Forgotten Keepers of the #RioGrandeDelta

An industrial buildout on the southern tip of Texas is erasing the last traces of an ancient world that still hasn’t died.

by Dylan Baddour
May 13, 2024

"This society has been trying to get rid of #Mancias’ people for 500 years. It couldn’t kill them all, so it’s destroying the evidence that they ever existed. That’s what Mancias sees as 100-ton bulldozers flatten the hills his #ancestors camped on, churn up their bones, and casually crush them into rubble, removing these last traces of their world.

" 'They almost annihilated us, and that #genocide continues,' Mancias said. 'To destroy the #environment you have to destroy the people who protect it.'

"He faces a formidable foe here at the last frontier for oil and gas on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Every other major inlet from the Mississippi River west through Port Arthur, Houston, Freeport, Lavaca Bay, and Corpus Christi is already ringed with #refineries, #ChemicalPlants, and terminals.

"But at the farthest tip of #Texas, the #RioGrande meets the Gulf between #WildlifeRefuges, a #StatePark, and a majestic #wilderness that still shelters endangered and little-known #wildlife.

"This is where Houston-based developer #NextDecade has begun constructing an $18 billion #MegaProject, which it called the 'largest greenfield energy project [financed] in U.S. history' when it announced in 2023 that it had secured investors to proceed.

"Named #RioGrandeLNG, the 750-acre facility will eventually pipe in up to 27 million tons per year of gas from #fracked wells in the #PermianBasin, supercool it to negative 260 degrees fahrenheit, and load it onto #TankerShips for sale overseas as liquefied natural gas (#LNG). It’s part of an explosion of lookalike projects that quickly made the United States the world’s top exporter of liquefied gas and drove soaring gas production at home.

"On an adjacent tract, another project called Texas LNG intends to build atop a site called #GarciaPasture—an ancient village ground where people lived seasonally for almost 800 years. The World Monument Fund calls it 'one of America’s premier #archaeological sites.' That project has its permits and awaits investor commitments before breaking ground.

"And about 5 miles away, #SpaceX continues to expand its #Starbase complex, where it manufactures and launches the most powerful #rockets in the world (which occasionally explode and fall to earth).

"Mancias fears this is just the beginning.

" 'All of this will be gone,' he said, driving his pickup truck down a highway through the marshes. 'They’re going to destroy all of this.' "

Read more:
https://www.texasobserver.org/forgotten-keepers-of-the-rio-grande-delta/

#DefendingTheSacred #SacredSites
#TexasObserver #InsideClimateNews #BigOilAndGas #CulturalGenocide #CorporateColonialism #ElonSucks #MegaProjects #Pollution #Fracking #SpaceIndustry #DefendTheSacred #EndangeredSpecies

Forgotten Keepers of the Rio Grande Delta:

An industrial buildout on the southern tip of Texas is erasing the last traces of an ancient world that still won’t die...

Mancias, now a 70-year-old long-haired great-grandfather, knows secret stories that could never be written:

about the last free villages on the Rio Grande’s banks,
about the massacres,
about his people’s disguises and
about their flight, at last, in the 1940s to the Panhandle of Texas,
where he grew up picking cotton.

He knows about the old river with an ancient forest and enormous, teeming marshlands of which only glimpses remain.

He knows how much was lost and how quickly it happened.

He also knows that people don’t believe him.

He heard the same lines all his life:
that the original inhabitants of Texas are gone,
that his grandparents made up their stories,
that he was just a Mexican from Lubbock.

This society has been trying to get rid of Mancias’ people for 500 years.

It couldn’t kill them all, so it’s destroying the evidence that they ever existed.

That’s what Mancias sees as 100-ton bulldozers flatten the hills his ancestors camped on,
churn up their bones, and casually crush them into rubble,
removing these last traces of their world.

“They almost annihilated us, and that genocide continues,” Mancias said.

“To destroy the environment you have to destroy the people who protect it.”

He faces a formidable foe here at the last frontier for oil and gas on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Every other major inlet from the Mississippi River west through Port Arthur, Houston, Freeport, Lavaca Bay, and Corpus Christi is already ringed with refineries, chemical plants, and terminals. 

But at the farthest tip of Texas, the Rio Grande meets the Gulf between wildlife refuges,
a state park, and a majestic wilderness that still shelters endangered and little-known wildlife.

This is where Houston-based developer #NextDecade has begun constructing an $18 billion mega-project,
which it called the “largest greenfield energy project [financed] in U.S. history”
when it announced in 2023 that it had secured investors to proceed

https://www.texasobserver.org/forgotten-keepers-of-the-rio-grande-delta/