A little about this website
After the shocking Associated Press story of October 20, 2013 by Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko, with the distressing image of Aixa Cano on the front page of the Buenos Aires Herald, it became obvious the scourge of pesticide use must stop.
This site is named after the late Argentine physician Andrés Carrasco who first showed the way, for all, it seems, on this continuing tragedy. What would be done without the life of this doctor? Obviously, the term “compass” is there as he was the moral compass to bring direction to stop the harm done by agrochemicals, particularly glyphosate.
Honestly, writing their names – Andrés Carrasco & Aixa Cano – I find quite hard, saddening.
Anyway, many have asked why am I doing this, working to bring substantial legal controls, including robust administrative complements derived from a new Argentine pesticide-enforcing agency, which will have the necessary means within the framework of the Argentine Constitution – both provincially, as well as nationally – to oversee agrochemical use, to levy heavy penalties on offenders, and, as an agency – aiding the courts – to help victims’ lawyers structure adequate financial awards for those harmed by agrochemical abuse.
The answer is I feel I should; or rather, I must.
Maybe the examples I saw growing up, with my father and lovely, impassioned, mother both fighting for causes they believed in, including my father’s work with Massachusetts’ “Model Cities,” my mother’s store-front-learning-center work for inner city children, and their stint protesting with tents to make affordable housing (i.e. “Tent City”) near Boston’s Back Bay, were some of the impressions which affected a cause sensibility. They were Vietnam War protesters. My father was even super-briefly jailed for protesting. Our babysitters, for lack of a better word, also were involved in civil rights and showed a strong example living in the house with us three children.
Finally, I think the anti-apartheid work of my father’s brother – Rev. Victor H. Carpenter, Jr. – in South Africa with the International Defense and Aid Fund, as well as his continuing this effort in the United States by, among other things, demanding Harvard University divest itself of South African interests (Harvard president Derek Bok flatly turned them down), might be among the influences on me. I’m not sure. Surely, however, I was brought up – and around – some noble rabble-rousers, who were seriously convinced of the rights of others. (* See note for words from my uncle recently sent to me, here below, if you like.)
Does that explain enough? Look at Ms Aixa Cano’s obvious loveliness – she looks like my stepmother would at that age, to me – in the link above, and think about how Dr. Andrés Carrasco might have given his life for a cause to protect his countrymen, and others, from harmful pesticide use, and then one might understand why I, an Argentine-Bostonian, want to serve these same people, and Dr. Andrés Carrasco’s memory, if I actually can.
For me, Argentines from the countryside are among the best people on Earth, if not the best, and I am more-than-honored to be with them, when I can.
Sign the petition, here, if you’re an Argentine living abroad, perhaps:
* The phrase “Human Rights” as it appears in “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” refers to the non-negotiable character of the human vision of responsibility and justice as being at the core of all human associations organized to support and further the common good.
The irreducible core of this claim is the affirmation that every individual human being is of inestimable worth and dependent on nothing other than its being before it is claimed by any human system of power. Every denial and/or abuse of this fundamental human right amounts to denial of the worth of human community and a crime against that community. As such, racism, sexism, ableism are crimes against humanity.
While believing In the words of Martin Luther King, “… that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice,” we also believe that the bending of that arc is accomplished by feats of human endeavor and passionate advocacy.
Rev. Victor H. Carpenter, Jr., February 23, 2015.
Carrasco Compass is non-partisan and does not solicit financial contributions.