Pacific Coast Communities Confront Shrimp Farm Threat
Call, Wendy
A rusted, faded sign arches over the entrance to the town of Uni6n Hidalgo, in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca. The sign tells visitors in Zapotec and Spanish, "Welcome to Gubifia Ranch." Local...
...1 The group had gathered to discuss industrial Wendy Call, <wendycall@world.oberlin.edu>, is a freelance writer who divides her time between Massachusetts and Oaxaca...
...Aquaculture floods Indian villages," G. Cohen, Multinational Monitor, July-Aug...
...4. "Shrimp-The Devastating Delicacy-The environmental damage caused by shrimp farming," Mike Haler, Mathew Gianni and Lorenzo Cardenal, Greenpeace report, May 1997, <www.greenpeaceusa.org/biodiversity/shrimp/index.html...
...The violence shocked both sides, propelling them to the negotiating table...
...Even the former port director works as a fisherman...
...Its old winches serve only to raise and lower the wealthier fishermen's motorboats into the water...
...They are natural industries created by our God and therefore they must be respected...
...The term pescadora-a fisherwoman-refers to a woman who sells fish, as many of the community's women do...
...It regurgitates a poisonous stream of these ingredients, mixed with shrimp excrement...
...The Champerico dock now stands rusting and abandoned...
...Mangroves in Misery," p. 30...
...3 2 The numbers simply don't add up...
...Seems like those pesticide sprayers earned by the tank or something...
...The company that planned to build Uni6n Hidalgo's farm, Camar6n Real del Pacifico, had not made its plans public...
...Otra vez disturbios: Protesta en Champerico," by Julio Rodas, Nuestro Diario, June 18, 2001...
...The farm is located at the edge of Estuary, the usual fishing grounds for many Champerico residents...
...After the tour of the Guiee Estuary, Gubifia XXI sent large color photographs of the blackened palm and mangrove to Mexico's Attorney General for Environmental Protection, PROFEPA...
...Local residents say their Pacific coast town started 150 years ago as a rural quarantine area during an influenza outbreak...
...Sofia Sdnchez returned from his trip to Sonora with a long- Olhovich, a Gubifia XXI volunteer, says, "The shrimp term plan: first, a shrimp farm in Uni6n Hidalgo, then farm-according to the company's plans-will last 20 several others in nearby towns...
...Call your security guards to come defend you...
...2 North American and Japanese appetites for shrimp have outstripped wild populations, increasing the demand for farmed shrimp...
...Even this leverage won't solve all of Champerico's problems...
...It all poured into the sea, and that's how everything was left empty" of fish and shrimp...
...Tr6pico Verde launched an international letter-writing campaign to Guatemala's president, demanding that he pressure CAMARSA to negotiate with the community and obey the law...
...In Uni6n Hidalgo, it's huge: local autonomy...
...In addition to CAMARSA's 220 acres of shrimp tanks, there are four other industrial shrimp farms between Champerico and the Mexican border: a total of 1,250 acres of ponds...
...26, 2001...
...Though the PRI lost the national elections enjoyed...
...Mangroves in Misery," p. 30...
...In 2002, there were 51,800 acres of artificial shrimp ponds in Mexico...
...They accused CAMARSA of breaking environmental laws, because it had cleared mangrove trees around its property...
...Mangroves have become an endangered ecosystem, with intensive aquaculture-fish and shrimp farming-adding to the already heavy destruction caused by unsustainable farming practices...
...9. "Shrimp Aquaculture...," p. iv...
...After the confrontation between the fishermen and CAMARSA guards, the community demanded negotiations with the company...
...The crowd waiting for the results of the meeting tried to take one of the CAMARSA representatives hostage...
...cutting it down has been prohibited since 1989...
...6 Thailand remains the world's top producer...
...The police arrested several CAMARSA employees, including a North American manager...
...Especially an indigenous community...
...AVEDICHAM has turned its attention to the much broader issues of poverty and economic depression...
...Camilo de Le6n, a community leader who was at the meeting, described how the crowd beat the man and forced him to walk barefoot on brambles...
...On May 2, 2002, a shrimp farm located just south of the CAMARSA facility fired warning shots at fishermen working nearby...
...The average is ten...
...28, 2001...
...Shrimp-once a luxury food-became the most-consumed seafood in the United States in 2001, surpassing tuna for the first time...
...SAnchez toured a 2,500-acre shrimp farm in Sonora...
...It improves wild catches, but not shrimp farm production...
...3 1 There are only about 29,500 acres of mangrove forest in all of Guatemala...
...The pesticide tanks were often filled with DDT...
...2001...
...Pacific Coast Communities Confront Shrimp Threat 1. In Uni6n Hidalgo, all the fishermen are indeed men...
...While the region around Uni6n Hidalgo still has large, healthy stands of mangrove, much of Guatemala's coastal mangrove has been depleted...
...Headlines like "Looting and destruction" and "Tension continues: Adolescent victim of riots buried" blared above lurid photos of young men burning books in the streets and a mother wailing over her son's coffin...
...2 5 The local clergy, bus drivers union, restaurant owners association and teachers organization all joined the fishermen's cause...
...Without fish," added a third...
...un muerto y 9 lesionados," La Jornada, Mexico City, Feb...
...Gubifia means "very poor" in Zapotec...
...His role in this story of edible protein produced by intensive shrimp farms and shows how national politics become entwined in these mangrove forests, acre for acre, are roughly equal.16 sorts of local struggles...
...Camar6n Real del Pacffico was structured as a cooperative, including both local and non-local members...
...As the federal government removes the legal basis for Mexico's communal land tenure, problems have increased...
...Uni6n Hidalgo managed to stop a shrimp farm before it gained a foothold...
...Vol XXXVI, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2003 21 Vol XXXVI, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2003 21REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENT In May 2001, Champerico residents had not heard about ecological footprint models...
...Even at midday, birds filled the air...
...He explained that the lifespan of a shrimp farm is about a decade, after which the shrimp farmers "abandon the land...
...Jn Uni6n Hidalgo, the local environmental group Gubifia XXI organized the May 2001 meeting at Fisherman's Church...
...On February 13, 2003, a crowd of 2,000 people demanding SAnchez's resignation waited at the municipal offices for the state-appointed auditors...
...The fishermen countered that the company was denying them the right to earn a living...
...5. "Country Profile: Philippines," Simeona Aypa, Department of Agriculture, and Santiago Baconguis, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Philippines, and "Country Profile: Thailand," Sanggontanagit Tanan and Anand Tansutapanich, Department of Fisheries, Thailand, both at <www.mangroveweb.net>, and "Mangrove Management and Development in the Philippines," Dioscoro M. Melana, et al, paper presented at "Mangrove and Aquaculture Management" meeting, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand, Feb...
...14- 16, 2000...
...15, 2003 and "Organismos indigenas analizan combate a discriminaci6n y lucha por autonomia," La Jornada, Feb...
...Though past community organizations in Champerico have failed because of internal conflict, AVEDICHAM has thus far managed to avoid this pattern...
...Juan Carlos Cantti, a Greenpeace representative, told the group that the Mexican government's long-term goal is 700,000 acres of intensive shrimp farms in the country...
...Enrique Bonilla and Camilo de Le6n agree that the people of Champerico need to find other ways to earn a living...
...In a decade or so, the shrimp farm literally drowns in its own waste...
...4 The Philippines has lost 77 percent of its coastal mangroves since 1967, while Thailand lost 50 percent between 1961 and 1993.5 As the aquaculture industry exhausts suitable coastline in Asia, it looks increasingly to Latin American shores...
...After more than a year of pressure from Gubifia XXI, in June 2002 PROFEPA fined the company 25,000 pesos (nearly $2,500) for destroying the mangrove and for failing to complete an environmental impact statement...
...1995, p 22-24 and "Camaronicultura en Oaxaca," William Griffin, Cuadernos del Sur, Aho 7, No...
...3 0 According to an October 2001 ecological footprint analysis of the region, the five shrimp farms in northwestern Guatemala would need approximately 44,300 acres of healthy mangrove to provide clean water and shrimp larvae, and to process wastes, over the long term...
...Once again, the company and the community sat down to negotiate...
...3. "Shrimp Farming and the Environment, A World Bank, NACA, WWF and FAO Consortium Program 'To analyze and share experiences on the better management of shrimp aquaculture in coastal areas,'" Synthesis report, 2002, p. 22, <www.enaca.org/shrimp...
...One May morning two years ago, a crowd of nearly a hundred people filled benches and chairs lined up in front of Uni6n Hidalgo's whitewashed Fisherman's Church...
...In Champerico, that effort is relatively small-scale: monitoring shrimp farm activity and slowly seeking economic alternatives to fishing...
...Between September 2001 and February 2002, CAMARSA removed the piles of brambles and pulled back the fences...
...The community members demanded that CAMARSA stop dumping wastes in the lagoons around the shrimp farm, and allow them to keep fishing nearby...
...Municipal police began to shoot at them, supposedly to prevent them from taking over the government building...
...In its 12-page decision, SEMARNAT concluded the plan would violate Mexican environmental law and that the company provided "false information concerning the environmental impact of the project...
...that accurately describes most of Uni6n Hidalgo's 15,000 residents...
...Without mangrove," said another...
...Letter from the Subsecretaria de Gesti6n para la Protecci6n Ambiental of SEMARNAT, to Desarrollo Acuicola Oaxaca Pacifico, Mexico City, March 3, 2003...
...Let's not forget, then, that mangroves are life, are fire, are pure environment, are blood...
...Fishermen and women took their places in the shade under a bright red tarp, alongside several representatives of Mexican and international environmental organizations...
...When they fumigated, there were fish kills," says local fisherman Enrique Bonilla...
...The stories of two places, Uni6n Hidalgo and Champerico, Guatemala, show how intense grassroots opposition can be-and how violence is often the response to community outcry...
...That state has 11,370 acres of pond...
...2. "Shrimp, Salmon, Titapia Rise in Popularity," press release from the National Fisheries Institute, Aug...
...They even promised to clean the pump filters regularly...
...The Champerico uprising attracted regional press coverage and a couple of brief wire reports...
...They declared Uni6n Hidalgo an "autonomous municipality...
...CAMARSA began to fear the grassroots movement in Champerico when it realized that there were supporting organizations that could garner international attention," says Piedad Espinoza of Tr6pico Verde...
...6. "Shrimp Farming and the Environment," p. 1. 7. "Shrimp Farming and the Environment," p. 12 and "Shrimp Aquaculture, the People, and the Environment in Coastal Mexico," Billie R. DeWalt et al, Report prepared under the World Bank, NACA, WWF and FAO Consortium on Shrimp Farming and the Environment, 2002, p. iv, <www.enaca.org /shrimp...
...22, 2001, p. 30...
...For two days the protestors smashed windows and lit bonfires...
...The two places are very different: Uni6n Hidalgo is a close-knit Zapotec community...
...The company had piled up the brambles to prevent fishermen from reaching their fishing grounds...
...Six weeks after the people of Uni6n Hidalgo forced Sdnchez out of town, the federal Environment and Natural Resources Secretary (SEMARNAT) put an end to Desarrollo Acuicola Oaxaca Pacifico's plans...
...As Camilo de Le6n likes to say, "It is a lot easier to put a shrimp farm in than take it out...
...Aziz Curioca, Director, Consejo Estatal de Pesca, Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, author's interview, July 2000...
...Perhaps eight feet wide-about as wide as a canal connecting a shrimp farm pond to the lagoon would be-each path stretched straight toward the lagoon...
...Uni6n Hidalgo has also maintained some of its land for common use...
...Champerico is, essentially, a town of ecological refugees...
...Though the company claimed it had purchased that coastline, land purchases are complicated business in Oaxaca...
...Between 1965 and 1996, Guatemala's Pacific coast lost about half its mangroves...
...Champerico's residents returned to their regular fishing grounds: the estuaries near the shrimp farm...
...Cantd finished the list: "And salinated...
...According to de Le6n, the protestors told the man, "Now, you are going to feel what we, the fishermen, feel when we 20NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENT cross here...
...9 "One of the priorities is Oaxaca," Canti continued...
...They pooled members' money to purchase just over 300 acres of land, apparently illegally, from several local plot holders...
...They found five paths in all, each about 500 yards apart...
...The ponds would be seeded XXI contacted journalists and garnered national media with shrimp larvae imported from Sonora or the Yucatan coverage for their cause...
...2 8 That single article affected CAMARSA's Miami-based owner in a way that all the coverage in Guatemala never could...
...In June 2000, the General As for the higher standard of living that SAnchez noted, Association of Mexican Workers and Peasants the former fishermen who work at shrimp farms repre(UGOCM)-an organization closely associated with sent a small portion of those who worked in the area Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-had before the farm was built...
...The 25,000 residents of Champerico, Retalhuleu, are not indigenous, but ladinos-people of mixed descent...
...Intensive aquaculture operainvited SAnchez to visit operating shrimp farms in the tions employ only one or two workers per acre of shrimp northern state of Sonora...
...Thus far, legal challenges and social opposition to both initiatives have prevented the government from eliminating communal lands altogether...
...It also describes the residents of the other indigenous Huave and Zapotec villages that line the coast near Uni6n Hidalgo...
...Many local people make their living catching fish and shrimp in the coastal lagoons or harvesting palm products, firewood or salt from the wetlands...
...1999, p. 7. 31...
...social and economic effects of industrial shrimp farms...
...Champerico desperately needs economic alternatives to the shrimp farms and to subsistence fishing...
...7 In 1998, the production of shrimp farms surpassed that of artisan fishermen for the first time in Mexico...
...The estuary has thick stands of black, white and red mangroves-the only three species that grow in the region...
...When several people tossed their fishing nets too close to the facility's fences, the CAMARSA guards fired warning shots, confiscated their equipment and physically threatened them...
...1 3 An ecological footprint gives a rough idea of the efficiency and sustainability of an enterprise by including all the inputs required and wastes generated...
...The resulting meeting between government, community and CAMARSA representatives spun out of control...
...Not like us, who just get jealous of each other...
...The shots killed a 29-yearold man and injured nine others...
...What is happening in Campeche is what is happening in Oaxaca, is what is happening in Nayarit...
...2 7 As a result, on July 21, 2001, the New York Times ran a long story about Champerico's struggle...
...2 0 s the story unfolded in Union Hidalgo, a very different struggle against a shrimp farm took place in another Pacific coast town, 240 miles away in Guatemala...
...Noticias, Guatemala, May 9, 2001 and Nuestro Diario, May 11, 2001...
...Champerico tiene la palabra," Prensa Libre, Guatemala City, June 1, 2001...
...The agency denied the company permission to construct the shrimp farm...
...Jacob Scherr, Natural Resources Defense Council, quoted in "Guatemala-Conflict sparked by shrimp farming," New York Times, July 21, 2001...
...They organized more meetings bringing together local Hundreds of Oaxacans who live in fishing villages have residents, people in nearby communities facing the same done the same, as part of a government-funded program issue, and representatives of national environmental and to promote industrial shrimp farms in southern indigenous rights organizations...
...Champerico's fishermen continue to face the legacy of the failed plantation industry...
...Camar6n Real del Pacifico had already cleared land for a project that few in Uni6n Hidalgo even knew was happening...
...3 An operating shrimp farm requires huge quantities of artificial nutrients, pesticides, antibiotics, and fresh and salt water...
...Under this system, residents have access to plots of land...
...They had, however, seen their real-world implications: security patrols, barbed-wire fences, and barricades of brambles separating them from the mangroves and waters that sustained them...
...Since Guatemala did not have an Environment Minister until 2001, there was no one to enforce the law...
...According to SAnchez, years...
...There are too many people fishing, with too little to catch...
...The community requested that the state government intervene and complete an audit...
...Shortly afterwards, PROFEPA investigators arrived in Uni6n Hidalgo to document the damage, listing several laws Camar6n Real del Pacifico had broken...
...CAMARSA managers claimed they did this to prevent people from stealing the shrimp from the farm's tanks...
...Industrial shrimp farms are looking to expand their operations in all those states...
...Past the palm stands tended by the palmeros and the salt flats where Uni6n Hidalgo women work, the group discovered a large area of burned mangrove and palm...
...Dissatisfied with what CAMARSA had agreed to, the fishermen organized a demonstration at the company's gates...
...Even government and industry sources now acknowledge that, as the World Bank puts it, "mangroves do not make good sites for semi-intensive and intensive shrimp farms...
...Only the strong survived...
...Se enfrentaron policlas y colonos en Uni6n Hidalgo, Oaxaca...
...They further agreed to enclose their water pumps with floats, reducing the amount of oil spilling into the lagoons...
...Tropical mangrove forests around the world have been bulldozed, burned and blown up with dynamite to make way for shrimp farms, artificial ponds for cultivating shrimp...
...According to Elmer L6pez, then director of Greenpeace Guatemala, in nearly a decade spent working with coastal communities, he had never seen a group of subsistence fishermen and women extract so much from an aquaculture company...
...As typically happens with older operations, in 2000--after more than seven decades-it still conhowever, Sonoran shrimp farms have been plagued by trols Oaxaca...
...for municipal president, all of them taking an anti-shrimp farm stance...
...As Camilo de Le6n explains it, "Mangroves are forests that give life to human beings, protect them from natural disasters, give life to other beings that live within them...
...The left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution's campaign slogan typified the strategy: "PRD supports the fishermen in opposition to the shrimp farm...
...They have begun with two ideas: found a community library and raise scholarship funds for their children...
...The shrimp farm became the pivotal issue disease and other technical problems...
...Caos y tensi6n," Nuestro Diario, Guatemala, May 9, 2001...
...Gana el PRI en Uni6n Hidalgo," Tiempo: Diario Independiente delIstmo, Juchithn, Oaxaca, Oct...
...Armando Sdnchez, a school administrator, was the local representative for both the old and new companies...
...Many local residents-including Gubifia XXI members-believed the report failed to account for a lot of government funding...
...1 2 Sdnchez was impressed both by the Sonoran In the midst of Gubifia XXI's organizing campaign, farm's productivity-about 1.2 metric tons per acre Armando SAnchez secured the PRI candidacy for municannually-and by the standard of living the workers ipal president...
...2 6 n Z s 8 4 Two non-governmental organizations in Guatemala City, Greenpeace and Tr6pico Verde, collaborated with the Champerico residents during and after the conflict...
...Ecuador is now in sixth place, just ahead of the Philippines...
...2 3 Five weeks later, in mid-June, negotiators reported the results of their discussions to the town...
...He told the group, "You are not alone...
...A coalition of local activists, fishermen, and farmers, Gubifia XXI was the first to sound the alarm when rumors of a shrimp farm started floating through town...
...One month before the meeting, Gubifia XXI members had visited the proposed site for the shrimp farm with a group of fishermen and palmeros, people who earn their living harvesting fronds and hearts of palm...
...The third key was that Champerico joined the Red Manglar, which threatened to turn the CAMARSA case into a very highlevel struggle...
...Many in Champerico are first-generation fishermen and women, the children and grandchildren of farmworkers who moved to the port town after the collapse of lowland agricultural plantations in the 1970s...
...16, 2001...
...1 not to let Sinchez's vision become reality...
...Though 80 percent of the world's farmed shrimp still comes from Asia, most of the rest comes from Latin America...
...1 8 In December 2002, the end of his first year as municipal president, Sdnchez gave his administration's financial report...
...That figure comes from a World Bank-funded plan in the early 1990s, which was unsuccessful...
...They went door-to-door in peninsula...
...In 20-acre ponds with earthen walls and shallow canals con- addition to filing complaints with PROFEPA, Gubifia necting them to the lagoon...
...Los impactos de la actividad camaronera en Champerico, Retalhuleu, Guatemala," Tr6pico Verde, and AVEDICHAM, 2001, p 2, <www.tropicoverde.org...
...1 5 When SAnchez had been convinced that the benefits of the the inputs and wastes are factored in, the net production shrimp farm outweighed the costs...
...When applied to industrial shrimp farms, the model shows those operations are not more efficient over the long term than people fishing with nets and canoes...
...Mangrove is the only legally protected ecosystem in Guatemala...
...Elmer L6pez, Greenpeace Guatemala, author's interview, Nov...
...Anti-shrimp farm organizing grew into something larger in both cases...
...None of the land can be sold to a private business or an outsider without community agreement.10 Nonetheless, illegal land transactions are common in the region...
...30, 2002...
...on the contrary, they are resources of incalculable value and difficult to restore...
...Registro de Granjas Camaroneras," MAGNAUNVPESCA: La Pesca y la Acuicultura en Guatemala, Nov...
...As in most small towns, though, no secret is safe in Uni6n Hidalgo...
...The fact that both communities identified the problems on their own, set their own agendas and decided when and how to involve the NGOs made these collaborations successful...
...Mangroves in Misery: Human impact upon mangroves on the north-western Guatemalan Pacific Coast," Stuart Thomson, Stockholm University, Oct...
...Our Ecological Footprint, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, New Society Publishers, 1996 (See <www.ire.ubc.ca/ecoresearch/ecoftpr.html> or <www.rprogress.org/programs/sustainability/ef...
...This time, the event did not lead to a riot...
...We all know that the worst thing you can do to land is throw salt on it...
...Beyond the concessions they secured from CAMARSA, Champerico residents gained something even more important from the experience: leverage...
...Shrimp Aquaculture...," p. 5. 12...
...Wetlands and Coastal Zones," UICN: World Conservation Union, 2001, <http://uicnhumedales.org/english...
...The company never did...
...The municipal police reacted with bullets, killing a 14-year-old boy...
...See, for example, <www.earthisland.org/takeaction/new action.cfm?aalD=61...
...Changes to Mexico's constitution before the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, along with the "Indigenous Law" signed in 2001, threaten communal land tenure...
...Actualizaci6n sobre Champerico," letter from Carlos Albacete, Tr6pico Verde, sent to REDMANGLAR e-mail list serve, Sept...
...On May 8, 2001, hundreds of people poured into Champerico's dirt streets...
...At low tide, the mangrove roots poked from the mud like delicate stalagmites-evidence of a healthy ecosystem...
...Both communities have set precedents...
...2001, p. 24...
...With the arrival of aquaculture companies, the fishermen confronted yet another challenge to their survival...
...between 35 and 190 acres of healthy mangrove to provide the raw materials (shrimp larvae, fish food, and Like a small number of Uni6n Hidalgo residents, clean water) and process the wastes it creates...
...Shortly after that, Camar6n Real del Pacifico disappeared...
...No 6 MAYIJUNE 2003 17 Vol XXXVI, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2003 17REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENT consumed an estimated five percent of the world's remaining mangroves...
...The piece was surprisingly sympathetic to Champerico's residents, including quotes like: "What you see in a sense is some of the poorest people in the world competing for the use of local coastal resources with some of the richest consumers on the planet...
...1 7 shrimp ponds and is responsible for 29 percent of Back in Uni6n Hidalgo, Gubifia XXI was determined Mexico's national farmed shrimp production...
...In both Uni6n Hidalgo and Champerico, collaborations with national and international organizations like Red Manglar strengthened their campaigning...
...What is ten years in the life of his company's farm would consist of a series of 10- to a community...
...8. "Shrimp Aquaculture...," p .7...
...The fine was never paid...
...Mangroves in Misery," p. 17...
...After the New York Times article appeared, the negotiations with CAMARSA swung to favor the Champerico residents...
...Guatemala - Conflict sparked by shrimp farming," David Gonzalez, New York Times, July 21, 2001, online at <www.gci.ch/DigitalForunm/digiforum/articles/article200l1/guatem ala.html...
...2 2 The riot had been sparked when managers from the nearby Camarones del Sur (CAMARSA) aquaculture operation sent armed guards in motorboats to patrol the waters around their 1,250-acre property...
...In September 2001, CAMARSA agreed to many of the community's demands...
...Instead, AVEDICHAM representatives approached the police and the company and successfully challenged the aggressive behavior...
...One of the fishermen in the audience corrected him: contaminated land...
...1 4 Each acre of shrimp pond in an intensive operation requires somewhere A palmero, or harvester of palm fronds and heart of palm, at work near Unidn Hidalgo...
...The dense bluegreen foliage of the mangroves reached far overhead...
...2 4 This time, a 23-year-old fisherman was shot to death...
...The company's negotiators promised to allow the mangrove it had illegally cut down to regenerate...
...The site was at the edge of the Guiee Estuarypart of the town's communal land...
...Between the late 1980s and late 1990s, shrimp farms Voi X)(XVI...
...He received a plurality of just over 45 percent of the vote...
...A new company called Desarrollo Acuicola Oaxaca Pacffico appeared, with a very similar list of associates...
...They are not idle lands, as some would like to think, or useless swampy places...
...8 While government officials say the aquaculture industry creates jobs, coastal communities-whose economies already depend on the sea-fear job loss...
...BY WENDY CALL shrimp farms-something many feared would threaten their livelihoods and their land, in particular the mangrove forests of the coastal wetlands...
...Mexico is eighth, with 98 percent of its output going to the United States...
...3 3 "The article directly pressured the owners of the shrimping company, and indirectly influenced the Guatemalan media to give more attention to the issue...
...Because Uni6n Hidalgo's climate is so well Uni6n Hidalgo with videos and popular education matesuited to shrimp farming, the company planned on two rials distributed by Greenpeace...
...They produced their harvests each year rather than the single annual harvest of own materials, in Zapotec, explaining the environmental, the Sonoran farms...
...16, May 2001...
...1 9 In the days that followed, the community forced SAnchez and his administration out of town...
...2 1 Until the 1970s, Champerico was the country's busiest Pacific port, shipping out cotton from the plantations and coffee from the highlands...
...In the case of Guatemala, discussed later in the article, there are indeed some fisherwomen who work in the lagoons...
...Cronologla de los hechos ocurridos en el puerto de Champerico," compiled by Camilo de Le6n, pages unnumbered, Nov...
...In spite of the violence, these are hopeful stories, about how poor people can face a powerful, global industry and win...
...Paths had been cut from the burned area into the mangrove thicket...
...According to federal law, CAMARSA should have completed an environmental impact study before starting the shrimp farm...
...The differences in scale of their respective work relates to the nature of the two communities...
...They can sell the right to use their plots to other community members or will them to their children...
...Marco Antonio Rodrfguez, president of Mexico's chapter of Red Manglar, the Latin American Mangrove Defense Network, traveled from the state of Campeche to attend the meeting...
...In the past ten years, scientists and economists have begun using "ecological footprint" models to account for the total land and natural resources required to produce a commodity, or maintain a certain standard of living...
...2 9 Those coastal resources are in danger...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENT did not see were the enormous ecological costs...
...Gubifia XXI is part of the Consejo Ciudadano Hidalguense, the Hidalgo Citizens' Council, which currently runs the entire municipality without any financial support from the state or federal government...
...In the course of organizing their campaign, Bonilla, de Le6n, and other fishermen and women founded the Neighborhood Association for the Comprehensive Development of Champerico, AVEDICHAM...
...Enrique Bonilla says, "The ones who are more unified are the indigenous people...
...Three other candidates ran Vol XXXVI, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2003 19REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENT Women from fishing villages near Uni6n Hidalgo at the May 2001 meeting at Fisherman's Church...
...As one Guatemalan newspaper reported, "A peaceful protest of artisan fishermen ended in tragedy, when the security guards of the shrimping business shot into the crowd, killing one person and injuring another 11, according to police...
...Champerico secured some level of accountability from an industry that usually abandons the communities surrounding its facilities...
...And what SAnchez in the Uni6n Hidalgo election...
...Uni6n Hidalgo is an indigenous community with long ties to the local land...
...International organizations including the Earth Island Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council and World Rainforest Movement supported the effort and contacted the media...
...Uni6n Hidalgo's land is an ejido, a government land grant that is communally controlled...
...In the end, with strong support from the state government and UGOCM, Sanchez won the October 2001 election...
...3 4 This last promise astounds: It is expensive and time-consuming work, with no direct, immediate benefit to the shrimp farm...
...Now you are going to feel yourself how the rich marginalize the poor...
Vol. 36 • May 2003 • No. 6
