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From article in Proceso, June 5, 1995.
OIL IS BEHIND SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN
CHIAPAS
[On May 24, 1995, the Jesuit Mardonio Morales, who has spent more
than 30 years working with the indigenous Tzeltal people, spoke at
a private study meeting on Mexican reality. His report dealt with
oil fields as a major factor in the current conflict in Chiapas.]
It is difficult to discuss the internal situation in
Chiapas due to the complex spectrum of interrelated action. Since
the second attempted dialogue in San Andres it has become clear
that the character of the battles being waged between the two
sides is one of low intensity conflict. Big interests are at
stake. On the one hand is the very survival of the indigenous
communities, not only in Chiapas, but throughout the country; on
the other, unrestricted control of raw materials, which are the
lifeblood of the economic neoliberalism that is choking us and
that has farreaching international ramifications.
My sole intention was to spend time with Tzeltal
communities in the municipalities of Sitala and parts of Ocosingo,
out of the San Bachajon Mission. In the process, I was able to
witness the growth and development of these forces that now
confront each other in a death struggle.
I will focus on an important factor which I think is a
guiding principle the state government and which can explain its
present behavior, which may seem to us very obtuse and
closed-minded. This factor is oil. I am going to talk about what
I have seen. This is testimony, not a technical study. I will
follow these steps: oil discoveries; timber exploitation;
settlement; "cattlization;" infrastructure (roads, water,
electricity); oil exploration and exploitation.
1. Discovery of oil
In the early months of 1964 I toured for the first time
the Bachajon lowlands, in the municipality of Chilon, which were
then completely wild and very sparsely populated. I arrived at
the Sacun ravine, and there at a stream of the Sacunil River, in
Cubwits, I found a bronze Pemex plaque set in cement, indicating
the year 1961. When I came down the ravine, I was informed in
Alan Sacun that there were Pemex markers there, too. That was the
first bit of information that struck me. As early as 1961, in the
most remote regions of the jungle, oil had clearly been located.
Moreover, along the main roads crossing the jungle from
the lowest area, towards Palenque, leading up to Ocosingo, I found
markings in red paint every 100 meters on the rocks and trunks of
tall trees along the roadway. They said EP and had a number. My
travel companions would tell me that occasionally "engineers"
would come by and make these measurements.
In the ensuing years, on my subsequent work tours, I saw
how these measurements were extended to all the roads and
footpaths. In the highest mountain range, near Coquilteel, above
Chichi, I saw tar seeping from the cracks in the rocks during the
hot season. My travel companions remarked that tar was easily
found in many places, and that in the old days they would use it
for certain medicines.
As the years went by I confirmed that the Pemex engineers
were stepping up their activities. They actually told me where
most of the oil deposits had been located, as in Jetha and along
the banks of the Paxilha River. During the Lopez Portillo
administration, at the time of the oil boom, these sites in Jetha
were reported on television.
2. Timber exploitation.
Concurrently with this exploratory work, ever since the
fifties there hd been an intensification of the exploitation of
mahogany and other hard and soft woods, all of them precious,
carried out by foreigners using the sawmill at Chancala and doing
business as companies that were Mexican in name only.
The government's concession was that they could take
whatever timber they found within 500 meters along any road or
path they opened up. Naturally, they took whatever they pleased.
The jungle had been awe-inspiring. At first, I could walk for
entire days in the shade, and could see neither sky nor landscape;
everything was green.
Once the timber exploitation was in full swing, the
settlement process began. Thus the timber company had to
establish a relationship with the new members of the ejidos, or
ejidatarios. As a result, a strange partnership was formed.
Since they were totally lacking in technical knowledge and
advisors, it was to the ejidatarios' advantage to have assistance
in clearing trees from the land the government was offering them
to plant corn. Moreover, the paths that the timber company made
were very helpful to the ejidatarios' internal communication.
With modern machinery and the huge sawmill at Chancala,
the destruction of the jungle took giant steps forward, compounded
by the traditional slash and burn system that finished off the
remaining nonharvestable trees on the ejidos.
I thus saw over ten years how the plunder progressed.
>From 1968 to 1978 the path was extended from Tulilha lands to the
Pico de Oro lands. It was some 200 kilometers long. Fifteen days
ago I got a ride from a huge trailer that was coming from Mazatlan
to get mahogany from Pico de Oro. Despite all the many formal
complaints were made by both institutions and individuals to
public opinion and government officials, this process of
destruction has continued on its course.
The explanation is simple: existing timber resources are
utilized, ande terrain is made ready for the next phase, oil
exploration and exploitation.
3. Settlement
In the early sixties the government opened the "national
lands" to campesino/indigenous groups from the highlands and even
to campesinos from other places like Veracruz, Puebla and
Guerrero. Specialists in the field harshly criticized this
opening of the jungle to agriculture. The jungle is not land for
planting, but for forests. No attention was ever paid to this
argument. Instead, this land which was ill-suited to agriculture
was irresponsibly handed over to hundreds of ejidos.
The strategic reason is now clear. On the one hand was
the need for cp labor; on the other, the need to finish preparing
the land for oil exploration and exploitation. Cheap labor was
required, meaning people who were controlled and controllable, who
would acquiesce to whatever was coming. That's why there was no
planning of how to organize the settlements that were forming. It
was a sociological time bomb.
Each settlement consists of indigenous people and
campesinos from various places, who arrived hungry and anxious for
land. At first they were united by a common need; then different
interests, customs and needs began to appear. It is extremely
difficult to organize them, and there is always someone who is
willing to serve the interests of the powerful. That is what the
government needs: disorganized, controllable people. In addition
to this came the arrival, starting in 1975, of successive waves of
groups from sects that have been a major obstacle to any attempt
at organization.
4. Cattlization
The next step in consummating the total and final
destruction of the jue was to get the ejidos that were devoted to
corn to turn to cattle-raising. To that end, in the mid-sixties
the official and unofficial banks offered easy credit and abundant
technical advice. In this regard, the Ministry of Agrarian
Reform, which for years had been mercilessly exploiting the
ejidatarios, did indeed offer generous advice so that the greatest
possible number of ejidatarios converted to cattle-raising.
Those who embarked on this business in the first four or
five years became wealthy cattle ranchers. This prompted those
who had not been drawn to cattle-raising to go to the banks in
droves seeking credit.
But the second phase was counterproductive for the
ejidatarios. The credit was a trap so that the past due debts
would leave thousands of unsuspecting people firmly in the bank's
grasp. Now the objective had been achieved: whoever wants to see
the Lacandon jungle will now find only the gigantic Lacandon
cattle pasture. You have only to look at recent aerial
photographs of the Mexican-Guatemalan border along the Usumacinta
River. The Guatemalan jungle contrasts with the arid line of
Mexico across the river.
5. Infrastructure
Oil exploitation obviously requires a large
infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, populations to provide
cheap labor, food supply centers, towns that can be converted into
places where technicians and skilled workers can be concentrated.
I have seen how the first roads were begun, and how in a matter of
a few years the communications network has multiplied.
One never ceases to be surprised at how incredible roads
are built while other regions that truly need to be connected
remain isolated. Wherever Petroleos Mexicanos waves its magic
wand, huge machines appear and make tortuous footpaths immediately
disappear. For example, everyone was surprised by the road that
was built at Chichi, near Bachajon, and by the construction of the
immense bridge that was built in order to cross the river and get
to the region where I saw tar on the very surface of the earth.
The most surprising thing was that this construction
abruptly stopped, once the bridge was complete, and was not
resumed. Why? Of course no one was given any explanation. Soon
thereafter we learned that the machinery had gone to the other end
of the jungle, to Pico de Oro, where they had started drilling
wells in the area bordering Guatemala.
No matter how much the government postures and tries to
portray this road-building as a social program, the reality of oil
provides us with a different explanation. Roads that are built
and left waiting for official use are left to deteriorate and be
destroyed until such time as the oil industry requires them.
Potable water was a battle that went on for years and
years in the communities. The first fifteen years of my residency
were a constant search for external financing for pipes; the
communities themselves would do the work, because the State would
not respond to our requests. Then the settlements were suddenly
endowed with potable water, as if by magic.
Conasupo's warehouses are strategically located to quickly
and efficiently supply the entire oil region. To find out whether
this phenomenon occurs in the Los Altos region, one has only to
see the reports of those who have gone to the conflict zone to
compare the government's social programs. Here in the jungle,
environmental destruction and manipulation of the local
population; there, neglect, hunger and disease.
Noteworthy is the electricity network that has covered the
entire region over the course of ten years. This is undoubtedly
the clearest indicator of the rush to put in place the
infrastructure that is essential to quick and efficient oil
exploitation.
All of us were surprised by the efficiency with which
telephone has been brought to the oil region. To those of us who
have struggled for years and years for the most essential
services, the government's strategy in the region is quite clear.
The very reform of Article 27 of the Constitution provides a
logical explanation that foreshadows what is in store for us in
the near term.
6. Oil exploration
About six years ago, along the sides of the highways of
the low region, we began to see temporary encampments of workers
of campesino origin. These encampments belonged to a foreign
company hired by Pemex to begin the oil exploration. The
encampments quickly multiplied, and I began to find them along the
roads.
It is admirable: they drew straight lines starting from a
settlement ine low region to the city of Ocosingo. A meter wide,
the path ran through mountains, ravines and valleys, stopping for
no obstacle. This caused fatal accidents among the workers,
mostly Indians, which of course no one ever heard about.
Every 20 meters they would dig a well, dynamite it, and
collect the information with devices that the workers carried on
their backs for days and months, until they reached Ocosingo.
That is how they marked off the jungle territory. Of course they
never asked for permission to enter ejidos or private property.
The explosions resulted in the loss of many water sources; at the
source of the Tulilha River, they killed all of the fish and
polluted the entire irrigation channel that ran some 80
kilometers, resulting in serious problems for the ejidos that the
river ran through. The protests, compaints and demands of these
Chol and Tzeltal ejidos were to no avail. Along the highways the
subsoil was being measured.
In the midst of this intense activity came January 1,
1994, and with it, the abrupt suspension of all exploratory
activity. Fifteen days ago, after the San Andres meeting, these
encampments began to reappear along the highway near Chancala.
7. Oil exploitation
In the region where I walk I have yet to see any wells
being drilled. But from the bus traveling on the road through San
Miguel to Ocosingo, I have seen drilling rigs and roads leading to
other rigs. And we know there has been a great deal of activity
in the Pico de Oro region. Of course everything has now come to a
halt. There's a reason why we have Army all over, even though we
are very far from the conflict zone.
I believe that this testimony I am now giving about what I
have seen from 1964 to the present, and the discovery of the
relationship between oil, timber, settlement, cattlization, and
infrastructure, explains the government's hard-line, overbearing
attitude.
If they are seeking oil and the riches that lie
underground, can an agreement ever be reached whereby the
indigenous people can have their autonomous territory? As long as
the indigenous are regarded as beasts of burden, can there be an
agreement to respect their dignity?
By way of conclusion, I would like to complete the picture
with two more thoughts.
First: we all want peace, and think it would be suicide
to go to war against the Army and government supported by imperial
foreign powers. We all know that the war against indigenous
people, environmental destruction, the subjugation of entire
peoples, hunger, disease and premature death are the lifeblood of
the wealth of the few, organized under neoliberal slogans backed
by armed force.
We know that this is nothing new, that it has always been
this way. Tht is why the !Ya basta! of January 1, 1994, resonated
among us all. This past year and a half has only strengthened our
conviction and has proven that this is not something local, but
rather part of the structure of the system that punishes us all
equally.
It is clearly a national matter. The demand for democracy
and for a structural change that will make real the slogan "all
for all" is penetrating the national consciousness.
Second: Why in Chiapas and not in Veracruz or Tabasco?
Oil exploitatin in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche has
destroyed jungles, torn apart towns, done away with the thriving
ecology of southeastern gulf rim. Why was it that we heard the
!Ya basta! in Chiapas?
The answer has to do with the system's deep resentment
against the San Cristobal Diocese and don Samuel: 35 years of
consciousness-raising evangelization; 35 years of commitment to
those who are exploited, ignored, despised, dispossessed; 35 years
of searching for ways forward without fear of making a mistake, in
a constant attitude of conversion of those who have been
marginalized by the system; 35 years of evangelical practice in
search of dignity and respect for these millenary peoples.
The best evidence of this faithfulness to oppressed people
is the violet reaction of slander and irrational abuse.
[Translation by David Mintz (dmintz@ix.netcom.com)]