“Bolivia Burning: Inside a Latin American Ecocide” is a superb new documentary film by the Gecko Project. The film is a detailed look inside the the destruction of forests in Bolivia.
2024 saw the worst ever fire season in Bolivia. More than 10 million hectares were burned. The fires were started to clear land for agriculture, but swept out of control.
Only Brazil lost more tropical primary forest than Bolivia in 2024 — anywhere in the world. According to a report by Fundación TIERRA, wildfires burned an area of 12.6 million hectares in Bolivia.
The film follows journalist David Hill and Bolivian lawyer and activist Alvaro Bozo García as they drive into the Chiquitano Dry Forest in the east of Bolivia.
“It’s just miles and miles, isn’t it, of burnt forest as far as we’ve been driving for two hours now. And left and right of us it’s just, everything’s been burnt off,” David Hill says as they drive through a devastated landscape.
“The whole of the Chiquitano is a cemetery,” Bozo adds.
One of the main causes of the destruction is government policy over the past 15 years to encourage the use of fire and to promote agribusiness. The government has failed to implement restrictions and penalties when laws protecting forests are breached.
Alcides Vadillo of Fundación TIERRA explains that,
“In 2013, the government approved something called the ‘Patriotic Agenda 2025’. What did this Patriotic Agenda propose? For Bolivia to be a grain and food exporting country. That was the strategic plan. To fulfil this plan, all environmental regulations were weakened. It doesn’t matter now if it’s forest, if it’s . . . they’re even allowed to clear areas reserved for forestry use.”
Indigenous and rural communities have seen their livelihoods destroyed, their crops and homes burnt, and their water sources contaminated. The smoke has affected the health of thousands of people.
Swift Current
A significant proportion of the destruction of Bolivia’s forests takes place on land owned and farmed by the Mennonites, a group of ultra-conservative Anabaptist Christian communities.
The Mennonites started in Europe in the 16th century. They were persecuted in Europe and moved to the US and Canada. From there they moved to Mexico, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.
In 2013 there were 75 Mennonite colonies in Bolivia. By 2022, this figure had increased to 124. About 150,000 Mennonites live in Bolivia.
Hill and Bozo travel to one of the oldest colonies, Swift Current, founded in the 1960s. It covers an area of almost 200 square kilometres.
The Mennonites travel in horse drawn carriages that they call buggies. There are no cars, no televisions, no internet, no smartphones.
Hill and Bozo speak to Johan Peters who lives in Swift Current. His parents moved to Bolivia from Mexico. They cleared the forest when they arrived, 67 years ago. They moved from Mexico because there was no more land available.
Peters says that,
There just wasn’t enough space. Always, once a colony is full and there’s no room for more families, they go looking for somewhere for a new colony. Some went to Paraguay, some to Argentina, some to Bolivia, some to Brazil. And there are people who are going to Angola.
Peters mentions a new Mennonite colony called Bella Italia, close to the border with Brazil. It’s forested but the Mennonites have legal title to the land and will clear the forest.
“We have to look for more land,” Peters says, “to establish another colony and make space for our children, so they can continue working like us.”
Bella Italia
Hill and Bozo drive through the burnt out Chiquitano to Bella Italia. They see recently cleared forest. They see a bulldozer used to clear the forest.
“They clear the forest,” Bozo explains. “They pile it up in the middle. They burn it and they have a clear field. They leave all the trees on the site.”
They speak to Peter Friesen who tells them that, “Swift Current was filling up. There was no more room and so they decided to buy this land here.”
They will plant soy, corn, sorghum, and peanuts as cash crops. When they arrived, it was “Beautiful, green, very humid,” Friesen says. “All forest.”
The forest burned a couple of weeks before Hill and Bozo travelled to Bella Italia. The fires came from a nearby cattle ranch. “There was nothing that could be done,” Friesen says.
So far, only six families have moved to Bella Italia. But more will arrive when more forest is cleared. “They will probably be clearing thousands and thousands of hectares,” Bozo says.
And Bella Italia is just one of several colonies in the area.
Cargill
US agribusiness corporation Cargill is among the biggest buyers of soy from Bolivia. A 2023 investigation by Global Witness revealed that Cargill has sourced soy from Mennonite colonies that have cleared thousands of hectares of forest in the Chiquitano.
Hill and Bozo travel to Hacienda Verde to see whether Cargill is still buying from them. This is a modern colony. Cars and motorbikes are parked outside people’s houses. When the Mennonites arrived it was a cattle ranch.
“I think it will be ten years since the first forest clearing,” David Rempel, one of the Mennonites living there, says.
Rempel confirms that Cargill buys soy from the Mennonites in Hacienda Verde. He shows Hill and Bozo a July 2024 receipt on his smartphone. Cargill also buys sunflower seeds.
Johann Wieler, another resident of Hacienda Verde, tells Hill and Bozo that the Mennonites prefer to buy land that is forested. “The land is always better if we have just cleared it because it is more fertile,” Wieler says.
And Wieler confirms that Cargill is one of the most important buyers of soy.
According to satellite analysis commissioned by the documentary makers, between 2016 and 2024, more than 3,000 hectares of forest was cleared in Hacienda Verde. Global Witness found even higher areas of deforestation in other colonies that were selling soy to Cargill.
Cargill declined to be interviewed for the documentary. Instead, they replied with a statement:
Our commitment to be deforestation- and conversaion-free in soy across all South America by 2030 remains the same. In Bolivia, Cargill is using its scale, influence, and understanding of the supply chain as an important voice within the sector to make sustainability a priority.
“They’re just kicking the can down the road,” Hill comments.
When I see the scorches of the forest and the land, I feel the burning on my body and heart. This is a very emotional and provoking film. How the contemporary colony establishments from Mennonites and Agribusiness giants demolish the forest with bulldozers and fire, while taking such ecocide as granted for their children and business, is beyond distateful. Although the Bolivian government has a strong legislative foundation for the Law of Mother Earth (which I find very refreshing as a new learner), it fails to prevent the crisis. The cries of the indigenous people, the forest, the animals, and the land have been silenced. This film has given them a voice. And we shall not let their voices go unheard.
The threat of green colonialism also known as elon musk needs to be exterminated by taxing billionaires and organized religion out of existence.