Original subtitles

I've known Argentina for 30 years. My son was born here.

I've seen this country become a laboratory for agricultural business,

its doors to GMO and pesticides, what we here call agrotoxics.

I've seen the consequences on the health of the men, women and the children of

this country.

What the World Health Organization has just certified is far from the reality.

My journey into the heart of the poisoned Argentina

starts right in the north, in the Misiones province, where thousands of

cultivate tobacco that will be exported to the United States and Europe.

These images might shock, but I've decided to show the raw, often

reality, a reality that many reject and that nobody really wants to see.

I have been searching for the truth with those who put together the pieces of a

terrifying puzzle.

They will accompany me the whole time during this investigation.

This film is dedicated to them.

We'll travel across the land together from the province of Misiones in the

of Argentina to the Brazilian frontier, a tobacco growing region.

one of the first places in Argentina to allow the use of genetically modified

organisms in the midnight booth.

Ricardo Rivero is a regional head of the electricity company.

He discovered little by little why these families could not pay their bills.

each time he found there were sick children.

With his help, we'll visit the tobacco farmers' humble houses, which are

tightly closed under secret and misfortune.

It stings him. It starts to heat him up because he doesn't have the pores, he

doesn't have the pores.

And then the heat of his body is all inside.

Then it starts to sting him and he starts to grumble, he starts to cry, it

bothers him. And many times what hurts me the most is that he starts to grumble

inside his eyes.

Lucas is five years old. He has an incurable disease, ichthyosis lamellar,

to a genetic mutation.

And nobody warned you?

According to what we found, this is the consequence of Lucas being the way he is

today. There are no explanations, and there is none.

Because there is nothing to say.

We can't say that he is an agrotoxic. Because until today, no doctor came and

said that this house is an agrotoxic.

This man is asking that question because he's been growing tobacco on his land

for years.

Genetically modified seeds with their proportion of pesticides and herbicides,

agrochemicals. He treated his tobacco plants with glyphosate and other

products for 15 years without any protection.

Now for his family's welfare, he has left his old house and moved further up,

away from this contaminated land.

Does it make you angry to see Lucas?

Lucas,

almost a miracle.

In this region, there is a disproportionate number of children born

deformities.

GMO cultures entered Argentina through the Misiones province.

The government authorized their use from 1996 onward, based on studies done by

Monsanto itself, without any contradicting research.

This gladurate earth, typical of the Misiones province, is actually

contaminated, poisoned by agrochemicals that were spread over the land for 20

years.

Not only the

land, the water too.

Nobody ever warned the tobacco farmers about the danger of these products. On

the contrary, For years they were lulled by the pacified producer's

announcement.

Endless advertisements on Argentinian TV claimed the merits of Roundup, the weed

killer that killed everything except the genetically modified organisms which

resist.

The message got through.

Today, every year, more than 300 million liters of glyphosate are poured over

Argentinian soil.

At

first,

the families in Misiones could not understand what was happening to their

children.

Then they started to have doubts.

Doubts but no proof.

Not right away.

Today they are withdrawn, distrustful and disheartened.

Lucas Krause was born with congenital microcephaly. He suffers from epilepsy,

delayed motor and mental development, multiple muscular atrophy, and numerous

related pathologies.

If his father stops growing tobacco, then he will lose his social security

will no longer be able to afford to take care of his son's needs.

In 2010, things started to move.

American lawyers came to Misiones and contacted some families.

A total of 144,

including the Nunez, whose 17 -year -old son William has been severely

handicapped since birth.

Come on, Javita.

These are the food from the banana and fruit blender.

Willy, did you see how terrible it is? Did you see how terrible it is?

What have we done here?

Life is very beautiful, isn't it, Willy?

Some people don't know how to live that beautiful life and we take advantage of

it. That's right,

Willy.

The family received no aid for the treatment William needs.

They have learned by themselves to take care for their disabled child.

Their hopes were raised after the visit of the American lawyers.

So someone was responsible after all. It wasn't the father for having used

herbicides without protection.

But there were two lawyers, three or four doctors.

There were a lot of people.

They said they were from the United States, the doctors.

What did they speak?

Supposedly, they had already presented the lawsuit in the United States. They

were talking about three million dollars.

It was the case of Luigi.

It was a case.

But it was going up.

As the dollar was going up, it was going up.

As a result of the encounter, William's parents signed this contract with a

commitment not to recount the case of their son.

Up to now, they have respected their vow of silence, but they don't want to keep

quiet any longer. They want to talk.

They have had no news since the lawyer's visit four years ago.

That's why.

Because if their entire program didn't fall, we wouldn't be able to pay.

If we put in the money, we had to pay. They were going to charge everything.

And I tell you that many closed their mouths for that reason.

Because they said that if their program falls, that everything they spend, we

have the right to pay because it's signed.

In San Vicente, tobacco is the main source of income.

Above all it is the only sector that provides social security for its

They have been tobacco growers from father to son, or rather they were,

today the sons do not want to do the same work as their fathers, at least not

under the same conditions, ignorance and exploitation.

Here we meet up with Emilio Cusick. He has created an independent labor union

contend with the two tobacco unions in the region who are more inclined to

up for the tobacco companies than the small manufacturers.

And well, it's a very hard work, right? People suffer a lot because they work

all year long and it's a bit of the economic results for the

family, apart from the risk of poison, right? And all those things that

sometimes the whole family gets involved, right?

The whole family gets involved.

And well, when there is another thing, too...

Emilio was raised with tobacco.

His father is a tobacco farmer.

He has seen the sector get organized.

He wants to show us what is, according to him, a slavery system.

The tobacco growers come here once a year to sell their tobacco.

It's the end of the cycle. The sowing, treating, harvesting, drying, sorting

out. And finally, it's transported here, the only place they can sell their

crop. Where they are on the day they'll get to know the value of their year's

work.

Each bale is evaluated in the wink of an eye. It has to meet fixed standards

laid down by the cooperative.

The texture, breadth, and color of the leaf tobacco in its natural state would

never pass the test. Only the use of chemical products can ensure good

In this office, in 30 seconds they evaluate the amount of tobacco from the

in relation to the quality.

So?

He has just earned a thousand euros for a year's work.

Outraged but submissive, how else can they be in this region?

Sometimes they have it there, like a nail, you can say, because the producer

afraid that if I stop planting and there is no social income, and there are all

things that make the producer stay there with

the same suffering.

He has to be there, because he is forced.

But it's broken, until the end, because...

Philip Morris provides a genetically modified thief of burly tobacco for the

manufacturer of light tobacco cigarettes.

Every year, about 100 chemicals need to be used to cultivate this perfect

tobacco, which is then watched to get rid of toxic substances and sent to the

United States.

So they set the price?

In the cooperative office, the tobacco farmers stream pass.

They come from all over the region.

It wouldn't take much for them to stop, but the government encourages them to

continue.

Wouldn't the buyers come anymore?

What do you mean by monsters?

They dominate to such an extent that they have totally changed tobacco

Small tobacco farmers come to this warehouse situated on the way out of San

Vicente to buy the pesticides necessary to manufacture tobacco that can be

certified by Philip Morris.

We take advantage of a momentary lack of attention to explore the

aisles. The full panoply, fertilizer and other chemicals manipulated with bare

hands.

Fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides.

Like Confidor, the bee killer recently banned in France.

Behind the door, we catch a glimpse of drums of glyphosate and other highly

toxic products, but we're interrupted.

I have to be realistic.

I have to be realistic.

Put that you are from this anti -tabacco organization.

Come on. We give you everything.

Let's be more clear. We give you everything that you are filming, that

all the things.

From here they go to the process, they sign the process and everything. And

go and show the world, this is what you do, this is what you kill. Because all

the cigarettes, if you buy them, what do you do?

We won't have free rain.

Philip Morris won't give us permission to film the main cooperative in the

region.

Poison is a recurrent word here.

One must admit that all those years the cooperative has been asking them to use

the product, and each year new ones. It starts to be a bit much.

Before leaving the region, we went to see a rather special collector.

50 -year -old Ramon Gomez has drawn up a list of all the chemicals he has had to

handle these last 20 years.

Today, most of them are banned, too toxic.

He doesn't know where to throw the bottles and cans. They are there, at the

bottom of a wasteland.

You can't put it far from the house, right? Inside a little house.

Those I occupied and put, now they say they're going to take that container.

But the other years ago, they never came to take it.

And I planted tobacco 25 years ago.

And you know how many barrels there were during those 25 years. And it was

always to come and look, and come and look, no. I had piles of washed barrels,

no? And they didn't come to look, what am I going to do?

No. You're going to have to make houses and houses to store bottles, right? And

bury that, it's going to get into the ground and it's going to go into the

branches, right?

So I made a wooden shed, I don't know, right? Made of wood, far away, right?

And it got on fire and that's it, it burned down.

It's working with something dangerous, right?

That's the same as you grabbing a weapon, right? And you have to be

not? And that one is also fighting us there almost like a weapon.

A weapon held by these farmers, left with no instructions for use, no

Raúl Gómez has glued the labels of his cans in a small notebook, an impressive

list of products, the majority of which have now been banned.

He feels he has most definitely been a guinea pig.

A few years ago they gave us this poison.

Look, this other poison as well, which is very good, bromogas, which is

the methyl bromide.

This poison, and this poison that I show you here, are very good poisons,

very good poisons. And this was given to us to put in the tobacco, for us to

pollute the tobacco.

And which poison do you use today?

So you have to use more of it.

They live

with a sword of Damocles above their heads.

The question for them is not to know if they'll become ill.

But when?

Are people contaminated here?

People live with that poison flowing in their blood forever.

The consequences come later.

perhaps even a long time after.

In Posadas, capital of the province of Misiones, doctors are considering an

more terrifying hypothesis.

The agrochemicals could determine a modification of the human genome.

Dr. DeMaio is head of the neurosurgery service in the Pediatric Hospital of

Posadas. Over the years, he has received an ever -increasing number of children

suffering from malformations.

These are no more empirical observations, but inescapable statistics

drawn up with his successor, Dr.

Barreiro.

The baby has two wounds, a wound in the head and another wound in the belly.

With a connector, with a passer, one passes under the skin.

Now,

if you don't have an intervention on these boys, 100 % of the boys will

go to the hospital at some point in their lives, in the first five years of

their lives they will go to the hospital.

Two little girls suffering from hydrocephalus linked to an abnormality

the X chromosome.

The two mothers were exposed to agrochemicals, but indirectly.

Where were the agrochemicals kept in your place?

And did your brothers protect themselves when handling those products?

And you washed their clothes?

And then the water is contaminated.

It has a lot to do with the whole environment. It is transmitted by

The boy was not necessarily in the field where the tobacco is, but the father

was spraying the poison.

It is not explained through an hydrocephaly, but I am the bearer of

and I transmit it to another person.

I'm going to have a child, maybe very far away.

from that place where I was working with agrotóxicos, but since I carry that

genetic damage, I am transmitting it.

Do you understand?

That would be the genetic damage that you are going to have.

The abnormal genes are deposited in the family

tissue. And these go to the genitals.

And when it goes to the genitals, in the ovary, in the woman,

In the beginning, these two doctors worked

alone. Then other doctors in Argentina with the same observations joined them.

They developed a network and managed to complete their investigation.

Their results published in 2009 are spine -chilling.

Miscarriages, congenital defects among newborn babies six times higher than

normal, cancers in small children five times more numerous than elsewhere.

The Monsanto company contested the study, writing on its Argentinian site.

Toxicologic studies on animals have shown that glyphosate does not cause

deterioration of immune systems, birth defects, nor reproduction problems.

According to the doctors, the agrochemicals pass from mother to child.

and caused chromosome damage in the first 28 days of pregnancy, rare and

monstrous congenital deformities that they tried to repair.

They are always very monstrous because at the end, let's say, notice that this

is hanging there.

Today we are talking about 1 ,000, 1 ,200 dollars or 1 ,500.

For me it is expensive.

It would have to be more affordable for that.

Do you have to live it or not?

Surely I am condemning death.

We are talking about pathologies that can also be present without the agro

-toxics, but that are ...

They multiply with the presence of new agrotoxins.

It leaves us with a feeling of frustration.

There are guys who shouldn't have gone through that and they go through it

anyway.

Dr. DeMaio is 73 years old. He has devoted the last years of his

life to this fight, to tell the truth.

The Argentinian government does not listen to him, so he puts all his hopes

educating and informing future generations.

With Antonio Juzulac, a social science researcher, he infiltrates universities

in the province to share his findings with the students, who are often

and sons of tobacco businessmen.

How many of you have been playing around with the tobacco that is drying up and

that is spilling agrotoxic on you?

You, in the silence at the beginning, maybe you were afraid to tell what you

knew.

But it came out, we are all happy that there is a problem.

Know, have conviction, have courage and we are going to change things.

Agro -toxics is like that, like a big iceberg.

What we see is the meningocele fear, which is what we studied.

Here comes another one.

Do you see him? There.

What do we tell him?

He was born with a malformation that will leave him paralyzed from here to

everything. We don't know the mixture of agro -toxics that we all have.

These young people are from the agrochemical generation.

They grew up with pesticides, but they know so little about them.

They were always told agrochemicals enabled us to feed the planet.

There are people who are dying of hunger and we are going to make sure that they

don't die of hunger anymore. But the issue is how?

Using agrochemicals, using transgenics?

That is the challenge that you young people have, as you said today, to

this reality.

Because you are the ones who are going to change.

Is it important to inform this new generation?

What did you think of this talk?

And how do you feel about it?

Some hope at last.

I left the province of Misiones to meet up with the lawyers defending these

families.

They have had no news of the procedures for four years.

Why is that?

Is there a chance to pinpoint those responsible and bring them to court?

Back in the capital, Buenos Aires, I went to their office.

There were two Argentinian lawyers, rather pleasant, but not very

about their case.

We decided to call the New York office for which they had worked on this file

four years ago.

in order to defend the 144 Misiones families.

On the phone is Steven Phillips from the Phillips and Paolicelli office.

He specializes in defending children and workers exposed to toxic products.

In the conditions that it would be used in South America and elsewhere, there

would be people mixing the chemicals, pregnant women. So this was extremely

dangerous. Monsanto knew it and sold the stuff anyway and, of course, made a

great deal of money.

Philip Morris would insist that they grow the tobacco precisely the way

Morris wanted, which included, of course, using the glyphosate and other

materials. And if they didn't, then Bill Morris wouldn't take their tobacco.

So the farmers had no real choice. If you force somebody to behave in a way

that's dangerous, lead them about it, and then their children get hurt, then

that's a reason to bring them into court.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time, and we keep it that.

They are aware that they are attacking David against Goliath. You realize it's

bit David against Goliath. They are giants.

Yes, but we all have reality on our side.

Many of these companies have lost their judges.

Because reality is imposed.

We have seen the contract the family signed.

Why didn't you want them to speak out?

At the end of it all, millions of dollars for the families and their

But all this will take time.

Philip Morris does not want the trial to take place in the United States, but

wants the proceedings to be located in Argentina.

I contacted Philip Morris and Monsanto to ask for their reaction to these legal

proceedings. I had no response.

Can David win against Goliath?

Perhaps. Little by little, the net is tightening.

Tobacco farmers are no longer alone in their battle.

There is another region in Argentina that has become a symbol in the fight

against agrochemicals.

Córdoba, Argentina's second most important city. My last stop.

Cordoba, the realm of the transgenic soybean.

Here, glyphosate is sprayed on the field by plane.

The town is covered with anti -Montanto tag.

In 2012, in Cordoba, a historical verdict was delivered.

A farmer and the owner of a plane were sentenced to three years in prison with

suspended prison terms for illegal aerial spraying.

They had been spraying glyphosate less than 2 ,500 meters from a populated

This penalty seems to be to them very light in comparison to the damages they

have suffered.

Those women are the mothers of Vituzango. They are making Monsanto and

Argentinian government tremble.

Sofia Gatica has taken the lead of this group of mothers. In 2014, they opposed

the construction of Monsanto's largest plant of transgenic seeds.

After a six -month struggle and violent clashes, the opening of the factory was

postponed.

Since then, she has become a target and is routinely assaulted, as on that day

in April 2014.

Today, Sofia lives in a village without any transgenic crop.

She moved house to protect the health of her two teenage girls.

She used to live in Ituzaingo.

Here we have the part of the history of 15 years of struggle

against the Montanto multinationals.

It's a map made by hand.

This map has 15 years of history, right?

Here I lived.

So I started to go house by house to see what was the problem of the people.

And I started to find that people were getting sick from cancer, from leukemia,

from malformation.

Leukemia, if you see, are triangles.

Notice that they are all close to the soy field. We have leukemia, leukemia,

leukemia, leukemia, leukemia, leukemia, leukemia, leukemia. 16 cases in, at that

time we were 5 ,000 inhabitants.

When we know that from 1 to 2 cases are 100 ,000 inhabitants.

To the north, to the south and to the east, We have leaves.

If they fumigate from here, people will die.

If they fumigate from here, people will die.

So we have been in the middle of many fumigations.

My daughter passed away with malformación de ciñón.

My other son could not walk after the

fumigations because they fumigated him and he became disabled.

The mothers rally and proceed to have tests done in Buenos Aires.

Three children out of four have agrochemicals in their blood,

chromium, lead, arsenic.

The water and air are also analyzed with the same conclusions.

But you have to sign here, where you renounce to make us judge.

And here we see again, they demand that we commit not to initiate legal and

derivative actions. So we had to sign this to be able to have water.

All these multinationals that come to the countries, if they bring, as they

that they bring progress, that they do not get sick and die.

Sophia left it to Tango, but most of her neighbors stayed there.

At times they're tempted to give up, for after struggling for 15 years, nothing

has really changed.

They go on doing it.

Despite the prohibition, it's forbidden there, but next door.

That's the newspaper we see it in.

Now it's called ecotierra. Look, you have the name.

Is it a joke?

It's a joke.

We asked them to humiliate us, and logically, because we couldn't plant it,

sold it.

And today people are complaining that it's clogged.

They don't care about the pollution.

And they take advantage.

However, the town authorities classified the area as a health emergency zone as

early as 2002.

The contamination of the land has been established.

This hasn't prevented newcomers settling here.

Are

your

neighbors sick too?

The second case of leukemia occurs in that little house with black tiles,

is because of that neighbor that I enter the group.

And the other two cases occur in the corner.

And here, on the other side, the other case of hemolytic anemia.

You see, in a very small sector.

272 people died between 2000 and 2009 in Tuizango.

They want to prove the link between those deaths and the use of pesticides.

They want to fight, and if they stay, it's for justice to be done.

Although for themselves, it's too late.

Why didn't you go?

She's your daughter?

How do you talk about all this with your children?

How would I tell my daughter that she had a certain illness and that she

wouldn't be able to do this and that?

How would I explain it to a three -year -old girl?

She was three years old when she had the disease.

And then suddenly her hair fell off, and how would I tell her if she grabbed her

hand like that?

Three years old, how would I tell her?

Everything that was going to happen to her.

What are you after?

That's what they hope for with the trial Causa Madre, which should open in 2016.

The mothers of Ituzango against Monsanto and the Argentinian government, who let

them be.

Meanwhile, families are trying to live with their sick children to give them as

much care as possible.

In San Vincente, there is one of the few centers which accept disabled children.

But there are not only serious deformities.

Children suffering from cognitive deficiency and learning difficulties are

and more numerous in the district.

That's where Lucas comes once a week to work with this instructor

who travels through the province.

She has many children like Lucas to look after and always the same appraisal.

Those who suffer the most are the parents.

on occasions when they can bring him problems.

Sometimes it's a kind of guilt to the father, if he is aware of the use, of

he did.

I mean, there is a need.

They knew it was bad for them, they were exposed anyway.

Then, over time, it generates a certain guilt in the parents to say, it's my

fault, my son is like this.

Parents who feel guilty, involved in spite of themselves in the agribusiness

overwhelmed by the system.

According to the World Health Organization, three million people in

are poisoned by pesticides every year.

Agrochemicals are worth $40 billion a year to the multinationals that produce

them.