‘Water is worth more than gold’: eco-activist Esteban Polanco on why violence won’t stop him
While making his way from his home in Loma de Blanco, a mountain in the middle of the Dominican Republic, to the nearby town of Bonao, Esteban Polanco was attacked by a group of about 10 men. They threw a molotov cocktail at the car in which he was travelling with two of his children, before running off. The family survived, but Polanco suffered terrible burns.
“I was close to death, and it took a year to recover,” he says of the 2007 attack. Some, but not all, of the perpetrators were later imprisoned.
Polanco believes IT was brutal retaliation for his work as one of the country’s most prominent land and water defenders. The collective of farmers he leads, the Federation of Farmers Towards Progress (La Federación de Campesinos hacia el Progreso), has, for decades, challenged successive governments and powerful business interests and famously stopped an international mining company from destroying and exploiting Loma de Blanco.
Polanco, 62, grew up in a remote community in Loma de Blanco. He remembers having to wade across the river 21 times to get to the nearest town. As a child, he helped his father, a farmer, before studying education and working as a teacher for 12 years. He is jovial and friendly, but his voice rises and he becomes animated when the conversation turns to defending the environment and the injustices his community has faced.
Today, his organisation continues to defend the land, rivers and rights of local people. It also trains environmental defenders from surrounding areas and around the world.
Latin America is consistently found to be the world’s most dangerous region for activists. In 2022 88% of the global total of 177 murders of land and environmental defenders occurred here.
We, the people, were the barrier that would prevent the mining company from accessing the land
“The situation for defenders is more dangerous than ever,” says Polanco. “[Mining companies and ranchers] exhaust more resources every day, and they are more aggressive. We have to keep fighting harder because they are going into areas much more vulnerable than those they have already damaged.”
The federation’s story dates back to the summer of 1992, when the government granted an exploration permit to Hispaniola Gold Mine, a subsidiary of a Canadian company no longer in existence, in the middle of a region called Madre de las Aguas (mother of the waters). The area includes Loma de Blanco and is home to the River Yuna, the second-longest river in the Dominican Republic.
It was a David and Goliath fight. Members of the federation travelled on foot or by mule from village to village alerting residents to the dangers presented by potential mining and conducting assemblies and workshops. “We, the people, were the barrier that would prevent the mining company from accessing the land,” says Polanco.
They studied the law and how it related to mining and the environment. They collaborated with geologists to learn about rock. “We fed ourselves with knowledge, and we created a newsletter with 10 reasons explaining why it was impossible to allow a mine to enter,” he adds.
Polanco also asked well-known activists and environmentalists, such as Aniana Vargas, considered a national heroine, to help in their fight.
In 1997, after years of relentless campaigning and protests involving thousands of people from across the country, government ministers notified the federation that the mining company had abandoned its plans.
The campaigners’ triumph “opened the possibility of us having an environmental law” and “changed the nature of the environmental movement in Dominican society”, Luis Carvajal, coordinator of the environmental commission at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, later commented.
Fernando Peña, of the National Space for Extractive Industry Transparency, a coalition of more than 100 organisations monitoring the impacts of mining in the Dominican Republic, says: “The federation’s conquest was huge. [Their struggle] inspired others.”
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Today, the federation’s headquarters lie in Loma de Blanco, overlooking mountains covered in lush, verdant greenery. The area is home to seven hydroelectric dams providing more than half of the country’s renewable energy. The federation has been there for 28 years since it was granted a resolution by the government to protect the area.
Its members have been involved in new environmental battles in the country, such as gaining national park status for nearby Lomo Miranda, which has vast reserves of ferronickel.
They have also built an eco lodge to generate tourism and show people some of what the natural surroundings can offer. They make their own coffee, teach farmers how to get the most out of the land and train people to make bamboo furniture.
In February, Polanco was one of those invited by the ministry of the environment and natural resources to organise local communities to help forest firefighters prevent devastation and deal with fires, which, according to the authorities, are caused by humans in 68% of cases.
The federation educates young people from surrounding communities about the importance of natural resources, such as water. It runs workshops and camps, invite environmental experts and academics to give talks, and is in the process of starting an agroecology school to teach people about food sovereignty and how to defend water, mountains, nature and biodiversity.
Land and water defenders from across the country and Latin America have come to learn about the methods the federation used to protect themselves and the environment. Esther Giron, 28, co-founder of Aquelarre RD, a grassroots feminist collective in Bonao, is one land and water defender inspired by their work.
“When I found out about the federation, I understood that their struggle was ancestral and anticolonial and was in the defence of water, land and life,” she says. “I realised that our political actions have to start from the community, and above all, they have to be done alongside women on a lesser privilege scale.”
Although the threat of environmental destruction is ever present, Polanco is reassured that there is increased public awareness of the need to protect the environment. He looks to the next generations to continue the fight.
“Today, we have young people from our community and surrounding towns who are determined that nothing is going to happen that threatens Loma de Blanco,” he says. “We cannot allow any vulnerable mountain in this country that produces water to be exploited for mining because, for us, a drop of water is worth more than an ounce of gold.”
