Making-down Upper Chira

The routine consists in working, spending, looking like, an waiting for… the next month.

 

All photographs by Estany Tineo for FACTORTIERRA. 

 

SULLANA, Peru – So near, so far. The towns of Upper Chira Valley’s left bank stand just 20 minutes away Sullana City, and it seems a world aside. So near, so far. The people hold very god TV’s, sound systems, freezers, but what hardly could be found in a house is running water, or, at least, a latrine that guarantees the excrement won’t be anywhere.

 

So near, so far. Amid the modern furniture, the most houses continue building of pasted mud and mud bricks, so near… so far. The mud is the only one connecting the people of this part of Upper Chira to their ancestors. The archaeologist Daniel Davila, who accompanied us before researching in Malingas Community, suspects tallán people went around looking for agricultural lands, taking Chira River as water source.

 

The green mantle

The archeology is not a priority for Upper Chira ffarmers. They are interested in growing, and it is now one of the most important agricultural development axis of Piura Department. Settled down in the whole Sullana District’s eastern portion, the zone produces rice, banana, mango, lime, and beans. Among all, only the last ones are for human consumption because the rest goes to sales, or even the exportation.

 

A Good part of the agricultural market is controlled by dealers or corporations, like Dole, that pays the farmer for the worked or rented land that ever it’s invested in paying the fees of loans assumed before financial institutions, whether banked or non-banked. The strongest loands (over € 2500) are invested in the countryside. The littlest (under € 500) in home appliances. Most times, the dealer is not fair but, anyway, the people fall in debt.

 

Where this guy was prescinded, it’s in the organic growers associations which model is based on the fair trade, what means producing a quality fruit, and, in exchange, the final consumer pays the farmer what it really the effort costs.

 

The power of association

 This part of Upper Chira is the headquarter of Organic Banana Growers Association, known as Ambao in Spanish, that is identified as one of the predecessors of Organic Banana Growers Piura Center, Cepibo as in Spanish, that was established in 2002. The fair trade standars force Ambao to guarantee the whole product’s handling  is agrichemicals-free, that the work conditions for men and women are fair and equitative, that there is a constant training, and that the quality is the organization’s flagship.

 

Like Ambao, the organic growers organizations are getting these skills. Also, it is developing advocacy favoring their interests. They opened a new mechanism easing to carry the banana not damaging it, not depending on human traction, by applying the old Greek pulley principle.

 

A Little further enemy

 When some leaders are asked about the latent threat for Upper Chira, they no doubt respond it’s the informal mining. Part of Somaté Service Center’s people decided to take Somatillo Hill to boycott the exploration activities of Minera del Norte, that is working in the place since 2008, although it’s ignored what they are looking for.

 

Trying, the people took zones where the family of late leader Godofredo Garcia Baca was developing a reforestation initiative. His former employees held the land and expulsed his elder son and one of his daughters under the pretext that they were living much time ago in the pplace, and they had a right on it. Tambograndé-style, the locals took the company out the work spot but not the zone, and some luckily, it’s possible to match one of the mining company’s pick-ups that are still going around.

 

Despite this, the late leader Jose Maria Silupú got to establish a systematic support network with the emblematic Defense Front of San Lorenzo Valley and Tambograndé. “We’ve taken out the miners because the law supports us,” Silupú repeated although he ignored the reasons that technically invalid the mining presence in the place.

 

Silupú and Ambao detected new rights put over agricultural zones. But, the strength aside, nobody knows what the most practical way to discard the problem is. The only it was made, up to date, is sending memorials to pertinent authorities which response is not equivalent. About 15 miles mor to the north, in Pampa Larga Community (Suyo District), thousand of informal miners continue putting Chira River in risk.

 

A series of stories aired by Radio Cutivalú the first 2010 April first week, substantiates the tailings, as well as mercury and cyanide, are throwing to Santa Rosa Creek micro-basin that leads in Quiroz River, one of Chira’s tributaries. Meanwhile, Silupú himself revealed many cases of cancer were reported in his village, what have been detected mostly in their terminal phase. Is the mining responsible for this?

 

Silupú himself doubts on it. “Here we have the own intoxication problem that the people suffers from ignoring to handle the poisons we put on the rice.”

 

Pyrrhic water

 The first emergency cause treating in health posts in Upper Chira left bank is the intoxication due to the wrong handle of pesticides and herbicides. Despite the warnings of health personnel, urgency cases continue coming in and there’s no survey of how this problem is affecting the quality of water in the zone.

 

However, we have some indicators as the prevalence of acute diarreic diseases cases in children. Every specialist we asked in the place coincide the water is the problem. All the people supply from Daniel Escobar Canal (that allows to transfer water from Poechos Reservoir to Piura River). In many cases, it’s gotten to put the liquid in pipelines for carrying it homes, but it was skipped the potabilization step.

 

To fill the frame, the people ignore to use, or they simply don’t use, their latrines, leave their excrements anywhere and the flies do the rest of the job. The only right WC’s are available in health posts, indeed, only when they are open.

 

The problem is if the people don’t have clear how they must priorize their resources, Upper Chira will follow filling with satellite cable-TV instead of WC’s and running water. A FACTORTIERRA research sponsored by Ambao found this issue doesn’t feature in the list of urgent needs, it hasn’t priorized neither in participative budgets. So near, so far. The vogue before the knowledge, the comfortable before the necessary, that the-government-gets-in-charge of before I-decide-to-solve-it. No one said the Paradise was perfect at all.

 

Produced by Luis Arancibia, Nelson Peñaherrera & Estany Tineo, sponsored by Ambao. © 2010 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Comment this below or on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Would you like to know the places quoted in this story? Write us at factortierra@gmail.com for more information.