Chile:
The short-lived lies of a “successful” forestry model
Chile is where the “forestry
model” introduced into the countries of the South – that is to
say large-scale monoculture tree plantations, mainly aimed at
producing pulp for export – has been “sold” best.
The 1973 military regime created
a framework for the introduction of neoliberal policies of deregulation,
privatization and unilateral economic opening up, whereby the
forestry sector was developed as one of the pillars of Chilean
macro-economy. Forestry activities in Chile come second
in importance to copper mining and are among the ten main products
concentrating 50 percent of the total value of exports.
What is not said is that although
the major forestry companies have contributed to create an outstanding
macro-economy, it is also true that they have generated similarly
outstanding levels of social inequality and the replacement of
native forests by exotic monoculture tree plantations, impoverishing
and evicting from their ancestral lands the people who lived there.
They have also caused landscape and environmental degradation,
in particular affecting water.
So, during the season of the
year when there is the greatest demand for labour, in the commune
of Los Sauces, Province of Malleco in the South of Chile, the
Mininco forestry company gives work to only 19 people from the
commune and pays them very low salaries. In a region where wheat
once grew and there were native forests of oak, raulíes and lingues,
today the exotic plantations of Monterrey pine and eucalyptus
occupy almost two thirds of the arable land. The largest timber
companies -Mininco, Arauco, Cautín, Comaco, Casino and Tierra
Chilena, among others- settled in this predominantly rural commune,
where twenty per cent of the population are Mapuche indigenous
people. Like in other parts of the country, their enormous profits
are expressed in a loss of quality of life for the local people.
Thirty-three point eight per cent of the population live in either
poverty or dire poverty.
Agricultural activities declined
22 % over the past 10 years, gradually forcing over 1,400 people
to migrate to towns where they build poverty belts amid the opulence
of the forestry companies. One of the reasons is the lack of water
as the plantations have dried up the soil. Every summer the municipality
has to deliver water by truck for domestic consumption.
In addition to the lack of
water is the problem of agrochemical contamination. The neighbours
in the rural sectors of Porvenir Bajo and Porvenir Alto suffer
from serious health problems due to plantation spraying by the
Comaco forestry company. Agrochemicals, in particular herbicides
(glyphosate and simazine), are mechanically or manually sprayed
before plantation and at various times during the first stages
of growth of the trees, polluting rivers, brooks and irrigation
channels.
Maria Martinez lives with her
husband on a small property next to a pine plantation and their
only source of water is the nearby stream. They use it for family
consumption, for the animals to drink and to water their crops.
“I have had pains in my stomach,” said Maria with concern. Ten
of her twelve sheep died and she is convinced that they were poisoned
by pesticides, “because the company has sprayed the banks of the
stream.”
The neighbours denounced agrochemical
spraying even along the border of the public highway. An irrigation
channel running parallel to the highway drains murky waters of
a suspiciously white colour and along its edges the vegetation
looks burnt. In the summer the forestry trucks come and go at
all hours, raising clouds of dust (with pesticide waste) that
goes into the houses, damages the grass the animals feed on and
makes the products of family vegetable plots inedible.
In Los Sauces there is a reason
to fear chemical poisons. In 1997 a woman of 70 and a boy of 14
both died, intoxicated by an anticoagulant rat poison (bromadiolone)
scattered by the Bosques Arauco company. At that time, various
persons were intoxicated, and domestic animals and cattle died.
Later a child died after having eaten wild mushrooms that his
family, like many others, used to gather and consume without any
ill effects. The father of this child was also intoxicated but
managed to save himself. As a discussion started on this issue,
the municipality entrusted a study to the Austral University of
Valdivia, which indicated that “uncontrolled dispersion of large
amounts of toxic substances such as pesticides (herbicides, insecticides,
fungicides, etc.) used in agriculture can make normally edible
wild mushrooms poisonous."
In the Mapuche community of
Lorenzo Quilapi Cabeton, in the Queuque sector of Los Sauces,
most of the young people have emigrated in search of jobs. “We
suffer a great deal because of the forestry companies,” says Pilar
Antileo. Her family no longer has a vegetable garden, because
“you can’t plant without water." They
used to have up to 150 hens that laid eggs”, some for use and
some to sell, but now this is impossible because the foxes that
the forestry companies released to catch the rabbits [that were
affecting the pine trees], also eat the hens.” After aerial spraying
various people who consumed wild mushrooms were intoxicated.
“A woman, Margarita Espinoza, died and a child of 13 found some
dead rabbits and took them home. They eat them and were all sick.
The child died and the mother continues to be sickly even now.
Another woman, Mercedes Huenchuleo, went up to the hill to look
at the animals and smelt a bad smell. She got sick and died. They
said it was a heart attack,” said Pilar. There are other cases
of questionable deaths that people associate with pesticides.
In the Guadaba Abajo sector,
spraying from planes was started three years ago in the Forestal
Cautin plantations. Ireni Polma, from the Antonio Pailaqueo community
says that her family’s bees died and that since then she has had
a permanent allergy on her face.
The most commonly used herbicides
in Los Sauces are simazine and glyphosate (Rango and Roundup).
The former is sold in Chile with a “green” seal (indicating supposedly
low toxicity) but it has been restricted in the European Union
since 2002.
It would now seem that the
forestry companies are resorting to even more poisons as a hitherto
unknown disease is attacking the large monoculture Monterrey pine
plantations. It is a fungus that attacks the trees’ needles, drying
them up so they look “burnt.” The gradual loss of leaves not only
leads to a lower growth rate but also makes the trees prone to
other diseases that eventually lead to their death.
The first attacks of “pine
needle damage” were detected in 2003 but alarm only spread at
the end of last year when from affecting some isolated plots only,
the fungus covered nearly 100 thousand hectares. Most of the damaged
plantations are located in the southeast of the Biobio Region,
Province of Arauco, where half the area is covered with Monterrey
pine plantations.
One of the main plantation
companies –Forestal Arauco- has already started aerial spraying.
This of course has caused various kinds of damage to the communities
neighbouring the plantations. Some inhabitants affirm that following
the spraying, adults and children showed symptoms of eye irritation,
headaches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Several bee-keepers
even affirmed that the fungicides caused the death of almost half
their hives.
This is the bitter reverse
of the “successful Chilean forestry model”: destruction and environmental
degradation, eviction, unemployment, disease and death for the
local communities – all this to support the profits of a handful
of companies.
The “successful” forestry model
has very weak foundations and the lies about its success are short-lived.
Article based on information
from: “Chile: ¿un caso modelo? Desafíos en los umbrales del siglo
XXI”, (Chile: a model case? Challenges at the threshold of the
twenty-first century) Claudio Maggi/ Dirk Messner, INEF1, http://www.meso-nrw.de/modelo.pdf;
“Las plantas de celulosa y el sector forestal. Visión de la agrupación
de ingenieros forestales por el bosque nativo (AIFBN)” (Pulp mills
and the forestry sector. The vision of the association of forestry
engineers in favour of the native forest), http://www.ecosistemas.cl/1776/articles-74477_recurso_1.pdf;
“Venenos en las forestales” (Poisons in the forestry companies),
Revista Enlace, Nº 76, April 2007; “La misteriosa enfermedad que
inquieta a las compañías forestales. La otra plaga de Arauco”,
(The mysterious disease troubling the forestry companies. The
other pest in Arauco), Nación Domingo, by Darío Zambra (http://ln.fica.cl/muestra_noticia.php?id=3010),
sent by Lucio Cuenca, e-mail: l.cuenca@olca.cl
