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Environmental Networking in Mexico: The Comité Nacional Para la Defensa de los Chimalapas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Elizabeth Umlas
Elizabeth Umlas*
Affiliation:
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Geneva, Switzerland
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In fact, for the chimas, the defense of their patrimony is a fundamental part of their history.... What is new is the growing interest of different branches of government and of national and international groups, which have realized the importance of the Chimalapas. Voces en la selva

Although often individually weak and marginalized in Mexico, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous communities coalesced in the early 1990s around the issue of preserving the Chimalapas rain forest in southeastern Mexico. They then brought the problem to national and international attention and eventually helped force the redrawing of a proposed highway route. This research note will analyze the formation and activities of the Comité Nacional para la Defensa de los Chimalapas (CNDCHIM), a network of environmental NGOs, artists and intellectuals, activists and researchers, and representatives of forty-five indigenous communities in the Chimalapas. CNDCHIM formed in 1991 in response to a proposed highway that was to run through La Reserva El Ocote in the Chimalapas, one of Mexico's last two rain forests. The Chimalapas issue is extremely complex, entailing social justice, land tenure, megaprojects, federal and state politics, and environmental policy. This study will focus mostly on CNDCHIM and its relationship with the Mexican government, placing the organization within the context of agrarian conflict and the political and ecological issues surrounding the potential destruction of the Chimalapas.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , 1998 , pp. 161 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The research for this research note was conducted in Mexico in 1993–1994 with a dissertation grant from the Yale University Center for International and Area Studies, and also during the summer of 1995. I would like to thank Margaret Keck of The Johns Hopkins University for her comments on previous drafts; four anonymous LARR reviewers for their extremely helpful evaluations; and numerous interviewees in Mexico, including members of various environmental organizations and CNDCHIM as well as government officials. An earlier version was presented to the Latin American Studies Association in Washington, D.C., 28–30 September 1995 and appeared as a chapter in my dissertation.

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