PHOTO: PPT panel by Claudia Campero.

Maude Barlow is in Mexico to participate in the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on the impacts of dams, visit Real de Catorce where a Vancouver-based company seeks to mine, and speak at a public forum in Mexico City on the right to water. This is her first blog from this trip.

PHOTO: The next morning (Monday), attending a public gathering for the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in Temacapulin, Mexico. Photo by Claudia Campero.

Travel, travel and more travel. Up at 4 am, flight to Toronto, then Mexico City, then Guadalajara, now in a van with about twelve people - the tribunal judges and organisers, plus our Claudia Campero, on a two-hour drive to Temacapulin, a small town that is at the heart of the resistance to the Zapotillo Dam.

Maude Barlow will be in Temacapulín, Mexico this coming November 5-6 to participate in the Permanent Peoples Tribunal examining the impacts of the construction of dams in Mexico. The Tribunal panel will hear about the El Zapotillo, Cerro de Oro, Paso de la Reina, La Parota and El Naranjal dams. The pre-hearing in Temacapulín on the environment is being coordinated by MAPDER (Movimiento Mexicano de Afectados por las Presas y en Defensa de los Rios/ Mexican Movement of People Affected by Dams and in Defense of Rivers), HIC-AL (Habitat International Coalition-Latin America), and other organizations. The information that the Tribunal panel gathers in early-November will be presented at a final Permanent Peoples Tribunal hearing in Mexico in early-2014.

Struggles to protect water throughout Latin America have been a powerful obstacle to the neoliberal growth model that has sought to dispossess communities of their communal lands and natural resources.
 
In 2001, when I was just beginning to learn about the resistance to neoliberal globalization around the world, I was inspired by the story of Cochabamba Bolivia, where two years prior, the community had taken to the streets to stop their water systems from being privatized by the multinational corporation Bechtel. After a bloody face-off with the Bolivian government, the people prevailed and Bechtel was ousted.