The North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee Blog
See our home page.(Our old blog on tripod.com is still active, but it is now also appended to the archives of this blog.)
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Local article on Colombia and coal
Reply-To: Lynnnadeau@aol.com
Reply-To: Lynnnadeau@aol.com
Date: Oct 20, 2006 4:49 PM
What is more important to get what we want than to have an informed public? In October 20, 2006 Jewish Journal, there appears the following article:
To get Avi's picture with it, go to http://www.jewishjournal.org/
hit the button for 'news'
then scroll to the bottom
There are other articles in the works, if only the Boston papers would take an interest!
A Local Link to a Colombian Coal Mine
Susan Jacobs Jewish Journal Staff
Salem State College history professor Avi Chomsky (above) wants people to become aware of the link between coal burned in the Salem Harbor Power Station, and the plight of indigenous people displaced by the El Cerrejon mine in Colombia.
Standing on the porch of her Salem home, history professor Aviva “Avi” Chomsky can see a large mountain of coal piled up outside the nearby Salem Harbor Power Station. For Chomsky, a social activist committed to improving the lives of indigenous people in Latin America, the coal serves as a daily reminder of work yet to be done.
An undetermined percentage of the coal in the pyramid-shaped pile comes from El Cerrejon, the world’s largest open pit coal mine. Located on Colombia’s Guarjira pennisula, the three-mile wide and 30-mile long mine sends one third of its coal to power plants located in Northeastern United States.
El Cerrejon is operated by Carbones del Cerrejón, a multi-national consortium owned by Anglo American, BHP Billiton, and Glencore (XStrata.) Although the company claims otherwise, environmentalists charge that the mega mine has severely contaminated the air and water — causing harm to local villagers, as well as those who work in the mine. In addition, human rights advocates accuse Carbones del Cerrejón of forcibly displacing the Wayuu, the indigenous people of the region, and confiscating their homes and farms.
In August, Chomsky led a Witness for Peace delegation to El Cerrejon to assess the allegations and report on what was found. The group found the conditions appalling. Despite laws enacted to protect the native people, Carbones del Cerrejón has bulldozed entire villages to expand the mine. Approximately 150 families remain in the region, but they are isolated and have no access to education, supplies or medicine. Many of the residents are sick as a result of dust from the mine.
The delegation met with local villagers, as well as representatives from Sintracarbon, the national coal union in Colombia. They learned that villagers do not want the mine to be shut down, but want to be compensated for their losses and relocated to another area where they can resume their traditional lives, which revolved around hunting, fishing, farming and weaving.
Chomsky plans to return to the region in November with a coalition to distribute much-needed medical supplies, and assess the ongoing health needs of the people. In the States, she and others are rallying to put international pressure on Carbones del Cerrejón to re-evaluate and alter its practices.
Chomsky stresses that she and her cohorts are not calling for action against Dominion Power, which operates the Salem Harbor Power Station, nor are they calling upon the United States government to follow in Denmark’s footsteps and suspend the importation of all coal from Colombia.
“We’re targeting the mine, not Dominion. But Dominion is buying the coal. They have a moral responsibility to take a stand on how it is mined,” she says.
Dan Weekley, Director of Northeast Government Affairs at Dominion, claims the energy supplier purchases very little coal from El Cerrejon. He issued a statement that read, “Dominion is sympathetic to the problems this village faces. We expect all of our suppliers — domestic and foreign — to adhere to all rules and regulations governing their operations. Dominion would like to see a just resolution to these issues.”
Chomsky, who is a member of the North Shore environmental group HealthLink, wants to clarify exactly how much coal Dominion imports from El Cerrejon, and what percentage of that winds up at the Salem Harbor Power Plant.
The conflict has attracted the attention of Salem politicians. Although the elected officials have not taken a public stand in regard to Dominion, Mayor Kim Driscoll has signed an official proclamation recognizing and supporting the efforts of the villagers in the Guarjira region, and the Salem City Council passed a resolution condemning the violation of human and democratic rights in Colombia, and expressing solidarity with Colombians working for nonviolent solutions to the conflict.
Chomsky has long been sympathetic to the plight of impoverished Latin Americans. The 49-year-old attended college at U.C. Berkeley during the era of Cesar Chavez’s grape boycotts. Through her work with the United Farm Workers, Chomsky discovered “how intertwined our lives are with the people who produce our things.”
Her awareness of Latin Ameri-can politics, and American inter-vention in the region grew as she helped resettle refugees from Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s. She also spent two years in Barcelona perfecting her Spanish and working in a bilingual school.
An intellectual with a Ph.D. in Latin American History, the divorced mother of two teens has been a professor at Salem State College since 1997. Prior to that, she taught at Bates College.
When she is not teaching or doing volunteer work on behalf of Latin Americans, Chomsky enjoys writing. She is currently working on two books. The tentatively titled “They Take Our Jobs and 20 Other Major Myths About Immigration” will be published by Beacon in July 2007. The other, still in manuscript form, deals with the linked labor histories of New England and Colombia.
Chomsky, who grew up in Lexington, is the daughter of renowned author/scholar Noam Chomsky. Extremely guarded about her personal life, she is unwilling to share personal details about her father except to say that she “grew up in a very political family where relatives on both sides were involved in Jewish organizing.”
Since religion was not a primary concern in her family, Chomsky recalls having to convince her parents to join a temple so she could attend Hebrew school and become a bat mitzvah. Although her Jewish identity was important to her as a teen, she admits that it has less meaning to her today. Chomsky describes herself as “culturally Jewish, but non-observant.”
www.HealthLink.org
781-598-1115
HealthLink's mission is to protect public health by reducing and eliminating environmental toxins through education, research and community action.
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