Dying Lakes Reveal Ecological Racism in Mexico

Early in September 2017, in a small fishing village on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, called Zapotalito, thousands of dead fish floated to the surface of Chacahua-Pastoría Lakes. People felt a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico City on September 19, as far away as Zapotalito, and the next morning, the black, indigenous and impoverished Mestizo, who depend on the area’s handful of lakes for food and trade, woke up to Smelly and terrible sight of floating fish.

Many locals insisted that the earthquake released toxic gases in the ground of the lakes and caused massive fish deaths. Although no official cause has been identified, it is not surprising that residents suspected a link between the earthquake and the toxins – it wasn’t the first or last time they woke up to fish floating in the water. For them, there is an environmental annihilation, or systematic destruction of the environment, going on here.

In a country where people of African descent were officially recognized in the federal constitution only in 2019 – despite having existed and played an important part of Mexico’s history since the sixteenth century – residents of the Lake District see this ecological state as another example of structural and environmental racism in Mexico. .

“We’ve asked for support from the government, but they say that since there is no damage to homes or structures, we are not a priority in Oaxaca,” a local African-Mexican fisherman and chef named Brigida told the Mexican news site Animal Politico a. After one year. But we are also victims of the earthquake. ”

The bank of the Chacahua-Pastoría Lakes River. Photography by Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez

Lakes have long shaped the black experience of this southern region of Mexico on the Pacific Ocean called the Costa Chica. There are between one and two million Mexicans of African descent, most of whom live in the southern states of the country, where the lakes of the Coast Chica are located. The lakes – and the rivers that feed on them – have provided water for important oil-producing crops such as cotton, coconut and cocoa on the Costa Chica since the Spanish forced people of African descent onto the coast. Five major lakes line the Pacific Ocean from Acapulco, Guerrero, to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, and while standing between coastal communities and the ocean, these freshwater lakes provide primary sources of food and water for drinking and irrigation.

The link between oil crops and the African diaspora

Along these waterways, oil plantations over hundreds of years have influenced the ethnic, labor and ecological history of the Costa Chica. But in order to understand how important crops and waterways are to Afro-Mexican communities (and the African diaspora in general), there is a short history lesson on oil crops.

In the twentieth century, oil crops have become increasingly important in the global vegetable oils and soap markets. After World War II, manufacturers used oil crops to make countless industrial chemicals, foods, and other products. Like African diaspora communities around the tropics, many Mexicans of African descent have cultivated the oilseeds needed for these global vegetable oil industries. In Mexico, the Costa Chica was the nation’s largest producer of cotton, sesame seeds and coconut at three different points in the twentieth century. As the coastal Guerrero region became the largest producer of coconut in the Western Hemisphere in the 1950s, and coconut plantations stretched across the Costa Chica for hundreds of miles into Oaxaca, more oilseed mills moved to the area.

There is great awareness of the dangers of a petroleum spill on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but today’s oil crops have also helped pollute many of the Pacific Coast’s lakes. As chemicals based on oil crops have become essential components of the industrialization of modern life – in the form of countless edible and industrial goods such as soap and plastics – African-Mexican communities have not benefited from the production. The profits went into the hands of local powerbrokers and multinational corporations, while communities were often left with environmental damage. This also applies to communities of African descent that harvest palm trees in Colombia, Jamaica, Honduras and Venezuela.

In the case of Chacahua Lakes, on the Oaxacan side of the Coast Chica, every cycle of oilseed-related industrialization – first in the 1970s, again in the 1990s, and even today – led to further pollution of the lakes, as the industrial process relied on more control systems. In water, oil processing plants, and agrochemical use. While irrigation drained the lakes of fresh water, waste from mills and runoff from farms filled the lake with harmful chemicals.

Women from Zaputalito fishing in the lake, photo courtesy Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez

Black geography is dying

Since the early 2000s, people of African descent and indigenous people in the Costa Chica region have sought government support to save their dying lakes. Locals sent messages to Mexico City and protested outside the government Capitol buildings in Oaxaca de Juarez. They have succeeded in reporting human rights violations both nationally and internationally. But after decades of activity and government inaction, their lagoons are still dying.

Today the residents not only need support, but they also want the government to recognize its environmental racism and how it has negatively affected one of the most important geographical regions for blacks in Mexico – the Chacahua Lakes – Pastoria.

At first glance, the government seemed interested in the area over the years. Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas first identified these lakes as a national park in 1937, but this distinction as a protected area did not save the surrounding communities – Zapotalito, El Corral, Chacahua, El Azufre – from environmental pollution. Government efforts to control water for tourism, fishing and agriculture in the region actually help explain how the lakes have become toxic and stagnant, as does government and private capital projects established in the area, and the impact of toxic pesticides and fertilizers used in the oilseed industries.

The surrounding communities are now finally cut off from the lake itself. Floating dead fish became an everyday sight.

Dead fish drift on the shores of Lake Chacahua in Zaputalito – Photo by Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez

“If we don’t do anything … Zaputalito will become a ghost town”

Dying fish is one thing, but destroying lakes also kills people. For black and indigenous locals, the lakes are their main source of livelihood. Communities there are struggling to survive without fish or adequate drinking water, not to mention the losses in ecotourism.

Christina, a black hunter, said in an interview with us in 2018, “There are days when we don’t even earn enough money to buy food. We came out of the lake with nothing, not even with something to eat.”

The dying lake is sick, polluted, and potentially malaria. Even without consuming chemicals from the lake fish or its waters, their death is an affront to all emotions. Touching the water caused skin problems for others. The smell of ammonia and the smell of sitting water is the source of a lot of headaches and a lot of dizziness and nausea. Bigger health concerns abound, too. In another 2018 interview, local fisherman Fernando described an increase in stomach cancer cases in the communities surrounding the lake, although there is no scientific research on this topic yet.

Blacks and indigenous people on the Pacific coast of Mexico continue to suffer from racial and colonial impacts through the dispossession and destruction of their lands and natural resources. People of African descent have lived in the area for centuries. They learned life in the lake and how to conserve it, but even their lifestyle on the sidelines is now at risk.

Yolanda, a Mixtec woman of African descent, made a point about it, in the summer of 2018, while sitting in front of the water: “If we don’t do anything now about this lake, when the children of our community grow up she said, ‘There will be nothing.’ ” ghosts.”

Jason Morris Porter is a PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University and Fulbright researcher Garcia Robles (2019-2020) studying agrochemicals and environmental justice in Mexico.

Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera is a PhD student in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, studying environmental gender racism in Mexico.

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