Argentina: The Qom people of El Chaco demand their ancestral right to water and their territory in the face of China's corporate pork industry advance

• While Qom indigenous peoples lack access to water as it is privatised, this article refers to the fact that Feng Tian Food company has been awarded an official contract with El Chaco local authorities for industrial pig production
• They allege that each one of the three industrial facilities would produce 12,000 pigs, contaminating the scarce water sources and requiring soy bean and maize GMOs crops.

"The Qom people in the Chaco, without water to live" -1 October 2021-.

Without water to drink, to fish, to shellfish. Without water to cook, to feed their animals. This is how the native peoples of the north have been living for decades. Stripped of their land and water, they have once again taken to the roads to demand what is ancestrally theirs. First expelled from their place by the green desert campaign. Then cornered by the most ruthless deforestation that has been mercilessly accentuated over the last 25 years. They were deprived not only of land and water as concrete elements for subsistence, but of their very way of living. The forest was taken away from them, their rivers were privatised... There is drinking water in Pampa del Indio," say the Qom leaders from the deep Chaco. "But we don't have access to it in the community. They prohibit it. We know that there is drinking water in Campo Medina, in Pampa Chica, but when we complain they tell us that it is private. And we know very well that it is a public work carried out seven or eight years ago". It is what is there. Within reach but forbidden by the imposition of the laws of those who hold the strings of power... "We don't have a water network. Before, they used to bring it to us in cistern tanks, but not anymore. They don't even give us water from the National Park. Last July, the province of Chaco announced the signing of an agreement with the company Feng Tian Food to set up three pig production complexes for export. Each complex would produce 12,000 pigs, which would require thousands of hectares of soya and maize...