It is the latest work by the Argentine muralist Martin Ron: a painting in San Nicólas de los Arroyos to denounce the shallow waters of the Paraná river.
A boy picks up a native flower from the river as he looks at his reflection in the water. In the Argentine city of San Nicolas de los Arroyos, about 240 kilometers north of Buenos Aires and on the banks of the Parana River, a huge mural “tells” a devastating problem: the historic shoal of the river
The signature is that of Martín Ron, a famous Argentine street artist who has given hundreds of murals all over the world and who now, with a huge painting by 40 meters high on the side of a building in the city center of San Nicolas, he wanted to draw attention to the devastating decline of the river. Affected by the lack of rainfall in Brazil, the Rio Paranà reached its lowest level in nearly 80 years this year.
The second largest river in South America after the Amazon, the Rio Paraná - which forms the border between Argentina and Paraguay - has in fact been dry for weeks. A video shot on social media last month showed how a group of people walked across the bed of the
We are walking on the bed of the Paraná river. The image is really very sad, says a woman as she shows the shores of San Marcos, Paraguay, the island of Caraguatay and the outskirts of the city of Monte Carlo, north of Tierra Colorada, in the Argentine province of Misiones. The reach of the Paranà is so small that it allows you to see the stones at the bottom of the river and to walk along it in some places.
At the end of July, the Argentine government declared a state of water emergency for 180 days in the entire region of the Paraná basin, where there has been the most significant decrease in its waters in the last 77 years. The river, which begins in Brazil before snaking through Paraguay and then Argentina to the ocean, carries around 80% of Argentina's agricultural exports of soy, corn and wheat.
Currently, in the port of Paraná, the capital of the province of Entre Ríos, the flow of the river is -32 centimeters below the hydrometric level, the lowest since the 1944 record, when it reached -1,40 meters. According to the Instituto Nacional del Agua de Argentina (INA), the Paraná shoal is the worst since 1944 and includes three possible scenarios for the next 4 months in different river locations, the third of which is the most critical and even worse than the one that occurred. in 1944: in November in the municipality of Rosario the level could reach -1,59 meters, compared to -1,39 meters 77 years ago.
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When I arrived in this beautiful city, I was worried about the dramatic change that the landscape has undergone due to the historic rain of the Rio Paraná, the river that gives life to much of this region - writes Martín Ron on Instagram. The causes? Many: climate change, drought, deforestation, reduction of wetlands and a lot of disinterest in asking questions.
The consequences? Too many. This mural is part of a new series of murals I'm working on where the protagonist is the reflection. And how appropriate it is to get involved to invite you to reflect on what happens when a river runs out of water.
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