i really hope this whole article pastes here...if not here's the link...good sunday read..

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Caura river: the reality of a crime against the atmosphere

http://www.eldiariodeguayana.com.ve/images/stories/2010/01Enero/31/16-F1.jpg.jpg','Image',800,492,0,0);" target="_blank">Luis Jiménez is an environmentalist it jeopardize with the development of works of conservation and viable handling of the natural resources in the indigenous communities that inhabit this river basin. With than 20 years crossing more these places of matchless beauty and natural wealth, this engineer agronomist sees with astonishment like the camping the Playón, once paradise of peace and tranquillity for the national and international tourists who visited the zone attracted by the beauty of the majestic Jump For; now one has become “a site of anarchy, disorder, corruption, alcohol. The delinquency, the drugs, prostitution and the malaria almost did not exist in the zone before the mining. We must ask if thanks to the mine of the Yuruaní today we have really prosperity and if it is worth the pain to change a handful of gold to poison one of the main hydric resources that could use our children as source of natural benefit, energy, fresh water, fishes and drugs”.

INDIGENOUS REJECTION

“Day of Kings, when we went to the twenty fourth general assembly of the communities yekuana and sanema of the river basin of the Caura that was realised from the 8 to the 12 of January in the community of Fañufodiña in the Caura stop, we saw six curiaras raising zone of operation mining located in river Yuruaní, broken that ends at Caura and that is conserved by us the yekuana because the center of the life of the native is considered, there we hunted for our sustenance. Also we saw near 15 miners lowering, is a constant”.

The yekuana Luis Tomedes, executive secretary of the indigenous organization Kuyujani (OIK) said that during the general assembly, the 19 indigenous communities that inhabit the river basin of the Caura river ratified their rejection to the mining activity that is being carried out from 2006.

“That letter against La Paz, the atmosphere, the coexistence of the towns and the national security, also repudiamos the participation of some natives who are involved and we demanded to clarify the participation of the military who have had businesses with the miners. In the meetings that we have maintained with the organisms of the State, always we listened to promises which soon we do not see fulfilled, are no forceful answers”.

Luis Tomedes makes a call to the opinion publishes so that he includes/understands that the Caura “is the last vegetal lung that we breathed, that the communities live on that reserve reason why we must conserve it for the future of the new generations”.

The same to feel promulgates Alberto Rodriguez, president of the OIK. “During the Indigenous Summit realised in July of the 2009, where the Latin American Indigenous Parliament participated, Amazonian Parliament and the one of the Afrodescendientes, the position to the problem of the mining paid attention by ricochet to the river basin of the Caura. At the end of July and in September 2009 we met with the Theater of Operations Nº 5 (TO5) of the Venezuelan Army, and were in acting, we insisted through the indigenous deputy before the Legislative Council of the State Bolivar, Yaritza Aray that it summoned to to5 in September to raise the denunciations, but also have not seen anything of action”.

DEMAND THE INTERNATIONAL

“We decided to undertake action at international level in view of which at national level the interposed denunciations are not being taken into account, although it says that the Caura is the lung of Venezuela and all that cursilería that occurs, nevertheless has been no uprising and people are impotent because no institution of the State has given the face in support to the communities, it is even spoken to demand to the Be in favor of the breach of the constitutional mandate with respect to the recognition of the indigenous rights”. The leader voice pemón Italo Pizarro, president of the Indigenous Federation of the state Bolivar, is forceful, still more when it remembers that during the summit realised in July 2009, the damages that the mining activity was causing in the coastal ecosystems of the Caura, the legal disorder that was appearing, the delay in the indigenous earth demarcation and the possibility were evaluated of approving the figure of national park.

“Until now we have not had answer of the Defensoría of the Town, of the Ministry for the Atmosphere, TO5, Ministry of Inner Relations and the deputies of the Indigenous Parliament”.

DENUNCIATIONS WITHOUT ECHO

“We stopped meeting with to5 before the lack of answers”. For Nalúa Silva Monterrey, anthropologist and investigator of the Experimental National University of Guayana (Uneg), with than 20 years accompanying more the fight by the indigenous towns of the Venezuelan Guayana to vindicate its rights, is urgent to take action.

“The denunciations have been realised, by diverse nature, but for some unknown reason it has not been driven. We already exhausted all the institutional instances that are had”.

It misestimates the proposal to create the figure of National Park for the Caura and for it is enough a simple resemblance to him: “In the national park Canaima there is mining reason why a legal figure does not stop this activity, the unique thing contains that it is the political will to take the actions that are required with the support of the communities, and brings back to consciousness of the importance of the environmental value of the river basin”.

NO! TO THE NATIONAL PARK OF THE CAURA

The president of the OIK, Alberto Rodriguez, lawyer of profession, appeals to the Venezuelan laws and the unanimous decision of the 19 indigenous communities congregated in the general assembly of the towns yekuana and sanema, to reject the proposal to create the figure of National Park in the river basin of the Caura.

“We considered that first it must have a recognition of the rights of the indigenous towns on his territories as sends the Constitution, this is our main demand. That proposal arose from a decision of a Court Agrarian Superior of Caracas, ratified the 16 of September, where it orders the study of change of forest reserve to one more a more restrictive figure like national park, which violates the norm of the legal instruments, national as as much international, related to the rights of the indigenous towns, which nonprehorseradish tree that indigenous figure for zones or territories. In addition, the Venezuelan legislation speech of the consultation previous and informed into good faith and this proposal has nevertheless not happened through that consultation, reason why there are another Indigenous violation to the norms established in the National Constitution and the Statutory law of Towns and Communities. Now we are evaluating the different actions to take that they allow to indicate our protest us before the public opinion”.

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

“There is a regulation of use of the river basin of the Caura, but the people omit this and since there is no an authority that puts brake to them or it sanctions, because they continue making it and the people have denounced who it before the organisms like Atmosphere, Mayorship, Interior, Environmental Day-care center, see that these do not give answer because from some or another form they obtain benefits. We have sent communications to these organisms and they say to us that sanctionary administrative procedures to about 4 or 5 miners exist, but do not do anything in the hope that the courts dictate sentence”.

The technical adviser of the Atmosphere Commission of the National Assembly, engineer Milton Vargas, said that the report on the illegal mining in Venezuela, made by the mentioned commission, was sent to all the corresponding organisms so that they acted consequently.

HISTORY THAT IS REPEATED?

“We will finish with Guayana turned into an uncultivated land, 88 style km or Guaniamo. That it dehorns! That bitterness and impotence the one that I feel! I have the sensation of which nothing is being made to stop the monster of thousand heads”. The impatient voice of the Venezuelan scientist Henry Briceño, pioneer in the studies of mercurial contamination in the Caroní river, is lapidary.

Environmental value

In its 5 million hectares, the river basin of the Caura river lodges five areas under regime of special administration: the national park Jawa Sarisariñama, ecosystem of tepuyes (plateaus) unique in whose tops are the enigmatic caverns of 350 meters of vertical depth, with flora and highly endemic fauna; the Natural Monument Mountainous area of Maigualida and Ichún Guanacoco, besides the South Protective Zone of the State Bolivar, important reservorio of water where the source several is located; and the Forest Reserve the Caura, decreed thus from 1969 dice the valuable forests that it owns. In addition, it conserves the 17 percent of the floral species of the country and more of the 32 percent of the national fauna and reports a represented ethnic diversity at the moment by seven indigenous groups: Ye `kwana, Sanema, Hotï, Pemón, Guajibo, Piapoco and Kariña. Local scientists argue that the increase of the mining activity in this river basin, would jeopardize east ecosystem that serves valuable environmental against the global heating, when guaranteeing approximately the 0.14 percent of I oxygenate of the planet (the Brazilian Amazonia contributes 20%).

• 17% of the vegetal diversity of Venezuela
• 28% of the vegetal diversity of the Guayana
• 88% of the registered endemic plants for the Guayana
• 32% of the registered animal species in Venezuela
• 441 species of reported fish, of which 35 are in extinction danger

Integration and brings back to consciousness environmental

“We are arranging meetings with the different organisms public to analyze the actions that are going away to take for this year 2010 with respect to take care of the mining illegal and to repay the environmental damage, we cannot forget that of this damage a contribution more to the global heating has taken control that we have anywhere in the world”.

It presented thus it the engineer Mily Hernandez, to one week of to be named Estadal Director of the Ministry of the Popular Power for the Atmosphere (Minamb). Hernandez comes to work in the secretariat of Tourism and Atmosphere of the Interior of the state Bolivar where she altogether developed to activities with Fundacite Bolivar, Kuyujani Organization and the Yajimarú Cooperative, directed to strengthen the network of tourist innovation in the river basin of the Caura and to repay the damage that the mining has caused to the atmosphere.

The civil servant explained that she will dedicate his efforts to the management of indigenous earth demarcation, for which announced the accomplishment of the first session of the Interinstitutional Regional Committee to take place the day Wednesday 3 of February, to 9 in the morning, in the multi-ethnic complex the Churuata in City Bolivar. This committee is integrated by 10 governmental organisms and 10 representatives of all the present indigenous towns in the state Bolivar.

“We will take into account the car demarcation that already has realised the communities altogether with the Indigenous Institute and the Indigenous Federation of the state Bolivar. We will evaluate the files that soon will be sent to the national commission of indigenous earth demarcation. Our interest is to aperturar this committee that was three years old paralyzed, to know the actions each member and power to make harmony with all the efforts, to unite and to take a single management to us before the national commission”.

In relation to the different abiertos sanctionary administrative processes from the miners in the Caura, Hernandez said that they are in the phase of revision. “From the Ministry we are working in accordance with the rest of the institutions, calling to integration to be able to ahead take all the actions that are needed framed within the illicit monitoring and control of all the environmental ones which they were possible to be causing in the atmosphere, we know that a single ministry cannot, for that reason I insist to the institutes to integrate to us and to the community to diminish all those illicit ones and to contribute major he brings back to consciousness environmental”.