Environmental Violence and the Socio-environmental (de)Evolution of a Landscape in the San Quintín Valley

• Author: Sula E. Vanderplank,Nemer E. Narchi,Enrique Alfaro-Mercado,Jesús Medina-Rodríguez
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20951774
• Subject Matter: Articles

103

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20951774

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 235, Vol. 47 No. 6, November 2020, 103–118

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20951774

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

Environmental Violence and the Socio-environmental

(de)Evolution of a Landscape in the San Quintín Valley

by

Nemer E. Narchi, Sula E. Vanderplank, Jesús Medina-Rodríguez,

and Enrique Alfaro-Mercado

The social and environmental effects of industrial agriculture in the San Quintín

Valley of Baja California are closely related. An environmental history of the valley from

European contact to the present demonstrates that modern schemes of globalized agricul-

tural production erode biological diversity while fostering labor exploitation. A critical

model drawing on the concept of environmental violence— historically structured asym-

metrical power relations that are reproduced and maintained to foster capital accumula-

tion—describes how neoliberalism shapes and exploits agro-industrial landscapes and

livelihoods in San Quintín to produce a crisis of underproduction.

Los efectos sociales y ambientales de la agricultura industrial en el Valle de San

Quintín de Baja California están estrechamente relacionados. Una historia ambiental del

valle, desde el contacto europeo hasta el presente demuestra que los esquemas modernos de

producción agrícola globalizada erosionan la diversidad biológica al mismo tiempo que

fomentan la explotación laboral. Un modelo crítico basado en el concepto de violencia

ambiental (relaciones de poder asimétricas históricamente estructuradas que se reprodu-

cen y mantienen para fomentar la acumulación de capital) describe cómo el neoliberalismo

da forma a y explota los paisajes agroindustriales y los medios de vida en San Quintín,

augurando hacia una crisis de subproducción.

Keywords: Industrial agriculture, Forced labor, Environmental violence, Biocultural

diversity, Biodiversity loss

The Valley of San Quintín, Baja California, is unique in its biodiversity and a

remarkably important place for understanding the early human colonization

of the Americas. The broader region, containing some 2,500 endemic plants and

Nemer E. Narchi is an associate researcher and professor at the Colegio de Michoacán. His

research includes coastal ethnobiology and environmental violence. Sula Vanderplank is an

adjunct researcher at the Centro de Investigación Científica y Educación Superior de Ensenada

Her research focuses on the botany and ecology of the Mediterranean region of Baja California.

Jesús Medina-Rodríguez is a research assistant at the Colegio de Michoacán and is currently

working on a Master’s degree in architecture and urban planning. Enrique Alfaro-Mercado is field

and operations officer at Terra Peninsular A.C. As an agronomist he specializes in protected crop

management and greenhouse intensive production. They are grateful for the assistance of Terra

Peninsular A.C. (especially Cesar Guerrero and Veronica Meza) and for the input of Anny Peralta,

Alan Harper, and Scott Tremor on extirpated species in the region; Narciso Barrera-Bassols,

Exequiel Ezcurra, Jesse Ribot, Yolanda Massieu, and the LAP editors, especially Tamar Wilson,

who kindly provided valuable feedback on the many drafts of this manuscript; and Steve Ellner,

who helped them reshape the manuscript to better fit the topic of this issue.

951774LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20951774Latin American PerspectivesNarchi et al. / Environment Violence in the San Quintín Valley

research-article2020

104 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

vast wetlands regularly visited by migratory birds, is part of one of the most

critically endangered ecosystems on Earth. Paradoxically, and regardless of—

or perhaps because of—its ecosystemic importance, San Quintín faces strong

agro-industrial and urbanization pressures that are the reflection of heavy

investment by global capital locally embodied by firms such as Monsanto and

Driscoll (Zlolniski, 2017). Increasing development in the valley is a result of 35

years of neoliberal policies, which have given an increasingly important role to

the private sector both economically and socially. One of the most noticeable

aspects of the way neoliberalism has exerted its influence is the human percep-

tion and appropriation of nature. Partnering with the state, neoliberal agents

restrict and heavily censor alternative ways of describing, understanding, and

utilizing natural resources (Narchi, 2015).

In this paper we explore the environmentally violent outcomes of industrial

agriculture in the valley. Our objective is to offer a socio-environmental geog-

raphy of agro-industrial activity on the local level. To describe the social and

spatial effects of the growth of industrial agriculture on peoples and environ-

ments, we reconstruct the socio-environmental history of the area and recreate

life histories using vignettes gathered through semistructured interviews with

local actors. The paper is divided into four sections: a theoretical discussion of

the capitalist (de)evolution of the landscape, a brief history of the San Quintín

Valley including the tangible outcomes of sustained exploitation and spoliation

of nature, a survey of the exploitation of agricultural laborers in San Quintín,

and the conclusion that the cycles of neoliberal economy are incompatible with

the cycles of nature and a proposal for broadening our understanding of envi-

ronmental violence to recognize that structural impacts to socio-environmental

systems lead to social inequality and ecological collapse.

SurpluS and the Generation of CapitaliSt SpaCeS

An interesting discussion on the non-ontological status of space that began

to gather force in the 1970s grew into a strong body of theory among Marxist

human geographers (e.g., Harvey, 1972; Peet, 1971). Ever since, the idea that

space is a preexisting context for human relations to unfold in has been called

into question. Instead, space is understood both as a social construct and as a

contingent outcome of human activities (Herod, 2003). Ideas of this sort can be

fully grasped using spatial categories such as landscape. As seen by James

O’Connor (2001), a landscape is the tangible result of labor. The geographical

conception of space as a contingent outcome of human activities is particularly

useful for thinking about the way capitalism has occupied and produced space

(Lefebvre, 1991) to expand globally.

Surplus value is the single most salient feature of capitalism (Santarcángelo and

Borroni, 2012). Capitalist enterprises occupy and produce landscapes to ensure

the production of surplus value (Harvey, 2001). Classically, surplus value emerges

from the second stage of the process of exploitation (Marx, 2010); after a wage

worker has provided the labor power that amounts to the price paid for it by the

capitalist, he provides a second amount of labor that will never be paid for even

though he has already sold it (Marx, 1951). However, the socio-environmental