By The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is a 120-mile strip of land between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, almost entirely in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. It has been inhabited by indigenous groups with different languages and customs for millennia. Since colonial times it has attracted both national and international attention for its important geographic location and wealth of resources.
In No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), author Wendy Call, a self-described grassroots organizer and researcher, makes an impassioned plea; if not for stopping the encroachment of the global economy on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, then for proceeding only after critical evaluation of environmental and cultural impact studies. Ms. Call spent two consecutive years living and working on the Isthmus, from 2000 to 2002, in addition to shorter visits totaling another year.
The federal government proceeded with its Transisthmian Megaproject by beginning construction of a four-lane highway through the region, in some cases as a bypass around the small towns and villages of Oaxaca, otherwise connected by two-lane highways packed with of potholes It became part of former President Vicente Fox’s Plan Puebla Panama, an initiative to extend Mexico’s relatively new main highway system from the US border to Central America.
The scope of the Megaproject initially included 150 proposed projects that included oil refineries, plantations, industrial parks, commercial shrimp farms, and a road-rail network to bring products to national and international markets. The project would inevitably alter both the environmental and cultural landscape. Villagers opposed the development of the region mainly out of fear of the unknown due to lack of information and consultation. Government and business interests intended to go ahead.
Call’s strong argument is that development will result in a widespread irreversible adverse impact on the natural environment and on the inhabitants by disrupting their means of economic livelihood, while at the same time destroying other cultural cues such as traditions and language. . The book focuses on the objection to the construction of the highway system and the proposed replacement of small fishing operations with large industrial shrimp farms.
In addition to her own personal experiences, No Word for Welcome Call recounts family histories and livelihoods, as well as opposing individual viewpoints. This is accomplished by providing detailed examinations of the lives of people he knew intimately in the course of his life on the Isthmus for three years and, to a lesser extent, by interviewing public officials and other proponents of the project.
Call’s novel-like use of colorful and detailed description draws you in. He maintains his interest by weaving together the stories of his subjects (ie, the activists, the fishermen, the uneducated school teacher); otherwise, archival evidence of the historical importance of the Isthmus often dries up (referencing, for example, the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz, the US attempt to buy the Isthmus in the 19th century, and the consulates foreigners from the beginning of the 20th century in the port city of Salina Cruz); the sometimes violent and destructive demonstrations of opposing positions (fishermen burning government trucks and dredging machinery and kicking out the town’s workers; gesticulating with a machete while threatening “if the government doesn’t respect the people…”); and his own point of view.
He can’t help but become extremely opinionated, either jumping on Call’s bandwagon or criticizing how his political views affect his thesis presentation. She approaches her chapter centered on Huatulco, the Pacific resort town created by FONATUR (Mexico’s national tourism development agency), with disdain, though she notes positive impressions from its Mexican residents. He seems to mock the government when he writes that the FONATUR office “felt more like a travel agency than a government agency, with cluttered furniture, brochures full of beaches and bikinis, and the hollow air of a place with more infrastructure than activity.” . How else do you try to sell tourism, sun, beach and surf?
But it is Call’s writing style, unavoidable as a consequence of his own reason for being on the Isthmus, that helps keep the reader on the edge of his seat, whether cheering for the cause and hoping “the people” will prevail, or cowering in naivety – the arrival of the global economy on the Isthmus is inevitable and could have been foreshadowed as early as the 16th century, perhaps earlier.
The description of the lives and hardships of the fishermen and their environment is rich and compelling. Yes, perhaps the industrial shrimp farms destroy the mangroves and have a short lifespan, leaving a swath of destruction. But they give us few alternatives for the area and its industry.
Both industrialization and the residents themselves have played a role in the marginalization of existence and the need for government intervention. But there seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of residents about the complexity of the problem and the role they have played in creating the current conundrum; Call’s job is not to educate in this sense. A fisherman assumes that his people have been collecting shrimp, fish, and crabs for over a thousand years, so he asks why he should pay attention to a mestizo government regulation that prohibits the use of large rectangular nets. He appears to deny any direct role as a contributor to the problem and claims that a government whose solution would create a bigger problem (industrial shrimp farms) cannot be trusted.
The area has been overexploited. The fishermen were not forced to start using motor boats. They discarded their smaller nets, each of which took a year of spare time to make, in favor of purchasing the large $100 USD Japanese machine-made ones, and proceeded to catch their catch by spreading these new nets across the mouth. from the river. The result was that small shrimp and other marine life could not pass through the nets and reach the mangroves to reproduce. The government had to ban the use of these nets to protect the industry. The fisherman insists that he needs to catch that many fish to survive.
Many in the position of the fisherman choose to head to the United States. Call mentions emigration from time to time, but it is not fully addressed in his book, perhaps because it is not consistent with Call’s thesis. It is rare to find an anthropological writing of this nature that does not deal directly with emigration. But Call is not an anthropologist and, in fact, he criticizes social scientists, for some reason he groups them with others who work on the Isthmus: “I tried not to act like so many journalists, anthropologists, folklorists and sociologists.” d found while living on the Isthmus. They used to come for a few hours, days, or weeks, spouting questions before their bodies warmed up a chair.” Perhaps anthropological fieldwork has changed dramatically since my days in graduate school.
The superhighway and a network of smaller highways and railways result in the physical division of populations, and may have an adverse impact on indigenous culture. Relocation of populations in neighborhoods with street names such as Poblado Uno, Dos, etc. instead of preserving the names of the heroes of the Revolution or of the gods and pre-Hispanic royalty, it impacts on the pride of society and one’s heritage. But globalization is inevitable, to the benefit not only of a few wealthy Mexicans and foreigners seeking to profit from NAFTA, as the book exposes, but also of the inhabitants of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Of course, as Call suggests, environmental and cultural impact studies are crucial to minimizing the destruction of peoples and their lands. And yes, sometimes they are not done or are ignored and politics and power often rule. What I found missing were proposals regarding the least detrimental alternative, which in the circumstances I would suggest, is the best one could hope to achieve, rather than a complete halt to everything. When Subcomandante Marcos’ caravan headed for Mexico City in 2001, and he assured that he would take the message to President Fox that “the Isthmus is not for sale,” perhaps someone should have suggested a lease with terms that would maximize the benefit for the isthmus.
No Word for Welcome is a well-written book that holds the reader’s interest from start to finish. I recommend it for prospective visitors to southern Mexico because its descriptions of life in that part of Mexico are extremely accurate, from the workings of local politics, the antics, the strategies, and sometimes the destructive forces used to make a point, down to the richness of detail, for the history lesson. The expat living in Mexico will find Call’s experiences familiar and reassuring on many levels (a department store clerk is often surprised when asked how much a refrigerator costs in cash rather than credit).
For those interested in the global economy and industrialization or who wish to understand how competing interests are addressed and resolved in southern Mexico in particular, No Words of Welcome is a must. It is written with a strong bias and, as such, arouses emotion. The reader is eager to know how it all turned out, and to some extent it is told. Mrs. Call’s final chapter includes her impressions of her 2008 visit.