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Team:Colombia Uniandes/Social
From 2013.igem.org
Human Practices
Social axis
Nicko was inspired by an article that we read in SEMANA, a Colombian magazine. The article's tittle was "Cerro Matoso: Mina Rica, Pueblo Pobre". In this article a journalist was describing the social and enviromental situation around one of the biggest ferronickel mine in the world, CerroMatoso which is in Montelíbano, Colombia. Montelibano is a city of Córdoba department, it has 85,000 inhabitants, many of them are native that belong to the tribe "Zenu del Alto San Jorge". The natives are the most affected people because they live in Pueblo Flecha, Bocas de Uré, just next to mine. The journalist wrote that many of the old workers in the mine has cancer now and that most of kids have skin diseases. One of the picture that journalist put in his article gave us the idea of Nicko, in the picture two kids are shown carrying water on a mule, the water had been picked up in a hydric source 800 meters from the mine and was intended for human consumption. Here we show the picture and the article to you: Cerro Matoso: Mina Rica, Pueblo Pobre
In this section we aimed to know if people that live near to the mine would be willing to drink water that has been treated with Nicko, but first we tried to get closer to the problematic to be sure that Nicko would be a great solution.
Our first movement was to write to the journalist in Semana because he knew perfectly the situation and he could help Colombia iGEM team to contact with people around mine. It was a hard work because magazine's policies don't allow reveal the name of authors of articles. We had to call hundreds times to people in SEMANA, with every people that we talked, we explained what our purposes were and what iGEM is. Finally, we could contact to the journalist, his name is Tadeo Martinez. When we told our project to Tadeo, he was fascinated and inmediately he wanted to help us. He told us many of the things he knew about Cerro Matoso and its social and enviromental impact and gave us the cellphone number of Jose Javier de la Hoz, the lawyer of natives of the tribe Zenu del Alto San Jorge . Besides, Tadeo shared with us many of his photos of the mine, sick people and water bodies close to Cerro Matoso. Below you can see them. If you want to know more about social and enviromental problem with Cerro Matoso, listen to a briefly part of the conversation with Tadeo.
ENTREVISTA TADEO
After we listened to Tadeo, we felt a social responsability with our country and we wanted to use our knowledge to create an alternative solution to our problem and why not, a solution for every country that exploits nickel in the world. In spite of we know that even if we achieved to get Nicko in the lab, apply him in colombian waters it's something almost imposible, we're sure to promote this kind of initiatives it's an important task because common people have to begin to see science as a valuable tool to improve the society's life quality.
It's time to work with people from Montelíbano! We called to José Javier, lawyer of native, and told him we'll be glad of meet him to talk about our projects, iGEM and of course about nickel contaminated water. He says:"Oh! you are so lucky, next week I'll be in Bogotá, in a debate about Cerromatoso in the Congress of the Republic, why don't you go? José Javier had not finished the sentence when we were saying YEEEEES!!!
On tuesday, august 20, iGEM was in the Congress of the Republic for first time, we were excited and again nervous beause we were participating in a debate in the maximun legislative body of our country. There, we meet to Jose Javier, and he was with Israel Aguilar, the indian chief :D. It was our opportunity to talk with the native chief about Nicko and asked him if they would be willing to drink water where Nicko had been cleaning. For our happiness, Israel says his community would drink Nicko treated water. Israel invited us to his community and he offered us his help. Due to we are on class semester, we have not gone to Montelíbano, but we are planning a trip on one of the next weekends. Here one photo of two of us in the Congress.
Frequently we chat with Jose Javier and he tell us how the native are. Recently, he gave us water samples that Israel send to iGEM Colombia. We intend to determine metals in these samples. The samples that Israel send us are valuable for us because nobody can enter in native's territory to get samples and we want to test Nicko's performance in these water.
We asked for a interview to Jose Javier and Israel and they said: "of course", but because of we don't live in the same city that they, a physical interview had not been possible. However, we interviewed José Javier via skype, so you can see the video below.
Entrevista Jose
More activities on the other two axes:
