“Water is worth more than lithium”, “No to reform! », we read, Thursday, July 20, on the signs brandished in the demonstrations bringing together several thousand people in the province of Jujuy, in the Argentinian North-West, and in Buenos Aires. That night, the region commemorated the “night of the apagon”“the night of the blackout”: the power cuts orchestrated in 1976 by the military junta then in power, in order to carry out the kidnapping, detention or assassination of 400 people in the province, 33 of whom are still missing.
This time, with traditional memorial gestures, organized for the 47e anniversary of this night of terror, new demands have been added. The indigenous communities of the province are protesting against a reform of the local Constitution, carried out according to them at the pace, by the governor of the province, Gerardo Morales. The amendments adopted in three weeks, against the three months of debate initially planned, raise fears among indigenous communities of being less well protected against the advance of lithium mining in the region.
In mid-June, hundreds of people descended from the puna Argentina, the Andean highlands, towards San Salvador de Jujuy, the provincial capital, to protest against this reform. The day of its adoption, June 20, the demonstrations organized in front of the Constituent Assembly had been brutally repressed, with a balance sheet of 96 injured according to the local authorities.
“This constitutional process was carried out in an “express” way, with very little consultation of the indigenous communities, explains Pablo Gargiulo, lawyer member of Andhes, an association of lawyers in northern Argentina. This is a sensitive subject because Argentina has subscribed to a series of international treaties and conventions that recognize their right to be informed of measures that may affect their interests. »
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This lack of consultation, which the local government defends, would contradict not only Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, ratified by Argentina, but also with the national Constitution, which prevails over the Constitutions of the provinces.
Particularly decried, the new article 67 enshrines the prohibition to cut “streets and roads as well as any other disturbance of the right to free movement of persons”. Blocking the roads leading to Chile and Bolivia being the most common forms of direct action by indigenous communities, the introduction of this new norm strongly limits their possibilities to demonstrate and make their demands visible.
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