Thirty Years of Government Irresponsibility Brought this Crisis

Gustavo Esteva:

Thirty years of irresponsibility by the Mexican government has provoked the crisis and made it even worse, and because of this an immediate solution from the society itself is required, assured Gustavo Esteva, director of the University of the Earth (Unitierra).

After learning about the activities during the “Gathering for an Autonomous Life”, he indicated that the crisis has a clear origin and corresponds to a series of political choices by the government itself, where decisions were left in the hands of private corporations.

He says it is obvious that this strategy, in which the government renounced its responsibility, hasn’t worked and now we are living the consequences of the State’s abandonment.

The investigator said that people have tried reacting “but are confronted with a combination of State and commerce that has not only caused the economic disaster, but also environmental degradation, contamination and lack of human development.”

He commented that this isn’t just a Mexican problem; it is a global problem, but in Mexico, there are exact dates: “for 30 years the government has not assumed its responsibilities, and instead, has sunk us.” 

Because of this, the crisis must be faced head on before it gets worse, before we face further problems. Now, people are fighting to survive. They can begin acting and using practices to resolve this critical situation.

Along these lines, this Thursday at 4:30 in the afternoon the “Gathering for an Autonomous Life” will begin. It will end the 11th of April in the Juarez El Llano park and will have demonstrated that families to individuals can begin to act with a goal of achieving a satisfactory and autonomous life, meaning not being dependent on commerce or State politics.

“The concrete experience of those who have decided to change their lives or view them in another way drives these activities because we want to recuperate what we have lost.”

He reported that this isn’t something complicated. It doesn’t require a large investment, only an effort and decision.

He added that implementing these actions, in the case of water, has become a grave problem. “We should establish new relations because climate change should also be analyzed from this point of view.”

“We need to begin using concrete practices ourselves, like cultivating food on our patios in order to become less dependent on others,” he said. He commented that the tradition was to do things ourselves “and they  [the government] took us down an inappropriate road.” Because of this, it is necessary to recuperate this tradition. “We can’t keep waiting… change is today. The solution comes from below, what we have to do is at the core. We have to be reasonable, no one ‘over there’ can fix this problem,” the investigator emphasized.

He reaffirmed that it is the people who must assume responsibility for the changes and not wait for the government or functionaries. “We are the base.”