Montes Azules Reserve at
the Eye of the Storm
Diego Cevallos*
MEXICO CITY, May 18 (Tierramérica) - Located in the southeastern Mexican
state of Chiapas, the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve brings together an
explosive mix of irregular human settlements, guerrilla groups, the logging and
burning of forests, plundering of species, and opposing visions of how to manage
this natural wealth.
The 331,200-hectare Montes Azules Reserve is at the centre of Mexico's greatest
environmental conflict, and in its management the present and future challenges
of other reserves around the world come into play, Julia Carabias, former
Mexican environment secretary, told Tierramérica.
Carabias is one of this year's recipients of the United Nations Environment
Programme's Champions of the Earth award.
The reserve and the surrounding Lacandona jungle constitute the most important
humid tropical reserve in North America and contain the biggest supplies of
freshwater in Mexico. They hold most of the country's tropical trees, as well as
33 percent of its reptiles, 80 percent of butterfly species and 32 percent of
birds.
''The region is plundered by foreign companies and interests linked to
bioprospecting, who say the indigenous people living there are a bother, and so
they force them out,'' said Miguel Angel García, coordinator of Maderas del
Pueblo del Sureste, a grassroots association working in the area.
But Carabias says those arguments are ''fallacious''.
They are accusations that ''use terms like biopiracy and bioprospecting, which
cause a reaction, but they don't know what they're talking about,'' said the
former environment secretary, now member of a non-governmental organisation that
runs a research station in Montes Azules, where nature reserve managers are
trained.
Reserve director José Zúñiga agrees: ''There is a great deal of (false or
exaggerated information) about Montes Azules, while the results of the
programmes under way and the crude and evident realities garner little
interest.''
The official told Tierramérica that in the reserve 85 percent of the tree cover
remains intact and that the process of relocation -- not displacement -- of the
indigenous populations, who he says moved to the reserve without authorisation
in the first place, is running smoothly, while the research programmes are
regulated and conducted in a professional manner.
''There is no bioprospecting going on,'' he maintained.
Working in Montes Azules, declared a reserve in 1978 by the Mexican government,
are various governmental agencies, along with a dozen NGOs, and there are
research projects involving funding from the United Nations, European Union and
foreign universities.
''There are very strong and unyielding viewpoints, and it is all a product of
political posturing and diverse interests,'' a foreign researcher who works in
the area told Tierramérica, requesting anonymity ''to avoid being attacked.''
Since the 1970s Montes Azules has withstood heavy pressures resulting from
social, political and even religious problems, which are manifest in new human
settlements, expanding unsustainable agriculture, and environmental destruction
from fire and logging.
This year around 300 hectares of the reserve were burned when local peasant
farmers lit fires to clear their plots of land.
Conflict in the area intensified in 1994 with the appearance in Chiapas of the
leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), led by the now famous ''Subcomandante
Marcos''.
Some of the EZLN's social bases are in the Lacandona jungle, including Montes
Azules, where they arrived after fleeing violence or were ordered there by EZLN
leaders. But there are also indigenous peoples who oppose the Zapatistas and
many have moved to the area simply looking for a plot of land to grow food for
survival.
Environmentalists maintain that the pressures on the reserve and the Lacandona
jungle, which together cover 500,000 hectares, are immense.
A century ago the jungle encompassed nearly two million hectares, and in that
time the human population has grown from fewer than 20,000 to more than 600,000.
The reserve and the jungle area ''are losing their viability little by little,''
warned then-minister of environment Víctor Lichtinger in 2002.
Surrounded today by several military barracks that were set up following the
emergence of the EZLN, the reserve also attracts interest from transnational
pharmaceutical and seed producing companies.
''It also brings with it a serious and complex agrarian problem dating to the
1970s, when the government at the time handed over farmland to indigenous
groups, with the only aim to plunder the timber in the forest'' they left
behind, said Maderas del Pueblo's García.
According to Zúñiga, director of the reserve that until 2000 did not have an
integrated management plan, there are 15,000 Chole, Lacandon, Tzeltzal, Tzotzil
and Tojolabal indigenous peoples living in the area with legally recognised
rights. There are also 500 people living there who are considered invaders.
He noted that thanks to negotiations with the invading indigenous groups over
the past five years, half of them had left the reserve. Carabias attributed that
achievement to the current environment secretary, Alberto Cárdenas.
The talks will continue in order to remove the more recent arrivals from the
reserve, said Zúñiga.
As in most matters related to Montes Azules, there is no agreement on the
numbers. García says that the people with recognised rights in the reserve
number no more than 5,600, and that the other ''invaders'' total almost 2,000.
In his opinion, the so-called relocations of the indigenous peoples are in fact
expulsions.
''There could be a reserve with people, and it could be left in their (the
indigenous groups') hands,'' said the activist. But such a model contradicts the
''concept of biosphere reserves without people and against people, which is the
approach of Montes Azules and was imposed by the developed countries,'' he
added.
''Now biodiversity is converted into genetic banks, of great interest to the
biotechnology, agro-food, and pharmaceutical industries, and for water bottling
companies,'' said García.
When asked to name who he believes to be working for those interests and
conducting the bioprospecting he denounces, García responded that it is
difficult to do so, ''because the transnational firms hide behind local
institutions and universities.''
On the official list of the reserve's director of the work and research being
carried out in Montes Azules, there are no transnationals.
Ten projects are in motion, including flower species inventories, the habitat
situation in cavern areas, the impacts of ''anthropological disturbance'' on
mammals, a study of the diversity of vanilla plants, and others focused on birds
and hunting in the area.
The institutions conducting this work are largely Mexican, although one of the
registered groups is a university from the U.S. state of California.
(*Originally published May 14 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the
Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by
IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United
Nations Environment Programme.)
(END/2005)
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.