Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [88]
During the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, Mexico steadily liberalized its economy. The end goal of the process was a free trade agreement with the United States and Canada. As part of that, Propemex with all its canneries, processing factories, and vessels, was privatized. Deregulation of the banking sector allowed private firms to push aside government financing of the fishing sector.19 In 1989 foreign ownership of up to 50 percent of fishing and fish-processing industries was allowed.20 The monopoly of the co-ops was ended, forcing them to compete with the private sector for formal access rights. The state reduced public expenditures by selling the main state-owned fish processor and exporter to a private bank and reducing subsidies to small fishermen. More broadly, between 1982 and 1994, 940 of 1,155 publicly owned businesses throughout the economy were privatized or liquidated. And previously closed markets were opened. In exchange for all of this, Mexico got greater access to US markets.21
The neoliberal model of fisheries management has come at a high social and environmental cost. Stocks have plummeted and poverty has risen among fishing communities. As the state downsized its role and private capital moved into a heavily regulated sector, official corruption and marine-resource poaching grew.22
The little regulation remaining is often circumvented in what veteran Times reporter Tim Wiener called “the great divide between Mexico’s laws and its law enforcement.” Officials have estimated that as many twelve thousand unregulated fishing boats work the Sea of Cortez alone.23 Foreign boats take much of the fish: Mexico’s fleet accounts for less than 10 percent of the total catch, with the rest going to boats from the United States, Canada, and Japan.24 This bad management of fish resources has made people like José Ramírez vulnerable to the new freak weather and helped push them away from their original livelihoods and toward Mexico’s cities and the United States.
The story of José Ramírez, multiplied across the country, is the story of climate change expressing itself through the political economic realities of neoliberalism. While it is impossible to say that climate change caused the 1997–1998 El Niño, we know that a hotter planet will likely lead to more extreme weather events like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and more toxic algae blooms. Combined with bad economic policies, climate change is already creating climate refugees.
Pushed from the Sierra
On the southwestern edge of Juarez, where the slums creep up into the Sierra Madre, I met other climate migrants in a colonia of Rarámuri Indians. Also known as the Tarahumara, these famous long-distance runners come from southern Chihuahua’s Sierra Madre Occidental. Their urban colonia replicates a mountain village centered around a plaza and a yellow-walled catholic church. Above them looms a cold, grey massif. On a fence hung two drying cowhides from animals slaughtered for the holidays. Many of the Rarámuri men were out of work or had only intermittent day labor, and many were drunk. The Indians moved here because jobs pulled them north, but drought back home is also pushing them.
“ We have no rains there, so many people are coming here,” said Celso Nava Galindo. Thirty-six, he moved from a village seven hours away called Bocoina. “No rain, no people,” said Galindo. “Back home we survive by farming and speak our own language. But the drought makes it very difficult.”
In 2008, travel writer Richard Grant noted the same: “The Tarahumara had moved out of the area now. It was climate change as much as anything. There had been twelve