Peasant leader. Augusto Obregon of Esteli, Nicaragua will be speaking on Friday, November 5th from 12:30 to 2:00 P.M. in Lecture Hall 1. He is part of the Fall Speakers tour, Migrating Towards Justice: Stories to Transform People and Policy, being organized by Witness for Peace Join us for a unique investigation into the root causes of migration and the impacts of free trade on Nicaragua.
Augusto Cesar Castillo Obregon is a campesino farmer from El Regadio, Esteli, Nicaragua. He has been a community leader in El Regadio for over thirty years and coordinator of the water committee, a community run organization which distributes potable water to the entire community. Three years ago, a tobacco factory designated as a free trade zone, was constructed in his community. While the factory has provided jobs to help mitigate the issue of migration, the increased cultivation of tobacco has threatened food security, the environment and the health of the community. Augusto works with the water committee to bring conservation projects to help protect El Regadio’s forests and water sources. Augusto is also the vice-president of the Federation for the Integral Development between Farmers or Federacion Para Desarrollo Integral entre Campesinos y Campesinas (FEDICAMP), a non-profit organization which works with small-scale farmers on sustainability.
“For me, free trade agreements, neoliberal policies and the conditions on the aid from the international financial institutions has brought our country to extreme poverty. And the people, the rural farmers, are desperate and don’t have any another alternative than to migrate to countries such as Costa Rica, Spain and the United States, with the only objective to work for their families. In my community, El Regadio, they installed a tobacco factory that is under the free trade zone, which generates employment, but the salaries are miserable and it is provoking a great contamination of our environment, principally to our water supply. It is also causing many diseases, of the skin and the organs of mainly women and children. The worst is that some farmers are selling their land to cultivate tobacco. This is causing less production of food, because the producers have dedicated their land to cultivating tobacco and this only serves to harm our health not to feed us.”- Augusto Obregon
Together with other outstanding speakers, Augusto Cesar Castilo Obregon, will also be speaking on a panel Friday night, November 5th at 6:30 P.M. at the Fair Trade Sweat-Free conference at Traditions Cafe on the “Free Trade, Forced Migration and Sweatshops Panel”
my web-page: http://blogs.evergreen.edu/bohmerp