Erzsébet Bori

The Bursting of Dams

Ádám Csillag: Dunasaurus I-II; Danube Torso I-II; Requiem for the Blue Danube; From the Danube Blows the Wind; The Bridge Péter Hegedus: Inheritance: A Fisherman's Story Tibor Kocsis: New El Dorado

 

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What was lacking was not environmental awareness, but a civil society allowed to articulate its own interests and defend them against the administrative and economic establishment- the State, as it was then called.

What happened in the years before and after the changeover resembled the bursting of a dam. Ironically, it started with the construction of one- in the area where the Danube formed the border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, upstream of a region rich in history and in exceptionally beautiful scenery. The idea, inspired by the gigantic Soviet hydroelectric power plants, had been first mooted in the fifties. Rejected at the time by Ernő Gerő, responsible for the economy under dictator Mátyás Rákosi, the project was forgotten for decades to come, only to get off the ground in the seventies, after some heavy lobbying, in Kádár's beaucratic state. As was to be expected in a party-state, plans for the barrage between Bős (Gabcikovo) and Nagymaros proceeded apace- ignor- ing ever-louder protests from hydrologists and the public. The Slovak (then Czecho- slovak) portion of the dam was completed and commenced operating. For the Hungarian section, preliminary work on the terrain began; the Danube Bend, gracefully overlooked by the 15th-century Visegrád Castle, soon started to resemble a lunar landscape. The project, known behind the scenes simply as "the Works", finally crossed the threshold of public consciousness. An inert public was stirred, and the protests became a kind of reservoir in which issues of politics, national independence and the environment were inseparably intertwined with passive resistance and an incipient freedom movement. The outcry grew until it swept half the country. An entire community, subjugated for decades and treated like children, completed its accelerated growing up, in civic conscious-ness and responsibility. Yet, it seemed for a while that it had all been in vain. In effect, a change in the entire political system was required to kill the Hungarian half of the project. (See Gábor Szabó's article on pp. 144-150 of this issue.)
All of this has been documented in great detail by Ádám Csillag, whose monumental series of films took on the nature of a river- sometimes flowing along one bed, sometimes breaking up into main and sec-ondary channels. His first film was banned; the political climate changed. When it was shown on television in 1989, the effect was overwhelming. It is not too much to say that the film played a major role in bringing construction to a halt. Its sequels dealt with the extensive environmental effects of the barrage on the Slovak side; the final one documented the reconstruction and inauguration of the Mária Valéria Bridge between Esztergom, Hungary and Párkány (Stúrovo), Slovakia, which had been destroyed during the Second World War (Dunasaurus I-II: 1984-88; Danube Torso I-II: 1991-93; Requiem for the Blue Danube: 1992; From the Danube Blows the Wind: 2000; The Bridge: 2001).

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In New El Dorado, we learn that the Ros¸ia Montana˘ Gold Corporation plan was hatched by a businessman of Romanian origins. The plan presupposes a Romania that, we have to hope, no longer exists; for the plan is such that it could only be carried through in a country inhabited by the hapless and by those paralysed by poverty. It depends on a corrupt bureaucracy and corrupt local big-wigs for its success. The corporation brazenly proposed to erase from the map six villages either in part or in their entirety- churches, cemeteries, mansions, old Saxon burghers' houses and all. Four mountains were to be "disappeared" by explosives and an enormous valley to be blocked off by a dam 180 meters high to serve as a 518-hectare depository for toxic slime. (By way of comparison, the purifying plant at Nagybánya/Baia Mare covers only 6 hectares.) All this was to be accomplished in 17 short years, the company was to pay no taxes on the gold extracted and was to fold its tents and leave as fast as it had come once the job was done. Even the World Bank, hardly squeamish by nature, declined to invest. Unfortunately, there is not much cause for reassurance: the Swedish chairman of the European Parliament's environ- mental committee makes a rather low-key appearance in Tibor Kocsis's documentary. The European Union supports the revitalisation of the mining industry, he says, as long as environmental regulations are observed. It is hard to imagine, though, what Brussels guidelines might exist for the destruction of centuries-old villages, or how a toxic lake filling an entire valley makes for environ- ment-friendly storage.

Appropriately, New El Dorado opens with images of the cyanide spill from Nagybánya/Baia Mare into the Tisza before show ing the storage facility at Ros¸ia Montana˘, designed to be a thousand times larger. The director of Inheritance, Péter Hegedus, went downriver to Algyő, where he met Balázs Mészáros, the central figure in a film he was about to make. Balázs is one of the 260 fishermen who were robbed of their livelihood and family inheritance by the cyanide spill in 2000. My own father and grandfather grew up near the Tisza at Csongrád, not far from there, where you can see one arm or another wherever you go. People use boats to get to their orchards and potato patches, and during the season, they eat fish every day. They used to, anyway. For although the cyanide has passed, and new fish populations have been introduced, the giant catfish, bottom feeders, are gone, victims of all the heavy metal in the river-bed. Balázs was especially hard hit, since he had specialised in big fish. While his companions went back to work after a year's hiatus, making do with whatever the slowly recovering river could offer, Balázs was unable to re-establish himself. He couldn't come to terms with the state of affairs and refused to accept that everything could go on as if nothing had happened. He found himself at loggerheads with the chairman of the fishermen's co-operative and sorely tested the patience and love of his family. His fellow fishermen shook their heads- he's off his rocker, they said. Balázs started writing a book about his "inheritance". Balázs brought home a stork that had been electrocuted by high voltage wires and put it in the refrigerator where he had once stored fish. He wanted to have it stuffed and donate it to the school. But the stork is a protected animal, meaning it is state property, alive or dead. Balázs had to take the official route and wait several months for his permit.
In the meantime, his electricity was switched off. (The refrigerator and the stork in it went to his parents' house.) Then, the gas was disconnected. Balázs would go to his parents' house to do his laundry and to eat a hot meal. When his father wasn't looking, his mother would secretly put some money in his pocket. Edit, Balázs's wife, who believed in him and supported him the longest, collapses before our eyes, and Balázs still doesn't know what to do with himself. He works on his book by the light of a kerosene lamp, and when the film crew heads off to Nagybánya/Baia Mare, where the Aurul company has its headquarters, he insists on going along, in the guise of a soundman, to see with his own eyes where the cyanide had come from. Here he learns that the catastrophe was not caused by an act of God such as an earthquake or a flood. Instead, it was simply triggered off by an unexpected warm spell: after some freezing January days, the temperature had risen by a few degrees, and a sudden thaw had set in.
Balázs travels to Budapest to speak to the lawyers representing the Hungarian state. He learns that the case might drag on for several more years, and even if Hungary wins, the fishermen won't get any compensation, because no one had filed any claims on their behalf. Meanwhile, the chairman of his coop succumbs to stress and steps down, to be succeeded by Balázs, who travels 600 kilometers along the river, organising the fishermen to sue for damages before the deadline for claims has passed. From there he decides to go to Australia to speak to the directors of Esmeralda, the corporation that owns the Romanian company Aurul.
By doing so, however, he causes major problems for the film director. Moral reasons had motivated Péter Hegedus to make his documentary in the first place. As an Australian citizen, Hegedus felt personally responsible for what one of his homelands had done to the other. In Australia, he was able to open some doors that otherwise would have remained closed to foreigners, but when he visited Esmeralda's head- quarters in Perth, he found that the com- pany hardly existed. Three people occupied a few rented rooms in an office building, including the director and a loyal secretary. In the background are the faceless share- holders who know nothing and are respon- sible for nothing, except for their own mo- ney, which they invested in the hope of huge profits. One wonders where the bil- lions claimed in damages by the Hungarian state and by individual Hungarian and Romanian citizens are going to come from.
The storage facility in Nagybánya/Baia Mare is as big as two soccer fields. It now stands empty. Esmeralda's shares are no longer traded on the exchanges. Investors and plaintiffs will only see money if the company restarts operations, using the same technologies. Meanwhile, three years have passed in the film. It is now Christmas 2003. The path of Balázs Mészáros has come to an end. He made it to Australia, where he pre- sented a fisherman's knife to the manager of Esmeralda. The manager is confident: the shares of the company are once again listed. Péter Hegedus has fulfilled his mission with the creation of Inheritance, a fisherman's story. Balázs and the audi- ence have visited all the important sites; ample room was left for the expression of doubts, moral dilemmas and questions- to which those of New El Dorado by Tibor Kocsis (with its images of the stunning landscape and the beautiful town) can now be added.

 

Erzsébet Bori
is the regular film critic of this journal.