Real World Radio interviewed Maria Godoy, a member of the group. Godoy is in Montevideo, Uruguay, to participate in the regional seminar “Agrotoxics in the Southern Cone – The Human Right to Water and the Right to Health Under Threat”. The event will take place on Wednesday and it was organized by the central workers’ union (PIT-CNT), the union of public servants (COFE), the National Commission in Defense of Water and Life (CDNAV), REDES-Friends of the Earth Uruguay and Programa Uruguay Sustentable.

On August 21, 2012, a Cordoba court sentenced soya producers Francisco Parra and fumigator Edgard Jorge Pancello to three years of community service. Alberto Gabrielli, another soya producer, was acquitted. The two convicted had fumigated soya plantations with glyphosate and endosulfan near the neighbourhood Ituzaingo Anexo. The case is now under consideration by an Appeals Court.

The three indicted, plus the agronomists who acted at the time and continue working for the producers, are facing new lawsuits from the neighbors, who will also go against public servants who have failed to comply with their duties, Godoy told Real World Radio.

Ten years ago, the group Mothers of Barrio Ituzaingo Anexo linked for the first time the many cases of cancer, as well as malformations and miscarriages in the area with the agrotoxic fumigations they would suffer regularly. Godoy now demands, as a first step, an “epidemiologic follow-up, especially of the people affected by the fumigations”.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real