Environmental Violence in Mexico

• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X15579909
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Nemer E. Narchi
• Subject Matter: Introduction

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 204, Vol. 42 No. 5, September 2015, 5–18

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X15579909

© 2015 Latin American Perspectives

5

Introduction

Environmental Violence in Mexico

A Conceptual Introduction

by

Nemer E. Narchi

In December 2010 Mexico hosted the United Nations Climate Change

Conference in Cancún, Quintana Roo. The conference intentionally crossed

World Forest Day, celebrated on December 5, and this gave Felipe Calderón,

then president of Mexico and current chairman of the World Resource Institute’s

Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an opportunity to urge the

nations of the world to save the world’s forests. In his speech on that day

(Calderón-Hinojosa, 2010) he urged peasants to abandon their traditional agri-

culture in favor of environmental-services payments, arguing that a year’s har-

vest would not be nearly as productive of income as the US$30–100 per hectare

per year they would derive from being compensated for not planting.

This speech permuted the realities of self-sufficiency by mistaking its use

value for the exchange value of crops and harvests. In an attempt to manufac-

ture consensus, it offered a remarkably narrow view of the economic mecha-

nisms, logic, and functioning of small-scale production systems. It is true that

peasants depending on rain-fed plots may not be able to produce more than a

single ton of corn a year. However, Mesoamerican agroecosystems also yield

hundreds of kilograms of other edible cultivars such as beans, chiles, tomatoes,

and squash (Aguilar, Illsley, and Marielle, 2007) and increase biodiversity with-

out interrupting the natural processes of vegetation renewal (Alcorn, Altieri,

and Hecht, 1990; Berkes, Colding, and Folke, 2000; Ramakrishnan, 1992; Turner,

1991). In addition, the presence of traditional agroecosystems attracts animal

species that are part of peasants’ diets (Navarro-Martínez, Schmook, and

Martínez-Castillo, 2000) and preserves wild germoplasm from which fruits,

firewood, construction materials, handicraft materials, tools, and dyes are

obtained (Aguilar, Illsley, and Marielle, 2007; Alcorn and Toledo, 1998).

Abandoning agriculture as a result of the negotiation of neoliberal landscapes

(see Carte et al., 2010) has deleterious effects on peasants’ diets and livelihoods,

as well as on local agrobiodiversity and traditional ecological knowledge

Nemer E. Narchi holds a postdoctoral position at Mexico’s Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana–

Unidad Xochimilco, where he is analyzing the relationships between urbanization and ethnobio-

logical knowledge erosion. His long-term research goal is a synthesis of biocultural research and

conservation. He thanks David Barkin for singling out Latin American Perspectives as the appropri-

ate venue for this collection. He also thanks the editorial collective for supporting it and the con-

tributors and reviewers for ensuring the coherence and solidity of its content. He is grateful for

the helpful comments on this introduction of Lucero Rádonic, Alberto Búrquez, Armando

González-Cabán, George Leddy, Marjorie Bray, and Stephanie C. Moore.

579909LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X15579909Latin American PerspectivesNarchi / INTRODUCTION

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