After an assembly in the access to Pedro Luro and a honk through the streets of the town, Farmers from the south of Buenos Aires once again cut off National Route 3, at the height of the Colorado River. Its productive activity depends on the contribution of that watercourse that faces a severe water crisis to which is added the institutional conflict around the entity that manages the resource, suspected of irregularities in the administration of their funds.
Resignation ofhe current administrator of the Colorado River Valley Development Corporation (CORFO) It is the main demand of the protest, promoted by the irrigators themselves. Ramiro Vergara was appointed last October, by the Buenos Aires Ministry of Agrarian Development, after he beheaded the leadership of the entity, denounced in court for alleged mismanagement of the budget, to which the province and the producers contribute.
As soon as he took office, Vergara, a technician who was already part of the CORFO staff, received the irrigators who raised a list of pointed questions. to be transparent the management of the entity and take actions to face the second worst downspout of the river in its history. However, according to the producers, the administrator did not respond to the claims and he himself ended up being denounced in May in court, allegedly a cover-up.
Although Vergara, linked to La Cámpora, did not participate in the last meetings organized by the ministry to reopen the dialogue, He continued to make decisions at the head of the agency. On Thursday, he led a press conference in which he accused the irrigators of creating “a permanent claim situation.” A few days earlier, he had announced that the delivery of water, initially scheduled for August, was delayed until September.
The response of the farmers did not wait. The group of autoconvocados cited a concentration on access to Pedro Luro, in which the Hydraulic Consortium, which brings together irrigators and the Villarino Sur Producers Association (APROVIS), also participated. Then, in a caravan that extended for more than 10 blocks, he toured the town, where CORFO has its headquarters.
At the demonstration there were merchants from Villarino and Patagones, the two districts between which there is ones 1,400 beneficiaries of Colorado River water. For the first time since the conflict began, representatives of the Bolivian community attended, with a strong presence in agricultural activity in the area, where onion production stands out.
“The problem it is also from the merchants because everyone lives from the countryside ”explained Gabriela Ciccone, president of the Consortium, who highlighted the massive presence of protesters. “It is not easy to leave the field and come here because it takes a lot of time and it is difficult to delegate tasks,” said the leader, on the side of Route 3.
“The Exodus it will be terrible if the situation is not adjusted ”, Ciccone warned, regarding a phenomenon that has already begun. Given the lack of water, aggravated by twelve years of drought in the river basin, many producers have migrated to the south or other regions, hitting the economy of the two southernmost districts of the province of Buenos Aires.
“This is a problem for the entire community,” remarked Gabriel Cardonato, president of APROVIS. “We always turned our backs on the river, which is the one that gives life to our valley and that makes our productions comparable to the best in the country,” said the producer who is also irrigated by Colorado.
“Sometimes, as it happens right now, nature hits us. But the ineffectiveness, the laziness, the inability of the officials who passed through CORFO do more, ”Cardonato said in a message sent to the community to join the claim. “The moment is very critical and we have to be together in the defense of our resource,” he added.
“We are all very concerned and it is not an activity we are looking for. But they close all the doors and we don’t haveanother alternative ”stated Luciano Príncipe, former member of the CH, on the roadblock. In the early afternoon, they had crossed a truck a few meters from the river, on the Villarino side, and traffic was beginning to stop.
With a mobile stationed on the Patagones side, the Buenos Aires police collaborated in ordering the slowed traffic, which generated the accumulation of trucks and cars on the road and the bridge. The protest allowed, in periods of 30 to 40 minutes, the passage of some vehicles to decongest the route.
In the same way, the producers had manifested themselves two weeks ago. There the main slogan to lift the cut was the presence of the provincial minister of Agrarian Development. Javier Rodríguez, first He led a virtual meeting and last Saturday he went to the area to meet with the producers.
When the dialogue seemed on track, the irrigators maintained the first point of the roadmap with the government, the departure of Vergara. “The current administration is functional to the previous one that is denounced for theft and they have covered it up,” said Príncipe, regarding the CORFO leadership, which he accused of hiding information from the irrigators.
“We are delivering what they ask for,” retructed Vergara, who defended his management and the actions taken to manage the lower flow of water that arrives due to the lack of snow at the headwaters of the river. He also denied the incorporation of more personnel than necessary and said that CORFO’s budget “is public” and can be consulted on the web.
“It makes no sense that CORFO is being accused of a lack of transparency and corruption because what we have come to do is accommodate that and start walking,” Vergara said at a press conference.
“They are only delaying the situation and not addressing any of our claims,” Príncipe told Clarion on the attitude of the entity and the official designated by the ministry as interlocutor in Bahía Blanca. The last meeting lasted barely ten minutes and triggered the new protest.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/producers-of-the-colorado-river-again-cut-route-3-in-demand-of-the-resignation-of-an-official-k/
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