects … extractive projects, water privatization and militarized territories.” The massive scale of the summit had offered an opportunity for national visibility around the country’s growing series of socio-environmental conflicts.
Nine years have passed and Mesa 18’s concluding resolution, called the Final Manifesto of Table 18 in Defense of the Peoples and the Earth / Manifiesto Final de la Mesa 18 en Defensa de los Pueblos y la Tierra, has slipped off the internet. I post the complete version below for future reference. A PDF version of the Manifesto is available here.
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This last issue is the subject of Choqueyapu: Un río enfermo que nos alimenta (Choqueyapu: A sick river that feeds us). Bolivian newspaper Página Siete has re-released one of its most important investigative pieces of 2017 in an online comic-book format. The narrative follows a drop of glacial meltwater as it travels past industrial sites, through the city center, and out to the vegetable and fruit-growing fields that lie downstream of the city. There, farmer Eugenia Mamani explains how her downstream community has adapted: “In the early morning the clean water comes” (because polluting industries and the slaughterhouse aren’t operating). “We irrigate from 3am onwards; during the day it comes in dirty and we no longer use it. We have to make sacrifices [to make] our products.”
Carwil without Borders 