When the inhabitants of Colfax, Louisiana, begin to hear explosions, the sound of bullets and large columns of smoke, they never think that a new war has begun, it is the same war that they have been resisting for years, in which it is possible that all end up dead.

Colfax is a small village of 1,532 people, most of them of the black race, in the vicinity of the Red River. Its history is that it was a place where freed slaves formed a camp, from which they were expelled by force, an action which killed 150 of them. The average income of its inhabitants is 13,800 dollars a year, below the line of poverty, which has been set at 22,000 dollars annually in the United States.

The misfortunes of the inhabitants of Colfax began about two years ago, when in a warehouse of the army, located in Minden, Louisiana, ton of explosives blew up, creating a cloud that reached an altitude of 7,000 feet and logically caused terror to the residents of the place, mainly due to the environmental pollution it caused.

Their terror increased, as well as protests from the population, when the residents knew that the army planned to burn, in the open air, 18 thousand pounds of explosives still remaining at that place, which would considerably increase the level of contamination.

To avoid problems in Minden, a population of a higher economic level, many of whose residents are of the white race and some of whom have good political influence, the army coordinated with the Clean Harbors company, which has a settlement in Colfax, to destroy the explosives there.

A few years ago, the Department of Defense used to incinerate these materials in their own units, until health authorities forbade it. They could send some explosives and ammunition shipments to Europe and Canada, but the countries banned that, due to the contamination it caused, so they sought a solution within the United States.

The solution to the problem was the establishment of Clean Harbors in Colfax, which has operated in coordination with the Department of Defense for more than ten years and is the only place in the nation that can burn explosives and ammunition without any Government control on the polluting emissions that this may cause.

Having solved the problems in Minden, the army moved 350,000 pounds of remaining explosives to the Colfax establishment that were still to be incinerated. From that moment, the Clean Harbors incinerators were working almost without stopping, with the smoke pollution covering all the surrounding areas and the air the residents of Colfax were breathing.

In the year 2015, in the Clean Harbors incinerators located in Colfax, 700,000 pounds of ammunition and explosives were destroyed, despite the protests of the community, with many fears but little money and almost no political influence to be able to oppose what was happening.

Added to this, the establishment is also providing services to other units of the Department of Defense, which at the same time diversified the types of materials that are destroyed in this place.

These include rocket fuel made by a factory in Los Angeles, hand grenades and ammunition made in Arkansas, detonating fuses from Cincinnati, the Rocketdyne Virginia Aerojet solid fuel, explosives manufactured in North Carolina, rockets manufactured by Lockheed Martin in Alabama and others.

At the Clean Harbors office in Colfax, there is a map showing 42 clients of the company, all military units in 22 States of the Union. The company, whose headquarters are in Massachusetts, in the year 2016, had revenues of $ 2.7 trillion, which represents an important business. Every day, trucks and trains that move high power explosives, travel across U.S. cities without their inhabitants knowing, despite the risks that this entails.

The business of war has these characteristics, spending a huge amount of money in explosives, ammunition, and other artifacts. Then it is necessary to spend another huge amount of money to destroy them.

The beneficiaries are the larger companies in the arms industry, the Pentagon officials who receive their commissions and members of Congress who also receive money to approve budgets that cover the cycle.

Those who are affected are the American people. Those of Colfax, whose death by pollution has already been decreed and the rest of the citizens, who will not die like those of Colfax, but throughout life will be in need while the Government burns much of what they buy.

Do you consider it a violation of human rights to pollute the environment while an entire population is at risk of dying from the irresponsibility of the Government of the country?

August 9, 2017

The HERALDO group sarahnes@cubarte.cult.cu