The Texas Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe has lived along the Rio Grande Delta in South Texas for centuries. Fossil fuel corporations are making plans for 3 projects that would improve our sacred cemeteries and degrade the environment, but state law causes our tribe to protect the lands that have been inhabited to us since time immemorial. The law on the giant component prevents us from exercising our constitutional right to verify through the application of draconian fines and imprisonment for acts of civil disobedience. We recently held a virtual tribunal to compile a close record of the misdeeds of these projects.
The message from state policymakers is clear: it is generally to damage the law to open a hairdressing pandemic, but if the rights of communities of color are violated, critics deserve to remain in the shadows.
Fossil fuel corporations have long desecrated sacred lands and do not respect the intellectual protections of the environment. The 3 projects: Texas LNG, Rio Grande LNG and Annova LNG, all herbal fuel export terminals to be built in Brownsville, are just escape attacks through fossil fuel corporations in our communities.
One of the terminals, Texas LNG, would cross Garcia’s prairie, a sacred charge for our tribe with burial sites and honest artifacts. The National Park Service noted that the site is “the first prehistoric archaeological sites in Cameron County.” The pasture can also be indexed on the National Register of Historic Places. Our ancestors are buried there.
The 3 tasks would also cause significant environmental damage. They would endanger local wildlife, i.e. degrade air quality during fuel design and design, among other influences. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the federal company guilty of comparing such allocations, approved the plans, one of its members, Richard Glick, criticized the verdict and said the assessment was “not the product of reasoned decision-making.” He regretted that environmental intellectual influence tests did not adequately compare the green-loading fuels to be emitted. Local citizens and the environmental intellectual group station have also demanded the allocations, presenting potential pollutants and a danger to wildlife.
Despite all this, the tasks are progressing. The Texas Commission on Environmental Intellectual Quality issued the assignment of its air permit, meaning state regulators have considered the allocation plan to comply with air quality regulations. This paves the task to move forward.
Our tribe has been denied a voice in this struggle. Although we are actually a local component of Texas, our defense is ignored because we don’t seem to be identified at the federal level. Maintaining the prestige of symptoms on the sidewalk probably wouldn’t save our sacred lands. For our voices to be heard, in order for our constitutional right to freedom of expressly to make sense, our state will have to respect our right to give direct protection to our lands by attracting the public with direct attention to the violations of huguy rights that we face. While all these acts carry risks, the consequences do not make it an essential culture of reget dressed out of reach.
In June 2019, Texas lawmakers passed a bill imposing heavy fines on other Americans that verify and block or disrupt the so-called “critical breach.” People who review and block a pipe design site could be convicted of a crime and thrown at criminals for 2 years and receive a $10,000 fine. Even entering an establishment and ending up to disrupt operations is punishing with up to a year of crime and a $4,000 fine. Unsurprisingly, major fossil fuel corporations spearheaded the implementation of this legislation.
Let’s be clear: these laws are a corporate ploy to oppress and penalize communities whose threats risk being invaded and colonized through harmful projects. Export terminals are simply not a critical infra-transmission; The real essential infrastructure is water, land, fire and any other. And the paintings of our tribe are never very “protest,” “disruption,” “blockage, or “civil disobedience.” It protects the land we have been given by cultivating for centuries.
Across the country, fossil fuel corporations can use their immense influence and currencies to secure the rights of Aboriginal groups. We won’t have to let this go on. We are fighting against the gentrification of the Huguy soul. Like other communities in the United States, tribes deserve the right to self-determination, self-preservation, and conservation in their communities without worrying about land desecration or environmental damage.
Juan Macías is the tribal president of the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe of Texas. Christa Mancias is the tribe’s secretary.
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