Just 70 years ago, Puerto Rico produced 70% of all the food consumed here.  Today, we produce less than 10%.  Modernization strategies based on foreign investment and our colonial relationship with the U.S. created a national economy of extreme dependence.  Agricultural dependence is always dangerous.  But Puerto Rico is particularly vulnerable.  A chain of islands in the Caribbean, our storehouses are designed to hold just three days worth of food.  If war, natural disaster or any other emergency interferes with the arrival of the ships that supply us, four million Puerto Rican people would face an unimaginably devastating crisis of starvation and violence.

 

Cayey is a town with a long agricultural history.  We have produced rice, corn, varied root vegetables, fruit, wood-bearing trees, sugar cane, barnyard and grazing animals, and more.  Little by little, Cayey was impacted by the new economy of consumption and by unsustainable urban development.  Shopping malls occupied mostly by multinational companies have left local businesses empty.  With 24 shops closed and our first shopping center almost empty, our local economy struggles to survive. 

 

Cayey still has a beautiful cattle farm of hundreds of acres with precisely the biodiversity and agricultural potential needed for sustaining our people.  Río la Plata, our longest river, fed by multiple springs on this farm, is one of our most important sources of fresh water.  And this is precisely where a group of developers plan to build another “outlet”-type shopping mall with 4,370 parking spaces and a big, luxury hotel with a casino.

 

More than 100 neighbors (CAYEY para el MUNDO) have united to protest this development because (among 16 principal reasons) it kills the possibility of sustainably developing the last flat, agricultural lands left in Cayey.  CAYEY para el MUNDO proposes alternatives of diversified agriculture and ecotourism based on our natural and cultural resources.  These alternatives, based in our communities, could serve as examples of appropriate, sustainable economic development.

 

Recently, the process of getting development permits in Puerto Rico has been “fast tracked” in order to eliminate community participation and neutralize other sources of resistance to inappropriate development projects.  The economic crisis seems to be a good excuse for ignoring our civil rights.  Agriculture apparently does not represent the economic growth that moves international credit.  But does it make economic sense in the long run to pave over the resources that would allow us to develop sustainable economies and ecosystems?

 

Around the world, agricultural economies confront the imposition of projects characterized by ecological and cultural destruction in order to stimulate the short-term economy.  In their name, and in the name of the ecological and economic health of our Puerto Rican archipelago, we ask that you sign this petition which will be sent to our governor Alejandro García Padilla.  We want sustainable development.  We resist the destruction of our agricultural lands.  Support us.

 

Visit us on FACEBOOK: Cayey para el Mundo.  To receive our proposal and analysis in Spanish, simply write to cayeyparaelmudno@gmail.com.

 

PETITION to our GOVERNOR:

Thousands of Puerto Ricans and our supporters ask that you revoke the permits for Ciudadela de Cayey.

For our food security, CONSERVE our agricultural lands.  NO MORE CEMENT over farm land.  SAVE Las Vegas de Cayey from the Ciudadela de Cayey project (yet another mall with 4,370 parking spaces, luxury hotel and casino).  We want development that conserves our natural resources and our local economy.

 

 

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