NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8640

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mexico-Environment pt.2
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DOCUMENT--PART2

The problems in the hinterland

      While Mexico City's problems are serious, in other areas, less well
prepared to confront them, the environmental crisis is equally or more
critical. A very expensive toll highway between the capital and Toluca was
just completed; it now costs $5 to drive 14 km. on this road, but if you can
afford to drive a car, you can also afford this new levy ~this must be one of
the most expensive tolls in the world. The toll road is part of a very
ambitious project to for private enterprise to construct 4000 km of very
profitable toll roads all over the country; the Toluca segment is part of a
program to connect to Mexico City to Guadalajara and the Pacific coast. It is
now possible to drive from Guadalajara to the coast resort of Manzanillo in
2.5 hours: a great port, contaminated by an obsolete thermoelectric plant,
which is now accessible for $30 in tolls. If you can afford the car and the
hotel, the toll is only a small additional expense. They are building these
toll roads so that trucks can bring goods into Mexico to be sold to the new
elites and so that products can be taken out from the new manufacturing
plants. But no question is raised about the quality of life which will be
created.

      In Monterrey and Guadalajara the problems are ubiquitous. The arid
region around Monterrey generates a great deal of dust, compounded by the
large cement factories in the metropolitan region, creating a serious problem
of particulate contamination. Water shortages in the area require vast water
works, bringing the liquid from long distances and impoverishing the basins in
which the water is captured, similar to the problems created by the water
system constructed to serve Mexico City. Water consumption in Guadalajara
threatens the viability of Mexico's largest natural lake, Chapala.

      The far-reaching 9 kilometer explosion of a sewage line in Guadalajara
is another example of a widespread problem. Underground storage facilities and
pipelines throughout the country are inadequately protected and receive
virtually no preventive maintenance. The leakage occasioned by inadequate
construction techniques and urban planning procedures has now instilled fear
throughout the society; this tragedy, together with far too many less
spectacular incidents elsewhere in the recent past, is beginning to stimulate
demands for greater corporate and public respect for established health,
safety, and ecological norms.

      People in the twin cities along the northern border get it from both
sides, and it is hard to know where it is worse: contaminated surface water
and aquifers, illegal industrial discharges, dirty air, and unsafe factories;
radioactive wastes also abound, with proposals for a nuclear dump in Texas,
and stolen radioactive wastes found in an open air dump on the Mexican side.
The maquiladora industry, which is the lifeblood of the border area, is
growing rapidly. During the past decade it grew about more than 13% annually
and now employs about 450,000 workers. The Mexican government is very proud of
its promotion efforts in this area. I think that it is a shame. A shame,
because this enormous, but inadequate, investment only resulted in the
creation of 450,000 jobs in ten years. And yet that is less than one-half of
the new entrants into the labor force in just one year: last year in Mexico
1,200,000 people joined the laboring population. A shame, because we the
generous Mexican taxpayers financed the infrastructure for these factories, a
very inadequate infrastructure at that, which did not include water treatment
plants, garbage dumps, sewage processing facilities, toxic waste sites, or
even parks and sufficient schools and hospitals for the workers.

      But ecological devastation is not limited to the urban areas. There is
not a single river in Mexico which is uncontaminated. Soil erosion,
contamination of the seas, damage to endangered species, disappearance of
germplasm, lead poisoning from breathing or eating, deafness from
environmental noise, polio, tuberculosis, malaria; the list is horrendous and
very long. In fact, it is only limited by our knowledge of illness and our
ability to diagnose damage to people and our environment.

      The country has lost more than one-half of its tropical rain forests.
The Mexican government would like to declare non-existent its 8 million
indigenous people. But unlike the trees, they have been able to resist the
concerted efforts to wipe them out, during centuries. Even now, in spite of
many institutions which attempt to protect them, their very existence is in
question because of the systematic devaluing of the products which they
produce as part of their traditional productive activities.


                        The New Environmental Awareness

      There is a new consciousness of environmental problems. There is an
environmental movement. In Mexico City, one day every month, people are asked
to bike to work; some do. On Sundays, the Avenida de los Insurgentes is partly
closed so that families can enjoy bike excursions. School children are taken
on trips to surrounding bare mountains to plant trees. Throughout the
countryside, open air landfills and polluted water ways surround virtually
every community, seemingly impotent to stem their growth or eliminate these
eye sores which are significant foci of infection.

      The poor suffer these outrages more than most. And the poor are the
majority of the population ~some 50 million people (of a total population of
about 83 million) officially fit into this category. Not only have millions of
jobs been lost: jobs were destroyed in the industrial sector with the
'modernization' process and the precipitous opening up of the country's
markets to imports, which has forced thousands of small and medium sized firms
to close.

      High government officials insist that they too have a greater
consciousness about environmental problems. This, in spite of their continuing
penchant to implement policies forcing emigration from the countryside,
spreading social disorganization, and further deteriorating working and living
conditions. How could there possibly be any meaningful sensitivity to
environmental problems when some of its root causes are so firmly embedded in
official policy? The unholy balance between rural and urban society forces
millions to crown into the cities. The misguided definition of economic
progress leads to unabated production of more contaminants. In fact, a leading
indicator of progress in 1991 was the record production of automobiles by the
foreign-owned Mexican industry; but this success cost us more than $1.5
billion in foreign exchange, as the value of imported parts and vehicles
exceeded sales abroad.
      This new consciousness about the gravity of the environmental problem is
an ever present theme in the discourse of official Mexico in recent years.
With great pomp and circumstance, the President was named as one of the men of
the year in 1990 by official environmentalists, after his decision to order
the closing of an obsolete petroleum refinery in Mexico City. But the daily
operations of government belie this commitment. Subsidies lead to a misuse and
waste of scare natural resources throughout society; even worse, in the
interests of promoting the new export-oriented development model, the
automobile industry and fruit and vegetable producers are encouraged to
increase output with subsidies which promote high energy use and the excessive
use of water (water subsidies alone are more than $1.5 billion). In effect,
poor and middle class Mexican tax payers and subsidizing the consumption of
more affluent consumers in other parts of the world! Such generosity by
Mexican taxpayers, explicitly designed by a well-trained group of government
technocrats, is further contributing to the egregious plunder of our
environment.


                          The Environmental Discourse

      I do not think that the root of the problem is what we can see, or what
we talk about. I think that it is much more profound. Some people say that
Mexico's salvation is at hand because of the greater consciousness that now
exists about the problem. Now people are willing to talk about it. Finally,
the Mayor is willing to admit that Mexico City is polluted. That is major
political progress. The next step will be to admit that AIDS is also a major
social problem. The border with the United States has also been 'discovered'
as a problem, after hundreds of thousands of people have been permanently
maimed, in one way or another.

      The environmental problem in Mexico, however, is not simply a problem of
the muck in the air, the floss in the air, or the lead in the kids brains. It
is much more serious: it is the lycra in the garments, the preservatives in
the bread, the twinky-wonders instead of the fruits and vegetables, the
processed but contaminated ham in the sandwiches instead of the beans in the
tortillas. It is the lack of adequate public transportation for poor people.
It is the official prohibition to farm corn, and the abandonment of land which
could produce "huitlacoche" (a highly regarded fungus which is an important
part of traditional diets) and other by-products in the milpa, or traditional
corn field. It is the production of self-basting double breasted turkeys which
displaces backyard chickens and turkeys. It is the importation of massive
quantities of hog tripe and the introduction of grain based factory-like hog
raising systems which make hog production based on the processing of urban and
agricultural organic wastes uncompetitive. It is the introduction of garbage
disposal units to process organic wastes and channel them into our sewer
systems instead of obliging people to prepare them for composting or other
forms of recycling, which is the historical solution. It is the burning of
automobile tire as a fuel for bricks. The list seems endless.

      The environmental problem cannot be solved by solely looking at the
detritus. In the USA, economic incentives, market mechanisms, are the magic
instruments of the economic healers; in this light, Mexico's problem ~and that
of the rest of third world~ is that there is not enough money to pay that
price, or, more pertinently, the rich are not willing to tax themselves to pay
the bill and the poor cannot pay more taxes. But, the problem is not simply
the things which come out from the production stream. Rather, we must ask what
are the ways in which the productive system is conceived; even, what is
progress itself? Where are we moving to? Should Mexico, in its large
industrial areas, be producing automobiles? Should people be allowed to drive
on city streets? The problems are the same in the USA, as in Mexico, but they
take on a different dimension here, either because there is enough money to
hide them, or to force people to behave in a socially somewhat more
responsible way.

      These questions and the dilemmas posed by the environmental problem are
quite difficult. One example offers a taste of this predicament.

      In the process of international integration, the impending free
      trade area, should Mexico defend its paper and pulp industry, and
      therefore maintain the jobs of 150,000 people, or should we give
      it up completely and import from Canada and Scandinavia? How do we
      make such a decision; who should make it? If you decide in favor
      of international opening, many poor people will be out of work and
      millions of consumers will get cheaper products and the country
      will have more trees; a small group of international firms will
      benefit but smaller national firms will be sacrificed. But without
      a drastic change in forestry policies and logging practices, the
      problems of private enrichment and natural destruction threaten
      the wide areas of the country. How do you trade off the benefits
      of some against the costs imposed on others; who is to make these
      decisions, and on the basis of what criteria?

      In the face of mounting evidence of the depth of the environmental
crisis, civil society is forcing producers to attempt to appear more
responsive. But, in the final analysis, the issue is whether 'the people' have
enough power to force business to pay for the necessary adjustments, and
whether these same actors are willing to make the required sacrifices in their
own lives. The Industrial Chambers of Commerce (CANACINTRA), for example, in
response to the record levels of contamination in March 1992, announced that
they were willing to relocate, but that they did not have the resources to pay
the costs; they demanded government grants. The government does not magically
pay for anything; we taxpayers must pay the bills, but the tax structure in
Mexico, even more than in the USA, shifts this burden away from the owners of
the country's businesses. When some firms are actually forced to relocate, it
seems like a tremendous victory for the people, but General Motors' decision
to move from Mexico City may actually be profitable, not only because of cost
savings in the new plant, but because of the profits realized from the
appreciation of the value of the land on which its plant was sited.

      What is the official reaction to this serious environmental problem? In
order to assuage the fears that Mexico will be exporting pollution, the
Salinas-Bush administration is finally throwing resources at the problem in
Mexico City and along the border. Environmental non-governmental organizations
(ENGOs) from around the world are fanning this anxiety. Now they too are
flocking to Mexico, to "solve" the country's problems, so it can confront the
brave new world, the society that is to become part of the FIRST WORLD
tomorrow! Many of these ENGOs announced that they are coming to help Mexico
join the First World in an environmentally responsible way. Only a few are
participating with local groups so that Mexicans will be better prepared to
deal with their own environmental problems.