1. The capitalist model that prioritizes benefits for transnational corporations over
those of the people and respect for nature is driving us towards the destruction of our
planet. Transnational corporations are our common enemies, they are enemies of
humanity.
The future of humanity is under threat. Industrial agriculture and livestock and the
commercialized food system, along with the atmospheric contamination casued by
these large industries, are what is provoking the climate crisis. The life, knowledge and
culture of peasant and indigenous communities are at risk, and with them sufficient
and healthy food production are at risk as well.
2. La Vía Campesina’s struggle is a different approach, which values and protects the
knowledge, culture and role of peasant and indigenous small producers and family
farms in food production. We are the solution to hunger in the world and our agriculture cools the planet.
Food sovereignty is the global alternative confronting the capitalist system and the
multidimensional crisis it has generated (food crisis, biodiversity crisis, financial crisis,
energy crisis), it is an alternative for society as a whole.
3. After the failure of the United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change
in Copenhagen (COP 15), the COP 16 will be held in Cancun, Mexico from November 29th to December 10th, 2010. We do not doubt that the governments of the
dominant countries, and their loyal allies in the South, are planning to meet again to
continue profiting on the basis of false solutions – such as agrofuels and the carbon
credits market – rather than addressing the real structural causes of the climate crisis,
which is part of the current multifaceted crisis of capitalism.
4. We are in high spirits following the World People’s Conference on Climate Change
and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia this past
April. The agreements affirm the rights of peasant and indigenous peoples, as well as
the rights of Mother Earth herself, and demand that industrialized countries assume
their historical responsibility for the climate crisis with real and drastic emissions cuts
and the payment of their climate debt, among other things.
Cancun, Mexico will be a distinct field of battle from the one in which we derailed the
WTO in 2003. So, we have made a call to create “Thousands of Cancuns” throughout
the world and throughout Mexico, during the dates when the COP 16 will take place, in
which we, the people, will show our complete disagreement with the false solutions of
big capital and bad governments and our firm determination to struggle for the real
solutions. We are calling for a process of struggle in which the basis will be the political
positioning regarding the subject and the real alternatives.
In Cancun, La Vía Campesina and allies will construct an Alternative Forum and we will mobilize to create a “sounding board” that will be heard and repeated in the many other “Cancuns” that will take place. The task is to create many Cancuns so that the real reason and the real promise of the struggle will spread throughout the entire world.
We propose starting now to impulse a process of constructing spaces and real
articulations from organizations and social movements, and that we meet again
leading up to August with constructed processes, from local and regional levels, to evaluate and consolidate the thousands of Cancuns. Today there are a number of initiatives proposed leading up to the COP 16, but none of them represent us. In particular, La Vía Campesina distances itself from certain “selfconvened” groups, and those who say they speak on behalf of social movements but who in reality are protagonists for their NGO. We want to construct processes and spaces so that more noncomformist voices can express their struggles. It is necessary to articulate, inform, organize and in this way from our struggles, from our bases, build a large world movement for Mother Earth.
We are for a real process of constructing spaces from the movements from below, along with goodhearted allies throughout the world and Mexico.
Peasants cool down the planet.
Globalize the struggle. Globalize hope!!!
Fraternally,
Henry Saragih Alberto Gómez Flores
CONTACTOS:
La Vía Campesina Internacional
Phone: +62217991890, Fax: +62217993426
EMail: viacampesina@viacampesina.org
La Vía Campesina Región Norteamérica
EMail: alberto.gomez@viacampesinanorteamerica.org
Phone Mobile: +52 55 41777846
EMail: enlace@viacampesinanorteamerica.org
Phone. +52 55 55843471 (México)
EMail: jroe@nffc.net
2 comments
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May 23, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Keith Lampe
La Via Campesina is one of my favorite activist organizations–and this is an excellent statement from them. They are indeed “in high spirits” following the Cochabamba gathering.
Yes, let 10,000 Cancuns bloom all around the planet!
In terms of their planned Alternate Forum I sure hope they provide folks with an opportunity to learn about the BEST replacements for King Cong (coal/oil/nuclear/gas) rather than just ones like solar and wind which are fashionable now with fake-green corporations.
I’m thinking especially of zero point and cold fusion energies.
The best places to become acquainted with them (and with other new energy modes) are “Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World” by Joel Garbon and Jeane Manning and “The Energy Solution Revolution” by Brian O’Leary. I’d be happy to cover the costs of these books for La Via Campesina’s library.
Meanwhile, I totally applaud their suspicions about NGO propaganda. We must find a way to reduce greatly the influence of mercenary climate activists and increase greatly that of volunteer ones.
Right on!
Yours for all our relations,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo and Ro-Non-So-Te
Co-founder, US environmental movement in
1969, Living Creatures Associates in 1972,
All-Species Projects in 1978 and founder, US
Pro-Democracy Movement in 1991
Vilcabamba, Ecuador
May 29, 2010 at 11:16 am
Keith Lampe
I’m writing to you again because recent assessments of the cataclysmic Gulf of Mexico oil volcano are tremendously important for the ongoing decision-making of La Via Campesina.
Earlier today I received an email which said: “Jay Weidner on Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster: This is the END..they have caused a hole into the core of the earth… This can never be stopped.. It will kill us all..”
This may not be accurate–but at very least the situation seems so serious that evidently within a year or two most people now inhabiting islands will have to move onto landmasses–mainly because of their loss of fisheries.
So we need an honest (that is, not just another CFR/IMF front group) assessment of carrying capacity for each of the bioregions on our various home-planet landmasses. Let’s base it on current lifestyles and energy sources while emphasizing incessantly that carrying capacity anywhere can soon be increased significantly with “crash” applications of the most appropriate devices from the broad fields of zero point and cold fusion energies. And increased even more with a “transfer of prime human attention from objects to states of mind” [Gary Snyder].
It seems to me it’s not “the end” if we humans can pull off a swift switch from competitive to cooperative values. But this will be quite tough given all the layers of conditioning for centuries to pitilessly competitive ones–e.g., the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex suppresses Kropotkin’s biology in university curricula because he saw relationships within nature as primarily cooperative, secondarily competitive: Survival Of The Most rather than Survival Of The Fittest.
Yes, let’s accommodate each other.
Yours for all our relations,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo and Ro-Non-So-Te
Co-founder, US environmental movement in
1969, Living Creatures Associates in 1972,
All-Species Projects in 1978 and founder, US
Pro-Democracy Movement in 1991
Vilcabamba, Ecuador