- Video of the 5th Latin American Water for People Summit
In Indigenous and Ancestral Territory of the Pre-existing Nations, communities of El Moreno, Tumbaya, Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc.
We are gathered at the 5th Latin American Water Summit for the Peoples, in defence of WATER, LIFE, the Rights of Pachamama, autonomy and Sovereignty of the communities and the Peoples, from the territories of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, reaffirming our own Indigenous rights and the Right of Collective Incidence acquired at national and international level to reflect, share and denounce the situation of our communities in the current context.
In the first instance we DECLARE
-That water is a living, vital, sacred, spiritual and integral being.
-That water is a subject of rights for all forms of life.
-That we fight for access to natural water in our territories.
-That we fight to decolonise the view and actions of the responsible governments and the corporations and their funding bodies that appropriate, commodify and exploit water and nature – as objects.
-That we fight to defend water, which is complemented by the air, the earth and the sun as the ancestral heritage of the ayllus, markas, original, indigenous and native peoples and communities.
-That water is a giver of life and that we have a bond of reciprocity and relationality because we are water, we raise water and water raises us.
Secondly, we declare that indigenous peoples continue to suffer genocide and a systematic and deliberately concealed genocide. In Jujuy, we have lived and are living through the imposition of an unconstitutional reform, which has been a laboratory experiment that today serves at national and global level, in a context that is deepening with the DNU 070/23, the Bases Law, the RIGI, and the Provincial Mining Decree 7751 that affects more than 400 indigenous communities and the territory of Jujuy in general. In this context, the indigenous communities of Salta, Catamarca and Jujuy, who inhabit the salt flats of Salinas Grandes, Olaroz, Hombre Muerto, Tres Quebradas, Jama, Carachi Pampa, Rio Grande Arizaro, Pocitos, Pastos Grandes, Pular, Tolillar, Cauchari, Incahuasi, Laguna Guayatayoc, we find ourselves in an extreme situation of invasion and dispossession of our territories in order to plunder them.
plundering.
Thirdly, we denounce as a general principle, the rejection of all activities that do not affirm life in the territory. And we denounce:
-the local, provincial and national governments that hand over water and land: stigmatising, repressing, criminalising and prosecuting those of us who inhabit and defend the territories.
– that mega-mining is drying up our watersheds, rivers, marshes, lagoons, mountain ranges, salt flats and all the natural forms of water on our Planet.
-that lithium mega-mining has not brought any benefit to our peoples.
-that we do not want any kind of exploitation in our territories.
-We reject and condemn the installation of off-shore oil companies in the seas.
seas.
-We reject and condemn the extension of agribusiness, monoculture, GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and agrotoxics.
-We reject the clearing and burning of native forests and wetlands throughout the territory of Abya-Yala.
-we reject and condemn all forms of extractivism associated with the false energy transition, basing exploitation on mitigating the climate crisis, generated and deepened by these same practices.
-We reject and condemn the surrender and appropriation of the La Plata basin and all our water sources.
-We reject and condemn the agreements between governments and foreign companies for the privatisation of water in our territories, with companies such as Mekorot, internationally denounced for human rights violations, Danone, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Manaus, among others.
-We denounce and hold international creditor organisations responsible.
-We denounce the impact on health in all its dimensions and forms.
-We denounce the violation of ILO Convention 169 and the Escazú Agreement. Free, prior and informed consultation is not respected in these territories. On the contrary, local governments violate, repress and corrupt these processes.
-We denounce that our territories are offered as sacrifice zones to supply the logics of the consumer system in this model of capitalist exploitation.
-We reject and condemn any kind of climate manipulation.
-We reject and condemn the corporate agenda of transnational capitalism towards the years 2030 and 2050 that enables the plundering of common goods and territorial displacement through the COSIPLAN strategic plan (ex IIRSA).
Fourthly, in our historical process, which looks back and looks to where we are going, we contrast the histories of life and community that shelter us in the Tawantinsuyu – Abya Yala – Puel Mapu – Wall Mapu, in the face of Western modernity, colonisation and imperialism, the old and new forms of conquest, we propose:
-Firstly, that, from the next edition of this meeting, the summit be renamed the Plurinational Water Summit for the Peoples of Abya Yala.
-The balanced, rational use, in harmony with nature, of all our vital elements.
-That the defence of the territory is essential for our lives based on livestock, agriculture, working with the land, production, food and health.
-To respect our own spiritual and ancestral practices to re-produce and care for life.
-That salt, from our salt flats, is part of our life.
-To work deeply on the recovery of our languages, and the creation of new languages to get out of the traps of the West and its concepts.
-To build a network of lawyers to review legislation on territorial protection, water, rights, for a coordinated legal strategy at international level.
-To build a network of popular communicators to be able to work together from the territories.
-Demand public policies that strengthen our regional productions, which are a real and existing alternative for sustainability and economic autonomy.
– We reinforce the commitment to incorporate all the mechanisms of popular community control in watershed management, to intervene in the development of integrated sanitation projects, the implementation of plans and the evaluation and accountability of the results.
-Validate existing consultation protocols such as Kachi Yupi, Pacha Jarkaspa and the Ocloya people, and encourage and support each community to draft their own consultation protocols, in order to efficiently comply with ILO Convention 169 and the Escazú Agreement.
-To build political tools, based on a deeper understanding of the processes of political autonomy of each of the peoples that pass through the summit, in order to build arguments and forces with a horizon of governance based on the form of Good Living.
Finally, we reaffirm here, the affected communities say ‘NO to Lithium’, ‘We are not territories of Sacrifice’.
- La Pozo Colorado Aboriginal Community
- Sol de Mayo Aboriginal Community Organisation
- TILQUIZA Aboriginal Community – OCLOYA PEOPLE
- COMACAMI PERU
- Atacameño Peoples (Chile)
- Comunidad Aborigen Negra Muerta Iturbe (Chile)
- OPINOA NOA Indigenous Peoples Org.
- Inti Yaku Apu Collamboy Coranzulí
- Aboriginal Community Aguas Blancas (Cochinoca – Jujuy)
- Association of Farmers and Irrigators of Toconao (Chile)
