Thread: The South's Furious Winds Point North

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Mesoamerica's Katrinas: The South's Furious Winds Point North
Frontera NorteSur, November 1, 2005

Mexican and United States border authorities are eyeing the possible immigration impact on their region of the weather/ecological disasters shaking southern Mexico and Central America. The images of hurricanes Stan, Wilma and now Beta are impressive throughout much of historic Mesoamerica. Flooded shantytowns, mud-crushed villages, uprooted crops, shattered fishing vessels, and battered monuments tourist icons have predominated in the region during the past several weeks. In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 11 nature reserves were damaged, including the already-stressed coral reef system.

Anywhere from 800 to 2,000 people are dead, according to estimates from different countries. Preliminary monetary estimates of the regional damage range from $3.8 to $5 billion dollars. In Mexico's Chiapas state alone, 21,000 homes were lost and 200 bridges collapsed. Mexican Labor Secretary Carlos Abascal estimated it would take between 6-7 months for normalcy to return to the southern border state.

Some say the regional devastation could result in a new wave of environmental refugees finding their way soon to the Mexico-US borderlands. Others point to the disasters as constituting the latest cause of underdevelopment, adding a new social mortgage on an increasingly costly eco-debt.

'Everyone knows that this city is a focal point that attracts foreign and national migrants,' said Samuel Ramos, the mayor of Mexicali, Baja California, 'We will be prepared, through our social assistance institutions, to receive the migrants in the event that their numbers increase considerably in the coming weeks.'

In Chiuhahua state, Carlos Carrera Robles, the state secretary of social development, declared that all levels of government will monitor the flow of people into Ciudad Juarez and be ready to implement an emergency aid program. The city bordering El Paso, Texas, already hosts a large population of people with family networks from Veracruz, Chiapas and Oaxaca, states slammed by the disasters. The city currently confronts an affordable housing and classroom/educator shortage.

Although Mexican President Vicente Fox vowed to have the huge international tourism industry in Cancun and the Mayan Riviera 80 percent functional by the start of the winter tourist high season on December 15, it remains to be seen how much of the industry can be rebuilt in such a short period of time and if many people won't be spooked away by the scenes of devastation and social chaos widely broadcast from Cancun.

Many Cancun workers have been told not to expect their jobs back for at least three months. Affiliated with Mexico's opposition PRI party, the National Farmers Confederation estimated that about 460,000 acres of coffee, bananas, papayas and other crops have been damaged in southeastern Mexican states hit by hurricanes. Nearly half of the sugar crop employing 300,000 workers in Guatemala was reported lost.

While torrential rains wreaked havoc in Mesoamerica during the last two months, unusual, off-and-on precipitation threatened more social dislocations in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, a traditional-migrant sending region to the United States. Officials and experts disagree over the possible of the dry weather on Zacatecas' agriculture, but some estimate upwards of 80,000 dryland bean and corn growers were unable to plant all their crops this year. As many as 15,000 farmers might have suffered complete losses. One possible brake on a new migrant exodus from Zacatecas, noted some observers, is the constant flow of
remittances from migrants already working the United States. At least $600 million dollars in migrant dollars is injected into the Zacatecan economy annually.

It's a safe bet many people will set their sights elsewhere if local economies aren't up and running soon. In Cancun's case, a Wilma-driven resident expulsion would mark at least the second time many people became migrants since most of the tourist industry's workers hail from other regions of southern Mexico and Central America.

Although the human face of the tragedy of the hurricanes has been transmitted far and wide, very little discussion has taken place about the underlying socio-environmental conditions that aggravate damage from seemingly natural phenomenon like Stan or Wilma.

Climate change, environmental alterations, land ownership/occupancy patterns, substandard housing, and overpopulation in weather-vulnerable zones all contribute to the mounting devastation, according to scientists and close observers. Whether in the colonias of Cancun or shantytowns of El Salvador, working-class populations often are housed in quarters most prone to flooding and other natural disasters.

Julio Calderon, the chief of the United Nations Environment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, affirmed that urban and agricultural developments have stripped away vegetation protecting the land from washing or blowing away. 'We can say that we'll find the hardest hit zones were also the ones that had suffered the worst deforestation and degradation,' Calderon said.

In El Salvador, almost 98 percent of the nation's original tree cover has been stripped away during the centuries, according to Angel Ibarra, the president of the Salvadoran Ecology Organization. 'Forested zones continue being destroyed in El Salvador, building is going on in appropriate zones for housing,' Ibarra said. 'We continue altering the vocation of the soils and extinguishing biodiversity, and if we continue using water in an irresponsible way, we will be making the country unlivable. consequently, droughts, floods, earthquakes and threats from volcanic eruptions produce environmental refugees.'

Meanwhile, an environmental disaster has slowly unfolded in Cancun and the Mayan Riviera, in the view of environmentalists and other researchers. A 1996 report authored by retired geologist Peter V. Wiese noted that the hurricane-cushioning mangrove trees were cut down, the swamp filled in and the lagoon choked off from the ocean in order to make way for the glitzy tourist mega-development.

'One hopes that the lessons that could be learned from the mistakes at Cancun would guide these new developments, but the indications are not encouraging,' Wiese wrote.

An assessment by Mexico's National Center for the Prevention of Disasters found that more than 3,000 people have perished and upwards of $10 billion dollars have been lost from hurricanes and tropical storms just in Mexico during the last 25 years. The monetary sum is four times the 2005 budget amount for the federal Ministry of Social Development and nearly equals the amount of money spend this year by the federal government on public education. Enrique Provencio, an ex-official of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, said weather disasters aren't just about stranded tourists in Cancun or Cozumel.

'The problem now is that there is a new cause of underdevelopment,' Provencio said. 'This is a silent tragedy that is happening, because it's only noticed when there is the emergency, and then it costs years to recuperate.'

The ease of illegal immigration to the States makes it harder to focus efforts on rebuilding. If the border were closed a farmer would be more likely to repair and replant. With the borders open a farmer might end up in the U.S. working instead here in agriculture or landscaping.