The San Fransisco river, also known as “the river of national integration” is today the centre of a debate which divides and rallies people. Everything started 3 years ago, the day when the Government announced the start of the herculean task of changing the course of the San Fransisco river. The works stopped after huge public resistance, and the government swore that a national debate would be held with those people who lived on the riverside. A few months later however, the work started again, with the help this time of the army, without the promised debates and without consulting Congress, which is mandatory., The Government claims that the aim of this projects to combat the drought in the Northeast region, a semiarid region located in the north east of the Brazil, by draining water from the San Francisco river. Nevertheless, there is a lot of criticism of the authoritarian way in which work on this project was resumed, of the enormous cost (6.6 millions of reales, which is nearly 2.5 billion of euros) and, more alarming, of the human and environmental consequences for the riverside population. This criticism is reinforced by the fact that the National Agency for Water has already offered alternative solutions. Discontent rose when social organizations noticed that the Government, flouting the ecological and social consequences, favoured the project’s economic and industrial stakes, as the works will irrigate lands belonging to agro-industrial multinational companies.  

	The pursuit of the work. © Frei Gilvander Moreira

A disputed project that has been rejected 

Faced with this evidence, mobilisation was organised. The initiator is a bishop from the state of Bahia, Luis Flavio Cappio. He started a hunger strike at the beginning of the work and encouraged the opposition movement. Acts of solidarity and support have multiplied throughout the country and among every social class: students, peasants, trade unionists… Even the Earth Pastoral Commission (CPT) or the Landless Movement (MST) [1] rose against the project by organizing, at the end of last year, a large demonstration of 5000 people, uniting the Church, Brazilian associations and intellectuals. This mobilisation led to the acceptation by the Regional Federal Court of the Northeast of a request from the regional council for water assistance. On 11th of September last, the court ordered a halt to the works. This was a significant but short victory; in spite of this ruling, the work restarted 10 days later.  

A national mobilisation that will not surrender! 

The mobilisation continues today. Thus, from the 25th to the 27th of February 2008, a conference, reuniting communities living by the river San Francisco and in the semiarid region in Sobradinho, was organised in the state of Bahia. Nearly 100 social and popular movements were represented, including the MST, and 200 people who are aware of the problem. At the end of the conference, militants organised themselves to work on four themes: access to water, revitalization of the river, rejection of the transposition project and the setting up of a sustainable development in the region of the river. The organisations are now focussing on ways to inform people, in order to block the massive misinformation campaign led by the government concerning this project. In addition, a day for the San Francisco river has been set, the 4th of October. If the work does not stop, as these organisations demand, the drought will intensify. The riverside residents are determined to defend this symbolic river, which Brazilians are in daily need of: the San Francisco river!