by With empty bottles and hand-painted signs, hundreds of inhabitants of the Delta islands held this Saturday a cut and a mobilization with boats and launches on the Tigre Riverin demand of the restoration of the electrical supply. “The situation is an emergency,” they claimed in the call, which included a protest on foot at the river station.
The electrical service has been cut off in many homes in the first, second and third sections for 13 days, after the storm on December 17 that caused damage to the AMBA and left a tragic balance in the Bahía Blanca area.
“Necessity and urgency” and “without light there is no work”, read the signs that the islanders held high. Others banged water bottles and blew bugles. There were those who, amidst applause, sang “Let the light return, let the light return”, under the curious gaze of the tourists aboard the inter-island collective boat.
“About 15 thousand people live in the Delta. We do not have the exact data, but Approximately 60% must be affected”, continued to Telam the islander Daniel Bracamonte, who maintained that “the situation worsened because on Friday there was a southeast storm and the power was cut off again in several places.”
Since the last storm on December 17 that affected the entire country, in which 13 people died in the Buenos Aires city of Bahía Blanca, many neighborhoods in different provinces were affected by power outages, as were the Delta islands. . . The difference is that in much of this area the light never returned.
Given the situation of “helplessness”, as they described it, about 200 people mobilized this Saturday at noon to the river station. A centenarian protested in 40 boats and boats that cut off the Tigre River.
“We are electrodependent”: stories from the Delta, complicated by the lack of light
“It affects us in every way. On the island we are electrodependent. The only public service that reaches the delta is electricity. When you don’t have light, you don’t have water. We are really going through a very complicated, emergency situation. There is no access to anything,” explained Verónica Parada, a 45-year-old artisan who has lived for two decades in the first section of the island with her family.
In addition, he described how the lack of supply affects the islander’s work: “We want to work and be able to progress on the island. This way you lose what you have, not only the food, but the people who work, those who make sweets, the artisans. “There are many workshops, lumber mills, small industries in the Delta and this breaks you in the middle.”
One of the most important economic income for this area is tourism with the rental of houses and cabins and after the power outage, the neighbors complained about the cancellation of many of the reservations.
“The problem is also with medications. In my particular case, I am insulin dependent, I depend on an insulin pump. Thanks to the fact that we have a generator set we can support ourselves,” shared, for her part, Liliana Minatta, who has lived in the Delta for 46 years with her husband and her children.
These days without supply, many islanders survive thanks to the solidarity of their neighbors.
“We turn on the generator set three hours in the morning and three hours at night. With that we can help the neighbors to charge their cell phones, to have some cold items,” Liliana said, adding that in the stream where she lives “two trees fell on the house of a family, which was able to be saved by the solidarity of the neighbors”.
“One had a cricket and was able to get the oldest daughter out who was not breathing. The house still has no solution. The neighbors help and one day they sleep in one house, another day in another,” he added.
Last Wednesday a crisis committee in which the technical manager of Edenor, the management of the Municipality of Tigre and residents of the island participate.
“Edenor agreed to hire extra people from the island and the municipality said it would collaborate with the delegation’s island staff to clean the streams,” reported islander Diego Renicoli.
“We agreed with the municipality to have an evacuation center, which is already set up because if this continues like this there are people who will have to be evacuated from the island. We don’t know if the crews are going to work today (this Saturday), we are demanding that go back to work because the water has already gone down,” Bracamonte added.
Although the power outage was caused by the storm on December 17, neighbors say it is “a structural problem.”
“It is due to lack of maintenance. Instead of changing, repair. There cannot be trees on the sides of the cables. There must be free space so that if it falls it is not on the power lines. That is lack of maintenance. 4 or 5 years ago we complained to Edenor and the motto was ‘Neither rain nor wind, lack of maintenance,'” said Parada.
Martín Nunziata, who has lived on the island for 46 years, now on the Carapachay River, added that “this is repeated over and over again” and warned: “We are 30 kilometers from the City of Buenos Aires, from the national government, a little more from the provincial government and nothing from the municipal government and we are absolutely in abandonment of person. What happens to our representatives?”
Several neighbors agreed that “Edenor does not want to invest in the island” and that there is a “plan to depopulate the island and make it only for tourism”; while no one from the company responded to this agency’s queries about the situation.
Christmas in the dark in the Delta, and New Year’s too?
On this occasion, furthermore, the cut coincided with the Christmas holidays, which took place by candlelight, and They don’t know what will happen for the New Year.
“As we all know, these are dates when people buy food, so there were many families who had to throw away the entire refrigerator full of food,” shared “Vicky”, a 37-year-old girl who has lived in Tigre since she was born and has lived in Tigre for six years. island.
The islanders stressed that they are not only “inhabitants of this territory,” but that they are “in defense of this territory.”
In this sense, Nunziata highlighted that they have “many proposals” and have presented “projects to improve the situation in the delta that were not heard.”
“We choose to live in the wetland, because it is a place that is in nature, close to land, it allows us to be in contact with other things, at a different pace. It is a decision to live more in connection with the environment and it is an environment that we take care of and that we want it to remain in good condition,” Victoria stressed.
“The wetland where the island is located is a type of ecosystem that allows us to clean the water that is extremely important for life. Not paying attention to the community that lives and resists in this territory is a mistake,” he concluded.
