Re\Commons: A survey of projects restoring ancestral common lands

Romanian agro-pastoral community reclaims common lands

THE
RECOMMONIZATION OF PROPERTY IN EUROPE

Devon G.
Peña | Seattle, WA | October 20, 2013

As a
co-inhabitant of the 80,000-acre common lands of the Sangre de Cristo land
grant (merced) in Colorado, I am directly
and acutely aware of the importance that place-based cultures hold for the
protection of closed access to ancestral landscapes. Tragically, many of these
ancestral common lands have been lost due to forcible conversion to the public
domain or the incessant enclosures of private property and capitalist maldevelopment. There are thousands of
place-based cultural heritage landscapes around the planet and in nearly every
case a growing social movement seeking to restore the enclosed common[s].

These campaigns
have predominantly been grounded in the struggles of indigenous peoples in the
Americas, Africa, Australia, and Asia, and the European common property
tradition has largely been eclipsed by privatization and the ecological
modernization that serves this mode of capitalist management. But there are now
reports of a revival of the struggle for ancestral common lands in Romania. The
Apuseni Mountains in Romania are part of the Carpathian Alps, a scattered range
with high peaks in excess of 1840 meters (6036 feet).

The “Mountains of
the Sunset” are home to ancient agro-pastoral peoples who managed the higher
elevation grazing meadows and mountainous areas as common property until the
advent of the Soviet bloc. The ‘peasantry’ was displaced to make way for the
industrial projects championed by the Soviets including mass deforestation of
the mountains for the sake of timber for the construction and maintenance of
new railroads and factories. However, the displacement was never complete or
absolute and many commoners maintained their traditions of access through acts
of sabotage and trespass. In other words, they engaged in the coding for
property rights via adverse possession and prescriptive easement.

Trascau. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The eventual collapse
of the state bureaucratic capitalist formation in Moscow has led to a gradual
transition across much of Romania involving a privatization schema in which a
few investors claim ownership of entire mountain tracts. This is a pattern that
actually closely parallels what happened with the private enclosure of Mexican
and Spanish land grants in Colorado and New Mexico: A few well connected
bureaucrats (e.g., land surveyors, local constables, district judges, etc.)
take ownership of lands that have historically remained common use tracts. We also share a common history of resistance to gold, silver, and other mining industries. The struggle in Rosia Montana involves resistance to mining combined with the struggle to restore land rights. Sound familiar?

It is with a
great deal of hope and excitement that I present the Proclamation of
Câmpeni, a manifesto by the
commoners of the Rosia Montana, and an inspired example of the widening resistance to
neoliberal capitalist norms across the planet including Europe.

The Proclamation of
Câmpeni – October 19, 2013

We, the inhabitants of the Apuseni Mountains, gathered today, Octomber 19,
2013 in Câmpeni, express our right to decide our own fate independently. Based
on this legitimate demand,  we
proclaim the following:

The land, the forests, the pastures, the water and the air of the Apuseni
Mountains belong to those who live here, as inherited from our ancestors. We
have the right and the obligation to give these,  in a good state, to our own offsprings, so that they can
also enjoy them. The inhabitants of the
Apuseni are the only ones entitled to decide the best way to valorize the
wealth that good God and nature endoweded us with, for the benefit of our
community and of Romania!

Life in the Apuseni Mountains is not easy, but we have pastures on which we
can raise our cattle, we have forests from which, with moderation, we can take
the wood for our furniture factories, we still have clean waters, landscapes,
and monuments of nature and of history which attract thousands of tourists each
year. These are activities that already help the inhabitants of Apuseni to make
a living and there are opportunities of development which, valorized with
wisdom, can offer us a good living both to us and our children and
grandchildren. We do not beg at others’
people’s doors, others have come to our doors and try to get and destroy what
belongs to us!

Taxes can be collected from these activities, which will be used in our
interest and the interests of the Romanian citizens. We demand our
representatives in the Local and County Councils and in the City Halls, in the
Parliament and in the Government, to use these taxes with full responsibility
in order to create roads, schools and hospitals. This money is not for their
pockets but for the development of communities and for a happy life for those
who contribute to the budget. If proven that this money will be used against
us, against our wish, we take the right
to reject them as our legitimate representatives  and we will defend ourselves the way each person is entitled
to defend herself/himself against those who hurt her/him!

Any foreigner is welcomed in the Apuseni Mountains as long as he or she
respects our way of life and does not do anything to change it against our
will. We preserve our right to fight against all who, cunningly and through
corruption are coming here to steal what is ours and to destroy the natural and
historical resources that our life depends on. The happiness and wealth of some cannot be based on the unhappiness and
empoverishment of others.

Considering all the above, we imperatively send the following clear-cut
demands to politicians and decision-makers:

1.    
Rejection by the Parliament of all
laws that provide special measures for the expropriation of Romanian citizens
as well as other measures that waive the legal regime for the protection of the
environment, the cultural patrimony, the water, the pastures and the
agricultural land, the public goods etc., in favor of mining companies of all
type.

2.    
Rejection by law of the use of
cyanide in mining in Romania.

3.    
Including Rosia Montana on the
tentative UNESCO list of Romania.

4.    
Urgent rejection by Government
decision of the environmental permit for the mining project in Rosia Montana.

5.    
Declassifiying of all contracts and
additional acts made by the Government, refering to the alienation, giving away
and concession of Romania’s mineral resources.

6.   
Resignation of the initiators of the
special law for Rosia Montana: the Minister of Large Projects, Dan Șova, Minister of Environment, Rovana Plumb,
Minister of Culture, Daniel Barbu, Director of ANRM, Gheorghe Duțu, as well as Prime-Minister Victor Ponta;

7.    
Acceptance by the Government of the
expertize and the opinions related to the mining project in Rosia Montana that
were expressed by the following: the Romanian Academy, the Ad Astra
Association, The Romanian Geological Institute, Romania’s Architects Order, the
Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church and of the United Romanian Church and of
other Christian churches in Romania as well as of independent experts;

8.   
The creation of a Parliamentary
Commission for the Investigation of the Rosia Montana business in all of its
dimensions: granting of soil deposits, the sponsorships given by the Rosia
Montana Gold Corporation to public and private institutions, NGOs, or other
legal and individual persons; influence of political decisions; violation of
final court decisions; losses in freedom of the press and free speech through
corporate publicity.

9.   
Rebuilding and developing road
infrastructre in the Apuseni Mountains and granting fiscal and other facilities
to the development of economic activities in the following fields: tourism,
wood processing and the restoration of the forests, raising and processing of
products of animal origin, apiculture, and other traditional activities.

10.  Adoption by the Romanian Government of public policies and elaboration,
with the help of the civil society, of strategies in accordance with the
principles of sustainable development, for the optimal use of resources,
preservation of cultural-historical patrimony and support for the local
entrepreneurs;

11.  Start criminal investigation by the legal institutions in the case of
persons who signed and participated in the elaboration and validation of
documents regarding the mining exploitation in Rosia Montana.

12. 
Legal prohibition of the method of
hydraulic fracture in exploiting shale gas and respect for the sovereign will
of the people in the regions where such exploitation is projected, people for
whom we express our solidarity.

This is our will, the will
of the inhabitants of the Apuseni Mountains, free people gathered in the Great
Assembly of Câmpeni, and expressed today, October 19, 2013, with our spirit and
mind directed at sustainable development which should allow for the access of
many generations to all the resources God gave us.

SO HELP US GOD!