From 2024: Locals Say #SpaceX Is #Polluting #SacredLand. This Project Aims to Preserve It.
“This wasn’t just something we wanted to do,” said 35-year-old Monica Sosa, who grew up in #BrownsvilleTX, a short drive from #BocaChica Beach. “We felt like we needed to do it.”
by Cat Cardenas October 30, 2024
"Among the #CarrizoComecrudo people of Texas, it is said that the state’s rivers are like ancestors. As they flow toward the sea, they bring their abundance, their beauty, and their knowledge with them. In South Texas, the place where these rivers meet and empty into the Gulf of Mexico is a sacred life source — the location they believe to be the birthplace of the first woman. Today, most Brownsville locals know it as #BocaChicaBeach — a public stretch of sand located at the end of #Highway4, along the southernmost edge of the Texas coast. But to many people outside of the #RioGrandeValley, that land, its name, and its history have largely been swallowed up by the operation of the #RocketLaunch facility just up the road: SpaceX’s #Starbase.
"Growing up a short drive from Boca Chica Beach in Brownsville, 35-year-old Monica Sosa told The Barbed Wire she still remembers it as an escape: a piece of unspoiled coastline that was free for everyone to enjoy. On lazy summer weekends, she and her siblings would hop into her mom’s blue Chevrolet Astro van. The back seats pulled down to make room for more passengers as they stopped to pick up more family. Once there, they’d look forward to hours and hours of endless sunshine, and a cooler packed full of ham and cheese sandwiches, sodas, Cheetos, and fruit.
"As an adult, many of those happy memories have turned bittersweet. The beach, while still free to the public, is frequently plagued by the closure of Highway 4 each time there’s a rocket launch or other 'space flight activities.' And even when it’s open, the construction has fundamentally changed the landscape: There’s a tall metal SpaceX launch and catch pad towering over the once-untouched sand dunes.
" 'Boca Chica was bliss,' Sosa said earlier this month. 'I came from a working class family, and being out there was one of the only times we would come together and play. We’d be in the water, sitting in the sun, running through the lomas (hills), or burying each other in sandcastles. You could spend the whole day out there. But now there’s someone who has the right and the ability to privatize a beach that people have used for decades and decades.'
"SpaceX’s operation in the Rio Grande Valley has been far from smooth. In recent years, they’ve been cited by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for multiple violations of #wastewater regulations and been the subject of multiple legal complaints. The company has disputed these claims as 'factually inaccurate' and has been allowed to continue their operations.
"In April of this year, multiple Valley-based environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department over a proposed land swap that would grant 43 acres of #BocaChicaStatePark to #SpaceX in exchange for land near Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. In addition to their concerns about #pollution, the groups also argued that the land proposed in the swap was sacred to the #CarrizoComecrudoTribe.
" 'SpaceX has always been polluting,' Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe told the Texas Tribune, which first reported on the allegations. 'And I think people are kind of brainwashed into thinking that rockets — constructing rockets, testing rockets and blowing up rockets — that somehow that’s not causing pollution.' "
Read more:
https://thebarbedwire.com/2024/10/30/locals-say-spacex-is-polluting-sacred-land-this-project-aims-to-preserve-it/
#ProtectTheSacred #Colonialism
#CorporateColonialism #OccupySpaceX #TwoHeartedPeople #GarciaPasture #EndangeredSpecies #EnvironmentalRacism #AncestralLand #ElonSucks #StarbaseCity
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