
A development model that continues to be based on the extraction of goods or the commitment to return to austere environments proposed by indigenous peoples; both visions are linked or opposed in the almost desperate search to stop the crisis that is expelling millions of people from their countries, because they cannot find a way to solve their basic needs.
How to be a good savage
My grandfather Simón wanted to be a good savage,
he learned Castillian
and the names of all the saints.
He danced in front of the temple
and he received baptism with a smile.
My grandfather had the strength of the Red Lightning
and his nagual was a tiger.
My grandfather was a poet
who healed with words.
But he wanted to be a good savage,
he learned to use the spoon,
and he admired electricity.
My grandfather was a powerful shaman
who knew the language of the gods.
But he wanted to be a good savage,
although he never achieved it.
Mikeas Sánchez, Zoque indigenous person from Chiapas
SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS.- A little more than seven years ago, in the northern area of Chiapas, inhabited by indigenous Zoques, the population organized to prevent the opening of 12 oil wells that were going to impact 84 thousand hectares of land, they also opposed mining extraction, one of which was owned by Carlos Slim, as well as the flooding of land due to the expansion of the Chicoasén Dam; in addition to the construction of a geothermal plant on the slopes of the Chichonal volcano. These projects would impact 170 thousand hectares of land over the next 30 years at least.
The residents of that region adjacent to Tabasco created the Indigenous Movement of the Zoque Believing People in Defense of Life and the Land (ZODEVITE), and are now working to recover a model of life where natural assets are not the property of individuals, but are on the contrary, resources can be rationally used that in the long run would allow them, for example, food sovereignty.
Mikeas Sánchez, one of the voices of these processes of resistance to extractive projects, explains: “those of us who have a different way of life, they look at us with disdain because they think that we lack this, we lack that, but we have other things”.
“We are made to believe that those of us who do not want megaprojects, that we do not want progress, that we are people who are against development, that we are very selfish people who do not want the country to progress. It is a discourse that is used to discredit us, to make us look like backward people, who have no ambitions, who are satisfied and do not want to get out of poverty.”
“That is quite ridiculous,” he adds, “because we are not poor. If we were, we would lack water, we would lack food; and we do not have a food security problem, we have fertile lands and we have water to cover our needs. We have ancestral knowledge that is in the culture, in community knowledge, in traditional medicine.”
For the Zoques, the imposition of measurements that place them in high rates of backwardness “has been because they have imposed on us a type of medicine, a type of education, a type of housing, a type of food, a type of knowledge that we did not have, nor do we have, because in our communities we live differently.”
Mikeas insists:
“We have to get rid of that idea of poverty now, because we are not poor. We are not against the president or the government, but this supposed development that is being talked about is not for us residents who live in the territories, it is for the companies and the big capital that will invest in these projects.
Development for whom?
Development. Sustainable development. Human development. Social development. The words have been enunciated for decades, more like a utopia than a reality.
The proposed utopia maintained that the living conditions of humanity would improve after becoming aware that the world could be changed and nature modified through reason and science; the application of the system of mass production and free market, it was proposed, would generate wealth and well-being for all people.
Under this logic, primarily economic, after the Second World War, nations were classified as “developed” or “developing,” according to their access to goods and resources that, ideally, would generate well-being. Its antithesis would be poverty, which implies the lack of the items necessary for material well-being.
Almost a century after the implementation of this development model agreed upon by nations, the results are not as expected. In this second decade of the 21st century, at least three out of every 20 people in the world – 1.2 billion – have problems accessing food and clean water; a situation to which is added the loss of ecosystems and habitable spaces due to the increase in global temperature.
One of the consequences of the impact of this model is the migration of the affected population; in 2022 there were just over 281 million people who left their country of origin due to lack of livelihoods such as access to food, health, security and the loss of ecosystems, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This is 3.6 percent of the world’s population, and although the first impact occurred in “underdeveloped” countries, the model has also been scaling in “developed” countries.
Even so, nations continue to opt for the same thing, as is the case of the proposal contained in the Comprehensive Development Plan for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the south-southeast of Mexico, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at the request of the countries themselves.
Immigration containment, the objective
The project, which was made public in 2021, focuses on proposing strategies to contain migration from the countries of northern Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) and the south-southeast of Mexico that seek to reach the United States.
It recognizes poverty, inequality, unemployment and the impact of natural disasters, among others, as causes of migration, and says that to address them we must have “a comprehensive perspective and within the framework of a new style of development, concrete actions oriented to economic growth with employment and the achievement of higher levels of well-being.”
It proposes to the countries some general lines of public policies in the areas of “economic development”, “social well-being”, “environmental sustainability, climate change and adaptation, and disaster risk reduction” and “comprehensive management of the migration cycle” that actually refers to containing irregular migration.
Although it points out “a new style of development” as a proposal, ECLAC’s approach includes projects that have been implemented for decades. In the case of Mexico, it focuses on “the construction and rehabilitation of railway infrastructure, road, port and energy connectivity projects”; that is, in the Tehuantepec Isthmus Interoceanic Corridor and the Mayan Train, among others that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador put on the table for private initiative in 2021 during the so-called Oaxaca Pact.
And in the case of Central America, it recovers the guidelines of the Alliance Plan for the Prosperity of the Northern Triangle, a program also focused on migratory containment that was proposed at the initiative of the United States, since 2015.
The recommendations revive projects that were already contemplated in the 2008 Mesoamerica Plan; and its predecessor, the Puebla Panama Plan of 2001. With their nuances, they are proposals that continue to revolve around the so-called extractive projects where the market sets the guidelines.
Embroidering on the same structure
“The economic approach continues to rely on a structure, which by nature expels population. Thinking about an extractivist model as it is proposed in the terms of ECLAC, evidently does not favor or does not benefit the working class,” concludes Daniel Villafuerte Solís.
Specialist at the Center for Higher Studies of Mexico and Central America (CESMECA), Villafuerte explains:
“There is no very clear orientation of what benefits the populations will obtain, because ultimately all construction of dams will pay to the electricity market, to the great electrical interconnection project, and we know that Spanish companies have hegemony there.”
Furthermore, fundamental problems such as the recomposition of the structures of the States are not contemplated, nor, for example, a change in policies on land ownership and the reactivation of the countryside, considering that this region has an agricultural vocation.
“I don’t see an approach to really reactivate the field, an inclusive participatory project that changes that extractivist model a little (…) there is no radical change towards a social economy,” says the specialist.
For the operation of this project, 25 billion dollars are needed, more than any of the nations involved have.
Since May 2022, through its ambassador in Mexico, Ken Salazar, the United States government has dedicated itself to holding meetings with governors of the southeast and has invited a series of companies to see this region as “niche opportunities to detonate future projects (…) they use all the tools they have at hand, even this discourse of sustainability, of renewable energy,” explains Villafuerte Solís.
“What is finally the genuine interest of governments in solving social and political problems that are triggering, or that are becoming visible in an increasingly growing migration? ECLAC has its feet made of clay because it does not incorporate the political vision, the social vision in broader terms,” concludes the specialist.
Different results with the same programs?
The development parameters that the United Nations continue to use remain the same ones that have led to the current crisis: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or how much countries produce: and the Product Per Capita.
“Who produces it and who keeps it are two very different things; having a high production of goods and services does not mean that we keep that wealth, but rather the company does,” says Gustavo Castro, director of the Otros Mundos organization.
He explains that since resources are not divided equally, the indicators that measure “development” are false in terms of general well-being; for example, in terms of tourism – another of the ECLAC Plan projects – the greatest profits go to the hotel chains, and the local population is only hired with minimum wages that do not even guarantee food subsistence.
He states that the current system of capitalist development is at a turning point, “a terminal crisis from the political, social, food, energy, environmental, and the migration of peoples who are escaping these crises”; because the same logic of extractivism of resources and the accumulation of goods is followed, in addition to their unequal distribution.
David Lobatón, Doctor of Law and advisor to the Foundation for Due Process, coordinates the protection and defense program of the communities of Yucatán and in defense of the cenotes, explains that there are other development models and these come from the original peoples (indigenous).
“Since the middle of the 20th century, the extractivist and capitalist model has run amok because land and natural assets are seen as the property of individuals; human beings are no longer seen as owners of nature, and not as part of it.’’
“However, the notion that the human being is part of nature and not its possessor was never lost by the native peoples, and neither therefore the rituals of asking permission from Mother Earth when going to extract a good or resource her. Because everything that impacts nature will also impact humanity.”
He states that although this is not generalized, there is increasing acceptance and awareness that the use of nature’s goods must be sustainable, thinking about future generations, “thinking about balance and not appropriation (…) currently, as the serious problems on the planet become clearer, that conception of the world makes sense.”
Moving on two tracks
The Zoques and the rest of the indigenous population or otherwise, coexist and interrelate in the market dynamics that set the prices of products and services; in the dynamics of normal educational and cultural models, how can we search in that context for an alternative that reaches those who live in cities?
“I am an idealist and I believe that it is possible to reconcile modernity and respect for nature. I trust a lot in intuition and the human ability to use common sense. In reality, it is very simple, the economic model is based on the unlimited exploitation of natural and human resources, the point is to understand that there is no unlimited natural and human resource, everything runs out: water, oil, minerals, trees, mountains, rivers,” explains Mikeas Sánchez.
He adds that the changes come from everyday life, “for example, technology is an ally, but it also requires proper use of it, as is the case with mobile phones; we know that the production of many cell phone components has a high cost due to the impact on ecosystems, the problem would not be the same if they had a longer useful life, and not planned obsolescence that forces us to buy new ones in short periods of time”.
“The lifestyle that the capitalist system promises us is unsustainable, but that does not mean the end, we can live in other ways, not necessarily how we indigenous peoples live, who have the advantage of being immensely privileged for having been born in territories with extraordinary natural assets. The issue is to change the chip of the extractivist model.”
For his part, Gustavo Castro maintains that it is not possible to reconcile, but to look for alternatives outside the capitalist development model, “seek autonomy, self-management in urban territories, exploit alternatives for decentralized energy in homes, vegetable production and green roofs, rainwater harvesting, community and neighborhood alternatives for education, health and organization.”
He also explains the use of alternative currency such as the Tumin, which already exists in several towns; the production of domestic gas, community markets, barter: the decrease in hydrocarbon consumption, more use of bicycles and other mobility alternatives, etc.
“We have to jump off the train of the system, the solution cannot be within the system itself,” he insists, and like Mikeas and some indigenous peoples and movements, he sees a change in the relationships between people, society and nature as essential.
Original text and photo by Ángeles Mariscal and Jesús García / Cuartoscuro Archive, Pie de Pagina, July 11th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas. Translated by Schools for Chiapas.