Alleged gang members are transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison built by the government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador to house 40,000 detainees accused of belonging to organized crime. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

By Gustavo González
SANTIAGO, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

Violence involving organized crime has made Latin America the most dangerous region in the world and has helped paved the way for a repressive kind of populism with a dangerous future, whose most visible symbol is Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador.

According to United Nations reports, Latin America, home to eight percent of the global population, accounts for 37 percent of the world’s homicides. (These statistics do not include deaths in wars, accidents and suicides.)

Observers talk about a generalized security crisis, and the Salvadoran president boasted of a 56.8 percent decline in the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, while Ecuador, at the other end of the spectrum, showed an increase of 82 percent.

But comparisons in percentages from one year to the next are misleading if the absolute numbers are not taken into account. For example, the homicide rate in Chile increased 32.2 percent in 2022, although in actual numbers that meant 4.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In El Salvador, the figure for the same year was 7.8 per 100,000.

Statistics in percentages, magnified by the media and by the rise in the degree of violence in the crimes committed, spread a sensation of insecurity and fear among the public.

The terrain of politics

Politics have seized onto the insecurity crisis, which serves in some cases for the opposition to question the government, or in others for those in power to seek to neutralize their opponents. Both sides come up with shortsighted measures that do not attack the roots of the problem and can actually aggravate it in the medium to long term.

The most common reaction is to beef up the police force while providing it with greater means and authority to crack down on criminals. Police officers are given a greater margin of discretion to size up the danger and shoot – in other words, to become “trigger-happy”.

The expression is not new in the region. It became widespread in various countries between the 1960s and 1980s, under military dictatorships, when the law enforcement and armed forces murdered opponents in staged shootouts or brutally cracked down on social mobilizations.

The revival of these practices in the 21st century has required legitimization through laws, such as the so-called “law of privileged legitimate defense”, passed in Chile on Apr. 10, or broader norms that involve the police, the military and the powers of the State, as Bukele has pushed through in El Salvador.

Bukele, the leader of El Salvador’s Nuevas Ideas party, used his majority in the legislature to allow him to be re-elected as president. And on Mar. 22, 2022, he declared a state of emergency, accompanied by various legislative reforms that in practice gave him a free hand in his fight against crime, namely gangs known in Central America as maras.

More than a year after the state of emergency was declared, Amnesty International denounced widespread violations of human rights in the small Central American country:

“This policy has resulted in more than 66,000 detentions, most of them arbitrary; ill-treatment and torture; flagrant violations of due process; enforced disappearances; and the deaths in state custody of at least 132 people who at the time of their deaths had not been found guilty of any crime,” the human rights watchdog said in a statement released on Apr. 3.

“Key to the commission of these human rights violations has been the coordination and collusion of the three branches of government; the putting in place of a legal framework contrary to international human rights standards, specifically with regard to criminal proceedings; and the failure to adopt measures to prevent systematic human rights violations under a state of emergency,” it added.

A member of the carabineros, Chile’s militarized police, is photographed while opening fire on a street in Santiago. CREDIT: Courtesy of El Desconcierto

Repressive populism

Bukele replaced prisons with virtual concentration camps. A total of 1.5 percent of Salvadorans are currently deprived of liberty, which means the Central American country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

However, opinion polls show that eight out of 10 Salvadorans are satisfied with the current president and want him to be reelected, while some dissident voices warn that the State is replacing the gangs as an agent of intimidation and concentration of power.

The temptation to imitate Bukele with repressive populism that feeds on showy measures is present throughout Latin America. While the “privileged legitimate defense law” was being debated in Chile, Rodolfo Carter, mayor of the municipality of La Florida, in Santiago, demolished houses registered as belonging to drug traffickers, in front of the television cameras.

In Ecuador, President Guillermo Lasso, threatened by impeachment, announced in early April that he was authorizing the “possession and carrying of weapons for civilian use for personal defense” as an urgent measure against the “common enemies: delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.”

Delinquency, drug trafficking and criminal organizations are recurring terms when talking about insecurity, but a dangerous drift is often observed where ‘trigger-happy’ laws and measures give way to repression against social protests or empower political persecution under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Criminalizing the poor

Javier Macaya, president of the Unión Demócrata Independiente, a far-right Chilean party that vindicates the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), accused the United Nations of supporting “political violence” when its High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned of the dangers posed by the “law of privileged self-defense”.

The authoritarian scope of “trigger-happy” laws also includes the criminalization of immigrants and poor neighborhoods, classified as gang territories that shelter drug trafficking rings, although large drug traffickers and drug users from high-income sectors are rarely prosecuted in the cities of Latin America.

Political persecution is often disguised as security, as in Nicaragua in February when 222 dissidents were expelled and stripped of their nationality. The government of Daniel Ortega accused them of “treason”, described them as “terrorists” and “mercenaries” and justified the measure in the name of national peace.

Security has been instated as Latin America’s most pressing issue. The latest Amnesty International report documents arbitrary acts in Venezuela that include forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. Haiti, mired in ungovernability, is another country where human rights are a victim of insecurity.

The complexities of the fight against crime involve strengthening the police and also growing vigilante justice on the part of citizens. In Brazil, the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) authorized the police to kill criminals and loosened restrictions on gun ownership for civilians. His successor, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, suspended the measures after taking office on Jan. 1.

Latin America has become a kind of arsenal, with more powerful weapons for the police, and also with the illegal trade that feeds organized crime. A third of the firearms seized in 2017 in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama came from the United States.

The right in Chile has not come so close to winning the presidency since Gen. Augusto Pinochet stepped down in March 1990, bringing a 17-year dictatorship to an end.

Right-wing business tycoon Sebastián Piñera emerged from Chile’s elections Sunday as the front-runner for the Jan. 17 runoff, with a 14-point lead on the ruling centre-left coalition’s candidate Eduardo Frei.

The last time the right won elections was 1958, when conservative president Jorge Alessandri was voted to a six-year term.

Piñera’s strong lead over former president Frei was not the only novel aspect of Sunday’s elections. The Communist Party, excluded from the legislature for 37 years, will once again have a presence in Congress, while independent centre-left candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami capitalised on voter fatigue with the Concertación por la Democracia coalition, which has been in power for 20 years, garnering 20 percent of the vote.

According to the nearly complete vote count, Piñera took 44 percent of the vote, followed by Frei with 30 percent, breakaway socialist Enríquez-Ominami with 20 percent, and Jorge Arrate, who was backed by the Communist Party and other small left-wing groups, with six percent.

It is a given that Arrate’s voters will back Frei in the second round. That means the challenge for Piñera and the governing coalition candidate is winning over the voters who cast their ballots Sunday for Enríquez-Ominami, who said after the elections that his votes “are not endorsable.”

The candidate, who is the biological son of Miguel Enríquez, the founder of the now-defunct Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) who was killed by the Pinochet regime in 1974, when Marco was just a baby, was elected to the lower house of Congress in 2005 and quit the Socialist Party in December that year to run as an independent presidential candidate.

To win the second round, Piñera will need to draw at least one-third of the 1.38 million votes taken by Enríquez-Ominami.

Frei, meanwhile, is facing the even more difficult task of winning over nearly all of Enríquez-Ominami’s voters (and all of Arrate’s), to overcome the right-wing candidate’s 14-point advantage.

Enríquez-Ominami, whose stepfather is senator and former cabinet minister Carlos Ominami – another dissident who left the Socialist Party (PS), to which the popular outgoing President Michelle Bachelet belongs – has thus become a key protagonist on the Chilean political scene at the age of 36.

The candidate is demanding the construction of “a new progressive majority,” and says society is divided along the lines of “liberals” and “conservatives” rather than “left” and “right,” which he said is an outdated way of looking at things.

The newcomer, who says the governing coalition has outlived its two decades in power, has campaigned on a platform of “change,” and undermines Frei’s chances of giving the Concertación a fifth consecutive term.

“We welcome Marco’s supporters with open arms,” Piñera said Monday, in an attempt to draw support from voters who are disenchanted with the Concertación and backed Enríquez-Ominami instead.

Former senator Piñera of the National Renewal (RN) party that forms part of the right-wing Alliance for Chile coalition is one of the richest people in this South American country of 16.5 million.

The Harvard-educated owner of the Chilevisión TV station and of a large stake in Lan Airlines knows that his image as a free-market advocate who has sought to distance himself from Pinochet’s legacy could be attractive to many of Enríquez-Ominami’s followers.

Piñera was defeated by Bachelet in the second round of the last presidential elections, in January 2006, but has remained the strong card of the Alliance for Chile coalition, made up of the RN and the Independent Democratic Union (UDI).

Senator Frei, a 67-year-old civil engineer, is the son of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), one of the founders of Chile’s Christian Democrat Party (PDC), who was slowly poisoned by agents of the dictatorship over several months, which made him too weak to survive stomach hernia surgery in 1982, according to an appeals court ruling handed down last week.

Frei junior was also president of Chile, from 1994 to 2000, becoming the second president in the transition to democracy after taking 58 percent of the vote in the first round in December 1993 as the candidate for the Concertación, which is comprised of the PDC, the PS, the Party for Democracy (PPD) and the Radical Social Democratic Party (PRSD).

The first was Patricio Aylwin, who defeated Pinochet in the December 1989 elections. The third and fourth were socialists Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) and Bachelet (2006-2010), both of whom won in runoff elections. Lagos defeated Joaquín Lavín of the UDI and Bachelet beat Piñera, leader of the RN.

Paradoxically, while Bachelet is ending her term with more than 70 percent approval ratings, it is her party, the PS, that has been hit hardest by the crisis in the Concertación.

Both Enríquez-Ominami and Senator Alejandro Navarro, who founded the small Broad Social Movement (MAS), were dissident socialists who left the PS.

Navarro ended up throwing his support behind Enríquez-Ominami, who also attracted a diverse range of young businesspersons, former leaders of the MIR, ecologists and the small Humanist Party, among other groups.

Arrate, a former minister and ambassador of the Concertación governments, is also a former member of the PS. In his campaign he charged that the governing coalition has followed neoliberal economic policies.

After former president Lagos declined the Concertación’s presidential candidacy, the PS threw its weight behind Frei, who is widely considered uncharismatic, while both the PDC and the PPD also lost dissident parliamentarians and supporters.

Frei and other leaders of the ruling coalition pointed out Monday that the 44 percent of the vote taken by Piñera is the same proportion that Pinochet won in the 1988 presidential referendum that paved the way for the 1989 elections, and is lower than the nearly 48 percent with which Lavín forced Lagos into a runoff in January 2000.

But it is impossible to deny that Frei’s performance was the worst of any Concertación candidate since the December 1989 elections, which Aylwin won with 54 percent of the vote.

“It’s not that we want the right to win, but if the Concertación loses, it’ll be its own fault, not ours,” said Enríquez-Ominami’s political manager Max Marambio, a former bodyguard of Allende, former MIR leader and today wealthy businessman thanks to his ties with Cuba.

“We don’t know how the democratically elected right governs, because we haven’t seen that since 1958,” said María Pía Matta, the director of the Corporación de Desarrollo de la Mujer La Morada, a local women’s development association.

“The other was a coup d’etat…We don’t know how the new right will govern,” she told IPS.

Nataly Orozco, a university student who voted in downtown Santiago, told IPS that she hopes “a triumph by the right” will be worth it. “I believe that what has been done should be kept, but that many things should be improved, like education and health, because one thing that’s sure is that not everything has improved,” she said.

Sandra Aguilera, on the other hand, said Frei is what the country needs. “A lot of good things have been done, the country has been really stable and growing, it has weathered a major economic crisis without us suffering much of an impact,” she commented to IPS.

“There are things that have to be done, the new younger generations of politicians should be given more opportunities, for example, but we can do that through the Concertación,” she said.

*With additional reporting by Pamela Sepúlveda in Santiago.

The United States has chastised Chile for failing to protect patents, especially for pharmaceuticals. The European Union also has its eye on the South American nation for possible violations.

- Photo Stock

Ernesto Benado, director of the non-governmental Chilean consumers' association Conadecus, told Tierramérica this conflict reopens the issue of the validity of long-term patents, which ensure that medications maintain “exorbitant prices”.

On Jan. 8, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced that Chile was placed on a “priority watch list” for its lack of effective measures to protect the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical, music, film and information technology products.

The sanction, which coincides with the third year since the U.S.-Chile free trade agreement took effect, means a downgrade for Chile in the three levels the United States uses: “watch list” for less serious cases, “priority watch list”, for situations of concern, and “priority foreign country” for the most serious cases.

Chile is the only South American country that has a free trade agreement in force with the United States.

Following the U.S. announcement of sanctions came declarations of concern from the European Union, which insists that Chile ratify the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which should have been signed before Jan. 1 but has yet to be sent to Parliament.

In a study by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, Chile is in 4th place globally in terms of intellectual property violations.

Economy Minister Alejandro Ferreiro asserts that the government of President Michelle Bachelet is complying with Chile's obligations under the treaty and said the U.S. sanctions are “disappointing”.

Carlos Fourche, director of international economic relations at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, told El Mercurio newspaper that there are “differences of interpretation” of the free trade agreement and that the “enormous influence” of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry was “evident” in the George W. Bush government's decision.

Benado, of Conadecus, agrees: “For Chile, when the patent of a (pharmaceutical) product has expired, it is free to be marketed as a generic. But the United States says the patent can be extended by authorizing additional uses.”

“Our organization defends consumers' interests. We believe that developing countries like Chile shouldn't turn in patents because that means medications come out on the market with exorbitant prices,” Benado added.

For Claudio Lara, an economic policy expert at the private University of Arts and Social Sciences (ARCIS), the conflict dates back to late 2003, when the government of then-president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) was “very rushed” in signing the free trade agreement with the United States, and did not adequately negotiate the final issue, which was intellectual property.

“The country was left very exposed,” Lara told Tierramérica. But he thinks Bush isn't very concerned about Chile because it's a relatively small market, but rather is using the sanction “to pressure the rest of the countries of Latin America,” especially Brazil and Mexico, to sign onto U.S. standards for patents.

Since the free trade agreement took effect on Jan. 1, 2004, trade between Chile and the United States has grown 134 percent, with the balance favoring Chile. Between January and November 2006 trade totaled 13.33 billion dollars, of which 8.27 billion were Chilean exports.

The use of pharmaceutical patents is one of the most conflict-ridden issues of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks, in which countries like Brazil, India and South Africa claim the right to produce generic medicines to treat diseases with heavy social impacts, such as HIV/AIDS.

At a University of Chile law school forum, professor and lawyer Gabriel Zaliasnik argued that the Chilean authorities are effectively protecting intellectual property, but said they should not go overboard, in order to avoid monopolistic abuses, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.

Software, music and film piracy, the other area Schwab mentioned for sanctioning Chile, moves 182 million dollars a year in this country, according to estimates from Conapi, an anti-piracy network of business organizations and artists.

Of that total, the reproduction and legal sales of computer software is the lion's share at 135 million dollars, while pirated music is 30 million and film 17 million dollars.

Sources from Conapi told Tierramérica there are currently about 430 legal cases under way for acts of illegal trade and piracy, which include the illegal printing of copyrighted books.

The commission says Chile loses 160 million dollars a year in uncollected taxes due to illicit trade and piracy, in which otherwise unemployed workers play a big part. The lost taxes could have been used to pay for social programs proposed by the government that had a budget of 140 million dollars, according to Conapi.

According to business leaders, the year's first declaration of “pre-emergency” for air pollution meant 3.9 million dollars in losses. They urge President Bachelet to take action.

Santiago, Chile. - Photo Stock

So far in 2006, Santiago has seen one day of environmental “pre-emergency” and several days with alerts issued in response to increased air pollution, which result in restrictions on vehicle circulation and shut-downs of boilers and other sources of emissions, and even bans on outdoor sports activities at schools.

The critical conditions brought by the climate phenomenon known as La Niña, with scant rain and low temperatures, brought to the fore the environmental vulnerability of the capital, as warned by at least two reports from international auditors, which pointed to shortfalls in many of the measures of the Atmospheric Decontamination and Prevention Plan (PPDA) pledged in 2000.

According to sources in the business sector, the pre-emergency declared on Friday, May 12, resulted in economic losses of 3.9 million dollars, due to the shutdown of 596 factories and 320,000 vehicles, including 120,000 cars with “green seals”, which run on unleaded gasoline.

Businesses complain “about the impact on their pockets, but undoubtedly the pre-emergency status means savings and benefits in health,” says Sonia Garrido, whose five-year-old son has respiratory problems and requires medical attention on days of higher air pollution.

Children and the elderly are most at risk in regards to poor air quality in Santiago. The capital's location in a broad valley surrounded by mountains and the lack of winds makes it one of the most polluted cities in Latin America, alongside Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

The environmental “pre-crisis” led Metropolitan Region Mayor Víctor Barrueto to convene a meeting of experts, who presented nine recommendations for a better registry of contaminants and more rigorous regulation of diesel fuel quality.

Barrueto himself announced six additional measures to bring the PPDA up to date, although the authorities had to acknowledge simultaneously a four-month delay in the Trans-Santiago Plan to streamline public transportation, which was to be fully implemented in October of this year, but is now put off until early 2007.

When it comes to who to blame, fingers are pointed at the previous administration, of President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), which is accused of failing to provide sufficient funding for the PPDA through the National Environmental Commission. But many of its measures were delayed in implementation by the archaic norms of the Comptroller General of the Republic.

The environmental crisis is consequence of “the lack of political will, given that many of the plan's measures were violated systematically by the government authorities themselves,” Luis Mariano Rendón, coordinator of the non-governmental organization Acción Ecológica, told Tierramérica.

Real estate speculation through converting farmland around Santiago into urban uses is, according to Rendón, an example of how the plan's measures have been violated through “an unnatural alliance between business and politics,” in which public functionaries encouraged private investment.

Acción Ecológica, with the support of the Furious Cyclist Movement, the Pro-Cyclist Network and others, convened a bicycle rally on Saturday, May 20, with brigades of cyclist pedalling uninterrupted for 12 hours around the presidential palace in the Plaza de la Constitución.

The rally, coming just before President Bachelet's first Message to the Nation, was organized to promote seven measures that the environmentalists say are urgent for reducing air pollution, and which especially aim to discourage the use of cars.

Their proposals come in addition to those of other citizen organizations, which call for improved efficiency in the transportation sector, auditing of industrial emissions with stricter rules, and higher standards for fuels, especially diesel, which has seen demand rise in recent years.

“It is citizen pressure that will change things. The plans to clean up the air have failed because they were made from a technical and bureaucratic perspective. But what is needed is a cultural change, in which we all have greater awareness that traveling today by car in Santiago is like smoking in a small room at home,” said Rendón.

The construction of a 36-meter telephone tower would harm the majestic scenic beauty of Torres del Paine Park, in the extreme south of Chile, says Greenpeace.

Mountains in Torres del Paine National Park, 2,500 km south of the Chilean capital. - Photo Stock.

“It is a project whose origins and discussion came about without citizen participation, behind closed doors,” Rodrigo Herrera, national coordinator for Greenpeace's forests campaign, told Tierramérica. He says the blame for the secrecy lies with the company itself and the government's national forest agency, CONAF.

Torres del Paine National Park, administered by CONAF, was created in 1959 and covers 181,414 hectares. It is located between the Andes Mountains and the Patagonian Steppe, in Ultima Esperanza province, in the far south of Chile, some 2,500 km from Santiago.

Thousands of foreign and Chilean eco-tourists visit the area each year, attracted by the mountains, rivers and big lakes, as well as the flora of the ancient forests of lenga (Nothofagus pumilio) and coigüe (Nothofagus dombeyi), and by a rich diversity of fauna, which includes the guanaco (a wild relative of the llama), fox, emu, condor and aquatic birds, like the black-necked swan and taguas (Fulica armillata).

The park, whose name comes from the Paine “towers”, three awesome massifs standing 2,250 to 2,500 meters tall, is an example of “preservation of natural environments and of the cultural and scenic traits associated with them,” where one can observe the ongoing processes of nature and conduct research and education, according to Greenpeace.

The environmental commission of the Magallanes region, COREMA, is to evaluate the Entel PCS project, which could take place in February if it is given priority by the national government's environmental agency, CONAMA.

Herrera said that although Greenpeace presented its observations, COREMA has not commented on the project to build the cell phone tower, which also faces objections from the Southern Chile Chamber of Tourism, environmental groups and local authorities.

“This is very strange,” added the activist, alluding to the fact that the Telecommunications Vice-Ministry's pronouncements on the project haven't been made public, nor have those of the authorities overseeing compliance with international agreements in this area signed by the Chilean government.

Torres del Paine National Park was declared a world biosphere reserve by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and is also protected by the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere, signed in Washington in 1940.

“We are not opposed to the existence of a telecommunications network inside the park. But there are alternatives for doing so without affecting the natural beauty,” said Herrera, who noted that already operating there are portable VHF (very high fidelity) radio phones and that the refuges for hikers have fixed network computer and voice-over-Internet systems.

A 36-meter tower for cellular phones would not only mar the natural landscape, but could also bring negative consequences in ecological, scientific, cultural and archeological terms, in addition to the impact of the tower's radiation on local fauna, according to environmentalists.

Those who oppose the project fear that, based on a system of free competition, the authorization to build an antenna would set a precedent for mobile phone companies to build similar towers throughout the park, “irreversibly harming its awesome scenic beauty.”

If that were to occur, it would subvert the universal concept of national parks, which is that they exist as a means to preserve nature for future generations, warns Greenpeace.

“Curiously, CONAF, the institution entrusted with overseeing the protection of the parks, seems to completely agree with the initiative” to build the antenna, adds the environmental group.

The Entel company, which emerged just after the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) with the privatization of the former national telephone company, has not issued a statement in response to Greenpeace's denunciations.

“This project is being managed very stealthily by the proponent (Entel). There is a lot of citizen disinformation, and it merits a statement from the authorities of the central government,” says Herrera.

Entel is majority held by Chilean capital, and on its board are magnate Ricardo Matte, business leader Juan Claro, former government minister René Cortázar, and current vice-president of the Central Bank, Jorge Marshall.

Increasingly vocal groups oppose mining for gold and silver along the Chile-Argentina border because the project would mean removing three glaciers in the Andes Mountains.

Chile is rich in glaciers, like those of Torres del Paine, in Patagonia - Photo Stock

The Pascua-Lama site extends to both sides of the Argentine-Chilean border, with 80 percent in the latter, and lies under the glaciers known as Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza. They feed into Huasco valley, 660 km north of Santiago, supplying irrigation water for some 70,000 small farmers.

More than 2,500 people protested against the project on Jun. 4 in a festive march through the streets of Vallenar, a town located 150 km west of the mining site, which is also 300 km northwest of the Argentine city of San Juan.

That same day, a thousand people marched in Santiago to protest the Barrick Gold project, while in Barcelona, London and Cambridge events were held to denounce the plan and in defense of the glaciers, organized by the non-governmental organization Vidau (Life, Cooperation and Development).

The Pascua-Lama deposit holds proven reserves of 17 million ounces of gold and 635 million ounces of silver. The transnational plans to invest 1.5 billion dollars over 20 years to exploit it, with annual output in the first five years of 750,000 ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver.

Barrick Gold proposes to begin work on the project in January 2006, but before that, it must respond satisfactorily within 90 days to a lengthy questionnaire on the project's impacts, presented in early June by the government's national environment commission, CONAMA.

''Water is worth more than gold. The Pascua-Lama project is a brutal example of the type of economic development Chile is carrying out,'' Lucio Cuenca, the Chilean coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), told Tierramérica.

Ecologists say the Andean glaciers, one of the Earth's important reserves of freshwater, are suffering sharp decline as a result of global warming, and that in this case the removal of 20 hectares of ice as part of the Pascua-Lama project — with a volume of 300,000 to 800,000 cubic meters of ice — would cause serious environmental harm.

In addition is the contamination from mining operations of the waters that irrigate Huasco valley. ''Gold mining dumps 79 tons of waste for every 28 grams of gold, and produces 96 percent of the world's arsenic emissions,'' according to economist Marcel Claude, vice-president of the international environmental group Oceana.

Foreign trade expert José Francisco Lihn warns that water contamination from mining will prevent Huasco valley farmers from exporting their olives, grapes and vegetables because they cannot meet the environmental standards of the international markets.

Barrick Gold has conducted an intensive publicity campaign, including television ads that paint the project as environmentally friendly in terms of water treatment, and stress its claims that it would create 5,000 direct jobs during the mine's production phase.

Carlos Vilches, the region's legislative deputy and member of the conservative National Renovation Party, said the fears are unfounded and assured that there are experiences in Chile of mining in glacier areas with environmental impact controls, both by private companies and the government mining agency CODELCO.

Of quite a different opinion is Sara Larraín, director of the Sustainable Chile Program, who told Tierramérica that Barrick Gold's ''avarice and obstinacy'' prompt the transnational to ''improvise technical proposals'' for the environmental authorities, citing the supposedly successful removal of a glacier for one of its mines in Central Asia.

''No glaciologist, no scientific institute, no known study supports the risky experiment that the Barrick firm conducted in the republic of Kyrgyzstan,'' said the ecologist.

The Toronto-based transnational, the world's third leading gold producer, hopes to rise to second place with the Pascua-Lama project. It launched studies in the glaciers in 1991, and in 1997 acquired, through its Chilean affiliate Empresa Nevada, the Chañarcillo or Chollay rural estate at the location.

But the community of Huascoaltinos, made up largely of farmers of Diaguita origin (an ancestral indigenous group from northern Chile), filed a lawsuit against the company in 2001 for its seizure of their lands, because the purchase was made from just one member of the group.

Nancy Yáñez, an attorney with the Observatory of Indigenous People's Rights, said there are legal foundations for annulling the transaction, in virtue of laws protecting the heritage of indigenous communities that require the agreement of all its members in sales of their ancestral territories.

Those opposed to the project also point to the controversial history of Barrick Gold, purchased in 1983 by Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and also linked to Venezuelan magnate Gustavo Cisneros, owner of major communications media among other interests, and to the family of U.S. President George W. Bush.

According to the book ''The Best Democracy Money Can Buy'', by U.S. journalist Greg Palast, president George H.W. Bush (1989-1993), the current president's father, exerted pressure in Indonesia and Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) for the benefit of Barrick Gold mining and petroleum deals.

Salmon farming in Chile, second in the world only to Norway, represents 30,000 direct jobs. But NGOs denounce the industry's labor practices. Long criticized for its environmental impacts, Chile's profitable salmon farming industry is now being accused of violating labor, gender and indigenous rights.

The report ''Salmon Culture and Human Rights: Systematic Violation'', presented this month by the Oceana Foundation, received a harsh response from SOFAFA, an industrial development association, which called it a ''pseudo-study'' and said the international environmental non-governmental organization is financed by competitors of the Chilean salmon producers.

Oceana's investigation, conducted by attorney Ariel León based on previous reports and testimonies that he gathered himself, concluded that the salmon industry violates constitutional standards in seven areas.

There are breaches of civil, political social, economic and cultural guarantees, says the NGO, which also denounced the restrictions on freedom to organize into unions as well as wage discrimination, and violations of the rights of indigenous peoples, of women, and of consumers in terms of food safety.

Salmon farming, which began to develop on a massive scale in 1986 in Chile's 10th and 11th regions (around 600 and 1,000 km south of Santiago, respectively), is today the fourth leading export of Chile, which is the world's second salmon producer, after Norway.

In 2004, Chile's salmon exports generated 1.44 billion dollars, and in the first quarter of 2005 foreign sales reached 461 million dollars, according to SalmonChile, an organization of the sector's principal companies, both locally based and transnational.

Salmon farming in Chile involves 30,000 direct jobs and another 15,000 indirect, and SalmonChile says that by 2010 there will be another 16,000 jobs created in the country's 11th region alone, where 1.46 billion dollars in new investments are forecast to expand salmon culture in the seas of southern Patagonia.

The Barcelona-based NGO Veterinarians Without Borders said this month that the expansion of the salmon industry is in keeping with the predictions of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that by 2030 aquaculture would provide nearly all of the fish on the world's dinnertables.

According to the group, Chile's salmon industry is a typical case of monoculture that does not permit sustainable development and whose employment-generating capacity does not translate into better income rates in the 10th region, where two out of 10 people live in poverty.

Out of every 100 dollars of Chilean salmon exports, just 4.5 are for worker salaries, 42 go to the company, 27 to fish feeding costs, 12.5 to marketing costs, seven to other infrastructure expenses, and 3.5 dollars to repaying loans, said Veterinarians Without Borders.

Oceana maintains that the worst deeds of the industry affect the employees, and especially pregnant women. ''The workers are beaten, mistreated, degraded as humans so that they will work longer than the legal hours, and in inhospitable places,'' said Marcel Claude, the group's vice-president for South America.

The Chilean government's limited regulation of labor matters allows companies ''to ignore the workers' basic rights, such as having a safe workplace, adequate periods of rest and the freedom to associate and unionize,'' says the report.

Attorney León noted that the salmon industry in Chile has not adopted the concept of ''corporate social responsibility.''

Jaime Dinamarca, SOFOFA environmental issues manager, said Oceana's ''pseudo-study'' has ''no transcendence or relevance,'' and it is ''ungrateful, arbitrary and unjust'' to argue that wages in the salmon industry are low without first establishing valid bases of comparison.

This sector's wages are fair in a country with per capita income of 5,000 dollars a year, which cannot be compared, for example, to the 50,000 dollars per capita in Switzerland, Dinamarca said.

''One cannot sin out of ignorance, (and) many NGOs are paid by the competition of the national salmon industry,'' he added.

Rodrigo Infante, SalmonChile's general manager, maintains that the sector is noted for its ''regulation of salmon production with the aim of making practices sustainable, in harmony with the environment and socially responsible.''

Sources from the corporate association said in Tierramérica interviews that the Oceana report is undermined by a survey conducted in August 2004 by Los Lagos University in the 10th and 11th regions, in which 91 percent of respondents said salmon farming is the most important economic activity in their municipalities.

Among the most favorable effects attributed to the salmon industry, the first one cited was its capacity to provide jobs. The poll respondents also emphasized its contribution to local economic development, its active role in the community, good wages for workers, and concern for the environment.

Indigenous leaders, who continue their demands for their communities' rights over ancestral lands, continue to be stigmatized as ''terrorists'' in Chile, say rights activists.

Mapuche women in Chile's Chol Chol community - Giovanna Beratto

For attorney José Aylwin, director of the Observatory of Indigenous Rights, there persists in Chile constitutional and judicial discrimination against members of the Mapuche community, and a lack of protection for their lands in lawsuits that involve socioeconomic, environmental and cultural aspects.

The most controversial point is the criminalization of the land occupations staged in recent years by indigenous communities in the Bío-bio and Araucanía regions, 400 to 800 km south of the capital, respectively, and home to the greatest percentage of the rural Mapuche population.

In the lawsuits against the 'lonkos' (chiefs) that have led the land occupations, the prosecution has applied Chile's anti-terrorist and national security legislation, which opens they way for government and logging companies' accusations of ''illicit associations'' acting within the indigenous movement.

''The Mapuche who protests is treated much more harshly than someone from any other group. The lawsuits against the lonkos have been complicated. They don't take into account the ethnic variable. They are stigmatized as criminals,'' anthropologist Loreto Rebolledo, of the public University of Chile, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

On Apr. 8, the Supreme Court of Justice annulled a sentence from the Criminal Court of Temuco, which had absolved 16 lonkos from the Arauco-Malleco Association, one of the most radicalized Mapuche groups. The highest court ordered the case reopened under charges of illicit association, based on anti-terrorism laws.

UN special rapporteur Stavenhagen, a well-known Mexican anthropologist, said in his April 2004 report that the Chilean juridical system is limited when it comes to the defense of indigenous rights, and recommended that the Chilean government take legislative, administrative, political and economic actions to overcome the shortfalls.

Stavenhagen criticized the criminalization of the demands for recognition of ancestral lands and the description of ''terrorist'' used for the Mapuche leaders. He recommended to the center-leftist government of Ricardo Lagos a general amnesty for the defendants.

But Jaime Andrade, deputy minister of planning and coordinator of indigenous policy and programs, told the UN Commission on Human Rights last month that the government does not criminalize the Mapuches, because it uses the anti-terrorist law only in ''extremely serious'' cases and is working towards resolving the land dispute.

Aylwin said that if the government is going to heed Andrade's recommendations, it should step back from its role as accuser in the reopening of the Temuco case against the 16 lonkos, ''given the inexistence of evidence that would prove the accused are part of an association with illicit and terrorist characteristics.''

The lawyer, son of former president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), said the government and the Public Ministry do not pursue with the same zeal ''the crimes committed against the Mapuches, like those attributed to the agricultural landowners near their communities or the police abuses that on more than a few occasions have been recorded, affecting even children and the elderly.''

Juan Carlos Huenulao, behind bars in Angol (608 km south of Santiago) and facing trial for burning a forest estate, said in a public letter: ''For us there is no justice. We are Mapuches.''

The government defends its indigenous policy and cites among its achievements the transfer of 230,000 hectares of land to indigenous communities in the 2000-2004 period, the concession of 33,000 scholarships to Mapuche, Aymara, Rapanui and other indigenous students this year, and Chile's Bilingual Intercultural Education Program.

President Lagos also underscores the creation of indigenous municipalities in areas that are populated mostly by Indians, as well as the election of indigenous mayors in 18 of the country's 345 municipalities in the October 2004 voting.

But the president has not been able to convince the Chilean Congress to approve a reform that gives constitutional recognition to the country's indigenous peoples, or to ratify the International Labor Organization's Convention 169 on tribal peoples — what Aylwin says is ''the most important international instrument for the protection of indigenous rights.''

The lawmakers' resistance to those initiatives, as well as the rejection of Mapuche demands for autonomy by most political groups, business leaders, some academics and the traditional press, demonstrate that the tensions have deep roots.

''We're left with the feeling that the attempts the government has made in terms of indigenous policy have focused on resolving certain social and economic problems as stop-gap measures. But there hasn't been a change in attitude that would allow them to rethink the type of relationship the Chilean government wants to have with the Mapuche,'' said anthropologist Rebolledo.

Ecologists argue that a cellulose factory caused the mass die-off of black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus) in southern Chile. But the accused respond that the activists lack proof. In a Río Cruces nature sanctuary in southern Chile, a massive die-off of black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus) was reported. Environmental groups blame contamination caused by a cellulose factory. But the plant's owners deny responsibility, and the authorities have opted for a cautious attitude.

The Carlos Andwandter sanctuary, named in memory of a scientist and philanthropist, until recently was home to some 6,000 of these swans, the largest population in South America. Some 2,000 are left, as around 100 died and thousands have migrated.

The site, located in the province of Valdivia, 790 km south of Santiago, was declared an internationally important marsh in 1981 under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands for protecting these ecosystems that are essential for water resources and biodiversity.

In February, after a long process for obtaining environmental permits, the Valdivia factory of the company Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (Celco) began operating. Its waste is dumped into the Río Cruces some 15 km from where the river empties into the marsh.

The Regional Environmental Commission hit Celco with a 25,000-dollar fine in April for the foul smell coming from the factory, perceptible 60 km away in the city of Valdivia.

Celco belongs to the Angelini Group, one of the two largest Chilean business conglomerates thanks largely to lumber operations and cellulose production, with investments in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, owning a combined total of 779,000 hectares of forested lands.

Cellulose pulp is surpassed only by copper in generating revenues in Chile's trade balance, and strong international prices have motivated the Angelini Group to maximize its production.

Sara Larraín, director of the Sustainable Chile Program, told Tierramérica that at both the Valdivia plant and another in Itata, further north, Celco presented projects for producing 550,000 tons of cellulose annually.

“But it has been illegally producing (at the two sites) more than 850,000 tons, overwhelming the treatment plants, emitting foul odors and contaminating the environment,” she said.

In October the black-necked swans began to die off, which the Chilean office of the World Conservation Union attributed to the liquid and gaseous waste from the Celco plant in Río Cruces, as they reported Nov. 25 in Bangkok at the World Conservation Congress.

On Nov. 29, the regional environmental commission for Los Lagos imposed two fines against Celco, worth 5,000 dollars each, for failing to turn in timely reports measuring toxic waste from cellulose production in sediments and water.

But environmental commission director José Luis García Huidobro and the national government's designated intendant for the Los Lagos region, Patricio Vallespín, insisted it has not been proved that there is a relationship between that irregularity and the deaths of the swans.

They echoed the statements from Eduardo Dockendorff, minister of the presidential secretariat, who argued that the company “should be presumed innocent until proved otherwise.”

Celco president José Tomás Guzmán himself said, “As the environmental authority has expressed, we must stress that no scientific study exists that allows us to concluded that this phenomenon (death of swans) is related to the operations of the cellulose plant.”

Vallespín said he had entrusted the Southern University of Valdivia to study the causes of the swans' death, and that the results would be released in two weeks.

Sustainable Chile leader Larraín said Vallespín should order the plant to halt operations, given the 19 environmental and production irregularities found in a report by a consultant for the National Environmental Commission.

The Río Cruces ecosystem “is ill or has been altered,” because it no longer supplies food and other necessities for the birds, evidenced by the fact that this year the swans practically did not build nests or lay eggs, Miguel Stuzic, expert with the government's Agriculture and Livestock Service, said in an interview with El Mercurio newspaper.

“It was obvious from the start that the Celco cellulose plant would discharge liquid waste into the Río Cruces, gravely harming the flora and fauna. The worst is that the damage is irreversible and will spread to other species through consumption of contaminated water,” Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, told Tierramérica.

Baquedano and other environmentalists fought the construction of the cellulose plant, which under its initial plan was going to dump its waste into the Pacific Ocean through a duct, but that was rejected by the local fishing communities.

The substitution of concrete for wood in the construction of sleeper cars for the Chilean railroad is worrying owners of native forest parcels.

A native forest in Chile -

''I think it's an excellent idea and I applaud it,'' said biologist Adriana Hoffman, president of Defenders of the Chilean Forest and former executive secretary of the National Commission on the Environment in the first years of the President Ricardo Lagos administration, which took office in 2000.

''If the Chilean railroad embarks on an expansion policy it must be environmentally friendly,'' Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, told Tierramérica. He also applauds the EFE initiative to use concrete, but said the eco-focus must be broader.

The national and international bidding process begun by the company on Oct. 4 includes the purchase of 200,000 concrete sleepers for the lines between Santiago and Chillán, 400 km south of the capital. From Chillán and Puerto Montt, 1,000 km further south, will see the replacement of another 250,000 sleepers, maintaining the wooden pieces.

The construction of the 450,000 sleepers will cost EFE an estimated 26 million dollars. According to Baquedano, for a complete maintenance and renovation of the railroad cars would require 1.2 million of the transversal pieces. If they are made of wood it would require the destruction of 3,600 hectares of forest, he said.

The volumes of weight and rail traffic that the sleepers must support mean they must be made with very hard wood, which are slow growth. In Chile, these include red oak (Quercus rubra), coigüe (Nothofagus dombeyi), ulmo (Eucryphia cordifolia) and the tepa (Laureliopsis philippiana), all autochthonous and threatened by overexploitation or illegal logging.

The Forestry Institute, a state-run technical agency, proposed that the EFE apply ''positive discrimination'' in favor of wooden sleepers in the bidding, arguing that their quality is similar to that of concrete and withstand intense rail traffic for 30 to 45 years if the lumber is adequately treated.

Construction of the wood-based sleepers ''contributes to the development of a large sector of small forest owners,'' who are committed to rational management and exploitation of native forests, according to Forestry Institute director Rodrigo Ipinza.

But Baquedano says the technical reports with which the institute approves the orders ''are part of the pressure that the logging industry imposes so as not to lose that market.''

The environmentalist said he would not oppose sleeper cars made of wood if they are certified as sustainably produced lumber by independent technical agencies, but in his opinion such conditions do not exist in Chile.

''It has to be an international, credible certification, because Chile is trying to create its own 'green stamp'. The forestry industry wants to create its own certification, which we don't believe guarantees anything,'' said Baquedano.

Forest defender Hoffman says the Forestry Institute's position is ''unacceptable'' because Chile lacks regulatory measures for forest exploitation, and instead of favoring the small forest owners, benefits ''the vicious traffickers of fine lumber,'' as was proven earlier this year when a smuggling ring of Patagonia cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides) was discovered.

''There are some good owners who are concerned about effective management of native forests,'' but they are the exception, just as among the companies that produce high quality sleeper cars, said Hoffman.

''The concrete sleeper cars are much more durable, more solid, facilitate more stable rail lines, and prevent the logging of the forest,'' said the activist.

The Forestry Institute's argument that the purchase of wooden sleeper cars could contribute to sustainable management of native forests is ''fallacious'', according to Baquedano, who pointed out that in Europe ''all wooden sleeper cars are being replaced with concrete cars.''

Baquedano said his environmental group also opposes EFE obtaining wooden sleeper cars in other countries. ''Five years ago the company tried to import such cars from Bolivia, which would have meant the destruction of native forest in that country.''

In Yumbel, a town 480 km south of Santiago, owners of native forest who sell their lumber to the biggest sleeper car company protested the use of concrete, saying it would jeopardize a thousand small lumber producers.

Latin America obtains more than 20 percent of its energy from ostensibly renewable sources. But much of it comes from hydroelectric dams, which can harm ecosystems.

The development of ''clean'' fuel for cars is crucial for Latin America - Mauricio Ramos

When the region assumed that goal in 2002, it used nearly 26 percent renewable sources, but 15 percent was hydroelectric, according to figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a regional agency of the United Nations.

Renewable does not mean sustainable, say activists and experts who want to see fewer gigantic dams and more regulation of the use of firewood (source of 5.8 percent of energy used in the region in 2002), and incentives for non-conventional sources.

They point to Costa Rica, where 50 percent of the energy matrix is supplied by geothermal energy, sugarcane waste, biomass and other renewable sources.

International Conference for Renewable Energies, held in Bonn, Jun. 1-4, drew delegates from 154 countries who assessed progress towards the goal of replacing fossil fuels in the global energy matrix that was set in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

The goal of 10 percent renewable energy by 2010 represents ''the opportunity to fight poverty by using local natural resources in a decentralized way, the possibility of overcoming dependence on fossil fuels, which now represent significant costs for the nations of the South, and the urgency of protecting the climate and the environment,'' Sara Larraín, director of Sustainable Chile, told Tierramérica.

Around 23 percent of Latin America's total primary energy supply (TPES) comes from renewable sources, including hydroelectric dams, according to the ECLAC study ''Energy sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean: the share of renewable sources'', published in October 2003.

The report says that Argentina, highly dependent on natural gas, is the only country in the region with under 10 percent renewable energy sources, but there are four others in the critical zone of 10 to 20 percent: Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela and Chile.

On the other extreme are Costa Rica, with 99.2 percent renewable energy, followed by Paraguay, Honduras, Haiti and El Salvador, with more than 80 percent.

But in that group all is not positive. Paraguay is almost totally dependent on hydroelectric energy, while Honduras, Haiti and El Salvador, like its Central American neighbors Nicaragua and Guatemala, rely heavily on ''dendroenergy'': firewood.

Activists and experts argue that big hydroelectric dams hurt the ecosystems around them and alter the living conditions of local communities, which are generally indigenous groups.

Firewood is a renewable resource as long as it is accompanied by adequate reforestation.

Manlio Coviello and Hugo Altomonte, authors of the ECLAC study, argue that reliance on firewood is ''disturbing and to a certain extent negative, because of the heavy impact it has on forestry resources and the consequent increase in carbon dioxide emissions from burning wood.''

Carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of what is known as the greenhouse effect.

The most accessible renewable source currently seems to be geothermal energy, given the high costs still associated with widespread use of solar, wind or wave power, though biomass (made from biological waste) is also gaining ground, as are small hydroelectric dams, which are also seen as more sustainable.

''Brazil has the most sustainable and cleanest energy matrix in the world,'' with 90 percent of its TPES based on renewable sources, including hydroelectric power, Emilio La Rovere, professor of energy planning at the University of Rio de Janeiro, told Tierramérica.

In the wake of the 1970s energy crisis, Brazil developed sugarcane alcohol as a gasoline substitute.

In recent years, automotive companies have developed engines that use gasoline or alcohol, or the two mixed, and are working on ''trivalent'' models that could also run on natural gas. Today in Brazil there are 700,000 to 800,000 natural gas-run vehicles, a figure that only Argentina surpasses.

One case that environmentalists point to is Cuba. The Caribbean island's energy matrix ''is sustainable because it is changeable and is tending towards achieving sustainable energy development,'' Luis Bérriz, president of the non-governmental group Cubasolar, told Tierramérica.

Cuba relied heavily on Soviet petroleum until the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to an interruption in supplies and pushed Cuba into crisis. Since then, Havana has been developing its own hydrocarbon resources, energy conservation plans, and pursuing research of renewable energy sources.

But the ECLAC report finds that Cuba still depends on petroleum, which represents 56.1 percent of its TPES, while renewable sources comprise 37.9 percent, and are mostly sugarcane byproducts (34.5 percent), which tend to use ''combustion processes that are not very efficient.''

The number and size of protected areas in private hands have grown, but they still lack official recognition and there are no incentives for them, say NGOs. There are more than 375 thousand hectares of privately run reserves in Chile — a tiny area compared to the 14.1 million hectares under public protection. – The organization and activism of individual landowners to protect biodiversity is a relatively new phenomenon in Chile, where 376,552 hectares of nature preserves are in private hands. The public sector, meanwhile, protects 14.1 million hectares.

“Objectively, we are lagging behind,” Cristina Cornejo, an official with the National Environment Commission (CONAMA), told Tierramérica.

However, a process has begun in Chile “that is comforting from the perspective of the work that needs to be done, and the fact that there is a great deal that public agencies have to learn about the issue,” she said.

Cornejo works in Chile's 8th region, 500 km south of Santiago, and is one of the promoters of the Nevado Chillán conservation project, a coming together of public and private efforts.

The National Committee for the Defense of Flora and Fauna, CODEFF, in 1997 founded the Network of Private Protected Areas, which unites 130 organizations and individuals who oversee conservation of biodiversity on their own land, encompassing 133 wildlife areas for a total of 376,522 hectares.

In December 2003, seven years of negotiations between the Chilean government and U.S. millionaire Douglas Tompkins ended successfully with the declaration of a 300,000-hectare nature sanctuary known as Pumalín Park, in the south. That project considerably expanded the amount of land under private protection.

Claudio Donoso is a member of RAPP and of an association of forestry engineers working to protect native flora in the province of Valdivia, 850 km south of Santiago. He heads the “Sendero del Bosque” (Forest Path) project, centered on a 32-hectare area that his family purchased 20 years ago.

“This land was quite degraded, and my father, a forestry engineer, saw it as a sort of experimental area and reconstituted its native vegetation. Now it is a beautiful landscape with a great diversity of trees and animals,” he told Tierramérica.

“Sendero del Bosque” today encompasses its original area plus two neighboring lands, “one of which includes a pristine forest that is 500 years old.” In the middle term, this endeavor will begin to turn a profit, “when we launch an ecotourism program,” said Donoso.

Victoria Maldonado, a CODEFF biodiversity expert, warned that despite this case and others like it, Chile is a long way from ensuring sustainable environmental conservation in the long run, “because the protected areas are concentrated in the south, but in the entire central-south, central and northern regions there are almost no protected areas.”

The properties covered by the RAPP network have not yet been formally recognized by the Chilean government, nor are there incentives or stimuli to encourage more individual landowners to participate in conservation plans, she said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

“We often think that 'private' means a person with a lot of money, but that is not true. Most of the people who are protecting (biodiversity) have smaller areas, less than 1,000 hectares, and they do so with a great deal of effort,” the expert added.

A CODEFF report authored by Maldonado and Alberto Cortés, which did not include the Pumalín Park, states that 38 percent of the privately held protected areas in Chile represent individual lands, formal or informal.

Another seven percent is land donated to the national park system, and 25 percent is land that different communities — mostly indigenous — maintain collectively under conservation systems.

The document also says that 22 percent of the total area is designated for ecotourism or ecological real estate projects, while just seven percent are concession for conserving lands that are government property.

The notion that environmental conservation is not the exclusive domain of governments and requires more active participation by an array of different actors took on new force in the wake of the 6th Inter-American Private Conservation Congress, held in mid-April in Santiago.

The participants in that event said they would arrive at the next Congress, slated for 2006 in Colombia, with substantial progress in strengthening and expanding conservation networks and building new alliances with the public sector, Myriam Pinto, CODEFF communications chief, told Tierramérica.

Faced with cuts in natural gas supplies from Argentina, environmentalists in Chile call for diversification of energy sources, while officials consider moving up the operational start date for a controversial hydroelectric dam on the Bío-bío River. Environmental leaders in Chile are demanding a “dramatic diversification” of energy sources in response to the cut in natural gas supplies from Argentina, which threatens local production of electricity.

“Chile must change its energy matrix immediately,” says a statement signed by environmentalists Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, Alvaro Gómez, coordinator of the National Ecological Action Network, and Sara Larraín, head of the Sustainable Chile Program.

Argentina decided on Apr. 1 to reduce by 14 percent — around 2.3 million cubic meters daily — its deliveries of natural gas to Chile, primarily affecting the arid Antofagasta and Atacama regions in the north, which do not have hydroelectric energy sources.

The suppliers announced that they would use diesel to alleviate the natural gas deficit. The national copper corporation, Codelco, Chile's leading source of revenues, plans to follow suit.

Chile receives 70 percent of Argentina's natural gas exports, which go to electrical plants that can also run on petroleum or coal, and cover 37 percent of the country's electricity demand.

The construction of these fossil-fuel-fired electrical plants complemented the building of hydroelectric dams in the 1990s, when natural gas pipelines were extended across the Andes from Argentina to Chile's central and northern zones.

The lack of investment for new exploitation of natural gas deposits led to the supply shortage in Argentina, which may further reduce its exports in order to cover the increasing domestic demand that has resulted from its economic recovery.

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos insists that the private companies that exploit Argentina's natural gas must comply with their contracts to supply Chile with the fuel, but recognizes that it is probably inevitable that there will be further cuts in the coming months.

In response to the potential energy shortage, the government is considering the possibility of moving up the start date for the Ralco hydroelectric dam this year.

The Pehuenche indigenous communities and environmental groups have fought construction of this mega-project on the upper Bío-bío River, which crosses the central part of Chile.

The Ralco dam would give a nine-percent boost to the current national supply of electricity, and could begin operating in June or July, depending on the river's flow volume.

In addition to staking their bets on increased hydroelectric production, officials are looking at using coal or oil for feeding the electrical plants in northern Chile, although those fuels cost more than natural gas.

The move could result in increased electricity rates for consumers in October, when the pricing system is up for review, announced Andrea Butelmann, head of the Economy Ministry's market development division, in late March.

It will be necessary to reorganize the public works plan for the central energy system, which called for the construction of seven new natural gas-fired electrical plants from now until 2015, she said.

Chile should realize that it will have to produce electricity from more expensive energy sources than natural gas, but if rates go up, it could be more economical to invest in alternative sources like geothermal energy, said the ministry official.

Baquedano, Gómez and Larraín described the energy policy based exclusively on hydroelectric dams and natural gas-fired electrical plants as “conceited and erratic”.

The greatest responsibility for this new threat of an energy crisis falls to the governments for failing to advance in policies for true diversification of energy sources, even if it is private companies that take decisions on investment and propose new infrastructure works, said the environmental leaders.

The focus on natural gas and the government's efforts to secure supplies of this fuel from Argentina “because it is cheaper” show that Chile's energy policy is governed solely by market criteria, they say in their statement.

The three activists propose seven measures, including legislation to promote the use of renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass and ocean waves, as well as small, low-impact hydroelectric plants.

They also call for accelerating plans to put at least three geothermal energy plants into operation, and the construction of three more by 2015.

“The apparently insurmountable (cost) barrier for renewable sources to enter the energy system has been overcome in most countries with the creation of funds for promoting the use of renewable energy,” stressed Baquedano, Gómez and Larraín.

This obstacle has been surmounted in other countries through investment incentives and discounts for clean energy production, they said, and insisted on the need for programs in Chile to promote efficient energy use.

Fernando Mujica, an expert in nuclear engineering and sustainable energy professor at the Universidad Austral de Valdivia, said that “a balanced plan for electrical development should analyze all production possibilities,” including hydroelectric, thermoelectric and nuclear power.

Leaders of environmental NGOs in Chile are calling for reform of the environmental law enacted in March 1994. They are demanding the creation of a truly “green” environment ministry. The environmental law that has been in effect in Chile since Mar. 9, 1994 aged very quickly, say activists, and there is near unanimity that the legislation must be reformed.

The head of the environmental program at the non-governmental Liberty and Development Institute, Ana Luisa Covarrubias, was the only one of six activists consulted by Tierramérica who considered the law sufficient.

In contrast, leaders of other environmental NGOs advocate creating a Ministry of Environmental Affairs or giving ministerial status to the National Environment Commission (CONAMA), also founded a decade ago.

Deputy Alejandro Navarro, of the co-governing Socialist Party and member of the lower house's environment committee, proposed a ministry or superintendent that would have effective regulatory powers.

CONAMA, part of the ministry-ranked Secretariat General of the Presidency, is an agency of “third or fifth category”, subordinate to other ministries and lacking the capacity to develop environmental policy, said the activists interviewed by Tierramérica.

Jenia Jofré, president of the National Committee Pro-Defense of Fauna and Flora, said the biggest flaw in the current law is that it does not allow for effective citizen participation in approving investment projects or in national or local initiatives for sustainable development or resolving environmental problems.

Sara Larraín, coordinator of Chile Sustentable (Sustainable Chile), Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, and Marcel Claude, director of Fundación Oceana, agreed that the 10-year-old law has not proved able to promote sustainable development.

Inspired by the 1992 Earth Summit, but also approved — says Baquedano — under pressure from negotiating trade treaties, the existing law had the merit of bringing together around a thousand environmental statutes that had been dispersed throughout Chilean legislation.

The Patricio Aylwin administration (1990-1994) considered it inappropriate to create an environment ministry, as other Latin American countries were doing. The government's argument was that ecological matters were “transversal”, cutting across the mandates of all ministries.

Larraín and Baquedano explained that this approach is why CONAMA is under the presidential authority that coordinates relations between the executive and legislative branch, which ultimately turns into political negotiations.

This has been reflected in CONAMA operations in Chile's 13 regions, where government appointees and ministerial representatives make decisions on investment projects using political criteria or short-term local objectives, without taking into consideration the broader scope of sustainable development.

The law gave CONAMA the authority to approve environmental impact statements for investment projects, such as hydroelectric dams, and that has turned into its most controversial task, given the conflicts that emerge between for-profit projects and the environment or the rights of communities, such as indigenous groups.

In its 10-year history, CONAMA has had six executive secretaries. The five prior to Paulina Saball, the current head, all left the post during critical situations.

It is up to CONAMA to review projects, establish norms on emissions of contaminants and for environmental quality, but the agency lacks the appropriate tools to carry out that mandate, said Larraín.

Other pending areas are regulation of privately held conservation areas and standardizing environmental policy with sector-specific rules, such as the future Native Forest Law, “a limited instrument that is not able to ensure sustainable development,” she said.

Fundación Oceana leader Claude said there is overexploitation of natural resources in Chile because the existing regulations do not provide necessary protections.

“We need an institutional context that is able to place the environmental question on the public agenda as a priority issue, not a third-rate problem, like it is considered today,” he said.

In Baquedano's opinion, a reform of the law should favor local environmental management and must be effective in investigating and punishing crimes against the environment.

But Covarrubias stressed that the existing law unified and streamlined the procedures for productive investment as well as establishing technical and economic requirements for the private sector and the government.

She condemns the type of participation that has been possible under CONAMA, saying, “Citizens have the right to make their opinion heard, but not to veto a project.”

Often the investing companies have to negotiate with communities to achieve approval of the projects, offering to build schools or other projects in exchange, said Covarrubias.

The law does not need to be modified, she said, except in making the CONAMA ministers' council decisions binding for the other ministries, which “would make it easier to assess and demand results” in environmental policies.

Chilean salmon farmers deny their fish are carcinogenic, contrary to what was reported in Science magazine. Ecologists and consumers are demanding more rigorous standards to certify salmon that is safe to eat. As if it were a matter of war, or a championship soccer game, Chilean salmon farmers believe the best defense is offense, and are on the warpath to disqualify a scientific report that reveals the presence of cancer-causing compounds in the fish they sell.

The study by U.S. and Canadian scientists, coordinated by the universities of Indiana and New York and published in Science magazine, found high levels of toxins in farm-raised salmon, including Chilean salmon, compared to levels in wild fish.

The study is “dangerous, alarmist and a shot in the dark,” says Leonel Sierralta, environmental advisor to SalmonChile, the name used by the Association of Salmon and Trout Producers in this South American country.

“One cannot say that eating 200 grams of salmon is going to cause cancer, because it is a disease that is produced by recurring exposure to a carcinogenic substance,” Sierralta told the Chilean press.

Meanwhile, environmentalists and consumers have issued a call for more rigorous standards in certifying salmon and have demanded that the companies involved comply with their social responsibilities.

“We are demanding the adoption of rigorous standards for (health and environmental) certification of salmon. That is what needs to be done, instead of trying to invalidate a serious report,” commented environmental economist Cristián Gutiérrez, of the international watchdog Oceana.

The study published in Science analyzed and compared more than two metric tons of cuts of salmon that had been raised on farms and that had been caught in the wild.

More than 700 filets tested by experts in toxicology, biology and statistics came from eight of the world's major producers, whether of Atlantic salmon (Scotland, Britain, and the east coast of the United States and Canada) or Pacific salmon (North America and Chile).

The study analyzed the presence of 14 toxins considered carcinogenic by the U.S. health authorities, and concluded that farm-raised Atlantic salmon, particularly from Scotland, contains high levels of 13 toxins, much higher than the levels of Pacific salmon.

But the scientists warn that even the farm-raised salmon from Chile or the northwestern U.S. state of Washington, which are among the least contaminated, contain more PCB, dioxins and dieldrin than wild salmon.

These substances are among the 12 persistent organic pollutants, POPs, also known as the “dirty dozen”. They are pesticides or products or byproducts of industrial activities and are characterized by their long life, the facility of their dispersal, and their accumulation in the food chain.

Exposure to POPs is a risk factor for cancer and genetic mutations, among other health impacts. The Stockholm Convention, adopted in 2001, regulates the control and elimination of these substances.

PCB is a highly carcinogenic compound and is found in farm-raised salmon because they are fed fishmeal and oil, say the experts.

In its conclusions, the study says that eating more than 200 grams of cultivated salmon a month, particularly Atlantic salmon, exposes one to cancer risks. In comparison, one could eat eight times more wild salmon without threatening one's health.

Chilean salmon entrepreneurs say the scientists used environmental criteria in the study, instead of a food-based perspective, which the fish farmers believe more appropriate.

“SalmonChile has dedicated itself to criticizing the report more than taking into consideration its conclusions. The research is very rigorous. Science is a highly respected journal and does not publish just anything,” responded biologist Alejandro Pérez, of Oceana.

“The Science study brings to the forefront the issue of the social responsibility of businesses,” commented Jorge Vargas, director of the Latin American office of Consumers International, based in Santiago.

“A company, in addition to having duties and obligations to its shareholders, is also responsible for the social and environmental impacts of its activities,” the representative of the world's leading consumer watchdog told Tierramérica.

“The fact that Salmon of America, an entity comprising producers from Canada, Chile and the United States, has admitted the existence of contaminants resulting from fish meal should mean the immediate adoption of urgent measures to protect health and the right of consumers to have safe, nontoxic food,” Vargas said.

“The obsession with intensive production and with conquering markets and increasing profits implies hurried processes that complicate or weaken the controls necessary for the entire food chain and which impede adequate evaluation of the products offered the consumer,” he added.

Oceana's Gutiérrez says it is likely that the report's findings will affect salmon exports, as consumers in Europe, Japan and the United States “are relatively responsible. They aren't naive. They inform themselves about the characteristics and origin of the foods they eat.”

Politicians say the declaration of protection for Pumalín Park, in southern Chile, is a violation of national security. The park is the property of a U.S. millionaire.

Pumalín Park, in Chile's Lakes Region. -

The 298,562-hectare park, situated in the southern province of Palena, in Chile's famed Lakes Region, is the result of seven years of negotiations between Tompkins and Chilean authorities.

The process culminated Dec. 9 with the tycoon and President Ricardo Lagos putting their signatures to an agreement.

The 200,000 hectares of native temperate rainforest are safe from exploitation by logging companies. It is a nature preserve that will be managed by a non-profit foundation in which Tompkins and Chilean entities will participate.

But 28 of Chile's 47 senators, including four from the co-governing Christian Democrat Party, believe the new status of these lands would prevent the construction of roads and other projects considered indispensable for the development and integration of the area with the rest of the country.

They asked that the agreement be submitted to COSENA, a body created by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and is headed by the president, with the participation of the commanders of the armed forces and of four civilian officials.

Bringing COSENA into the matter is problematic because it is one of the objectionable legacies of the dictatorship, agree activists Sara Larraín, head of Sustainable Chile, Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, and Gonzalo Villarino, executive director of Greenpeace-Chile.

The three, consulted by Tierramérica, pointed to the inconsistency of the Christian Democrat senators, whose party has long advocated eliminating COSENA, and they applauded the fact that President Lagos, of the Socialist Party, has refused the lawmakers' request.

Hernán Larraín, senator of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union party, told Tierramérica that the 28 legislators represent “a vast majority” that believes COSENA's intervention is necessary “because the park agreement creates many concerns with respect to the limitations of Chilean sovereignty.”

The conflict alludes to equality under the law, given that “special treatment is being given a foreigner.” It is up to the state “to determine the occupation of the territory and the preservation of sectors whose characteristics contribute to improving the environment,” said the senator.

“There are doubts about the effect of the declaration of a nature sanctuary and the restrictions it could mean as far as developing infrastructure for communications, services and roads, and as far as resolutions by national courts on expropriation for the necessities of the common good,” Christian Democrat senator Jorge Pizarro, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

“If national security means protecting our natural resources, there is no contradiction in what Tompkins is doing,” says Jenia Jofré, president of the National Committee Pro Defense of Fauna and Flora.

According to Raúl Sohr, an expert in defense issues, “The idea that sovereignty is lost is absurd. There is no loss of sovereignty in any territory of the country that is acquired by an individual.”

“If there is the desire to build a road, the same expropriation laws will be applied that are applied in the rest of the country,” he said.

Sara Larraín stressed that both the president of the Senate, Christian Democrat Andrés Zaldívar, and commander of the army Luis Emilio Cheyre, say it is not appropriate in this case to convene COSENA, of which they are both members.

It is stipulated in the agreement that land would be set aside for building roads, she said. The foreign investments Tompkins has brought to Chile are the only ones aimed at preserving forests instead of exploiting them, added the activist.

Analyst Sohr and the environmentalists believe the political reaction against Tompkins is due to his ecological stance.

The senators never mentioned national security when foreign investments were made to exploit natural resources, which they instead see as “a factor for national development,” they said.

“In 30 years, the areas that are being preserved will be of incalculable value in terms of ecosystems. The activities to be carried out there are friendly to the environment, such as ecotourism,” said Baquedano.

“The deeper issue is the lack of vision of those (who are opposed to the nature sanctuary), who think of the country in the short term, and not in the long term,” added the head of the Instituto de Ecología Política.

Senator Larraín, meanwhile, denies there is a double standard that favors exploitation of resources while discriminating against Tompkins for his conservationist position, though he does criticize the millionaire for his support of what is known as “deep ecology”.

“We have serious concerns about deep ecology, because it is an extreme position in environmentalist thought, and in the end seeks the depopulation of the territory,” says the senator.

“As someone said as a caricature, deep ecology prefers trees over people. But we believe people are more important than trees. Nature should be at the service of man, not the reverse,” concludes the right-wing lawmaker.

Environmentalists say the payment of more than a million dollars to four indigenous women who had opposed construction of the Ralco hydroelectric dam is a blow to democracy. The energy plant is to begin operations in 2004.

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The agreement between the Pehuenche Indians, the transnational energy company Endesa-España and the Chilean government was announced Sep. 16 by President Ricardo Lagos, and immediately came under fire from former presidential candidate and ecologist Sara Larrain.

“It is a terrible precedent, putting environmental obligations and the protection of indigenous peoples at the mercy of politics and economic power,” Larrain, coordinator of the Sustainable Chile Program, told Tierramérica.

“This compensation constitutes the final step in one more case of violation of the rights of our original peoples, and was certified in his July visit to Chile by the United Nations rapporteur for indigenous peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen,” wrote Marcel Claude, activist with the non-governmental organization Oceana.

In contrast to the ire of the environmentalists, the government considers the arrangement an “investment in social peace”, which was able to defuse the conflict involving indigenous rights and the country's energy sector development.

Ralco, whose troubled history began in late 1992, is to begin operating in 2004, and with its output of 570 megawatts, would provide an 18-percent increase in the central energy network's supply for nine of Chile's 13 regions.

As a result of the agreement made with Berta Quintremán, Rosalía and Mercedes Huenteao and Aurelia Marihuán, the demands for electricity can be met, even after increasing 7.3 percent by the end of this year, says Rodrigo Iglesias, of the governmental National Energy Commission.

Along the upper Bío-Bío, the main river in central Chile, 500 km south of Santiago, the hydroelectric plant will alter a unique watershed with the construction of a dam that will hold a reservoir of 1.22 billion cubic meters of water, flooding an area of 3,400 hectares.

The upper Bío-Bío runs through the ancestral lands of the Pehuenche, a branch of the Mapuche Indians whose name comes from the 'pehuén', the giant pine tree that provides sustenance with its pine nuts.

First the Endesa-Chile subsidiary, and then Endesa-España were able to convince most of the 80 Pehuenche families living near the construction site to exchange their land for plots elsewhere.

But the four women, joint owners of 48.35 hectares, held out until the end, refusing to move.

“The Pehuenche communities were pushed into a corner until they were forced to negotiate,” said Larrain, who noted that in order to legalize the land exchange process in accordance with the 1993 Indigenous Development Act, the previous government of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle forced two directors and several board members of the National Indigenous Development Commission to resign.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in February took up a claim against the Chilean government for “denial of justice” for the Pehuenche women Nicolasa and Berta Quintremán, and in April a Chilean court ordered a halt to the dam construction process.

That ruling apparently sped up government efforts to compensate the Pehuenche women.

Endesa-España will pay each of them 298,000 dollars and will give them 77 hectares of land. The government will have to take care of compensating 10 other families considered “indirectly affected” by the megaproject.

The latter reparations, 1.8 million dollars, will be paid “by all Chileans”, and represents “an unacceptable and unconsulted subsidy to Endesa-España, one of the biggest foreign companies operating in the Latin American energy sector,” said Larrain.

“On my desk are hundreds of signatures from citizens around the world asking the Supreme Court for justice,” says Claudio Escobar, of the group “No Ralco”, which was preparing a campaign in case the conflict reached the highest court.

Escobar recognizes the “sovereign will” of the four families that negotiated the accord, but condemned “the complicity of the government, which was sworn to defend indigenous rights.”

In the end, “the market easily defeated democracy,” he said.

A similar frustration occurred in June 1996, when Chilean activists joined the San Alfonso community, in the Santiago foothills, in a mobilization demanding that the Canadian transnational Nova change the route of a gas pipeline from Argentina that was to pass through the town.

After a year of conflict, and as a result of mediation by then-president of the Chilean lower house, Jaime Estévez, an agreement was reached between the local residents and GasAndes, the Nova subsidiary, so that the pipeline would maintain its course in exchange for economic compensation.

“Eternal ice” no longer exists in Latin America. Peru's glacier on Huascarán Mountain, one of the most famous in the Andes, has shrunk 40 percent in the past 30 years.

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One can no longer speak of “eternal ice” in reference to mountain glaciers. This is proved by the continual reduction of the glacier-covered areas of the Southern Ice Fields in Chile and Argentina, of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl, and of the Callejón de Huaylas, known as “the Peruvian Switzerland”.

Latin America's glaciers are suffering the devastating impacts of global warming and of the meteorological phenomenon of rains and drought known as El Niño and La Niña, and of volcanic eruptions.

Glaciers hold 70 percent of the planet's freshwater, equivalent to a depth of 70 meters across the world's oceans. Antarctica stores 91 percent of this ice, but the importance of the remaining nine percent is not to be underestimated.

As water sources, glaciers are vital for herding communities and for farmers, but environmentalists report that they are also being destroyed by mining companies, which consume large quantities of water in processing ore.

Interest in Mexico's glaciers was spurred by the search for indicators of global warming, says Patricia Julio, researcher at the Geology Institute of the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

Popocatépetl, “mountain that smokes” in the indigenous Náhuatl language, rises 465 meters above sea level and is located where the states of Morelos, Puebla and Mexico meet, some 60 km north of the capital.

The process of glacier extinction there began to pick up speed in 2000, due to volcanic activity, though climate change and the impacts of human activities have long been affecting the ice fields.

“What happens next winter (December through February) could be definitive” for the glaciers' survival, Julio told Tierramérica.

Mexico's glaciers are of particular importance because they are the only ones situated within 19 degrees latitude North. In 1997, scientists began systematic observations of Popocatépetl, whose total glacial area was estimated at 0.53 square km in 2000.

The ice fields lost 1,500 square meters per year from 1982 to 1996, and its current area is just 30 percent of what was measured in the 1950s by archeologist José Luis Lorenzo.

Peru, meanwhile, with 470,000 hectares covered by what “eternal ice”, possesses 70 percent of the mountain glaciers within the Earth's tropics.

In the past 20 years the ice-covered area of the Peruvian Andes has been reduced 20 percent, says activist Jorge Alvarez, with the non-governmental Board for the Defense of Natural and Cultural Heritage.

“And the process is tending to accelerate,” he said in a Tierramérica interview.

“On Mount Huascarán, Peru's most famous mountain, a loss of 12.8 square km of ice has occurred, around 40 percent of what it covered 30 years ago,” noted Alvarez.

“The acceleration of the deglaciation process is a catastrophic danger in the short and medium terms,” says Carmen Felipe, president of the governmental Water Management Institute.

In the short term, the melting could cause overflows of reservoirs and trigger mudslides, and in the medium term, reduction in water supplies, said the Peruvian expert.

In the southern Andes, the most detailed studies are focused on the Southern Ice Fields in the Patagonian region of Chile and Argentina.

It is the largest glacial area in the Southern Hemisphere, after Antarctica, covering an area of 13,000 square km.

A report from the University of Chile's Glaciology Laboratory states that most of the ice field's 48 valleys have seen a sharp reduction in recent years.

The giant glacier lost 50 square km in surface area from 1945 to 1986, while its thickness was reduced by as much as 14 meters between 1991 and 1993.

The same deterioration suffered in western Antarctica “is occurring on a smaller scale throughout the Andean glaciers,” reported award-winning researcher Claudio Teitelboim, of the Glaciology and Climate Change Laboratory at the Center for Scientific Research (CECS) of Valdivia, in southern Chile.

The director of the laboratory, Gino Casassa, warns that the deterioration of the mountain glaciers is a serious problem, as much for the climate and geographic implications as for the fact that “during droughts we rely on the water reserves provided by those glaciers.”

An exclusive ecological community in Chile is protesting the relocation of poor residents to a nearby area. The matter is to be resolved in August. Residents of the exclusive Peñalolén Ecological Community, in the Andean foothills of the outskirts of the Chilean capital, are refusing to accept the relocation of poor families to nearby areas. Their rejection seems to indicate the emergence of a new class — the “eco-elite” — but is that really the case?

The Housing Ministry reached an agreement in early June with the leaders of the squatter settlement known as “Toma de Peñalolén” to relocate more than 1,500 families from the 22-hectare area where they have lived since 1999 to new homes in the foothills.

The plan is to settle the families from the Toma in at least four areas and to tear down their encampment of precariously built shacks of wood, cardboard and metal sheeting.

In the Chilean capital, home to nearly six million people, the municipality of Peñalolén, founded during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), has been constantly expanding towards the Andes Mountains.

In their new settlements, the “pobladores”, as impoverished urban residents are referred to in Chile, will receive government subsidies to help finance the construction of sturdy, permanent homes.

But when it was announced that one of the four relocation sites, to be home to 250 families, is next to the Peñalolén Ecological Community, many of the latter's residents reacted with resentment.

In the mid-1990s, a group of people — including artists and intellectuals — decided to flee the pollution of Santiago and bought land in the Andean foothills with the plan of living in greater harmony with nature.

In an environment of unpaved streets and abundant native vegetation, the community has set up a waste recycling system and produces food in self-sustaining gardens that are irrigated with water from the nearby Macul arroyo.

Living in rather unconventional homes in the eco-community are 25 to 50 people per hectare. Houses range from large constructions using modern applications of traditional adobe (mud and straw) techniques to a converted train car.

The settlement of families from the Toma would mean a density of 300 people per hectare and would violate the 1999 regulation that limits the population to no more than 50 per hectare, says Valericio Contreras, president of the eco-community. He denies that the property owners protesting the resettlement are acting in a discriminatory way.

“On five previous occasions we rejected the construction of luxury condominiums, because just as in this case, they would destroy the environment and a lifestyle that are unique in this country,” he said.

“People have the right to fight for their dignity, and this is a matter of decent housing,” says actor Héctor Noguera, a resident of the community who has not spoken out against the resettlement project.

“I hope they don't give them houses that fall down with the first rains. It would be great if they could live in the same ecological way as the people of this community. If the children could have parks and the families have space to live,” Noguera said in comments to Tierramérica.

Several actors who had taken a negative stance against the relocation of the Toma families have decided against making any further public statements due to the controversy created by their initial rejection of the measure. The matter is to be decided in August.

María Emilia Tijoux, sociologist at the University of Arts and Social Sciences (ARCIS), said the eco-community's opposition “expresses discrimination created around the stigma of delinquency. Poverty is being confused with delinquency, and delinquency with drug addiction, and it is all put in the same package.”

The first choice of the Toma de Peñalolén residents would be to build houses on the same sites where they live now, Alexis Parada, president of the Voice of the Homeless Commission, told Tierramérica.

But what is important is to find a housing solution, she said.

A debate about diversifying Chile’s sources of energy has been ignited by fears that a La Nina-spawned drought could lead to rationing of electricity. The specter of electricity rationing in Chile in 2004 to offset the effects of drought associated with the weather phenomenon “La Nina” has reopened the debate over energy policy and its environmental impact.

Not only is the proliferation of hydropower plants being called into question, but so is their future replacement by natural gas generators and the effectiveness of the government’s conservation campaigns, says Roberto Roman, with the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Chile.

El Mercurio, a Santiago newspaper, reports that the private sector fears a return of the “terrible blackouts” that plagued the central part of Chile in 1998 and 1999 when La Nina forced rationing of the electricity supply.

La Nina is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and generally follows the cyclical, warm weather phenomenon of El Nino.

El Mercurio quotes National Energy Commission (CNE) studies as saying if demand for power grows at an annual rate of eight percent as projected, the country will need 15 new power plants in the next 10 years, compared to the 12 that have been planned.

However, Laura Elgueta, in charge of communications at CNE, scoffs at the idea of rationing in 2004.

“It is impossible as of now to state that there will be a drought in Chile. Besides, there would have to be not one drop of rain for the whole of next year before we would even begin to think of rationing,” she told Tierramerica.

One of the reasons for the concern in the private sector is that only one hydroelectric plant, called Ralco, is under construction. It is being built on the upper Bio-bio River, 500 kms south of Santiago.

Opposition by environmental organizations and the Pehuenche indigenous group whose lands will be flooded by the 35 sq km Ralco Dam has led to judicial action, which delayed the construction of the plant, which was to have begun operating in 2002.

The plant is being built by the Enersis consortium, acquired in 1997 by Endesa- España. It will join the Pangue Dam, which began operating in 1996.

The two dams will sandwich a 70-km stretch of the upper Bio-bio river valley, irreversibly damaging a unique ecosystem, environmentalists say.

The controversial project will be the last hydropower plant built in Chile under the CNE program.

“We have a policy of biodiversification of energy, with the aim of not creating a dependency on only one source,” says Elgueta.

In the 1990s, an agreement was negotiated with Argentina for the permanent supply of natural gas to Chile through three pipelines that cross the Andes mountains, which will encourage the development of thermoelectricity, she says.

But Roman warns that it is unreasonable to base an increase in the country’s electricity capacity solely on natural gas plants, considering that its supply is so small.

“Surely the price of natural gas will feel the impact of the rise in oil prices shortly, in view of the fact that Argentina is coming out of its recession,” he says.

According to Elgueta, CNE favours encouraging renewable sources of energy as long as they contribute to electricity capacity, and are sustainable and competitive in economic terms, which will make them feasible in rural areas where conventional sources of power have not yet arrived.

Roman believes diversification is a good idea, but that priority must be given to renewable resources. He has worked with a group of environmentalists to prepare an alternate energy policy proposal.

The incorporation of small hydraulic plants without dams, the use of geothermal and wind energy, and the rationalization of consumption are some of the environmentalists’ proposals.

Mexico, Costa Rica, El, Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina and, on a smaller scale, Peru, are the major users of geothermic and solar sources of energy, says the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE). In the rest of the region, there is no significant development of renewable resources.

Latin America and the Caribbean produce nine percent of the world’s energy supply and consume 6.7 percent.

Bathers are no longer safe even in the waters of Latin America's most beautiful beaches — the culprit is contamination.

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This is a common phenomenon throughout the region, and often pits health authorities and ecologists against local officials and businesses, the latter seeking to preserve the lucrative tourist economy associated with beaches.

Acapulco, on Mexico's southwestern Pacific coast, Colombia's Cartagena, on the Caribbean, and Viña del Mar, on the Chilean Pacific coast, are feeling the effects of these debates.

So, too, the Brazilian beaches of Rio de Janeiro, on the Atlantic, where authorities decided two years ago to establish a swimming beach on the shores of an artificial lake.

The 'Piscinao (big pool) de Ramos', made famous in Brazil by the popular TV series 'The Clone', was created to give the 130,000 residents of the nearby 'favelas' (slums) an alternative to bathing in the polluted waters of Rio's otherwise beautiful Guanabara Bay.

At Ramos and other beaches along the bay, measurements taken in 1998 to 2000 revealed concentrations of 4,000 fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters of water, when the internationally accepted maximum is 1,000 per 100 ml.

Sewage is the biggest enemy of the beaches, but also taking their toll are oil spills, garbage brought in by tides and even natural accidents, like die-offs of sea birds or fish.

In Viña del Mar, officials assure that the coastline is no longer contaminated, thanks to the construction in the 1990s of a system that carries sewage far out to sea, and to the water treatment plants along the Aconcagua and other nearby rivers that flow into the Atlantic.

Municipal waste is subject to treatment processes in Cartagena, Colombia, and in Mexico's Acapulco, where mayor Alberto López Rosas, of the leftist opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), who countered the health authorities' ban on two beaches, going for a swim at both.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says in a recent study that urban wastewater has been identified as one of the greatest threats to sustainable coastal development worldwide.

According to the UNEP, the economic value of goods and services provided by oceans is 23 trillion dollars a year, while the infectious diseases that the contaminated coastal waters cause among bathers and seafood consumers have an annual economic impact of some 10 billion dollars.

The problem takes on greater dimensions in Latin America and the Caribbean, where 60 percent of the population lives less than 100 km from the sea.

The rehabilitation of beaches thus emerges as a shared responsibility in defense of marine resources and human health, an endeavor that requires extensive investment, monitoring systems, and environmental education campaigns targeting local populations.

Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, chief advisor of the Mexican Environmental Secretariat, said in comments to Tierramérica that the key is to provide systematic information about coastal water quality to alert bathers about health risks.

But when the Secretariat imposed a ban on Tlacopanocha and Caletilla beaches in Acapulco during the recent Holy Week, the mayor actively rejected it, saying the measure was excessive and inappropriate. The mayor was backed by local Roman Catholic archbishop Felipe Aguirre Franco, who proposed pouring holy water into the Acapulco sea.

Acapulco took in 200,000 tourists during Holy Week, 8.6 percent more than in the same period in 2002. Five million people visit the resort city each year, says mayor López Rosas.

The Cartagena Center for Ocean and Hydrology Research states in a report that the water in the city's bay has “high levels of contamination, sedimentation and overall environmental deterioration,” as a result of wastewater discharge with organic compounds and fuel, oil, and fertilizer.

But Cartagena mayor Carlos Díaz said in a conversation with Tierramérica that those problems are past, dating to when the city's sewage system could not keep up with the waste created by newly constructed properties. He said the current state of Cartagena's bay is “excellent”.

In nearly all Latin American countries there are bodies that monitor the coastal environmental conditions, and beaches in particular. In Chile this is the task of the Joint Commission on the Coastal Border, made up of the militarized Carabinero police, the navy and the local municipal authorities.

In November 2002, of the 415 beaches tested along the Chilean coast, eight were closed to bathers because they had higher coliform levels than the permitted 1,000 per 100 ml of water.

But the people who use the beaches say the clean-up efforts are not very rigorous. “Two years ago my right foot was infected with the staphylococcus bacteria in Viña del Mar. I had to take two months of medical leave,” said tourist Renato Moya.

The major beaches of Rio de Janeiro, like Copacabana, Ipanema and Barra de Tijuca, do not suffer high levels of contamination because they face the open sea, unlike those of Guanabara Bay, where mayor Anthony Garotinho inaugurated the 'Piscinao de Ramos' in December 2001.

Environmental activist and Rio resident Maria do Carmo Serra Lopes told Tierramérica that she shed tears of happiness when she saw the beautiful park built around the artificial lake in an area where she had played as a child.

The “big pool” is a public work that not only improved the quality of life of the impoverished local residents, it also has had a positive effect on the bay itself, where fisherfolk have seen the fish population swell as a result of the clean water that flows into the bay from the artificial lake.

“Weed” might relieve pain, control nausea and reduce stress, but in Latin America, only a handful of scientists and politicians advocate legalising marijuana for medical use.

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In Mexico and Brazil, lawmakers are preparing bills to legalise Cannabis sativa (the scientific name for marijuana) for medical treatment, while the Colombian government is planning a referendum to revoke the authorisation for personal consumption that has been in place since the 1970s.

Research conducted largely in Europe and North America shows that marijuana is effective in controlling the nausea and pain that often accompanies treatments for cancer and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

The active chemical agent of the plant is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which can be ingested by smoking marijuana leaves or by taking prepared capsules. It is also used in treating glaucoma and to alleviate the pain associated with arthritis and multiple sclerosis, as well as serving as a tranquilliser and stress reliever.

The capsules are currently manufactured in the United States under the label Marinol.

The supposed merits of marijuana have been known for centuries. In 1545, King Philip II of Spain ordered Cannabis, or 'cáñamo' (hemp), to be planted throughout the empire. He was excited about the plant's medical properties and its uses in the production of paper, rope and crude clothing for the poor, who did not have access to fabrics made of cotton or linen.

In Brazil, legislative deputy Fernando Gabeira, of the ruling Workers Party (PT), plans to present a bill this year that would authorise marijuana for therapeutic ends.

Meanwhile, Mexican lawmaker Elías Moreno, of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), has a similar bill ready. Although he announced the draft of the law last September, it has yet to be tabled.

Furthermore, the new leftist party 'Mexico Posible', which will participate in elections for the first time in the legislative balloting in July, announced that its political platform includes the decriminalisation of the trafficking and consumption of marijuana.

The aim, says the party, is to undercut the powerful drug trafficking rings, which benefit from the ban on the drug because illegality pushes prices up.

Marijuana was utilised in Colombia until the mid-twentieth century by the poorer strata of the population to relieve pain from rheumatism and arthritis. It was common to take a bottle of alcohol to the local police station to add confiscated marijuana and make a medicinal paste.

Following the legalisation of personal use of the drug, the custom of smoking marijuana for analgesic purposes began to spread, but this “alternative medical practice” occurs in Colombia without scientific or institutional controls.

The lack of laws about medical use of marijuana is common in Latin America, while anti-drugs regulations place high priority on fighting trafficking and consumption throughout the region, inspired by the U.S. doctrine of “zero tolerance”, and effectively halting debate on the topic.

Canada is the only country in the Americas where marijuana consumption is legal and is authorised for medical use, as it is in some U.S. states, despite the federal ban upheld by the Supreme Court in that country, psychiatrist Pedro Naveillán, president of the Chilean Institute of Mental Health, told Tierramérica.

Naveillán advocates legalising marijuana, due to its merits as a medication and because it reportedly does not cause addiction, as it has been found that most consumers of the drug quit after three or four years.

The factors leading to drug consumption and to official repression are social and cultural, says Naveillán, and addiction tends only to occur in individuals who are predisposed to substance dependence, he adds.

But an Argentine colleague, Oscar Ramírez, of the Gradiva Foundation, does not agree. He concedes that Cannabis sativa has sedative and calming properties, but says they are weaker than those of other drugs, and warns of “the precursor role that marijuana can play in relation to the use of other drugs.”

He is backed by Miguel Angel Astariz, doctor and director of the Argentine Edusalud Foundation: “Marijuana, in addition to altering behaviour and being harmful to health, is a drug that, like alcohol, serves as a precursor to the consumption of other more dangerous substances.”

In Peru, the ban on marijuana does not distinguish between its “recreational” and medical uses. Peruvian physicians Edmundo Hernández and Carlos San Martín acknowledged in a conversation with Tierramérica that the drug can alleviate the discomfort associated with chemotherapy among cancer patients, but they argue that there are several legal substances that produce similar effects.

Ophthalmologist Moisés Lu, director of the Peruvian Vision Institute, admits that marijuana has been proven effective in treating glaucoma, but stressed that “there are other eye medications on the market that are very effective, safe and easy to use.”

In Venezuela, since the enactment of the 1993 law on narcotics and psychoactive drugs, there have not been any formal requests to use marijuana for medical purposes, reports pharmacist Carmen Zambrano, head of the related department at the Directorate of Drugs and Cosmetics of the Venezuelan Ministry of Health.

Ranging from indifference to demonisation, the debate continues in Latin America about the medical use of marijuana. For now, there is consensus on only one point of the issue: it will be many years before consumption of Cannabis sativa is legalised in the region.

Filmmakers should touch on issues that are transcendant for society, such as environmental problems, suggests Chilean director Orlando Lübbert, whose award-winning film includes a taxi as one of its stars. “All automobiles pollute,” he warns.

Orlando Lubbert -

The creator of the winningest film in Chilean movie history spoke with Tierramérica about his career, power, ecology and — of course — taxis.

Q: Do taxis pollute? A: Of course they pollute. All automobiles pollute. Although in Spain, as I recall, there were natural gas taxis for a time. That was an improvement.

Q: So, natural gas taxis for Chile? A: What there should be are electric taxis. If electrical power plants had not been given away to foreign interests… Electricity in Chile is like a gift from heaven. It comes from the rain and from the rivers of the Andes (hydroelectric power). The logical thing would be to have electric taxis and trolleys.

Q: How could the film industry help to raise awareness about this issue? A: By making it into a central theme. We have to touch on issues and problems that are transcendent in our socieites. Even if we aren't taken seriously and they think we don't pose a threat. We filmmakers have not yet achieved a level of danger that allows us to be taken seriously.

Q: Do governments listen to filmmakers? A: We have been a bit like the cherry on the cake, an element through which governments in general can show off. Now we have a government in Chile that has a sincere interest in developing culture. But we live under a system of film marketing and the people who offer “film as merchandise” obey other interests. It is very difficult to find individuals among them who are interested in issues like cultural identity or the environment.

Q: Your favourite colour? A: Blue.

Q: What about green? A: Green is also a wonderful colour.

Q: You lived in Germany. There the Green Party maintains quite a presence. A: Yes. They started off very small, and maintained a strong development. Now they have been tempted by power and all that it entails.

Q: There are those who say the Greens are leftists who were left behind by history. A: Could be. But it's a good thing, if that's the case. I have met ecologists of different viewpoints, some nearly religious. If we are defending nature we don't need to be wondering if the father of someone was a communist or whatever. We are facing a global problem. There were atrocities committed against nature in the Soviet Union. The communists should be learning by now what it means to defend nature.

Environmentalists warn that nutria, penguins and dolphins, as well as other species populating this natural Chilean paradise, are in danger.

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The island, located 500 km north of Santiago, is part of the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve, a protected area of international importance, as it is home to the species endemic to the Humboldt ocean current.

The National Committee in Defense of Fauna and Flora (CODEFF) organized an expedition in early November for 24 environmentalists who set up camp at the site to demand that the Ricardo Lagos government take action to protect the island.

CODEFF and other environmental organizations warned in letters addressed to Lagos and other officials that if Damas Island were to lose its status as a national reserve, the Chilean government would be violating national law and international commitments.

The alarm spread in September, when rumors circulated that the government was considering withdrawing protection for a portion of the Damas Island territory.

The National Humboldt Penguin Reserve, established in 1990, encompasses the Damas, Choros and Chañaral islands, which are relatively close to the Chilean continent.

The frigid Humboldt oceanic current flows from Antarctica past the northern Chilean coast and turns inward into the Pacific when it runs into the warm El Niño current off the Peruvian coast.

This cold current, which reaches the Galápagos Islands, is a permanent migration route for species from chillier climes, allowing penguins, seals and sea lions to coexist near the Equator with animals of the tropics, like iguanas and giant sea turtles.

The beauty of an uncontaminated marine environment and its varied fauna caught the attention of the tourism industry. The authorities of the Coquimbo region decided to authorize eco-tourism projects on Gaviota Island, next to the Damas-Choros-Chañaral triplet.

Two companies presented their plans. The first, drawn up by local investors, entailed a complex of apartments, campsites, restaurants, swimming pools and a museum, as well as an environmental education component, for a cost of 600,000 dollars.

But it was rejected by the Coquimbo Concessionary Committee, which opted for the proposal of the transnational Genera Investments, with its budget of 80 million dollars to build a 200-room five-star hotel and a marina.

Because of its size, the project would reach Damas Island, and thus endanger its biodiversity, say environmentalists.

The National Penguin Reserve is also home to the yunco (Pelecanoides garnotii), a sea bird whose population in the past numbered in the millions. Today there are only two colonies in northern Chile, one on Damas Island, with just 1,500 reproducing pairs.

The most notable endangered species is the Humboldt penguin itself (Spheniscus humboldti). There are some 300 pairs that regularly next on the islands of Damas and Choros.

Also found there is a colony of 'chungungos', the Chilean name for the sea cat or marine otter (Lontra felina, not to be confused with the sea otter), another vulnerable species that is under a strict protective regime.

The varied fauna of the small archipelago also includes the South American tern (Sterna hirundinacea), 'bandurrias' or black-faced ibis (Theristicus melanopis), and the popular bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), which swims the waters surrounding the three islets.

Tierramérica headed to the sea to visit this endangered species in the waters surrounding Argentina's Peninsula Valdés, where these whales arrive in for the September mating season. They are protected by a hunting ban, but their future is still uncertain. The catamaran cuts through the wind-whipped waters of Nuevo Gulf, carrying an amazed group of 42 Chilean travelers who came to South Atlantic to observe the southern right whale in its habitat.

Several whales swim near the boat, their dark heads and backs with their characteristic callosities — often mistaken for barnacles — rising above the water's surface, breathing through their air-holes and sending shoots of water over the people on board before diving under and showing off their incredible tails.

A young whale periodically leaves its mother's side and swims around the catamaran, doing corkscrew twists in the water.

“This is not a show like the ones performed by captive dolphins at Miami's Sea World. Our aim is to study the animal in its habitat, where the mating, gestation and reproduction of the species occurs,” Diego Taboada, of the Whale Conservation Institute, told Tierramérica.

“A playful interaction takes place in which it is difficult to know who is spying on whom, if the humans are watching the whales, or the whales watching the humans,” adds Taboada, an Argentine entrepreneur who visited Peninsula Valdés for the first time 13 years ago as a tourist, and decided to dedicate himself to protecting these giant sea mammals.

Today, there are no more than 8,000 right whales in the world, 3,000 of which are the southern species (Eubalena australis), which each year make the 3,000 to 5,000 km journey through the South Atlantic between Brazil and Antarctica.

Of the coasts of Peninsula Valdés, in the Argentine province of Chubut, some 1,200 of these marine giants gather each September in Nuevo Gulf, to the south of the peninsula, for mating or to give birth after a 12-month gestation period.

The humans on this whale-watching tour — including Daniela and Gabriel Carvallo, 11 and eight years old, respectively — made the long trip by bus from Santiago to Valdés.

Through the Whale Conservation Institute's sponsorship program, the visitors “adopted” the whales Gabriela (named for Chile's Nobel laureate for literature, Gabriela Mistral), Troff, Antonia, and her baby, Docksider, and will receive periodic reports about these specific animals.

The southern right whale was for two centuries one of the most sought-after by hunters. It is estimated that in that period more than 90,000 whales were slaughtered. In 1935, this species received partial international protection, until in 1986 the International Whaling Commission (IWC), founded in 1949, banned hunting of the southern right whale.

“The were the most hunted because of the quantity of oil they have and because, unlike other species, they float when they die,” explained Taboada, who works at the Institute's research station in San José Gulf, north of the peninsula.

They are also among the largest whales, with some measuring 16 meters. Adult females weigh between 30 and 32 tons, and males between 25 and 30 tons. The southern right whale can live to a ripe old age of 80.

As they belong to the sub-order of the mysticetes, they are baleen whales, with large food filter plates that hang from the roof of the mouth, instead of teeth, and feed on algae and krill, the microscopic crustacean of the Antarctic.

In 1970, U.S. scientist Roger Payne, the founder and director of the Whale Conservation Institute, came to Peninsula Valdés because he was concerned about the virtual extinction of the species. Thanks to his studies, it was proved the next year that the callosities on the head of the whale are unique to each one and can be used in identifying specific whales.

Payne created an identification system using a pattern or diagram of each whale's callosities (outgrowths of tough skin), based on photos taken from above, at 70 meters above the water's surface.

This allows each animal to be named and tracked for study and protection. To date, there are 1,300 whales identified using this method, says Taboada.

In 1975, observation trips began, a form of eco-tourism that grew exponentially and benefits Puerto Pirámides, a village of 300 people on Nuevo Gulf, where six sea excursion companies conduct whale-watching tours.

The observation trip lasts some 90 minutes and the price ranges between 12 and 17 dollars.

“Thanks to eco-tourism, people have learned that the whale is more valuable alive than dead,” said Sofía Benegas, the guide on the catamaran carrying the Chilean visitors.

The boat trip and the journey from Chile have served to increase awareness about the whales.

“Many Chileans have no idea that we are part of a biological corridor for many whales. The fact that Chile does not have a national marine park is an indication that there is little awareness about it,” said one traveler, Rodrigo Mellado, director of the membership division at the National Committee Pro-Defense of Flora and Fauna (CODEFF), one of Chile's oldest environmental organizations.

Mellado commented that Chile and Argentina should create a research and conservation area for whales in the Southern Whale Sanctuary, a circumpolar area covering the seas up to 40 degrees latitude south, established by the IWC in 1994.

In spite of the hunting ban, the southern right whale still has its enemies.

Japan, an international leader in whale hunting, was able to block the creation of whale sanctuaries in the Atlantic and Pacific, says Mellado.

And Japan will continue to fight for lifting the hunting ban at the meeting of the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES), to take place in Chile in November, and at the IWC conference next year in Germany, warns the activist.

The environmental authorities in Chile have launched an offensive to eliminate the use of pesticides containing methyl bromide, a substance that depletes the ozone layer and is harmful to human health. The Chilean government is working to eliminate methyl bromide-based pesticides because they contribute to the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. The use of these agro-chemicals has skyrocketed in the nation's farming communities in the last three years.

Methyl bromide is used in eight of the country's 13 regions to kill the insects and rodents that damage fruit crops. It is extremely toxic for humans and it depletes the layer of ozone that surrounds the planet and protects plant and animal life from harmful solar radiation.

“Imports of methyl bromide shot up from 380 tons a year in the late 1990s to 550 tons in 2001,” Jorge Leiva, coordinator of the Ozone Protection Program at Chile's National Environmental Commission (CONAMA), told Tierramérica.

The plan for eliminating the use of this substance has a price tag of 800,000 dollars, and is being financed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The deterioration of the Earth's ozone layer, first detected by scientists in 1974, is caused by the accumulation of certain gases, such as refrigerants and industrial propellants known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons (used in fire extinguishing equipment) and methyl bromide, among other substances.

The ozone hole — which is really an extreme thinning of the layer of ozone gas — reaches its extreme in September and October, just as the Southern Hemisphere summer gets under way, and it primarily affects Chile and Argentina.

CONAMA has carried out a program over the last nine years to comply with the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances. Chile ratified this international treaty in 1990.

As a developing country, Chile has until 2010 to completely eradicate CFCs and halons, and until 2015 to eliminate methyl bromide.

With the backing of the United Nations, 32 technological reconversion projects were launched to replace CFCs and halons with safer substances. Imports of CFCs have been slashed by 500 tons.

Sustainable development is not viable at the same time as increased militarism, agreed pop star Ricky Martin, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, who joined 30 other panelists in Puerto Rico Aug 12-14. More than 30 artists, experts, lawmakers, activists and Nobel laureates united their voices against war, although from different standpoints on development and environmental policies during the “Peace in Peacetime” conference held last week in the Puerto Rican capital.

The differences reflect the diversity of viewpoints, nationalities, cultures and expertise represented at the meet, which was the intent of the dialogue organized by the Puerto Rican Senate and the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, founded by former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace laureate Oscar Arias.

The Puerto Rico Declaration included a call to resolve the profound economic inequalities of the planet, and will be brought before the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which begins Aug 26 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“We, the so-called creators of illusion, have the primary obligation to carry forth the highest human values and translate them into a message favorable to well being, happiness and peaceful coexistence, and the sustainable development of humanity,” said Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who rose to fame when his extradition request put former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet under house arrest in London for more than 500 days, urged those gathered for the Peace in Peacetime conference to give their full support to the International Criminal Court, which he described as the first major initiative for justice and peace since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Twentieth-century history is based on violence, expressed in wars, guerrilla movements, and by terrorists of all kinds, said Garzón.

The lowest form of violence is terrorism, a widespread phenomenon in the 20th century, though it was born before that, he said. It is more intense in some countries than in others, such as Spain, “where terrorism has been a plague for more than 30 years,” stated the judge, in reference to the actions of the Basque separatist group ETA.

“Terrorism as a defense of political ideas using weapons is a characteristic of all countries, but no one seemed to realize that until September 11,” Garzón said.

The panelists at the conference generally agreed that there is no peace without development, just as international harmonic coexistence is impossible in the context of the exclusive globalization process that deepens the gap between rich and poor.

It is necessary “to create an ethic that is able to harmonize human consumption patterns with the integrity of the environment and the consequences of rampant militarism for world peace and sustainable development,” stressed the president of the Puerto Rican Senate, Antonio Fas Alzamora.

The lawmaker denounced “the ecological destruction and the terminal illnesses caused by military and war practices,” in light of the U.S. navy bombing training on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

Today's world is one of “destruction and unrepentant consumption, in which 12 percent of the known species are in danger of extinction and the world reserves of petroleum and natural gas may be exhausted in the next 50 years,” said Costa Rica's Arias.

The former president lashed out at the industrialized economies that are demanding that the developing world open its doors to free trade while they themselves continue to subsidize production, undercutting the poor nations' ability to compete.

“The problem is not free trade, but that trade is not free. I am convinced that successful sustainable development must be based on the elimination of barriers that protect the markets of the rich countries,” stated Arias.

Meanwhile, for Maneka Gandhi, a lawmaker from India, trade “is an assault on nature”, both for its mechanisms of distribution and for the violence entailed in maintaining “armies of enslaved children” to manufacture trinkets “that we think we need”.

The legislator, daughter-in-law of the assassinated prime minister Indira Gandhi, spoke out against the world's demographic explosion, saying it aggravates poverty. She proposed a moratorium on births for a certain number of years, or incentives to limit the number of children in each family.

The wasteful practices, shortages and pollution affecting water in Latin America are the result of inadequate and often chaotic government regulation of water resources, say experts. Appropriate management requires stability, solid institutions and political will. Latin America needs institutional and social stability, a solid legal framework and a centralized authority — but one that is open to participation by users — if it hopes to overcome the current problems in regulating its water resources and to achieve sustainable management, agree experts.

The management of river basins, watersheds and subterranean reservoirs is plagued with “gray zones” that lead to waste, shortages and contamination of water supplies, Axel Dourojeanni, director of the Natural Resources and Infrastructure Division at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told Tierramérica.

“In the last 10 years, more modifications of water legislation in Latin America and the Caribbean have been proposed than in the entire last century. Goals are constantly being readjusted, the personnel change, or the institutions in charge of water management are restructured. Unfortunately, in spite of all efforts, the deterioration of water resources continues to rise,” says Dourojeanni in a recent study co-authored with Andrei Jouravlev.

Frequently a river route is affected by 50 or more actors, from industries, farmers and ranchers, potable water and sewage companies, to poor populations settled along the riverbanks, says the document.

Nearly all governments in the region have an agency whose mandate is to regulate the distribution of water, but these tend to give priority to designating and monitoring water supplies used in farm irrigation.

It is thus a broad field in which state and private entities intervene — related to mining, electric energy, public works, environment, health, sanitation services — giving way to virtual anarchy in water management.

In this sense, the participation of private entities in water management is neither good nor bad, said another ECLAC specialist, Miguel Solanes, member of the technical advisory team of the Global Water Partnership (GWP), in a conversation with Tierramérica.

The shortage of funds and the perception that the state is by nature inefficient affected the administration of water resources in most Latin American countries, but the deregulation process was itself deficient because it mistakenly assumed there would be competition in a sector that in practice tends towards monopolization, said Solanes.

Latin America, and particularly South America, holds major freshwater resources in its lakes and rivers, which are fed by abundant rainfall, comparable only to those of Asia, according to the GWP.

Nevertheless, 25 percent of South American territory is arid or semi-arid, 20 percent of the continent's residents do not have regular access to potable water, and 30 percent lack adequate sanitation systems, says a GWP report based on figures from 2000.

The experts recommend a centralized authority in which water users can participate, one that distributes the water in a rational way and operates through the management of river basins and watersheds.

That was where Mexico was headed in 1993 when it created the Watershed Councils, whose mission is to improve water administration, develop infrastructure and preserve river basins with input for society.

A watershed encompasses the area in which water from rainfall or snowmelt flows or drains, passing through streams or creeks until it reaches a main river, and later a lake, lagoon or reservoir.

In the 25 Mexican councils participate government delegates and representatives of various sectors of users — farming, industry, distribution firms, urban consumers — with voice and vote, and universities and non-governmental organizations, who may not vote but can provide information.

According to Jean Francois Donzier, director general of the International Office for Water, Mexico is one of the most advanced countries in Latin America and the world when it comes to integral and efficient use of water resources.

However, a similar effort resulted in frustration in Peru, where the Autonomous Watershed Authorities were created, made up of government and user representatives.

To date, only five such entities have been formed and none is truly autonomous. Ten percent of their budgets is to come from irrigation fees, but the failure of users to pay for this service runs at 50 to 80 percent.

“A social crisis arising from poverty could lead to water service shutdowns, but it is not necessarily a crisis in governance. A governance crisis happens when there is no authority in charge of water usage,” pointed out ECLAC's Dourojeanni.

Appropriate administration requires political, economic and social stability. But that is not enough if there is not a solid, permanent and articulated institutional system throughout the country.

Another requirement is political will and knowledge of the sector in governments, parliaments, businesses and the community, say the authors of the ECLAC report.

Mexico and Colombia are, in their opinion, the nations that have made greatest effort to manage their watersheds, while Chile and Brazil stand out for their institutional stability in national water administration.

On the other extreme there are countries like Guatemala, where the government as recently as May presented a legislative bill for the rational exploitation of water resources and to prevent industries and communities from continuing to pollute rivers and watersheds.

Nearly 30 percent of the people in Latin America do not have access to potable water and sanitation, in spite of a wave of reforms and privatizations in that arena.

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In Argentina's population of 37 million people, nine million do not have access to potable water and nearly 23 million lack sewage systems, according to a 2000 report by the World Council on Water.

In Costa Rica, where the service remains entirely in the government's hands, many residents have been without potable water for the last several months.

In 1995, 27 percent of the Latin American and Caribbean population did not have potable water and 31 percent did not have sewage and sanitation services, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Some environmentalists warn that the debate on privatization of public services cannot escape the principles of water's economic value, adopted by the 1992 World Conference on the Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro.

“Water has a huge cost and we must become conscious of the need to care for it,” expert Armando Bertranou told Tierramérica. “To do that, the idea is to adopt economic incentives to promote the more efficient use of water, as there is in many countries where there is a culture of taking care of water sources.”

“The use-value should be taken into account, as well as the cost of preserving water, extracting it and distributing it,” said Seidy Salas, a spokesperson for the Central American division of the international Global Water Partnership (GWP), a network of governmental, private and independent entities engaged in water management.

“Giving water an economic value does not mean turning it into merchandise. That would imply that only those who could pay for it could have access to it. Water is an indispensable good needed for life and so should be managed as a social good,” Salas told Tierramérica.

For Humberto Peña, head of Chile's National Water Directorate, “the privatization process (begun in 1992) is neutral from the perspective of the sustainability of water management.”

The plans of the private enterprises must be approved by a regulatory body, the Sanitation Services Superintendent, according to Peña, chief of GWP in South America.

In December 1999, 58 percent of Chile's urban sanitation systems were run by private companies, 37 percent by government-controlled bodies, 4.5 percent by municipalities and 0.5 percent by other types of entities.

Foreign capital has a major presence in the 20 largest sanitation companies active in Chile. The Britain-based Thames Water, the world's third-largest firm in this industry, controls 20 percent of Chile's potable water market.

The country's urban coverage of potable water services is 99.2 percent and 92.3 percent for sanitation services, according to 1999 figures, Peña told Tierramérica.

The aim of the privatizations was to attract investment for sewage treatment. In 1999, the country processed just 22.6 percent of wastewater but, says Peña, the portion will reach 80 percent in 2006 and 100 percent by 2010.

The community's participation in controlling the services is an issue that is far from resolved. Consumers International, a global federation, underscored this weakness in Chile, where the Consumer Defense Law excludes public services.

Customer protests focus on the price of water services. In April, residents of poor neighborhoods in the Chilean capital demonstrated outside the presidential palace to protest the high rates.

In the city of Rancagua, 90 km south of Santiago, 120 families in the Costa del Sol district were left without water when Libertador Sanitation Services, a Thames Water subsidiary, shut off the service, claiming non-payment.

“Do we have to choose between water and food?” wondered María Díaz, president of the neighborhood council.

The privatization process was not transparent, Alexis Abarca, director of ODECU, a consumer's organization in Chile's Sixth Region, told Tierramérica.

“Officially, it is said that in the last three years the rate hikes were 16 to 24 percent in some cases and 24 to 30 percent in others. ODECU reviewed 15,000 water bills and found that in truth the increases were at least 100 percent and even reached 200 percent,” she said.

In Argentina, the Tripartite Council of Sanitation Works and Services incorporated consumer representatives in 1999, a pioneering effort in Latin America.

The Aguas Argentinas company received a 30-year concession in 1993 for managing potable water and sewage services in Buenos Aires, the capital's outskirts and 17 municipalities in the surrounding areas, serving a total of 10 million residents.

The company seeks 100 percent coverage of both services as part of the contract, as well as providing wastewater treatment, which in 1993 covered just five percent of the area. Aguas Argentinas reports that in the first seven years, it extended services to 2.6 million more people.

In Costa Rica, meanwhile, potable water is of high quality and residents pay “very little” for it — 14 dollars a month –, says consumer Flor María Solano. But in recent months there has been water rationing. “Now we only have water from 3:00 to 9:00 in the morning,” she complained.

Environmental economist Jaime Echaverría told Tierramérica that he supports privatization, in spite of the strong political resistance it can trigger among the public. “With privatization, water is finally going to see its true value. In Costa Rica, this service has been highly subsidized.”

The Costa Rican authorities are engaged in a democratization effort to make potable water and sewage services available to the entire country, but there are two weak points: the rates are not enough to cover operating costs and rigorous controls are not enough to ensure the quality of the aqueducts, said expert Salas.

The Chilean government is attempting to avoid environmental stipulations in its trade accords with the European Union and the United States, saying they are a source of arbitrary interpretation, potential disputes and penalties for non-compliance.

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Included in the central text of a trade agreement, environmental clauses create obligations for the signatories to heed international environmental conventions and slaps trade sanctions on any party that fails to comply with those conventions.

For the Chilean government, the most appropriate solution was the approach it took in the free trade treaty signed with Canada in 1996, which does not contain environmental or labor clauses, matters that were relegated to annex protocols that were signed at that time by the two countries.

The Chilean authorities believe this formula is a model of how negotiations should be conducted by a developing country with an industrialized country, and they are attempting to repeat it in talks with the United States. However, environmental organizations in Chile and the United States are incensed at such maneuvering.

The environmental aspects related to trade are one of the pending issues of the new round of multilateral trade talks begun last November under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but it is a difficult matter that could explode at the body's next ministerial conference, slated for 2003 in Mexico.

In the absence of a global standard, the trade-environmental equation is left open to the lobbying capacity of the parties involved in bilateral or multilateral negotiations.

The conflicts are most evident in asymmetric talks, when powerful countries attempt to subject their potential developing country trade partners to submit to the former's environmental legislation, which tends to be stricter.

Although the final text of the Chile-EU agreement is still being drafted, the preliminary protocol upholds a widespread trend: linking trade to internationally recognized environmental treaties, such as the conventions on climate change, ozone layer protection and biological diversity.

The information released by the Chilean Foreign Ministry, in charge of the talks, does not include mention of environmental clauses, though it underscores the EU's willingness to provide broad cooperation with Chile in this area.

The matter becomes more complicated in the context of the talks with the United States, where there is heavy pressure from ecological organizations, unions and some farmers that are in favor of introducing environmental and labor clauses.

The Chilean Alliance for Fair and Responsible Trade is also inclined towards such clauses, arguing that the transnational corporations keep their eyes on such trade treaties and accords in order to transfer their investments to countries whose fragile legislation allows them to exploit their natural resources.

Rodrigo Pizarro, an economist for the independent Terram Foundation, objects to the Chilean accord with the EU, saying he believes it will only make Chile more dependent on primary commodity exports and open up its fishing wealth to the European bloc.

But the government is of a different opinion. The environmental clauses distort the trade aspects of the treaties and open the door to arbitrary decisions and possible sanctions for non-compliance, said the head of the Trade Policy Department at the Chilean foreign ministry, Ricardo Lagos Weber.

The official admitted that the problem lies in the fact that while the WTO serves as a sort of supra-organization dictating trade norms, there is not an equivalent global authority on the environment for agreements on obligatory procedures for the entire international community.

In this context, environmental organizations in the developing South, like the Third World Network, warn that the inclusion of social and environmental clauses could turn out to be a mechanism that reverses the deregulatory nature of free trade, but also serve as a barrier imposed by the industrialized North for exports coming from developing countries.

Of the 246 garbage dumps operating in Chile, just 11 have environmental impact evaluation systems.

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Of the 246 dumps operating in Chile, 174 are not even legal, and just 11 have environmental impact systems in place. In Santiago alone, there are 101 clandestine waste sites, simple open-air garbage dumps that do not involve any sanitary or environmental controls.

The administrative chief of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Marcelo Trivelli, promised that the closing of Lepanto would be moved up from Apr 30 to Apr 25, after which the 120,000 tons of waste the site received each month would be redirected to sanitary landfills in La Rinconada and Santa Marta, sites set up last year by the Regional Environment Commission, in the southern districts of Maipú and Lonquén.

The residents of Lepanto feel relieved by the decision because the Lepanto dump is on the verge of collapse. The site threatens the health of the 3.5 million people in the southern districts of Santiago and the environmental balance of the agricultural areas in the outskirts.

But the people of Lonquén and Maipú are indignant. “This is pure rubbish,” was the ironic complaint of Raimundo Lara, resident of Maipú, located southwest of Santiago.

Lara's protest is based on the series of petitions to prevent the creation of a landfill there that have been rejected by the courts. Furthermore, the authorities have refused to take into account the risk of the La Rinconada site, which sits on a geological fault, he said.

With nearly six million residents, the Chilean capital produces 210,000 tons of solid waste each month.

The 13 municipalities of the capital's south send their waste to Lepanto, while that of the remaining 20 municipalities is sent to the suburban Til-Til site in the northern part of the Metropolitan Region.

The landfills are always located in outlying areas, but there is no overarching policy to foment control and recycling of domestic waste.

On average, each Santiago resident produces 1.4 kilos of garbage a day, much less than the average in the United States of 2.5 kilos, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The annual output of waste in Chile reaches 3.34 million tons, 47 percent of which is generated in the capital, according to the National Environmental Commission.

Just the five percent of the population of Santiago with highest income produces more than 20 percent of the waste, the upper-middle-class sector 34 percent, and lower-middle-class 33 percent, while 40 percent of the capital's residents, the poor, are responsible for some 13 percent of waste.

The citizens' movement is preparing proposals and demands for the “Rio+10” summit, setting an agenda in which sustainability also encompasses social equality, according to environmental activist Sara Larraín, who spoke with Tierramérica at the second World Social Forum.

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Were there concrete proposals, or was it pure rhetoric? Was progress made toward the Rio+10 Summit, slated for September in South Africa?

Sara Larraín, one of the leading personalities at the WSF, believes so. The meeting, she says in a Tierramérica interview, represented an enormous step forward for the global citizens' movement, which is beginning to structure its own social-environmental agenda, with alternative proposals to the neo-liberal development model that predominates today.

Larraín is a noted Chilean environmental activist, coordinator of the Sustainable Southern Cone Program, which includes local chapters in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, and she is a member of the International Forum on Globalization.

What is your assessment of how environmental issues were handled at the second World Social Forum? There was major progress compared to the first Forum a year ago. The matter of sustainability and environment was the focus of an entire day this year, with workshops and conferences on water, access to land and food sovereignty. The meeting halls with a capacity to hold 2,000 people were not big enough. Activists and experts expressed the urgent need to redefine development, because environment and sustainability include aspects of social equality. This socio-environmental paradigm was a key contribution to the event.

How will this paradigm, or model, be implemented? It is very difficult for the citizens' movement at the global level to move beyond a reactive agenda against neo-liberal globalization. In order to take the political initiative, civil society requires its own project for social development. At this Forum, the first step has been made in that direction. We perhaps will advance even further next year, at the third WSF, to be held here in Porto Alegre again.

What elements arose from the WSF, with regards to Latin America, for the Rio+10 summit? There was a preparatory meeting last October in Brazil involving Latin American civil society. There, we ratified the validity of the Agenda 21 that was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit (in Rio de Janeiro), but highlighted the failure to implement the commitments made in 1992. Then, as well as now in Porto Alegre, we established that Agenda 21 cannot be implemented due to one fundamental obstacle: the new international institutionalism, which is under the command of the World Trade Organization (WTO). One way or another that system has contradicted all the environmental, labor, health, education and food commitments, that were agreed within the United Nations.

What do you propose should be done, given this situation? It is very clear that as long as there is no structural reform of the international financial bodies and of the WTO, it is not going to be possible to continue advancing an international policy agenda. For Latin America, the sustainability agenda is not only environmental. It is an agenda of development, in which environmental sustainability and social equality are combined. If we do not overcome poverty, there is no sustainable development; if there is a no environmental protection, there is no sustainable development.

Did any concrete proposals arise along those lines? Yes, there were many. For example, a treaty was proposed to protect humanity’s common wealth, saying 'no' to patents on living organisms, 'no' to the privatization of water and land. It was suggested that we move towards agreements that establish priority for multilateral environmental treaties over those related to trade, as well as creating a chapter in the International Court of Justice for issues related to the violation of environmental and social rights. Another proposal calls for linking foreign debt with ecological debt, and the need to find instruments for the combined treatment of both. But perhaps the fundamental achievement was the conception that democracy is a prerequisite for sustainability. We cannot advance if there is no possibility of democratic debate with participation by the communities about the direction development should take.

1.6 million automobiles are responsible for 53 percent of the Chilean capital's air pollution.

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The new regulations of the ''Atmospheric Decontamination and Prevention Plan'' call for exclusive lanes on city streets for buses, the incorporation of new technologies and the expansion of restrictions against vehicles that use leaded gas.

Though some sectors consider them to be arbitrary and insufficient, the measures announced in March by the Ricardo Lagos government are proving successful, say the authorities.

Several major roadways have been set aside for public transport vehicles during rush hours, and bus-only lanes were created on Bernardo O'Higgins Boulevard, Santiago's main thoroughfare.

As a result, the average travel time for individual cars has been slashed 20 percent, according to government figures.

Since the 1980s, Santiago has been through various phases in the battle against air pollution – one the population tends to believe has been lost, especially in the winter months when periods of critical pollution mean a rise in respiratory infections and another massive wave of visits to health centers.

In the last decade, restrictions on vehicle circulation have been tightened, outdated buses and cars have been banned from city streets, and use of unleaded gas began.

This has forced a renovation of the car fleet circulating in the city, expanding the use of unleaded gasoline, which pollutes 80 percent less than conventional fuels.

And there has been a lowering of the maximum air pollution levels required for this city – which is surrounded by mountains – to call an alert, a pre-emergency or environmental emergency.

According to a 1992 report by international environmental watchdog Greenpeace, Santiago's atmosphere received 440,661 tons of pollutants each year – the equivalent of each capital resident smoking seven cigarettes a day.

The sources of emissions of other toxic substances have been eliminated or reduced while the number of vehicles circulating has increased, reaching the current balance: experts say that the 1.6 million cars are responsible for 53 percent of Santiago's air pollution.

Based on the results of a public and voluntary consultation conducted in May 2000, and following a long legal battle that has yet to be resolved, the government decided to prolong its restrictions that allow only those cars adapted to consume unleaded gasoline to circulate.

The measure, however, can only be implemented during episodes of pre-emergency or environmental emergency, and not during days of ''alert'' – which are much more frequent, though less critical.

In early May, 19 senators from right-wing parties presented a petition before the Constitutional Court to annul the regulation, saying it is unconstitutional, arbitrary, inefficient and an attack on property rights.

For environmental groups, however, the lack of restrictions for cars running on unleaded gas goes too far because they are the source of pollution just like vehicles using conventional fuels. They are just as responsible for suspended particulate matter in the air – raised from unpaved streets -, and they pollute more as far as ground-level ozone emissions.

The countries with greatest nutritional deficits in Latin America and the Caribbean are Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras and Brazil.

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The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in mid-April that a new political commitment is needed from the global community if nations are to meet the goal of cutting the number of hungry people in half by 2015. In 1996, the total population that did not have enough food was calculated at 800 million.

Progress made in the five years since the World Food Summit has been minimal. In its report on ''The State of Food Insecurity in the World'' for the year 2000, the FAO calculated that developing countries were home to 791 million people with poor nutrition levels in the 1996-1998 period.

According to the UN agency's projections, that total will be reduced to 576 million in 2015 and to 400 million in 2030. For Latin America and the Caribbean, estimates indicated there were 55 million undernourished people during the 1996-1998 period, but that sum should decrease to 45 million in 2015 and 32 million in 2030. These numbers are far from the 50-percent cut the international community established as a goal five years ago.

The FAO report explains that ''the depth of hunger, or food deficit, is measured by comparing the average amount of dietary energy that undernourished people get from the foods they eat with the minimum amount of dietary energy they need to maintain body weight and undertake light activity.''

''Knowing the number of kilocalories (k-cals) missing from the diets of undernourished people helps round out the picture of food deprivation in a country. On average, the 826 million chronically hungry people worldwide lack 100-400 kilocalories per day, '' the FAO study says.

It is with these criteria that FAO experts establish the average caloric deficits for these hungry populations, expressed in k-cals per day. The Rome-based agency cites the case of Pedro Quispe, a peasant farmer from Bolivia's Lake Titicaca region who walks an hour to work and back every day and whose diet normally consists of corn, potatoes, onions, lard, salt, rice, carrot, quinoa (a grain) and fish, though he is only consumes the latter two or three times a week.

Based on the magnitude of his physical efforts, both at work and at home, Quispe would need to eat 2,800 k-cals each day to maintain his body weight and maximize his health, but his normal diet provides him with just 75 percent of that total. In other words, he is enduring a daily deficit of 700 k-cals.

The greatest average caloric deficit in the region is found in Haiti, where the typical undernourished person is 460 k-cals short. Next are Nicaragua (300 k-cals), Honduras (270), and Brazil, Dominican Republic and Guatemala, each with a 250 k-cal deficit per person.

According to the FAO data from the 1996-1998 period, next in line are Peru, (250 k-cal deficit), Bolivia, Guyana, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago (230 k-cals each), and Colombia and Paraguay (220 each).

With a daily average deficit of 210 k-cals among their hungry populations are Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, followed by El Salvador and Jamaica (200) and Suriname (190).

The region's countries with smaller average caloric deficits for the undernourished are Costa Rica and Ecuador (160 k-cals), Chile and Uruguay (150), and Argentina, where the average deficit is estimated at 140 k-cals per day.

There are no Latin American pictures of starvation with crowds of skeleton-thin people, like the ones the international media display from some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but that does not mean the problem here is not serious, stresses the FAO.

Chronic hunger is not always evident because the human body compensates by a slowing the metabolism in adults and stunting growth in children. ''In addition to increasing susceptibility to disease, chronic hunger means that children may be listless and unable to concentrate in school, mothers may give birth to underweight babies and adults may lack the energy to fulfill their potential,'' says the UN agency's report.

The FAO is implementing a series of mixed-strategy food assistance programs in Latin America and the Caribbean intended to boost agricultural production and improve food distribution. The initiatives also seek to support export capacity in order to provide revenue to import foods not produced within the country.

One of the main goals of these programs is to reinforce the contribution made by peasant farmers, who throughout most of the region supply an important portion of the vegetables consumed by the population.

Developing capabilities specific to the situation of these small farmers is essential, says the FAO, which highlights the example of a group of Nicaraguans who combined their resources, with each one investing 40 dollars, to build a series of metal silos so they could protect their harvested corn from humidity and pests.