Different sectors of the popular field highlighted the 7th. National March for Sovereignty that took place in Lago Escondido, in the province of Río Negro, between the end of January and the beginning of February, warning that it served for the “case display” of magnate Joe Lewis, owner of those lands, seeking to expose the “media siege that it has”while maintaining that “The people must defend the country’s natural resources and we must be strong to say ‘enough'”.
At that point, the MST leader in the Left Front and Workers-Unit (FIT-U) agreed. Celeste Fierro and the head of the block of deputies of Parlasur and general secretary of the Octubres Movement, Gaston Harispewho highlighted during interviews with Télam the importance of “Politics Take the Sovereignty Discussion”.
“In an election year, we know that most of the political forces are going to try to hide the issue. Because here it is not just Lago Escondido, Río Negro and Lewis, it is the Chubut River with the Emir of Qatar; it is the opening of the Canal de Magdalena, the transit through the Paraná River, Benetton in Santa Cruz and hundreds of other cases of what decades ago was known as the foreignization of land in Argentina,” said Fierro.
For the leader, the march “It had a very important value because it promoted the visibility of the Lewis case and took steps to break the media siege that it has. But this is a first advance, because the fight for the foreignization of the land has more opponents”said.
And he explained: “It is Benetton also in the south, or the Emir of Qatar that closes the sources of the Chubut River and attacks the Mapuche communities of Lof Cayunao, who seek to confront this advance, for example. We managed to install it and now we have to strengthen the fight, because it is clear that all the governments and state institutions continue to take care of the interests of these magnates who keep our territory and the water bodies.”
“That is why it is very important to nationalize the struggle, to get the communities in the area that are not in it to join, unifying with the rest of the struggles, against foreignization and against the negotiation of our common goods,” he emphasized.
For Fierro, “the indignation generated in broad sectors of society by the images of the repression by a vigilante mob of the pirate Joe Lewis It made many more organizations want to join and it is being analyzed that the next march has delegations from all parts of the country and is much more massive”.
The leader also added that “political sovereignty is consistently defended” and that “it is hypocritical to make a tasting of sovereign causes to defend. Because the pirates are not only in Lago Escondido, they are all over our territory and it is also the IMF,” he added.
Fierro considered that the lands of Lago Escondido “they should be nationalized” to “respect the rights of the original communities in which it corresponds, protect our common goods against the destructive advance of multinationals and guarantee access to lakes and rivers for the entire population as established by law.”
“But it is necessary to know that all the governments, Peronists, radicals or the PRO, with different variants endorse and endorse that this be perpetuated. For this reason, one cannot trust one bit in those speeches of sovereignty that some give and in the face of a case like the one in Lago Escondido act in favor of the usurpers,” he denounced.
For his part, Harispe, who was brutally attacked along with seven other militants by Lewis’ rural security workers, stated that “The Argentine people must take care of Patagonia because there are foreign interests that intend to continue appropriating what does not belong to them.”
“In Argentina there are many Lewis and more will come if we do not mobilize the national awareness that Argentina is one of the great countries in the world, we are a power and if we do not prepare ourselves they will come for us, for our natural wealth,” he added.
Harispe agreed that the national State “must occupy the territory and displace Lewis with legal aid” and bet that “there will be a growth in mobilizations in defense of national sovereignty on different fronts”.
The leader stressed that “politics has taken up the issue of national sovereignty: there are issues such as the Malvinas, the Paraná River, the Magdalena Canal, Lake Escondido, energy, lithium, gas and oil, which will be the axes of the next electoral campaign. Sovereignty and nationalism are mass spaces. The national question is above the crack“.
“The national cause unites Argentine men and women and isolates the interest groups allied to the powers that geopolitically harm us and generate dependency. The same with the allies of financial capital. I am convinced that the light blue and white flag kills a sellout“, he stressed.
On Lago Escondido, Harispe stressed the need to “limit the alienation of the land, of the occupied territories, remove them from the border areas, which is explicitly indicated in the National Constitution; The paths that are taken must be openedcolonize, exploit tourism and restore land to Creoles or native communities to increase production and economic activity, increasing population”.
Along these lines, he denounced that “foreign capital is parasitic, unproductive and expensive. It costs Argentina a lot of money to maintain these rich people. Here, in addition, a strategic vision is required. Argentina projects itself to the South Atlantic and Antarctica, from Patagonia This region is the future of the Homeland. Patagonia must be nationalized with the support of the people.”
The manager warned that “there are a lot of Lewis in the country and more will come if we don’t mobilize national consciousness that Argentina is one of the great countries of the world. We have almost seven million square kilometers, a bicontinental country, the fourth maritime coastline in the world, the main Spanish-speaking territory.”
