05/23/00 -- Mexico's Forests at a Watershed

***********************************************

WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Mexico's Forests at a Watershed

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

05/23/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Mexico loses approximately 1.5 million acres of forests annually,

about 1.2% of its forested land. Following is a very good overview of

rampant, out of control Mexican deforestation, and the new peasant

ecology movement that is fighting for ecological sustainability.

Being an ecologist, especially if one is also a peasant, can be a

criminal offense. Read on...

g.b.

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Mexico's Forests at a Watershed

Date: May 16, 2000

Byline: JAMES F. SMITH, Times Staff Writer

A peasant activist turned the world's eyes to the loss of the nation's

woodlands, where the problems facing authorities are as dense as the

trees once were.

BANCO NUEVO, Mexico--The rivers and streams were withering in the

valleys of the harsh Sierra Madre above Mexico's Pacific Coast, and

Rodolfo Montiel was convinced that he knew why.

The 45-year-old peasant reasoned that, as loggers cut down more of the

towering pines in the hills above his village, the barren

mountainsides could no longer soak up and store rainwater. Instead,

water cascaded off the treeless land during the rainy season, dragging

tons of topsoil with it, and the terrain stayed sun-scorched through

the six-month dry season.

Their complaints ignored, Montiel and his fellow self-described

peasant-ecologists took bolder action. They set up impromptu

roadblocks in early 1998 to halt the loaded logging trucks that umbled

down through their Coyuquilla River valley each day. That provoked the

wrath of the logging interests. A year ago, Montiel was arrested by

soldiers, imprisoned and allegedly tortured, and the logging trucks

began rolling again.

But instead of crushing his unlikely movement, Montiel's arrest has

galvanized a cross-border coalition of environmentalists and human

rights activists in his defense. As he sat in jail awaiting trial last

month, he received the prestigious $125,000 Goldman Environmental

Prize for courageous activism and was named an Amnesty International

prisoner of conscience.

Indeed, Montiel's case has turned a global spotlight onto what was a

shadowy trail of destruction through one of the hemisphere's important

forests. The damage to these woodlands, along a 200-mile swath of

Guerrero state above the resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, has

become a worst-case symbol of systematic deforestation in Mexico, from

the Lacandon rain forest in the south to the Sierra Taruhumara region

in the northern state of Chihuahua.

Environment Secretary Julia Carabias Lillo acknowledges that Mexico

loses 1.5 million to 1.6 million acres of forests annually, or about

1.2% of its forested land. The United States, by contrast, has a net

gain in forests each year.

Carabias notes that Mexico's deforestation rate is among the highest

in countries with diverse ecosystems, and she calls the loss of

forests in Guerrero state one of the world's 10 most serious

deforestation challenges.

Drug Traffickers, Rebels Use the Land

The array of problems in these jagged mountains is certainly daunting.

Drug traffickers frequently set forest fires to clear ground for

growing marijuana and poppies to make heroin, and guerrillas from

Mexico's only currently active armed rebellion hide out here. Village

feuds add another layer of complexity. The army provides the only law

enforcement in these parts, residents say, and its priority is hardly

the trees.

With few alternatives to earn cash, peasant leaders of the communal

land cooperatives known as ejidos have signed contracts to sell

hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of logs. Montiel's followers say

some ejido leaders greedily encourage exploitation of their lands to

fill their own pockets. This allows clandestine loggers to flourish in

a climate of corruption and intimidation where control by forestry

inspectors has all but vanished.

"When I arrived here 38 years ago, this place was full of marshes. It

was wet even in the dry season," said Perfecto Bautista Martinez, a

farmer here in Banco Nuevo, a hamlet of 20 families on a high bluff

just 30 miles inland but three punishing hours by motorbike up a dirt

track into the mountains.

"But then they started to cut down the forests and clear fields, and

now it's just dust," he said. "We are ecologists now because we have

seen the symptoms of the destruction all these years. We had to

think of our children: Do we want them to receive a desert from us?

That's why we organized."

Bautista Martinez was one of Montiel's allies in forming, in February

1998, the Organization of Peasant Ecologists of the Sierra of Petatlan

and Coyuca de Catalan. The group drew in farmers from the Coyuquilla

River valley, which runs from the coastal town of Petatlan up to the

crest of the Sierra Madre range, and from the "hot lands" northeast of

the 10,000-foot mountain ridge toward the town of Coyuca de Catalan,

75 miles inland.

The organization's first target was Boise Cascade Corp., the Idaho-

based wood conglomerate that had contracted in 1995 with the region's

union of ejidos for exclusive rights to buy the forests' long,

straight pine logs--some of them a yard thick. Boise Cascade pulled

out shortly after the protests and roadblocks began in early 1998,

citing an irregular supply of wood. Domestic buyers soon filled the

void.

The peasant ecologists blamed Bernardino Bautista Valle, the ejido

boss from Montiel's village of El Mameyal, for selling the wood rights

for the benefit of a handful of insiders. Bautista Valle in turn went

to the army and police to accuse Montiel and his group of being drug

traffickers and members of the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR,

which operates in the area and killed seven police officers near here

in March 1999.

The Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center in Mexico City, which has

taken up Montiel's cause, said Bautista Valle is one of the old-style

caciques, or local chieftains, who dominate isolated rural areas and

who are often in corrupt cahoots with state authorities--in schemes

such as logging more wood than allowed by law.

The human rights center said gunmen loyal to the cacique killed one

ecologist near Banco Nuevo in May 1998, and a soldier, allegedly

accompanying Bautista Valle, killed another ecologist in July that

year. A Banco Nuevo ejido official, Jesus Cervantes Luviana, told La

Jornada newspaper in August 1998 that soldiers had tortured him to

force him to point out four ecologist leaders, including Montiel, who

the soldiers said "were chiefs of the hooded ones," a reference to EPR

guerrillas.

Earlier this year, Bautista Valle's son was murdered as he descended

from Banco Nuevo toward El Mameyal. Villagers think that it was a

revenge attack for assaults against the ecologists. The cacique has

fled from the village and his whereabouts are unknown.

Detained Activist Says He Was Framed

Montiel was arrested by the army in the village of Pizotla near Coyuca

de Catalan while he was selling clothes to earn a living. A peasant

was shot to death during the raid, and Montiel's friend, Teodoro

Cabrera, was arrested and remains jailed with Montiel in the regional

city of Iguala.

Montiel was charged with illegal possession of a military weapon and

with planting marijuana and possessing poppy and marijuana seeds. He

insists that the weapon and seeds were planted to frame him.

Carabias, the environment minister, said: "The president himself is

informed about the matter. It will receive every attention, from the

perspective of justice, to ensure the law is applied without bias."

Last month, she promised activists that she would conduct an audit of

logging permits issued for the region to determine if they were

properly granted and if the logging was being carried out in

compliance with the permits. She said she expected preliminary results

in a few months if her inspectors can get there and work safely.

"We almost can't get there," she said. "Every time we send inspectors

there, death threats are made. I have had to change my personnel there

several times because of death threats.

"Given the sum of poverty, caciques, the absence of a democratic

political process, drug trafficking and guerrillas, deforestation is

just one more variable," Carabias said. "The problem is of such a

magnitude that a person like Montiel becomes an expression of the

broader problem."

The problem is indeed far broader than Guerrero. Deforestation affects

much of Mexico.

To be sure, the major source of the deforestation is not logging but

the clearing of land for farming. This was the main cause in the

Lacandon forest in Chiapas state, Mexico's only tropical rain

forest. Mexico has lost 70% of its humid jungle, researcher Alejandro

Villamar said.

In Chihuahua state, the Sierra Taruhumara region is Mexico's largest

forested area. A report issued last month by researchers from the

state human rights commission and the Center for Policy Studies at the

University of Texas found that 411 complaints of improper use of

forest resources were filed from 1996 to 1999 but that none has

resulted in prosecution.

"There is no concerted policy to promote sustainable development in

the Sierra Taruhumara," the report said. "To the contrary, the

voracious, anarchic and corrupt exploitation of forest resources has

been encouraged to satisfy the demands of the market and the interests

of the companies."

In the central states of Michoacan and Mexico, just north of Guerrero,

illegal logging has wreaked havoc in the reserves that make up the

winter migratory sanctuary of the monarch butterfly. The federal

attorney general's office reported recently that it seized 4 tons of

logs illegally cut in a national park, one of the few cases of

judicial action.

"The logging has grown terribly in Michoacan," said poet Homero

Aridjis, an environmental champion. "The sawmills have increased in

size and number. The logging trucks pass constantly. In the night, 30

trucks pass through the [butterfly] sanctuaries to cut clandestinely.

"This is part of a dynamic destruction of forests in Mexico that is

out of control," Aridjis said. "The authorities are not capable of

stopping this destruction. Many of these woodcutters are armed, or

work for powerful companies. And many governors and politicians are

involved in the woodcutting business. The issue cannot be separated

from the political problem-- the lack of accountability of bureaucrats

and of governors who are like feudal politicians."

In 1998, the worst forest fires in half a century charred areas of

central and southern Mexico, sending palls of smoke northward that

darkened skies in Texas and the central U.S. The careless setting of

fires to clear fields has been a major cause of deforestation, as

flames leap out of control. Delicate highland forests in Oaxaca state

suffered extensive damage that year.

Carabias has waged an information campaign since 1998 to get farmers

to stop using fires to clear land, with some signs of success.

But drug traffickers are immune to such pleas. And in Guerrero, the

lure of profits from poppy or marijuana cultivation appears to have

been more persuasive, encouraging traffickers to set fires and open up

fields for their illicit crops.

"In every ejido, everybody knows who are the ones with plantations of

poppies and marijuana," said Sylvestre Pacheco, an environmental

activist in Zihuatanejo who works with Montiel and other peasants.

"The Sierra is a zone with an absolute absence of authority."

But Pacheco said the problem of illegal logging could be resolved with

serious political will by erecting roadblocks at the few exit points

for logging trucks out of the mountains and checking that their

cargoes have appropriate government permits. He said a successful

pilot project in Guerrero, the most conflict-torn region, could serve

as a model for the rest of the country.

Formally, the state government contends that forest resources are

underutilized. Official figures say permits have been granted for 8.8

million cubic feet of logs annually, while as much as 26.4 million

could be cut on a sustainable basis.

That view is mirrored on a national level. The Environment Ministry,

which is responsible for protecting forests and for encouraging their

safe exploitation, says only one-third of the 66 million acres

suitable for forestry are being exploited "due to lack of technology

and investment."

The government's 1999 Forestry Atlas notes that Mexico is a net

importer of wood products, and employment in the industry fell by 24%

from 1989 to 1997. Carabias believes that well-supervised development

of the industry, with adequate technical support, could be healthy for

local communities and for the forests.

But to assertions that forest resources are underutilized, activist

Pacheco responded: "We are sure they are cutting far more wood than

they have permits for, and they haven't reforested. The permits say

they have to manage the forests, and inspectors are supposed to mark

with a brand each tree that can be cut. But there are no authorities

to supervise this cutting."

Soil in Region Is Especially Fragile

Moreover, the steep river basins in Guerrero are especially

vulnerable, according to researcher Villamar, who works on forestry

issues for the center-left Democratic Revolution Party. He has also

written extensively on deforestation. "The soil there is very fragile,

and the destruction of the forests uncovers the soil very quickly,

causing terrible erosion that affects the campesinos [peasant farmers]

below."

Villamar said that more than 60% of the water basins in Mexico are

damaged by erosion, pollution and deforestation and that "an increase

in deforestation in damaged basins causes more damage, like a sickness

that is contagious."

Montiel and his cohorts understand that relationship, Villamar said,

"so their battle was not for the forest itself but for the whole

ecosystem. It makes no sense to fight for the land if there is no

water."

Awareness of the issue is growing as the impact worsens.

"I see a real desperation among the people--there is a lot of

immigration to the United States," said Gustavo Jimenez, a

Roman Catholic priest whose parish embraces the highland villages.

The largest customer for logs in the area is Boards & Veneers of

Guerrero, a Mexican-owned plywood factory near Zihuatanejo that has

contracts for 1.7 million cubic feet annually, all consumed

domestically. The year-old factory employs 500 people and is one of a

handful of industrial businesses on the entire Guerrero coast.

"The forest is like an orchard--you have to care for it," said factory

supply chief Jesus Maria Basterra. "It would make no sense for us to

see the forests exhausted. We need the forests to be used rationally.

And the only resource those people have is to exploit their forests.

You don't see any other form of life up there."

He said the company is working with the ejidos to reforest areas being

logged near the mountain peaks in the villages of Durazno and

Corrales, north of Petatlan. "And we don't buy a single meter of wood

that is not branded by the inspectors."

In Rodolfo Montiel's home village of El Mameyal, halfway up the

Coyuquilla River valley, ecologist organization co-founders Jesus

Cortez and Jesus Sanchez say people have come to support the group

despite the intimidation of the last two years.

"The government treated us very badly and called us guerrillas or

narcos. They said we were not ecologists but 'hooded ones,' " Cortez

said. "But we have never protected the drug traffickers or their

crops.

"Our organization started because the people realized that, years ago,

there was plenty of water in the river," he added. "When these logging

companies came, the forests were being destroyed. If the forest dies,

all the people will die too."

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

This document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non-

commercial use only. Recipients should seek permission from the

source for reprinting. All efforts are made to provide accurate,

timely pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all

information rests with the reader. Check out our Gaia's Forest

Conservation Archives & Portal at URL= http://forests.org/

Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org