THEY ARE NOT THE SAME; WHILE THE GRAPES GROW YOUR SON DRIES

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME;WHILE THE GRAPES GROW YOUR SON DRIES
DENOUNCE

El Mar, 21/10/08 America Communicational wrote.
From Subject: Elqui pesticide Chile – Date: Tuesday, 2, December 2008 12:49

We have put together the following message taken from newspaper articles and web blogs. We hope for your understanding and approval.
This message will be sent to existing social webs sites such as Orkut, Twitter, Face book, Massive Mail, Chilean Congress, Chamber of Representatives and other Search Engines.

Contamination due to Agrochemical in the Elqui Valley.

Children are born with malformations in this region such as blindness, congenital malformation, stomach problems learning difficulties and without anus.

The authorities turn a blind eye to this problem, as once again the interest of the companies are taken care of in spite of the people. As the rural properties El Cerrito, El Poso, El Ajial, which belong to Mr. Zepeda and Mr Errazuriz that do not comply with the regulations impose by the SAG which determine that it cannot either fumigate nor pour liquids when the temperatures of the environment exceed 20 degrees Celsius which happens early in the day in the valley. Red flags should be raise over the sprayed area and nobody should enter the vineyards during the following 48 hours.

On Tuesday of this week it could be seen from the terrace of one of the cabanas ( holiday cottages) of Pisco Elqui, tractors fumigating at midday. Two hours later a group of workers were working among the rows of vineyards that had just been sprayed and some of them were wearing just shorts and without shirts.
A tourism manager said: “ even the own Mayor drives to Paihuano passing by the school 4 times at day and it is inadmissible that he can not see that they are fumigating and having no respect for the law or the people”.

The students have had years of living with the vineyards just 2 metres way from the school and the contamination. The valley of Elqui offers 3 idyllic months to those 300,000 tourists that visit it during summer and small doses of hell to those 4,000 inhabitants that live here the rest of the year.
The child care unit is located less than 3 metres away from the plants of the vineyard and the school itself is surrounded by plantations, i.e. on one side the land exploited by Mr Francisco Zepeda and his family and the lateral sides by the rural property Bella Vista that belongs to Mr. Jorge Errazuriz.

In spring the grapes grow and the insects that have been in larvae during the winter attack the plants that had been receiving hormones to grow.

The last few weeks have been hard for the Child Care facility in the valley. In Pisco Elqui the nursery run by the National Center Of Child Care, a nun of the order of Missioners Carmelites, Maxima, suffers from an allergy to her legs with red spots
“ my whole body was burning and couldn’t sleep at night” she says, showing a rash on both her legs.

In the nursery there are 17 children and according to the carer, who says: “it is noticeable when they have fumigated the vineyards all the children arrive with the same type of diarrhoea, bronchial problems or conjunctivitis”.

Although the owners, Mr. Zepeda and Mr. Errazuriz denied using banned pesticides, they assure that they respect the regulations. However, it is evident that something is failing in the system to enforce the compliance of the regulations and the memory of Wilson Rojas, the worker who died in January 2005 after a long illness that it is still fresh in the minds of the people of Elqui.

In the district of Paihuano, locality of Pisco Elqui, at least 3 agricultural rural properties do not have a Certificate of environmental impact. They are the rural properties El Cerrito, El Poso and El Ajial which still continue to spray these dangerous agrochemicals in an indiscriminate way which affects the health of people who maintain this beautiful valley and have to live with the unbearable smell of insecticide every morning and night.

We denounce and we call on all the ecological and social organizations to condemn these indiscriminate practices and we urge all those who wish to protest with us to so urgently.