Via Marabunta
Eight years ago we were thousands outside the Neuquén Legislature demonstrating against a project of looting and environmental devastation. On that day, YPF allied with the multinational Chevron, under the protection of the national and Neuquén governments, to massively apply fracking in Argentina. That day, the police repressed the mobilization for more than eight hours and two rukas of the Mapuche community Campo Maripe, where the first wells were later installed, were burned. With this violence was coined the consensus that still guides government and business policies. Despite this, many of us continue to denounce that the exploitation of the Vaca Muerta destroys nature, societies and economies.
With the expansion of the exploration areas through fracking, the national government intended to build a supposed energy sovereignty and minimize the currency restriction. However, despite the millions of dollars destined to favor the oil companies, neither objective was achieved.
After eight years, the impacts of fracking are innumerable. The use and contamination of 60 million liters of water per well in a context of drought, the regular occurrence of earthquakes near the most important explorations, and the thousands of tons of waste accumulated in open-air “oil dumps” are the most visible environmental effects. In addition, the economic consequences translate into growing provincial indebtedness, which has repercussions in terms of worsening poverty and indigence indices in the towns that “coexist” with the wells. In turn, the rights of Mapuche communities are being constantly violated.
The Vaca Muerta is a geological formation from which almost 50% of the country’s gas and 30% of its oil is extracted. Thousands of people live off it and are being contaminated by this technique, which is questioned all over the world and forbidden in several countries. Just like in the Pampas region, fracking has become a massive experiment in which our bodies and territories are at the service of the profit of a few.
If we live in plundered, polluted and impoverished territories, we are also plundered, polluted and impoverished peoples. We cannot live with dignity, nor can we develop, nor can we be happy in areas of sacrifice.
From the Marabunta Social and Political Current, we understand energy as a human right and we fight for a transition that stops the burning of fossil fuels that cause the climate crisis and allows us to improve the lives of the majority through renewable sources with popular control. We fight, then, for a popular energy transition that transcends the visions that seek green capitalism or sell us supposedly sustainable development. It is not possible to stop the environmental crisis within capitalism, and that is why day after day, together with other organizations and groups in struggle, we are building an eco-socialist and feminist alternative from below.
Vaca Muerta is plundering and pollution!
No more ecocide!
Energy to live!
We want livable lives!
