The Water Defenders by Robin Broad & John Cavanagh

Author:Robin Broad & John Cavanagh [Broad, Robin & Cavanagh, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

With a Fat Cat and Sun Tzu, the Resistance Goes Global (2010–2015)

“T here’s a hole in the Fat Cat, and it’s leaking air,” John said, standing in the shade of the eighteen-foot-tall inflatable. The orange feline wore a royal blue business suit and clutched a fat brown cigar in its left paw. It was September 15, 2014, five years after Marcelo’s assassination and after Pac Rim had launched its global lawsuit against the government of El Salvador.

On this day, the action had shifted from countering the “white men in suits” in El Salvador to stabilizing an orange cat in a blue suit in Washington, DC. But John was careful not to worry loud enough to be overheard by those assembled here with us. We were gathered outside the expansive World Bank headquarters in a high-rent, posh area of Washington that locals call the Golden Triangle. The irony was not lost on us, and there was more irony. This day marked the 193rd anniversary of Salvadoran independence from Spain. And today the Fat Cat with its cigar stood in as Pac Rim.

Inside, up on the fourth floor, the legal teams representing Pac Rim and the government of El Salvador and their witnesses convened for a hearing on a new phase in the Pac Rim lawsuit. That is what had brought us here, but the immediate problem for us and the other organizers of this outdoor event was the leaking Fat Cat. John hurried off to find the man from the Teamsters, the large US union that owned the prop. The man had just hooked up the gasoline-powered generator that was pumping air into the giant inflatable. We had been told that this man had driven the Fat Cat to rallies against corporations all across the United States and that he truly knew what made it purr. We wished it were as easy to figure out what made the ICSID tribunal purr.

About ten of us had arrived hours earlier at the World Bank’s massive central building—as we had more than a dozen times during the preceding five years. Our pre-8 a.m. arrival was timed to beat the morning rush hour of the Bank’s staff from all over the world. We positioned ourselves near the four big entrances around the building, which we had come to know well. With courteous smiles, we handed out more than one thousand leaflets to Bank officials and staff alike. Our leaflet alerted people about the unjust water-versus-gold corporate lawsuit against El Salvador and invited them to the demonstration set to start outside at noon: “Join us in telling the World Bank that cyanide poisoning of El Salvador’s drinking water will increase poverty, not eradicate it. Join us in telling the mining company to drop its suit.”

Around 9 a.m., the lawyers of Pac Rim filed past us. Just minutes later, the lawyers of El Salvador followed. The Pac Rim team wheeled in cardboard file boxes of testimony and background documents for the week’s hearing. John politely offered them leaflets.

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