Samples of mother's milk taken from a group of pregnant women in the area were also found to contain, in 43 percent of the cases, organochlorine insecticides,'' Ivonne Alvarado writes in her report on the Central University study. Another environmental group, 'Integracion Livista', focused on cleaning up the Castan river for the inhabitants of Trujillo, a small city in Venezuela's western Andes mountains, is also demanding studies of a possible link between the use of agrochemic als at the source of the river and a rise in cancer of the cervix in the area.
People buy beer and organise barbecues to watch the spectacle.
Agrochemicals like those used to speed up the ripening of sugar cane also have effects that have yet to be studied. Farmers whose fields border sugar cane plantations in central-western Venezuela have successfully sued for compensation for damage to th eir crops caused by such chemicals. The countryside ''is being left all by itself,'' writes Nalliba. Venezuela's rural sector is home to a mere 15 percent of the country's 23 million inhabitants, with peasant women accounting for ''the poorest of the poor who migrate and swell the tides of urban marginality, easy prey to trades which are neither intellectually nor economically valued,'' she adds. This ''aggression'', she says, comes in the form of oil exploitation which is experiencing a new boom as it mov es from a state monopoly to an industry in which private capital is playing a growing role.