LA VENTA, THE CRADLE OF THE OLMEC CULTURE CONVERTED BY PEMEX INTO PETROLEUM COATED WETLANDS
Tabasco, MEXICO 1 April 1997
Activists of the international environmental organization Greenpeace errected three replicas of the huge Olmec stone heads covered with oil, in front of the PEMEX Gas Reprocessing Facility to protest against the ruthless pollution of the La Venta wetlands by the government owned oil company.
"What we have seen today is beyond the power of description", declared Alejandro Calvillo of Greenpece, "hundreds of acres of formerly productive agricultural and grazing lands, as well as wetlands with a rich biodiversity, are now completely useless, dead bodies of water, because of the pollution by fossil fuels and the burning of wastes in the open, and there is no signs of any environmental authority to control the situation."
On the second day of Greenpeace's 'OIL TRAIL', activists of the environmental organization and crew elements of its ship the RAINBOW WARRIOR, together with members of local non governmental organizations, the Asociacion Ecologica Santo Tomas (Saint Thomas Ecological Association) and the Comite de Derechos Humanos de Tabasco (Tabasco Human Rights Committee), witnessed the inhuman working conditions of people hired to take part in the so-called clean up of daily spills of crude oil by PEMEX.
Children and elderly people, ex-farmers and ex-fishermen employed by contractors to work for 3 US dollars per day, without any protective equipment. The touring group crossed several teams of workers known as "chaperos" (tar people), totally covered with oil. Two youngsters, aged 13 and 17 were seen bathing in diesel to clean up their bodies at the end of the working day. "The contractors only give us diesel to wash away the tar, no detergent, no cotton wool" said the workers to the touring group which included national and local media people.
"To comprehend how the environmental situation in Tabasco has deteriorated," said a Greenpeace spokesperson, "you have to consider that the Commission for the Development of the Oil Areas of Tabasco (Comision de Desarrollo de las Zonas Petroleras de Tabasco, CODEZPET) has acknowledged since 1989 the impacts in the La Venta wetlands and on the land near the separation battery No. 1 of Campo San Ramon. A document reported 125 acres affected in the La Venta wetlands and 7.5 acres damaged in San Ramon. Now in La Venta in the Jose Narciso Rovirosa ejido alone (communal farmland) 1,250 acres have been damaged by pollution and hundreds of acres more in the ejido Ley de Reforma Agraria where the Campo San Ramon battery is located".
Calvillo said "What we have seen today is inhuman; it is unbelievable that people who once provided for their families using sustainable available natural resources, now have to survive sinking in the same oil that has killed their lands".
The RAINBOW WARRIOR is now at the port of Dos Bocas, where THE OIL TRAIL continues.
