The weekly newsletter of the Mexico Solidarity Project

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August 21, 2024 

Nature and/or Economic Development?

Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Photo: CIMMYT

What is wealth? Native peoples traditionally don’t define wealth as the accumulation of money and the things money can buy. Instead, having natural resources in perpetuity to ensure the tribe is sustained far into the future is their version of “wealthy.” Achieving that goal requires stewarding the land. Without nature’s bounty to feed the people, what good is a mountain of gold?

Capitalism discarded this commonsense idea. With guns in their hands and money on their minds, capitalist exploiters would take and take and take again, exhausting nature’s gifts and causing the native peoples — who depended on the animals, fish, and edible plants in their environment — to starve or to abandon their lands.

Western purveyors of economic development attempted to mitigate starvation in the Global South countries they dominated by increasing food production and, of course, increasing their own profits and control over agriculture in the process! They didn’t return the land to the people, the obvious solution. Instead, they turned to technology. The US exported the so-called “Green Revolution” to Mexico beginning in 1940. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations funded experimental projects to replace traditional agricultural practices, introducing hybridized corn, expensive farm equipment and chemicals to boost output. They claimed that millions were saved from starvation.

The actual result? The agronomist who first went to Mexico, Norman Borlaug, got a Nobel Peace Prize. What did the Mexican people get?  New methods that ruined Mexican farmers by making them dependent on imported seeds. The new farm machines were best suited to large-scale agriculture, and new foreign-owned agribusinesses employed farm workers, often the former masters of the land, making them dirt poor in both senses. Forests were cleared, toxins leached into soil and water.

Today, Mexico’s southern region, the poorest area of Mexico, needs economic development and more healthy food. Is there a way to grow the economy, feed the people, and steward nature? Does it have to be either/or?  In this week’s interview, agroecologist Cecilia Elizondo explains a new “both/and” model of development being tried in Mexico.

For a deeper dive into current news and analysis in English, check out our media website. And definitely see the new English podcast ¡Soberanía! (Sovereignty) with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth.  They entertain, while dismantling the lies and distortions about Mexico fed to us by the mainstream media.

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Cost of Development: Destroying Nature?

Your research centers on agroecology and political ecology in the Yucatán Peninsula, and you have looked at how the new Tren Maya has affected food production, the environment and the lives of local people. First, what is agroecology?

Agroecologists study the relationship between agricultural crops and the environment. We also study the producers and social movements that determine which crops are grown. By emphasizing natural processes that protect the soil and water and avoiding contaminants like chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, we promote respect for the ecological processes of the ecosystem.

These ideas are not new. Historically, when Mayans peopled the Yucatán, they relied on nature’s processes to grow food. Some say that as their populations increased, they destroyed the environment, but newer research appears to contradict that theory.

How has modern development affected agriculture and the environment?

Human activity of any kind affects the environment; the question is how to minimize that impact. Recent activities focused only on short-term profit have been extremely harmful.

For example, there’s the mining of limestone, the main component of the soil in this region. In Playa del Carmen, a US company’s mining operation covering 2000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) extracts limestone from deep in the earth. This damages underground rivers and cenotes.

We have tourism based on a 1960’s model of unlimited growth. Natural and human resources are concentrated in a few places and in a few private companies.

Tourists swimming in an open cenote

A study from 1980 to 1992 shows that Cancún grew from 60,000 to 1,000,000 residents within 13 years. In Xcaret, near Cancún, developers used dynamite in the 1980s to create water parks so hordes of tourists could swim in underground rivers. As a result, suntan lotion suffuses the water and damages the environment for plants and fish. Hotels and luxury homes hog the fresh water and electricity.

To get to these places, developers built roadways that cut through delicate environments. Vehicles kill wildlife and spew carbon into the atmosphere.

Many have criticized the huge Tren Maya project that circles through the Yucatán Peninsula. Won’t it exacerbate the problem of environmental destruction?

Ha! The criticism of the Mayan Train is about politics. It’s not really about the environment.

First, the train is a public benefit; it is not for private gain — an essential distinction.

Critics say that installing pillars deep into the earth as foundations for the train platforms is destructive, but these are the same structures that have been used for the foundations for the hotels and luxury homes.

The section of the train between Tulum and Playa del Carmen, where 500 hectares, or about 1200 acres, had to be appropriated, has sparked the biggest conflicts. But limestone mining is four times as big. Unlike mining or the tourist industry, the Tren Maya project has taken measures to mitigate the train’s impact. Almost 2 million hectares of new national protected areas were designated between 2021 and 2024 in the five states the train passes through.

To protect ancient cultural sites, the National Institute of Anthropology and History has rehabilitated twelve archaeological sites. In short, the Tren Maya has produced many more environmental and cultural benefits than negative impacts.

Social impacts? Planners are required to work with the communities near the stations. Local people want the jobs that come with tourism but also want limits to growth, and rather than privately owned luxury hotels, they want to develop community-based cooperative ecotourism projects. This has been supported by the planners.

Will ordinary citizens ride the train?

It’s a passenger train with different ticket prices for different populations. For example, approximately from Palenque to Mérida, it costs 670 pesos for locals, 900 pesos for Mexican nationals (1040 pesos by bus), and 1200 pesos for tourists. Critics leveled the accusation that the train was mainly for tourists, but already 80% of the riders are Mexican.

Train travel is comfortable because you can move around and buy refreshments. It’s safer, trains have fewer traffic accidents. And it’s faster, too. People can jump on a train from, say, Candelaria in Campeche to go to a concert in Mérida. Before, the trip took 12 hours by car or bus, but now it is doable in a day. You can imagine why the private transportation industry opposes the train!

Recently, you worked on a policy — which became law — for adequate and sustainable food (Ley General de la Alimentación Adecuada y Sostenible). What is in that law?

Article 4 of the Constitution gives us the right to food, and this new law, published on April 17, 2024, shows how to implement this right by transforming our food system. The law requires that 15% of what the government buys must come from small and medium-sized producers. It scales up the use of bio-inputs and agroecology practices and scales down the use of agrochemicals.

Mexico is where the global “Green Revolution” program began. It increased food production but did so by imposing the use of the cancer-causing chemical glyphosate as a herbicide. It used GMO seeds, which produce sterile plants, so seeds must be bought year after year from the multinational companies. This model leads to neither sustainability nor self-sufficiency.

Agribusiness has promoted the idea that without chemicals, we can’t produce enough food to feed the people. But it’s not a matter of needing to produce more. It’s about managing the food we have! A lot is lost in harvest, and so much is wasted — think about all the food in our refrigerators that gets tossed while so many families go hungry. According to the UN Environment Program report from March 2024, while a third of humanity faces food insecurity, an equivalent of one billion meals go to waste every day — one fifth of our food is thrown away!

Cecilia and the UN Committee on Food Security. Photo: Forbes

Transforming our food system requires a big but necessary change. Government entities, farmers, health providers, advocates and environmentalists — as well as every one of us — must pay attention to improving our ways of managing food. It will take all of us to work with, not against, our natural environment.

Household ingredients make joyful art!

Of course, this being Mexico, the lines and shapes are strong and fluid, the colors vibrant. The pieces can be temporary or permanent with different uses and intentions. But the basic plot, the theme that runs through most paper mache art, that puts a smile on your face, that shivers down your spine, comes from the combo of simple but elegant, familiar but strange, modern yet ancient.

Reaching outside of life, trying to climb out of ourselves — no, that is not cartonería. Celebrating each day, each person, each neighborhood, is. Masks about fables. Skeletons that honor the dead. Children’s games. Religion. Politics. TV images and superheroes big and small.

Family of Pedro Linares makes paper maché, Film at Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Life can be hard but also funny, elemental, mysterious, joyous.

Cartoneria brings badly needed joy to our world!

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Compiled by Jay Watts.

Mexico Will Wait for the Venezuelan Electoral Authorities to Pronounce Telesur English. President AMLO said that on Tuesday, July 30, the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, the Organization of American States (OAS) and more countries came out to demonstrate in favor of a candidate, an excess and a show of interference from the White House.

Étienne von Bertrab, Proceso: ¿sin remedio? Pie de Página. A partir del seguimiento a la cobertura del Tren Maya y partiendo de tener algo de conocimiento y elementos para hacerlo, constato que el periodismo actual de la revista Proceso es tendencioso y mediocre. ¿Será que hemos perdido del todo el semanario que tanto nos significó?

Mexico Anger Over U.S. Funding for Anti-Corruption NGO Newsweek. "I think that there is open intervention by the U.S. government in the sovereign affairs of Mexico," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.

Pablo Ferri, La comisión de la Guerra Sucia reinterpreta medio siglo de violencia en México El País. “Los medios coercitivos del Estado no solo fueron puestos al servicio de sus fines políticos, sino también al servicio y defensa de un modelo de desarrollo económico extractivista, de acumulación de capital y en el que el Estado se hacía partícipe de la economía criminal”, señala el informe, sobre su idea principal.

Chamber of Deputies Approves Historic Reform for Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Communities Mexicanist. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies approved a reform to Article 2 of the Constitution, recognizing indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples as subjects of public law with legal rights, autonomy, and assets.

Nancy Gomez, Claudia Sheinbaum: la travesía hacia Palacio Sin Embargo. Desde la primera vez que Andrés Manuel López Obrador la nombró como una posible sucesora, en julio de 2021, Claudia Sheinbaum ha recorrido un largo camino para llegar a la Presidencia de México como la primera mujer presidenta del país y norteamérica. Acá un recorrido desde sus años de lucha hasta su cargo como Jefa de Estado.

Maquiladoras exporting more goods to US with fewer workers WGNO. A pessimistic POV from the business press.

Salvador Corona, AMLO: Nosotros no queremos volver a ser colonia de ningún país extranjero El Universal. De cara a la elección presidencial de Estados Unidos, el mandatario federal Andrés Manuel López Obrador aseguró que van a tener buenas relaciones con todos los gobiernos del mundo, y aseguró que "nosotros no queremos volver a ser colonia de ningún país extranjero".

Eli Wolfe and Azucena Rasilla, Duongs accused of wage theft at Mexico factory linked to Oakland FBI investigation The Oaklandside. Six workers in Tijuana, who were hired to design and assemble container homes for Evolutionary Homes, were owed $626,970 in Mexican pesos, about $33,000 U.S. dollars.

Álvaro Delgado Gómez, El club de adversarios: Empresarios antiAMLO y cercanos al PRIAN son donantes y también beneficiarios de MCCI Sin Embargo. Los principales empresarios que financian con multimillonarios recursos a la asociación civil Mexicanos contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, fundada en 2016 por el magnate Claudio X. González Guajardo, tienen dos características: son enemigos del Presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador, en algunos casos desde hace décadas, y también son beneficiarios de los gobiernos de PRI y PAN, sobre todo desde el sexenio de Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and Mexico’s national sovereignty.

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs, Susan Weiss.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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