Living in Mexico City – a place that has already
suffered a kind of ecological collapse – has convinced me that the
most crucial environmental struggle in the coming decades will be
providing water, food and clean air, and ensuring basic human
health in a world where resources are more and more limited. The
most compelling work for environmentalists – and for the planet –
should be to develop a dialogue across the economic
divide.
* Joel
Simon,
Endangered
Mexico
Endangered Mexico: An
Environment on the Edge takes on an enormous task. Author Joel
Simon, a former correspondent to Mexico for Pacific News Service,
sets out to cover the past and present of the country’s
environmental problems, starting with the world of the Aztecs and
ending with the aftermath of NAFTA. The result isn’t exhaustive –
imagine a similar history of the U.S., or even the West, crammed
into nine chapters – but he uses well-chosen examples to explore
the major threats to Mexico’s environment.
The
chapters based on Simon’s original reporting are the most vivid,
including an account of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and a
chapter on the relationship between logging and the drug trade in
the Copper Canyon region of northern Mexico. Simon also tackles
industrial tourism in Cancun, toxic dumping in Tijuana, and the
horrific pollution crisis in Mexico City, managing to communicate
the complexity of Mexico’s environmental struggles in a few brief
sketches. While the Tarahumara Indians resist development, for
example, small farmers in Chiapas are demanding access to loans,
chemical fertilizer and agricultural land within an international
biosphere reserve. Both ends of the spectrum clash with upper-class
Mexican environmentalists and international conservation groups.
Simon has no solutions, but he sees the pragmatic approach of local
activists – those motivated by health and economic problems close
to home – as a promising strategy for both Mexico and its neighbor
to the north.
Sierra Club Books, San Francisco,
275 pages, paperback, 1997. $16. Call 415/977-5600 or find their
Web site at www.sierraclub.org/books.
* Michelle
Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Endangered Mexico.
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