Tierra Sublevada by Pino Solanas

Today (September 28, 2009) I went to watch Pino Solanas’ last documentary Tierra Sublevada [something like Raising Land]. Two things struck me apart from the general message about the neo-colonial practices that the mining business implies, and they are how the Argentinean environmental movement relates to nationalism, and the role that Pino Solanas plays in outlining the discourse for this same movement or rather, what the relationship is between him and the movement. Through the documentary I heard the same slogans as I have during the two UAC I have participated in: water is worth more than gold, life is worth more than everything else, and no one touches the glaciers. The practices, or the looting, that the multinational corporations are supposed to be involved in were central in the story. Solanas describes how the multinational corporations that extract the minerals only pays 1-1,5% in royalty since they can deduce costs for extraction and transportation, and how this is only the case for 3 out of all the dozens of minerals that are extracted. This is further information that is possible to find at his official website as well (www.pinosolanas.com). The documentary has obviously been filmed and concluded during the last months, because events which I have been able to observe in my study were present like the charge against the activists who blocked the road to Famatina. Solanas described how the protests have been criminalized, how politicians are selling the common goods, and how politicians in the major mining provinces are corrupt and favoured by impunity by the juridical systemHe also highlights how the mining company Alumbrera Ltd pays 50 million pesos for the education at the University in Tucuman, an issue which has been heavily debated within the environmental movement since April or May, which have even led some departments to reject the funds.

To continue the reflection I initiated above on the relationship between nationalism and the Argentinean environmental movement, I find it captivating (or perhaps scary is a better term) to think about the privatization of the common goods that is possible to observe. It is difficult not to agree on the relevance of the question that Solanas poses: how can there be so much poverty in a country which is so rich? Like a banner at the demonstration in San Lorenzo on the 12th of September said: “At this port the wealth is shipped out, and we are left with poverty, contamination, explosions and ill health”. So the interest in nationalism is both relevant in the light of globalization concerning what it is that moves over national borders, as well as internally concerning who benefits from and who can participate in the decisions for how to use common goods.

Information overload

“There is no shortage of activities” an activist concluded at a meeting I attended, and asked the other 7 participating activists to please keep to the program for the evening where they were to decide on how to arrange a public event in October, while he tried to keep his 4-year-old son busy and not disturbing the meeting. A woman in her 50’s commented that her family will have to put up a picture of her in her home, since she is never there but constantly attending meetings and activities with the environmental organization and related networks which she is working with. She continued with a sigh that there is not one single weekend that isn’t filled with activities until Christmas. The issue of having sufficient time for all the meetings resonated in an interview which I performed with a man who is deeply involved with a national organisation, and in an interview I performed with an activist who is dedicated to Greenpeace campaigns which she can help out with from home over the internet. Two girls I interviewed the other day commented on how unhealthy they eat when they are in reunions all the time when someone stops by the “kiosco” to by something sweet to nibble on for the group. “We will get really fat soon” she said and laughed while she opened a box of alfajores and placed in on the table where we were going to perform the interview.

Ruth Lister et al. observe that citizenship studies gain from “a multi-tiered analysis, which pays attention to the spaces and places in which lived citizenship is practiced” (Lister et al. 2007),which the above is an example of. But it also relate to what is commonly called “information overload”. That at the same time as social movements gain from the possibility to communicate and share information at a low cost, having time to read all that one has the possibility to read, and to sort between sources and bountiful information is more difficult. During the last month I have probably received 300- 400 e-mails with invitations to public events, reports on the results from marches and protest activities, invitations to facebook lists and pages, new blog entries, news letters, excerpts from interviews with leading activists and scholars, and “heads up” about advancements and environmental impacts by companies which are extracting the Argentine resources. Some of the information is sent over and over again by people from different lists, and it is possible to notice patterns and repetitions in the information. Based on this one cannot only draw the conclusion that activists have problems making it to all the events, reunions and network meetings, but more importantly that there ARE so many activities organized with the attempt to influence environmental politics. The questions a researcher can pose based on this is what the activists believe they accomplish, how they keep the faith when their attempts do not seem to result in any changes, and moreover how the continuous flow of information about what other participants in the movement do and think all over the country influences individual participants’ identity as members of a social movement.

Having your “own” scientist and scientific (in)dependence

A central element in environmental movements’ work is to translate and interpret scientific studies and facts that establish relationships between humans and the environment. I watched a TV program where the environmental organization “Conciencia Solidaria” discussed the dangers of open air mining, in a debate with “La Camara Argentina de Mineros”. One of the arguments by the representative from the Chamber was that there are no scientific studies whatsoever that shows any direct link between the mining practices and the chemicals used, and health problems like cancer, for example. This shows how scientific results, or lack of them, are used in environmental communication.

Here I want to discuss two issues that connect the environmental movements in Argentina, with scientific matters. The first concern financing of university studies, and the second a specific scientific study performed by Andrés Carrasco which has received a lot of attention in relation to the movement against the herbicide gliphosate. The discussion about science and universities in Argentina relate to general issues of trust and scientific independence. I have heard several expressions of distrust in scientists in my interviews and observations, or the belief that scientists are paid by multinational companies to find only what they are expected to. This is why it becomes important for the environmental movement to find scientists that are considered as “one of us”.

It was at UAC in Jujuy that I first heard demands to reject the university funding from the mining business Yacimientos Mineros Aguas del Dionisio (YMAD), or the Alumbrera as it is commonly called. The funding is part of the law 14.771 from 2008, which evidently gave the National Interuniversity Council 50 million pesos from the mining business to distribute to universities, money which is now rejected by some universities, scholars and student movements due to the supposed environmental destruction that the mining causes. The matter places focus on who is funding education, and whether funders can demand certain results or research projects, issues which in turn relate to scientific independence, and in what ways that neoliberal policies have influenced public education. Critical voices of the funding from YMAD claim that it is part of a campaign to legitimize the environmentally destructive mining activities, which in turn says something about the expectations on political representatives who created the law to start with.

Andrés Carrasco is considered by several participants in the environmental movement as “one of us”. He has performed a biological investigation of gliphosate, an ingredient used in the herbicide Roundup Ready and its impact on cell transformations in embryos. The fact that Carrasco is Argentinean makes his findings even more important, stated a university professor that I interviewed the other day. This can be demonstrated by the fact that Carrasco is not only invited to a lot of environmental events and travels the country to give speeches on his findings and experiences, but is also interviewed for radio programs and newspapers. Carrasco testifies of how he has been receiving threats, and how he has been accused for attempting to participate in the conflict between the government and “el campo” (read the large land owners). His testimonies give strength to the preoccupation within the environmental movement about corruption in scientific studies, which I would argue further contribute to the notion of distrust.

The two cases demonstrate that knowledge production is always part of a political and social context, and sometimes they become part of political struggles or social movements. However, even if only certain studies, results or scientists get “agency” and are enrolled in social movements, it is fundamental to remember that also those that don’t, or those which are silenced are part of the political context. How this is done is a fundamental issue for the research field social studies of science and technology (STS), which has a lot to offer the investigation of how science is used in social and environmental movements, and in politics in general. When taking as a point of departure that all knowledge production is ideologically tainted, it is logical to require transparency and recognition of what assumptions about the world that scientific conclusions are based on. By this I mean that is difficult to produce “neutral” knowledge, we can only attempt to show how it has been done. For my current study however, it is a lot more interesting to continue the investigation of how science is enrolled in the Argentinean environmental movement.