Ahead of the November Presidential Elections in Chile, Presidential candidate Michele Bachelet met with artisanal fishing leaders from the National Council for Fisheries Defence (Consejo Nacional de Defensa de la Pesca (Condepp)) an organization that purports to represent around 50,000 artisanal fishworkers nationwide.
According to Condepp President, Jorge Bustos, the former President and candidate in the forthcoming elections has committed to fishery reforms to benefit artisanal fisheries, including extending the 5 mile artisanal zone along Chile’s entire coast, and providing funding to enable artisanal fish catches to be sold on line. She is also reported to agree that natural resources are public assets and should not be privatized, as has been done through the 2012 reform of Chile’s Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture, the so called Longueira Law, named after the former Economy Minister its chief architect and promoter.
In a speech presented in the southern commune of Aysen, Bachelet stated that: We wish to extend the 5 mile artisanal protection zone from Chiloe as far as the extreme South, so that the exclusive zone for artisanal fishing covers the entire country. It is not possible that there should be a difference between fishermen in the North and those in the South. She also announced an artisanal fisheries fund, which with technical support would allow fishermen to put on line their daily catches and in this way negotiate better prices for their products with different buyers. This is something that is done in many countries with good results and we want to take advantage of the technology to benefit our fishermen, said the presidential hopeful.
According to Jorge Bustos the price currently paid by the industry for fish catches is determined by 7 families who control the sector. This means that there is no opportunity to negotiate, and fishermen are effectively held to ransom. For artisanal fishermen the fund promised by Bachelet would be a huge step forward, because the monopoly cartel of 7 families has prevented us from getting a better price for our fish. Through this measure the Government will be helping us to develop programmes to commercialize our catches on the beach, in a transparent and competitive way, similar to what is done in other countries. In this way we can put an end to this market monopoly of 7 families, we can develop ourselves and our negotiating capacity.
According to Juan Carlos Cardenas, Director of Ecoceanos, the concentration of wealth in the fisheries sector is a major obstacle to social development and in moving ahead with democratic reform in the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship. Cardenas points out that despite being the seventh most important fishing nation in the world and the second largest aquaculture producer of salmonids, Chile has a remarkably low annual per capita consumption of fish; only 6.9 kgs compared to 40 kgs in Spain, and 80 kgs in Japan. This is a serious contradiction he says, given that the Chilean population suffers from appalling problems of overweight and morbid obesity. This is especially a problem amongst children, storing up problems for the future of metabolic and cardiac diseases. What is required is a healthy eating policy based on fishery and marine resources, of high biological quality, low in price and rich in vitamins, micronutrients and antioxidants. It is paradoxical that in such a resource rich country as Chile that the consumption of fish is well below the global average annual per capita consumption of 17 kgs, and very similar to that of low- income food deficit countries. It is doubly paradoxical that Chile imports tilapia and pangasius for the domestic consumption market, imports that compete with local artisanal fish catches.
Currently a large proportion of Chile’s fish catch is destined for export, or in the case of small pelagic fish, converted in fishmeal and fish oil for the export oriented salmon aquaculture industry. The small pelagic fish – mackerels, sardines, anchovies, and horse mackerel – in particular could form a central plank of such a healthy eating policy by providing an important low cost high value food for low income groups with poor nutrition. However, many of these resources are in a state of collapse due to decades of mismanagement and industrial overfishing.
Ecoceanos and Condepp form part of a wider social movement demanding constitutional reform in Chile, which is still ruled by laws established under the military dictatorship. The wider movement includes student unions campaigning for educational reforms, trade union groups campaigning for reform of labour laws, and indigenous people campaigning for recognition of their civil, political, cultural and social rights, including recognition and protection of their traditional territories. The movement advocates that fisheries reform should be part of a wider package of constitutional reforms in a country that has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in Latin America, and where the rich-poor divide could become an important electoral issue.
One of their key demands is that the Longueira Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture be repealed, and that fisheries resources and coastal marine areas be established as public assets not private property, as is currently the case. Ensuring that small scale fisheries, coastal communities and indigenous people are given priority to these public assets will be a major step forward towards a fairer, more democratic, more inclusive society, says Cardenas.