August 15, 2024, 11:27 PM
August 15, 2024, 11:27 PM
“Taking advantage of the fact that Bolivians’ attention is focused on the economic crisis, the government of Luis Arce has just enacted Supreme Decree 5202. Basically, it cuts 224 thousand hectares in three areas of El Choré, thus eliminating the protection measures that existed and the prohibitions on settlements and land titling within it,” said Gonzalo Colque, researcher at Fundación Tierra and former national director of the same institution, through social networks.
According to Colque, the government has thus admitted what the Tierra Foundation denounced last year, “and which the INRA has publicly denied: that it has illegally titled lands and is carrying out clearing processes within El Choré, with more than 40,000 hectares having been surveyed and cleared,” he stressed.
Decree 5202, according to Fundación Tierra, is extremely misleading and dishonest, “certainly drafted by underhanded people, without principles or professional ethics,” since with the “excuse” of reinforcing protection measures, it converts El Choré into a Protected Area, declaring a part in the category of National Park, and the 224,000 hectares in question as an Integrated Management Natural Area (ANMI), which “gives free rein to land grabbers and traffickers,” it said.
For Colque, tacitly, without daring to say explicitly whether the decree creating the El Choré Forest Reserve is repealed, “Luis Arce and his ministers have just perpetrated one of the worst acts of ecocide,” he denounced.
He believes that the authors are confident that the economic crisis will prevent people from demanding the repeal of Supreme Decree 5202.
Last year, between October and November, the capital of Santa Cruz recorded the worst air quality in its history, due to the almost 60,000 hectares burned in El Choré, according to ABT reports.
Despite the environmental damage, there were no sanctions for that area. Rather, on February 22, 2024, through his social networks, President Arce Catacora made public a meeting with representatives of El Choré, including the departmental assemblyman of the area, Minister Eduardo Del Castillo, Deputy Deisy Choque, but also the directors of the INRA, Eulogio Núñez, and of the ABT, Luis Flores Orellana.
“We listened to them and decided to form working committees to address their needs,” the president posted.
In June, the ‘settlers’ of the El Choré Federation marched and blocked Km 50 of Yapacaní, threatening to mass protest if they were not approved for a loan to pave the north of that municipality.
Later, both the government and the opposition approved the loan for the project. Today, in August, the decree for the creation of the protected area will be issued, where the Governorate also complained that it could not enter during the fire season.
“More than 50,000 hectares have been burned. This has caused one of the biggest environmental crises, we would say, in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and it also raised alarm about the presence of many people in Choré through illegal settlements and even that the INRA had carried out processes of sanitation and titling in the area. So, unfortunately, despite this precedent, we see now that they have continued to negotiate the reduction of Choré, basically the legalization, in this case, of all the illegal settlements of the land traffickers who were in that area and also of the people who have made clearings and have extracted resources illegally in that area. This precedent from February is also another example that there is a political agreement for what has happened,” said Colque.
Regarding the road, he admitted that in June it was already very suspicious that the Government had agreed with the interculturalists who are illegally settled in El Choré to build a section that borders the entire southern and eastern part.
“And today we are verifying, with this decree, that there was already an agreement in that area for the entire strip to become an integrated management area, which means that settlements, land titles, authorizations or permits for clear-cutting are permitted in those areas, so, basically, all the protection measures that were much more forceful and clear with the decree creating the Reserve are being eliminated,” he said.
For him, the protected area figure was used because it would attract too much attention from people to directly cut back on the Forest Reserve, modify its boundaries, or basically cancel it out.
“They are not talking about cuts, they are not talking about quantifying limits. There is an agreement with the intercultural groups in the area, and this is surely in coordination with the agrarian and peasant centres, not only in the integrated north of Santa Cruz, but also in Chapare in Cochabamba,” he insisted.
In November 2023, MAS deputy Deisy Choque was appointed as secretary of the Planning and Public Investment Committee.
Previously, he supported the Federation in its request to remove part of El Choré from its territory.
