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Article: The privatization of Patagonia: fences are marching across the Patagonian wilderness, displacing Indigenous peoples and turning pure water into private property. Tomas Bril Mascarenhas reports on another conquest, this time by foreign investors.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- August 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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'If we don't stop this intrusion we will live in exile in our own land,' says Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his struggle to defend human rights in Argentina. He is now worried about the impact on the country's indigenous peoples of massive sales of land in Patagonia.
His fears are well founded. In the 1990s Argentina privatized almost every public asset and became the International Monetary Fund's model student. Now investors have started to diversify, buying thousands of hectares of land that contain not only native peoples' memory and ancient woodlands but also lakes and rivers with some of the purest water on the ...