Milenio.com , Dom, 08/08/2010 - 06:15
Agustín del Castillo, sent
The region, which extends north of the vast jungle isthmus Zoques, was the scene of a failed collectivist experiment supported by the vast destruction of tropical rainforests.
Uxpanapa, Veracruz .- Let's face it, do the impossible, "says even today in revolutionary language, haughty, messianic, the rusted sign located on the road from the village La Esmeralda numbered -From 1 to 15, with almost Soviet-rationality, evidence of prematurely aged Uxpanapa collectivist experiment.
The region is an ancient rainforest wilderness transformed in less than five years by the visionary planners of the government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976), who dreamed of establishing a Jauja food sovereignty that would give the country and, incidentally would show that Indians could be the "new man" indispensable to a planned economy, centralized, with no sign of individualism and controlled by government bureaucracies.
But these tropical ecosystems have soil thin, precarious, but apparently something else with the huge, lush forest that sustain it: not the most suitable for agricultural production. The other, but is that the Indians have their own culture and an ancient world view, and would not be empty, passive and obedient recipients of the doctrines of progress, which have always distrusted.
consider these two elements do not explain what happened after 1974 in the northern part of the great forests of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
"The extraordinary development of the tropical vegetation noted as having a high fertility soils. However, the poorest and most fragile than temperate regions. This is mainly due to the jungles or forests in warm-humid areas can not by themselves increase the amount of humus in soils. There exists a constant balance between production of organic matter, which forms the humus-and assimilating it. If you alter the ecological balance degenerate vegetation, soil and water cycles, the damage may be irreversible, and there are cases of jungle areas that come to transform themselves into true deserts ... ", noted in 1988 and Ivan Restrepo Miguel Székely ("agricultural frontier and colonization," Eco Centre), regarding the "miracle of Uxpanapa."
However, the impossible was made. In a relocation program Chinanteco fifteen thousand Indians who lost their settlements by the construction of the dam Cerro de Oro, Oaxaca, established a new regional geography: a network of roads, houses, pipelines, roads, drainage, electricity, schools and clinics . Many of the settlers were airlifted to inaccessible areas for centuries. And they began clearing. First, with handmade instruments of indigenous people themselves, then with heavy machinery. "They put a long string and pulled between two very large vehicles, such as caterpillars, and carried clubs more than 30 meters, "said Don Luis Cayetano, a resident of the Six (La Laguna), while the stranger shows the vast plains with cattle, crops and houses that opens before your eyes, where recently there was a solitude of forests and wild beasts.
addition to the planned migration of Chinanteco, kept many ejidos mestizos and other ethnic groups, and still in the eighties was a migration Zoque Chiapas, ejected by the eruption of Chichonal, which occupied the spaces and isolated mountain .
The forest was reduced, and experienced the effects that always finds the peasant wisdom. "We saw that finished trees was running out of water and climate amol. The government sent us in recent times plants for reforestation, but not stuck, because they are very tender and, although they throw water with compost, just ... just what does grow is born alone, "says Agustin Angeles Fernandez, resident of village Two.
At 40 years, several studies talk about the loss of 200 thousand ha of forests in the country, but they survive about 60 000 ha, maintaining connectivity to wildlife and the great massif of Los Chimalapas in Oaxaca, and with the biosphere reserve of El Ocote, in Chiapas.
This is the "miracle Uxpanapa. "
Promised Land in 1971, the Echeverria government joined the Interministerial Commission on Population Centers New Ejido (I agree). "In Coinco programs you had as a possible barn southeast of Mexico" because it was pointed out that large tracts of unexplored land, fertile and with great potential, Restrepo and Székely point. "In the lush tropical vegetation, these lands may be machined to expand and diversify the national agricultural area" and out of its backwardness, poverty and isolation. Also reduce the food deficit, agricultural backwardness, migration to cities and unemployment. So
born, along with Uxpanapa, other projects such as Los Naranjos (Veracruz) and Tenosique (Tabasco). And in that same spirit, in Jalisco were razed 35 000 hectares of tropical forest and down to open the coastal plain of Tomatlán production, irrigated by the dam Cajon de Peña (opened in 1975), which is still underutilized.
Uxpanapa was the jewel in the crown. A witness of the project in their execution times described: "The wood was cut and removed for use in trucks. The remaining trees, many of which measured 30 meters tall, were uprooted in chains and dragged by tractors, dumped in the grass dry and burned. The land was cleaned up to look like a grid of fields of 20 acres each, surrounded by a windbreak. The trash was buried with heavy disking and land was planted to rice and corn. In 1976 he was the first year that tried to produce in that area and more than nine thousand hectares were planted [...] the early stages of the cycle had progressed with impressive ease. The seeds had been planted with tractors and from airplanes. At regular intervals were applied fertilizers and insecticides and fungicides to control pests and diseases, "says Peter T. Ewell, National Research Institute of Biotic Resources (INIREB), in an article entitled "Modern Agriculture in the rainforest."
However, he adds, gradually accumulated frustration after frustration: a plague of mushrooms, rice blast had damaged an important part of the harvest. The rains had not stopped, and threshers, "designed in the U.S. for quite different conditions, were not working well." The abundance of nitrogen applied and were clearing remnants of the rice plants grow more than usual. The space required harvesters drained and free of water and weeds. A rod that was left over from the last clearing disable them more than half a day.
His visit is in 1977. "In Oaxaca all [the farmers] had always worked hand in more than three ha, here each family was 20 ha. Had the opportunity to earn more money than ever and the responsibility to provide basic food grain in Mexico, "he told the bureaucrats to Chinanteco. They were protesting the remoteness of their homes over the transfers, the low payment per kilo harvested, the high cost of food.
officials traveling with Peter were frustrated: "They could not understand why the Indians were responsible, why all they had to do. They had been treated with all consideration since they had been brought to Uxpanapa by boat and by helicopter for three years. The government had invested millions of dollars in roads, infrastructure, clearing and credit, for a group who had lived in poverty could become members [sic] of a thriving community. "
The Observer describes the transformation of the landscape: "The first impression was amazing: the order imposed on nature. The forest had been pushed back in line uneven, showing the red earth and white limestone .... " After attending
a meeting between government officials and ejidatarios: "The corn was developed poorly and unevenly, it said the agronomist, was really because of them [farmers] did not follow instructions on fertilizer. It is a common misconception that farmers expect to plant measured 20 cm before applying nitrogen in this climate it is important to do so before the plants develop strong .... "
was brewing a union of ejidos, which, according to government agents, would soon be national economic power, with a collective system, large loans and high marketability, he said the landowners meeting. "... The ejidatarios were silent a moment. Then a man in his 40 years stood [...] said that many people did not like the collective system [...] some people were lazy and took advantage of working. "
agronomist Papaloapan Commission replied that they were spoiled, the farmers always take things slowly. "Mexico and never progress. Discipline must take responsibility .... "
INIREB The observer ends his description with a visit to an ejido composed Totonac who joined the wave of colonization. "The first years were very hard: there were no schools or doctors, and the river was impassable two or three months. " Now they are integrated into a village called Chinanteco, but "had invested tremendous amounts of time and energy in clearing land and planting their gardens, and did not want to live among strangers whose language and customs."
The visitor also discovers that the varieties of maize planted Indians were more resistant than hybrid imposed by the government: "They were much more resistant to various problems: it gave better on land that had been dismantled by hand instead of machine, and yielded more than the hybrids, "he reported.
Papaloapan Commission, the government body responsible, was charged in the 80's ecocide, to encourage contractors to irregular seas of public budget and the "systematic destruction of Indian culture." So the feat was impossible.
life who does not give
Don Augustine relates that when he came to reside in 1975, the Town Two, was famous story of a peasant who died attacked by a "tiger" (jaguar). "They said that in a town that was named Feb. 24 killed a woman, but was long ago; since then, are attacking the animals [cattle]. "
Because these lands, after the collapse of collectivism, have become cattle. And aggressively remain open pastures are cut down and burn trees and wildlife are persecuted "Daner."
In San Francisco de la Paz, at the end of the road that begins at La Esmeralda, where the re-internment Veracruz to Oaxaca, are today the outrages of the "tiger."
"For eight or ten months a tiger killed me a bullock as 240 kilos, he was still nursing, it is recognized that the cow fell out with the animal but it is very agile, and knocked down a ravine and kneeling left ... I ordered two dogs and they are scrubbed, but not killed, but when I go, I had eaten a good part of the cow [...] four months ago say they returned to kill the other is a female anda kidding and he's doing much damage, "said José Montero García, community member of the congregation.
wildlife researchers have detected an almost miraculous adaptation of the tapirs, the largest wild land animal in Mexico to prevent the Panthers: the cattle are mixed. And, as they are more accustomed to face the beast, to ranchers like that custom, which benefits their herds. Who
think, 40 years of predation, something was in the region of Uxpanapa, north of the jungle zoque. But American biologist and geneticist Jennifer White, University of Washington, has spent four months last year in the area. "The main problem is the change in land use, but long to live: I saw a spider monkey, a small tapir, many people with parrots or monkeys as pets [...] I am surprised that, although it is prohibited for people is something Common caught and brought to the jungle, "he explains.
The idea is to salvage what is left and in a job heading the University of Veracruz, a proposed protected area.
seems to be superhuman. But the project Uxpanapa born between aromas of utopia, as their slogan says revolutionary in a very old road, into the jungle extinct: "Let's face it, do the impossible."
Mexico:
retreating forests
tropical vegetation is the most depressed and devastated Mexico in the last century. Ignoring it is the ecosystem that has the largest reservoirs of carbon on the planet, settlement policies have been aggressively destructive and sub-humid forests in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as low or dry forests in the Pacific slope, which includes Jalisco.
"The area is humid tropical ecosystem that has the highest deforestation rate in the country, as currently only has 10 percent of the forest from Mexico", the researcher Gonzalo Flores Mondragón ("Biodiversity land of Mexico and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ") It is estimated that in the early twentieth century was of 200 thousand to 220 thousand square kilometers of these ecosystems, of which there are now just about 20 000 km2 (the fourth part of the territory of Jalisco and Colima four goals on about).
destruction was systematically from north to south. And besides colonization and, in particular, cattle ranching, are the findings of oil fields as triggers of change. La Huasteca, between San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, which was the evergreen forest to the north of the globe now retains only remnants of their old splendor, it has become 90 percent to agricultural activities and trade. In this area, the Mexican oil industry was born (Ebony, SLP). After the drastic reduction in Veracruz was lived up to the jungles of the isthmus and Lacandon, all victims of major infrastructure projects and excessive agricultural endowments.
The devastation of the lowlands has reduced to 35 percent of its original area and continue to be highly disturbed despite being the richest wilderness areas in endemic species (species) that has the country.
damage
The devastation of the forest Zoque Uxpanapa may be one of the files of the most important environmental destruction in the modern history of Mexico. The more conservative sources estimate 80 000 hectares cleared up authors point out that the clearing of the colonizing project reached 200 thousand ha.
The government Echeverria and Lopez Portillo subsequently, claimed that the development of the forests was the start of an agricultural empire impact national.
Today, there remain only 60 thousand hectares of forest in Uxpanapa, in a district that is among the 500 most marginalized of the country.
