This post is a follow-up to a comment made to my 4.12.12 post about Climate Change and Hoover Dam. That comment wondered about the wisdom of human intervention altering the Colorado River and forming Lake Mead in the first place. While I love that the reader asked the question and I might agree, I would answer that I try to focus on the present, with a consciousness of the past. I see part of our task in working with what we inherit.
These images bring home what that means to me explicitly in my work with Guatemala and AFOPADI and Earthways. The photos are from the Mayan Mam mountain village of T'umiche, one of the communities where they work. Shown are a typical village path and also a sign that the community erected which basically translates as "T'umiche sticks to the decision taken in the referendum." In other words, the indigenous communities voted against the intrusion of the nearby Marlin gold mine owned by the Canadian company Gold Corps. Guatemala's equivalent of their Supreme Court even voted in favor of the Indigenous. None of that mattered however. The mine exists and contaminates the environment as you would expect...despite much corporate propaganda to the contrary.
So as much as I wish that mine wasn't there, I see the question in the present as how to deal with that reality in a productive way that promotes social justice and environmental health.
2 comments:
Yes, I agree that we must deal with what we have now, and face the current issues with as much wisdom as we can muster, which at times seems very meager.
You're not kidding about the wisdom sometimes seeing very meager. But there are always amazing people working out there...have hope!
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