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During the government of President José López Portillo told us that we should prepare ourselves to manage abundance thanks to the growing extraction of hydrocarbons. Those who denounced the environmental damage that this caused were described as sensationalists
. Likewise if they protested the destruction of thousands of hectares of imposing jungle in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas and Quintana Roo, to give land to agricultural day laborers in the center and north of the country. That of Uxpanapa, in Veracruz (200 thousand hectares), lost half of its trees to relocate the Chinantecos displaced by the construction of the Cerro de Oro dam. They were promised paradise. It was the opposite. The Lacandona, also decimated.
The government had a National Deforestation Program to destroy the jungle. The machinery for this task was provided by a Secretary of State, who later misruled Sinaloa. Dismantling contracts were given to journalists related to the system and who disqualified the defenders of the green lungs. Contracts were sold to the highest bidder. And in the administration of Salinas de Gortari the government co-opted with public positions to leaders of environmental groups and sponsored the creation of that family business that is the Green Ecologist Party.
Those sensationalists
They demonstrated with precise data the need not to destroy the forests to establish extensive cattle ranching and/or crops not suitable for the tropics. Cows instead of century-old trees, in a country where the majority do not eat meat because they are poor. Those sensationalists
They were the most qualified scientists in the universities and the new ecology centers created by Conacyt when Gerardo Bueno Zirón directed it with vision and efficiency. Time proved them right. Meanwhile, due to poverty, members of ejidos and indigenous communities misuse the natural resources around them to survive.
they were also sensationalists
those who recommended the rational occupation of the sea coast. The authorities promised that a new tourist destination, Cancun, would be an example of growing without preying, or of being poor next to extreme luxury. It was not like that and neither was it in the Riviera Maya and its two main cities, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. The indigenous workforce of the Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas, working as swallow laborers in construction; or as gardeners, cleaning hotels and living in undignified conditions.
All this happened and still happens when the clamor of the community of nations is to change the current economic growth model, since it is at the cost of the destruction of the environment. The Stockholm Conference in 1972 was the watershed. Two decades later, the Rio Summit. And then the Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming. Mexico was no stranger to this call and the public sector gave greater importance to the environment. But the depredation of natural resources continues and climate change is a reality in the countryside and cities.
Now the scientists, the social groups that defend biodiversity, the agrarian communities that denounce the damage caused by various megaprojects and propose changes for the good of all, are called to the pinnacle of power pseudo-environmentalists
. The reality shows that they are right. For example, with the Mayan Train. In a recent statement, the pseudo-environmentalists
and the social and agrarian organizations of the Yucatan Peninsula inform President López Obrador of the damage that it will cause in several of its lines to the most important underground aquifer on the planet, on which the rich biodiversity that exists there depends. They emphasize its importance for agriculture and the lives of thousands of people.
Meanwhile, the mess that distinguished the management of the previous person in charge of said project, Rogelio Jiménez Pons, dismissed for incompetence, is revealed. In addition, the increase in the cost of the works and the variations in their route due to poor planning; the dismissal of 85 high-level officials and many other irregularities. Instead of listening to the reasoning of those who know, disqualifications. And the complicit silence of the new director of Fonatur, as well as the heads of the secretariats of Environment and Natural Resources and Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development.
