Repairs to a hydroelectric megaproject
By: Alfredo Molano
writer and journalist Alfredo Molano discover one by one the "buts" in the construction of the Urra dam II, a project that is committed to the highest government, and we features, style, a devastating environmental radiography. Reservoir
Urrá I
Urrá I became operational in 2000. The reservoir flooded 7,400 hectares and the work cost $ 800 million which were funded by the World Bank.
highway between Medellin and Monteria a unique viewpoint of living metaphors. In the same output of which is called the "silver cup" overwhelm the communes, torn between poverty and crime, later, in cold area, the Mountain-Don Matias and Santa Rosa-smelling seminary and milk. On the spine of the Andes, Valdivia, with its houses perched on the cliff, and down to the river Cauca, on the side of a road always under construction, 232 farms, some made with wooden selvedge called Chilapa, others with waxed cardboard, and more with black plastic. They are the homes of peasants forced off their land 20 years ago that have just arrived.
Further down the river Cauca, impetuous, detergents and weed poisoning and its banks, farms of landowners paisas, half honest, half gangster, won fine queen in vegas and some where there are wetlands, herds of buffalo. The buffalo, more predator than beef, live in marshes and grass with their hooves and their weight squeezes the land and facilitates drying. It is a machine for making the desert, so use it to beat its own land to wetlands.
By nature, the landowners are expansionary, they buy-or-buy their neighbors, drained lakes, which do not belong, and fences are to the same road berms, claiming to prevent invasions. It is the scenery economic inter-ground Tarazá Cuco Vanoy-Caucasia-farms-and Monteria Macaco-fertile land. In the background is expansive and predatory history of the great cattle that has prevailed in Córdoba since the mid-nineteenth century, which explains much of the violence in the region since the assassination of Gaitán. But it is also the principle underlying the Uribe government's decision to build the dam Urrá II, aka, "Sinu River Project." Hydroelectric plants in Cordoba is not a matter of energy and even water. They are a land problem.
Sinu River rises in the Paramillo, moor exceptional collects water from the rivers Tigre, Manso and Esmeralda, the narrower the hill where he built Quim Urrá I-and then you water in the plains, swamps and feeds Tinajones leads. His twin brother, the San Jorge, does the same job, but flows into the Cauca boot in Mompos depression. All are delicious land to farmers for soil fertility, and also very rich farmers who grow maize, cassava, taro and are, in turn, fishermen.
Basically, these forms of exploitation of the wealth brought up by the rivers are the cause of social conflict from grass to imports in the late nineteenth century, continues. Farmers seek, by any means, drain the marshes to expand their farms, farmers, workers and amphibians, heirs of the Zenú-weather because of them comes from their food. Since the 50's of last century, politicians, businessmen and landowners dream with plans to regulate the waters. Irrigation districts built by Incora in the 60 and projects Urra Urra I and II are due to that purpose and have triggered social conflicts leading to war between paramilitaries and guerrillas.
The last civil war (1899-1902) mobilized the conservative hosts to the Sinu Antioquia to close the Over the liberals entrenched in Panama. Antioquenos have discovered a land occupied by forests rich in fine woods, which ended up being exploited by foreign companies, and indigenous populations displaced by wild black freedmen, in turn displaced by mestizos-o-Chilapa, all fishermen and farmers all and all occupied territories defined. The farmers, all white and wealthy, came from Bolivar, Magdalena and Antioquia.
In the 30's, when Lopez pulled out the social function of property, the landlords occupying uncultivated land with their livestock to make acts of ownership over them, and peasants invaded public lands or not with the same purpose. The landowners were also military and political, as Colonel Francisco Burgos and General Pedro Nel Ospina, symbol of a wildly landlordism, and on the other hand, the peasants were organized by trade unionists Vincent Adamo, an Italian anarchist, or Julia Juana Guzman a "mulatto briosita."
The occupation of lands and swamps Violence has worsened during the 50's. Julio Guerra was lifted in the upper San Jorge persecution of chulavitas and monitored until the 60 Paramillo region, where at the end of the decade was born on EPL. In the plains, farmers Flagship strengthen their possessions and Colonies Peasant, as the government valued the land with the construction of roads, of Turbo Valencia, Arboletes to Monteria, Pueblo Bello Turbo. Just about the high cost of land, the National Front drove in three major projects of land reform and irrigation in Cordoba, sponsored by the Alliance for Progress.
However, the redistribution of property was minimal. Between 1968 and 1975, 4,203 hectares were awarded to 300 families, but were dried over 10,000 acres of marshes and wetlands, which sooner or later fall into the hands of landlordism. Was not without foundation Apolinar Díaz Callejas Agriculture Minister Lleras Restrepo, when it concluded that the Incora "protected the farmer by institutionalizing latifundio ranching as 'appropriate' form of land use." Lleras himself was aware of the trend and tried to stop it by organizing the ANUC in Cordoba had more than 30,000 farmers and fishermen partners.
From: http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/nacional/articuloimpreso100701-viaje-al-corazon-del-alto-sinu
Posted by: Raul Vasquez - Ecosocial
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