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Final declaration of III the Mesoamericano Forum
Anti Dams 2004


Municipality of Carolina, Department of San Miguel, El Salvador C. A. 536 people of the mesoamericana area, and other international communities, affected and in risk of displacement by the construction of dams and projects of privatization of water down promoted by the transnational governments, companies and financial institutions, we have met in III the Mesoamericano Forum Against Dams to interchange our fights, problems and to construct the strategies to defend our life. During 3 days, women and men of: Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and Mexico we exposed the reasons for which our countries, the indigenous towns, farmers and civilians we are alarmed by the uncontrolled growth of dams that turn to us the victims of the famous neoliberal development.
Considering that:
ô the hydroelectric projects and the privatization of the water, follow in increase, without it is taken into account by the governors of our countries, the shout of aid that the affected towns direct and indirectly have declared in the accomplishment of the previous Mesoamericanos Forums and the innumerable regional actions that show the opposition the neoliberal policies that attempt against the nature, the sovereignty of our towns and the existence of the same life.
ô the methods and miserable strategies used to deceive, to divide and to threaten the towns that resist to die, turn out to be the same ones, which indicates that we have a common enemy that development, false policies of use generation always tries to hide under the dark mantle of the assumption, common well-being and generation of clean energy like alternative to the environmental contamination.
ô the lack of attention to our denunciations, expositions and the titles of ignorantes that attribute us by the single fact of not being in agreement with the criminal ideas of the transnational empire with the help of sells mother countries, are ending the patience of our mesoamericano town, which insists on resisting to leave its sacred earth, their sites, their rivers and the irrational alternation of its system of social life, cultural and natural.
ô Neither the generating companies of hydroelectric energy nor such governments are interested in spreading an educative campaign to diminish the electricity consumption; on the contrary, it is stimulated to the population to the constant and disturbed consumption of the energy, like one more merchandise than it circulates in world-wide the capitalist market.

Therefore:
Having resorted to the legal routes and pacific methods to defend our fundamental rights to the life, without to have obtained positive answers to our requests,

We demanded:
v the total cancellation of all the hydroelectric and privatizadores projects of the water in all mesoamerica, and the reasons exceed, but most important it is to defend our earth, our river and the right of the future generations to have accesses frees to such. The water is a vital necessity and not merchandise.

v Demandamos that the governments develop programs and policies that generate a development more human and real, that corresponds to the necessities of the towns and not to the interests and international policies. The hydroelectric projects cause too many negative impacts that do not justify their creation. The new renewable sources exist, and we demanded their implementation taking into account like priority the opinion of the towns.

v the immediate liberation of the Honduran companions Marcelino Miranda and Leonardo Miranda, both of the Green Mountain community, Department of Graciasque has been condemned unjustly to defend their rights and to demand the respect to its territories situation by which already we lost in the 2003 to ours loved companion Carlos Kings and did not tolerate from the government of Honduras a cruel repression but, thus we condemned it and we made responsible in its totality.

v Also we denounced energetically the aggression that underwent our companion Marcelino Tiul Caal to the being hurt by firearm the 14 of March during the protests made within the framework of celebration of the Day the International Against Represas in the department of the Petén in Guatemala.

We concluded

1. That before the global envestida one that comes to us above with these projects, the answers of the mesoamericanos towns will be of equal or greater magnitude in resistance and fight.
2. We did not fight by money, ideals or fleeting things, but by the life and the love to our rivers. We lived on the water, the Earth, the coexistence of our cultures. Without our natural resources and our earth, we will become history, will be able to us in extinction.
3. We want development but without imposition. A sustainable, constructive human development in where it is respected the life and the care of mesoamerica and the entire world. The development must be of the town for the town and by the town.
4. We make a call to the governors of our countries, to the reflection and the true commitment that they have before its towns, because the deterioration, operation and implementation of these projects attempt against the life of they themselves.
5. A shout of resistance and organization to our indigenous towns, farmers and civilians against all type of dams, privatizations, commercial treaties and what means the kidnapping and evacuation of the only thing that still to us our loved Mesoamerica belongs. They cleared gold to us in the colonization, but they will not clear the water to us, nor nothing else.
6. The town does not have to pay the debts of these project, to pay its own death.
7. The Mesoamericano Movement against Represas, is committed to being a being decisive of fight against all the attempts of robbery of the wealth, natural, cultural and territorial from Mexico to Panama.

Given day 17 of July of 2004, Department of San Miguel, El Salvador.

Rivers for the life, Not more Dams!


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