Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream
Source: The Guardian
The Polluters
Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream
Community tell of devastating environmental impact on land where their animals grazed
Uki Goñi in Neuquén
Mon 14 Oct 2019 07.00 BST
Last modified on Tue 15 Oct 2019 17.16 BST
The roar of the burning gas well could be heard almost a mile and a half away, from atop the high plateau where Albino Campo Maripe stood, looking down at the orange flames lapping the earth in the distance.
When he was a child, the 60-year-old Mapuche chief used to ride there bareback. Those days are gone for ever. The once-pristine landscape is now dotted with fracking wells and the white patches of land cleared for even more.
The panoramic view is nonetheless overpowering. Two crystal-blue lakes, whose far shores blend with the horizon, cling to the edge of an arid and wind-buffeted Martian landscape of red sandstone, rugged promontories and wide beaches.
The ancient and spectacular rock formations of Neuquén province in Argentina’s Patagonia region are a paleontologist’s dream, rich with dinosaur fossils. But the image quickly fades to the sight and sound of the fracking well that exploded on 14 September and burned continuously for 24 days, spewing hot gas and other elements into the air from nearly two miles below ground.
The raging fire was finally put out on Monday by a team of experts who flew from Houston with 56 tons of special equipment. “This shouldn’t be happening,” Campo Maripe said, “but these are the consequences of fracking.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/14/indigenous-mapuche-argentina-fracking-communities
