Susana Marquez couldn't stop crying when she heard the sentence in
the courtroom in Cordoba. She was hoping that the men accused of
spraying the town of Ituzaingo with agrochemicals would serve a prison
sentence. But that did not happen.
Two of them were found guilty of environmental contamination and
sentenced to three years probation… The third one was acquitted of all
charges.
"Nobody went to jail. This trial shows that in this country there is
only justice for the rich, for farmers. Nobody cares for the poor", said
Maria Godoy who lives in Ituzaingo, not far away from the provincial
capital.
'They are murderers'
Susana Marquez has had 15 miscarriages and of the two children she
was able to deliver both were born with heart defects. Only one of them
is still alive. Lourdes is seven years old and blood tests show high
levels of agrochemicals in her system. Susana blames two ranch owners
and a pilot who are currently on trial for spraying her town with
pesticides and herbicides.
"They are murderers how they sprayed the area indiscriminately. This
is no coincidence. I lost 16 babies because [of] those beasts. And I
live in fear because my daughter is sick, we have no money to pay for
the surgery she needs", she told me.
It all started when the newborn baby of Sofia Gatica, one of the
mothers, died of kidney failure in the same town in 1999. That's when
women in this poor town started to gather information about what was
going on. They realised that cancer rates in their town where at 40 per
cent higher than in other parts of the country. A study carried out in
2010 showed that 80 per cent of the tested children here had
agrochemicals in their blood.
The ranch that was fumigated by land and air is one street away from many of the houses where people later on got sick.
Argentina is the world's third-largest soybean exporter and its
economy has become highly dependent on it... Much of that soybean is
grown in Cordoba where farmers use large quantities of agrochemicals
like the glyphosate.
Those behind the lawsuits hoped the trial would put industry
standards on the stand as well. But Government officials say there is no
need for any major policy changes. "I don't think that Argentina's
productive system has to be transformed. What they have to do is respect
the thousand or fifteen hundred meters imposed when there are people
living in the area," said Argentina's Human Rights Secretary, Andres
Fresneda.
In spite of the anger and disappointment in the courtroom, lawyers
insist that the trial was a milestone. "This is important because it has
proved that some types of fumigation are a crime. This means that from
now it won't be a mistake if somebody sprays a town and people will know
that they can go to jail," said one of the victim's lawyers. He says
that the trial will set a precedent as it's the first time that somebody
is sentenced to prison for spraying in a banned area.
Scientists had hoped the sentence will set an example in Latin
America. "Multinational companies have the complicity of the state but
there is no doubt about the damages involved for human health of some
types of pesticides. We hope that the sentence of the trial will set a
precedent about the consequences of large scale farming", said Andres
Carrasco from the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of
Buenos Aires School of Medicine. His studies published in the magazine
"Chemical Research in Toxicology" have shown the damage caused by
glyphosate in amphibian embryos even in smaller amounts than those used
in agriculture.
But the lawyers of those accused insist the illnesses of Ituzaingo
are not only related to agrochemicals. They also claimed they could also
be the consequence of arsenic found in the water and electrical
transformers that used to be placed in the town.
"This trial has been filled with ideologies between those who are
against large scale farming and those who are not. The mistake is to put
on the trial of three people what should be a national debate about
agrochemicals and then reconsider Argentina's economic model. Those
accused where using approved agrochemicals", said Sebastian Becerra, one
of the defence lawyers.
SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/24-5
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