Working together and fair trade.

I had plans to go to the south of Chile and Argentine to do some hiking and see this part of the continent, but then Frank asked me to help with some new projects at Merazonia (yes it still exists and no the paperwork is still not done) . Last year I left with some arguments with Jennifer and the conclusion that the management of Merazonia and me have a totally different way of working, so I wasn´t sure if it would be a good idea to go back. But I have to admit that I love the work in the jungle, I would like Merazonia to work out and if a friend asks for help, how can I deny. But I would only go if we would really work together and according to a plan, not to just do something.

As I fly into South America again, heavy rains and floods are troubling Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Many roads and houses are floated and while I worry about my relationship with Merazonia, hundreds maybe thousands of people worry about their missing, wounded or death family and friends. So what do I actually worry about?

 Eight weeks in Mera sounds like a lot of time to accomplish things on the land and a lot of evenings to read and prepare things for my website. But now, seven weeks later, it feels like I´m running out of time.

Before I tell you about my time in Merazonia, I want to tell you a little more about Latin America and especially South America and Ecuador. A lot of people (and I was one of them) don´t know much more about South America than that Colombia is very dangerous, Peru has Machu Picchu, Inca´s and Lake Titicaca, Chile is a long and small country, Argentine has good steak and Brazil has the Amazon river and is cutting away the biggest rainforest of the world. What did I forget? O, Ecuador has the Galapagos Islands and Bolivia has also a part of Titicaca, but Bolivia is strange, so dangerous.

An other example that shows how ´unpopular´ Latin America is, is the small amount of publicity that the Latin America film festival in Holland gets in comprehension with the Bollywood film festival. The new big Hollywood movie of Indiana Jones also doesn´t do right to the Latin culture, when it talks about Maya´s living in the Amazon rainforest…

Chaves has now started his own movie company, against the Hollywood culture, but at the same time he closed a radio station (RCTV) which produced too much political sound against him.

The western world versus Latin America; some different points of view:

First of all, not all countries in Latin America are poor third world countries, they all have fertile soil and like I said, some of them are rich with minerals, gas and/or oil. Also there is no official war between these countries and al their presidents (except from Castro) are democratically chosen, so that should give a lot of opportunities, then what´s the problem of these countries? In my opinion their biggest problems are corruption and people/companies who want to earn too much money without caring about others than themselves…

There live about 520 million people in 20 countries in Latin America.

Most countries now have left governments and are trying to work more together on economical and political issues. Unfortunately they´re still not very good at that and the corruption makes things even more difficult. But how fair is it to judge about this? Their governments are (almost) all elected in a democratic way, so that´s a good start. We also have to keep in mind that most countries have less historical experience in having democratic governments and if even almost 400 million people in the USA voted 4 times for Bush…

Let me tell you a bit more about some of the more important countries in South America:

Ecuador; president Rafael Correa. I asked around and most people think that he is doing a better job than the previous presidents from at least the last 10 year. It seems he really wants to do something about the corruption (a few years ago Ecuador stood on place 21 of the most corrupted countries in the world) in the government.

However not everyone is happy about the way Correa handles the resent conflict with Colombia (Colombian militaries crossed the Ecuadorian border to attack a camp that supposedly belonged to the FARC. One Ecuadorian got killed.), it does seem to make him more popular how he stands up for his country. This is something most presidents before him didn´t seem to dare.

The elite doesn´t like him, because he tries to get more tax-money from rich Ecuadorians and big foreign companies.

Some other critics against him are that it is not all very transparent what he is doing. He also doesn´t seem to be very good in handling critics against him, sometimes he reacts to ´aggressive´ or emotional. Maybe because he really cares about what he is doing..?

Peru; President  Alan Garcia (for the second time president). Wants to work together with Venezuela, although he does seem to do better than before, he still doesn´t seem to be very popular in his own country.

Chile; President Bachelet. She has 50% women in her government.

Chavéz is the biggest supporter of the free trade alternative for Latin America, the ALBA. This Latin alternative for the FTAA (ALCA in Spanish) is part of a Bolivariaans block, a trade agreement between the countries of Simon Bolivar, against the U.S.A.

Chaves hates the U.S.A., but also needs it to sell his oil

Brazil; President Lula. Was very popular in his own country and even far around, but this is getting less. He does want to protect 84.000 square km rainforest within the next 3 years. He also says that it is a shame that the poor countries have to suffer from the so called ‘clean energy project’ from the rich countries.

Bolivia; president Evo Morales. He is the first indigenous president of the country. Not everybody is happy with him, and they´re speaking about splitting the country in two. But being president for more than 2 years now, makes him already leading the country longer than most of the presidents before him (Bolivia has had 195 governments in 183 year of independence).

Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil now want to ´help´ Bolivia with buying it´s gas and they´re going to pay fair prices for it as well, so this is a good result.

From coca farmer to president, Morales turns out to be good in politics in a difficult and poor country, were most presidents serve less than a year. Only the rich don´t like him, because he is raising their tax´s and is talking about redefining huge parts (about 20 million hectare) of (farm) land.

Morales also want Coca off the drugs-list. For centuries the Coca plant is been used against altitude sickness, the harsh cold, difficult working circumstances and more. The plant is part of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andean Culture. In Bolivia there are about 30 legal products which include coca leaves, like cookies, flower, bread, thee and even spaghetti, it is only after 1961 that it is on the list of illegal products. But you need about a 1000kg of leafs to produce one kg of cocaine. Illegal selling makes more profit than legal selling.

Unfortunately the drug policy in the world is mostly concentrated in punishing the producers of the drugs, instead of reducing the (mostly western) buyers.

In Colombia for example they destroy about 130.000 hectare of forest and coca plants by dumping poison from out of planes. This often also destroys the land of poor farmers and not only the ones who harvest coca.

A lot of officials (ministers/presidents) like to believe that their policy against drugs seems to work, because this gives them more credit. However the truth is that most of the direct actions against the coca plant hit the poor farmers, but still don´t reduce the amount of drugs that gets produced and sold. It turns out to be impossible to find and destroy all the coca fields.

So how is the relationship between the western world and Latin America? This is a difficult question, because the answer depends a lot on what you read about it and how you want to interpretate it…

´Why so much protest?´, I was wondering. It is a free world and it is good to share products and knowledge.

But now I´ve read and heard more about it I understand why a lot of people in Latin America are against these contracts.

Some examples: In 1994 started the NAFTA between the USA, Canada and Mexico. According to several researches this NAFTA is making the poor in Mexico more poor. Prices of corn (their most important food) and rice went sky high and now Mexico, who used to export rice, has to import it. The small farms and companies in Latin America can´t compete with most of the huge big farms and companies from the western world. Small farms lose their fertile soils, small family companies lose their customers and a lot of people lose their jobs, or have no alternative left then to work for the people who ´stole´ their jobs. Look for example at the Mexican maquiladoras, assemblage fabrics from Levi, Gap Siemens and more who are aloud to import tax-free raw materials. Yes they supply work, but against a very low salary. This and other examples caused more and more protests against these huge contracts in Central and South America.

´Free trade´, often doesn´t seem to mean ´fair trade´. You can only work equally together, between equal partners, so now the USA tries to accomplice separately different contract with the different countries. Let´s hope these new contracts have a better balance.

Some big Canadian/American gold companies gave the governments of Guatemala, Peru and Chile a lot of money and without consulting the locals who live there or without worrying too much about the environment, or the health of the people, they could start digging wherever they want.

I wonder how this will go in Pulacayo in Bolivia? By how this town looks now I think that they could actually be helped with new activities in their mine.

European companies also want to work more with Latin America (they signed the DR-CAFTA). They try to get better contracts than the USA and their contracts say that the country needs to respect the human rights and try to protect as much nature as possible. But these rules are not really being checked, because the money that is earned with the ‘free trade contracts’ and the cheap labor is too valuable to lose.

As part of the free trade contracts and because the countries need the investments, big multinational companies often pay very small amounts or no taxes at all. This isn´t fair towards the smaller companies and in the end the countries don´t gain much with it at all. It is cynical that big companies try to show off with donating soccer fields and schools, while the government, who is suppose to do this, has not enough tax-money to pay for this.

Next to the minerals and oil, now the western countries have something new to bother Latin America with, ‘clean energy’ Yes, maybe for them, but how clean is bio-fuel and water-electricity for the places where it comes from?

The Itaipúdam in Foz de Iguazu in Brazil is after the Three Canyon dam in China, the second biggest in the world. It supplies 80% of Paraguay and 25% of Brazil from ´clean´ energy. But how clean is this energy if river directions had to be changed, a big part of nature had to be destroyed and about 60.000 people, mostly farmers, had to move to build a new lake?

At the end of the 19^th century the first diesel engines worked on peanut-oil, but when petroleum became cheaper in use, this changed. Now prices of petroleum are rising and the public demands more and more for green instead of black energy, bio-fuels are getting more popular again

Brazil is one of the biggest producers of bio-fuel and because Brazil is a federal state, all states have their own tax-structures, which make that it is sometimes cheaper to sell products to other countries instead of within Brazil. This is good for the huge agriculture companies who can own more than 100.000 hectare of land to grow soya and sugarcane. Especially this sugarcane is used to make ethanol, the base for bio-diesel. While bio-fuel is getting more and more popular in the western world to save the environment, Brazil will probably need to cut more rainforest to grow more sugarcane…

All these big companies harvest everything with big machines and use far less people than small companies would do, so for the local economy these companies are not very good. On top of all, because of the demand on ground to grow sugar, soya, rice and corn, the prices of these products rise for the local people as well.

Also something for vegetarians to think about, you need about 10kg of soya to produce an equivalent of 1kg of pig-meat. So out of every 10kg soya, you have 9kg waste, if you use it to compensate for not eating meat.

Taking care of the environment is becoming business, where money is more important than nature and culture.

Remember that ones, a very long time ago, in 2004, I wrote that Ecuador needed to cut wood to pay off its dept with the World Bank? Now President Correa says that he is willing to save a big piece of rainforest within the Yasuni Nature Reserve. Experts say that underneath this rainforest lays about 900 million barrels of oil. Correa now says that if the world will pay Ecuador half of the value of this oil, poor Ecuador will not extract it and protects it nature. An interesting point of view, I wonder what the rich oil consuming countries who want to protect nature, say about this. It seems that the idea is popular, but I wonder if the world is really going to pay about 260 million dollar for saving an Ecuadorian nature reserve…

From the huge problems in the world, to small solutions in Mera.

What has Merazonia to do with this? Yes we cut some trees, spilled some paint and cement and killed some insects (mostly mosquitos). But also the wind can brake down trees, and the plants can absorb some small amounts of chemicals. Floods are bigger natural disasters here and except from the few things we contaminate, the buildings on the land are almost self-sustained. We use only gravity to get our water in the kitchen and showers and we use our feces, urine and compost to fertilize the land.

 Yes, Merazonia is really integrated in the forest and in the community of the village Mera. This is more than you can say about a lot of projects… At the moment we help the economy of the village and hopefully later on some animals. It is not a huge solution for the contamination of the world, but I think it is a good example of how a western organization can help the nature and economy of a poor country on a sustainable way.

I was suppose to go to Chile, but instead I went to Merazonia, so now the question: Was this a good decision?

Well let´s first say that I had a very good time working out in the jungle. It is still a pretty place and challenging project and I really needed the exercise. Damn, I was tired the first few days. I was doing some heavy physical work on the land, but getting tired is not really something I´m used to, luckily within a week I was back in shape again.

I´m proud at Frank and Jennifer that they´re still working at this project, but we do still have a very different opinion about how to do things. This is not always easy for me to accept, but I tried to follow the advice of a friend of my. She told me that sometimes it is better to let people do things their own way, even if it is (in your opinion) the wrong way, let them learn from their own mistakes instead of trying to do it your way.

For two months we worked together, but both doing our own things our own way. The results were no arguments and a new house on the land…

In between we did have some other adventures as well, like the body of a death woman we found close to our look out point. I was checking this area when I found a sweater with some bones in it and a little further there was even a skull. We informed the police, who came in the presence of one young man on a motorcycle with one pair of gloves and no camera. He asked my friends to help with taking pictures of the body and putting the bones and clothes in a plastic garbage bag. Frank had to carry this bag to the police office in Puyo while he was sitting on the back of the motorcycle. But first they would have lunch in Mera and the police officer wanted to know if one of the female volunteers was still single.  

Another small story is about 2 Israeli volunteers who thought they could they could run Merazonia. They left Merazonia after one day without even seeing the land, but now, a week and a half later they´re still in Mera.

At this weekend (Saturday 12-4-2008) Mera is celebrating its anniversary with parades, a Miss Mera election, music, dance and alcohol. Yesterday I was asked to play the president of the U.S.A. riding on a horse behind the attacked Twin Towers.

The terrorist were the hero´s and even the horse didn´t like the president of the U.S.A.. They probably didn´t thought very deep about this act of terror, but I guess it does show that the government of the U.S.A. isn´t very popular in Ecuador and I´m sure this is the same for most of Latin America. But it also seems that Latin America and the U.S.A. do need each other, they only need to find a way to work together, which means they both have to make concessions… They need to work on a base of ´Fair Trade´, instead of with ´Free Trade Contracts´.

The beautiful sky of Mera on 16-4-2008!