WW interviews participant in climate change protests during La Via Campesina caravan to Cancun

Workers World interviewed Che Lopez, organizer with the Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio, Texas, at the Dec. 9-12 Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference in Birmingham, Ala. Lopez had just returned from La Via Campesina caravan and protests at the U.N. Forum on Climate Change (COP 16):

WW: Tell us about the La Via Campesina caravan that protested against the U.N. Forum on Climate Change.

CL: The La Via Campesina caravan started on Nov. 27 from Guadalajara. Six caravans from across Mexico traveled through the country and converged on Cancun on Dec. 3.

At the El Salto de Jalisco forum, farmworkers, youth, working class and Indigenous people testified about big business’ contamination of the Santiago River and connected it to the struggle for food sovereignty. All were members of La Via Campesina as well as the National Assembly of Affected Peoples, the National Liberation Movement and the farmworkers union UNORCA. Members of the Mexican electricians union (SME) testified. But SME was smashed by the government when 44,000 workers were laid off.

On Nov. 28 in Morelia, Michoacán, we met with Siglo XVIII, which is composed of unions of teachers, public and electrical workers. About 4,000 workers marched and rallied at Lázaro Cardenas’ monument, then marched to Morelia’s plaza, demanding environmental justice, the right to unionize, and against liquidation of the electrical workers’ union.

On Nov. 29 we went to Tepuxtepec and rallied with community people. We met with students and organizations at the university in Puebla. That is where Smithfield, the hog industry and other multinational corporations have displaced Indigenous and poor communities, although they have united in protest.

On Dec. 1 we went to Mexico City where caravans from San Luis Potosi and Acapulco joined us. We did an action in a Toluca market.

We met with petrochemical industry workers in Veracruz and with OilWatch and other organizations.

On Dec. 2 we went to Coatzacoalcos. We stopped at a roadblock where pineapple and sugar workers had taken over the road because the government promised to fix the roads for the farmworker communities.

In Merida another caravan from Oaxaca and Chiapas joined us, and we did an action there. We were hosted by UNORCA in Temozon del Norte, where we rallied. We went to Chichen Itza, a Mayan temple, where we joined in a ceremony led by Indigenous people.

In Cancun we went to the Via Campasina Camp, where the six caravans united with nearly 2,000 people. We stayed in a tent city. There were meetings and panels with people from different movements and daily actions, including at the World Bank and at Green Spaces where CEOs and industry bosses were meeting.

WW: Did you have an impact on the meeting?

CL: Yes, we had people inside with credentials as well as outside. We commemorated Lee, the Korean farmworker who committed suicide at World Trade Organization meeting in 2003. There was discussion of the Cochabamba Accords that came out of the Rights of Mother Earth Conference held in April in Bolivia and against carbon trading, carbon sinks, and the U.N.’s REDD plan (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

The REDD plan includes the right to buy clean air. Negotiators go into clean communities and undeveloped places, and they buy communities’ carbon credits. They then force people to move out of their communities. Corporations get the right to pollute more where they already are, surpassing their parts-per-million pollution rate. REDD is promoting dams and flooding and displacing many communities.

WW: Were there people there other than from Mexico and the U.S.?

CL: Yes, there were people resisting with us from Dakar, Copenhagen, China, India, Japan, Korea and from all continents, including Latin America, Africa and Europe, and they represented many struggles. Dec. 7 was the Global Day of Action for the Rights of Mother Earth, Climate Justice and Life in respect for the Cochabamba Accords. We marched for six miles to ground zero where Lee committed suicide.

On Dec. 9 we hosted Evo Morales and other international diplomats at the Via Campesina camp to promote ALBA, the Latin American and Caribbean alternative to free trade.

WW: What was the main message you wanted the COP16 bosses to hear?

CL: That the capitalists, with their neoliberal agenda of globalization and transnational organizations, must stop their ways of making money, polluting and creating global warming. People are rising up and demanding alternative ways of finding energy, food sovereignty, an end to the displacement of Indigenous nations and calling for working class people to unite. So-called “free trade” and borders are creating divisions. There must be connections to the immigrant rights movement and grassroots mobilizing.