Disasters and Neoliberalism: Different Expressions of Social Vulnerability [1st ed.] 9783030549015, 9783030549022

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Gabriela Vera-Cortés Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano   Editors

Disasters and Neoliberalism Different Expressions of Social Vulnerability

Disasters and Neoliberalism

Gabriela Vera-Cortés Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano •

Editors

Disasters and Neoliberalism Different Expressions of Social Vulnerability

123

Editors Gabriela Vera-Cortés Departamento de Sociedad y Cultura El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico

Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano Departamento de Cambio Sociocultural Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) Mexico City, Mexico

ISBN 978-3-030-54901-5 ISBN 978-3-030-54902-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

Rediscovering El Dorado: Latin American Contributions to Disaster Studies I am grateful to the editors, the authors, and the publisher of this collection of studies. They add substantially to the growing literature in English that focuses our attention on Latin America as a laboratory and pioneer of both forces that create disaster risk and efforts to expose those forces and to institutionalize resistance to them. This collection also advances the cause of decolonizing research in the Americas (Gaillard 2019). Most of the studies in this volume are based on fieldwork and historical observation in Mexico (with side journeys into Brazil, Italy, and the USA). These detailed studies add to other similar collections such as the free, online volume, Reduction of Vulnerability to Disasters: from knowledge to action (Marchezini et al. 2017) that combines offerings in Portuguese, Spanish, and English that explore social vulnerability to disaster in Brazil and several Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. Also in English, is Virginia1 Garcia-Costa’s edited book, The Anthropology of Disasters in Latin America (Garcia-Acosta 2020). One can only hope that the richness of Latin America’s long history of risk and vulnerability creation as well as resistance to these malign forces are made accessible in English and other languages, from the hyper-local, such as mutual aid (autogestión) in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria and abandonment by the colonial US federal government (Garriga-López 2019) to the national scale such contributing to the overthrow of the long-hegemonic ruling party in Mexico as a result of its malfeasance following the earthquake that devastated Mexico City in 1985 (Apodaca 2017; Riding 2017). South and Central America are highly exposed to natural hazards because of their great diversity and range of climates, bioregions and topography, location on the “rim of fire” (a zone of seismic and volcanic activity), and also being affected by long- and short-term cycles of high and low rainfall due to ENSO Pacific Ocean temperature variation, as well as Caribbean hurricanes. Until recently, however, 1

Available for free download at https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/56269.

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studies of the root causes of disaster, that is, their creation or genesis had been hampered by several conditions. Firstly, for many years the view that disasters were “natural” prevailed (Maskrey 1993). Secondly, with independence from Spain and Portugal and the creation of national government institutions, disasters were generally assigned to the military whose mandate did not extend to prevention but was limited to immediate response and (with the church) to relief. Thirdly, attention of the state and the emerging scientific establishment was limited to large-scale disasters and not to the numerous small-scale landslides, floods and other “everyday” events that undermine livelihoods and act with a ratchet effect to reinforce poverty (Lavell and Maskrey 2014; Reyes Pondo and Lavell 2012; Wisner et al. 2004). This last-mentioned reflects long-standing racial and class dichotomies in the hemisphere that privileges the lives and concerns of urban, White, and mestizo citizens while rendering invisible rural, indigenous ones. One sees this beginning with the conquista, colonial administration and economies based on the extraction of mineral wealth and bio-based commodities such as rubber and sugar cane. The early distinction between indigenous people and slaves versus the urban elite was reinforced by the distinction between large-scale latifundia landholding and the small-scale “peasant” minifundia farms. This is not merely a land tenure system that has brought so much suffering due to civil wars but also a “model” of society at large (Galeano 1973).

Laboratory and Pioneer In the twenty-first century, views and approaches to disaster in Mexico and the rest of Latin America have changed. Unrecognized by many in the field of disaster studies and more broadly in policy and public administration circles, Latin America has been a laboratory for a deadly driver of disaster risk creation in the form of neoliberalism, particularly focused on the economics of neo-extractivism (Svampa 2019). Although much of Latin America began to develop its own development path in the inter-war years and through the Second World War, these efforts were systematically undermined by a post-WWII global system dominated by the USA (Gunder-Frank 1966). As the two editors of Disaster and Neoliberalism (DN) explain (p. 7), widespread advances by an organized working class in the 1960s led to a counterstrategy by the capitalist class, using legislative and state power reinforced by policies by the post-war Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank, regional development banks and IMF, that had been put in place to stabilize and safeguard return on invested capital. What took the place of liberal, democratic governments and a social contract that provided a safety network for workers were neoliberal regimes whose focus was to create conditions for overseas investment by minimizing labor standards, environmental protection, and public spending (Harvey 2007; Rénique 2005).

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The result in Latin America has been 50 years violent coups (Chile, Argentina, Brazil) and civil wars (Colombia, Peru, all of Central America) as well as direct US intervention (Panama, Grenada). Citing Therborn (2013), the editors of DN summarize the human cost of this historical development path (p. 10): “… premature death, fragile health, humiliation, subjugation, discrimination, exclusion from knowledge of the predominant social life, poverty, impotency, stress, lack of safety, anxiety, lack of self-confidence and self-love, and exclusion from opportunities, as well as the necessary resources to act and participate in the world” as well as “a reduction in life expectancy and inter-generational social mobility, along with a generally lower quality of life and capacity for survival.” Thus, Latin America was a laboratory for the creation of neoliberal policies that were later imposed on Africa by the Bretton Woods institutions and former colonial governments (Wisner 1988). But Latin America was also a pioneer in developing an understanding of disaster as “failed development” and promoting of local efforts of people collectively to protect themselves from the risks created by the dominant development pathway. There had been early voices such as Josue de Castro (1952), medical doctor and geographer, who wrote eloquently about how drought in northeast Brazil was turned into hunger and even famine by a long history of elite control over land and water. However, the creation of a new paradigm for understanding disaster and development accelerated in the late 1980s (Anderson and Woodrow 1989; Cuny 1983; Maskrey 1989) and the early 1990s, especially with the publications of the network known as La Red (Wisner, Brenes and Marchezini 2020). This pioneering is available on La Red’s website, for example, Lavell (1994); Lavell and Franco (1996); Mansilla (1996); Maskrey (1993) and the translation into Spanish of the Routledge volume, At Risk (Blaikie et al. 1996). From the late 1990s onward, the impact of UN framework for disaster reduction (UNISDR 2005) and its precursors was to be seen, as well as the influence of La Red and other networks of critical researchers and planners in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America widely in the region. For example, critical researchers who had a role in shaping new disaster legislation was created in Colombia in 2012. They also influenced the approach of regional organization that began to link disaster with development (Ferris and Petz 2013: 49–62). These intergovernmental disaster agencies include CEPREDENAC in Central America, CDEMA in the insular Caribbean, and CEPRADE in the Andean region.2 In Brazil, the less well-known and more loosely networked counterpart of La Red had a role in shaping that country’s disaster legislation following deadly landslides in 2011 (Marchezini et al. 2017). Latin America, and in microcosm, Mexico as discussed in Neoliberalism and Disaster, have many surprises for the reader and valuable experience of relevance to removing obstacles to public safety such as oligarchy, technocracy, and 2 Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) https://www.cdema.org/; Coordination Center for Natural Disaster Prevention in Central America (CEPRENENAC) http://www.unspider.org/sites/default/files/_CEPREDENAC_S.pdf; Andean Committee for Disaster Prevention and Assistance (CEPRADE) http://cidbimena.desastres.hn/docum/crid/EIRDInforma/ing/No6_ 2002/art16.htm.

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necropolitical investment strategies in other parts of the world. In the pressure cooker constituted by pandemic, post-pandemic recession, resistance to globalization, and climate change, what new surprises will emerge? London, England June 2020

Ben Wisner

References Anderson, M. & Woodrow, P. (1989). Rising from the ashes: development strategies in times of disaster. Boulder, CO & Paris: Westview and UNESCO. Apodaca, C. (2017). State repression in post-disaster societies. London: Routledge. Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., Davis, I. & Wisner, B. (1996). Vulnerabilidad: el entorno social, politico y economico de los desastres. (Tercero Mundo Editores. Lima: La Red & ITDG). https://www. desenredando.org/public/libros/1996/vesped/. Cuny, F. (1983). Disasters and development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castro de, J. (1952). The geography of hunger. Boston: Little Brown [Geografia da fome. Rio de Janeiro: O Cruzeiro, 1946]. Ferris, E. & Petz, D. (2013). In the neighborhood: the growing role of regional organizations in disaster risk management. New York & London: Brookings & London School of Economics and Political Science. Gaillard, J. C. (2018). Disaster studies inside out. Disasters, 43, S1: S7–S17. Galeano, E. (1973). The open veins of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Garcia-Acosta, V. (Ed.). (2020). The anthropology of disasters in Latin America. London: Routledge. Garriga-López, A. (2019). Puerto Rico: The future in question. Shima. https://www.researchgate. net/publication/336692535_Puerto_Rico_The_Future_In_Question. Gunder Frank, A. (2010 [1966]). The development of underdevelopment. In S. Chew & P. Lauderdale (Eds.). The theory and methodology of world development: The writings of Andre Gunder Frank. London: Palgrave. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lavell, A. (Ed.). (1996). Viviendo en riesgo. Lima: La Red. https://www.desenredando.org/public/ libros/1994/ver/. Lavell, A. & Franco, E. (Eds.) (1994). Estado, sociedad y gestión de los desastres en América Latina. Lima: La Red. https://www.desenredando.org/public/libros/1996/esyg/. Lavell, A. & Maskrey, A. (2014). The future of disaster risk management. Environmental Hazards, 13(4), 267–280. https://www.institutomora.edu.mx/ProteccionCivil/Recursos/M%C3%B3dulo% 202.%20Riesgos%20hidrometeorol%C3%B3gicos/The%20future%20of%20disaster%20risk% 20management.pdf. Mansilla, E. (Ed.). (1996). Desastres modelo para armar: colección de piezas de un rompecabezas social. Lima: La Red. https://www.desenredando.org/public/libros/1996/dma/ DesastresModeloParaArmar-1.0.0.pdf. Marchezini, V., Wisner, B., Londe, L. & Saito, S. (Eds.). (2017). Reduction of vulnerability to disasters: from knowledge to action. São Carlos, SP, Brazil: Rima Editora. Maskrey, A. (1989). Disaster mitigation: a community approach. Oxford: Oxfam. Maskrey, A. (Ed.). (1993). Los desastres no son naturales. Lima: La Red. https://www. desenredando.org/public/libros/1993/ldnsn/. Rénique, G. (2005). Introduction: Latin America today: the revolt against neo-liberalism. Socialism and Democracy, 19(3), 1–11. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/ 08854300500284561.

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Reyes Pondo, L. & Lavell, A. (2012). Extensive and every day risk in the Bolivian Chaco: sources of crisis and disaster. Revue de Géographie Alpine/Journal of Alpine Research. http://journals. openedition.org/rga/1719. Riding, A. (2017). Mexico’s 1985 earthquake didn’t start a revolution. Zócolo, 29 September. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/09/29/mexicos-85-earthquake-didnt-start-revolution/ ideas/nexus/. Svampa, M. (2019). Neo-extractivism in Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Therborn, G. (2013). The killing fields of inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Wisner, B. (1988). Power and need in Africa. London: Earthscan. Wisner, B., Brenes, A. & Marchezini, V. (2020) The role of non-governmental organizations in natural hazards governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. In B. Gerber (Ed.), The oxford research encyclopedia of natural hazards governance. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 338954436_Non-Governmental_Organizations_and_Natural_Hazard_Governance_in_Latin_ America_and_the_Caribbean.

Contents

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Disasters and Neoliberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabriela Vera-Cortés and Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano

Part I 2

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Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Urban Contexts

Disasters as a Social Relapse in Neoliberal Capitalism. Two Cases Analyzed in Developed Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano

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Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes in Mexico City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jorge Damián Morán-Escamilla

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Social Vulnerability: Learnings from the September 19, 2017, Earthquake in Mexico City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patricia Eugenia Olivera

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“On the Banks of the Rio Bravo…”: Social Construction and Perception of Flood Risk in Irregular Settlements . . . . . . . . . . Xavier Oliveras-González, Teresa Elizabeth Cueva-Luna, and Rosa Isabel Medina-Parra

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Temporary Shelters and Health Services for Older Adults in Floods in the Metropolis of Monterrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Rosalía Chávez-Alvarado

Part II 7

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Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Rural Contexts

Spatial Reconfiguration and Relocations After Disasters in Rural Contexts: The Case of Tacotalpa, Tabasco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Gabriela Vera-Cortés

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Human Relocations in Guerrero After the September 2013 Disaster Emergency: A Non-preventive Neoliberal Response . . . . . 185 Marisol Barrios-Yllan and Beatriz Adriana Méndez-Torres

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Vulnerability, Management of Volcanic Risk and Neoliberalism in Colima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Hugo Ignacio Rodríguez-García

10 It is Not the Rivers Fault: A Reflection About the Construction of Disasters in Brazil and Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Gláucia Maria Quintino-Baraúna 11 Tabasco: Between Hydraulic Plans and Floods. Disasters and Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Ma. Magdalena Hernández 12 Water and Hills in the Indigenous Worldview and the Fight for the Defense of Natural Resources in the Sierra Norte de Puebla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Jair Díaz-Hurtado 13 Social Capital and Disasters. Facing Natural Hazards in the Nahua Sierra-Costa in Michoacan, Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Berenice Solís-Castillo and Janik Granados-Herrera Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Chapter 1

Disasters and Neoliberalism Gabriela Vera-Cortés and Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano

1.1 Introduction Since1 the early 1980s Fred C. Cuny maintained that disasters were associated with the subject of development, which he described as the “modernization of a society” (Cuny 1994: 262) explicable in terms of a direct connection between vulnerability and poverty. Those ideas were then refined by others by saying “disasters are unresolved development problems” (cf. Lavell 2000: 4). Cuny affirmed that disasters should not be defined in terms of the natural or anthropogenic phenomenon that has a destructive impact, but rather in light of human consequences. The relationship between “disasters and development,” as his iconic book was entitled, stated it as follows: When a natural event does affect a human settlement, the result may still not be a major disaster. Consider the earthquake that struck San Fernando, California, in 1971. The quake registered 6.4 on the Richter Scale. Yet San Fernando, with a population of over seven million, suffered only minor damage and fifty-eight deaths . . . Two years later, an earthquake of a 1I

would like to thank the Polemología y Hermenéutica (Polemology and Hermeneutics) research area, headed by Marco Antonio Molina Zamora of the Department of Politics and Culture, directed by Esthela Irene Sotelo Núñez, of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, for allowing me to spend March to June 2020 completing the revision and preparing the final version of this volume. And of course, I am also grateful to El Colegio de la Frontera Sur as a workplace that had given its ongoing support to my work. GVC. G. Vera-Cortés (B) Departamento de Sociedad y Cultura, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), Villahermosa, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] J. M. Macías-Medrano Departamento de Cambio Sociocultural, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_1

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G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano magnitude of 6.2 struck Managua, Nicaragua, and reduced the center of the city to rubble, killing an estimated six thousand people. What was the difference between the two locations that caused such a disparity and made one an “earthquake,” while the other was a “disaster”? To oversimplify, the answer is the different level of development in the two cities. Are disasters in the Third World on the increase? The answer is both yes and no. The average number of natural events occurring each year has not changed; there are no more hurricanes and earthquakes today than there were in past years. What has changed is the magnitude (deaths, damage, costs) of each disaster and the increased attention given to developing countries (Cuny 1994: 14).

Another similar example of disastrous events in two social contexts with major developmental differences has been that of the comparison of the effects of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The figures on destruction revealed a conspicuous difference: citing casualties alone, in Haiti there were 316,000 deaths and in Chile, only 507; it should also be pointed out that the magnitude of the quake was greater in the Andean nation than in the Caribbean (Brain and Mora 2012). No matter the notion of development that is employed, when it refers to a society, it presumably implies that a country has achieved sufficient economic resources for the members of society and for governance, as well as collective organization, technical resources, and expertise, such that the threat of disasters can be addressed with awareness and preparedness to avoid or reduce their impacts. In the narrative of “disasters and development” following Cuny’s assertions, that general idea was reproduced and even suggested as a paradigm (González 2008), which has been of remarkable importance in the understanding of disasters. An extensive body of literature reproduces that central idea: “disasters are an unresolved problem of development” (Lavell 2000; Zilbert 2003, 2008; García 2005). However, the general idea that less-developed countries are more disaster-prone, as implied by Cuny’s statement, was placed in doubt by others, such as Aguirre (2004), who questioned the direct relationship between vulnerability, poverty, and disasters by referring to the Latin American subcontinent. Cases of major disasters—such as the destruction of New Orleans in the United States in the wake of the passage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the repeated floods in England (ECLA 2013), France (Jackson 2010; OECD 2014) and Germany (Schröther et al. 2015), and the earthquake in Japan in 2011 (Ferris and Petz 2012)—drew attention to that propensity to disaster that Aguirre (2004) had earlier related to a notion of vulnerability not directly associated with poverty. Instead, he emphasized an opposing, inherent attribute of resistance-resilience, claiming that developed countries are also vulnerable to disasters and in fact have the highest economic losses. With that, he explained the surprise he found in the Declaration of the Hemispheric Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction of Costa Rica in 2001: This assumption that vulnerability and economic development are opposites makes the surprise reflected in the declaration understandable . . . which considers it “paradoxical that, at a time when such an extraordinary effort is being made to raise the sophistication, security, and comfort of our societies, our vulnerability to natural risks is in fact growing.” The paradox is resolved if one accepts that vulnerability and the capacity for social resistance change as societies change (Aguirre 2004: 488).

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Without overlooking the fact that those statements were based on the analysis of data from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (Wallemacq 2018) to refer to the enormous economic losses of wealthy countries, it is important to view those same data in perspective. Clearly, higher mortality from disasters has continued to be recorded in poor countries (CRED 2016); in other words, it is a constant where more than a million people have died in more than 700 “natural disasters” in a period of twenty years and 90% of these deaths by disasters took place in low- and medium-income countries (Schlein 2016). What role does neoliberalism play in this apparent data paradox? Data collection on disasters has reflected a shift in the pattern of those affected that has continued to be measured in terms of economic losses and deaths, but they have not yet been analyzed in different terms. In the 1960s to the 1990s losses from disasters in developing countries were situated on the level of international relations as a certain “burden” for developed countries; they had to “aid” countries with fewer resources through specialized agencies, which was lamented because they had to offer that “assistance” free of change, as a sort of charity (Cuny 1994: 11). Probably, as a consequence of this belief, compounded with the over-capitalization of reinsuring enterprises in the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 (Greenwald 2012), international financial agencies were to devise instruments to confront disasters, such as catastrophe bonds and different insurance and reinsurance schemes, which have not proven to be as effective in addressing disasters in underdeveloped contexts (Cota et al. 2017). In fact, the pattern of disasters in the world has undergone major changes that can be attributed to neoliberalism (Filion 2013; Collier 2014; Scoppetta 2016). Developed countries have more monetary losses, above all if we consider the variable of insured losses. That said, other matters of conceptual interest are misnomers, such as the notion of “rich county” versus “poor country.” In capitalism those nations, whether rich or poor, are not homogeneous in terms of their social composition. The existence of rich and poor in capitalism, in other words, the differentiation of social classes, is a condition sine qua non, in the same way that poor countries are also inhabited by rich, employing the meaning Lipietz (1977) proposed to understand the spatiality of capital. Differentiability in the pattern of disaster impact is also a process amply identified in the increase in social inequality and poverty, even in wealthy countries. “Oxfam’s research has revealed that over the last 25 years (Hardoon et al. 2016; Coffey et al. 2020), the top 1% have gained more income than the bottom 50% put together” (Oxfam 2017: 3). This situation reflects the consequences of economic processes that, as we shall see, are inherent to neoliberalism. Furthermore, they are rife with economic policies and actions of governments and big business associated with the shock doctrine that Naomi Klein (2010) brilliantly characterized that have led to the decomposition of the axiological limits of capital. In other words, it results in corruption greedy for illicit enrichment that perverts the legal order of the foundation of what is referred to as social contracts in the political sciences (see Scoppetta 2016). In the period of what is referred to as neoliberalism, clear differences have marked the occurrence of disasters worldwide. We have also observed major disasters in

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developed countries, such as the United States and Japan, and those on a slightly lesser scale, such as the European disasters mentioned earlier. This does not necessarily mean we should agree with the opinion of Aguirre (2004), who, alluding to the relationship between losses from disaster, vulnerability, and development, displays a degree of confusion when it comes to equating losses with vulnerability in an overly simplified way that suggests the greater the vulnerability, the higher the losses. It is not the same to lose a gold coin as it is to lose a nickel coin under the same conditions of vulnerability. Neoliberalism as a phenomenon of multiscalar economic organization can only be explained by taking into account its antecedents, as Susan George (1999) has pointed out, with roots in the past in which the rise of the socialist world in the early twentieth century, the aftermath of the end of World War II, and the later collapse of the USSR are key explanatory points. In reality the spatiality of neoliberalism, its globality and local expressions synthesized the role of the State and the market in the economy and their repercussions on the living conditions of members of society. The economic orientation of neoliberalism would also define its beneficiaries and victims in manifestations of disasters. David Harvey (2005) dubbed this period of the development of world capital coinciding with the general periodicity of neoliberalism as the new imperialism. The same author identified its inception starting with the corporate capitalist class feeling threatened by the growing power of labor worldwide from the 1960s and 1970s, thus it implemented a series of actions from the 1970s to early 1980s. They can be summarized as transferring capital to where cheap labor could be found; strengthening financial capital; privatizing state institutions; and undertaking technological changes and deindustrialization by means of automatization and robotization. All of this took place through ideological, economic, and political changes implemented by international agencies by means of the foreign debt of different States in the world, particularly in developing countries (Harvey 2016; Sassen 2015). Other pressures were exerted on a regional scale, such as the consensus of Washington or different economic agreements (Trans-Pacific Partnership: TTP; Trade in Services Agreement: TISA: Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership: RCEP, among others), with current trends of globalization toward regionalization, which have also contributed to a neo-extractivism and regional devastation that Sassen (2015) refers to as the proliferation of “dead land.” Its projection in risk-disaster substantially increased the vulnerability of the population and shifted the attention of States from protecting the population in the face of disasters to meeting the global interests of power groups. The generalized characteristics of neoliberalism have been the reduction of social policies and the resulting deterioration of the living conditions of the population that lead to poor services and/or the privatization of health, education, and other social programs, accompanied by higher costs for the population. In general terms, broad sectors of humanity have experienced declining social mobility. Countries such as Mexico, and developing countries as a whole, have witnessed a gradual elimination of public subsidies for the rural sector (which has not occurred in developed countries), ongoing urban expansion encroaching on agricultural lands, and migration to cities, in addition to a process of deindustrialization stemming from the low productivity

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level of the sector, high-interest rates in the speculative market, and opening up to foreign capital. Furthermore, precarious work in all branches of formal enterprises has multiplied in jobs characterized by low wages, the absence of a labor contract with social benefits, work hours exceeding legal limits, and inadequate working conditions. At the same time, there has been an increase in the informal economy, in which formal businesses participate by hiring informal labor, in order to increase the flexibility of labor programs and austerity, which have resulted in the informality of the labor force, underemployment, and massive unemployment (Pradilla 2013, 2014, 2018; Bartra 2013). According to the International Labour Office (2018), in 2016 informal employment in North America was 18.1 and 53.1% in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the case of Mexico it was 57%, similar to those of the highest percentages in the region of Central America, 58%, and in the Caribbean, 57.6% (although in the cases of Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, it was close to 80%). In contrast, in Europe it was only 25.1% and if the farming sector is excluded, the percentage went down to 20.9%. However, in diverse subregions in Europe the percentages change. In northern, southern, and western Europe it was 14.3%, below the regional average, quite different from the percentage in Eastern Europe with 31.5%, whereas in Asia the average was 59.2 and 64.8%, if China is excluded. For the African continent, the average was 85.8%. For Robinson (2004), Pradilla (2013, 2014, 2018), and Stiglitz (2015), neoliberalism has sought conditions to adjust national and regional economies to the global economy, which include an appropriate political and macroeconomic environment and a legal framework for the reorganization and a productive internal insertion into the global economy. Since the 1970s a restructuring and a new form of integration of nation-states into the global economy have begun. Neoliberal adjustment programs in each country opened the barriers of goods and capital to operate barrier-free over national borders. Profits were appropriated by national elites and transnational corporations. Neoliberalism introduced major changes, such as depressed and flexible labor conditions and the elimination of state regulations as controls for environmental protection. As for the informal economy, with the arrival of neoliberalism, salaried workers were left out of social security and legislation. Business leaders accumulated wealth beyond the law and did not pay taxes to public coffers, nor did those who were part of the formal economy, or else they paid little in taxes. On occasions, the informal economy had ties to globalized, organized crime, as well as to financial and banking capital, which in countries such as Mexico and other parts of Latin America were associated with the illegal extraction of natural resources, such as petroleum and mineral deposits. The economic income of the employed population varied depending on the type of work they performed, which could yield extremely low or extremely high income (Correa-Cabrera 2018; Davis 2006). Generally, in the case of Mexico, the minimum wage income is one of the lowest in the world (International Labour Office 2016).

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1.2 Qualitative and Quantitative Data on the Influence of Neoliberalism on Social Vulnerability to Disasters Social inequality is expressed in the world population through poverty that Therborn (2013: 11–75) defines as the result of a systemic violation of human rights that prevents billions of people from achieving full human development, as well as the capacity to function as human beings and to opt for a life of dignity and wellbeing, given current conditions of technology and growth. These limitations can assume multiple forms and consequences in the population, such as premature death, fragile health, humiliation, subjugation, discrimination, exclusion from knowledge of the predominant social life, poverty, impotency, stress, lack of safety, anxiety, lack of self-confidence and self-love, and exclusion from opportunities, as well as the necessary resources to act and participate in the world. It also results in a reduction in life expectancy and inter-generational social mobility, along with a generally lower quality of life and capacity for survival. The preceding is explained based on four mechanisms promoting inequality: the gap between the richest and the poorest, exploitation, exclusion, and hierarchization of power groups over the rest of the population. Later it is summarized in three categories: (1) vital: mortality rate, life expectancy, infant health prospects, hunger, and malnutrition; (2) existential: inequality of autonomy, degree of freedom, the right to respect, and personal development; and (3) of resources: economic income of parents and children. On the basis of statistics and research conducted in different parts of the world, Therborn (2013: 83–88) reveals an inequality that has increased over the last four decades at a more fast-paced rate than in the past. He points out that around the 1990s AIDS increased in sub-Saharan and southern Africa; meanwhile the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union brought a major reduction in life expectancy, and according to data, in the male population it was much higher, because it declined by 7 years from 1991 to 1994. The premature death toll rose to 2.6 million in 1995, compared to a decade earlier in Russia and Ukraine alone; while throughout the former USSR, it grew to 4 million in the 1990s. The rise of unemployment in the European Union between January 2008 and January 2013 went from 8 million people to 26 million, while in the United States, from 4.6 to 13 million. Therborn compared average life expectancy in developed and developing countries and found a difference of 27 years, according to 2010 statistics. He also uncovered more extreme comparative cases, for instance in Sierra Leone and Japan, in which the gap rose to 46 years. In general terms, the poor and those who have little formal education not only die prematurely, but they also have common chronic diseases that impact their lives. In turn, Oxfam (2019) focused on inequality in income and presented recent examples showing the consequences of inequality that confirm and update many of the examples given by Therborn in 2013. In developing countries, the children of wealthy families are 32% more likely to complete primary education than the children of poor families. Meanwhile, in countries with a predominance of people with middle and low income, it is estimated that the lack of access to health services is responsible for 3.6 million deaths annually. The data from 137 developing countries reveal that

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the children of poor families are, on average, twice as likely to die before the age of 5 than the children of well-to-do parents. As for longevity, African-American children in the United States are twice as likely to die in their first year of life than white children. Meanwhile, in India, the life expectancy of a woman considered to be from a “low caste” is 154 times lower than a woman from a high caste. Just as Therborn, they coincide that life expectancy in one of the poorest areas in London is 6 years lower than that of one of the richest neighborhoods in the English capital. At the same time, life expectancy in Pinheiros, one of the wealthiest barrios in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, is an average of 79 years, while in one of the poorest suburbs in the same city, Ciudad Tiradentes, it is only 54 years. Oxfam concludes by pointing out that in 2018 a mere 26 individuals possess the same wealth as 3.8 billion people (the poorest half of humanity); in 2017 this figure rose to 46 individuals. It arrives at these figures by employing data from the World Bank (2018), which states that almost half the world’s population (3.4 billion people) currently live on less than US$5.50 per day. The rise of social inequality in almost four decades has become accentuated in Latin American metropolises, where the number of poor living on the fringes of cities has increased, without State protection and in conditions of bare survival, sometimes dwelling in the absence of basic services and making ends meet with irregular income (Davis 2006; Harvey 2013; Oxfam 2018). Neoliberalism has entailed processes such as the elimination of support and protection of labor rights for workers. Meanwhile, on a local scale, many social groups have been oppressed by dominant power groups in the world or, in the best of cases, have simply been ignored (Wisner 2001). The same author points out (Wisner 2003; Wisner, Gaillard and Kelman 2012) that pristine nature untouched by human hands no longer exists, which has wreaked major environmental deterioration. This situation is compounded by social processes that are giving rise to social inequality and a State that acts by generating a void when it comes to how disasters are addressed and the actions for recovery from them. People have the physical, economic, social, and political capacities that in the end will become resources they will use satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily to prevent, resist, and recover from the challenges of natural phenomena, but they will have difficulties as a function of their capacity to access resources. As a result, other components of social vulnerability that have a bearing are mentioned by Bolin and Stanford (1998), Bolin and Kurtz (2018), and Button and Oliver-Smith (2008), concerning the differences in social classes and ethnic diversity that lead different social groups in each country to establish power and inequality relations over others, including the State itself. Thus, if inequality is visible in the face of a disaster, there is nothing to suggest that this situation will change during a disaster and subsequent recovery from it. A political and economic order exists and it will seek to maintain that order, as observed in the African-American and Latino populations in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Barrios 2017), where in some zones of the city, armed soldiers attacked displaced groups. Similarly, numerous other examples show similar circumstances repeated time and again and are clearly visible in the rest of the world.

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In this volume, the differences in ethnic context are clearly developed in Chaps. 7, 8, 12, and 13, in four regions of Mexico. Class differences are also evident in the rest of the chapters. Although the subject is not addressed directly, it remains implicit as a characteristic that we acknowledge as a causal factor that gives meaning to the formation of social vulnerability. For Bolin and Kurtz (2018), the study of vulnerability emphasizes economic and political inequalities, as well as processes of racial, class, as well as spatial marginalization in their relationship to risks in the face of environmental threats. Consequently, economic, political, and historical factors are producers of inequality, along with their connections of patterns of land use. Vulnerability exposes the fact that disasters are produced and shaped by everyday expressions of the political economy and social relations in a specific place. These “racial” differences have produced disadvantages that have been historically expressed in class position, visible in education, employment, health, and housing opportunities. These types of processes can be explained as specific events of risk that become disasters. Bolin and Stanford (1998) point out that racial formations are historically produced, hierarchical, and hegemonic, and they are expressed materially, spatially, and in speech. Consequently, in disaster risk research it is necessary to understand that social processes require historical research into the particularities of racial formations in specific locations and times, and how they determine the environmental risks that people face. Furthermore, they add other characteristics that affect social vulnerability, which will depend on the regional context and economic policies applied. Thus, in addition to race, ethnicity, and class are those that correspond to age, poverty, disability, language, literacy, gender, physical health condition, life cycle, type of housing, and immigration status. This last characteristic is fundamental today, because immigration status also defines vulnerability, which has been clearly demonstrated also by Wisner (2001), Wisner et al. (2012), and Button and Oliver-Smith (2008). In fact, they add that all of these characteristics that are interwoven with social vulnerability, when they are transferred from a general to a local framework, will be expressed in a particular way that could clearly contribute, although not necessarily, to the expression of the disaster. Similarly, Wisner (2001) coincides with these features of vulnerability and adds religion to the discussion. These characteristics can affect loss, injury, or death in the face of disasters. The abovementioned authors coincide that the creation of vulnerable homes reflects historical, socioeconomic, and political conditions, in which certain populations will be less capable of coping with losses in disasters. One concern is that attending to these forms of expression of social vulnerability, as well as disasters, which must be addressed by means of social protection, requires legislation to reduce unsafe conditions and state organizations for disaster management in society. In the neoliberal phase of capitalism, that order has been violated, in favor of States attending to the interests of transnationals and hegemonic world power groups, over the very life of society in general; this practice has been on the rise through the gradual removal of individual guarantees and constitutional rights, not to mention the maximum reduction of social policies. A similar situation is also visible in developed countries, which have paved the way for clear social inequality.

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Finally, Pelling (2003) demonstrates that although disasters associated with natural phenomena have the capacity to delay a country’s development, as in the 1988 case of Honduras and Nicaragua, where the efforts of a decade were erased after Hurricane Mitch struck, cycles of economic growth also contribute to stagnation or setbacks. To conclude this section, we would add that the prevailing new order has left an increase in social inequality, which characterizes social vulnerability, which in turn is tied on a local level to processes that impact the present and that are compounded with others continuing from a past predating neoliberalism, thereby exacerbating the rise in disasters.

1.3 Aim of the Book The objectives of this volume are to demonstrate how social vulnerability to disasters develops and is expressed, based on the neoliberal phase of capitalist development by revealing how neoliberal development influences the formation of social vulnerability on the part of States, transnationals, private enterprises, or non-governmental organizations. The book also sets out to show how globalizing proposals have an impact on modifications in constitutional laws related to disaster response. The authors of this volume have turned to the work of diverse experts on disasters. They essentially coincide with the definitions of researchers such as Ben Wisner and Jesús Manuel Macías, whose work we revisit for concepts of disaster, risk, and social vulnerability. We return to the ideas of Macías, who proposed the central notion of the riskdisaster process: to observe in a social totality, where all qualitative and quantitative change (of advancement or retreat) is conceived as a development of what is potentially the ulterior unfolding of an extant process (in other words, the derivation of the disaster or the continuous development of the state of things), and ultimately, the orientation of that process can be identified through the comprehensive analysis of its components. In this sense, the concept of disaster is subordinate to the general notion of the risk-disaster process itself, as triggering a certain general social process. Risk is not the unfolding of the threat-vulnerability relationship, as it tends to be seen in much of the specialized literature; risk is one [entity] (it is not a matter of different types of risks: seismic, flood, anthropogenic, etc.) and it is the possibility of negative change (qualitative and quantitative), where threat (as the phenomenon that is potentially damaging) and the condition of vulnerability (which defines the range of possibility of change) intervene in the sense of susceptibility to damage and harm, but the results of the disastrous conditions mediate in the capacity for recovery (Macías 2015: 320–321).

The concept of social vulnerability is taken from Wisner et al. (2004), who defines it as the characteristics of a social group that permit or prevent the development of its abilities to anticipate, confront, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural danger. It also involves the interaction of factors that are a measure of the degree to which life and livelihood are at risk from the event of danger to the natural or technological surroundings. Wisner (2001) emphasizes that the exposure of individuals depends on

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the infrastructure, housing quality, production capacities, and other human resources in areas prone to hazards. Our interest is to emphasize the social relationships and processes that contribute to susceptibility to damage in the face of a threat. The principal bases are found in the global economic and political, state and regional relations and processes that impact the local scale in a particular way by promoting social inequality that affects and limits the proper functioning of the population in vulnerable conditions when faced with environmental hazards. These conditions, in combination, give rise to the manifestation of disasters; similarly, this situation is exacerbated as earlier processes converge with the most recent processes to reveal their social vulnerability to disasters. All of this is studied in four countries in the world: Italy, the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. In all four, age-old processes inherited from a complex and contradictory structure have persisted, all pooled today with economic processes of privatization of everything that generates wealth, based on the imposition of economic policies that pursue their globalization in all States worldwide. It is worth noting that this globalization is also currently expressed in the rise of disasters and their surrounding processes, although their manifestations and challenges respond to the particularities of political, economic, social, and historical development in each country or region. This book focuses special attention on disasters related to hydrometeorological phenomena, although those of a geological nature are also taken into consideration. Of the four countries, our attention is directed particularly to Mexico. The case studies selected come from the north, center, and south of the country, regions that present clear differences in social inequality, significant natural wealth, and major deterioration and devastation of their natural resources. Furthermore, these regions have a longstanding history of disasters associated with hydrometeorological and geological phenomena.

1.4 First Part: Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Urban Spaces In sum, the subjects addressed in the chapters refer to the organization of operative interventions guided by neoliberal policies in providing attention to two disasters that occurred in the United States and Italy. It explores the omission of actions or preventative programs in those developed countries, as well as the consequences of privatization or semi-privatization of state institutions responsible for disaster response (Chap. 2). The process of neoliberal financialization of the civil protection system in Mexico and the parallel development of governmental legislation allude to a supposed adoption of Integral Risk Management (IRM) to simulate the transfer of the “reactive” to the “preventive” approach, however, they demonstrate utter ineffectiveness in light of the consequences of the 2017 earthquakes affecting different parts of the country.

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The research applies to Mexico City, because the policy was essentially aimed at contracting insurance policies and catastrophe bonds to manage contingencies and not at strategies that could address the entire population (Chap. 3). Disaster response and the organizational actions undertaken in the 2017 earthquake in Mexico City, with a brief comparison with that of 1985 and the collateral damage, reflect the consequences of neoliberalism that transformed the real estate development programs in the city. These schemes privileged the profits of companies in this sector, at the expense of the increased physical and social vulnerability of the city’s inhabitants. In addition, the consequences of water extraction from the subsoil should be considered. This chapter demonstrates how disaster attention on the part of the government abandoned many disaster victims to their fate, because experts provided endorsements of safety allowing people to remain in buildings that should have been demolished (Chap. 4). Examples of urbanization in areas prone to flooding can be found in many parts of the planet, but some locations possess distinctive conditions, such as those shaping the nature of the border areas between Mexico and the United States. The precarious urbanization processes in informal settlements in an area contiguous to the Río Grande are observed through the subject of the social perception of risk on the northern border of Mexico. It crosscuts the relations of governmental actors and organized crime, exacerbated by neoliberal policies, as control of the border crossing is disputed, compounded with the growing deterioration of human safety, which become triggers for disasters (Chap. 5). The thematic and geographic proximity with the northern border of Mexico and the problem of flooding in the Metropolitan Zone of Monterrey are analyzed with a focus on a vulnerable sector (senior citizens) in that city and public policies that prioritize exclusive economic and doubly discriminatory dynamics, particularly in the protection of this vulnerable population at times of emergencies and disasters. The phenomenon is even more complicated in a country where its population is beginning to age and seniors have been losing their constitutional rights. Temporary migration or overwork to survive and less family attention for the elderly are resulting in a situation in which more elderly people are alone at home, sick, and not receiving any real attention on the part of the State in response to their basic needs. The study is conducted in one of the three leading cities in Mexico and it reveals a concern for specific unresolved issues (Chap. 6).

1.5 Second Part: Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Rural Contexts The second part of this volume contains chapters that cover cases and problems of social vulnerability to disasters in rural areas. The subject of relocations of human groups as a result of disasters is relevant not only for their response to events with disastrous impacts in communities, but also because under certain circumstances

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they have openly given way to the intervention of sectors from the private initiative, in the guise of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This situation fully corresponds to the neoliberal dictum to regulate the deployment of financial resources on recovery activities with failed relocation projects. This is the case of communities in a municipality in the state of Tabasco, Mexico, highly prone to flooding. The study was conducted in an indigenous community with a history of exploitation going back decades and even centuries, a group that migrated from the state of Chiapas to Tabasco in search of a better life. The study revealed that the ethnic diversity of the country is a pretext that has enabled different power groups in different periods to reap gains based on an imposed social order (Chap. 7). Relocations conducted through failed interventions designed by the federal government and carried out by state and municipal governments are also analyzed. These case studies focus on the state of Guerrero, in one of the poorest regions of the country (La Montaña), as well as in one of the leading, longstanding tourism centers in Mexico (Acapulco). A comparison of the relocations carried out ten years ago by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL; Ministry of Social Development) and others today, studied in this chapter, shed light on major differences in the services they provided, while exposing corruption, the misappropriation of resources, and protocols calling for less attention in disaster recovery (Chap. 8). Both analyses of relocations in this volume have led to the same failed results, permeated by corruption in the government and private sector organizations; in other words, they did not help the disaster victims, instead they became a “second disaster” for the impacted individuals. A dramatic form of governmental relocation management, now from disaster risk, was applied to a peasant community in Colima, Mexico, a settlement linked to volcanic risk. The case clearly illustrates the motivations of political and financial resource control during interventions in impoverished communities under threat, using scientists and technical emergency planning documents as allies in the process (Chap. 9). It is not hard to find a connection between neoliberal policies and water, whether as a resource or as a hazard for disaster. For example, in Brazil and Mexico, investment priorities supported by international financial organizations have created hydraulic infrastructure works, such as dams; however, these same works have affected communities, forcing them to be displaced and stripping them of their resources. This displacement represents a drastic transformation of their way of life, which is, in itself, a true disaster. In Brazil, huge dams are still planned, as discussed by Scudder (2005); despite efforts to date, the consequences for the relocated population continue to represent substantial losses (Chap. 10). Ironically, there is a determinist relationship between urban growth and a geography dominated by abundant water currents, as in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. The juxtaposition of exploitation of agricultural and petroleum resources and the periodic instability of floodable lands, in addition to uncontrollable flood “control” works have shaped a sociological and political scenario ripe for the violation of human rights (Chap. 11).

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The disaster, the double disaster (Pearn 1998), is a result that cannot be overlooked in territorial configurations influenced by this relationship between disaster and neoliberalism. In the final example, the visions of Nahua indigenous communities associated with struggles over resources are discussed as attention shifts to another region of Mexico, the Sierra Norte de Puebla. In this region, at least 20% of its area has been granted by neoliberal governments of Mexico as concessions to private enterprises for extractive exploitation. The study examines how autochthonous communities have organized the defense of their resources and the environment, following the terms of their worldview, (Chap. 12). To conclude this volume, the case of another Nahua indigenous community is analyzed; accustomed to living in the presence of disaster, in the absence of support from authorities, and with organized crime operations in the Sierra de Michoacán, it faces special challenges. In this regard, as Correa-Cabrera (2018) has pointed out, its versatility has led to the looting of natural resources to be sold and distributed through the ports of Colima and Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, bound for different parts of the world (Chap. 13). The cases analyzed throughout the chapters take into account particular contextual references to the study region, such as organized crime, the rise in violence, as well as the lack of social safety, phenomena not necessarily adopted by neoliberal policies, but indeed accentuated by them. They also reflect changes in disaster response on different scales of analysis, corresponding in general to a specific order of government. Some authors have decided to revisit historical developments prior to the neoliberal phase to explain how accumulative processes present today came into existence and how they shape social vulnerability to disaster. Finally, it should be emphasized that the studies presented in each chapter are projects from a multidisciplinary perspective, particularly from geography, anthropology, history, and sociology. The case studies demonstrate the importance of understanding different manifestations of social vulnerability to disasters. From this perspective, this volume represents an invitation for academics, decision-makers, and the public in general to construct a more comprehensive vision of disasters.

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Scoppetta, C. (2016). “Natural” disasters as (neo-liberal) opportunity? Discussing post-hurricane Katrina urban regeneration in New Orleans. TeMA, Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 9(1), 25–41. Retrieved November 17, 2019, from https://doi.org/10.6092/1970-9870/ 3725. Scudder, T. (2005). The future of large dams: Dealing with social, environmental, institutional and political costs. London: Earthscan. Stiglitz, J. (2015). La gran brecha. Qué hacer con las sociedades desiguales. Barcelona: Taurus. Therborn, G. (2013). The killing fields of inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Wallemacq, P. (2018). Economic losses, poverty & disasters 1998–2017. Brussels: CRED-UNISDR. Wisner, B. (2001). Capitalism and shifting spatial and social distribution of hazard and vulnerability, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 16(2), 44–50. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlEmMgmt/2001/23.pdf. Wisner, B. (2003). Changes in capitalism and global shifts in the distribution of hazard and vulnerability. In Natural disasters and development in a globalizing world. New York: Routledge. Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., & Davis, I. (2004). At risk: Natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Wisner, B., Gaillard, J. C., & Kelman, I. (2012). Theories and stories seeking to understand hazards, vulnerability and risk. London: Routledge Handbook. World Bank. (2018). Poverty and shared prosperity 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2020, from http:// www.worldbank.org/en/publication/poverty-and-shared-prosperity. Zilbert, L. (2003). Guía de la red para la gestión del riesgo. Módulos para la capacitación. Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://cidbimena.desastres.hn/docum/capacitacion/MPLC-MOD2_ene29-2003.pdf. Zilbert, L. (2008). Los desastres: ¿problemas no resueltos del desarrollo? Perú hoy. Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://www.desco.org.pe/recursos/site/files/CONTENIDO/14/03_Peru_Hoy_ 2008B_ZILBERT.pdf.

Part I

Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Urban Contexts

Chapter 2

Disasters as a Social Relapse in Neoliberal Capitalism. Two Cases Analyzed in Developed Countries Jesús Manuel Macías-Medrano

2.1 Introduction This chapter pretends to show how neoliberalism has permeated different societies in the world influencing the generation of conditions expressed in risk for disaster, and that can only be interpreted as a form of setback for humanity, if disasters embody the main negative features of societies. We resorted to the historical references in the field of study of disasters in which the differences between the disastrous conditions of poor countries with respect to the rich ones, are observed. The impulse and expansion of neoliberalism also globalized the amplification of poor people in developed countries, and with this, the multiplication of disasters. Recent data reflect these historic modifications in disastrous propensity. We present a brief analysis of two cases which show how the essential characteristics of the neoliberal influences have been implicated. Each case is presented under the following format: a description of the event, referring to the damage, and social reactions. Background on the knowledge of risk is included, and of course, there is reference to the problem of the lack of attention. The causes of the disaster are emphasized, and at the end, a summarized conclusion is offered. It is important to point out that in the presentation of the cases there is not much attention put on the topic of the responses and the recovery actions; the focus is set on the actions or omissions of prevention. At first, we must note that the numbers of disasters, deaths, and losses in all the disaster data bases show an increase in these. There exists a common denominator in these data bases, being such from big insurance and reinsurance companies like Swiss (2018) or Munich (2018), or the best organized data base worldwide J. M. Macías-Medrano (B) Departamento de Cambio Sociocultural, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_2

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of the University of Louvain, called “EM-DAT”, (Wallemacq 2018). This common denominator is that disasters have increased for some time. No matter the detail of the methodology of each data base, and its register criteria, they all show an increase in the number of disasters for periods which go from 1970, 1980, or 1990 to the present. This increasing tendency is contrary to the scientific and technological development about the knowledge of threats and risks, as well as the advances in intergovernmental agreements and actions that we know as the UN International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), and the international meetings with their action protocols to reduce disasters, named of “Kyoto”, “Hyogo”, “Sendai”, and the undertaken activities in all of these for the UN International Strategy for the reduction of Disasters (ISDR) and all the technical and humanitarian binational help, that would transfer that major knowledge of the threats and a more developed resource of governmental and non-governmental organization, to “reduce disasters”. The growing tendency of disasters is consistent with the period of development of the neoliberal economy in the world, that we can place since the beginning of the eighties of the last century, although, as George (1999) points, in reality there are precedents that must be considered since 1930. We must reiterate that not only the quantitative increase of disasters can be associated to neoliberalism, also a characteristic feature is the fading division of affectation per condition in each country, that is to say, the qualitative condition of disaster increase has been modified. In the eighties there was a clear distinction between poor countries and rich countries, and Hagman (1984: 3), called attention to the increase of disasters in them: “The way in which disasters are increasing in many of the countries of the Third World makes us wonder about some of the current practices of development. In fact, some of the tendencies of disaster increase bear evidence of mistaken development programs. We think that the governments responsible for development of their countries, and the organizations involved in the aid for this development, should also take note of the alarming tendencies for disasters and collaborate to fight them”. Recent disasters of enormous significance have taken place in the United States (Hurricane Katrina in 2005; Storm Sandy in 2011; and Hurricane Harvey in 2017), but also in European countries like England, Germany, Spain, and Italy, of which we will present a case later.

2.2 Conceptual Approach: Disasters and Neoliberalism Two concepts are central in this chapter, one is disaster and the other is neoliberalism. They are the axes with which its interrelations are defined and the bases of explanation of the disaster cases that will be treated further on. Disasters are outcomes of social processes which represent setbacks in the development of societies. They have negative features, destruction, and death and are inherent to the development of a society that is always forming part of its “natural” surroundings, which has characteristics where eventually, threatening natural phenomenon may appear (also its own socio-technological atmosphere). That is

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why the social system, way of production or organization of society to reproduce, is determinant. But also because of the relationship between disasters and the characteristics of societies, disaster has been related to “development”, or with “development problems”, because the vision of the social actors of powerful countries has associated with poor societies, as was affirmed by Krimgold (1974; cit. in Westgate and O’keefe 1976: 65): The real quality of a disaster is that it presents problems within the context where it cannot be solved with the current resources in this context. This signifies that there are different levels of disaster. We can talk about the local, regional or national disaster, or even international. A local disaster could be the one that cannot be handled with strictly local resources, therefore, it requires the help of the regional level. A regional disaster could be the one in which national help would be needed, and a national disaster could be the one in which help from other nations would be required. This is the base of the definition of disaster for help purposes. What can be a national or international disaster in a small country with a fragile economy, may even not constitute a local disaster in a rich country with an internal organization of well-developed aid.

One of the general features with which disaster is associated, for definition purposes, is to assume it as a stage-moment, period, of destruction derived from the apparition of a threat. That is why is has been defined as an “event”, this has been in laws, academia, and in operations, and that has been a corresponding part with a dominant form of conception. The definition of disaster as a “concentrated event in time and space”, from Fritz (1961) is an overwhelming example that we see reproduced in these formal definitions. Nevertheless, there exists another way of understanding disaster, that is the one of “social processes”. In this sense, a very useful concept for comprehension is that of “social vulnerability” which went from a study on poverty to disasters since at least the 70’s (Kanbur and Squire 1999). Social vulnerability to disasters is a concept that has been very useful in the explanation of causal reasons of disasters. Macías (1992) defined it as a “social relational condition”, social condition makes sense if it is related with, for example, a threat and, therefore, socially, to disaster. Social vulnerability is not an absolute social condition and for this it has had several gains as a concept in the studies of poverty. There even exists a theorization of social vulnerability to poverty (Gallardo 2017). In disaster studies, the notion of social vulnerability is associated to other concepts such as disaster, threat, and risk, which have been the nodal concepts. However, the concept of vulnerability has been subject to many interpretations, of which we prefer the one that was initially proposed by Peter Winchester (1992) that observes such condition with a dialectical expression, in other words, with a component of weakness or susceptibility to damage and another positive component which refers to the capacity of society to overcome an impact or crisis, utilizing society’s own resources (kinship, organizations, etc.). Social vulnerability is a decisive element in disaster configuration and is a condition derived from historical processes that delineate the social and productive ways and relations, and it is in this way that disaster makes sense as a social process.

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Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is the condition of production, distribution, change and capitalist consumption (“development model”, “doctrine”, “movement”) or “new character of the old capitalism (Betto 2005), in its most barbaric and antihuman version, which is accompanied by a fatuous ideology, ruthless that fades the most elementary “social contracts” of society to make it subordinate to the market. But the market is not but an abstraction of social relations determined by an economic relation, which establishes supply and demand. The neoliberal ideology presents the “law of supply and demand” as if it were a “Natural law”, when it is known that supply and demand can be manipulated. Neoliberalism is a system devised to correspond to the needs of the most advanced organizational schemes of great corporations or world-scale companies which have sought to conform a monopoly which only favors those companies, it impoverishes the inhabitants of poor countries and, also of the wealthy ones, at the same time it creates convenient exceptions. Vitali et al.’s study (2011), have demonstrated how the world transnational corporative control falls on 18 financial companies related to the Federal Reserve of the United States (Newman 2013). George (1999: 3), defined the general neoliberalism features mentioned, and recalled what Polanyi brought forward in 1942 (Polanyi 2007), regarding to the idea that neoliberalism would lead directly to “the demolition of society”. She was asked: Why can the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund willfully intervene and force countries to participate in the world economy, in unfavorable terms?1 Why is Social Security threatened in all the countries where it was once established? Why is the environment about to collapse and why are there so many poor people in rich countries? And she answered that neoliberals have bought and payed their own: “Great Vicious and regressive transformation…they created an enormous international web of foundations, institutions, research centers, publications, academicians, writers trapped in public relations, to develop, package, and relentlessly promote their ideas and doctrines”. According to George, they built this highly efficient ideological framework; because they understood what the Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci said when he developed the concept of cultural hegemony: “if you can occupy the head of the people, their hearts and hands will follow.” Globalization, inherent to the expansion of the way of being of neoliberalism, covered the need of undoing the limitations of national sovereignty to access natural resources. The “national states” as territorial entities and legally sovereign, would have to be seen as something from the past, facing the modern or current, internationalized, and globalized world. Another implication of competence as a central value of neoliberalism, is that the public sector must be brutally reduced, since it must not nor cannot obey the basic law of competing for profit in the market. Privatization is one of the major economic transformations of the past 30 years. 1 In this precise sense, Barr (2013) described the very harmful effects of the payment of foreign debt

taxes in poor countries like Haiti in 2008, which saw in 2010 one of the worst disasters, brought about by an earthquake that caused more than 220 thousand deaths: “Haiti spent in 2008 more in the service of its debt than in health, education and the environment combined …”. In this chapter, we make emphasis in the part of these financial organizations because of their influence in the international and national agenda definitions in the issue of risk-disaster.

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The neoliberal expansion project relied on the utilization of the main international financial organizations, as the World Bank, whose mission, objective and goal, was and is, the reduction of poverty, same that generated without limits, the proper neoliberal model, contradicting its reason for being. Because of this, the World Bank makes strenuous efforts to demonstrate that poverty has been reduced in the last years (WB 2016), however, poverty and inequality have increased in what has been neoliberalism’s cycle of life (Navarro 2012; Oxfam 2018). The issue of poverty has become a strategic matter because it challenges the existence of international financial organizations whose purpose rested in the reduction of poverty (Blanco and Carrasco 2007). Thus, there are desperate actions to muddy not only the conceptual work about poverty (“multidimensionality”) but the resources to measure it, and there are many traps as Navarro mentions: One of them is that the major part of this decrease in the percentage of the population that lives with less than 1. 25 dollars a day is concentrated in China (and in second place in India), and China has not followed the neoliberal politics in its development. Against conventional neoliberal wisdom known as Washington Consensus in the USA, and Brussels Consensus in the EU, the Chinese State is highly interventionist, with full public control of banks and credit, among other examples.

Kagarlitsky’s analysis (2015) concerning the social and economic impact of neoliberalism, identified some of its consequences since the end of last century, in two socially global processes which “complemented and contradicted themselves”. On the one hand, in this period an expansion of proletarianization without precedent was generated in the world population.2 . On the other hand, he considered that the structure of classes was blurred and was expressed in that: …the traditional bonds are weakened, and solidarity familiar mechanisms and collective efforts are no longer functioning. The new proletariats were much less connected among themselves than the workers of industrial companies in the XX century. The businesses were becoming smaller, their workforce was reducing, and their structure was becoming each time more differentiated…The organized industrial proletariat was replaced by service employees, specialists in education and health, and scientists…The salary gap between the different groups of hired workers increased drastically, which inevitably questioned the force of its solidarity (Kagarlitsky 2015:5).

Other neoliberalism effects, identified by Kagarlitsky (2015), which had an effective gestation in the decades of 1990 and 2000, was when the multinational corporations moved the industrial production to Latin America and then to Oriental Asia and China. This process was not only to access cheap labor and avoid elevated taxes and environmental restrictions. It was also a conscient and successful policy destined to weaken organized labor and the workers’ movements in the countries of origin and, that not only influenced in the impoverishment of the working classes in rich countries, but also in the dilution of the structures of traditional classes in these countries. 2 “Enormous

quantities of people, who beforehand were dedicated to traditional occupations, were becoming part of the modern economy and the industrial production in Asian, African and Latin American countries, that Balibar and Wallerstein (1998) described as a period of “total proletarianization” (Kagarlitsky 2015: 5)

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2.2.1 Neoliberalism and Disaster Increase It has resulted evident that the reduction of bureaucracy, as one of the pillars of neoliberalism, has had unequivocal repercussions in the limitation of the capabilities of confrontation of the conditions of threat increase (as lack of maintenance in dams, in urbanization planning), and in the discrepancy of priorities of public financing for anti-risk infrastructure maintenance, as we will see further on in Italy’s study case. In general, the reduction of bureaucracy, as society’s government institution, also means, the reduction of governance resources (risk monitoring norm) to reduce disasters. In this same tenor, it must be considered that privatization of public services, and above all, of public goods, has set a vicious circle that affects the increase in vulnerability and the increase of threats. For example, the attempts of privatizing the distribution of water services for rural and urban purposes, and the policies of “benign negligence”3 in order to facilitate these processes, are added to the wrongful components of society facing disasters. Furthermore, the processes identified by Kagarlitsky (2015), which point to some general features of the modifying influences of neoliberalism in societies, impact on the modification of the components of social vulnerability to disasters. Proletarianization without precedent implies the expansion of the phenomena of alienation, as moral and physical degradation of people with respect to work (Marx 1980; Ollman 1975) and, above all, in relation to the collective decisions about security (Macías 2018). The change in the structure of classes and the inherent degradation of the solidarity relations, imply a decrease in the recovery capacities and organization possibilities, and represent an important devaluation of the positive component of social vulnerability. This component, as was indicated, alludes to the recovery capacity and the confrontation capacity. It is worth mentioning that this dialectic component of social vulnerability, currently has the imposture of the term “resilience” (Macías 2015). Other disaster researchers have also contributed offering other important theoretical analysis about how neoliberalism has increased the negative component of susceptibility to damage, of social vulnerability to disasters (Wisner 2001a, b). Barr (2013) in his disaster analysis of Haiti in 2010, refers criticism to globalization and neoliberal policies of Blaikie et al. (2004), signaling the budget cuts from public spending, during the decade of the eighties, in health and social protection that undermined the capacity to face dangers. Additionally, he noted that the programs to manage the international debt imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on many of these poor countries “increased the vulnerability of the people to disasters”. 3 Kristen

Buras calls “benign negligence” or “benign abandonment” the rehearsed policy in the United States during the administration of Richard Nixon, “about matters of racial inequality to reduce the government’s support to Afro-Americans” (Dunn 2010). In Mexico this has been observed with the PEMEX case and the lack of attention of its fundaments to secure its unfeasibility and justify the move of some of its processes to the private sector. It’s a persuasive evidence that this channel is a fine and concealed motive which lies in the neoliberal policy of disaster (Macías 2014).

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2.3 Cases of Disasters 2.3.1 Flooding Case of River Serchio, Tuscan Region, Italy 2.3.1.1

Description of the Event

On December 25, 2009, in the Tuscan Region, especially in the limits of the provinces of Lucca and Pisa, the river Serchio broke its dams in two zones, one the province of Lucca affecting the area of Santa María a Colle, where 200 people were evacuated that day. According to reports from the office of Regional Civil Protection (Orsi 2010), close to two thousand people were isolated in municipalities of these provinces that were inaccessible due to mudslides. The other zone was the one called “Oltreserchio” in the province of Pisa, which is the northern slope of the river, covering the areas of Migliorini Pisano and Nodica, in the municipality of Vecchiano. The inundated zones were residential, farming and, in lesser quantity, industrial (Migliarino). 250 firefighters were initially intended for the aid and evacuation work, helped by helicopters, which brought to safety the one hundred people trapped in cars and flooded homes. The rupture of the dams was surprising and in straight areas that apparently did not have hydraulic pressure (Fig. 2.1). On December 26, the responsible officials of national civil protection performed a recognition flight over the affected areas, and confirmed that the most critical situations were in Santa María a Colle, Lucca, and the rupture of the Serchio dam in the Nodica area, Pisa. They estimated that the rupture of the dam put in danger of contamination the nearby Lake Massaciuccoli, which has hydroelectric installations.

Fig. 2.1 Map of disaster area Toscana Region, Italy. Source Google Maps

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The flooding covered an area of at least 3000 ha of farming fields, mainly cereals, that were inundated in the Tuscan countryside. Damage was estimated in a little more than 200 farming businesses, with lost crops (Coldiretti 2009). The president of the Tuscan Region announced a disaster recovery budget of more than 100 million euros with a “breakdown” as follows: 10 million, indispensable for emergency interventions; other 60–70 to restore the dams and damaged infrastructure due to mudslides; 20–30 million of contributions to families and businesses. The official implementation for the proclamation of a state of emergency, was already presented in the “national government” (Coldiretti 2009), nevertheless, the politician responsible for the province of Pisa, announced that such quantity, 100 million euros, was the same that he estimated only for his province. This reaffirmed the claim of the regional president, that the government of Italy would assume the total cost of the loss and recovery, and the suspension of tax payments from the affected. In the response efforts there intervened, as was mentioned, firefighters, the army and volunteers. The evacuated were moved to improvised shelters, but the majority went to stay with relatives. The conditions of the emergency generated discontent among the affected because they did not have any kind of warning, either in terms of prevention nor with respect to the rise of floodwaters. Many of the affected received alerts from the neighbors who were already under flooding conditions, and during December 25, 2009, Christmas Day, they did not receive any attention from a single official, neither local nor from any other level. The rupture condition of the dam, as well as the inefficient and slow development of the emergency, were factors which demanded explanations from the affected parties and from the municipal and provincial politicians responsible. The causes for the rupture of the dam were questioned, even legal demands were made, and an investigation was started with that purpose. The Pisa police directed a communiqué to the public ministry, denouncing the inundation under the crime of “wrongful disaster”, and alluding to the breakage of the dam of the river Serchio in Nodica. The Pisa magistrates accepted the report to determine if there existed responsibility for the flooding. Particularly, it was supposed that the investigators would have to determine if the rupture of the dam was caused by bad maintenance, as was speculated among the affected and local officials, or by another cause that would not implicate human responsibility as an “exceptional, unpredictable and natural event”. A file was opened similar to the one in the public ministry in Lucca, against whomever was responsible. The investigations about the ruptures of the dam of river Serchio in Santa María a Colle, in Lucca, were considered as a “mandatory act”.4 It is interesting to point out two things, one that on December 28, 2009, an official dealing with environmental matters from the province of Pisa, whose name is Valter Picchi, affirmed that the rupture of the dam was an “absolutely extraordinary and unpredictable event” (Pisanotizie 2009a). Almost two years later, on November 7,

4 “Mandatory

act. Is all manifestation of will which results from the compliance of a legal norm or a celebrated pact, in turn, in compliance with a legal law” (Magaña 2018).

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2011, the Tuscan communications media made known the result of the investigations started in 2009. The resolve: “an exceptional and unpredictable event”,5 which curiously confirmed Picchi’s affirmation. What is an extremely relevant fact is that this official had denounced, together with Raffaello Nardi (2010), the president of the the Serchio River Basin Authority (SRBA),6 that, even though the Plan of intervention from that Basin Authority was ready and approved by the national government in 2004, it never received financing, meaning that all the contained and planned measures in the Plan, which alluded to maintenance projects for safety, were never seen to. Pardini (2010) stressed the existence of many difficulties in the “path of ‘no financing’ of the safety of river Sercchio”.

2.3.1.2

Background of Risk Knowledge and the Problem of no Attention

As was previously noted, for effects of water reserve management in Italy, an organization has been followed since 1989 that established the Hydraulic Basin Authority with the purpose of planification and conservation of the land, among other very important things like water management. Within this organization, the planification of hydraulic danger is included, which considers diverse threats such as mudslides, heavy rainfall, surges, etc. Within the schemes of planification, as we will see, the SRBA has carried out preventive planification related to maintenance and corrective actions of the hydraulic structures in the basin. It is of greater interest to draw near the level of knowledge that people had in the zone, about the inundation danger, just where this phenomenon was verified at the end of 2009. The state of awareness of the inundation threats or risks in the affected area offers elements to discern the levels of responsibility that can be compared with the results of the clarification of the social process. The SRBA had approved cartography plans of hydraulic danger (SRBA 2004b), of intervention actions to reduce the hydraulic risk (SRBA 2004a) and cartographic forecasts about the normative references in the “hydraulic risk sector” (SRBA 2004c). These plans provide us with information of the indicated provisions, to be able to contrast with the events of the 2009 flooding.

5 The

investigations performed “against unknown people, according to what has been learned, did not identify profiles of personal responsibility, and it was concluded affirming that the floodwaters which caused the fracture of the river dam in several places, was an exceptional and unpredictable event” (Tirreno 2011). 6 ABFS in Italian. Is an institution established in Italy by law on May 18, 1989. It is an organization constituted between the State and the Regions, to perform strategic and integrated planning about the conservation of land and water reserve management, under a proper approach for hydraulic basins. The managed territory by the institution is divided among the 38 Tuscan municipalities belonging to the provinces of Lucca, Pisa, and Pistoia (ABFS. http://www.autorita.bacinoserchio.it/).

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The SRBA also conducted an evaluation of the inundation conditions in 2009, in a specific report (SRBA 2010), in a way that those documents, allow not only to highlight possible planification errors, but the lack of attention from the national Italian government to the expected measures in the planification of the Serchio river basin. The latter defines the absolute responsibility of the national government, headed at the time by Silvio Berlusconi, and Guido Bertolaso, in charge of Italy’s Civil Protection, with the mission of protecting lives and goods when facing natural and anthropogenic threats. The comparative exercise, only in the area of the Pisa territory, between Nodica and Migliorini shows that the inundation danger estimates, in general terms, were correct, though with some great differences in regard to the quantitative ratings, meaning low, moderate, and high probability of flooding. The area that flooded in 2009, between the Serchio river and Lake Massaciuccoli, covered the three mentioned zones, which makes us suppose that the rupture of the dam, overcame the considered elements in terms of probability. The lidar image (below) shows the topographic differences in height parameters above sea level, and shows that the inundated area in 2009, simply covered the lowest parts regarding the zone of the dam rupture. Anyway, we must highlight the existence of forecasts about the danger of floods, although they were not accurate as to the zoning detail, they were fully contemplated in general terms and with that knowledge the transference of funds for maintenance activities for the containment structures (dams), including the prospective and corrective7 was sufficiently justified. The faults in the prevention of disaster and the ones very dramatically observed in the response that the responsible government officials of all levels offered, also bring out into the open that the Italian organization to prevent and meet disasters is fallible starting with the fragmentation of the agencies and lack of synchrony in the management of disasters.

2.3.1.3

Causes: Privatization of Water Services, Privatization of Civil Protection

Some of the reasons that sought to pinpoint legal responsibilities at the time of the emergency on Christmas, 2009, stemmed from the fact that the rupture of the dam in both affected zones, was in places where those defenses do not particularly suffer strong pressure from the water, as in curved areas, and was centered on the problem of possible human negligence. This is such a broad concept that it could encompass deliberate acts of destruction, lack of monitoring of the condition of the dams, and/or its lack of maintenance. The environmental assessor of Pisa, Picchi, mentioned two contradictory things, one, that a physical inspection of the dams had just taken place, consequently discarding the idea that the weaknesses were due to the fauna that 7 Which points, in prospective and corrective maintenance terms are activities of maintenance engi-

neering and not disaster risk control, as has been falsely made known in informal literature (Lavell et al. 2003).

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had dug their burrows in the area, and the other, that the national government never approved financing for the SRBA plan. In real terms, the media did not provide major reports regarding the allegedly revision of the dams, therefore, the people affected as political actors and environmentalists, denounced, among other phenomena, the privatization of water in Italy, as a factor that would explain the lack of transference of financial funds to the states in charge of water management (See footnote on p. 6). The Italian environmentalist association Legambiente, initially attributed the causes of the disaster to climate change, although it later induced rectifications (Legambiente 2011: 31): …if the violence of the heavy rains has been the trigger factor, the disaster that the affected municipalities suffer is not attributed to the rain. The wrong management of the territory and of the considered hydrogeological high-risk area, the lack of adequate alert systems and of contingency plans to rescue the population, together with a territory which is not capable of receiving such intense rainfall, are the factors that have transformed a violent storm into a tragedy.

On the other hand, the organization of agricultural producers named Coldiretti attracted attention on the development of urbanization processes in the area of the low Serchio, where the inundation was, pointing that: The hydrogeologic risk is not foreign to the fact that in ten years the utilized agricultural surface (UAS) in the Toscana has decreased by 17%, from 945 thousand hectares it was reduced to only 809 thousand, and then an ample zone whose extension is comparable to the entire province of Livorno was removed from farming. The gradual abandonment of the territory and the process of quick urbanization and the “concrete jungle” often out of control, was not accompanied by an adaptation to the water drainage network and it is necessary to intervene, to reverse a tendency that endangers the hydrogeologic safety (Pisanotizie 2009b).

Meanwhile, the inundation risk provisions that have been noted, imply the consideration of urbanization processes in terms that these are verified when planning. Without doubt that the responsibilities in the territorial regulation regarding urban growth, surpass the organization of the hydraulic basin. That is an important factor also in the delineation of responsibilities for the disaster, but the topic of water privatizing in Italy needs examining, as a reflection of a broader policy, the neoliberal one, to search for the transformation of productive relations, government schemes and the private ownership of public goods. The lack of attention to risk reduction by the SRBA, denounced in the moment of the emergency by officials, could be interpreted as the luck of “benign negligence” of Dunn (2010), of the deliberate neglect of a governmental entity in order to propitiate deficiency in its operations and, therefore have a favorable public opinion for the privatization of all or some of its services or functions. Gramaglia (2007), summarizes very well the problems of water privatization in Italy, and has highlighted the fact that the country is the third world consumer of water (1.200 cubic meters of consumption yearly per capita), which has worked to make that sector particularly attractive for national and transnational capital. In fact, before the attempts for privatization of water in Italy, a reverse process in Europe

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could be observed a reversal process of privatizations in several European countries had advanced in this way, as in France (Postacchini 2010). In Italy, there already was a very big resistance movement against this type of privatization, even the SRBA president, Rafaello Nardi, pronounced himself, in technical terms, for not recommending the privatizations (Lo Schermo 2007). In fact, as Gramaglia (2007: 2), pointed out, the Italian system structure as a whole, the state monopoly in the administration of service and the determination of tariffs, “remains substantially without change”. It can be assumed that in such circumstances, the financial conduction of the national government, could influence in “benign negligence” in different sectors. In the administration of Silvio Berlusconi, impetus was given to privatizing policies, especially in the last period of his government (2008–2011). Realfonzo (2010) considered that “with the Ronchi privatization decree8 that was promoted by Berlusconi’s government, it was accentuated … pushing towards the privatization of the custody and administration of local public services of economic relevance”. Adding to the topic of the privatization of Italian water, otherwise, failed as result of its popular rejection in the referendum held in 2011 which cast the NO, from 57% of voters (Del Pino 2011), there existed another privatization topic in Italy, the one of Civil Protection, that surrounded the inefficient conditions of preparation and efficiency of that governmental organization. Certainly, the head of that agency, Guido Bertolaso, was a main protagonist. Such figure managed the elaboration of a decree to privatize the Civil Protection services, that the Italian senators baptized as “Bertolazo’s Spa”, creating a play of words between “S. p. A.” (Societá per Azioni or Anonymous Society), and Spa for health resort. The decree sought to conform a business called Civil Protection Services, A. S. (Protezione civile servizi s.p.a.), that would be under the supervision of the office of the Prime Minister, Department of Civil Protection, and would function according to the policies and the strategic programs established by the President of the Council of Ministers, a proposal from the Chief of the Department of National Civil Protection. The business would encompass services for a wide range of events, not only for emergency issues, for example, from covering meetings of political summits of other country presidents, to sporting events as Olympics or world championships, until the disposal of toxic waste (Statera 2010). The decree to privatize those services, by means of the mentioned business, was issued on December 30, 2009, amid the inundation emergency of the river Sercchio. Bertolaso was subject to several demands for corruption and had to resign as the Head of Italy’s Civil Protection in 2010 (Puliafito 2010). The legislation that privatized Civil Protection was approved, but other legal modifications, as the reforms made in different months of 2012, modified, among other things, relative attributions to “great events” and its management stopped being a matter for Civil Protection. Civil protection activities returned to their original basic, original competences defined by law 225/1992, 8 Approved

by the Parliament on November 18, 2008. “The Ronchi decree imposes the tender for the assignment of services and establishes that businesses that quote in the stock exchange should carry the percentage of public property under 30%. Besides, the decree makes it even harder to access these ambiguous lagoons, one of the Italian legal problems, that are anonymous societies of totally public property” (Realfonzo 2010).

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primarily destined to face disasters and the increase of the efficiency of the actions in the handling of emergencies (GU 2012).

2.3.1.4

Conclusion

1. There was knowledge about the risk for inundation in the area where, on December 25, 2009, the Sercchio river dam in the lower part of the basin between the provinces of Lucca and Pisa, fractured. That risk knowledge was produced by the regulating authority of water management (SRBA) of the river, fulfilling its objectives. 2. The risk knowledge was adequate in general terms, with the disastrous consequences of 2009, although there were differences in precision in the detail of the qualitative assessment of flood risk, which showed evidence that no dam breakage scenario had been generated. 3. The characteristics of the response to the emergency, in the days in which the rupture of the dam was verified and during the following days, in different areas, showed great deficiency of preparations from the four government levels (township-municipality, province, region, and national) that failed to dispose of specific development plans of relief, not of the installations of shelters. 4. In the moment of the emergency, public officials from different government levels, denounced the lack of financial support to the SRBA, which could be associated with probable “benign negligence” applied during the government of Silvio Berlusconi in the organizations of water management in order to facilitate privatizing actions, as a code of conduct and economic policy of that government. On the other hand, given the difficulties of not having evidence thereon, the least that can be noted is the great administrative deficiency of the Italian government, starting with the national level. 5. The disastrous event did not cause deaths, nor a significant number of wounded nevertheless, it caused many economic and infrastructure losses, as well as human suffering, mainly among the elderly who were trapped by the inundation. Official bodies of both affected provinces issued demands and initiated investigations in order to clarify the possible incursion of responsibilities. The result was that they did not find anyone responsible, there was no identification to establish any penalty, meaning, there was impunity. The legal result was of impunity. The analyzed case ratifies what has been said before, with respect to neoliberal policies that have influenced in societies in a sense in which conditions are created so that the occurrence of any threat is a disastrous occasion. The orientations and priorities of those policies and their governments do not work for the protection of the citizens, of human beings.

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2.3.2 Case Effects of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, USA 2007 2.3.2.1

Description of the Event, Social Reactions Damage

Between August 26 and 28, 2017, hurricane Harvey entered land and remained in territory which covered a wide area of the southeastern part of the North-American state of Texas, where Harris county is located, seat of the city of Houston, the fourth major in this country (USCB 2017). The trajectory time of this hurricane, which downgraded to tropical storm in that area, was long enough to cause much damage by winds, storm tides and above all, by heavy rainfall (Fig. 2.2). The city of Houston has had a history of frequent floods for being located in low areas, in great part floodplains (marshes, swamps), and has had the characteristic of having achieved a particularly accelerated urban growth in the decade of the sixties of the last century, reaching 2 099,263 in the year 2010 (SCB 2010) and 5 399,338 in 2014, according to the Urban Expansion Atlas (UNY 2016). Houston grew as a niche city of growth of the oil industry and other derivatives. It is also an important financial center and an attractive node of demographic flow that have capitalized the real estate businesses which have assured a sustained growth, with a great political liberal influence. Liberalism and neoliberalism are appropriate terms for the urban and economic development of Houston.

Fig. 2.2 Map Hurricane Harvey best track Aug 17 Sep 1 2017. Source NOAA (2017)

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With the arrival of hurricane Harvey and urban growth out of regulation (Robins 2017; Dawson 2017), ensued inundations in the areas that before were of “natural floods”, wetlands and areas (water ways) of flood regulation (Kahn 2005; Brody et al. 2011) and that in that moment were already urbanized affecting thousands of people. That phenomenon is more than known just as much by scientific literature, as by the authorities in all the government levels, the media and the urbanizing companies, and the common people (Satija et al. 2016). That is to say, the bases for the disaster in Houston, by Harvey and by climatic events and from other nature, are very well known as an extreme case of propensity to disaster, the “announced disaster”. Hurricane Harvey resulted in more than 68 direct deaths in the state of Texas, and a little more than half of them 36, were in Harris county, in the metropolitan area of Houston. All the deaths, according to the report from the National Center of Hurricanes in the United States (NOAA 2017), were by drowning in the floodwaters and not by storm tides, which were expected to be very damaging due to the category 4 with which the hurricane entered Texan land. This hurricane is considered the most lethal since the case of hurricane Sandy in 2012 in the New York area. But there were also other 35 additional deaths that were considered “indirect” for being associated with electrocution, vehicle accidents, lack of medical attention. The damage was significant according to the mentioned report, which points that they were calculated in $125 thousand million dollars and places it on the side of harmful dimensions of hurricane Katrina that affected New Orleans in 2005. However, they affirm that there is uncertainty in the estimate of the total damage, due to many factors, among them is that most of the loss claims for flooding in residential areas are outside the plateau of “500-year flood”,9 where there is low national participation of the Program of Flood Insurance (NFIP), with tens of thousands of claims pending. The damage caused by Harvey’s floods were considered “catastrophic” and occurred over a large area of southeast Texas. More than 300.000 structures in that region were inundated with about 500.000 cars registered also as flooded. Nearly 336.000 clients were left without electric power during the hurricane. An estimate of 40.000 affected people was evacuated and took refuge in shelters in Texas and Louisiana. FEMA informed that approximately 30.000 water rescues took place during Harvey. The Federal Agency for Management Association (FEMA) offered a summary of the interventions during the phases of response and recovery (FEMA 2017a). In the case of the first phase, it pointed that due to the enormous amount of rainfall, floods were suffered that were “generalized catastrophic”. “Almost 80,000 houses had at least 46 cm of floodwater, 23,000 had more than a meter and a half. The Houston area experienced the largest amount of rainwater ever registered in the continental United States … Twenty-four hospitals were evacuated, 61 communities lost the capacity to have access to drinking water, 23 ports were closed, and 781 roads were 9 It

is important to point that the estimates of flood probability are made by statistic methods and are associated to the insurance definitions, in terms of obligation of purchase, according to a zoning they have developed in the US. Insurance against floods in that country are controlled by FEMA, they are compulsory for certain zones (Holmes 2017; FEMA 2017b)

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impassable. Almost 780,000 Texans left their homes. In the following days to the storm, more than 42,000 Texans were temporarily accommodated in 692 shelters. Local, state and federal first responders rescued 122,331 people and 5,234 pets”. In respect to the recuperation phase, FEMA informed that the volume of requests for assistance per disaster was one of the highest in the history of the agency. At the end of September 2017, 792,000 requests for housing disaster help or assistance had been received. In 30 days, according to the report, more than $ 1.5 thousand million were paid in federal funds to the affected by the disaster, including assistance subsidies, low interest loans for disasters and the advance payments of insurance against floods. During that period, 270,916 families received $ 571.8 million from FEMA for temporary housing, basic repairs to make their homes safer and habitable, and for other essential needs. More than 24,000 families were temporally living in hotel rooms paid by FEMA because their homes were inhabitable. More than 2,100 remained in shelters until the date of the report. On the other hand, more than 87,000 insurance claims against floods were presented, and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has made payments for $ 608 million for accelerated claims. The Small Business Administration in the United States (SBA), the main source of federal funds for reconstruction after a disaster, gave $ 367 million in low-interest loans, for more than 4,340 businesses, proprietors and tenants in Texas. FEMA coordinated the response activities and federal recovery, through assigned missions to other federal agencies. In Texas it coordinated more than two dozen federal agencies.10

2.3.2.2

Background of Risk Knowledge and the Problem of no Attention

The awareness of potentially disastrous threats in Houston, in Harris county, is very broad and has a long history. Besides, there exists a detailed knowledge of the dangers that represent the destructive consequences of the passing of tropical storms, particularly hurricanes, because of their occurrence and attention background. With regard to the scientific and “operative”11 knowledge about disaster and risk threats, it can be affirmed that it has the same dimensions and is considered in different spheres as the legal one, for example, the topographic characteristics of the terrain,

10 The agencies respond to hurricane Harvey. The Coast Guard, Health Department and Human Services (HHS); Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), US Army Engineer of the Corps (USACE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DoD), US Small Business Administration (SBA), Civil Air Patrol, Department of Agriculture (USDA), General services Administration (GSA), Services Centers of Medicaid and Medicare, Department of Transportation, Commission of Labor Forces of Texas, American Red Cross, and more than 300 volunteer organizations, including the National and Texas Volunteer Organizations, Active in Disasters and local groups. 11 By “operative” I refer to the technical and scientific knowledge that is already being applied in some program or formal project of reduction of disasters.

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the frequency flooding estimates, by statistics or by remote images, are considered by the normativity of the insurance program and the flooding probability cartography. Scientific literature about the potentially disastrous threats is so vast that we can only offer some examples in this contribution, which allude to the area of interest of the case, Harris county, Houston and its metropolitan area. The inundations, their causes, consequences and qualitative and quantitative impact estimates, are covered by investigators of the US Geological Institute (USGS) apart from investigators from public and private universities, as well as consulting companies and private institutions. Climatic threats, as tropical hurricanes and tornadoes (Pielke and Landsea1998; Pielke et al. 2008) and geological, as faults and land subsidence or sinking (Neighbors 2003; Buckley et al. 2003; Campbell et al. 2018), is incredibly extensive. But there also exist diverse estimates of social and physical vulnerability to disasters (Oxfam 2017; Zahran et al. 2008; Bernier et al. 2017; Hibbard 2006) and of danger linked to the insurance programs against floods (Conrad et al. 1998; Conrad 2010; NFIP 2006), which is also very big. There is a production of publications about urban growth and risks, management plans for flood plains, insurance analysis and urban prospective, etc. Parallel and proportioned to this dimension of knowledge production, the shortfalls and/or omissions are many. It is not possible to even imagine that in the face of a forecast of a tropical hurricane (which usually has a reliable anticipation of six days), there is no certainty of the magnitude of damage, loss, and disruption that would occur in Houston and its metropolitan area, to talk about that specific place. The accumulated knowledge about the threats, its characteristics and consequences, in theory, should cancel the disastrous effects of its occurrence. It has not been like this. We will see some of them in the following section.

2.3.2.3

Causes

During the development of the destructive impact on Houston with the passing of hurricane Harvey, and the significant appearance of the damage due to the magnitude of the floods, several explanations for the causes of such disaster were placed on the public attention (Berger 2017; Dawson 2017; Hallegatte et al. 2013). One of them alluded to the insistence of “climate change” and the relation between this and the supposed increase in the severity of hurricanes. These arguments will not be considered here for lacking enough scientific support, as well confirmed by Berry et al. (2016), by demonstrating the weakness of the official argumentation of “global warming” and because they have been adopted in order to deviate the attention of the true causes of the disasters. There is no doubt that the urbanization processes (and this is very marked in the Houston case, matter which concerns us) have generated environmental affectations that favor the modifications of the effects of the threat occurrences and that, hence, has influence on an increase of the negative consequences. In fact, that has been one of the results that have complicated the flooding dimensions of Houston.

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It is important to be clear that climate alterations are a consequence and not a cause, from the interventions of a society which organizes itself for that. The alterations of the natural surroundings, without doubt have influenced in the reconfiguration of hydraulic functioning. The research of Jacob et al. (2015) shows that only in Harris county, almost 30% of freshwater marshes were lost between 1992 and 2010, which is an alarming fact, if we understand the role they have in the retention and distribution of water. Satija’s et al. (2016) study complemented this observation pointing out that the ratio of the marshes that have been lost, the “impermeable” surface extension in Harris county increased by 25% from 1996 to 2011 and affirmed that “there is no way in which the engineering projects or the control regulations for floods have compensated this change”. The topic of destruction in marsh areas is just one of many others that allude to human intervention in its surroundings to modify the dynamics of nature that may become in major threats to society itself. We must consider that the urbanization processes linked to neoliberalism combine urban expansion with processes of urban intensification (gentrification) lucrative and densification. The structure of North-American society,12 conformed through the last years starting with the neoliberalist development, utilizes its natural surroundings in a way corresponding to its purpose. It is not, thus, the alteration of the surroundings the cause of the disaster, but one of the consequences, as the disaster itself, of the development of a society dominated by the principles of coherent advancement with its objectives. We will see some specific points. 1. The urbanization process of Houston corresponds to the liberal and neoliberal orientation policies of the United States in its expression in Texas. Mainly fostering the ways to create businesses without caring about human safety and its surroundings, as seen in structural and environmental rules and in the government’s behavior (legislation included) related to disaster reduction. That is a principle in the urban development of Houston. First the businesses and their owners and then the rest. Only this can explain the growth with no environmental limitations and human safety. Certainly, a sector which is identified as responsible is the one of real estate capital, but that would be too simple to put a finger on if it is not associated to other economic sectors (as oil and others that have been generators that have attracted people of different origins) and with government officials that allow the rules dealing with aspects of safety to be flexible, in order to propitiate housing developments or the deficiencies of public management in the reduction of risk in a disaster. Here we must highlight the responsibility of the government that has not fulfilled its obligation of protecting the lives of the people, be it in the local level, as in the state of Texas or the federal level. The federal organization of the United States that intervenes in the topic of disaster prevention has had as a touchstone the Federal Plan of Mitigation. In its outlines about floods, the mitigation is regarding the programs of flood insurance. As was

12 Always,

by definition, organized in social classes, one of them dominating and therefore responsible for the government and defining its policies. This is, probably a useful iteration.

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seen before, in the description of the event, the claims for flood insurance13 were very large in Houston (87 thousand). Meanwhile, the problem of insurances in the United States and principally in the case of hurricane Harvey in Houston, is very serious. As they are defined, they pose a condition of “false security”. The analysis of the operation of insurances that Grunwald (2017) offered, shows these adverse characteristics. The uncontrolled development of that city in flooded areas, was also accelerated by the federal flood insurance, which is, according to the author, “strongly subsidized and has a deficit of 25 thousand million dollars”. The Insurance Program is, by extension, a problem that has to do with the federal order and that has negative repercussions in local areas. Grunwald’s vision is highly important: the government imposes the need to buy insurance to discourage people from building in dangerous places, but in the end promotes this: “the federals have also promoted these tendencies when offering extremely cheap insurance in high risk areas”. Relating this uncontrolled urbanization process, invader of flood risk areas and reinforced by the insurance program, Houston may tell extreme stories of those disastrous processes. The following map is very clear evidence of such things. It shows how residential areas have grown in reservoirs (Addicks and Barker) that were built more than 60 years ago to “prevent floods”. The growth of these areas was on government land! Collier and Satija (2017) mention that the residential areas, which they call “subdivisions”, built within the Barker and Addicks’ reservoirs, remained flooded several days until the Army Engineer Corps gradually released water utilizing the river called “Buffalo Bayou”. It is important to mention that this action undertaken by the Army Engineer Corps, was carried out to prevent the collapse of such dams and, consequently, the worsening of the flooding in Houston. However, the release of these waters flooded a neighborhood of people of high income which demanded the federal government for their losses (Sims 2017). Later we will come back to this point. 2. Abandonment of public responsibilities, impunity and corruption. The case of the consequences from hurricane Harvey in Houston gathers a summary of errors and of “benign negligences” and is of the utmost interest to locate the conditions which make these circumstances propitious. At the end, the loss of human lives and goods illustrate the lack of compliance of these responsibilities, but no public official has deserved punishment for it. The highest local authorities, the state and federal officials are competences in the protection of the lives of the governed, abandon their obligations without mediating punishment to what could be placed as a criminal act. The “event” Harvey, the deaths of North-American citizens and the substantial loss of 13 Flood insurance in the United States is administered by the federal government through a program called National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Such program allows the owners of properties to acquire flood insurance provided that the local governments adopt and enforce an “Ordinance of Management of Flood plain”, to reduce future flood risks. The issued policy is known as the “Standard Policy of Flood Insurance” (SFIP). These policies, almost all, are bought through private insurance companies known as “Write-Your-Own” (“WYO”) companies. The responsibility of the payments caused by damage falls on the federal government (PLF 2017).

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goods, generated some legal demands, many of them secondary, for example, a hotel (Willey 2018), electric companies (Ketterer 2018), a chemical plant (Downs 2017), other than the collective demand against the Army Engineer Corps, no demands were registered to the direct responsible of the deaths and losses. We are considering in this all the officials from all the levels of government. Certainly, needless to say that these abandonments, inefficiency, impunity, etc., couldn’t have developed without the existence of corruption. 3. Inefficiency or simulation of the mitigation programs (purchase, relocation, and elevation of houses). The United States is the country that generated what we know today as the comprehensive management of risk, the “emergency management” as it was originally called, and one of the features that had made it a model of a successful governmental organization, is the attention of the problems that disasters pose as a whole, the four phases (mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery). It stands out from the reactive organizations of civil defense and protection, for being integrated and not only reactive. This type of organization turned out to be inefficient when we analyzed it with the case of hurricane Harvey. The programs of prevention–mitigation for disasters used in Houston and analyzed with regard to the consequences of hurricane Harvey, offer very questionable results. In addition to the indicated in the flood insurance program, other mitigation programs about housing (purchase, elevation, and relocation), remained absolutely useless as mitigation measures. Facing the recurrence of floods derived from urban growth in inundation areas, some experts consider that the Home Buyout14 program could have contributed to the reduction of disaster, given its characteristics. The program deals with the possibility that the government may purchase a house that is in a high-risk zone, paying the owner a competitive price, and is one last instance, as relocating, to save the people from an expected threat. In Houston this program had been applied for several years and Harvey’s occurrence served to make an evaluation of its failure or success. Shaw et al. (2018), utilizing data of the District of Flood Control of Harris and of FEMA, accomplished to put in evidence for the case which occupies us, the mentioned program turned out to be inefficient as is shown in the map below. Harris county is considered as one that has had the most applications of this program in the United States. Since 1985, the District of Flood Control of Harris county, the main entity that administers the purchases in the Houston area, has spent 342 million dollars to buy approximately 3,100 properties. There are other 3300 houses to buy in the list of priorities (Song et al. 2017). The housing acquisition program with preventive purposes, in theory, represents a resource of enormous importance, together with relocations, as last measures, but is undoubtedly of absolute eligibility. In the United States it has been implemented since the seventies with results that have not been analyzed thoroughly. Brokopp and Greer (2016) did evaluative research of housing acquisition cases in the state of 14 Home Buyout considers the purchase of houses to private owners by a public agency. There exist different reasons for the acquisitions: the houses can be blocking a public construction project or be in a dangerous area, like an alluvial plain, where there exists a great risk of costly damage. The purchase of a house compensates the owner with a percentage higher than the market value of the house and may also cover relocating costs (TDPS 2015).

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New York after the passing of Sandy in 2011, this means that more than 40 years from having started this program, one of the first evaluations of it is recognized. In such research diverse problems were found that allude equally to the design as to its instrumentation, which observed lack of transparency and, incidentally, far from the participation of people who would eventually be benefited. The results were not conclusive in the sense of affirming the benefits or declaring its failure, because despite identifying notable faults, as the incomprehension of the process on the part of the supposed beneficiaries (attributable to the officials and the design of the program), placed an enormous potentiality to reduce disaster risk.

2.3.2.4

Conclusion

In this case of analysis of the conditions of disaster in Houston caused by hurricane Harvey, it demonstrates something of extreme gravity, the existence of an enormous accumulated amount of scientific and technical knowledge, that has been useless in the reduction of disasters. Besides their exist other elements which magnify the gravity of the potentially disastrous conditions in the United States, as the existence of preventive planning (and the resources spent on it), reflected from the federal to the local planning, considering, in a very special way, the preventive programs as the one of housing acquisition in risk zones, as others of engineering solutions. Even though the development of liberal capitalism in the United States, has prioritized the generation of earnings above human beings, it is evident that in the period dominated by neoliberalism, the unfavorable conditions for most people have increased exponentially. Not only did the profit gap multiplied, but that elimination or minimization of regulations was intervened, which have only been possible with the magnification of corrupt practices in all the government instances of that country. Illegal or illegitimate, as all acts of corruption, for the fact of the lack of compliance of the responsibilities for the protection of lives and goods consigned in its legislation, particularly in the Stafford Act. In the current circumstances, of Houston (Harris county), and of the prone places to the occurrence of potentially disastrous threats in the United States, there are not but pessimistic perspectives in this sphere of risk-disaster, unfortunately.

2.4 Concluding Disasters have been a present phenomenon in the history of humanity, it has been a question of a specific luck derived from the insertion of society in its nature (nature). This has required the development of societies, the advancement in the knowledge of the surroundings, of the expressions of the same which can be dangerous for existence. But the evolution of societies has modified the relation with the surroundings. Growing scientific knowledge has multiplied the transforming capacity of societies and that has had, in turn, adverse consequences in many occasions.

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Currently, societies in the world are found dominated by neoliberalism, rather, its sequels, as Kagarlitski (2015) notes. Societies have added to their capacity of transformation and affectation of their surroundings, a determination that seeks to increase the benefits for the classes that have dominated historically. We know this as neoliberalism and its objectives are gains without limitations. This contribution has sought to show that these determinations for the benefits of a minority, in different national contexts in countries considered as developed capitalism, are at the expense of the safety of the people. The two analyzed cases of disaster in developed countries (Italy, the United States), reflect a luck setback in the historical development of societies. The disasters are recent and were analyzed focusing on the economic conditions, of government and the environment, that have been clearly identified as ruled by the neoliberal patterns and principles where the policy of privatizations has had a different role, both in the Italian case as in the North-American one. While in the first, disproportionate policies were generated to privatize even “civil protection”, in the United States privatizations have been a pattern of its history, that is to say, the liberal tradition of that country influenced a major incursion of private capital in different public services historically, just as the impact of these policies has been differential, but certainly in this neoliberal phase, as Harvey demonstrated in Houston, the tendency to profit on all that is “lucrative”, including the safety of the citizens is gravely scandalous. Also, in the United States they tried privatizing the Federal Agency of Emergency Management (FEMA), but a certain political and social sanity was imposed (Tierney 2012). Finally, it is necessary to highlight the importance of confronting the visions about the solution to the problem of disasters and the real conditions of societies, imposed by the dominant action and neoliberal ideas, as has been shown in the cases dealt with here. Scientific technical advances in regard to potentially disastrous threats have been useless. The different government organizations to face disasters, Civil Protection in Italy and “Emergency Management” or Disaster Management in the United States, have been proved to be equally insolvent despite being conceptually and organizationally very divergent. Tierney (2015) wrote that “…resilience facing disasters can be conceptualized as a collective increase of science, policy and practice” and assumed that it would be a useful concept to contrast the disastrous consequences of neoliberal practices. She managed to distinguish the use of these deriving from the case of hurricane Katrina that destroyed a good part of the city of New Orleans, in 2005. We must conclude that neoliberalism overcomes any conceptualization about risk-disaster. The relation between neoliberalism and disasters cannot be assumed as a “social construction” in the sense of a disrealization of its historical existence. Neoliberalism pushes societies to disaster.

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20433. Retrieved February 9, 2017, from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/han dle/10986/25078/9781464809583.pdf. Westgate, K., & O’Keefe, P. (1976). Some Definitions of Disaster. University of Bradford. Disaster Research Unit. Occasional Paper No. 4. Bradford. Willey, J. (2018). Jill Renick’s death inside Omni Houston Hotel during Harvey was ‘easily preventable,’ says lawyers. ABC 13. 4 de Jun. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from http://abc13. com/family-of-woman-who-drowned-during-harvey-sues-hotel/3561750/. Winchester, P. (1992). Power, choice and vulnerability. A case study in disaster mismanagement in South India, 1977–1988 (253 p.). London: James & James. Wisner, B. (2001). Risk and the neoliberal state: Why post-Mitch lessons didn’t reduce El Salvador’s earthquake losses. Disasters, 25(3), 251–68. Wisner, B. (2001a). Capitalism and the shifting spatial and social distribution of hazard and vulnerability. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 16(2), 45. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlEmMgmt/2001/23.pdf. Zahran, S., Brody, D., Gillis, W., Vedlitz, A., & Himanshu G. (2008). Social vulnerability and the natural and built environment: A model of flood casualties in Texas. Overseas Development Institute. Oxford, Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Retrieved May 11, 2017, from https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0361-3666.2008.01054.x. http://research.arch.tamu.edu/media/cms_page_media/ 3391/SucVuln_disasters.pdf.

Chapter 3

Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes in Mexico City Jorge Damián Morán-Escamilla

3.1 Introduction In Mexico, risk and disaster management is overseen by the National Civil Protection System (Sinaproc),1 which was designed and implemented as a response by the federal government to the September 1985 earthquakes. In other words, the disruptions experienced by the country’s economic and political center made it necessary to design an institutional model that would coordinate the structure of public administration in the face of similar disaster situations, and prevent the exposure of the system’s disorganization and vulnerability to these situations (Macías 2012, p. 380; Morán 2017b, p. 160). Sinaproc is a system that incorporates or institutionalizes civil protection in related action schemes, in which disasters are conceived as a public issue that must be addressed in an articulated and systematic manner by the various instances and different levels of government,2 including civil society groups (Morán 2017b, p. 161).

1 Sinaproc was organized on May 6, 1986, when the bases for its establishment were published (BM 2012, p. 14). 2 The General Civil Protection Law defines Sinaproc as an organic and articulated set of structures, functional relationships, methods, norms, instances, principles, instruments, policies, procedures, services, and actions, which government agencies establish jointly with public sector entities, with the organizations of various voluntary, social, private groups and with the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, of the autonomous constitutional bodies, of the federal entities, of the municipalities and the districts, in order to carry out coordinated actions in the field of civil protection (LGPC 2012).

J. D. Morán-Escamilla (B) Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt), Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] Programa Agua y Sociedad, El Colegio de San Luís (COLSAN), San Luís Potosí, Mexico © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_3

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The structure and objective of the system are to protect individuals, society, and its environment against the risks and hazards posed by disruptive agents and vulnerability in the short, medium, or long term, caused by natural or anthropogenic phenomena, through integrated risk management and capacity-building for adaptation, assistance, and reestablishment of the population (LGPC 2012). Because the system was created in an emergency situation, it was initially structured to deal only with this type of setting and natural threats. However, over time, a series of transformations has led it to undergo a transition, at least in terms of discourse, from care to prevention and, currently, to Comprehensive Risk Management (CRM), which was subscribed to in the General Law on Civil Protection enacted in 2012. In this context, this chapter aims to show the mechanisms used to manage floods in Mexico City in the early twenty-first century, based on changes to Sinaproc. Likewise, it seeks to propose that the financial insurance schemes adopted to deal with the consequences of disasters can be interpreted as a model of neoliberal attention, not only because they have been promoted by international financial organizations, but also because they focus only on one part of CRM and because they are mainly aimed at dealing with the economic losses generated by disasters for governments, without resolving or correcting the underlying causes that give rise to them. It should be noted that one of the changes brought about by the adoption of the Sendai Framework was the transition from disaster management to disaster risk management. In view of this, financial insurance schemes do not contemplate risk management, neither avoid the production of new risks or the building of resilience, and only address economic difficulties without considering the social, educational, or environmental (ONU n/y) issues stemming from a disaster.

3.2 Background and Transitions Toward Risk Transfer The first Civil Protection Law in Mexico was enacted in 2000 and, though it was amended and revised, the most representative changes were made in 2012,3 since it makes provisions for the establishment and demarcation of responsibilities for the authorization of settlements in risk areas; the procurement and establishment of risk management and transfer instruments by municipal and state authorities; the definition of CRM and financial instruments for risk management and transfer; the recognition that risks are socially constructed, among other elements. In general, the reforms to the General Law of Civil Protection (LGPC) have had various purposes, such as making it compatible with various regulatory frameworks; generating the 3 Some

other reforms to this Law were presented in January 2018 (due to reforms to various regulatory frameworks, including the LGPC itself); December 2017 (amendments to Article 19); June 2017 (additions in the area of technological innovation); April 2017 (amendments to Article 4); June 2014 (amendments to Articles 2, 20, 63, and 82). With the 2012 LGPC, the 2000 LGPC and its amendments in December 2001, June 2003, June 2004, and April 2006 were repealed.

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necessary adjustments as new legal documents are adopted or revised; as well as their harmonization as new agencies emerge and/or Sinaproc is restructured. In general, one can perceive a slow and lagging process of change relating to the needs and pace at which Mexican society transformed, since the LGPC came into effect 15 years after Sinaproc was established and its Regulations were passed in 2014 after 14 years of operation. In addition, it was not until June 28, 1999 that Article 73 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States was amended, allowing the Congress of the Union to issue laws establishing the basis on which the federation, the states, the then Federal District and the municipalities would coordinate their actions in civil protection matters. This legal amendment allowed the first LGPC to pass. Other factors that made the enactment of this law possible were the integration of the first National Civil Protection Plan 1990–1994 and the organization of Sinaproc (Decreto de LGPC 2012). Thus, in 1988 the National Center for Disaster Prevention (Cenapred)4 was created as a technical-scientific body that advises Sinaproc on the creation, management, and promotion of disaster prevention and risk reduction policies. To this end, it conducts research, monitors, trains, and disseminates information related to risks and threats to the population (LGPC 2012). On the other hand, although it was created in 1996, the Natural Disaster Fund (Fonden) began operating in 1999 with the issuance of its first Rules of Operation. Fonden is the first financial instrument of its kind whose objective is to support states, agencies, and entities of the federal public administration in dealing with disasters related to natural processes that exceed their financial response capacity (BM 2012, p. 8; CNPC 2014).5 According to the World Bank, the changes that the Fund has undergone since its creation to date make it one of the most advanced financial vehicles for managing catastrophic risk in the world (BM 2012, p. 5). At the same time, with the aim of transitioning from a response to a prevention scheme, the Preventive Trust (Fipreden) was set up in 2002 to provide resources

4 Cenapred

began operations in 1990. Its creation was made possible with the support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). 5 Some of the Fund’s transitions have sought to increase its efficiency and effectiveness, moving from an instrument to finance expenses in response to emergencies to a comprehensive risk management strategy (BM 2012, p. 5). Based on the Official Gazette of the Federation, these changes are reflected in different adaptations at the regulatory level. In September 2017, amendments to the specific Operating Guidelines of the Fund were published, as well as amendments to Articles 11 and 22 of the General Rules of the Fund, replacing the specific Operating Guidelines issued in January 2011. In December 2010, the General Rules of the Fund were disseminated, replacing the Operating Guidelines issued in May 2009, which in turn replaced those of September 2009. In July 2012, the Fonden Emergency Fund Guidelines were issued, abrogating the Guidelines for the issuance of Emergency Statements and the use of the Revolving Fund issued in December 2008. These amendments replaced the guidelines issued in September 2006 and December 2004, while those issued in December 2004 replaced the General Guidelines for the use of the Revolving Fund of November 2002. In 2000, the Fund’s operating procedures were modified to include the emergency statements, and collaboration agreements were proposed with state governors to set up state trusts where resources authorized by the Fund are deposited (BM 2012, p. 17).

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to federal and state public administration agencies and entities to carry out nonprogrammed preventive actions (CNPC 2013).6 Later, in 2010, the Trust was merged with the Fund for the Prevention of Natural Disasters (Fopreden),7 created in 2003, with the purpose of making efficient use of financial resources disaster prevention related to the negative effects of natural phenomena (CNPC 2015). To this end, Fopreden provides financial support to projects aimed at risk assessment and reduction, as well as to initiatives focused on capacity-building in risk prevention, with Fipreden being its “financial enforcement arm” (BM 2012, p. 9). Finally, the last actions undertaken toward the transition of the system to an apparent CRM are outlined with the issuance, in 2006, of the first catastrophic bond (Cat Mex). Through this mechanism, the Fonden can transfer financial and fiscal risk, which represents a disaster for the public treasury, to the international capital market. This bond, like the subsequent issues in 2009, 2012, and 2017, was valid for three years. The difference between the first bond and the subsequent ones, called Multi-Cat, consisted of different coverage. While the first bond was only designed for seismic events in specific areas with defined intensities,8 subsequent bonds kept the magnitude and location schemes, accompanied by parametric reinsurance schemes, while adding the consequences that hurricane impacts usually have on three frequently affected areas (IBD 2017, p. 5; BM 2012, p. 10),9 which shows how many of these areas, and others throughout the country were not very conducive to urbanization, meaning their settlement was a mistake and a poor decision. 6 In August 2002, as a result of the reform to Article 32 of the LGPC, the Guidelines for the Operation

of the Trust were established, which were abrogated with the entry into force of the Fopreden’s Operating Rules in December 2010. 7 Based on the Official Gazette of the Federation: In December 2010 the Fund’s Rules of Operation replaced the Rules issued in 2006, which in turn abrogated the Rules published in October 2003. This arose as a result of amendments to Sects. 3.3 and 3.4 of the LGPC (BM 2012, p. 17). 8 The first bond considered a coverage of USD$450 million against major earthquakes in the three areas with greater seismic risk in Mexico. Zone A, northeast of the Cocos Plate, covers Jalisco and a part of Guerrero, where earthquakes with an intensity equal to or greater than 8° and a depth of 200 km can be seen. Zone B, the central part of the Cocos Plate, extends over Guerrero and Oaxaca, and is considered to have the same characteristics as Zone A. While Zone C, delimited by a ring around Mexico City, attends to those disasters produced by earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.5° at a depth of 150 km (Morán 2017b, p. 177). 9 The bond issued in 2009 covered an amount of up to USD$290 million divided up into $140 million for earthquakes and $150 million for hurricanes (the latter in the three areas with the greatest presence of hurricanes). In 2012, the amount was USD$315 million ($140 million in the event of earthquakes, $100 million for hurricanes in the Pacific and $75 million for hurricanes in the Atlantic: for hurricanes the North Pacific area extends through Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, and Guerrero, it is covered before hurricanes with an intensity equal to or greater than Category 4. The South Pacific Zone encompasses Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, and Sonora and includes hurricanes with the same characteristics as those of the North Pacific Zone, while the Atlantic area, where Yucatan and Quintana Roo converge, includes Category 5 hurricanes (Morán 2017b, p. 177). For 2017, bond coverage was USD$150 million for earthquakes, USD$100 million and USD$110 million for hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific, respectively, with the exception that the location, depth and intensity of the earthquakes would be verified by the United State Geological Survey (IBD 2017, p. 5).

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In addition, the 2012 General Law of Civil Protection recognized the responsibility of governments (federal and state) in addressing the negative effects of extreme hydrometeorological events on agricultural activities, and therefore the need for mechanisms to provide rapid and timely assistance, through direct support and catastrophic insurance, to low-income agricultural, livestock, and fishery producers affected by extreme weather events (LGPC 2012).10 Along the same lines, Fonden has resorted to contracting catastrophic insurance for public assets and low-income housing in order to have financial protection in case its expenses are exceeded.11 To this end, the Fund, with the support of Cenapred, has developed the R-Fonden tool to assess the probability of disaster risk facing public assets and low-income housing, calculate average annual losses, and calculate probability curves for excess losses (BM 2012). In this way, entities such as Sinaproc, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and others related to the design and procurement of financial instruments, have parameters that, in theory, would allow them to improve the coverage of bonds and insurance in order to improve the efficiency of public spending for the different financial instruments designed to attend to and prevent risks and disasters in the country.12 With such measures, the federal government and the Ministry of Finance seek to reduce the financial burden that has been placed on the Fonden in dealing with events that, while unavoidable, have consequences that could be prevented and mitigated through coordination, planning, and oversight mechanisms, both institutional and intersectoral, in compliance with regulations and the establishment of administrative, civil, and criminal liability for the omission and complacency of irregularities.

10 Since 1999, the Fonden Operating Rules have provided support for the population engaged in these activities (ROFonden 1999). 11 This insurance scheme for excess losses aims to cover the Fund in those cases where the financial risk is lower than that covered by the Multi-Cat, so that all the assets that can be supported by the fund would be covered by this insurance; the risks covered are those covered by the Fonden and the operation would take place in accordance with the rules and guidelines of the Fund, thus covering all those events covered by a disaster statement issued by the Ministry of the Interior (Morán 2017a, p. 167). 12 The LGPC establishes that, through the General Coordination of Civil Protection, in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), will propose models for taking out insurance and risk management financial instruments that guarantee the best conditions in terms of price, quality, financing, opportunity, and other relevant circumstances will be proposed (LGPC 2012). In the Fonden’s operating guidelines, reference is made to the tasks aimed at developing an integrated risk management strategy related to the inventory of goods, identification of the risks to which they are exposed, as well as their degree of vulnerability; definition of risk management and transfer schemes, including prevention and mitigation measures (LOEFONDEN 2011).

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3.3 LGPC and Fonden, Vehicles for Financial Risk Transfer Based on the various transitions mentioned above, it can be assumed that various elements poured into the LGPC in 2012 respond to an inertia imposed by the transformations experienced by Fonden and, in turn, by commitments undertaken at the international level by the Mexican government, at several levels. One of the main concerns for the different levels of government and international institutions is the increase in the costs of disasters and the risk they represent for national finances due to the liabilities they generate. Therefore, the need to put greater emphasis on disaster CRM that includes financial protection and insurance measures against disasters in order to address these disruptive trends has been raised (BM 2012, p. 5). In this regard, the World Bank (WB) described Mexico as a country at the forefront of developing an integrated framework for disaster risk management, which includes risk financing and insurance mechanisms for managing fiscal risk arising from disasters (BM 2012, p. 5).13 However, what the WB deems as disaster CRM cannot be considered as such, since it only covers the financial part linked to the emergency and reconstruction phase, without considering risk prevention and mitigation. Although the trend, design, and implementation of the schemes described above date back to the early years of the twenty-first century, with the advice of the World Bank to Mexico for the issuance of the first catastrophe bond, there is an event that seems to reinforce and justify the decision to have financial instruments to deal with these contexts, accelerating the regulatory and institutional adaptation for this purpose. The cumulative impacts in 2010 of the losses associated with the floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes experienced throughout the country made evident the vulnerability of public finances, the lack of Fonden resources to attend to all the emergencies that could arise during a year,14 and the ineffectiveness of the paradigm followed by Sinaproc. As a result, Fonden faced its largest deficit ever, transferring more than USD$3.3 million from other budget lines to cover reconstruction expenses in 2010. This meant that in 2011 the Fund received the largest allocation of resources since 1999 (BM 2012, p. 47). Another result of the impacts suffered in 2010 was the creation of the Fund for the Reconstruction of Federal Entities (Fonrec), which provided a line of credit for states 13 With the approval, in 2012, of the General Law of Civil Protection, new powers were created for the Federal Executive to implement financial instruments for risk management as well as the responsibility of the state governments and the then Federal District government to take out insurance and other risk management instruments and transfer for the coverage of damages caused by a natural disaster (sic) in the assets and infrastructure of the states (IBD 2017, p. 2). 14 The national coordinator of civil protection, Laura Gurza Jaidar, said that the delay in the delivery of resources from Fonden in 2010 was circumstantial because it was an atypical year, since the disasters left the fund without funds and that gave rise to a change in the operating rules, creating the Reconstruction Fund (Fonrec) […] The official also highlighted the draft of the new civil protection law (La Prensa 2011).

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to access zero-coupon bond resources.15 In turn, the Fund’s Operating Rules were amended and work continued on formulating the new LGPC (Decreto de LGPC 2012).16 Although it is not explicitly stated, it can be inferred that these changes were based on an apparent CRM, grounded on the co-responsibility of states and municipalities, mainly for taking out financial risk insurance against disasters. For Sergio Puente (2014), the concept of Comprehensive Risk Management is the basis for current LGPC, defining CRM as the set of actions aimed at identifying, analyzing, evaluating, controlling, and reducing risks, considering them to be multifactorial in origin and in a permanent process of construction, involving the three levels of government, as well as sectors of society, which facilitates actions aimed at the creation and implementation of public policies, strategies, and procedures integrated into the attainment of sustainable development guidelines that combat the structural causes of disasters and strengthen the resilience or resistance of society. It involves the stages of risk identification and/or training, forecasting, prevention, mitigation, preparation, relief, recovery, and reconstruction (Puente 2014, p. 694). In the same vein, Fonden’s operating guidelines define the CRM strategy as the process of planning, organizing, and implementing a risk management scheme that includes the design of transferable financial instruments17 ; its ultimate goal is to anticipate, reduce, and control disaster risk in society on a permanent basis, combating the structural causes of natural disasters (sic) and strengthening the resilience of society (LOEFONDEN 2011). However, CRM in both the LGPC and the Fonden has proved different in practice than what is set forth in the guidelines stated above. In addition, those guidelines establish the need to specify states’ commitments, from the moment a disaster is declared, to allocate the necessary resources in their subsequent programs and budgets to safeguard affected assets identified in the damage assessment and quantification conducted under the disaster declaration (LOEFONDEN 2011). In the event of repeated damage to infrastructure, Fonden Rules state that it will only back those assets that have been insured after reconstruction. For the World Bank, the fact that operational guidelines for providing financial resources for reconstruction are subject to a policy of “building back better” allows resources to cover not only replacement costs but also the additional costs (improvements) needed to build back in a better way and to reduce physical vulnerability to 15 This bond was established in 2011, within the Federal Expenditure Budget for 4.5 billion pesos, to guarantee loans of up to 27 billion pesos with a maturity of 20 years to states that had suffered damage since January 2010 and had requested support from Fonden. The federal entity only pays, on a monthly basis, the interest on its loan while Fonrec […] pays the principal at maturity of the credit (BM 2012, p. 52; IBD 2017, p. 5). 16 On March 9, 2010, the initiative to modify the LGPC was presented in the context of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile that year, whose work had been going on for just over 3 years, through the regional civil protection coordinators and the Civil Protection Commission of the National Conference of Governors (Conago); as well as the work carried out by the state civil protection authorities since 2004 (Decreto de LGPC 2012). 17 The General Directorate of Fonden is the area in charge of providing technical and economic guidance and support in the development of a CRM strategy. Economic support refers to the public resources authorized to carry out strategies under supervision Fonden (LOEFONDEN 2011).

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the effects of disasters in the long term. In addition, these guidelines can promote the reduction of financial vulnerability by requiring the purchase of catastrophic insurance as a requirement for eligibility in the event that reconstruction financing is required again (BM 2012, p. 57).18 In this way, it is proposed as a strategy to reduce the amount of support generated by the fund and thus redirect priorities toward uninsured public infrastructure or infrastructure that is underinsured (Gurza 2010). Under this assumption, LGPC Article 18 states that it is the responsibility of state governments and the then Federal District to purchase insurance and other risk management and transfer instruments for the coverage of damages caused by a natural disaster (sic) on the assets and infrastructure of their states. In order to comply with this obligation, states may request that the risk management instruments […] that they acquire be supplemented with financial instruments of federal risk management (LGPC 2012). Although Sinaproc also contemplates both prevention and anthropogenic processes, the instruments used for disaster prevention and attention continue to privilege only natural hazards, under the argument that they are unpredictable and uncontrollable phenomena. In the case of prevention, the way in which the different levels of public administration operate does not seem to be coordinated, cooperative, and to conceive of civil protection as a joint task; nor can it fall to a single body that lacks the necessary powers to ensure the precepts laid down in the LGPC and, above all, to make progress in the area of prevention. For this reason, the CRM, under which it operates and is conceived in the LGPC and by Sinaproc, lacks a comprehensive character. With regard to anthropogenic processes, the Law seems to contradict itself when it states that anthropogenic phenomena are, in essence, caused by human activity and not by a natural phenomenon. They generate a framework of civil liability, so they are not within the competence of the financial instruments of risk management provided for in the Law itself (LGPC 2012). Despite the fact that the Law itself, in different sections, recognizes that risk is constructed and that the authorities, at their different levels, have the responsibility, competence, and powers to authorize aspects such as land use and, therefore, to sanction those conducts that incur in the commission or complacency of irregularities, in which the population is exposed to the negative effects of natural phenomena. In general, it can be observed that although these mechanisms could mean, in fact, an instrument for the prevention and improvement in the quality of life of the population, they are limited to a transfer of the financial risks that some phenomena represent; this shows authorities’ lack of interest in protecting the population in the face of the limited vision of reducing the public spending strategy; that is, it is limited to a financial resilience that could well have benefits if these resources were efficiently

18 The

specific Operating Guidelines of Fonden establish that in the event of damage to federal infrastructure that is insured, the Federal Agency or Entity may only request access to Fonden resources for the difference between the insured amount and the total amount of the damage once the former has been exhausted (LOEFONDEN 2011).

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allocated to other types of public actions that would reduce the vulnerability of the population, which is the real underlying case behind disasters. In fact, the transfer of [financial] risks seems to conceal a pernicious incentive […], [when] infrastructure insurance guarantees the repeated reconstruction of assets [but does not] constitute an opportunity to reduce vulnerability (Moran Morán 2017b, p. 172). In any case, a cost overrun could be assumed, given that the insurance is paid for with public resources and public programs are allocated to disaster care and prevention. Moreover, the underlying causes assumed by CRM are not addressed and, in fact, it is an attempt to shift the costs and financial burden of disasters to a private sector that cares little about improving the living conditions of society, which is the object of this type of instrument. In this way, disasters seem to be a new business option for capital in the participation of risk management and the reconstruction of spaces affected by poor planning that exposes the manifestation of certain natural phenomena.

3.4 Contingency Insurance in Mexico City According to Sinaproc, from 1999 to 2018, Mexico City has only received resources from Fonden on two occasions, once for earthquakes and once for floods. In the first case, following the earthquake of September 19, 2017, the resources spent reached 3,462’267,763 pesos, of which 76.74% came from Fonden and the remainder were contributions from the city government.19 In the case of the floods, on February 3 and 4, 2010, the Gustavo A. Madero, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, and Venustiano Carranza20 districts were affected and a declaration of disaster and emergency was issued. In the first case, the amount authorized was 219’241,850 pesos, of which 48.94 percent came from Fonden and the rest from the city government, which was used to deal with the effects on the athletic, water, urban, housing, and education sectors (DGGR 2018c). With this precedent, I proceeded to request information from the Institute of Access to Public Information, at the district level and with various Mexico City government agencies, on a number of points: (1) contingencies considered for floods between 2000 and 2017; (2) the number of contingencies (floods) attended to by any government program, during the referred period; (3) the number of contingencies 19 The sectors that were reported to have been affected after the disaster announcement were culture, sports, education, forestry, water, military, monuments, navy, health, and housing. The type of action carried out with these resources consisted of immediate partial support, reconstruction, and assessment expenses (DGGR 2018a). Both the disaster and emergency statements considered the 16 districts to be affected; they were supported, under the emergency declaration, by the delivery of food provisions, blankets, type B laminate, cleaning, and personal hygiene kits, hide and neoprene gloves, flashlights, crowbars, wheelbarrows, shovels, shoes, helmets, B masks, and water, for a total of 432,336 pesos (DGGR 2018b). 20 At the end of 2018 the districts were transformed into municipalities (Alcaldías), with the entry into force of the new constitution of Mexico City.

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attended to through catastrophic insurance or other financial instruments, during that period of time; and (4) the annual amount spent on this type of financial instruments. The purpose was to test whether taking out these instruments meant greater financial resilience and the extent to which they complied with the precepts established in the LGPC. Firstly, the request for this information, through the Mexico City transparency portal, revealed a series of elements that brought into question the economic, technical, and human capital capacity of those responsible for civil protection matters, to carry out the tasks entrusted to them; secondly, the failure to comply with various provisions contained in the LGPC; and thirdly, the lack of coordination between government agencies and levels, all of which called into question the CRM that Sinaproc and the LGPC itself boast. One of the first aspects to be considered is the lack of records on incidents or contingencies, due to flooding, presented in previous administrations. There is also the omission of the regulatory frameworks in matters of civil protection by those responsible for protecting citizens from the natural and anthropogenic risks that converge on Mexico City. Based on the information obtained, three types of action can be conceived in the district governments, in financial matters against risks due to natural phenomena. (1) Governments that took out insurance on their own account to cover contingencies, which is the case of Álvaro Obregón that reported an annual expenditure of 7.4 million pesos.21 (2) Governments, such as that of Venustiano Carranza, subscribe to consolidated insurance programs run by the Mexico City government, through which they receive insurance coverage and toward which they allocate a budget item.22 (3) Governments seem to depend on the insurance coverage purchased by the Mexico City authorities and, apparently, are not very capable of financially managing the risk due to the lack of specific programs to attend to contingencies,23 the lack of information on events prior to their management and the transfer of responsibilities to other Mexico City government agencies such as Civil Protection, the Water System (Sacmex), and the Chief Clerk’s Office.24 Based on the foregoing, it should be noted that there are a few districts that have a historical archive with information that includes the management of previous administrations. Álvaro Obregón is the district with the greatest number of years of 21 According to the Directorate of Material Resources and General Services, the contingencies reported as of 2008 were covered by urban infrastructure insurance. 22 According to the Head of the Departmental Unit of General Services and Risk Management, from 2012 to 2017, the district allocated resources to budget item 3451 “property insurance.” Likewise, it referred to the fact that it was adhered to the Consolidated Insurance Program through the Comprehensive Package Insurance Policy at First Risk All Goods, All Risks of Physical Damage, with which it was protected against damages and/or losses to movable and immovable goods and urban infrastructure owned and/or in charge of the public administration of the Mexico City. 23 The Civil Protection Directorate said that Azcapotzalco had no program for dealing with floods, nor specific resources for that purpose. 24 It should be noted that Coyoacán was the only district that did not respond to the request for information.

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7 400 350

5

300

4

250 200

3

150 2

Number of floods

Number of years

6

100

1

50 0

0

Floods reported

Years with reports

Fig. 3.1 Years with reported floods by district, 2000–2017. Source Prepared by author with data provided by the districts. Note The periods reported by each district vary: for Álvaro Obregón the entire period applies; Azcapotzalco only 2016–2017; Benito Juárez 2002–2017; Cuajimalpa, Cuauhtémoc, Gustavo A. Madero, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Milpa Alta, Tlalpan and Xochimilco no information is available; Magdalena Contreras and Venustiano Carranza 2012–2017; Miguel Hidalgo 2011–2017; Tláhuac did not specify the period; Coyoacán did not respond

floods reported, between 2000 and 2017; although with a low number of incidents (16), if we take as a reference the 428 floods reported in Miguel Hidalgo, between 2011 and 2017 (Fig. 3.1). Under this scenario, Miguel Hidalgo is precisely the district that reported the largest amount of resources executed through its flood insure policy, in a shorter period of time. In other words, the flooding incidents recorded by the Miguel Hidalgo district in only three years exceeded the sum of all similar incidents reported by other districts in the same period. This datum allows us to reflect on several aspects. Firstly, taking out insurance coverage seems to lead to a more detailed record of floodrelated incidents in particular and disasters in general, as well as the development of administrative capacities for this purpose. Second, this suggests that having a better record of contingencies increases the number of reports on emergency situations and does not necessarily mean that disasters have increased or that CRM is being carried out. In other words, when there is greater detail, monitoring, and instruments to deal with risks and their consequences, governments seem to be more willing to record and report on them, thereby transferring disaster costs and liability for compensating those affected to private financial institutions.

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Third, there is a growing trend toward the use of these types of instruments. Although Fonden has mentioned them in its Rules of Operation since 1999, and Sinaproc is committed to promoting their implementation through the restructuring of the General Directorate of Fonden25 and the new LGPC, in Mexico City reference to them dates back at least to 2006,26 but their use, more generally, seems to respond to the 2010 floods that led to the first disaster declaration for Mexico City.27 This is probably the reason why, from the information provided by the different districts, Miguel Hidalgo is (1) the district with the greatest number of floods on record; (2) the one that has used the greatest number of resources to attend to floods, through insurance policies (Fig. 3.2), surpassing districts such as Álvaro Obregón or Benito Juárez that reported the greatest number of years with this type of contingency; and (3) from 2011 onwards, it is the one that reported the highest expenses incurred (Fig. 3.3). According to the information provided by the district, in 2011 the insurance company providing flood coverage paid out 17.3 million pesos, representing 72% of expenditure reported by the area in three years, whereas in 2012 and 2017 the average amount paid out in both years was 3.4 million pesos. These elements seem to support the ideas developed above, i.e., Miguel Hidalgo, in theory, would report a better administrative capacity for the registration of contingencies related to floods, although this does not translate into a greater capacity to manage risk and reduce the vulnerability of the population. At least, it does not demonstrate this for neighborhoods such as Popotla or Tlaxpana that were affected by floods in 2011, 2012, and 2017. In the case of Popotla, the insurer reported an expenditure of 48,555 pesos, 14,551 pesos, and 150,400 pesos, respectively. While for Tlaxpana the amounts were 17,234 pesos, 67,002 pesos, and 506,631 pesos, respectively. Thus, the data would corroborate that disasters have not necessarily increased, but rather their costs have increased and record-keeping has improved. The latter is (surely) due to the fact that insurance companies must generate information to make policy payments and, in turn, information is required to generate new coverage. This does not mean that the private sector is more efficient; rather, it reflects the apathy of the authorities to assume their responsibility in carrying out this task, which should be a constant input for disaster database tools such as R-Fonden, Risk Atlas, as well as for government plans and programs.

25 With the changes to the LGPC, in 2012, the General Directorate of Fonden gave way to the General Directorate for Risk Management, which is responsible for assisting the National Coordination of Civil Protection in matters of financial instruments for risk management (prevention, attention to emergencies, and disasters related to natural phenomena). In addition, among other functions, it coordinates the operation of these instruments and assists in resource management (Segob 2013). 26 In 2006, the director of Sacmex pointed out that Mexico City had an insurance policy that would provide an average of 6,000 pesos to the 226 families affected by floods in Iztapalapa (El Universal 2006, “Todo bajo control ante lluvia: Sistema de Aguas,” Mexico City section). 27 As mentioned above, in that year Fonden was left without resources due to the impact of floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes that were experienced in different parts of the country.

3 Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes … 30,000,000

450 400

25,000,000

300 250

15,000,000

200

10,000,000

150

Number of floods

350

20,000,000 Pesos

59

100

5,000,000

50

0

0

Amount spent

Floods reported

Fig. 3.2 Amount paid out by insurance companies and number of floods reported by district, 2000–2017. Source Prepared by author with data provided by the districts. Note The districts Azcapotzalco, Cuajimalpa, Cuauhtémoc, Gustavo A. Madero, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Milpa Alta, Tlalpan, and Xochimilco did not report data and Coyoacán did not respond

For its part, the Mexico City Chief Clerk’s Office (Oficialía mayor),28 as the entity responsible for taking out insurance, states that in the last five years the amounts paid out by the comprehensive insurance policy […], amounted to 115’396,610.97 pesos, derived from 67 floods reported between 2013 and 2017. Unlike the information provided by the districts, in this case, Iztapalapa was the district with the largest amount of money spent in four years; since the 35.6 million pesos required by the region to attend to contingencies,29 this district represented 31% of the resources spent in Mexico City during that period (Table 5.1). It should be noted that Iztapalapa is also the most densely populated district, along with Cuauhtémoc, which reported almost 12 million pesos spent on floods in 2014 (Fig. 3.4). The insurance coverage taken out by the General Directorate of Material Resources and General Services of the Chief Clerk’s Office of Mexico City is paid on an annual basis and its purpose is to insure the administrative units of the central government, agencies, and autonomous bodies that are part of the public administration of Mexico City. In addition, coverage includes civil liability to protect the assets 28 Office

in charge of the internal administration of the Public Administration of Mexico City. 2013, through insurance, 25 million pesos were allocated to attend to contingencies in Iztapalapa, which represented 70% of the resources spent in four years in that area. 29 In

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Álvaro Obregón

Benito Juárez

Magdalena Contreras

Tláhuac

Venustiano Carranza

Miguel Hidalgo

2002 2007 2008

Years

2009 2010 2011 2012 2015 2016 2017 18,000,000

16,000,000

14,000,000

12,000,000

10,000,000

8,000,000

6,000,000

4,000,000

2,000,000

0

Fig. 3.3 Amount paid out by insurance company by district. Source Prepared by author with data provided by the offices

of individuals and corporations that may be affected by activities carried out by areas of the Mexico City government. To this end, the policy provides for the establishment of a loss management fund in which the areas that adhere to the consolidated contract contribute a certain amount to meet the contingencies that arise (Table 3.1). Finally, it should be noted that in the information provided by the district and the Chief Clerk’s Office, regardless of the difference between the periods, the amounts paid out for floods through insurance do not match. The district of Alvaro Obregón reported almost 1.4 million pesos over 7 years, while the Chief Clerk’s Office referred to almost 3.7 million pesos in 4 years. For Benito Juarez, the Chief Clerk’s Office reported an expenditure of almost 1.2 million pesos for 2017 and the district allocated 203,216 pesos for the same period. For Miguel Hidalgo, the differences are almost 21 million pesos more between what the district stated and what the Chief Clerk’s Office reported.

3 Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes …

61

Fig. 3.4 Amounts paid out by Comprehensive Insurance Coverage and population density by delegation. Source Prepared by David Martinez and Guillermo Aguilar Martinez with data from the Mexico City Chief Clerk’s Office

In addition to the inconsistency in the amounts, which could be explained by the difference in budget items and funding sources, there is another inconsistency in the report on the floods recorded in Mexico City. Thus, the information collected from the districts refers to some points that the Ministry of Civil Protection or the Water System does not report or vice versa. Although it can be argued that some districts did not respond and that there are different levels of authority and responsibility in dealing with floods, the information gap seems to question the real coordination and articulation between agencies and levels of government that both the LGPC and Sinaproc establish within their operational bases and the CRM itself assumes in its guiding principles.

3.5 Final Remarks The current way in which disaster risks are managed, both throughout the country and in Mexico City, leads us to question whether the model that is being followed can really be conceived within the concept of CRM. In the first place, financial management of disaster risk seems to be considered as the central axis of CRM because it continues to privilege attention to emergencies over risk prevention and mitigation. Second, insurance does not address the root causes, does not improve the quality of life of the population, and does not reduce the vulnerability of these sectors exposed, year after year, to flooding. Thirdly, civil liability coverage seems

No information

25,142,891.55

Iztapalapa

8,985,145.83

1,700.00

Iztacalco

8,995,695.83

1,700.00

Gustavo A. Madero

1,276,029.31

No information

10,550.00

11,963,815.91

No information

No information

No information

Cuauhtemoc

No information

11,880.00

Cuajimalpa

No information

1,241,177.31

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

4,585,950.95

No information

301,003.29

301,003.29

No information

No information

No information

1,700,000.00

3,397,516.30

1,278,605.73

283,577.00

79,370.00

961,600.00

1,107,900.00

2,333,449.95

4,765,896.95

No information

No information

1,193,700.00

413,650.00

No information

2,803,050.00

No information

No information

Amounts disbursed 2017

29,992.00

No information

No information

60,177.59

60,177.59

Amounts disbursed 2016

689,400.00

11,415.00

No information

No information

215,261.40

215,261.40

Amounts disbursed 2015

830,517.10

883,804.10

No information

Benito Juarez

Azcapotzalco

No information

60,000.00

2,681,643.00

No information

2,741,643.00

Alvaro Obregon

Amounts disbursed 2014

Amounts disbursed 2013

District

(continued)

35,643,565

1,278,605

14,064,296

11,963,815

No information

1,193,700

3,686,854

3,017,081

Amount

Table 3.1 Amounts paid out per Comprehensive Insurance Policy. Source Prepared by the authors with information provided by the Mexico Chief Clerk’s Office

62 J. D. Morán-Escamilla

1,276,029.31

890,185.90

No information

No information

No information

Tláhuac

Tlalpan

No information

No information

No information No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

Milpa Alta

80,556.22

No information

134,080.00

134,080.00

No information

268,160.00

4,841,621.78

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

No information

224,618

81,371.19

305,989.19

No information

No information

711,261.22

711,261.22

526,694.36

6,477,913.48

11,333,496.46

376,590.00

191,621.25

163,780.70

213,002.00

309,050.00

1,254,043.95

No information

2,975,538.98

No information

No information

Does not apply

Does not apply 3,109,092.00

3,040,244.30

357,272.00

Amounts disbursed 2017

Does not apply

679,693.91

985,643.50

491,215.45

Amounts disbursed 2016

4,160,870.30

240,000.00

321,483.40

Amounts disbursed 2015

5,309,647.25

9,940,566.32

Amounts disbursed 2014

Amounts disbursed 2013

Miguel Hidalgo

Magdalena Contreras

District

Table 3.1 (continued)

(continued)

11,333,496

1,560,033

No information

3,056,095

979,421

Amount

3 Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes … 63

218,106.75 218,106.75

No information

No information

No information

No information

243,206.93

59,929.25

303,136.18

19,000.00

19,000.00

No information

No information

Amounts disbursed 2015

49,599.00

49,599.00

1,839,668.00

1,839,668.00

No information

No information

Amounts disbursed 2016

36,500.00

967,144.00

943,285.68

688,280.70

65,400.00

647,400.36

974,635.55

4,624,056.19

8,946,702.48

1,459,067.32

565,000.00

370,450.00

8,667,611.00

11,062,128.32

1,944,145.00

3,237,160.00

5,181,305.00

4,328,888.62

Amounts disbursed 2017

9,517,544

12,920,796

5,181,305

Amount

Note No information means that the Chief Clerk’s Office did not report the disbursement of resources for flood care, through the contracted insurance. At the same time, Not Applicable means that for that region there were no more contingencies than those referred to

Coyoacán

No information

No information

No information

No information

Xochimilco

No information

No information

Venustiano Carranza

Amounts disbursed 2014

Amounts disbursed 2013

District

Table 3.1 (continued)

64 J. D. Morán-Escamilla

3 Flood Management Through Financial Cost Transfer Schemes …

65

to conceal the inability and irresponsibility of civil servants in the face of acts of omission and indulgence in irregularities. Fourth, as a result of all the above, mechanisms such as insurance do not resolve the increase in disaster costs, because they do not seek to eradicate the structural causes mentioned by Fonden and the LGPC, but only transfer the costs to the public treasury by the materialization of disasters. An example of this is the scheme proposed by Fonden, which encourages the creation of state funds to cover contingencies and conditions the future reconstruction of infrastructure damaged by a natural phenomenon in exchange for insurance.30 In this regard, to the extent that disasters continue to increase reconstruction costs, financial institutions will increase the amount of coverage taken out by governments, so that the costs, at least not the social costs borne by the population, of disasters will not be reduced.31 Under this scheme, the risk management model in Mexico cannot be considered a comprehensive model because (1) it does not actively incorporate the population in the action schemes; (2) it ignores the capacities of actors and their instruments for local risk management; (3) it avoids or erodes the construction of local support networks (hindering social empowerment, limiting risk self-management); (4) it does not promote the proper coordination required for true CRM, in different stages; (5) it does not stimulate capacity building in local governments (thus making them dependent on the central government); and (6) it blurs the establishment of liability in the construction and exposure of the population to risks. For this reason, it can be pointed out that in Mexico a transfer of risk predominates, which is limited to the transfer of fiscal risk; this seems to respond more to international commitments and to capital insurance for private groups,32 than to the commitment that the government has to the general population, forgetting the basic functions that authorities, as representatives of the State, have of providing personal security and public order to society. For Macias (2012, p. 371), the State’s obligation in the face of disasters derives from its function as an authority to guarantee the protection of life and property in society,33 principles generally adopted in the laws 30 Infrastructure that is repeatedly affected by a disaster can be rebuilt with Fonden resources on a recurring basis, provided that some form of insurance is in place. However, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development points out that sometimes contractors use lower quality materials in reconstruction, which generates recurrent losses when that infrastructure is damaged again by another natural phenomenon (OECD 2013, p. 184). 31 Disasters increase social costs because there is a decline in people’s quality of life. According to the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, phenomena such as floods or droughts inhibit human development and increase poverty. Thus, between 2000 and 2005, the impact of disasters in Mexico resulted in an average loss of progress over two years and poverty increased from 1.5 to 3.7% (UNISDR 2015, p. 211). 32 For the World Bank, the application of alternative tools for risk transfer schemes will depend on the technical capacity of the country and its access to capital markets. It is useful for countries to consider the strength of domestic capital markets and their ability to access international capital markets when exploring feasible financial instruments (BM 2012, p. 58). 33 Responsibility for these permanent and contingent problems (threats, risks, and disasters), as well as the status of administrator of the common goods of society, implies responsibilities and obligations regarding damages, losses, and everything related to arrangements for recovery from

66

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of modern democracies. For the same reason, it must be firmly established that aid from the government is an obligation insofar as it is one of its functions and not a charitable gift. It is an obligation that has been grossly neglected (Macias 2012, p. 380); as long as the population, in general, continues to cover the costs, in various aspects, of disasters.

References Banco Mundial (BM). (2012). FONDEN: El Fondo de Desastres Naturales de México. Washington, D.C.: Banco Mundial. Coordinación Nacional de Protección Civil (CNPC). (2015). Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/es/ProteccionCivil/Antece dentesROFOPREDEN. Coordinación Nacional de Protección Civil (CNPC). (2014). Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/es/ProteccionCivil/Que_es. Coordinación Nacional de Protección Civil (CNPC). (2013). Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/es/ProteccionCivil/Introd uccionFOPREDEN. Decreto por el que se expide la Ley General de Protección Civil. (2012). Diario Oficial de la Federación, Proceso Legislativo. Dirección General para la Gestión de Riesgos (DGDRa). (2018a) Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/work/models/Protec cionCivil/Resource/36/26/images/DGGR-RA2017-27MAR2018.pdf. Dirección General para la Gestión de Riesgos (DGGRb). (2018b). Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/work/models/Protec cionCivil/Resource/2373/1/images/Insumos_autorizados_CD_MEX_311-17.pdf. Dirección General para la Gestión de Riesgos (DGGRc). (2018c). Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/work/models/Protec cionCivil/Resource/36/26/images/2010.pdf. El Universal. (2006). Todo bajo control ante lluvia: Sistema de Aguas. Mexico City section. Gurza, J. L. (2010). Organigrama, estructura funcional, misión, visión, atribuciones, objetivos específicos y plan de trabajo 2010. México: National Congress of Civil Protection. Instituto Belisario Domínguez (IBD). (2017). Recursos Federales para la Atención de Desastres. Notas estratégicas. Senado de la República. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://bibliodig italibd.senado.gob.mx/bitstream/handle/123456789/3715/1%20Publicaci%C3%B3n%20NE% 2013%20Recursos%20Federales%20para%20la%20Atenci%C3%B3n%20de%20Desastres% 20Naturales%20en%20M%C3%A9xico.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. La Prensa. (2011). Los desastres dejaron al fondo sin fondo: Gurza. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from La Prensa.mx: http://laprensa.mx/notas.asp?id=75018. Ley General de Protección Civil (LGPC). (2012). Diario Oficial de la Federación. Lineamientos de Operación específicos del Fondo de Desatres Naturales (LOEFONDEN) (January 31, 2011). Macías, J. M. (2012). Estado y desastres. Deterioro, retos y tendencias en la reducción de desastres en México, 2011. In J. L. En (Coord.), Cambio Climático y políticas de desarrollo sustentable. Juan Pablo Editor & Consejo Nacional de Universitarios para una Nueva Estrategia de Desarrollo. México (pp. 368–392).

crises in those sectors or communities that need it and are unable to recover through their own resources (Macias 2012, p. 371).

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Morán, J. D. (2017a) Escenarios de riesgos y desastres por sismos e inundaciones en la zona metropolitana de la Ciudad de México. San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. Morán, J. D. (2017b). Panorama del Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil en México. Revista de El Colegio de San Luis 158–183. Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) (n/y) Marco de Sendai para la reducción del riesgo de desastres 2015–2030. Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE). (2013). Estudio de la OCDE sobre el Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil en México. OECD Publishing. Puente, S. (2014). Del concepto de gestión integral de riesgos a la política pública en protección civil. Los desafíos de su implementación. En S. Giorguli Saucedo & V. Ugalde, Gobierno, territorio y población: las políticas públicas en la mira (pp. 691–723). El Colegio de México. D.F. Reglas de Operación del Fondo de Desastres Naturales (ROFonden). (1999). Diario Oficial de la Federación. Secretaría de Gobernación (Segob). (2013). Reglamento Interior de la Secretaría de Gobernación. Diario Oficial de la Federación. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). (2015). Hacia el desarrollo sostenible: El futuro de la gestión del riesgo de desastres. Informe de Evaluación Global sobre la Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres. Oficina de las Naciones Unidas para la Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres. Ginebra

Chapter 4

Social Vulnerability: Learnings from the September 19, 2017, Earthquake in Mexico City Patricia Eugenia Olivera

4.1 Introduction The intraplate earthquake that struck the central and southern regions of Mexico on September 19, 2017, had a magnitude 7.1 (depth 57 km; epicentral distance 114 km from the city). The disaster was the collapse of buildings; the destruction of power grids, road, water, and plumbing infrastructure; and resulted in many deaths, involuntary social displacement, and led hundreds of people to seek refuge in informal camps and shelters. This intraplate earthquake originated 120 km outside of Mexico City, where there is no seismic alert. As noted by expert geomorphologists, engineers, and geophysicists, large deformations such as newly formed fractures and differential subsidence appeared in the basin of Mexico following the earthquake. Earth and social science specialists affirm that joint preventative action must be taken, beyond an emergency relief perspective, considering that this disaster may be a prelude to another earthquake whose magnitude, intensity, spatial and temporal proximity cannot be estimated. The potential hazard implies unraveling all factors contributing to social vulnerability and the patterns to end it. In light of disasters, the social vulnerability has been widely studied in terms of social relations from a theoretical perspective of the political economy (Maskrey 1994; Macías 1992). Within this perspective, the relationship between risk and danger to vulnerability in Latin America, as stated by Maskrey, detonated an accumulation of vulnerabilities derived from the way productive activities are organized, and a subsequent increase in migration to cities, evidenced by a sharp upsurge in the population under specific occupation policies (Maskrey 1994). To this day, urbanized area expansion and population growth in Mexico City have gone through several stages P. E. Olivera (B) Departamento de Geografía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México UNAM, Ciudad de México, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_4

69

70

P. E. Olivera

associated with a series of structural conditionings, such as the phases of circulation of capital in city, industry, commerce, services, and belonging to specific groups or social classes along with different degrees of accessibility to urban land typologies, housing, and place of residence. Some groups, mainly known for their socioeconomic precariousness, combined with a lack of opportunities or rapaciousness from certain groups, found refuge in informal settlements exposed to different hazards, forming a wide array of vulnerable social strata. However, the seismic disaster of September 19, 2017, affected all social classes. This article aims to understand the development of social vulnerability in Mexico City from a political economy perspective. We take into account the risk of seismic activity, among others associated with it, derived from the real estate boom that concealed multiple morphological changes inherent to the Basin of Mexico City. It was built on top of an ancient lake, increasing the demand for water and urbanized land, which are general conditions that play a role in the construction of social vulnerability caused by seismic activity. To set a precedent, the first part of this paper will present a review of specialized studies of the geophysical factors that had an impact on the outcome of the earthquake, considering specific characteristics of the Basin of Mexico and environmental management. The second part will involve an analysis of the social construction of vulnerability through urbanization policies, the development of buildings and infrastructure, significant changes to laws that regulate land use, residential occupations with varying degrees of density and function, affected geoforms and natural resources, particularly those of water bodies, compressible land, and hillsides. Finally, this article includes a reflection surrounding reconstruction efforts, the lessons learned from this experience, and the role of academia.

4.2 Seismic Activity in the Lake City, An Impending, Foretold Hazard Mexico City is inside seismic zone B, where the magnitude and intensity of earthquakes are lower than that of A, but it rests above ancient lake sediments, which makes it a high-risk zone. We review the studies from geophysicists, engineers, and geomorphologists to understand the scale of the risk of seismic activity in this city. The Working Group for the National Seismological Service (Grupo de Trabajo del Servicio Sismológico Nacional [SSN] 2017) at UNAM showed that in 2017 seismic activity in Mexico exceeded 26,400 earthquakes of all magnitudes. This figure is notably higher than the 15,400 epicenters or rupture zones measured in 2016, and the 10,900 from 2015. These events mainly occurred near the Pacific coast, from Chiapas and Oaxaca (with a higher number of cases and intensity in this area) to Jalisco and the Gulf of California coast (SSN 2017). Based on the data gathered by Miguel Angel Santoyo on the interplate earthquake of 8.2 magnitudes on September 7, 2017, with an epicenter located at the coast of

4 Social Vulnerability: Learnings from the September …

71

the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, it caused both the rupture of the main normal fault and a shift on the contact surface that affected 12,000 km2 (an area equal to half of the extension of the Isthmus). It generated a relative motion of 15 m between the two blocs in the Cocos plate. Additionally, he noted that they found a second normal fault parallel to the main normal fault. In other words, two large motions comprising three planes from the same rupture took place, which exhibited a fault perpendicular to the other two, and showed that the whole plate seems to be fragmenting, a condition found nowhere else in the world (Santoyo 2017, UNAM). Mexico City is located at more than 350 km from the trenched area where subduction begins but close to the fault rupture that caused some days after, the intraplate earthquake of September 19, 2017, at 120 km. According to seismologists from UNAM, at least three distinct types of earthquakes affect Mexico City, in addition to those of volcanic origin. Those caused by interplate subduction at shallow depths, between 19 and 58 km, such as the September 19, 1985 earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.1 and an epicenter on the coast of Michoacán, 450 km from the city. Also, the 8.2 magnitude earthquake of September 7, 2017, with an epicenter on the coast of Tehuantepec, as previously mentioned. Others seismic events are caused by intraplate subduction at intermediate depth, which originates from the subducted Cocos plate under the continent, such as the 7.1 magnitude earthquake of September 19, 2017, with a rupture that took place 12 km southeast of Axochiapan, Morelos, and 120 km from Mexico City (SSN 2017). Lastly, the seismic events that occur inside the Basin of Mexico. Despite measuring at a lower magnitude, the earthquake that struck Mexico City on September 19, 2017, caused more considerable damage than the one on September 7, 2017, due to the higher accelerations it produced, and its closeness. This event mostly impacted infrastructures between three and seven stories high, particularly those on the west side of the Texcoco Lake (Cruz-Atienza et al. 2017). Given the geotechnical zoning of the Basin of Mexico, the resulting seismic energy pulse resonated directly with buildings within that range, as opposed to the taller buildings affected by seismic waves on September 19, 1985 (Ibid.). According to studies conducted by the National Seismological Service (SSN), intraplate earthquakes in Mexico have a similar frequency than interplate earthquakes, like 1985. The seismic risk in Mexico City is high for both cases, even though intraplate earthquakes are more frequent along the coast of the Mexican Pacific (SSN 2017; Cruz-Atienza et al. 2017). On the other hand, the inherent seismic activity of the Basin of Mexico is associated with the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt that crosses the country from east to west, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean where the tallest and most active volcanoes are found. According to the National Seismological Service Working Group Report, most earthquakes occur along the edges of the Basin of Mexico, typically measuring lower than 4 in magnitude. However, the Working Group reported earthquakes of magnitudes around 7 in 1912, and July 12, 1974, in Acambay, when a rupture was found near the University City Campus, with the highest accelerations ever measured within the Basin of Mexico (SSN 2017). Experts suggest various hypotheses for the origin of the earthquakes within the region: the reactivation of

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P. E. Olivera

old faults, a product of stress built up in the region, or the sinking of the Valley of Mexico, where the tension between different layers could set them off (SSN 2017: 3) Fig. 4.1. They also take into consideration the hypothesis where “larger earthquakes from the Pacific coast could cause conditions of imbalance triggering earthquakes in the region” (SSN, ibid.). To understand what happened on September 19, 2017, in Mexico City, CruzAtienza et al. (2016) showed that the Valley of Mexico presents an acceleration of incoming seismic waves and the prolongation of their motion at very high percentages (Cruz-Atienza et al. 2016: 7). According to seismic wave acceleration records, the

Fig. 4.1 Geotechnical Zoning of Mexico City. Source Building Regulations (2017). Official Gazette of Mexico City. December 15, 2017

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73

authors found that the peak ground accelerations on the earthquake on September 19, 2017, were two times higher than the ones in 1985, reaching 57 Gal and 30 Gal, respectively (1 Gal = 1 cm/s2 ), based on the measurements made on the Zone I Hills, at the University City campus. However, in the Zone III Lakebed, some areas registered higher ground accelerations during the 1985 earthquake compared to the ones from 2017. The accelerometer of the Ministry of Communications and Transport measured a peak ground acceleration of 160 Gal in 1985, compared to 91 Gal in 2017. Experts believe that ground accelerations on September 19, 2017, earthquake were probably higher, and show how dissipative superficial layers can be. Seismic energy propagates in long distances, deep beneath the valley, promoting as mentioned earlier prolongation and amplification of motion, and resulting in long and devastating shocks across Mexico City (Cruz-Atienza et al. 2017). These researchers found the factors that determine the long-lasting ground motion of earthquakes in Mexico City are closely related to the geotechnical structure and the depth at which they arise, given that incoming seismic waves along the limits of lacustrine sediments go through a transduction and induction process. Despite seismic energy dissipation within the superficial layers of clay, between 10 and 100 m deep, energy does not decrease in deeper layers (Cruz-Atienza et al. 2016: 6). Motion is prolonged by the incoming regional energy and the nature of the sediments located inside the ancient lake zone, particularly at the deepest levels. This amplification is not as pronounced in the Zone II Transition and among hard rocks at the edge of the ancient lake, where it is around ten times lower. Therefore, total spectral amplifications at the bottom of the lake may reach between 170 and 290% higher, especially on the lower layers, from subduction earthquakes with starting frequencies between 0.5 and 0.3 Hz, respectively (Ibid: 7). This geotechnical zone extends into the area where the now-canceled new airport was projected. There is a combination of at least three events of high seismic hazard at play in Mexico City, maximum ground acceleration, prolongation of time propagation, and the amplification of seismic waves. Whether from the coast or within the oceanic plate at intermediate depth, seismic waves incoming to Mexico City are further prolonged within the lake zone by encountering compressible lacustrine sediments. Waves are amplified between 20 and 50 times, depending on the frequency and wavelength of the incoming earthquake (Cruz Atienza et al. 2017). Given this combination of circumstances, especially regarding oscillations, there is a differential effect on buildings as Singh et al. (2018) registered the comparison effects between the intraslab earthquake of 2017, and the interplate 1985. They remembered that it should not be considered unexpected events (Singh et al. 2018: 2197). On September 19, 2017, 93% of collapsed buildings were no higher than seven stories, compared to the 1985 earthquake, where most affected buildings were between seven and ten stories. The Basin of Mexico has, therefore, a very complex and variable pattern of motion, whose wave frequency and dominant period of the site are very associated with the damaged building’s height, manly in the boundary between transition and lakebed zones (Ibid: 2196). From a social vulnerability perspective, it is imperative to disallow building densification of the zones in Mexico City due to the susceptibility to seismic

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risk, and other dangers related to this, where the biggest damages to households, services, and infrastructure could occur. Recently, images of Mexico City from the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis project (ARIA 2017), in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, were published. These interferometric images, captured on September 8, and September 20, 2017, by the Sentinel-1A and 1B satellites, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), were used to calculate apparent deformations of the terrain that reached 3–5 cm. However, Mexican specialists noted these measurements are not conclusive. According to scientist Dora Carreón-Freyre, a researcher from the Geoscience Center at UNAM, 12 areas in Mexico City are with notable deformations in neighborhoods within the Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez, Xochimilco, and Tláhuac municipalities, Fig. 4.2. These places had the highest

Fig. 4.2 Faults, fractures, and cracks in Mexico City. Source This figure has been created using CENAPRED-UNAM 2017, Carreón-Freyre, Boletin UNAM-DGCS-677 October 12, 2017, in https://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2017_677.html

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number of buildings collapsed in 2017. Her team is currently researching the vulnerability derived from subsidence, fracturing, and faults in Mexico City (see www.atl asnacionalderiesgos.gob.mx). Experts Carreón-Freyre, Cerca, Gutiérrez-Calderón, López-Quiroz, Alcántara-Durán, Gonzáles-Hernández, and Centeno have studied subsidence or regional sinking in Mexico City, relying on the information dating back to the 1950s that shows persistent subsidence of the terrain and its link to damages in buildings and infrastructure (Carreón-Freyre et al. 2017). They acknowledge that, to some degree, this is due to natural causes, as a result of the high compressibility of the ancient lake sediments. However, they consider the sinking of the region is accelerated by the escalating extraction from waterbeds supplying water to the increasing population, particularly after the decade of 1950. Currently, 12 out of 16 municipalities show subsidence, except for three from the east, Cuajimalpa, Álvaro Obregón, Magdalena Contreras, and one from the south, Tlalpan, and the elevated portion of Tláhuac. Pollution and decreasing water levels of the aquifer are associated with groundwater extraction. The consequences of these geophysical processes result in damages to all types of infrastructure, diminished hydric reserve, and contamination from sewage infiltration increases due to the poor conditions of the sewer system along with unkempt landfills leachates. Iztapalapa is the most affected municipality. Records show a shifting of the terrain along faults of more than 3 m within a 20-year window (1991–2011), and annual subsidence of more than 40 cm along the border with the Nezahualcóyotl Municipality (Carreón-Freyre et al. 2017). Consequently, this zone is also the most affected by poor hydric management. Researcher Cruz-Atienza recognizes at least four factors that influence local hazards, understood as the intensity of the shocks measured in a given location: the magnitude of the earthquake, the distance from its epicenter, the way a fault ruptures, and the characteristics of the soil where the earthquake occurs (Cruz-Atienza 2013: 67). Therefore, social vulnerability should consider the natural characteristics of the basin under the city, and the implications of soil and subsoil alterations given the direct and indirect interventions from social actors in urban development. Hence, the importance of multidisciplinary studies that allow us to understand the relationship between different social and geophysical events, to express the differential risks and vulnerability within such a complex urbanized medium, and by doing so, setting the guidelines to research the way social vulnerability is developed (National Center for Disaster Prevention, [CENAPRED] 2018).

4.3 Social Vulnerability in Mexico City Due to Seismic Activity Social vulnerability entails a set of characteristics of a group or individual in terms of their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a hazard or threat caused by natural phenomena (Blaikie et al. 1996: 14). This definition implies a series of factors that determine the degree of risk to which society is exposed,

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which can negatively impact the lives of people, their livelihood, their property, and their infrastructure. Through the identification and understanding of this risk, it is possible to develop the means to prevent and reduce these hazards. Through empirical information obtained from various cases, it was found that more than 90% of deaths attributed to seismic events happen in buildings, mainly within homes. Studies on vulnerability aim to identify secure zones in built-up areas to respond to three related factors: location, form, and constructive specifications (Blaikie et al. 1996). After the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, several studies have been conducted to help modify the Building Regulations to address these three factors. Several public entities and legal documents were created to develop policies that undertake natural disasters. On May 6, 1986, the groundwork to establish the National System for Civil Protection was published on the Official Gazette of the Federation (Diario Oficial de la Federación, DOF). The Civil Security Prevention Committee was established to aid the National Reconstruction Commission with the purpose of “studying and suggesting actions to ensure the safety, participation, and coordination of the general population in case of disaster” (DOF 1986). Although state regulations have improved to “protect the livelihood, liberty, and property of citizens” and a set of organized and systematic structures and actions were developed so that the private, social, and public sectors can prevent, control, or reduce damages caused by disasters, and this conception implied that disasters are natural. The focus limited on actions that advocated for civil protections in light of the disaster rather than pursuing integrated risk and management prevention to avoid disasters, then socially produced (Macías 1999). Given the hazards originated by the seismic activity in Mexico City, the social perspective implies acknowledging the space–time variability of the causalities of social vulnerability as well as the response capability. It is crucial to explore these two dimensions: on the one hand, land use policies considering the privatization of the common lands (ejidos). The building authorizations in them have been promoted despite specific existing risk zones. Besides, the tolerance for rampant construction efforts, even though urban and population densification is a factor that increases hazards due to slip, subsidence, and seismic activity in specific zones, as will be further detailed. On the other hand, the crucial role the state plays in guiding efforts to prevent, cope, and reduce the crisis in the face of disaster, and to build and strengthen social securities through the management of prevention and risk reduction policies facing these dangers and the activity of the private sector. The focus on vulnerability considers the susceptibility to damages, and the ability to resist them since their interdependence and their intrinsic relationship (Macías 2015). The lack of prevention policies and risk management was evident in the disaster caused by the 1985 earthquake. It intensified mobilization efforts due to the generalized social conflict, given the lax implementation of building regulations, loss of property, and human lives. Social organizations were the ones that managed to rebuild safe social housing through public funding and donations, as has been thoroughly analyzed (see Tamayo 1989; Serna 1995; Ibáñez 1996). The 1985 earthquake had an impact on the role of engineers and geophysicists who specialized in seismic events. They were in charge of the development and revision of the Building Regulations

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(2017) in Mexico City, commissioned by local and federal authorities, as well as the National Risk Atlas, as noted by engineer Roberto Meli (1994). On the other hand, the Building Regulations in Mexico City called upon the importance of developing a seismic risk map that considers the construction date of all reinforced concrete structures, which paradoxically performed poorly compared to masonry structures. The document showed that constructions built between 1925 and 1942 were held to very high-quality standards. While the quality of those built between 1942 and 1964 suffered a lack of supervision throughout the city. Considering the varying degrees of destruction by incoming seismic waves can produce in Mexico City (Singh et al. 2018: 2196) as well as their unpredictability, it is important to develop multidisciplinary studies. They should follow preventative guidelines in face of new vulnerabilities to ensure the well-being and safety of residents, workers, and employers, such as detailed large-scale geographical studies in critical areas that take type, intensity, age, and quality of buildings into account while acknowledging environmental protections to improve risk mapping. Therefore, conforming to new regulations must be considered in all areas with active tectonic plates. CENAPRED took the definition of the effects regarding hazard P, the probability of an event of certain intensity to occur that can cause damages in a given area, as a starting point. They defined the degree of exposure E as the number of people, property, and systems found in the studied area and how likely they are to suffer damages caused by the seismic event, and established vulnerability V as the tendency of these systems to be affected. That is, the vulnerability was expressed as the probability of damage, and risk R, as the result of three factors: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability (CENAPRED 2001: 11). This equation did not yet consider the capacity for prevention. Currently, in Mexico, the CENAPRED assists the General Law of Civil Protection in producing risk atlases as scientific and technical regulatory instruments to help design programs and policies within the National Coordination of Civil Protection. Additionally, the 6-year-long Special Prevention and Risk Mitigation Programs aim to transition from a reactive approach to a preventive one, as specialized institutions do significant work to monitor events that threaten to cause natural disasters in Mexico. The National Meteorological Service continuously monitors hydrometeorological hazards, CENAPRED monitors volcanic activity, and the National Seismological Service has access to the Seismic Network in the Valley of Mexico, managed by the Geophysics Institute of UNAM. All of this represents a great achievement; these programs have made great efforts regarding state and municipal coordination; however, the goal of integrated risk management to involve civil, government, and business authorities in the detection of hazards, risks, and prevention has not been achieved. The earthquake of September 19, 2017, revealed that urban development, particularly the real estate market, and the studies in new seismic hazards, had diverged interests. The Building Regulations (2017) were the main document adopted to reduce vulnerability in buildings after the 1985 earthquake. Several essential requirements were modified to guarantee that different typologies of buildings avoid structural damages caused by high-magnitude earthquakes. Building companies and real estate

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developers must follow the norms corresponding to the geotechnical zoning in Mexico City where these buildings are located. However, there are two substantial limiting factors affecting this document—to which observance is fundamental nonetheless—the first is the lack of supervision in construction work, which has been noted at several conferences regarding the September 2017 earthquakes, and particularly by the collapse and structural damage affecting buildings up to seven stories, those impacted the most by the September 19, 2017, earthquake in Mexico City. The second is a new kind of social vulnerability generated by environmental alterations produced by urban occupancy, mainly from groundwater extraction and its consequences due to severe sinking related to seismic activity and other hazards in Mexico City. Derived hazards from geophysical and geomorphological characteristics of the basin, as the tectonics of the ancient lake, will be discussed below. In a preventative approach, some studies help detect the processes associated with social vulnerability produced by multiple determinants, which comprise the action and inaction of protection policies at different levels, in addition to the changes in the degree of exposition due to natural and related hazards. Borden et al. (2007) define vulnerability as the susceptibility to damage because of the risk of dangerous events in a particular location, and the degree of social disruption caused by such events. They associate the degree of vulnerability to location, consisting of characteristics from social, physical, and built environments, which can make a location more susceptible to risks and hazards; additionally, these characteristics can influence the ability to recover from those events. This approach includes recognizing socioeconomic factors and processes that enable or hinder the ability of a person or a location to respond and recover from dangerous events, giving rise to a proposal to define the descriptors of frequency, diversity, and impact of natural hazards in a given location (Borden et al. 2007: 2), which includes built environment factors that can amplify or attenuate the effects of such seismic hazards. According to Schmidtlein et al., vulnerability also involves how decisions considered the influence of limited access to resources, selective policies of power, capital associated to groups and social classes, beliefs, and customs in addition to characteristics of the built environment, such as building volume, age, type, and density of infrastructure (Schmidtlein et al. 2008: 1100). Therefore, social vulnerability is dynamic; it emerges from the interaction of new and ever-changing internal and external factors that converge in a particular community (Wilches-Chaux 1993). Given the extension and magnitude of seismic hazard, it is important to link the geographical scale of the boroughs, municipalities, and local communities to the metropolitan and regional scale to implement integrated risk management, considering all public and private agencies involved. Geophysical studies compared different seismic wave accelerations between 1985 and 2017 (Singh et al. 2018). Considering the building damages listed in Tables 4.1 and 4.2, which display these two moments of disaster that struck Mexico City, appears the differential social vulnerability given the risks of these two patterns, particularly dangerous in the occupied urban zone of the Texcoco Lake and the transition zone. With that in mind, the present work aims to contribute reflecting on what is the degree of relation between the urbanization process in Mexico City of the last three decades

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Table 4.1 Collapsed buildings from the September 19 and 20, 1985, earthquakes in Mexico City Urban land use

Neighborhoods severely affected

Housing buildings

Centro, Roma, Condesa, Tepito, Juárez, Doctores, Nonoalco Tlatelolco, Peralvillo, La Merced, Guerrero, Morelos, Narvarte, Obrera, Campestre Churubusco, Villa de Cortés, Álamos

Housing buildings mixed with Retail and other business

Collapsed buildings 188 75

Traditional markets

Jamaica (hall 4), Merced (2nd floor)

2

Schools

Centro, Roma, San Rafael, Juárez, Churubusco, Culhuacán, Paseos de Taxqueña

10

Sewing workshops Union headquarters

Obrera, Tránsito, Centro

7

Hospitals, clinics

Centro, Doctores

6

Churches/Cinemas

Centro, Juárez, Doctores

2 4

Hotels/Banks

Centro, Juárez, Tabacalera, Parque San Andrés

Public offices

Centro, Doctores, Narvarte

Total

24 neighborhoods

11 4 18 327a

Source Roberto Meli (1986), Report Damage evaluation in buildings after the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, IG, UNAM. Alejandro Juárez Gamero and José L. Moncada, El Nacional October 1, 1985. Poniatowska, Elena (1988). Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earthquake. México: Ed. Era a It is estimated that the number of impacted buildings after the 1985 earthquakes reached 2,831

and the development of social vulnerability due to seismic risk, which can happen at any moment and with variable patterns at local and regional scales. Vulnerability by seismic activity was defined not only by shortcomings derived by poverty at different levels but also by new hazard conditions. Particularly in Mexico City, the number of severely damaged buildings by the earthquakes in 1985 was about 2,800, more than 320 of them collapsed utterly, 58% were low and middleincome homes, 42% were public office buildings, schools, universities, hotels, sewing shops, and hospitals; see Table 4.1. After the September 19, 1985, earthquake, around 20,000 people died, including residents, students, and workers,1 damaged buildings caused around 150,000 people to lose their jobs, among tradespeople, workers, and employees. In general, the low-income population was the most affected. However, on September 19, 2017, observed damages showed that middle-class residential areas were heavily affected; around 40% of neighborhoods situated particularly in a strip extending west near the limits of Lake Texcoco, where the central municipalities 1 Data

is not conclusive. According to the official figures given by the federal government, there were between 6,000 and up to 40,000 lives lost as estimated by Iván Salcido (2010) 30 años de nuestra memoria.

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Table 4.2 Collapsed buildings, collapsing risk, and structural damages from the September 19, 2017, earthquake in Mexico City Urban land use

Neighborhoods severely affected

Single housing

Santa Rosa Xochiac, San Gregorio Atlapulco Santa Cruz Acalpixca, Ex ejido Sn Fco. Culhuacán, Guerrero

Buildings of housing, housing mixed with, retail, and other business

Roma, Hipódromo 31 Condesa, Del Valle, Santa Cruz Atoyac, Miravalle, Narvarte, Niños Héroes, Portales, Zacahuizco, San Fco. Culhuacán, Los Girasoles; Lomas Estrella Sección 2; Héroes de Churubusco, Educación, Jardines de Coyoacán, Guerrero, Santa María La Ribera, Lindavista, Nueva Atzacoalco, chinampas en San Gregorio Atlapulco, Santa Ma. Nativitas (Xoch.), Juárez, Tránsito, Paseos de Taxqueña

Hypermarkets and Campestre supermarkets Churubusco, Los Girasoles, San Gregorio Atlapulco

Collapsed buildings Collapsing risk buildings, and structural damages neighborhoods 8

3

San Gregorio Atlapulco (62) Santa Ma. Nativitas (53) Santa Cruz Acalpixca (25) Culhuacanes (5) Santa Catarina Tlahuac (42) Del Mar (40) Agrícola Metropolitana (39)

Number

266

Roma (51), Del 453 Valle (50), Portales (38), Narvarte (37), Hipódromo Condesa (21), Paseos de Taxqueña (14), Juárez (13) Condesa (6), Cuauhtémoc (10) San Rafael (1), Santa Ma. La Ribera (1), Tabacalera (2), Buenavista (4), Doctores (11), Guerrero (16), Girasoles (16), Parque San Andrés (8), Santa Cruz Meyehualco (45), Santa Martha Acatitla (40), UH. Ejército de Oriente (15), Unidad Cananea (15), La Planta (39) Tránsito

2

(continued)

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Table 4.2 (continued) Urban land use

Neighborhoods severely affected

Collapsed buildings Collapsing risk buildings, and structural damages neighborhoods

Schools

Nueva Oriental (Coapa), San Bartolo Chico (Coapa)

2

Manufacturing plants and warehouses

Obrera, Villa Coapa

2

Churches

Santa Cruz Acalpixca

Total

32 colonias

Number

1 46

722a

Source P. Olivera, based on CENAPRED “Damage inventory in Mexico City,” in El Financiero, 28.09.2017 Architectural College and School of Architecture, UNAM; CDMX platform, Reconstruction Committee, Impacted Buildings Census, September 11, 2018. https://plataforma. cdmx.gob.mx/censos/isc a It is estimated that more than 2,000 buildings suffered damages and around 5,200 jobs were impacted in Mexico City

and their neighborhoods are located. As Table 4.2 shows, primarily Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez, and Coyoacán; to the south, affected areas were Tlalpan, Xochimilco, Tláhuac, Iztapalapa, and Álvaro Obregón; see Fig. 4.2. The number of deaths compared to 1985 sharply decreased, there were around 400 deaths, 46 collapsed buildings, around 2,000 structurally damaged buildings, and more than 5,000 jobs affected. In respect to the scale of Mexico City, located in the Basin of Mexico, there are records of internal and external processes that have influenced urbanization patterns over increasingly hazardous areas. There have been few international efforts in urban planning which focus on risk reduction that works as a reference to manage or establish mechanisms that help regulate the approval of safe buildings in Mexico. The present work reviewed the recommendations made after the first United Nations Conference Habitat I on Human Settlements, held in 1976 in Vancouver. These recommendations focused on the reduction and control of human concentrations and revealed that risk reduction sources were inexistent. Derived from those recommendations on national and local urban planning, Mexico’s federal government created the Ministry of Human Settlements and Public Works in 1976. The poor results of this department and other public entities concerning population increase and productive activity in the country become evident when observing the urban supremacy of Mexico City. Metropolization increased since the 1950s, from 16 to 58 neighboring municipalities in the State of Mexico and one in the State of Hidalgo. Meanwhile, the process of megalopolization extended into five neighboring cities since

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Fig. 4.3 Collapsed buildings and structural damages in Mexico City by the earthquake of September 19, 1985. Source P. Olivera, based on Table 4.1. Jumonji and Tanaka (1996), Ordaz et al. (1994). Cartographic base: INEGI. Drawing: Obed Campos

the decade of 1970. Local governments were overwhelmed given regional migrations and social precarity, two of the first nearby municipalities, Nezahualcóyotl and Ecatepec, reached urban growth rates of over 6% higher than the annual average between 1940 and 1970, settling into muddy terrain known as Desiccation Zones IV and V of the Texcoco Lake, respectively. This urbanization process, informal at first but later promoted by AURIS,2 settled beside the native population on the Guadalupe Sierra, along the shores of the Texcoco Lake, which has accelerated natural desiccation in the area. Zone V was divided among the generals of the revolution in the decade of 1930, however, was abandoned and later sectioned in lots measuring 10 ha. This area was occupied illegally through fraudulent sales or massive invasions by migrants and displaced population from the formerly called Federal District. This process was repeated in the decade of 1980 in Chalco, Chimalhuacán, Los Reyes, La Paz, and Naucalpan, mainly. Other municipalities also saw an increase in informal developments (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4). The earthquakes of 1985 were a contributing factor for residents in central Mexico City to migrate to neighboring municipalities in the State of Mexico, where the local government promoted development into the north and northwestern areas of 2 The

Institute of Urban Action and Social Integration (AURIS), a decentralized public entity of the State of Mexico that operated between 1969 and 1985 and was responsible for occupations, regularizations, and housing promotions for self-construction that ended at the first crown of the metropolitan municipalities.

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Fig. 4.4 Collapsed buildings and structural damages in Mexico City by the earthquake of September 19, 2017. Sources P. Olivera, based on Table 4.2. Cartographic base: INEGI. Drawing: Obed Campos

Mexico City, notably toward the piedmont and foothills of the volcanic ranges of Chichinautzin, Sierra de Guadalupe, Sierra de Santa Catarina, and Sierra de las Cruces. Formal and informal housing developments continued for decades alongside the Metropolitan Area. This uncontrolled, tolerated, and sustained growth suggests rather severe flaws in urban policies in general, particularly urban land policies and accessible, secure, and dignified housing with public services and environmental protection. Social vulnerability protection was not among the subjects discussed on Habitat II, the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, held in Istanbul in 1996. Problem discussion focused on improving the quality of life given informal growth in poor countries, particularly access to housing. Habitat III, the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito, Ecuador, held in 2016, settled in the New Urban Agenda (Nueva Agenda Urbana [NAU]) the implementation of new guidelines focused on generic sustainability. It adopted resilience as a holistic perspective toward risks and hazards to reduce the vulnerability of formal and informal settlements to allow “families, communities, institutions, and services to prepare for the impact of hazards, so they can react and adapt to them, and thus recover sooner.” (NAU 2017). This agenda implies that urbanization creates positive transformations by increasing productivity, activities with added value, and the efficient use of resources, including the contribution of an informal economy (Ibid: 6). However, this urban agenda does not raise an issue on the ways neoliberal urbanization is generating new risks and vulnerabilities.

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4.4 The Neoliberal City and the Increase of Social Vulnerability Based on developed studies on geophysical and geomorphological processes in different neighborhoods of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, the findings are significant for they help generate urban policies by detecting geological hazards in this densely populated area. However, the local governments approved new settlements in risk areas after the 1985 events and other disasters, contradicting the research, and findings. Nowadays, Carreón-Freyre et al. noted the presence of rupturing and subsidence events in the Basin of Mexico after the September 19, 2017 earthquake, especially in Iztapalapa, according to the mapping of the studied fractures Fig. 4.2 (Carreón-Freyre et al. 2017). These fractures originate from the water extraction in the basin, which causes the compressibility of subsoil clay. These authors associate the population increase that gained momentum in the decade of 1950 to the accelerating extraction of water. The metropolis had a total of 3.1 million inhabitants in 1950, which rose to an estimated 22 million inhabitants in 2020. The increased built environment surface of Mexico City in more than eight times shows three significant risk consequences: 1. Differential sinking or regional subsidence, 2. The depletion of underground water levels and the ensuing reduction in water reserves, 3. The pollution of aquifers by leaching of landfills and filtration of sewage water due to ruptures in the drainage system (Ibid.). After the September 19, 2017 earthquake, we should add another one: 4. The relationship between the seismic disaster and recent urban occupations, from 2000 onward, within the three geotectonic zones over the city aquifer and the faults and fractures of the system, which require a geomorphological and geophysical microzone analysis. The scientific research will help explain new risks that are associated with seismic activities such as water extraction, sinking, and soil sealing or waterproofing under urbanization. The criteria for disaster and social vulnerability prevention should take into account residents, workers, tradespeople, and infrastructure when it comes to the location of safety buildings considering the specific hazardous conditions so that urban government entities act opportunely and responsibly under a focus on disaster prevention. Figure 4.2 shows the municipalities most affected by subsidence, fractures, and faults, which are also traversed by four regional faults, according to Carreón-Freyre et al. (2017), the Copilco fault (CO), which crosses the central municipalities Miguel Hidalgo, Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juarez, and parts of Coyoacan. Within these municipalities, there is a high percentage of real estate development for the middle and upper middle classes, with its boom beginning in 2000. Large low-income population areas are located near the Mixhuca fault (MI), which intersects Cuauhtémoc, Iztacalco, and Iztapalapa, parallel to the former fault. The San Lorenzo Tezonco fault (SLT) goes alongside the border between Iztapalapa and Iztacalco, toward Nezahualcoyotl, perpendicular to the past fault, where registers show subsidence of up to 40 cm per year between 2002 and 2010. Finally, the Santa Catarina fault (CA) is almost parallel to the previous fault, in Tlahuac. The CENAPRED’s Risk Atlas of Mexico

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City offers valuable images of differential subsidence and the structural geology of the city, displaying the main faults and fractures. Nonetheless, the work of CarreónFreyre et al. (2017) is the one that presents these four faults that define the graben of the Roma neighborhood, in Cuauhtemoc, within the limits of the transition zone and the lake zone, and the other pair forming the Santa Catarina graben, in Iztapalapa and parts of Xochimilco and Tláhuac, associated to a swarm of small fractures in the Roma neighborhood, east of Iztapalapa, as shown in Fig. 4.2. Other extended fractures on the west side of the city and metropolitan area follow the E–W barrancas system, represented in the Risk Atlas, and PAOT (2010). In general, the destructive elements that generate risks and disasters along barrancas can be geological, hydrometeorological, chemical, sanitary, and ecological phenomena, or even authorized private housing units. The presence of geological hazards can unfold under specific processes that affect predominant features: morphostructural, such as rugged terrain, steep slopes caused by erosion and faulting, abrupt discontinuities, highly fractured rocks due to faulting, foldings; the lithology of low resistance materials and solid rock fragments; and stratigraphy, with the presence of massive layers resting on top of softer, more permeable layers. The most frequently studied hazard in hillsides is mass wasting, including the falling of slopes, landslides, and rock, debris, and soil flows (Alcántara and Murillo 2008). Conditioning factors depend on the nature, structure, and shape of the terrain, shear strength produced by material friction or discontinuities, and cohesion, while external factors causing instability are associated with speed and magnitude of the movement generated by hydrometeorological events, human-made processes, or earthquakes. The most common hazard-inducing factors in barrancas along the west zone are hillside excavations for civil works such as roads, housing development, fencing, or antennas placed on top of poorly consolidated materials in earthwork slopes, in fractures, and faults. Under these conditions, the area can be affected by earthquakes of varying magnitudes, originated locally or from the Pacific coasts, in tandem with other factors, including irrigation, deforestation, ground vibration caused by drilling, explosions, and the transit of heavy machinery and vehicles. In summary, earthquakes can affect the instability of the soil through landslides, skidding, flowing, collapse, and sinking, which generates substantial vulnerability in settlements (Carreón-Freyre et al. op cit 2017). The earthquake from September 19, 2017, affected the population located in these three risk areas, alongside the transition strip of the west edge of the Texcoco Lake, from the Azcapotzalco, Gustavo A. Madero, Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa, Tlalpan, and Xochimilco municipalities (Fig. 4.2), including middle and upper middle-class neighborhoods, in Condesa, Roma, Del Valle, Portales, and Coapa, to the east where generally lower class areas are located, particularly in Iztapalapa, as well as the area of the original population in Xochimilco, including the towns of San Gregorio Atlapulco, Santa Cruz Acalpixa, and Santa María Nativitas, inhabited particularly by lower and middle-income families. Here, the destruction of housing, transport infrastructure, drainage, and drinking water systems has

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occurred.3 Finally, the western area of barrancas suffered collapses registered in Santa Rosa Xochiac, in the Alvaro Obregon municipality, a place pressured to adopt a self-construction social housing plan of 40–45 m2 with a unit cost close to 350,000 pesos, around 18.500 US dollars of 2018. Even though the Urban Development Program of Mexico City (Programa de Desarrollo Urbano de la Ciudad de México [PDUCM] 2003) notes the existence of hazards in these urban zones, for more than fifteen years a housing boom has been developing in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, both inside the city and the suburbs, as well as in the metropolitan municipalities. There has been a push for big projects in lands occupied by different equipment, which in the face of losses in their industrial use have been re-evaluated with the excuse of urban recycling. Likewise, high-income building developments along barrancas are approved vertical edifications, and even in the graben located on the inner city. To understand the urban strategies that favor rentability over vulnerability, we must remember the year 1982 when a neoliberal faction took power over the political establishment justifying the free-market policy as the “only path” toward development, as expressed between rich countries in the context of a hegemonized neoliberal ideology as an economic and political stance since the mid-decade of 1970. The international scale of the capital flow toward the financial sector and the production services in contemporary capitalism impacted leading cities. In Mexico City, neoliberalism materialized the link between public and private institutions with financial groups in the country and abroad through so-called structural reforms, among other mechanisms, for the swift transition from a protectionist economy to a liberal one, making this city, and four others in the country, very appealing for global investment, making up 70% of real estate investments nationwide. The accelerated specialization of cities toward productive services particularly affected Mexico City, which became the headquarter of the free movement of capital into the financial, commercial, and real estate sector, among others, highly demanding of and producing the built environment. Given that several industrial plants were decentralized, reorganized, or went bankrupt, they transformed large estates or intensified land use, creating new centralizations, promoting processes associated with gentrification, resulting in the displacement of the more impoverished population toward the metropolitan peripheries (Olivera 2014). Together with the social polarization derived from increasingly richness concentration of less than 10%, and lower wages of 60%, the surge in unemployment, the dismantling of social security, and the lack of affordable and decent housing programs. Among other neoliberal policies, all of this favored the expulsion of the lower income population and the increase in real estate developments for upper middle and upper class sectors on central neighborhoods with previously mixed, industrial, and popular housing uses, mainly (Ibid.).

3 Additionally,

it was possible to demonstrate the filling of fractures with cement in the weeks following the earthquake of September 19, 2017. There are several testimonies of this in different affected neighborhoods of the strip, including Iztapalapa, which prevents their study.

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Mixed-use, commercial, and residential surfaces increased by more than 20 million square meters between 2012 and 2017 in Mexico City alone (Olivera 2019).4 The settlements typologies in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) are the Historical Center, original towns, popular neighborhoods, housing complexes, middle- and high-income residential areas. As a whole, in 2016, the MCMA extended over 786610 ha, including entire municipalities (CONAPO 2018),5 the occupied urban area reached approximately 214791 ha, and the average metropolitan urban net density was 160,1 people per hectare [pph] (Suárez 2017). Between 1950 and 2015, the urban surface increased eightfold, and the population increased sevenfold. The population in the Historical Center varied notably; after its conception in 1521, it has extended into the Cuauhtémoc municipality. In 1930, this area constituted 98% of the population in Mexico City, having 1.049 million inhabitants (Covarrubias 2010). In 2015, there were around 176.000 inhabitants in the Historical Center; and the municipality as a whole had 532.553 inhabitants, which represents 6.1% of the current total population in Mexico City, and only 2.5% of the MCMA. High-density popular neighborhoods (211 pph, on average), resulting from the first stage of informal occupation of land, accommodate 40% of the metropolitan population, including Nezahualcóyotl (226 pph), parts of Iztapalapa (215.4 pph), Iztacalco (210.4 pph), Venustiano Carranza (209.5 pph), Gustavo A. Madero (200 pph), Coyoacán (194 pph), and Cuauhtémoc (215 pph). Popular neighborhoods of mid-density (98.8 pph) and low density (28 pph) makeup 15 and 6% of the population along the metropolitan periphery, respectively (Suárez 2017: 53). Altogether, popular developments represent 61% of the population, more than 12.7 million people who reside over 110 000 ha, more than half of the urbanization in the entire metropolis. Housing complexes and residential areas of middle and upper classes make up 19% and 8% of the population, around 3.97 and 1.67 million inhabitants residing over 28.000 and 15.000 ha, respectively. The previous urban occupation structure will be better understood if we look at the financing of social housing in Mexico City until 2018. Public institutions such as the National Fund for Workers’ Housing (Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores [INFONAVIT]) have increased housing financing in Mexico City favoring higher income households. According to INFONAVIT, in the first year of its creation, in 1972,6 more than three-quarters of the mortgage loans were granted to the segment of workers earning less than 4 Facing

social protest, the current government decided to preserve the vast surface of the Military Field 1-F with an extension of 147.7 ha in the Lomas de Tecamachalco barrancas, of the Naucalpan municipality, in 17 federally owned properties put up for sale by the central government (DOF, January 17, 2018, available at dof.gob.mx/17/01/2018), in the middle of a socially polarized, urbanized area between Santa Fe, Lomas de Chapultepec, Polanco, and a large popular area, El Molinito—among other neighborhoods—and toward the north to the old industrial zone, mixed with popular housing. 5 According to the National Population Council (Consejo Nacional de Población [CONAPO]), the Mexico City Metropolitan Area includes 16 municipalities from Mexico City, 59 from the State of Mexico, and 1 from the State of Hidalgo. 6 INFONAVIT was created in April 1972 to fulfill the workers’ right to housing, established in the Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1917, through a fund comprised of the employer’s

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two times the minimum wage (MW). However, according to the National Housing Commission (Comisión Nacional de Vivienda [CONAVI]), between 1980 and 2015, the metropolitan segment of the lowest income, earning up to 2.6 MW, which represents 60% of the population, benefited with 25.1% of the total public financing for housing. The segment between 2.61 and 6 MW received 18.9%, between 6.01 and 12 MW received 28.9%, and the segment with more than 12 MW received 27% of financing for housing (CONAVI 2017). However, this income segment comprises less than 5% of the total population of the city. Since the real estate boom in 2000, private investment in public financing increased. According to INFONAVIT, out of the $378 545 million pesos invested for housing by this institute between 2012 and 2013, 66% of loans were co-financed, in other words, granted in combination with private agencies such as banks or mortgage intermediaries, with credits assigned according to family income (INFONAVIT, Informe 2013). The housing financing policy supported a series of extensive, authorized housing developments for young lower income families, with more than 12.000 low-quality single-family units each. Then, emerged those big housing projects on agricultural lands, in areas at risk for seismicity, volcanism, floods, hazards associated with fracturing and sinking in the east and north of the metropolitan area, occupying the lands of the ancient Texcoco Lake, Zumpango, Chalco and other areas of aquifer recharge. Examples of this type of sizeable anti-city housing complexes are San Buenaventura, Los Heroes, and Citara. These urbanizations were approved based on lax technical instruments, ill-advised housing policies, risky financial mechanisms, and neoliberal urban and regional planning. As sources of financing are not affordable to the most precarious sectors, an urbanization process began to spread on the mountain ranges that surround Mexico City, including informal settlements on the hills between Huixquilucan and Naucalpan, on protected natural areas around the original populations of the south and west, and the intermediate parts of the barrancas in Cuajimalpa, Alvaro Obregon, and La Magdalena Contreras. Due to geological faults, sinking, and volcanic activity, there are risks of collapse, landslide, and flooding were already have occurred (Environment and Territorial Planning Procurator [PAOT]). These settlements attest to the informal urbanization processes after the decade of 1940, caused by insufficient provision for affordable, safe, and decent housing, as well as political patronage, including a cost-effective production in the context of impoverishing policies. Another outcome of this policy is the increasing amount of abandoned housing, especially in Tecamac, Zumpango, Ixtapaluca, Huehuetoca, among other municipalities in the north of the ZMCM (Suarez-Pareyon 2017:194). There are more than 120.000 abandoned houses due to the combination of increasing mortgage interest, transportation expenses for families, organized crime, lack of basic services, housing too small for family needs, the concentration of employment in central areas of the metropolis, making mobility more difficult, expensive, and insecure.7

contributions, that amount to 5% of the salary of hired private-sector workers, to grant them housing credit or the return of their savings. 7 There are more than 5 million abandoned homes at a national level.

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At the same time, after the decade of 2000, there has been a push for the use of urban land for high-income segments in three central municipalities in the city, particularly Miguel Hidalgo, Cuauhtemoc, and Benito Juarez, as well as in three other adjoining municipalities on the south and east of the cities such as Cuajimalpa, Alvaro Obregon, Magdalena Contreras, and the metropolitan municipality of Huixquilucan, where the system of barrancas is located. The housing boom that unfolded in the corporate center of Santa Fe after 1987 increased in 2000 with the Bando 2 decree, which promoted urbanization in central municipalities, increasing again after the 2008–2009 crisis. Between 2012 and 2017, there were 584 housing developments in more than 64 million m2 within towers of different heights (an indefinite number of them exceeded the number of stories allowed), 44.7% were for residential use, 34.7% for mixed-use, and 12.6% for shopping centers (Olivera 2019). According to urban policy results, in 40 years, the main issues preventing the increased production of housing and health services, among others, have not been addressed (Suarez-Pareyon 2017). Urban policies have privileged real estate production in upper classes segments, particularly those for mixed-use, which included commerce, housing, services, and recreational infrastructure, increasing construction activities in new areas and urban recycling, creating segregated areas of informal housing, shops, and other traditional uses, in turn, creating socially polarized and exclusionary zones, bringing numerous social conflicts due to extended gentrification (Olivera 2018). A first step toward integrating the urban environmental diagnostic, at the end of 2018, is the legal relationship between the Urban Development Program and the Ecological Ordainment Program of Mexico City, developed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (SEDUVI), and the Ministry of Environment (SEDEMA 2012). Considering that the effect of sinking in the city is linked to the decrease in load capacity and the overexploitation of the aquifers in the city, it seems contradictory that authorities promote the urbanization of these areas that need intervention to minimize the consequences. Here are some examples of neoliberal urbanization that defy the Federal District Environmental Protection Act (Ley Ambiental de Proteccion a la Tierra en el Distrito Federal) and could be associated with seismic hazards. This law classifies Areas of Environmental Value in Urban Forests and Barrancas (Areas de Valor Ambiental en Bosques Urbanos y Barrancas). The latter works as a refuge for wild flora and fauna, it makes way for natural rivers, streams, and precipitation channels that are part of important zones for hydrological and biogeochemical cycles, which are essential for the water consumed in Mexico City. The environmental services provided to the population are the recharging of groundwater reserves, regulation of hydric balance, carbon capture, retention of contaminating particles, noise suppressors, microclimate regulation, erosion control, and refuge for flora and fauna (LAPT). Around 60% of the water consumed in Mexico City comes from an underwater aquifer, and the rest is pumped from outer basins. Most of the aquifer recharge through rainwater filtration comes, on one side, from Conservation Land, approximately 87 thousand hectares, and on the other, from urban barrancas (SEDEMA 2012). Hence, forests and barrancas are crucial for hydric balance in the city. It is important to note

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that the neighborhoods and populations in Pedregales de Coyoacan have suffered from upwellings in different places, most notably in Parque Huayamilpas, located in Los Reyes, Aztecas 215 street, in Coyoacan, where three building projects that included a three-story underground parking lot were approved. The technical report presented by the Geology Institute of UNAM notes that upwellings in this land are part of the important natural discharge sites for shallow aquifers, which at some point interconnect with other upwellings and shallow aquifer layers whose precipitation comes from the Ajusco Mountains, as part of the natural recharge aquifer layers that wells employ, more than 70 m deep (Escolero 2016). Another study from the Geology Institute shows a significant vulnerability of water sources due to environmental erosion, including waterproofing by urbanization of these waters reservoirs in Mexico City, therefore declaring “The protection of the upper layers of the basin should be treated as one of the primary issues concerning civil and environmental protection, the conservation of recharge zones, and local climate” (Escolero et al. 2016: 423). The government of Mexico City is allowing the urbanization of different environmental and hazardous zones beside the barrancas system that originated from moraines in the mid-Pleistocene epoch, located west of Mexico City; there are 13 in Alvaro Obregon, 10 in Cuajimalpa de Morelos, 2 in Magdalena Contreras, and 4 in Miguel Hidalgo. An example of this is Tarango; on July 30, 1987, the Land Conservation Declaration was published, protecting 2,668 ha, “forming part of the most critical environmental unit for the generation of oxygen and recharging of aquifers, comprised by the barrancas and valleys that form the Contreras-Desierto de Los Leones system.” However, in 2008, the Cumbres de Santa Fe complex was approved, one of the most lavish in the metropolitan zone, which includes housing and mixed luxury uses. On July 22, 2009, the Tarango barrancas were declared an Area of Environmental Value to promote its ecological restoration, thanks to the environmental services it provides to the city. Urban and agricultural uses were banned, and in 2010, an Environmental Management Program was announced to protect 268 ha. However, housing use was allowed in this Area of Environmental Value through private discretionary funds mechanisms denominated the Cooperation Action System (Sistema de Actuacion por Cooperacion), the same one that operates in other neighborhoods in the city, where the price of land has skyrocketed. The planning includes 1,600 homes, mixed-use, and road infrastructure, leaving 27 ha as an urban park. Two waste transfer stations were also approved, one for debris and the other for compost. Aside from reducing infiltration in the west, where the city’s highest precipitations are registered, urban occupation along barrancas is promoted, even though there have been landslides in these geoforms. Urbanization has produced increasing vulnerability since the decade of 1980, first by irregular settlements, and later with luxury housing typologies. Between 1980 and 2013, there have been 38 landslides in Alvaro Obregon, 44 in Cuajimalpa, and 23 in Magdalena Contreras, affecting the popular neighborhoods of Tetelpan and Santa Rosa Xochiac, among others, which suffered structural damage and collapsed buildings on September 19, 2017, as well as in highincome neighborhoods in Lomas de Tarango, on the road infrastructure of Puente de Los Poetas, Sabines section, and along with the western Supervia. Numerous buildings dig deep along with these barrancas areas, leaving unstable slopes in the

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neighborhoods of Alvaro Obregon, Cuajimalpa, Naucalpan, and Huixilucan, especially in Santa Fe (Pantoja 2015) developments and avenues such as Desierto de los Leones, Olivar de los Padres, Paseo Tamarindos, Carlos Echanove, the Bosques de las Lomas neighborhood, among others. Only in the avenues Desierto de Los Leones and Olivar de Los Padres, around 100 luxury housing developments were approved between 2005 and 2018, with price tags over 8 million pesos per apartment (more than 400.000 US Dollars of 2019), including three shopping malls and convenience stores. According to National Risk Atlas, this is a high-risk landslide area (CENAPRED 2018). Only two developments were closed after the local population complained about their lack of regulatory compliance, and one of them is still operational. Others have stopped indefinitely, as the Corporativo Pedregal (Periferico 3042) an unfinished tower building sitting on top of a protected natural area, the Anzaldo dam reservoir, ignoring it is a federal area (not private). On the other hand, it exceeds the number of stories allowed in neighboring lands and represents a latent hazard by overlooking safety regulations. On the Tarango and Atzoyapan barrancas, among others, and between their hills and streams, another vulnerable zone has been developing since 2008, due to the hazards previously mentioned as well as irregular housing, luxury complexes, and mixed uses within wooded areas and faults, on vital land necessary for hydric management of the metropolitan zone and for the reduction of sinking in the city. In other words, neighborhoods historically impacted by landslides, flows, and subsidence around the ancient Texcoco Lake are combined with new developments in the west metropolitan area, whose dynamic is vital to study in association with seismic activity and must be taken into account for a new urban and environmental zoning. Finally, considering the reconstruction efforts made after the damages suffered on September 19, 2017, this phase passed throughout several stages, since public, social, and private organizations converged to revert to a normal state, or as before the disaster. However, they were still inoperative 2 years after the event until 2020 with the new government. The reconstruction steps went from the concealment of public resources, donations, embezzlement, to the lack of a reliable damage inventory, the manipulation of residents, of information, the lack of responsibility from authorities, and the impunity of those responsible for collapsed buildings due to lack of regulatory compliance. On January 18, 2018, in a meeting with the UN Rapporteur on Human Settlements in Mexico City at UNAM, organizations, residents, and academia participated in collecting testimonies from the effects of the 2017 earthquakes and their impact on human settlements in Mexico and the role of the Reconstruction Law, in Mexico City and the metropolitan zone.8 The UN Commissioner expressed five questions to the participants: 1. Access to land, and justice, 2. Housing policy, 3. The role of reconstruction, 4. Privatization, public–private partnership, 5. Problems generated and the right to the city. Highlighting clear, critical stances, with few exceptions, concerning governmental and private actions undertaken in this phase, participants expressed the lack of access to land, and safe housing was addressed. The absence of 8 Session

organized by the Institute of Legal Research of UNAM and the Habitat International Coalition.

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a register that, beyond showing the loss of infrastructure, would recognize the social function of the government in this type of disasters, considering the socioeconomic conditions of those affected, as well as age, or employment status: pensioners, unemployed, disabled, women householders, among others. Popular organizations carried out visits to show the properties that suffered severe damages and the requests for studies delivered to the local government before the 2017 earthquake. Despite the increase in loans granted for social housing and the production of housing by federal agencies, there is a lack of guarantees in the right to housing. There is a combination of irregular practices in the management of funds allocated to social housing, a lack of legality in public–private partnerships, and an effective demand or commodification of social housing and unjustified increases in land prices, in addition to increasing impunity regarding forced displacements and the actions that tend to undermine citizen initiatives made by social organizations. The most significant social vulnerability of the working class, given this phase of urban reconstruction, requires reflection on the right to the city from the perspectives of Lefebvre (1968), Harvey (2012), and recognizing current approaches to the social production of the city and the subordination of the interest in profit for the emancipatory transformation of the working classes, considering that the surplus produced in the city is part of the collective right to the city and not only for the appropriation of the real estate and financial sector elites.

4.5 Conclusions The most dangerous earthquakes are those of intraplate and interplate subduction, and the structure of the deep Basin of Mexico is responsible for the acceleration and long-lasting ground movements in the lakebed. Considering the social disasters by earthquakes in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, and the probability that more earthquakes will occur on the Guerrero Gap, 350 km from the city, in addition to other intraplate earthquakes, the ongoing pattern of urbanization that exists since 1950 should change definitively. This pattern of urbanization generates social vulnerability by seismicity hazards and other associated risks currently being studied. The Geotectonic Zone III Lakebed is considered the most vulnerable urban area. In this zone, high consumption of water and strong subsidence exist, and the most considerable number of buildings collapsed due to seismic activity, registered in this paper. The second place belongs to Zone II Transition, and Zone I Hills is in third place, however, with buildings affected by landslides in barrancas. Notwithstanding, in the last three decades, after the 1985 earthquake, new housing developments have been built in risky areas, and collapses, landslides, and subsidence have occurred, which modeled social vulnerability in the entire metropolis. Nowadays, social vulnerability due to seismicity experienced by the expansion of housing in the metropolis is very similar between informal and high-income residential buildings. New researches should follow conducted studies involve taking new prevention measures, such as considering the age of buildings to detect those built

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before 1985, which have severe damage. The reorientation of urbanization efforts should be related to the geomorphological characteristics of the Basin of Mexico, which, as noted in the Risk Atlas, “determines a differentiated vulnerability” of phenomena that converge in the same place (Atlas de Riesgo 2003). The Mexico City Urban Development Program (Programa de Desarrollo Urbano de la Ciudad de México [PDUCM]), recognizes a combination of urban risks, such as sociallyorganized ones, “determined by high human concentration activities concerning system failures, such as air and land accidents, social unrests and massive population relocation” (PDUCM 2003). The PDUCM specifies that the most affected areas are those where seismic waves are amplified, in addition to the damages that can occur in “mined areas, unstable slopes, areas susceptible to floods, and compressible soil, due to decreasing water levels, especially those found in clay subsoil areas of the ancient lakebeds.” It indicates that these risks are aggravated by the “loss of aquifer recharge areas and their overexploitation, which leads to increased soil dryness and loss of piezometric pressure of water tables.” It was further enhanced “by greater deforestation, which promotes erosion, landslides, and sludges of dams and sewers” (PDUCM 2003) as observed in the municipalities of Alvaro Obregon, Xochimilco, some neighborhoods in Gustavo A. Madero, Cuajimalpa, Iztapalapa, Magdalena Contreras, and Miguel Hidalgo, which can cause floods. Even though the PDUCM notes the risks for regional and differential “subsidence, cracking and landslides” in areas detected in the Risk Atlases, the Program does not present a subsequent and necessary level of action for prevention. Urbanization, driven by the stimulation of private profit, has created exposed and vulnerable populated environments. Urban planning regulations are altered to allow high densities and building intensities in protected natural areas; they become lax in terms of height limitations, supervision of current constructions and different ages and levels built before and after 1985; the lack of coordination between instances of urban governance regarding the Risk Atlases prepared by CENAPRED, updated to scales of 1: 5,000 and 1: 10,000, persists; and little participation in preparation and management between local authorities and civil society to achieve the goal of having a susceptibility inventory of exposed assets, homes specifically, buildings and their type, year, and built surface, as well as strategic equipment such as hospitals, schools, communications, telecommunications, transportation, commerce, and supplies and infrastructures such as roads, bridges, tunnels, asphalt, sidewalks, drainage, and drinking water. The neoliberal city practices prevail, characterized by the lack of social commitment from economic and political powers, which implies the responsibility of the public and private sector in the creation of social vulnerability in the city. The lack of prevention policies to reduce the susceptibility of the damage is evident. It is not enough to have them printed on papers or discourses; they should be expressed through the binding actions and the responsibilities of public entities necessary to reduce urban vulnerability with effective seismic regulations in Mexico City, the Metropolitan Area of the State of Mexico, and the megalopolitan area. Finally, due to these risk and vulnerability processes, the Urban Development Programs would have to consider scholar research on occurring phenomena and,

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based on the results, update and consequently modify urban occupation areas, their density, and building intensity, as well as relocation measures, where appropriate, for the prevention of new disasters. Therefore, the role of academic multidisciplinary research on vulnerability is also essential. The learnings of the earthquake make us think and act on the prevention and reduction of social vulnerability as far as possible to develop a just city. Acknowledgements Member of the project PAPIIT- IN302120 “Financing of the real estate market: new forms, actors and scales in the production of the built environment in the contemporary city” granted by DGAPA, and Critical Urban Studies Seminar at UNAM.

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Chapter 5

“On the Banks of the Rio Bravo…”: Social Construction and Perception of Flood Risk in Irregular Settlements Xavier Oliveras-González, Teresa Elizabeth Cueva-Luna, and Rosa Isabel Medina-Parra

5.1 Introduction In the course of our fieldwork, in June 2018, Matamoros, Tamaulipas had flooded again, as happens practically every time it rains in cities in the transboundary region of the lower Río Bravo, as it is known in Mexico (as opposed to the Rio Grande in the United States). On that occasion, the rains and subsequent flooding were so intense (National Weather Service 2018) that two of us decided to spend the night at the office to avoid the challenge of crossing a flooded city to get home. The scope of the disaster was such that some media described it as “a mini-Beulah” (Whitlock 2018), after the hurricane that struck this cross-border region in 1967. Due to the geomorphological and climatic characteristics of the region, two types of flood risk converge, one caused by precipitation and the other by river flooding. Risk reduction infrastructure is in place to cope with the latter, including the flood control levees of the Rio Bravo/Grande, one on either side, built by the Mexican Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA) and the US International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), respectively. Although floods are unavoidable from a physical point of view, several anthropic factors contribute to X. Oliveras-González (B) Departamento de Estudios Urbanos y Medio Ambiente, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), Matamoros, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] T. E. Cueva-Luna Departamento de Estudios de Población, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), Matamoros, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] R. I. Medina-Parra Departamento de Estudios en Administración Pública, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), Ciudad Juárez, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_5

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the risk, some common to both sides of the border (such as soil impermeability due to urbanization) and others that differ. The main ones on the Mexican side include clogged drains, obsolete pumping stations, the modification of the flood control levee, and the settlement in the floodplain (between the river and the levee). The latter is caused by the need of the low-income population to obtain land or housing, as well as the incompetence of the public sector regarding risk prevention and management. These constraints, inherent in the Mexican state for several decades, have been exacerbated in the neoliberal context by the weakening and shrinking of the public sector parallel to the emergence of criminal organizations as key actors in territorial policies (Calveiro 2012, 2019; Pradilla 2009). It is in this context that the social construction and perception of flood risk in Matamoros are analyzed to determine how risk is created, how consciously people participate in the process and what solutions, if any, are envisaged as possible routes for its management. To this end, a case study with three specific characteristics that increase the complexity of this issue has been considered. Firstly, there are colonias (irregular settlements) located within the Rio Bravo floodplain (the area between the flood control levees), where settlements are prohibited (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores 2014). Secondly, the observation unit comprises two adjacent irregular settlements, the Rafael Ramírez and Bosques del Río colonias, with a distinguishing feature: the unauthorized modification of the flood control levee to facilitate access to the site, which therefore makes it less effective in preventing the city from being flooded by the river. The third element is the presence of organized crime, which controls access to and crossing of the river/boundary (for drug smuggling and undocumented migration) and provides certain basic services for the colonias. In this respect, the “Maña” (the local name used to refer to organized crime) joins the other two actors involved in risk construction and management: the settlers (the population in the irregular settlements) and the state actors responsible for issues such as maintaining the levee, civil protection, and land regularization. While the intervention of private actors in environmental risk construction and management, particularly in a neoliberal context, has been widely studied, the main innovation of this research is the presence and action of this third illegal actor. The chapter continues with an exposition of the theoretical framework (the construction and social perception of risk in irregular settlements in a neoliberal context) and the methodological strategy. This is followed by the results: first, the characterization of the case study and then the different perceptions and actions regarding the risk of each of the actors. It ends with a set of conclusions.

5.2 Risk in Irregular Settlements in a Neoliberal Context A gradual approach to spatial reorganization under neoliberal governance is provided to analyze the construction and social perception of risk in the case of irregular settlements, in a context dominated by the weakness of the state and the territorial control in the hands of organized crime.

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5.2.1 Social Construction and Perception of Risk As has been amply demonstrated, disasters are not only physical phenomena but should also be considered as social processes in that they are the result of the material conditions in which “metropolises are created by making excessive use of their natural environment” (de Alba and Castillo 2014: 143). In other words, humankind participates in risk construction through the use it makes of space and the interactions it establishes in and with the latter. From an objective perspective on risks, it is useful to highlight the different degrees of exposure of the population to threats and the consequences that can be expected (or the uncertainty it faces with respect to them). In this regard, inequalities between the various social actors are key (Caram and Pérez 2006; Natenzon and Ríos 2016; Serrato et al. 2016; de Armas et al. 2017; Muñoz et al. 2017), and include their political, socioeconomic, and cultural status; practices and resources (economic, political, institutional, social and cultural); and space occupation patterns. Likewise, the notion of risk is the result of a process of social construction and, is, therefore, neither unique nor homogeneous nor the product of scientific rationality (Beck 1998). Aragones et al. (2003), for example, have comparatively studied how risk perception is related to belief systems and values held by different ethnic or national groups. Thus, some specialists have shifted from an objective perspective of risk construction, which emphasizes its production, to studying the subjectivities involved in the definition of what is considered risky or safe (Serrato et al. 2016). This point of view acknowledges the existence of a plurality of meanings, in other words, perceptions and understandings according to the various social actors. Accordingly, responses to risk and disasters are neither homogeneous nor automatic and instead qualified by experiences, attitudes, values and, in general, normative, cognitive, and symbolic spheres. At the same time, the different notions and responses may even become antagonistic. Sometimes the uncertainty or permanent state of emergency in which a person lives can become normalized, which makes sense when one considers the priorities of the various risks the population faces in their everyday lives (Serrato et al. 2016). Thus, in a framework of interaction and conflict among various actors, each actor defends their most advantageous notion and response in accordance with their interests (Caram and Pérez 2006; de Armas et al. 2017). Highlighting interest in the subjective nature of risk makes it possible to achieve a more comprehensive vision of the phenomenon and incorporate analysis of the cultural dimension. Thus, de Alba and Castillo (2014) argue that it is not risks that are culturally constructed but rather their perception. A comprehensive conception of risk involves adopting both objective andsubjective views of it, suggesting that its management, either before the disaster (prevention) or afterward (to return to the initial conditions or mitigate the damage), should not only be undertaken using a technical approach, as has usually been the case (de Armas et al. 2017; de Alba and Castillo 2014). On the contrary, social risk management requires, on the one hand, recognition of the effect of the unequal damage

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wrought by disasters and the fact that there is a willingness to influence and transform them. On the other, the detection and transformation of the human actions whereby space has been affected and people have placed themselves in a vulnerable situation.

5.2.2 Irregular Settlements and Risk In a context such as Latin America, strongly conditioned by the need for housing for low-income population sectors, the private real estate market and deficient, noninclusive public policies, irregular settlements have sprung up in urban areas. These settlements are created through irregular, or even illegal, practices by landowners or purported landowners (such as scams and fraudulent sales, and the privatization and subdivision of ejido land) and/or the occupation and invasion of land by certain sectors of the population, with the connivance of local governments, public officials and political parties, often within clientelistic networks. Over time, some of these settlements end up being vacated or regularized by public administrations, while many others remain irregular. This type of settlement is usually characterized by its deficiencies (Alegría and Ordóñez 2005; Delgadillo 2016; Félix 2016; Lombard 2015, etc.) as regards land tenure, urban planning and regulation, investment in infrastructure and basic services (such paving, drainage, drinking water, and electricity), and the structural quality of housing. This definition based on shortcomings tends to stigmatize and reproduce prejudices and stereotypes about these settlements and their inhabitants. Without overlooking the fact that they are poor and vulnerable urban spaces, they are also defined by the agency of their inhabitants as reflected in self-construction and the ability to decide and intervene in private and public spaces according to their needs and capacities, without being subordinated to hierarchical relationships (such as governments, construction companies, technicians, and bureaucracy), regulations, or urban planning (Roy and Al Sayyad 2004; Roy 2011; Turner 2018). Given the characteristics of the economic structure, squatting usually occurs on land located on the urban periphery, lacking basic habitability conditions and exposed to various types of environmental risk (such flooding and pollution) and public insecurity, making the population more vulnerable (Portes et al. 2005; Brain et al. 2010). Several studies have explored the perception of and response to the risk of population and irregular or informal status (Caram and Pérez 2006; Hernández and Vieyra 2010; de Alba and Castillo 2014; de Armas et al. 2017; Muñoz et al. 2017, etc.), which epistemologically reveals various elements normally overlooked in traditional analyses focusing more on the formality (of both the spaces and actors). Along these lines, evidence has been found that the level of awareness of settlers regarding risks, or the notion of risk itself, is relativized based on their priorities and interests. Accordingly, the risk is sometimes prioritized and at others dismissed. Given the prospect of land and settlement regularization, Caram and Pérez (2006) point out that flood risk is relegated to a secondary position since their inhabitants

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prefer to possess the land that has already been occupied. Conversely, prioritizing risk could entail moving and possibly losing their land. De Armas et al. (2017) and Muñoz et al. (2017) add that the population of informal settlements normalizes risk. In other words, they assume vulnerability and exposure to risks (of any kind) as inherent to the condition of irregularity, together with the absence of or poor management of these risks by the public sector. This normalization also partly explains their responses to risk: the lack of preventive measures on the part of the settlers, and the emergence of collective organization and solidarity only after the occurrence of a disaster, although more as a reaction than as an awareness designed to prevent future events. Simultaneously, in the presence of other circumstances and the prioritization of interests, there is an opposite response: awareness and the individual and collective adoption of prevention and mitigation measures. At the same time, these informal actions to cope with disaster underscore the gap between the capacities (and incapacities) of the state and the socio-environmental vulnerability of the settlers, while highlighting the action of other social actors, who respond separately from the state (de Alba and Castillo 2014). Thus, when non-state actors affected by a disaster take steps to deal with them, they become empowered. However, their responses are usually guided by the immediate need to cope with an emergency and are rarely coordinated with state actions. Likewise, disaster, albeit afterward rather than before, produces various signs of social dissatisfaction among settlers regarding the state, while non-state actors use “risk” and grievances as a bargaining chip with public actors to obtain specific benefits (such as the land regularization and investment in infrastructure and services) (Caram and Pérez 2006; de Alba and Castillo 2014). Faced with these situations, the challenge is to establish communication networks between the various actors (informal, public, specialists, technicians) and the participation of all of them as part of the agreements in the search for solutions and a better risk management.

5.2.3 The Neoliberal Space Reorganization: From the State to Organized Crime Far from improving the quality of life of the entire population and preserving natural resources, the neoliberal model has exacerbated the problems of urban development and risk management Latin American countries already suffered (Calveiro 2012, 2019; Pradilla 2009). In this respect, the shrinking of the state and the loss of its institutional centrality have increased, which has exacerbated the absence of a public policy for land use planning, urban development and risk management. However, this is not a matter of the disappearance of the state, but rather of the overlapping of the state apparatus with actors that far exceed its power, forming a network of public and private, and legal and illegal actors. For this reason, control of the territory and resources by private and supranational actors (both legal and illegal) at various levels has increased, together with the concentration of capital, the incorporation

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of the logic of the private sector and the management model, the exploitation of natural resources, intensive land use for urban functions, social inequality and the abandonment of the most vulnerable sectors, the precariousness of work, and the generalization of violence and fear policies, among other aspects. For the purposes of this research, it is necessary to mention one of the aspects of neoliberal governance: the emergence of a relatively autonomous system comprising criminal networks and organizations, which maintains connections with both the legal economy and state sectors (such as police, politicians, and officials) (Calveiro 2012, 2019; Pradilla 2009). Territorial control for organized crime occurs through the administration of the population and resources, as was the case with the state, the difference being that it is an administration based on individual rather than collective economic and strategic interests. The exercise of power by criminal networks is expressed through a wide array of criminal activities (including murder, kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and corruption), as well as philanthropic activities (for civic and religious festivities) and service maintenance and provision (such as street paving, public transport, assistance for those people most in need and health care) and even public safety (robberies, traffic accidents, etc.) (Gambetta 2007; Piñeyro 2010). While the former activities create fear and violence, the latter give criminal organizations prestige and a base of social support, reinforcing their territorial control, while questioning (and replacing) state institutions. Ultimately, this form of organization of power is based on a set of public–private violence, mediated by fear and terror.

5.3 Methodology Since this is an unusual case, as no similar cases have been identified in the Mexican floodplain of the Rio Bravo, this research was framed as an exploratory study. To this end, a qualitative methodological strategy was designed to describe the study area and identify the main actors who use, transform, and manage this space. In this process, it is key to move from the representation of facts solely from the etic perspective (of those of us who study the subject from a scientific perspective) to an emic one, involving the representation and perceptions of the inhabitants of the study area, which enables us to discover how they interact, perceive risk, and position themselves in response to it. In order to characterize the selected irregular settlements, information was collected through a hemerographic (news in the local and regional media), cartographic (Google Maps and Mapa Digital de México), and statistical review (Censo de Población y Vivienda and the Inventario Nacional de Vivienda, published by Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática). Secondly, fieldwork was undertaken (May and June 2018) comprising four visits to the site and semi-structured interviews with 11 key informants (Table 5.1): settlers of the colonias, and public actors directly involved in risk management and basic service provision. In the case of the settlers, to obtain possible informants, on the first field visit we went to a Christian

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Table 5.1 List of interviewed actors Profile

Issues

Federal actors (1): Comisión Internacional de Aguas y Límites (Reynosa delegation)

Flood control system, and position toward irregular settlements on federal land and the Rio Bravo floodplain

Municipal actors (4): Civil protection, Firefighters, Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, and Public Security

Knowledge of the place and settlers, services provided to the community and risk management actions

Settlers (4): pastor of a Christian church, member of a Christian church, settlement presidentl founding settler

Experience of living in the settlement and experiences of floods in the place and in the city. Knowledge of urban improvements in the neighborhood. Time frame of their experience

Other local actors (2): historians (municipal historical archive, research center)

Historical account of problems related to floods in Matamoros

Compiled by the authors

church located in the settlement, and from there, we contacted several people using the snowball technique. The third technique consisted of participant observation in the meetings convened by CILA on flood control and flood risk (June 2019). Finally, the triangulation of the discourses and contents that emerged from the interviews and meetings, and the field observation provided information for interpretation. Limitations associated with the experience of insecurity The fieldwork was affected by the insecurity we perceived in the colonias studied since it is a space controlled by organized crime. We had references from people who had visited them previously and had frightening experiences (such as being approached by people who forced them to leave immediately). It was therefore decided to consult with the Municipal Department of Public Security on the feasibility of visiting the colonias and talking to some of the inhabitants. After their approval and offer to support us in undertaking the fieldwork, we visited the colonias, reporting to our Public Security contact on entering and leaving the area. Although we were treated well by the people, we spoke to and no suspicious person approached us while we were there, on three of the visits, we had the impression of being watched. On the first visit, this was more noticeable, since two men on foot positioned themselves on a corner we passed and returned to, in an area where there was no one in the street, not even in people’s front yards. At the same time, the use of the snowball technique was designed to avoid risky situations, since some of the inhabitants, as they warned us, are involved in organized crime. Finally, one constraint on deepening the analysis was our refusal, for security reasons, to arrange an interview with members of organized crime, even though the opportunity to do so arose. To overcome this limitation, it was decided to conceptualize organized crime not as an actor but as a quasi-character (Lussault 2015). When conceptualized in this way, the intervention of the Maña does not depend on its identifiable material form or on its actions but rather on its key role in the informants’

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narratives (the actions attributed to it and the reactions it causes in them), which makes the settlers and state actors behave in a particular way.

5.4 Flood Risk in the Lower Rio Bravo and Irregular Settlements 5.4.1 Flood Risk Management in the Lower Rio Bravo Due to its geomorphological and climatic characteristics, the Lower Rio Bravo region (a delta plain) has historically been periodically flooded by both river overflow and intense rainfall (especially during the hurricane season, from June to September) (Cueva et al. 1998; Herrera 2018). When the various cities were founded, on either side of the river, flood areas were avoided, although due to the rapid demographic and urban growth from the second half of the twentieth century onward, these areas were progressively occupied without having an adequate drainage system, which increased the risk. For all these reasons, Junta de Aguas y Drenaje (the Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, JAD) states that “the perfect storm” in the city would be the simultaneous occurrence of a flood of the Rio Bravo and intense rainfall, without being able to drain the water (JAD Interview). In order to reduce the vulnerability to floods due to precipitation, at the beginning of the twentieth century and on either side of the river/boundary, a network of drains was developed to channel surplus water into the sea. Conversely, only a few flood control levees were built in the vicinity of cities to cope with the risk of river floods. These levees proved inefficient, as borne out by several events, particularly Hurricane Beulah, in September 1967, which completely flooded the lower Río Bravo/Grande region (Grozier 1968; The Monitor 2017). This flood marked a turning point in risk management in the region and for the maintenance of the international boundary between Mexico and the United States, since any modification of the river course entails an alteration of the international boundary. In this respect, the Comisión Internacional de Límites y Agua (CILA)1 and the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), representing both governments, agreed to regulate land uses and the hydraulic works to be undertaken with the twofold objective of reducing flood risk and preventing alterations to the international boundary. The agreements were established in the Boundary Treaty between Mexico and the United States and Act 238 of CILA-IBWC, both enacted in 1970 (CILA 1970; Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores 1972). Three of the different measures used should be mentioned due to their direct relationship with the case study. First, a flood control system was created (Fig. 5.1), 1 The CILA-IBWC is a binational organization comprising two sections, a Mexican one (answerable

to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and a US one (answerable to the US Department of State), and helps both federal governments in the areas of jurisdiction for which it is responsible on the Mexico–United States border.

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Fig. 5.1 Flood control system in the lower Rio Bravo/Grande. Source Unidad de Servicios Estadísticos y Geomática (USEG), El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, with information from Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas

comprising two flood control levees, one on each side of the river, and extending for over 100 km upstream of Reynosa to downstream of Matamoros on the Mexican side, and from Peñitas to downstream of Brownsville, in the United States. The levees, made of compacted earth (except for a section on the US side, which was replaced by concrete during the construction of the border wall in 2008; Garrett 2010), are designed to contain the waters that flow down the river and are not retained by dams or channeled by the floodways (one on either side). Secondly, the permitted land uses in the floodplain (the area between the two levees) were determined: any permanent topographic modification of the river course and the levees that might alter the river dynamics in the case of flood was forbidden. This included virtually any type of construction, infrastructure, mining or agricultural use, etc., with a few exceptions that would have to meet a set of criteria. And thirdly, CILA-IBWC is obliged to ensure that the floodplain and the levees are not modified and that they remain unimpeded. In order to perform its functions, CILA-IBWC coordinates and collaborates with the various agencies in their respective countries. Thus, in the case of water and risk management, the Mexican CILA coordinates with Comisión Nacional del Agua (the National Water Commission, CONAGUA), state agencies and municipal water commissions, and state and municipal departments of civil protection and fire, among others.

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5.4.2 The Rafael Ramírez and Bosques del Río Colonias The studied colonias are located within the Rio Bravo floodplain, in other words, in the floodable area between the river course and the flood control levee (Fig. 5.2). According to informants and the newspaper review, the origin of these colonias dates back to 1995, when a purported owner began to divide the land up into parcels and sell them. The land was initially part of the El Longoreño ejido, and in the 1970s, it was expropriated by the Mexican federal government (when CILA established the flood control system), although to this day, the ejido continues to regard it as its own. This legal uncertainty was compounded by the claims of the settlers, who do not have property deeds, yet who over time obtained proof ownership certificates granted by the Matamoros municipal government. Since both colonias were established, settlers have attempted to obtain regularization and basic services, although so far without success. They also complain that in each electoral campaign the candidates have promised them solutions they have never fulfilled. The two colonias comprise approximately 300 people. They consist of 39 blocks arranged in a grid and have both wood and cardboard houses and other larger ones made of concrete, some with two floors and striking architectural design. A certain

Fig. 5.2 Modifications on the flood control levee of the Rio Bravo in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Source Unidad de Servicios Estadísticos y Geomática (USEG), El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, with information from Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas

5 “On the Banks of the Rio Bravo…”: Social Construction … Table 5.2 Condition of dwellings built in the neighborhoods studied

Characteristics

107 No. of dwellings

With electricity

64

With piped water

10

With drainage

26

With indoor plumbing

70

Total dwellings

122

Source Inventario Nacional de Viviendas 2016

amount of commercial activity takes place in the colonias to meet the inhabitants’ needs, through stores (such as a stationer’s, haberdashery, grocery store, mechanical workshop, and water tank). It also has two Christian churches, and a small water park with swimming pools, palapas, and an events room. During fieldwork, we saw that the streets had recently been covered with caliche, a material extracted in the region and used as a tar substitute. Although it has not been evenly flattened, caliche has been useful for improving mobility, especially in periods of rain, when, according to some settlers, the streets became impassable. Given the settlements’ irregular status, basic service provision constitutes one of the main needs. However, both colonias have, at least partially, some basic infrastructure. Relatively speaking, the most widespread infrastructure is electrification: according to INEGI data for 2016, nearly half the houses have electricity (Table 5.2), although as one of the informants said, “I have seen very poor people living there who cannot afford to pay their bills”2 (settler interview). Likewise, street lighting only fully encompasses four blocks and partially covers another 19. According to the informants, electrification was carried out by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE): “They gradually provided electricity, in the streets” (settler interview), but they did not reveal through whom or how this was achieved, although they hinted that it was through organized crime. This procedure comes under the category of the “social” activities of organized crime. Regarding the supply of drinking water and drainage, the situation is extremely precarious (Table 5.2). Although the settlers have repeatedly requested these services, JAD has not provided them to these colonias. However, both JAD and the Fire Department periodically take drinking water in trucks “for humanitarian reasons” (JAD interview), especially at times of drought. At other times, the settlers buy it from private water trucks at “20 pesos for a 200 L drum.” The socioeconomic level of the population is low, and the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL) reports, for 2016, that these colonias have a high level of social backwardness. Accordingly, the settlers occasionally receive in-kind support (blankets, food parcels, medicines, etc.) from some authorities and political parties. As far as work is concerned, some of the settlers are employed in the plants of a nearby industrial park (Ciudad Industrial) while others engage in the informal (such as several of the businesses mentioned 2 “yo

he visto gente bien humilde que vive ahí y no tiene ni pa’ pagar un recibo”.

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Fig. 5.3 La Playita, on the Rio Bravo. Authors’ photograph (05/28/2018)

above) and the illegal (such migrant smuggling and drug trafficking to the United States) economic sectors. In this last respect, according to our impression in the field as narrated by various informants, the colonias contain a significant presence of members of organized crime, where they exert a certain degree of territorial and social control. In fact, considerable overlap between the settlers and organized crime was detected, in that several of its members also live there. One informant even reported that one of the colonia founders is a well-known “patero” (a person who smuggles migrants to the United States across the river). However, the fear or complicity of the interviewed settlers regarding organized crime meant that they preferred not to talk about it or to do so covertly. Finally, on the riverbank near these colonias, there is a place popularly known as La Playita (“the little beach”), where various activities take place. In fact, some of the early settlers were frequent visitors to this place. The inhabitants of the colonias and the city go to bathe in the river and “there at weekends, if you go on a Sunday, it is full of people, really crowded”3 (settler interview) (Fig. 5.3). Sometimes it is also used for religious purposes by Christian churches (for river baptisms). Likewise, our informants mentioned that this part of the river is shallow, which is why it has traditionally been used for crossing both people and drugs into the United States, as borne out by the existence of a path on the opposite bank. Likewise, Civil Protection and the Fire Department mentioned that corpses have been found near to this point, allegedly of those attempting to cross to the US.

3 “ahí

los fines de semana, si se van un domingo, está lleno de gente, lleno”.

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Fig. 5.4 Breach in the Rio Bravo flood control levee: one of the entrances to the Rafael Ramírez colonia. Authors’ photograph (06/06/2018)

5.4.3 Breaches and Dips in the Rio Bravo Flood Control Levee In addition to the development of the Rafael Ramírez and Bosques del Río colonias and the improvement of La Playita, the levee of the Río Bravo was modified at various points without authorization from CILA, in order to facilitate access. During the fieldwork, five “breaches” were identified in the levee (ventanas, according to CILA terminology) (Fig. 5.4), through which five of the streets in the colonias are connected to a road on the other side of the levee and parallel to the latter, División del Norte Avenue. Before the opening of the first breach, as some settlers recall, the only way to get from one side to the other was to go up and down the levee through the dense vegetation covering it. The settlers decided to open the first breach in 2010, which they called “the main entrance,” taking advantage of the start of the work to extend Division del Norte Av. carried out by the municipal government; another four were subsequently created. According to various informants, the opening of the breaches was the result of a collective action in which several settlers participated: “There was cooperation between all the people who live there, and we rented a machine […]. It seems each settler gave 200 pesos, something like that”4 (settler interview). In addition to the settlers, other actors intervened, although it was not possible to establish precisely who participated or the veracity of the information. According to several 4 “hubo

una cooperación entre toda la gente que vive ahí y se rentó una máquina […]. Parece que [cada vecino] les dimos 200 pesos, algo así”.

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informants, “the person who sold the land apparently lent them some machines” and “the municipality lent them a machine too,”5 and they also received the support of businessmen from the nearby industrial park and from the Maña. In relation to this last actor and the fear it creates, a settler remarked that “If they don’t open it up, who else is going to? We all know who they are, but we cannot say anything”6 (settler interview). In addition to the breaches, other unauthorized modifications to the levee were also identified: reducing the width (cortes, “slicings”) and height (rebajas, “dips”) of the levee by removing material. According to CILA and Civil Protection, the extracted earth is used as fill and construction material, in both the colonias and the rest of the city. This action not only extracts material but also expands the space to be occupied. In this respect, several informal businesses were established in a segment that had nearly been lowered to street level: car wash and food sales (although during the fieldwork, little or no activity was observed, except for the former). In another segment, one of the churches established in the colonias put up three large crosses, both to mark the territory and to celebrate religious events.

5.5 Flood Risk According to Two Actors and a Quasi-Character 5.5.1 Risk According to the Settlers Denying flood risk … but having built a “levee” The interviewed settlers appear to have seen or experienced floods in other colonias in Matamoros, but not in those studied, meaning that the situation they experience there seems incomparably better. In their opinion, these colonias are not at risk, unlike other areas of the city: “Here the water doesn’t even… and there, in Las Arboledas colonia, everything was totally flooded. Water is a problem, there [but] I don’t think there’s a problem here. It’s not because we have our property here, you know. … but it does not flood at all in this colonia”7 (settler interview). They claim that, in the event of rain, these colonias are higher than the other surrounding areas and therefore, the water does not form puddles and flows away (either toward the river or through the breaches in the levee). In this respect, some informants said that during a heavy rainfall when División del Norte Av. was being built (between 2010 and 2013), this road was completely flooded and was very difficult to cross to enter the 5 “el

que vendió [los terrenos], parece que él prestó unas máquinas” y “el municipio también les prestó una máquina”. 6 “si no abren ellos, ¿quién más va a abrir? Ya todos sabemos quiénes son, pero no podemos decir nada”. 7 “aquí el agua ni siquiera… y ahí, en Las Arboledas todo estaba bien inundado. Allá el agua sí es un problema, yo aquí no le veo problema. No es porque uno tenga aquí su propiedad ¿verdad? … pero no se inunda; no, nada en esta colonia”

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colonias, whereas, in the colonias themselves, there was no waterlogging. Likewise, as regards the risk of river flooding, the informants deny that this exists. One of them does not believe that the water level has ever risen, not even to halfway up the space separating the river from the land where he built his house. This is a clear example of subjective immunity (Douglas 1996), a result of the relationship between accepted risks and familiarity with them, which makes people downplay them. The denial of flood risk parallels the perception of greater risks: eviction (due to the legal uncertainty regarding land ownership) and those derived from poor urbanization and the lack of basic services. Settlers are also concerned about the effects related to the health and environmental schemes present in the colonias, which directly impact them, such as frequent insect pests (mosquitoes), infectious diseases in stray and farmyard animals (scabies in dogs, infections in sheep), the accumulation of garbage in streets and vacant lots, and the systematic burning of trash by some settlers (in the absence of a collection service). This prioritization of risks is reflected in the settlers’ actions: on the one hand, several petitions through government channels and street protests to demand the regularization of land and the provision of services, combined with helping to breach the flood control levee. However, as one delves deeper into the acknowledgement of flood risk, their perceptions become more nuanced, with contradictions emerging. In this respect, one settler said that if there was a risk due to river flooding, it occurred in the parcels of land closest to the watercourse, as they were lower than the others. They also declared that they had built their own infrastructure for prevention: a “levee”—as they call it—after the last row of houses, near the riverbank. According to some settlers, they maintain and reinforce it themselves: “I spent a day there with a backhoe, personally moving the soil around there”8 (settler interview). The settlers believe that this infrastructure protects them from any flooding. However, as could be seen during the fieldwork, the levee was open to enable people to reach La Playita by car. In addition to this breach, CILA also points out other structural deficiencies that make it less effective: the earth has only been piled up, not compacted. Deceit behind the risk warnings When settlers were asked whether any agency or authority had approached them to warn of the potential risks of the river flooding and the modification of the flood control levee, they answered negatively. They also minimized the effects and possible scope of a flood that would not only put them at risk but also the eastern sector of Matamoros (especially an industrial park and adjacent residential areas), and they even said they were unaware of possible prevention measures and/or appropriate actions for floods or other emergencies (such as the existence of shelters and evacuation routes). Conversely, the settlers consider that both the flood risk warnings and the lack of progress in land regularization, urbanization and the extension of basic services are part of a perverse strategy by certain government officials to evict them and benefit private interests. Thus, according to the informants, the private sector has 8 “yo

anduve un día ahí con el trascabo, yo mismo personalmente acomodando la tierra para allá”.

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an interest in turning the space occupied by the colonias into industrial land and expanding the adjacent industrial park. As proof of this, settler informants stress the fact that the industrial park was built—in their opinion—on land expropriated by the state governor, who subsequently sold it for this purpose. In this respect, references to public servants and their actions in the settlers’ narratives tend to be critical. For example, the presence of Civil Protection was associated with the activity of removing earth from the floodplain, specifically the pseudo-levee near La Playita: “…look, I’ll tell you the truth, the Civil Protection people themselves go and take the sand out of there, they go and bring their sand trucks, I mean, what are we here for? To take care of ourselves or destroy the levee on our own?”9 (settler interview).

5.5.2 Risk According to the State Actors Modifications of the floodplain and levee as “critical points” Unlike the settlers, for CILA, the settlement in the floodplain and the breaches, slicings, and dips of the levee constitute the main “critical points for floods” (CILA interview). Although the Rafael Ramírez and Bosques del Río colonias represent a permanent modification of the floodplain and the levee, for both CILA and Civil Protection, the latter should be analyzed in greater detail. According to CILA, the entire city is at risk because of several “critical points” (Fig. 5.2): the extraction of material from both the levee and the floodplain near the Guadalupe and Juanillo ejidos, to the west of the city; a dip of the levee at the old customs house, near the B&M international bridge, in downtown; and, finally, extraction of material from the levee to make room for the extension of División del Norte Av., upstream of the colonias under study. For CILA, whose argument is based on the formulation of engineering-type solutions, the integrity of the levee is crucial to preventing possible environmental disasters. The efficiency of the levee was demonstrated by two risk situations that occurred after its construction: the floods caused upstream by the rainfall associated with hurricanes Gilbert, in 1988, and Alex, in 2010. Neither flood affected Matamoros since the surplus water was diverted through the floodways and did not overflow the levee. However, CILA points out that the risk remains, since every year, there are likely to be hurricanes and other tropical storms. In this respect, as Civil Protection notes, there have already been examples that reveal the vulnerability of the city to modifications of the levee, such as when, after a storm in 2017, it was reported that, due to the breaches near the Guadalupe and Juanillo ejidos, water had flowed in, flooding several fields, although it did not reach people’s homes. However, the inviolability of the levee and the floodplain proves to be relative, depending on the actors and interests involved and the procedure followed. In this 9 “…nomás mire, yo le voy a decir, los mismos de Protección Civil van y sacan la arena de ahí, ellos

mismos van y sacan sus camionetas de arena o sea, digo yo, ¿para qué estamos? ¿para cuidarnos o para nosotros mismos desbaratar el bordo?”.

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respect, in order to respond to different processes, CILA-IBWC agreed to modify the layout of the levee in Matamoros in 1991, between the current international bridge of Los Tomates and the Lucio Blanco ejido, by bringing it closer to the river and, therefore reducing the floodplain (CILA 1991). According to various informants, there were several irregular settlements in the floodplain and, due to the impossibility of removing them, it was decided to modify the layout of the levee and thus, indirectly, “remove” them and allow their regularization. Although most of those colonias have been regularized, CILA has yet to authorize the regularization of two of them (La Herradura and Ampliación Ricardo A. Basso) (CILA interview). Likewise, the modification of the levee and the floodplain involved the construction of a new, long-awaited international bridge, Los Tomates, inaugurated in 1999, to divert commercial traffic from the urban centers of Matamoros and Brownsville (Texas Department of Transportation 2015). For other interviewed local actors, this modification responded to and favored private interests, for urban development and real estate, supported by the intervention of the promoters of a shopping mall and various housing developments. Regardless of the interests that converged in the transformation of this space, through the modification of the levee, CILA sought to guarantee restricted land use within the new delimitation of the floodplain; in other words, to maintain its de jure inviolability. Actions in response to risk: incomplete awareness raising Civil Protection was the first public actor to detect the modification of the levee. In 2010, following the works to extend División del Norte Av. and the opening of the “main entrance” of the Rafael Ramírez colonia, Civil Protection warned of the risk posed by “the considerable extension of the wall that is damaged” and the “theft of earth from the levee” (Pineda 2010). Reflecting the lack of knowledge of who was responsible for maintaining the levee, Civil Protection first notified it to CONAGUA and was subsequently referred to CILA. Civil Protection urged them to “[repair] the stretch of the levee that had been stolen as soon as possible and to reinforce surveillance in the area to prevent this type of situation that puts the population at risk” (idem). Since CILA became aware of these modifications to the levee, as well as the invasion of the floodplain, it has engaged in continuous, albeit intermittent, public awareness campaign, consisting of informing people of the risk they pose, not only to settlers of the colonias, but also to the entire eastern sector of Matamoros. In this respect, CILA staff have met with the actors involved in water and risk management, although only with those they recognize as valid interlocutors: government actors from municipal (City Council, Civil Protection and Fire, Public Security, Water and Drainage Board, etc.) and federal levels (Department of National Defense (SEDENA), CONAGUA, etc.), and formal private and civil actors (businessmen from the industrial park, El Longoreño ejido residents). However, it has not met with either the settlers, due to their irregular status, or the illegal private actors (the Maña), despite their direct relationship with the use and transformation of this space. The level of awareness of these actors differed, partly depending on their knowledge of the case. Thus, while incumbent mayors and businessmen were unaware of the risk

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involved, for Civil Protection and the JAD the situation was almost the opposite, as has already been shown in the case of Civil Protection. At the local level, information has generally been transmitted top-down. In this respect, the incumbent mayor has convened meetings to address the risk associated with alterations to the floodplains and the levee, to which the departments of Civil Protection and Fire, Public Works, and Social Welfare, among others, were invited. These municipal departments are responsible for approaching the colonias. Thus, for example, Civil Protection did so to warn the settlers of the risk and inform them of the procedures to be followed in the event of a river flood or hurricane; while the Social Welfare, together with CILA staff, did so to discuss the issue and the settlers’ possible relocation. However, as several informants noted, these approaches have been infrequent: “That time I talked to some settlers, a while ago now … About four years ago, give or take a few months …”10 (Civil Protection interview). Finally, the information and awareness-raising action of CILA and Civil Protection have also been implemented through the local and regional media (see, e.g., Requena 2018). Although in this case dissemination has followed some less vertical routes, it has not proven to be very effective either. Lack of restoration of the levee The technical solution to the modifications of the levee is obvious to the various state actors: repair the levee. From the time CILA first recommended its repair in 2012 until this research, the levee has not been renovated; on the contrary, it has continued to be modified. As has already been pointed out, the breaches are strategic for the mobility of the settlers, for organized crime operations and for the army to combat the latter, meaning that its restoration would affect those activities, while there is no guarantee that it will not be re-opened. In this respect, at the meeting convened by CILA in June 2019, the attendees formulated two possible solutions of a different nature: first, the construction of ramps to be able to cross the levee and, second, the reinstatement of the CONAGUA hydraulic police, whose functions were to prevent the extraction of earth and water, settlement in federal land and the undertaking of illegal works. When asked why it has not repaired the levee, as it should have done, CILA argues that it has been limited by at least two main reasons: a budget reduction and a prohibition by the Maña. In the narratives of the various informants, action by this quasi-character is expressed in three different ways: communication from the Maña to CILA (or Civil Protection, or the municipal government, etc.) that it should not close the breaches, although none of the interviewees confirmed this directly; fear on the part of CILA and other municipal actors of possible retaliation by the Maña; or a convenient, convincing argument to avoid having to repair it and thus justify its failure to act. At the same time, CILA has requested that the repairs be undertaken by other state actors, be it the Matamoros City Council, the Tamaulipas State Government,

10 “Esa vez me tocó platicar con algunos [colonos], ya tiene tiempo… Hace como unos cuatro años,

más o menos…”.

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CONAGUA or JAD. They have all turned down this responsibility: “That is a matter for CILA”11 (JAD interview). Regarding the invasion of the floodplain, CILA’s solution of choice is the vacation and relocation of colonias. At the same time, it rejects the modification of the layout of the levee, which would require a binational agreement, so that its integrity could be restored and at the same time the colonias could be regularized. As far as the relocation is concerned, neither in the interviews nor in the meeting convened by CILA is anyone clear who should undertake this or how, because of the ambiguous legislation (CILA may demand the support of SEDENA, or that of the municipal government and the Department of Social Welfare). In fact, management of the irregularity of the Rafael Ramírez and Bosques del Río colonias by the state agencies is trapped in a vicious circle in which no-one is willing to assume their powers: CILA directs settlers’ demands to the state and federal agencies for land regularization (Instituto Tamaulipeco de Vivienda y Urbanismo, ITAVU, and Instituto Nacional del Suelo Sustentable, INSUS) and, in the opposite direction, ITAVU and INSUS refer them to CILA. Consequently, the resulting situation is characterized by the permanence of irregularity and uncertainty over time.

5.6 Conclusions At first glance, this research could be just another study on the risks of flooding in irregular settlements on the banks of a river, in this case, the Rio Bravo/Grande, a complex space since it is both the geopolitical division between Mexico and the United States and a space controlled by organized crime. Accordingly, this study is in line with other papers, albeit with two important differences. First, in our case, no disaster has occurred, contrary to the focus provided in the literature on this subject, often centered on post-disaster situations (a condition which, as reported, contributes to settlers using risk as a bargaining chip). On the contrary, its distinctive feature is the increased risk from the modification of the flood control levee, which not only jeopardizes irregular settlements but also, albeit unbeknown to the settlers, the entire city. And second, the unauthorized modification of the levee by two informal, overlapping actors (settlers and organized crime) and the inability of the state to resolve the issue. It is precisely the emergence of organized crime which constitutes a contribution to the literature on irregular settlements and environmental risks, which usually focuses only on the settlers and the state or, in the neoliberal context, on the weakening of the state. This study has been useful for showing how risk has been constructed (the irregular urbanization of floodable areas, construction and destruction of flood protection infrastructure, failure to act on the part of state actors and intervention by organized crime). At the same time, the results also show a differentiated perception of the risk between the different actors, based on their knowledge, experiences, interests, and 11 “eso

es cosa de la CILA”.

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interpretations. Thus, in the case of CILA and Civil Protection, perception is based on background information, awareness of vulnerability and technical knowledge (probability of return, projections, etc.), whereas for the settlers, the absence of risk is based on self-justification, subjective immunity, the right to inhabit purchased land and knowledge based on their own experience and short-term evaluations. In addition to these two actors, the intervention of a third private and illegal actor (organized crime) has been detected, whose presence is reported by all the other actors, who act in response to the latter (which is why it has been conceptualized as a quasi-character). The presence and activities of organized crime make both the place and risk construction and perception a more complex process, while the conflicting positions of CILA and the settlers are also made more complex by the intervention of the Maña. Our interpretation is that among the three actors involved in the de facto although not de jure use and transformation of this space, there has been a symbiotic association, in which each one benefits from the existence of the other two. On the one hand, state actors justify their inaction regarding the repair of the levee on two grounds: either the budgetary limitations derived from the weakening of the State in a neoliberal context or the fear of dealing with the Maña, a criminal organization that would prevent access to and intervention in the colonias and levee. Likewise, they justify the non-provision of public services in the colonias on the grounds of their irregular status. On the other hand, the settlers downplay the existence of the risk of the river flooding, while at the same time relying on a precarious pseudo-levee built closer to the river. They are not opposed to the Maña or its criminal activities since they are part of the social, economic, and political fabric of the colonias. Thus, for example, the Maña provides them with basic services and infrastructure, in the absence of and to replace the state. Lastly, the Maña “helps” both colonias and settlers while opening and protecting breaches in the levee since they are strategic points for their illegal activities. In short, all this constitutes a spatial reorganization of risk management under neoliberal governance.

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Requena, J. (2018). Colonia Rafael Ramírez pone en peligro a Matamoros. Mex Noticias [Matamoros]. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from https://www.mexnoticias.mx/matamoros/colonia-rafaelramirez-pone-en-peligro-a-matamoros/. Roy, A. (2011). Slumdog cities: Rethinking subaltern urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), 223–238. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01051.x. Roy, A., & Al Sayyad, N. (Eds.). (2004). Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lanham: Lexington Books. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. (1972). Decreto por el que se aprueba el Tratado para resolver las diferencias fronterizas pendientes y mantener a los ríos Bravo y Colorado como frontera internacional entre los Estados Unidos Mexicanos y los Estados Unidos de América, hecho en la Ciudad de México el 23 de noviembre de 1970. Diario Oficial de la Federación, CCCX(12), January 15 1972. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. (2014). Jurisdicción de la CILA en la Línea Divisoria Internacional México-Estados Unidos. Retrieved March 10, 2018, from https://www.gob.mx/ sre/acciones-y-programas/jurisdiccion-de-la-cila-en-la-linea-divisoria-internacional-mexico-est ados-unidos. Serrato, B., García, A., Figueroa, C., & Pantle, D. (2016). Percepción del riesgo de inundación por desbordamiento de presa en zona urbana vulnerable. Papeles de Geografía, 62, 77–89. https:// doi.org/10.6018/geografia/2016/234741. Texas Department of Transportation. (2015). Texas-Mexico international bridges and border crossings. Existing and proposed. Austin: Texas Department of Transportation. The Monitor. (2017). Remembering Beulah. The Monitor. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from https:// www.themonitor.com/remembering-beulah/. Turner, J. F. C. (2018). Autoconstrucción. Por una autonomía del habitar. Escritos sobre vivienda, urbanismo, autogestión y holismo. Logroño: Pepitas de calabaza. Whitlock, R. (2018). Were the June 2018 floods as bad as Beulah? Rio Grande Guardian [McAllen]. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1W65-AMIug.

Chapter 6

Temporary Shelters and Health Services for Older Adults in Floods in the Metropolis of Monterrey Rosalía Chávez-Alvarado

6.1 Introduction In Mexico, the major concentration of adults is shown in cities, which represents the functionality of neoliberalism, taking into account that the first guiding axis of urban guidelines is constituted by the housing market: fundamental constructor of the urban expansion. The second guiding axis is the government, in its three levels, which grants with the high permissiveness for the expansion of the cities in inappropriate areas for urban development. The third, and last final axis, is the society that takes advantage of the situation of the permissiveness as well as the lack of a policy for the housing access, by built human settlements informal. Thus, the three, mentioned above, are the constructors of the city, and in many ways, they can as well contribute to the risk for using the permissiveness cope in the way of the urban development regulations. The metropolis of Monterrey was developed in a territory that contains inappropriate areas for urban expansion, adding which includes the economic activities of the transformation and mining industry as well as the modification of the natural space in the urban territory; therefore, it represents a historic construction of anthropogenic origin risks (Vizcaya 2006). The metropolis is a significant example of neoliberal policies with obvious environmental and socioeconomic differences as well as being a city in the demographic aging process. It can be hypothetically stated, based1 on official data regarding hydrometeorological phenomena in the northeast region of Mexico, that the metropolis of Monterrey is a reflex of the climatic changes that have been mentioned in the Climate Change Panel 1 Metropolitan municipalities in 2012 by legislative decree, Monterrey, San Nicolás de los Garza, Guadalupe, General Escobedo, Santa Catarina, San Pedro Garza García, Juárez, García & Apodaca.

R. Chávez-Alvarado (B) Cátedra Conacyt, Universidad de Quintana Roo (UQROO), Chetumal, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_6

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briefs of the United Nations (UN) since 2007 in the Latin American and Caribbean region as well as the natural disasters caused by hurricanes Gilberto in 1988, Emily in 2005, and Alex in 2011. The aging population of Monterrey shows sociodemographic characteristics, which, in front of the climate modifications, increase its exposure to natural disaster risks due to the place they inhabit. To know the characteristics and importance of the shelters, and health care services for 60-year-old, and older people, this research applied a survey, at a representative level, in the Metropolis of Monterrey which was constituted by 406 interviewed participants to know the factors that constitute their social vulnerability, as well as the usage of shelters and health care services as they face the risk of natural disaster: floods. The results favor the development of continuing the topic in Latin American and Caribbean cities from the perspective of the public management of the natural disaster risks, because there are various studies at an international level which show the high morbidity, and mortality rates of elderly people when facing natural disaster risks, principally in Asia, Europe, and the United States of America (WHO 2008; Laska and Morrow 2006). The objective of this publication is to boost and elevate the planning necessities from the perspective of the natural disaster risk public management, as well as to spot the location of shelters, and health care services for elderly people as they face climate emergencies that are considered originated by the world environmental modifications.

6.2 Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Relation to Social Vulnerability Studies which were done in the United States of America and England mention the necessity to be analytical about the disaster risk management (DRM) for those who inhabit urban impoverished neighborhoods considering that their everyday nature is an unceasing scenario for possible risks (Jenkins et al. 2007; Shakey 2007). The social vulnerability of elderly people is determined by multiple socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and institutional factors. The worldwide academic discussion favors the direct relationship of economic conditions derived from neoliberalism with the social vulnerability of the population, e.g., marginalization, social-space segregation, diminishing of sustainable planning, apart from the long-term socially and culturally constructed disadvantage where the Baby Boom population (1920–1950) grew up in the countryside ended up in city immigration processes increasing the selfconstruction of their dwelling, and having low schooling, they got jobs and trades, which left them out of the pension system with a high disability rate as well as mental and physical limitations caused by their trades. In Mexico, the Disaster Risk Management (DRM), derived from the Framework of Sendai of 2015, requires the multidisciplinary and the transversal approaches order

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to obtain achievements in the academic field as well as in the state institutions with the purpose to diminishing damages, therefore, being city-dwelling elderly people a vulnerable group when it comes to natural disasters, the liaison of this work with the perspective of environmental gerontology is mandatory. The historical antecedents of the DRM are stated in the foundation of the Secretariat of the International Strategy for the Reduction of Natural Disasters of the United Nations, as well as in Mexican policies of the theme derived from the Objectives of Development of the Millennium (ODM) and in the Framework of Action of Hyogo (FAH) for 2005–2015 held in Japan to assist the recurring natural disasters all over the world (Molina 2013). Subsequently, the Framework of Action for the reduction of natural disasters of Sendai for 2015–2030 is held, where the phases of Public Integral Risk Management are stated (GIR in Spanish, Gestión Integral del Riesgo), including financial, social, health, and legislative actions when it comes to human rights of the institution of the state order to obtain a major resilience of the communities (UNISDR 2015). According to Puente (2012), the General Law of Civil Protection of 2012 is framed from the perspective of the Integral Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) whose principles must be efficiency and equity, integrality, transversality, co-responsibility, and report of accounts. DRM is discussed in academic and technical circles in Mexico nowadays, and it is preferred to use the Integral Natural Disaster Risk Public Management (IDRM) to the guidelines of the Framework of Sendai. This paper and Puente (2012) are based on using the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) since, in Mexico, despite the international guidelines and its legislation, natural disasters are scarcely prevented or mitigated, and public management focuses on post-natural disaster relief, whose action segregate the population without support for recovery or reconstruction. The majority of these principles were analyzed emphasizing results by gender, trying to contribute to the studies that state a higher social vulnerability of the women (Molina 2013).

6.3 The Situation of the Shelters and the Necessary Social, and Health Care Support Health care services and shelter access when it comes to face the natural disaster risk such as floods are the guidelines of this paper. The number of studies that combine the DRM as well as the necessities of elderly people relying upon shelters and health care services is exiguous. Some studies favor the integrated analysis of natural disaster phenomena, social factors, and politicians that support the DRM, notwithstanding the elderly population are minimally integrated so these academic voids niches justify the present paper. In the United Nations High Commission for the Refugees world survey (UNHCR) of 2015, it was estimated that there were nearly 20 million refugee

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people, and the 10% of those were sixty-year-old or older people, and many of them were refugees due to climatic emergency (WHO 2008). Diverse studies on hurricane Katrina in 2005 are revealing on the damage rates on elderly people, and the flooding natural disaster, delayed as attention policies were lately applied, the delay led first to the overflowing disaster and then, to the flood of a proportion of New Orleans, adding the geological conditions of the place and the settlement of a sociodemographic group, which concentrated social vulnerability factors such as African descendent ethnic group, low income, high level of unemployment, aging people, overcrowding, lack of services, precarious housing construction material, among the most outstanding factors (Olshansky 2008; Nguyen and Salvensen 2014; Spader and Turnham 2014). In the American example, there were 1.36 million affected people, and 71% of them were from the older than 60-year-old population: a high proportion of the death toll. It was stated that before the arrival of the institutional relief, some volunteers sent the population the warning for evacuating the place before the flood; however, mental and physical limitations, as well as one-story houses were factors that hampered safeguarding the elderly people’s belongings at a higher level, and consequently, they refused to go to the shelter (Cutter 2006). This reaction makes evident the necessity of inter-institutional coordination at different levels, natural disaster planning, and resilient infrastructure, (e.g., communication guidelines, provisions, medicines, hospitals) because shelters were established with lack of the necessary conditions before the demand of the population that requested their service (aging people with disabilities and suffering from chronic and mental diseases) therefore, the disadvantages of the shelter increased the vulnerability of elderly people (WHO 2008). In Latin America and the Caribbean, Alcocer et al. (2016) continue working on the DRM improvement using geographic information tools to locate shelters nevertheless, a sociodemographic characteristic diagnosis is absent in their work, as well as the relationship in the urban space they use since the political and socioeconomic organization constitute important factors to explain the social vulnerability of the people and their exposure to the risk of the natural disaster. Other studies, such as the one done by Rincón (2011) in Colombia, propose where and how to locate shelters nearby health care service facilities for people who inhabit flood-prone areas; in Peru, the work of Alva (2019) is focused on the location and construction materials of the shelters for people affected by floods: both proposals emphasize the necessity of increasing research and the analysis of the DRM, government actions as well as the need to create a culture about resilient construction founded on a social basis. As cyclical periods of hydrometeorological phenomena are faced, it is necessary to propose academic research about territorial planning with a transversal perspective of the DRM, of the climatic change, and the environmental gerontology (Jenkins et al. 2007). The most vulnerable and socially marginal groups in process of aging, such as undocumented immigrants, homeless people, HIV patients, and the LGBT community, have stayed on the sidelines of attention and mitigation phases when they face the risk of natural disasters. Some American works explain the limited

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importance given to medical services which have been requested by socially vulnerable people—among them mental and physical illness coverage—which are hardly covered by insurance companies (Schultz et al. 2005; Rothman et al. 2008; Howarth et al. 1997) like the presence of ambulances and vehicles that could allow the mobility of elderly people, suffering from disabilities, or chronic diseases, when facing a climatic emergency (Jie et al. 2015). Studies on disasters, whose menace factor was a phenomenon of natural origin, make mention of the direct impacts that affected elderly people such as loss of housing, material possessions, and modus vivendi. In the shelters, the situation of elderly people is difficult to resolve due to the separation from their families, grouping with unknown people, physical abuse and violence, social marginalization, family abandonment, and the high social vulnerability of the women as a result of cultural questions (Rolnick 2006; Weston 2007). Investigators emphasize that culture is important because it permits the construction of solidarity, or social cohesion, to support in the mobility when it comes to face the mental and physical conditions of the older population (Laska and Morrow 2006) which means an intense work from different fronts (society and government) to base this kind of actions, which is called social resilience by some researchers (Szanton et al. 2010) and defined as a learning effort when facing a challenge (which could be the flood) with support and recuperation promoting among human beings the enhancement of the quality of life as well as their capacity of adaptation. It is important to boost the empathy with elderly people in the everyday nature in the presence of climatic emergencies; so far, the scarcity of studies on the age-range group justifies the proposal. Public policy is encouraged in Mexico, whose objective is to make families sensitive toward elderly people; the policy grants the oldest members of the family economical support to participate with the home expenses. The federal government delivers an economic amount to 68-year-old, or older people, even if they have the right to a pension. The goal is that elderly people could fulfill their monthly expenses, adding the cost of medicaments and food, since the pension is insufficient to cover the most elementary necessities to subsist,2 and as a result of this policy, those who live together with their relatives are not seen as an economic burden anymore. In a natural origin, or anthropic, a period of crisis, this age-range group has health care priority as well as banking services, shopping facilities, and various services with the purpose of priority of attention for them, and therefore diminishing their vulnerability. There are factors to be considered for the sensitivity of elderly people and their necessities as they face a climatic incident worldwide, for example, gender since females show higher stress than males notwithstanding, a higher life expectancy is recognized in females than in males, a 5% rate, therefrom elderly females must be the support for older males in their care, and mobility to reach the shelters, with scarce support from their children (Rosenkoetter et al. 2007; HelpAge 2007).

2 Take

advise, https://www.gob.mx/bienestar/acciones-y-programas/programa-para-el-bienestarde-las-personas-adultas-mayores. Accessed November 30, 2019.

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The situation is modified when the duration of the natural disaster lasts three days or longer, as people will have to confront a forced adaptation. These shelters are the locations that will be requiring favorable conditions, for short-term coexistence among unknown people, and special support for their health care (Davis et al. 2006) such as breathing apparatuses, insulin, syringes, running water, to continuously wash wounds, in addition to institutional-level acting protocols to avert epidemics as well as insecurity, and health care problems. Jenkins et al. (2007) mention that natural disasters expose over-60-year-old people to shelter overcrowding where their process of adaptation is increased due to sudden changes in temperature and dehydration. When Miami confronted hurricane Andrew, in the United States, in 1992; the incapacity of the shelters was evident; it was caused by the lack of accessibility with insufficient personnel to assist the population; people suffering from hearing impairment were left out with no support, the administrative public management limited the access to medicaments, and there was insufficient electricity supply which led to an increase in elderly people disabilities because of the low-welfare level in addition to the lack of medical equipment (Rosenkoetter et al. 2007). Another example of the DRM limitations is the lack of information about “what to do” and “where to go” in the event of a natural disaster; elderly people are entitled to be informed by the local authorities (Hyer et al. 2007). So far, there are insufficient studies where the lack of awareness of elderly people could be evident to be prepared and deal with a natural disaster that forces them to stay at home. There are minimal and old-dated studies related to elderly people´s perception of the danger, for example, shelters are seen as places where elderly people will be uncomfortable and afraid of sharing the area with unknown people: segregated, excluded, transgressed, and abused. In addition to the latter, there is the social insecurity perception of some elderly people who imagine that if they left their dwellings, they could lose their properties (Feldstein and Weiss 1982). Family and friends might represent the only support for the mobility of elderly people in the face of a climatic change event. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that there are elderly people who live in loneliness (Cutter 2006). The recorded experiences in some studies show that elderly people suffer from an environmental pressure to fight for their adaptation in the shelters because of their loss of privacy, there is lack of bathrooms, independent dormitories, the food is different; there is also lack of running water for keeping them hydrated as well of patience, and solidarity. For those elderly people with special needs for their mobility or the maintenance of their health, the situation is more complicated due to the absence of human resources, running water, electric energy equipment, and distribution (Davis et al. 2006). The situation gets worse for 75-year-old, or older, people, the possibility of movement diminishes, as well as the one of leaving their dwelling, due to the attachment to their home; their loneliness is a result of family abandonment (Davis et al. 2006). The most emblematic challenges of the shelters lie in the health care field, of the volunteers prepared in geriatrics that may be able to support elderly people (Feldstein and Weiss 1982).

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It is stated that there are scarce post-natural-disaster records related to the usage of shelters in the United States; a datum that could facilitate decision-making, append testimonies or data about the feeding offered services, dormitory, and health care; classified by gender, age, morbidity and mortality rates, foreigners, undocumented immigrants, and homeless people, all this information would favor the advance of the elaboration of plans of the DRM, regenerating the experience and amplifying the security of people threatened by a natural disaster risk (Hyer et al. 2007). Considering the diversity of shelters and environmental context; in Mexico, this kind of data is discretional, for the most part, because the army is in charge of their administration. Despite Hurricane Katrina, in the United States and all over the world, posttraumatic stress studies about elderly people in the face of a natural disaster are minimal. Some studies were originated with hurricane Katrina and their advance or continuity is also minimum, however (Bar-Tur and Levy-Shiff 2000; Cherry et al. 2008, 2009, 2012). The situation is aggravated for elderly people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses, which unleash impediments that can cause even their death. Some examples are schizophrenia, bipolarity, autism, grave forms of depression, obsessive-compulsive, and panic attacks considering that the offered health care services, in the presence of natural disasters, are excluded for these types of ailments (Person and Fuller 2007). These kinds of cases do not have even an included scheme in the DRM, or in the preparation of the doctors who are sent by the armed forces. Beck (1998) refers to modernity, and its liberal economic model, in which society is catastrophic and modernization generates risks since extraction and production processes are responsible for constructing the natural risk; development is questionable when “it endangers its sustainability.” In developing countries, some factors define the natural disasters: the construction of cities in places that are not appropriate for urban development, prone to floods, close to the coasts, exploitation of forests and jungles, which causes soil erosion, loads of sediments that block rivers, streams, and the drainage system; construction of houses on hillsides, which can easily be detached due to the removal of the mass, inter alia. Therefore, a natural disaster is an abnormal grave situation that affects the life of people, promotes the affectation or loss of goods as well as lives, and exposes the fragility in which people usually inhabit (Cardona 2008). The DRM must be a social objective to maintain social welfare despite the inevitable (man-generated) construction of risk, taking into account the necessities of the people, planning the actions from the federal level until the local level to achieve, that a natural-originated phenomenon, which may affect a scarcely sustainable city, diminishes its impact to avoid a natural disaster. To achieve this aim, the DRM must consist of planned phases, through objectives, strategies, and actions, where government support is basic, nevertheless, the leadership must be social as well as local. The most recognized phases in American literature, which can be adopted in Mexico, are 1. Prevention: actions to be done to be more sustainable, and fewer constructors of risks.

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2. Attention: what and who participates in permitting the identification of the most affected areas, and the most compelling necessities. 3. Recovery: who, how, and with what must the affected population be supported. 4. Reconstruction: What means can one rely upon, who is going to be privileged; or the hierarchical organization of the support. 5. Mitigation: Learning from the experience and put into practice what was learned to avoid the same errors in the reconstruction and the extension of the city, and new constructions of risk must be limited (Cutter 2006; Merayo and Barzaga 2010). The DRM and the capacity of adaptation can be considered as the basis of the evolution of the society (Quintero et al. 2012) for its relationship with the reduction of the risk of disaster. Social vulnerability is a multifactorial concept defined from the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean by ethnicity, the differences among social classes, the threshold of the purchasing power, those who stay on the sidelines of the economic neoliberal regime, and how they are inserted in the city to obtain a dwelling and the means they have to subsist (Howarth et al. 1997). The predominant economic system is another factor that explains the social vulnerability since some of them are left out of the working market, because of the educational level, amplifying social inequities. This paper emphasizes the necessity of planning to avert the generation of susceptible areas that contributes to the construction of the risk and where a natural-originated phenomenon could unleash a natural disaster associated with floods (Cutter 2006; HelpAge 2007). It is feasible minimizing social vulnerability at an urban level by planning territorial order actions with a perspective in the face of a climatic emergency developing actions or policies inside the DRM which take into consideration vulnerable populations as a priority (Cutter 2006). The amplified social vulnerability, caused by climatic changes, must incorporate three political and institutional frameworks to achieve the adaptation of elderly people: (a) the reduction of the climatic change and the vulnerabilities that it generates, (b) improvement of the political and social structures to diminish their social vulnerability and taking them as the core of the efforts; (c) obtaining a governmentsponsored leading institution, that could be trusted by the society, to build up networks, between the society and the government, with the scope of increasing long-term capacities of the people in the face of climatic change, principally with the public management of natural disaster risk (Sperling and Szekely 2005). Finally, the concept that stems from the Framework of Hyogo is resilience, which deserves a wide discussion and conceptualization in developing countries; it is defined as the necessity of actions to reduce social vulnerability permitting the improvement of social and living conditions when it is time to start the post-disaster reconstruction, considering that the infrastructure and the equipment must be planned with an environmental vision, in smaller sectors, as well as allowing higher in habitability (Cutter 2006). Conditioning to achieve the adaption of, mainly elderly, people,

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taking as experience the natural disaster, allowing the wide participation of the citizenship, principally the most affected ones, so that the natural disaster consequences would not make a difference based on low income, gender, age, ethnicity, or disability (Ehrenfeucht et al. 2011). There are Anglo-Saxon investigations that propose the usage of geographical information systems to locate the shelters; however, it is only used as a manner to represent quantitative data of urban constructions, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the usage and analysis of physical conditions, roads, flood areas, evacuation routes, and flood patterns inter al, which lead to the planning of shelters and hospitals to assist the population in man-generated and climatic emergencies, and represents a great opportunity for the specialists (Jenkins et al. 2007; Morales et al. 2014; Enders and Brandt 2007). In Latin America and the Caribbean, forced migrations to create man-generated natural disaster risk areas from the moment immigrant populations can get inserted in the housing and labor market in an informal manner, in inappropriate areas for urban development creating, like this, natural disaster areas with the increasing social vulnerability of the immigrants caused by the briefer returning periods of the natural phenomena (Castillo 2011). Environmental immigrants exist where people lose their housing as well as their everyday life; there is poverty, crime, deficient health, and they dwell in a location of urban zones inside natural risk areas such as alluvial plains, wide-inclined mountainside as well as riverbeds. This means they will inhabit similar urban areas to the ones they previously abandoned. There is not a real or efficient strategy to avoid environmental migration or to prevent natural disasters nowadays (McGirk et al. 2000). The experience after the natural disaster must be absolved of being stereotyped; responses got are in different manners depending on the population, the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts, a continuous evaluation of the events is required as well as counting with the records of the experience. The most compelling necessity is health care; illnesses and ailments are modified with climatic change, and new patterns are required for the prevention and public management of the health care services in natural disasters, both of them with a critical validation (Howarth et al. 1997). The arrival to shelters caused by a natural disaster in the neighborhood, derived by flood, needs the existence of psychological support for the victims of the natural disaster as well as for the volunteers who must be in continuous contact with the affected to be able to understand the situation of the displaced people, their age, in addition to their necessities (Howarth et al. 1997). Transportation is vital in the DRM because it permits the mobility of people, mainly for those who demand special support. Even if public transportation becomes useless in the face of floods, it can be a strategy of support to mobility, especially for those people who are physically independent. The use of public transportation requires the coordination of different systems and resource allocation; its integration must be a priority in plans of natural-disaster risk public management (Hyer et al. 2007).

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According to Rosenkoetter et al. (2007), the high impact of chronic diseases and disabilities in adult elderly people determined by the neighborhoods of the city suggests the elaboration of a plan of emergency in the face of natural disasters where public management of the medicaments, nearby health community centers, specific information to locate these people, relative-contacting information, and relocation sites must be included. It is vital to rely upon efficient anticipated planning in the face of the natural disaster in communities where aging and disability rate is high.

6.4 Methodology An elderly people representative survey was conducted among 406, 60-year-old, as well as older, adults in the metropolis of Monterrey, state of Nuevo León, Mexico in June and July 2010; 242 of them were female adults (59.6%) and 164 were male adults (40.4%) out of the total number. The survey was conducted with relative distribution in equivalence to its concentration of population (INEGI 2010). The sample included the differentiation of groups distributed in the city, including the metropolitan area, as well as informal settlements. It was divided into three groups of age: 60 to 74, 75 to 84-year-old, and 85 or older, people. The rate of response was 94.1%. The territorial units called BGSA (Basic Geo-Statistical Areas, in Spanish AGEB), the ones which are identified in the area of the flood, and geo-referred by the state of Nuevo León, were selected; as a result, they show a higher concentration of elderly people, according to the information supplied by the state authorities. The 2010 National Statistics, Geography, and Informatics Institute (NSGII, in Spanish INEGI) database were used to obtain the representative sample, at the time 3,879,007 people inhabited the area with an annual increase of 2.1% since 2000, the metropolitan area assembled 84.4% of the population of the state of Nuevo León. Likewise, the demographic structure of the metropolis experimented the aging of its population reflecting a relative weight of the 60-year-old and older, a people group of 6.7–8.5%, whose rate was slightly inferior to the state mean average median (8.9%), and the national one (9.1%) (INEGI 2000, 2010). As a consequence, of the increase in life expectancy and the process of demographic aging, growth in the 75year-old, and older, people population was shown; the most vulnerable group when coping with floods (Webb 2006). The metropolitan area of Monterrey continues its territorial expansion, to other municipalities, nowadays as well as the aging process of its population is increased in a city of vast spatial extension which is dispersed and with higher scarcities than the ones referred quoted in the present paper. Se the 2010 NSGII geographical data, the fieldwork was done in 2012 and its results are still valid since the DRM offers support exclusively in post-disaster stages. The areas of fieldwork are typified for being flooding zones and the first find was that an important figure of elderly people inhabited these impoverished areas and relied upon poor health care services, as shown in Fig. 6.1. The lockdown situation of elderly people in their dwelling, the insecurity of the city, which is threatened by criminal groups, as well as the official data made the

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Fig. 6.1 The Concentration of Older People (Percent, %). Source Figure elaborated by the author based upon INEGI (2010)

location of the objective population difficult to achieve, and because of this the Responsive Driven Sampling Method was used to identify concealed or difficultto-achieve populations employing networks of social relations which are connected to the members of an objective population (Rudolph et al. 2011). Four in-depth interviews were conducted, which amplified the supply of the specific information: a state government official, who actively participates in the DRM of the state of Nuevo León, was one of the interviewees as well as three elderly people, who stated their perception about the DRM before, during, and after hurricane Alex in 2011.

6.5 The Geography of the Shelters When Coping with Floods. Results The industrial city of Monterrey was established very near the water bodies where floods occur, and this forced the city to expand its design as well as to be founded several times. Subsequently, the settlement of mineral-extraction mining companies, in the metropolis of Monterrey, from the conducted survey showed that almost 50% of the surveyed people suffered from the loneliness factor, which was determined by the

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Fig. 6.2 Location of temporary shelter and refuge in the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey. Source Figure elaborated by the author based upon fieldwork (2010)

lack of caregiving, and attention from their children, the majority of the interviewees inhabit areas prone to floods, some of these due to their informal settling, others because of the growth of the city; people mistrust the authorities because their actions increase the disaster in the event of climatic change since the conduction of public policies of attention to the affected victims segregates elderly people because of their mental and physical disabilities as well as the social insecurity mentioned in the results3 of the present paper (Fig. 6.2). In the areas of flood risk, the 60-year-old, and older, population registers a lower health care coverage (75.2%) compared to the average of the metropolis (86.6%) (INEGI 2010) which means that a third part of the elderly people could be more socially vulnerable, and the situation limits hospital services, as well as medicament access, that are limited throughout their old age. The protocols of the intervention of the DRM have achieved the most affected areas nonetheless, according to survey respondents, there are limitations to cover the necessities of the complete population, principally the eldest sector, and this justifies that the DRM must consider the location of health care services in non-flooding areas, and access to different means so that the 3 Interview

to Mrs. Ana, 2012, (Fieldwork, Rosalía Chávez), Proyect: Vulnerabilidad Social de los adultos mayores ante las inundaciones en la zona metropolitana de Monterrey, México. 2012. Metropolis of Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. July 10, 2012.

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Table 6.1 Results related to the survey Percentage of the population (%) Female

59.6

Male

40.4

Population suffering from physical limitations

34.1

Perception of loneliness

26.4

Perception of sadness

35.4

Neighborhoods with green areas

34.4

Neighborhoods with hospitals

59.1

Neighborhoods with a community center

9.2

Neighborhoods with sidewalks in good conditions

47.6

The population who do not use transportation

40.1

Neighborhoods with flood areas

48.6

Population whose perception of the institutional support, when coping with floods is negative

35.6

The net number of surveyed respondents (N)

406

Source The table was elaborated by the author, and based upon fieldwork (2012)

protocols of attention could provide more extended support, as shown in Tables 6.1 and 6.2. A low percentage of 75-year-old, and older, people, who were living on their own, were observed in the metropolis of Monterrey. In Table 6.1, you see 26.4% of the survey respondents show a sensation of loneliness due to the scarce family coexistence with their children and grandchildren, even though the elderly people shared the same dwelling. Nearly 20% of the survey respondents, of different range of ages, live completely by themselves. 5% of the male survey respondents live alone, without a partner, and are still active in the working class. There are community centers, in the metropolis of Monterrey that, according to protocols to State Civil Protection, have been selected as temporary shelters so far; this policy of mobility and attention is developed in rural areas. This type of edification is less utilized in the city. The geography of the location is a topic of investigation which deserves attention inside the DRM. Incentive allocation was granted to community centers, as a public policy in the six-year presidential administration between 2000 and 2006, which were established by the Secretariat of Social Development (SSD in Spanish SEDESOL) due to an increase in social inequality and poverty. The continuity of the plans of action of the policy, coping with poverty, permitted the introduction of services through budgeting allocations of incentives which modified the environment of the community centers with streets, that were gradually asphalted, unfortunately, the rest of the neighborhood roads were not urbanized, turning the mobility of elderly people impossible, from the moment they were away from roads that could lead them to other locations, with the absence of street

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Table 6.2 Basic results of the survey Variable

N

(%)

Gender

Male Female

128

65.6

Age

60–74 years old

140

71.8

55

28.2

139

71.3

75 years old and more Familial coexistence

Spouse and sons Other relatives Alone

Monthly income

Mexican Institutional Insurance Rightful Claimant

Unknown/No replay

34.4

2

1.0

54

27.7

31

15.9

Low (Less than 130 USD)

106

54.4

Medium (131 a 255 USD)

49

25.1

High (256 USD or more)

9

4.6

Unknown/No replay

1

0.5

Non-rightful claimant

46

23.6

Rightful claimant Physical limitation or disability

67

148

75.9

Motor

56

28.7

Visual Acuity

41

21.0

Hearing Impaired Trouble-free

11

5.6

115

59.0

49

25.1

The necessity of aid to conduct everyday chores

Needful Independent

146

74.9

Use of public hospitals

Public Hospital User

135

69.2

60

30.8

406

100.0

Non-Public Hospital User The net number of surveyed respondents (N) Source The table was elaborated by the author, and based upon fieldwork (2012)

lighting in their surroundings, and with the supply centers located far away from them.4 From Table 6.2, we can see that due to their economic conditions, elderly people use public hospitals, mainly all of those who inhabit flooding areas (69.2%) from this group, 60 to 75-year-old females show higher use of health care service (73.6%); their principal occupation as children-and-partner caregivers are highlighted. The latter demonstrates that, in cultural terms, females keep themselves in physical independent conditions to feel useful and support their families. Those with professional studies show a higher physical dependence (73.5%), which constitutes a limit to their everyday nature. The last fact mentioned entails that they scarcely use, private 4 Interview to public worker of Civil Protection, 2012, (Fieldwork, Rosalía Chávez), Proyect: Vulner-

abilidad Social de los adultos mayores ante las inundaciones en la zona metropolitana de Monterrey, México. 2012. Metropolis of Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. July 6, 2012.

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Fig. 6.3 Location of areas of risk of floods and accessibility to public hospitals. Metropolitan area of Monterrey. Source Figure elaborated by the author based upon INEGI (2010).

or public, health care medical services; as a result of it, their health condition stems from the situations previously described. The profile of those who use health care services shows a social context favored with less physical dependence. Figure 6.3 shows the ratio of the distance of 2 km around the hospital, which represents the distance that any person can walk to obtain accessibility according to Lynch in his book The image of the City. The map shows metropolitan areas which are not covered by health care services, in addition to this, the quality of the service for the survey respondents deserves important structural reforms. In municipalities such as Monterrey, Juárez, and San Pedro, survey respondents mentioned that their attendance to health care facilities is diminished by distance, time, and poor quality of the service,5 the last situation mentioned leads to the reflection of the accessibility of these facilities in the event of a climatic emergency. In municipalities such as García, more the 90% of the survey respondents are not rightful claimants of health care services, this datum shows the difficulties that socio-spatial segregation promotes. García is a peripheral municipality inhabited by a population of higher levels of poverty. On the other hand, in the semi-structured 5 Interview

to Mr. Ernesto, 2012, (Fieldwork, Rosalía Chávez), Proyect: Vulnerabilidad Social de los adultos mayores ante las inundaciones en la zona metropolitana de Monterrey, México. 2012. Metropolis of Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. July 12, 2012

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interviews, elderly people mentioned the lack of institutional support to be able to cope with poverty, the inexistence of health care services, lack of accessibility to the rest of the city, inter al. The majority of the human settlements are located near the river Pesquería which makes their population extremely likely to be affected by atypical rain and hurricanes therefore support, such as incentive allocation, from the National Fund of Natural Disasters (NFND, in Spanish FONDEN) is historically requested due to the high level of affectation of the area; a flood causes the loss of their dwelling and their property in addition to the lack of attention in the face of a disaster which could be determined as familial as well as institutional abandonment. A disproportioned distribution of public hospitals is observed in the metropolis of Monterrey, 76.7% out of these are located in Monterrey (N = 25) and Guadalupe (N = 8), which are the most populated and aged municipalities. On the other hand, in García there is a lack of hospitals a fact that causes segregation in the city suburbs. The distribution of public hospitals presents two important problems: (a) the location of areas of flood risk, whose operability and functionality can be affected in climatic emergency situations; (b) the distance to aged neighborhoods and flooding areas. The location of older people with physical limitations who inhabit flooding areas leads to the reflection about the way shelters and equipment are planned, as shown in Fig. 6.2. Apropos of the works consulted, it was evident that it is necessary to count on constructions to be used as shelters, only when a climatic emergency emerges. In the metropolis of Monterrey, using community centers was the option nonetheless, these are scarcely used by the elderly due to the location or lack of accessibility of such facilities. Results showed that 60-year-old, and older, females (10.2%), and 75-year-old, or older, people—of both genders (9.1%), are the ones who usually attend these community centers or go there together with a relative; going there is also used as a stroll to cease the seclusion inside their dwelling. Figure 6.2 shows the location of community centers in the flooding area when the city coped with the last hurricane in 2011. As a result, the use of these facilities was canceled due to the fact of their inaccessibility and the water damage caused by the flood affectation. See Fig. 6.2. Community centers could diversify their activities to include the whole family, principally to train to sensitize the population concerning to vulnerable groups, as well as the DRM, this objective could be achieved by setting participative workshops to augment the knowledge, and community cohesion. The elaboration of plans and actions of the DRM should even present the gerontological perspective of the topic, since the survey respondents mentioned that they are considered as non-productive people, as well as abandoned by their families, in cultural terms. The social vulnerability of elderly people in Monterrey is built by factors such as physical limitations to do everyday chores, scarce mobility in limbs to move, weakened eyesight, that refrains them from doing their activities, which could lead to risks such as falls, fractures as well as the loss of mobility. The lack of familial or friendly support; the government indifference in the actions within the diagram of the DRM, low income or insufficient pensions, inaccessibility to hospitals, poor

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health care services, as well as the fact of inhabiting high-prone risk areas of the flood disaster, force elderly people to become highly vulnerable. In the case of the DRM, almost fifty percent of the survey respondents mentioned that they decided to stay at home, when the city was struck by hurricane Alex in 2011, due to the physical barriers of the dwelling, as well as those of the neighborhood, to be able to reach a shelter.6 The lack of social and familial support, as well as of options to get shelter; the impossibility to move by their own means due to their physical or mental disabilities, in addition to the insecurity in the neighborhood, increased the fear of elderly people of losing their belongings. Physical limitations, disability, lack of family, or friends are factors of social vulnerability of elderly people which are increased by the presence of a risk of disaster. These characteristics are similar to the ones from the studies previously quoted in this paper (Rosenkoetter et al. 2007) which justifies the necessity of the implementation of the DRM according to the gerontological perspective in a transversal manner. The incidence of 60-year-old, or older, elderly people who suffer from falls at home is noticeable, there is a higher possibility of a fall at a younger age due to the required mobility to go to work, as well as inside their dwelling. On the one hand, females are housewives and caregivers; whereas the others, males, are long-term kept in the labor market conducting low income, as well as heavy, professions such as auto mechanics, plumbers, masons, private security officers, or drivers; therefrom they conduct handyman reparations at home, and so they do the same in the event of a flood, after the disaster, since they have to cope with the reconstruction of their dwelling on their own (Fig. 6.4). The survey respondents mentioned their physical limitations in the mobility of feet and legs, (23.7%); as well as eyesight limitation (18.2%), as the principal cause of their frequent falls is because of the architectural barriers preexisting in their dwelling such as stairs; small steps, rough texture of floors, edging of some furniture, as well as the one in the shower exit, lack of lightning and absence of bars to be safely held, as seen in Table 6.2. Table 6.3 shows the characteristics of the public hospitals, which offer gerontological health care services in the metropolis of Monterrey, and Fig. 6.2 data could be added to obtain an amplified panorama of the deficiencies in the offer of the health care services in a metropolis that is rising demographically together with the presence of the risk of flood. Elderly people´s everyday lives are developed within the limited conditions of the local health care services therefore, the necessity of modifying the diagrams and perspectives of the DRM becomes urgent to get the development of a public policy that favors the urban resilience preventively. The way social vulnerability of elderly people, like hospital patients, as well as how their physical dependence could increase at the time is shown in Table 6.3 to enable us to obtain deductions based upon poor health standards; non-existent empathy before the 6 Interview to Mr. Guillermo, 2012, (Fieldwork, Rosalía Chávez), Proyect: Vulnerabilidad Social de

los adultos mayores ante las inundaciones en la zona metropolitana de Monterrey, México. 2012. Metropolis of Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. July 12, 2012.

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Fig. 6.4 Older people who have suffered a fall in their home Source Graphic elaborated by the author based upon work field (2012)

necessities of elderly people, distancing, prolonged waiting time to access medical services; lack of medicaments, elevators, wheelchairs, stretchers as well as of equipment to conduct gerontological diagnosis, and beds inwards to assist patients until their total rehabilitation is achieved.

6.6 Conclusions and Discussion The areas of fieldwork are typified for being flooding zones and the first find was that an important figure of elderly people inhabited these impoverished areas and relied upon poor health care services, as shown Fig. 6.1. These factors showed, altogether, the usual environment of danger for the aged population, which increases in the event of floods. Elderly people with a low income mentioned, as their main concerns: the loss of their furniture, the damage of the structure of their dwellings because they would have to cope with these economical expenses on their own. On the one hand loneliness, when facedby the abandonment by their offspring. On the other hand, it is difficult to obtain support for elderly people granted by the government. The latter permits stating that the recovery and reconstruction are phases that should be in charge of the DRM nevertheless, such phases are coped, by the elderly population by themselves. There is empirical evidence about an increase of the sense of community and belonging as they return to their dwellings after the flood. In some cases, some residents relocate to others, this experience allows people to revalue their community,

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Table 6.3 Attributes and functions of public hospitals which offer gerontological services in the metropolis of Monterrey Attributes

Valuation

Description

Safety

(+)

Banisters

(−)

Inefficient lighting; problems of acoustic contamination; inefficient fire preventive system; limited private security; location in areas of flood risk. Emergency exits were hard to locate; minimal hygiene found in facilities and the handling of first-aid medical supplies

(+)

Existence of ramps and elevators

(−)

Architectural barriers (deteriorated common grounds, elevators, and stairs) blocked emergency staircases and doors, limited access to public transportation routes Elevators were exclusively used by the staff in case of an emergency The hospitals are located on main avenues with lack of sign markers, pedestrian crossings, disabled people friendly time-setting in traffic-lightning, bus stops, or road-safety education from drivers toward pedestrians

(+)

Use of sign markers

(−)

Disorientation (Inadequate use or sign markers in external areas). Inefficient information about evacuation routes

Accessibility

Orientation

Privacy

(+) (−)

Control

The widespread increase in the emergency area and the waiting room

(+) (−)

Limited capacity from the user to adapt himself to his surroundings to improve autonomy

(+)

Committed professionals with elderly people´s attention (social workers and psychologists), psychological support, social support networks

(−)

Scarce of geriatrics specialists and aides, lack of prevention in necessities (medicaments, clothes, drinking water, and food)

(+)

Conduction of sport and socio-cultural activities Geriatric patients are driven to their dwelling by a hospital vehicle

(−)

Scarce natural-element presence (gardens) and natural landscape deterioration, absence of a friendly design, and poor ventilation (color or decoration)

(+)

Access to recreational areas (entertainment and sport)

(−)

Garden access is limited

Functions Aid and support

Stimulation

Maintenance

(+) Positive valuation. (−) Negative valuation Source Chart elaborated by the author based upon Wahl and Gitlin (2007) and Rowles et al. (2003)

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friends, and support networks, which were exposed to the disaster, which is different just as Davis and his colleagues reported in their research (Davis et al. 2006). The use of community centers is rescued in the present paper, consolidating them as meeting points so that the community could increase its social cohesion sharing their experiences to draw up neighboring plans to cope with floods, map routes of evacuation, and obtain empathy among demographic groups. Thus, a double purpose for community centers could be accomplished: on one side, a quotidian use; on the other, the facility could be utilized as a shelter in the case of a climatic emergency. The example of hurricane Katrina is emblematic for the discussion of the concept of social vulnerability, in addition to focusing it as a public policy of attention to more fragile communities due to their ethnic and socioeconomic conditions. Because of the scarce specialized literature published in Spanish, related to the topic of the shelters, the diffusion of similar publications is mandatory to increase the discussion about the theme. The following reflection coincides with the research of Davis et al. (2006): it is indisputable that low-income elderly people will suffer from continuous concerns like damage, scarce recovery, and reconstruction power in the face of risks principally, and they will be met, vis-à-vis, by the institutional and social indifference. It is indispensable when coping with the conditions of climatic changes, the increase of the studies related to the subject concerning elderly people without taking notice of their socioeconomic condition (Feldstein and Weiss 1982; Rosenkoetter et al. 2007; Ehrenfeucht et al. 2011). The equipment of health care service, entertainment, and mobility is an important aspect to consider in the valuation of the environment by the elderly person from the moment they are essential for their physical and mental condition to ensure them with physical independence and security. That is the reason why, the planning of the shelters, in the event of floods, should be focused on the physical capacity of elderly people as well as the way to assist them when coping with their health care, psychological, and psychiatric necessities. The following must be mentioned, regarding the phases of the risk public management: 1. Prevention: In this stage the location of the shelters is important, the cartography related to the areas prone to floods must be modernized. Shelters must work, together with the Secretariat of Health Care to be liaised in the case of any emergency to establish protocols to avows epidemics. 2. Attention: Shelters play a very important role because they will be consolidated as a safe location containing the necessary attention so vulnerable groups, such as elderly people, could sense safety contentment during their stay. 3. Recovery: It refers to the priority of providing services for vulnerable groups considering their socioeconomic conditions. Elderly people represent an impoverished group, who belong to the working class; therefore, an affordable policy of recovery must be contemplated for this aged group. 4. Recovery: The following questions must be taken into account: Who will offer support; what kind of it; and for how long? 5. Mitigation: it is related to the reconstruction considering the errors, and trying to avoid the construction of cities prone to disasters.

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The present paper outlines (DRM) challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean such as the professionalization, and specialization of the personnel to become experts of the subject to support the refugees; the capacity of comprehending the problems and the necessities of elderly people with disabilities as well as the scarce privacy and state of uncertainty which is sensed by this group when they must stay in a shelter. Additionally, the scarce specialized literature that outlines the analysis of the shelter and hospital staff, coping with a disaster at work, who are also coping with a similar situation with their families in their communities, and such a situation could influence the quality of the offered service. A context of elderly people surveys’ respondents, who inhabited dwellings with damage in their structure and was economically helpless to cope with the cost of reconstruction, was remarked as the same situation was also observed in the case of New Orleans (Jenkins et al. 2007); even passing a law dealing with people who were forced to migrate because of the impossibility of returning to their communities, this process of expulsion can be a preponderant factor to determine the social vulnerability of elderly people, as a result of their loneliness, abandonment, and poverty. In México, the review of some documentation registered in the public policy of the DRM shows a diagnosis with a lack of vision or definition of social vulnerability, principally the one with a high figure with environmental factors. Technical documentation, and their scarce social analysis, is notorious, and for this reason, the creation, or the improvement, of the DRM, must be promoted. It is necessary for the creation of studies about social problems caused by floods, which lead to increasing poverty, epidemics, stress, lack of social services, migration, malnutrition, as well as lack of confidence concerning the administration of resource allocation by the authorities to support the affected families.

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Part II

Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Rural Contexts

Chapter 7

Spatial Reconfiguration and Relocations After Disasters in Rural Contexts: The Case of Tacotalpa, Tabasco Gabriela Vera-Cortés

7.1 Introduction: Relocations from Development and from Disasters The present chapter has two main objectives: (1) identify the main socioeconomic and political processes that led to social vulnerability to disasters from the late nineteenth century to the present in two communities in the Tacotalpa municipality, Tabasco; (2) define the role of each of the actors involved in the relocation management of a Chol Indigenous community that began in February 2008, in the wake of a major disaster associated with continuous rainfall that prompted flooding, when waters exceeded the capacity of the state hydrological system in October 2007. Displacement and relocation stemming from development projects have occurred repeatedly in world history. Since viceregal times in Mexico, the most affected groups have been Indigenous peoples, who have been displaced as a result of the needs or whims of regional elites. After Mexican independence, the re-accommodation of these groups and of the mestizo population continued, along with repression, dispossession of lands, forced labor, displacement, not to mention massacres; these practices prevailed throughout the country. In southeastern Mexico, different regional power groups made agreements and accords to temporarily or permanently send small groups of laborers to other parts of the country. As Ruz (1994) and Viqueira and Ruz (2004) noted, diverse ethnic groups in the state of Chiapas were sent to Tabasco, and dozens of forced relocations were carried out within the state of Chiapas; Turner (2007) also mentioned the deportation of Yaqui groups from Sonora to Yucatán by presidential decree in 1908.

G. Vera-Cortés (B) Departamento de Sociedad y Cultura, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), Villahermosa, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_7

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The reasons for displacements and relocations have been varied. One of the most recent causes has been the construction of dams. This type of displacement overlaps with relocations from natural disasters, a subject addressed in this chapter, in the lack of integral attention and follow-up in the relocation management process. This chapter focuses on a case study in the municipality of Tacotalpa, Tabasco, where a number of families from the Chol ethnic group were relocated by a Chilean nongovernmental organization Un Techo para mi País, following the natural disaster that struck the state of Tabasco in 2007.1 A relocation is a process by which the housing, assets, and public infrastructure of a community are rebuilt in another place. In the case of relocations for development, there is a planning stage, which is determined by the inertia that arises from the socioeconomic and political organization of the governments of different countries. Other relocations arise from the existence of a threat posed by a disaster associated with a natural phenomenon that seek to move inhabitants to a safer place, although this is not always the result (Ibrahim et al. 2015). While Downing and García-Downing (2009) define it as the “loss of physical and non-physical assets, including homes, communities, productive lands, cultural sites, social structures, networks and ties, cultural identity, and mutual health mechanisms,” Oliver-Smith (2005) adds that the relocation of populations impoverishes them, because it strips them of their economic, social, and cultural resources, as well as political power, for they are not taken into account in determining their future and they are unable to decide where and how they will live. Scott Robinson (1990) points out that resettlements are part of a political process that must be planned and analyzed in terms of the dynamic power relations between all parties involved. In this sense, changes in national and international resettlement policies respond to political pressures. The core of relocation projects is the loss or inadequate substitution of one productive system for another, which seriously demands maintaining or improving the quality of life of the relocated population. It will then depend on the how the histories of the relations between the different groups are developed and especially the type of power exercised by governmental authorities or hegemonic groups over the rest of the population. Perhaps for the same reason, Gledhill (2000) defines power as a privileged relationship, whose reciprocal movement structures society. This relationship constitutes the political sphere. Power is contrary to group work and reciprocity, and it also negates the internal structure of the group. The same Robinson (2000) authored one of the 126 reports submitted to the World Commission on Dams (WCD) in 2000, providing a reflective analysis of the relocations carried out in Mexico by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE; Federal Electricity Commission) and the Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos (SARH; Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources, later: Comisión Nacional 1 This

article is part of the project: Miradas sobre vulnerabilidad en el Sureste de México. Megadiversidad y prácticas alternativas para el bienestar (Perspectives on vulnerability in southeastern Mexico: Megadiversity and alternative practices for wellbeing), financed by El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, 2015–2018, as one of its subprojects Vulnerabilidad social a desastres (Social vulnerability to disasters), which I directed.

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del Agua; National Water Commission). In an initial stage, from 1929 to 1988, he noted that the State took control of the construction of dams, in which it made little effort to offer compensation to mitigate the losses of displaced and relocated populations, and to negotiate the best terms for the inhabitants, despite the radical opposition of those affected, an ensuing reaction against it, and police repression. On occasions, no payment or any sort of reparations were made for the patrimony lost by populations and their social disarticulation as a result of the move. The State did not express any serious responsibility in the relocation process and left it to dam construction engineers to employ their own logic, which soon became the unwritten rule. These processes were repeated in southeastern Mexico, particularly in the state of Tabasco. The Comisión del Río Grijalva (Grijalva River Commission; 1951– 1987) proposal led to the construction of four dams (Chicoasén, Malpaso, Angostura, and Peñitas) in northern Chiapas (Secretaria de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos 1988), to control floods in the Grijalva–Usumacinta river basin and to promote the “experiment” (in a tropical zone) of trying to turn the region into the country’s breadbasket, as noted by Tudela (1989) and Arrieta (1994) with the Chontalpa Plan and, later, the Balancán-Tenosique Plan, also implemented in the state of Tabasco. Oliver-Smith (2005) and Downing and García-Downing (2009) point out that similar processes were repeated on a global scale and that with the forced displacement of a group of individuals, they are stripped of their property and are displaced without a comprehensive overview of the process and the loss it entails. Their former patrimony is not replaced in a satisfactory way. Furthermore, much more than material assets are lost in the process, such as cultural property, social networks, and a form of community organization built over the course of several generations. This situation results in a rise in morbidity and even in the mortality of persons who are unable to adapt to the changes and to the loss of place, which is an essential part of their group identity. Constructed over generations, this identity also represents for them a way of understanding, acting, and interacting with their surroundings, based on what they have learned through experience; their knowledge and culture make the setting a place to live that allows them to explain and differentiate between themselves and neighboring human groups. The surroundings thus constitute another essential component of their identity. As Tuan (1977) has described by referring to place as a safe space, it represents their home to the people and is part of their very essence, because for them it is filled with symbols, experiences, memories, traditions, and relationships. Its importance equally applies to relocations from natural disasters, whenever it implies distancing themselves from the lands where they were born. A clear example of the power of these feelings is seen in the case of a woman from the Sierra Norte de Puebla, the head of a household, who gathered a bit of soil from what was her former home when she was relocated as a result of the loss of her patrimony in the 1999 disaster, to be able to take it to the new place of residence that the authorities had chosen for her and her family. The woman described the need she felt to take a bit of her past that was part of her and that had been lost forever. The soil, in this case, meant part of her life story and a deep feeling of roots and belonging in the place where her parents and grandparents had been born (Vera 2014).

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According to Robinson (1990), former government policies of evading responsibilities, related to resettlements from dams, were transformed in 1989 in a second stage that emerged in the midst of a multi-partisan and multifaceted struggle among different social classes and interest groups competing for resources and political control. In the past, it was the engineers who established the agreement with the relocated communities and determined the steps to be taken in the indemnification and design of the new settlements. Consequently, the actions established were the expropriation of ejidos (government-owned lands used by autonomous farmers’ societies), the evaluation of property values and indemnification, and designing the relocation; rarely did a restitution of lands occur. The same pattern was implemented by the CFE, SARH, Pemex (government oil monopoly), and the Ministry of Tourism. This second phase was also characterized by greater resistance on the part of the population, which even led to the cancellation of dams. Such a panorama forced the authorities to negotiate. In addition, the intervention of the private initiative became visible through the World Bank. Perhaps the most important change was that for the construction of dams and relocations, there had been no legal framework or any rendering of accounts, which clearly contrasts with the way that regional elites have been accustomed to having the State cater to their needs and benefits, a circumstance that took on different overtones under neoliberalism. On an international level the stories of relocations for dams were repeated, although with particular features, depending on the historical processes of each country; for this reason the World Bank, which had been strongly criticized for its discretionary actions, decided to form the World Commission on Dams in 2000. For this purpose, the World Bank invited eleven international experts on the subject to prepare an evaluation on the subject for the next year. Scudder (2005), one of the guest experts, pointed out that although memorable efforts have been made, much remains to be done by different States and the World Bank itself. Dams continued to unnecessarily impoverish tens of millions of people, uprooting populations, and augmenting stress and suffering. Through diverse forms of research carried out in 1997, Cernea (1997) prepared a model of the impoverishment of the population relocated for the construction of dams; in the case of relocated populations, the consequences have included: marginalization, unemployment, an increase in morbidity, food insecurity, loss of access to common property, and social disarticulation. A few years later and despite diverse efforts, Cernea and Mathur (2008) emphasized the lack of regulations, transparency, and accountability, which Robinson (1990) had declared for the case of Mexico, although Cernea (1997) generalized it to be an international problem. However, increased research on these processes have helped to give them visibility and to exert greater pressure on authorities for the need to address the subject of relocations in a more integral way. And although some progress has been made, millions of individuals who have been displaced by de facto administrative agreements have not seen any restitution for their many of their losses. Displacements have continued to represent dispossession and expropriation that strip the assets from the affected population. It reveals a lack of attention in economic policy, the absence of reallocation, distribution, and/or lack of resources, as well as a legislative void. As a result, both authors highlight the need to continue conducting specific studies, on

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a case-by-case basis, of the actions carried out by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Finance Corporation, to try to reverse the massive impoverishment caused today by involuntary displacements. These lines of inquiry would challenge the status quo, which is a fairly difficult task in this neoliberal phase, where the authorities representing the State in each of the developing countries have been restricted by the growing external debt. Furthermore, according to Sassen (2015), this growing debt has contributed to the rise of corruption in several countries. This has facilitated discretionary agreements between politicians and businessmen or transnationals, at times without any concern over social discontent. But what is the relationship between relocations resulting from dams and relocations from natural disasters? Both cases involve population displacements and providing a new infrastructure for people who have lost their patrimony. They differ in that relocation from dams is related to a population that loses its patrimony with little retribution for them and the loss of social and cultural capital in the name of the wellbeing of others, not specifically for the displaced and relocated people. In the case of populations relocated as a result of natural disasters, the affected population loses its belongings stemming from the characteristics of their social vulnerability and from the threat of disasters associated with natural phenomena. Both population groups strongly resemble each other in terms of the consequences of poorly planned relocations, whose causes reside in the construction of an economic, political, and social framework that has permitted differential treatment for decades, with new undertones in neoliberalism. Nowadays, populations live in conditions of severe social inequality, which has roots in different forms of accumulation that have simultaneously fostered a specific construction of social vulnerability, which is closely tied to the actual democracy that exists in a country. This form of expressing power relations among different groups is what shapes a type of social structure. Disasters, in this sense, reflect this situation, in which the most affected will regularly be the social group that has the least possibilities of accessing material resources and exercising constitutional rights before and after the disaster. Throughout their history, both relocated groups have displayed difficulties in gaining access to resources, stemming from the existence of a type of power structure that determines social inequality and, therefore, an ever-growing percentage of the population will live in conditions of high risk to disasters. Macías (2009) analyzed the processes of relocation from disasters that the population experienced during the administration of the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (Sedesol; Ministry of Social Development) from 1998 to 2005, where a single regulation was in force that was implemented under discretionary power. For these relocations that took place in Puebla, Veracruz, Chiapas, and Yucatán, Vera (2014: 189–196) found the following: (1) The processes of population selection that benefitted from the different official agencies were not always the most appropriate; (2) Distance from the fields and farmlands. The people did not lose their lands, but sometimes the relocation was too far away from their fields, which caused difficulties in their daily movement; (3) The attention provided by Sedesol, which conducted bidding with construction companies that standardized a single architectural design, housing

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model, without differentiating between urban and rural populations, aimed from the start at what was considered low-cost housing, according to the determinations of the state housing agency. In addition, they did not take into account environmental and climate conditions, which sometimes meant the housing was extremely hot or simply poorly planned to provide adequate living space, and rural housing did not have any designated area for backyard animals; in addition to the low quality of materials used in construction; (4) Risk assessments were sometimes carried out only partially or not at all. It was ascertained that in the case of more than one relocation, it was built in a flood zone in danger of landslides; (5) Part of the relocated population was forced to change economic activity, especially farming people who opted for other activities, such as working in construction. Women were forced to contribute to supporting the family by seeking domestic work, by cooking or cleaning in homes; (6) Temporary and/or permanent family disintegration. On some occasions the relocation of the entire community took place, although generally a relocation was composed of segments of different neighborhoods or places and everyone had to participate in a sort of raffle in which the distribution of families was mixed up, without taking into account what groups were to be included or who would be their new neighbors. This situation prompted a slow process of neighborhood articulation and increased distrust. Parallel to these relocations coordinated by Sedesol, others have been implemented, but little information is available on them. These are relocations from disasters carried out beyond the work carried out by Sedesol. On occasions, relocations were conducted by authorities from second and third (state and municipal) orders of government. Earlier I did fieldwork on a relocation of this sort in the municipality of García, which is part of the Metropolitan Zone of Monterrey, in Nuevo León (Vera 2019), which shed light on problems faced by the population in urban zones. A state government institution was in charge of the relocation, without the legal framework of a written regulation and handling people relocated from disasters just as it had in the case of resettling an extremely-low-income population by forming neighborhoods that faced difficulties of integration into the city and that remained marginalized from the start. Furthermore, the absence of relocation risk assessments, with negative consequences for a population settled in a zone of gullies, with flooding problems, and with major differences in contrast to the Sedesol relocations, which initially provided them solely with a plot of land, as was the custom for many years on the part of the Fomento Metropolitano de Monterrey (Fomerrey; Monterrey Metropolitan Promotion). The only feature unifying this type of relocation is that they were conducted without any written document outlining guidelines or regulations to follow, although relocations of this sort have been implemented on more than one occasion in each state. Moreover, they bear a resemblance to the modality of low-cost housing or granting housing to low-income populations, under guidelines stipulated by the national housing institute and each of the states in Mexico. Based on cases observed to date, apparently disaster relocation measures have often responded to traditional practices entrenched in the prevailing power structure, whose inertia is obvious, and to the way of treating citizens now engrained in neoliberal policies. In other

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words, mechanisms in which the private initiative, in accord with government authorities, obtain benefits from housing construction, without respecting agreements or contracts signed with the government, and turn over developments with lower quality dwellings that contribute to perpetuating social inequality and maintaining a social vulnerability associated with natural threats, stemming from similar social causes of vulnerability.

7.2 Methodology The research presented in this chapter is based on a processual focus. It underscores the foremost processes that explain how a period of more than a century has constructed social vulnerability and how relocation was part of a similar process that characterizes vulnerability today, because it responds to the socioeconomic and political relations between different groups in the region and authorities, in which the Indigenous population has traditionally been the most oppressed. This work is based on bibliographic and periodicals research, and it relies on semi-structured interviews with older members of the community of Madero Primera Sección (the population affected by the 2007 disaster), and Nuevo Madero, part of the settlement that was relocated from Madero Primera Sección. Fifty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded; twenty-four of them in Madero Segunda Sección, twenty-two in Nuevo Madero, and four with public officials. Together with the author, the following individuals contributed to conducting the interviews: Michelle Jacqueline Lara Blanco, José Hernández Cruz, and Rosario Vázquez. The interviews were transcribed by Carolina Ofelia Martínez López. I would like to express my gratitude to all of them for their invaluable support. For Reygadas (2008: 12) the processes cannot be understood without taking into consideration power relations pervading different levels and dimensions of social life. These relations and processes explain the distribution of goods in a framework of an apparent structural configuration and interaction among diverse social groups competing for the appropriation of goods by the inhabitants. The structure, in this sense, is not static, although it might seem to be immobile. The processes form part of the implementation of voluntary and involuntary relations between two social groups that are maintained over time, thus giving rise to the transformation and establishment of a geographic space. Harvey (2008: 240–241) indicates that space, time, and matter are the result of a complex of processes, essential ontological categories for a comprehension of the world. In this way spatial temporality is part of a dynamic historical geography. He emphasizes the need to integrate an interpretation of processes that operates on different scales (both temporal and spatial). A dialectic relationship between the global and local contributes to configuring space, while influencing other relations and scales. This research revisits some of the processes that have had an impact on the relocation of Nuevo Madero, Tacotalpa, in the state of Tabasco, which represents the base scale. The rest of the scales are more administrative in nature, as proposed by Calderón (2001), because economic

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policies are generally applied, and specifically the proposed relocation of different population sectors, in these administrative (federal, state, and municipal) divisions. The term disaster is understood as a group of processes and interrelated events of a social, environmental, cultural, political, economic, physical, and technological nature produced in different time periods. They are processes that take place in all dimensions of a social structure and the totality of their relationships with the environment, which can be seen as involved, affected, and focused, expressing conflicts through the operation of physical, biological, and social systems and their interaction among populations, groups, institutions, and practices, which give rise to imbalances and losses of human lives and material losses (Oliver-Smith 2005). Alexander (2012) coincides that the concept of social vulnerability is a core element in the study of disasters. He emphasizes that vulnerability is the potential for damage or loss, or the triggering of a series of complex reactions governed by social, economic, and cultural development. What I would like to underscore here is how conditions of social vulnerability arise, which can be visualized in the study of relations that lead to processes stemming from the development approach that has been implemented. For the present discussion, threat is a natural phenomenon in itself, or those natural or social processes that contribute to harming a social group, while risk is the possibility that a disaster can occur, when natural or social processes that give rise to loss converge.

7.3 Spatial Reconfiguration in the Grijalva Basin: Historical Context and the Present in Tacotalpa, Tabasco Why write about historical processes and relations to try to understand a situation today, in this case the relocation from a disaster of a community of ethnic Chol people? In the first place, because communities and isolated events do not exist; everything is in some way interconnected. This type of relocation management that was implemented in Nuevo Madero, Tacotalpa, responded to relations of subordination, exploitation, domination, solidarity, and so forth, which had earlier roots in southeastern Mexico. The relationships and processes refer to the type of power that federal, state, and municipal authorities as well as the hegemonic regional power group have established through centuries-long economic policies and practices exploiting the Indigenous people and the extraction of natural resources; in fact, their wealth and power derived from their use and abuse of Indigenous manpower, on occasions as unpaid or semi-paid labor. The case study addresses a Chol community, an Indigenous population that has not yet healed its wounds from different types of exploitation that has harmed them for centuries. In the historical memory of the origins of the community of Madero Primera Sección, there is the account of ancestors who fled slavery during the age of Porfirio Díaz in the late nineteenth century. As told by the elders, they were displaced

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Fig. 7.1 Location of towns in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas mentioned in the chapter. Prepared by Martín Eduardo Morales Espinosa (I would like to thank Eduardo Martín Morales Espinosa for his collaboration in preparing the maps in Figs. 7.1, 7.2 and 7.4)

from Tila, Sabanilla, Salto del Agua, and Amatán (Chiapas) in search of a better life. Today, half of this population was displaced to Nuevo Madero after the 2007 floods (see Figs. 7.1 and 7.2). The states of Tabasco and Chiapas share one of the mightiest hydrological basins in Mexico (the Grijalva–Usumacinta system) along with a series of concomitant historical processes, such as the extraction of natural resources and recent forms of exploitation, together with large-scale agricultural holdings (plantations), including those with timber wealth, which was tapped through logging camps; the development of coffee production mainly in the state of Chiapas; not to mention the implementation of a complex hydraulic system managed by the Comisión del Río Grijalva. The latter modified the physicogeographical conditions of the region, where four dams were built in northern Chiapas to control the course of rivers on the Tabasco plains to culminate in petroleum industry developments. All of these measures have prompted a spatial reconfiguration, with major population displacements, the establishment and growth of new settlements, along with oil-production development, in which the municipality of Tacotalpa, with its former emphasis on farming, became a municipality that has forced population groups out, given the gradual abandonment of the farming sector by governmental authorities. Development projects in the state of Tabasco promoted relations of inequality among its inhabitants.

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Fig. 7.2 Location of towns in the municipality of Tacotalpa, Tabasco. Prepared by Martín Eduardo Morales Espinosa

On the one hand, Stavenhagen (1988: 2–4) already identified a systemic violation of the native population’s human rights throughout the Americas, expressed in social deficiencies and processes of deprivation and exploitation of those who had been victims and who, in many cases, continue to be so. Furthermore, they have been denied the possibility of preserving their own cultures (including languages, customs, modes of interaction, forms of social organization, and ways of understanding the world). The conditions of the population today originated during the time of the conquest and the colonial system. On the other hand, Bartra (2010) added that the so-called indio americano (American Indian) has been, from the start, an invention of the Spanish Crown. It was a category imposed for purposes of collecting tribute, but it also entailed moral-political dimensions that supplanted autochthonous designations. This has made it possible to establish a division of labor and a social hierarchy based on ethnicity and communities (Fig. 7.3). As we know, and as Stavenhagen (1988) has emphasized, the so-called Indigenous population is composed of poor farmers subjected to a double exploitation of their lands and resources: in part by peonage, a system of servitude exploitation, and by the ethnic condition of the population, discriminated against and scorned through racism and feelings of cultural superiority determined by the dominant cultural values in Mexican society. Moreover, this sector suffers the systematic violation of its rights, in

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Fig. 7.3 Drainage pattern of the locality of Francisco I. Madero Primera Sección. Prepared by Gerardo Arrieta García

response to the very structural conditions stemming from an economic and political history, backed by a legal and institutional structure of national legislation that has undermined these peoples, both in the past and in the present. During the Viceroyalty (1521–1810), the best lands belonged to the church and to large landowners, who regularly resorted to Indigenous labor. The population temporarily migrated to meet the need to make tribute payments demanded by viceregal authorities. Independence did not substantially change the living conditions of the population, which remained subjugated under conditions of virtual slavery (Ruz 1994; Álvarez et al. 2015). In northern Chiapas part of the population of Tila migrated in multiple waves, fleeing the onerous demands and mistreatment of the priests. Migrations also occurred during periods of disease and drought; in the highland Chiapas community of Yajalón, in the late eighteenth century, three-quarters of the population left the village. One of the places where they preferred to go was northward. Some claim that half the community was displaced to Tabasco. In northern Chiapas various other localities also saw similar emigration, and on occasions they permanently stayed in Tabasco. In this way, the links that exist today between the population of Chiapas and Tabasco can be traced to blood ties and religious connections, as a result of the existence of a social, cultural, and genetic interaction not limited solely to the native peoples of the highland Sierra region. Furthermore, Ruz (1994) reviewed documents showing that the routes between the diverse Indigenous towns, as well as the paths of the Spaniards, Blacks, and members of other castas,

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were constantly intertwined. In this way, as Ruz notes, for the population of Chiapas, Tabasco was “Spain’s Portugal”; in other words, a place to seek refuge from the everyday abuse inflicted by the regional power group (Ruz 1994:148–220) and on occasions where people were sent by force under agreements with the authorities of both states or interest groups tied to regional power. The state of Chiapas has survived various forms of extraction, just as its neighboring state: Tabasco. I am specifically referring to logging to extract mahogany and logwood, as well as coffee and banana production, the hydraulic and population relocation plans of the Comisión del río Grijalva, along with oil exploitation. In the following, some of these economic policies that were based on the extraction of resources will be examined, as well as their repercussions on Indigenous communities.

7.3.1 Logging The extraction of mahogany from 1870 to 1940 by so-called “modern” companies was carried out by Spaniards, such as the Valenzuela, Romano, and Bulnes families, who were replaced by Canadian, American, and British enterprises. The exploitation of logwood and mahogany arose particularly in southern Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas, and extended to the Petén in Guatemala. Logging camps were located along the Usumacinta River, and the municipality of Tenosique became the hub of a riverine transport system that took the timber to the sea via Frontera (Centla). Records of logging camps date back to Catazajá and Jonuta in 1886, Chilón in 1911, and Palenque, but there are also records of even earlier logging camps on the west coast of Tabasco. Those that were further east operated mainly by means hired labor recruited primarily in Ocosingo (Benjamín 1981; Balcázar 2003). In truth, it was a slave-based practice where the grueling work and harsh punishment for not fulfilling the quota demanded per day meant the peon could not survive more than seven years (Benjamín 1981). Although much of this history of the logging camps still remains unknown, Benjamín’s contention recalls what John Kenneth Turner wrote in his 1909 book Barbarous Mexico, in which he devoted a section to the labor conditions (slavery) of the population working in tobacco production in Valle Nacional (Oaxaca), who could survive no more than a year. And the humid tropical conditions of Tabasco and Chiapas, along with the abuse, punishment, and torture of the Indigenous population would suggest that seven years would have been a maximum. The logging camps, as Uribe (2016) notes, gave rise to augmenting the wealth and reinforcing the control of regional power groups that still exist today.

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7.3.2 Coffee Production After Mexican independence, the power group—cattle ranchers, landowners, and merchants—exercised archaic forms of exploitation over the 78% of the population, composed of Tsotsil, Tseltal, and Chol people in northern Chiapas. Under the pejorative category of “indios” (Indians), they were vilified and subjugated under an ideology that attempted to justify its actions and profiteering at the expense of Indigenous communities. At the end of the nineteenth century, coffee and livestock invaded the lands and displaced maize, which was only planted by peasants for subsistence. With the disentailment of property, the so-called law of uncultivated lands and of national property, the Indigenous people were stripped of their lands, making way for the entry of foreign companies, which were offered incentives to buy property. Also, as part of the agreement between the federal and Chiapas state government, the fiscal and administrative reform included measures to increase manpower in the export sector, without any attempt to abolish the servitude that existed in 1880. In 1877 there were 98 haciendas in the state of Chiapas; by 1910 the number had grown to 1076 plantations. The same occurred with the rise of peonage, in which in 1865 the Chiapas population working in farming was 69%, and by 1910 it had increased to 90% (Álvarez et al. 2015; Pérez 2004). With these decrees and laws, the Indigenous population began to lose their lands, but not without fighting for them. In the early twentieth century, coffee production proliferated with support of the Díaz regime in northern Chiapas, which attracted other Tsotsil migrants from San Andrés Larrainzar, San Juan Chamula, and Unachmec; Tseltals from Sitalá; and Chols from Tila, all drawn to Simojovel and Huitiupan (Pérez 2004). The population of northern Chiapas was displaced in different directions, some seeking lands from a boss to work and others trying to escape abuse. Later, as Alejos (2004) pointed out, coffee growing expanded in northern Chiapas in the final decades of the nineteenth century with foreign investment promoted by federal and state policies. The three municipalities developed for coffee cultivation were Salto del Agua, Tila, and Tumbalá, although its presence could also be seen in other communities. The assumption that only European migrants could bring progress was used to justify the dispossession of communities and the creation of estates with vast land holdings. Local ethnic groups were transformed from self-sufficient subsistence farmers into peons on coffee plantations, the region’s main source of wealth. Just as Pérez (2004) and Alejos (2004) have pointed out, a slave-based regime was maintained and it paved the way for agricultural export enterprises from European, German, and later American enclaves. With this, localities devoted to logging, coffee, and rubber tree plantations were intermixed. This economic model led to the exploitation of natural resources and manpower, which although it drove the state economy, it did not substantially change the social relations of production from the past. The peonage system was consolidated in 1891 by Governor Emilio Rabasa, who believed that the destruction of Indigenous

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communal property would create a new type of modern agricultural producer, integrating the Indigenous population into Mexican society. With this, according to Alejos (2004), the Chol population was permanently incorporated into the international market system and stripped of its former autonomy. The peonage system through indebtedness in Chiapas led to farmworkers living in conditions of extreme poverty and servitude. This period ended with the agrarian reform of 1915, but it did not cease to be felt in this region until around 1930. This economic political process gave rise to a new expression of social inequality that again reconfigured northern Chiapas and set in motion the displacement of part of the Chol population into southern Tabasco in search of a better life.

7.3.3 Grijalva River Commission, 1951–1987 Tabasco is a state in Mexico with experience in relocations from development. This is the case of the Chontalpa Plan and the Balancán-Tenosique Plan overseen by the Comisión del Río Grijalva (CRG). The economic resources of the Chontalpa Plan were from the federal government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). I would like to single out some of the aspects of the Chontalpa Plan that directly affected the municipalities of Cárdenas and Huimanguillo in the 1970s. With the state government’s aim to turn Tabasco into the nation’s breadbasket, the CRG proceeded on the basis of a series of assumptions that the abundance of the tropics would produce the same results with introduced crops, generating a bounty that could feed the nation’s entire population. The Indigenous people, especially the Yocot’an, were the most affected. The principal works involved flood defense; drainage works; communication projects; the Chiapas dam system—Nezahualcóyotl (1959–1969), Angostura (1969–1976), Chicoasén (1974–1980), and Peñitas (1979–1986)—which are primarily for hydroelectric use; the Gulf highway (1959); sanitation works; diversion of the entire hydrological system; and canal construction; among other works. However, here I would like to focus on the relocation plans that were applied under the Chontalpa Plan (1951–1987). Arrieta (1994) and Tudela (1989) state that 22 neighborhoods were established for 2,010 ejido-holders who were organized into a collective to use lands for farming. As for the percentage of lands, 35% were to be occupied for agriculture, 43% for extensive livestock raising, and the remaining 21% would not be employed because it was on lowland floodplains. In general, all the lands would be for collective use, except for two hectares that would be given to each family for personal use, but these lands were in floodable zones. The community was never consulted, so their opinion was never taken into consideration in the relocation; those who lived in the affected zone were indemnified and those who did not wish to accept the compensation conditions were forced out. All the vegetation was cut down and the new dwellings were laid out along geometric lines, with an initial size of 46 m2 (495 ft.2 ), with 1200 m2 (less than a quarter acre) per plot with some variants in dimensions. The material used for the housing

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was not appropriate for tropical environments, because initially the dwellings were constructed with wood beams, cement block walls, and a concrete roof. However, the lack of foundations led to walls cracking; to remove weight from the walls, the tile roof was changed to asbestos. Later rebar structures were employed instead of wood. In addition, the 2.10 m (almost 7 ft.) height of the housing was not appropriate for the climate conditions. The dwellings were sold by drawing lots with annual payments for a period of twenty-five years, at the end of which the owner would be given the deed of ownership. Furthermore, the local culture of the area was not taken into consideration, so the people had to make modifications, such as removing the kitchen and the bathroom from the dwelling to an outdoor space, to conform to local custom. As for the organization, the people went from an organization based on kinship ties to one of mutual cooperation, with a commercial system based on family work and simple forms of collective credit societies to the union of collective ejidos. Through the formation of credit groups, the population had to plant crops that they were unfamiliar with. The planners also thought about transforming the activities of women in their homes by having them work on an agro-industrial piece of land, but only a miniscule part agreed to accept, so of the 7000 women over the age of 16, only 422 agreed to work on a collective, low-yield ejido, just as the collective ejido of the men. The lack of understanding of the implications of being subject to credit, despite the courses that were given, further hindered economic development. For the new populations it was an unknown economic system that offered them profitability through a technology beyond their understanding and unsuitable for the geographic conditions of the location. As a result, many areas were left unproductive. Tudela (1998) writes that these lands were ultimately used by the regional elite for livestock grazing to avoid losing political and economic power in the region, because the decisions came from the federal government and international interests. The Chontalpa Plan was an experiment in which attempts were made to control the abundance of water based on a network of canals. It tried to accelerate the country’s economic growth, learning to use the natural resources from the moist tropics, and to spread the experience to developing countries with an adequate technological system. However, in practice, the lack of knowledge and experience with plant growth processes in the moist tropics produced unfavorable results for the geography of the location, as well as for the population where it was implemented. In his research, Arrieta (1994) observed that at the end of the project there were fewer participants than at its start. The experiment, however, continued in the Balancán-Tenosique Plan (1973), producing similar results for the population. However, it was a failed experiment on multiple fronts: it experimented with the tropics for a hydraulic project; unfeasible agricultural and highly expensive hydroelectric development; and by introducing non-traditional forms of organization at the whim of engineers who designed a new social organization based on technology and family disintegration in the pursuit of production incompatible with the physical characteristics of the tropics, producing unsuccessful results. Finally, in the history of both Tabasco and Chiapas, since the 1960s, oil development yielded profits for

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some and brought benefits for the entire country, but not for the region’s population, nor for nature in the local environment that has been looted and contaminated. The history of the moist tropics did not end there; the energy reform returned in recent years with new determination and with cheaper, more contaminating technology that has concentrated on extracting gas and petroleum from deeper wells in the Gulf of Mexico and new areas that had been reserved for the development of new extraction technologies. The municipalities of southern Tabasco and northern Chiapas, which had been on the fringes of petroleum exploitation, will now be inserted in these new extraction projects. Moreover, they have already been in the sights of Teca and palm oil plantations that degrade the soil until the land becomes barren. Although foreign companies that exploited forestry resources through logging obtained net profits in areas that served as enclaves, the same occurred with coffeegrowing plantations, where peasants were working in conditions of peonage. The agrarian reform that resulted from the Mexican Revolution (which did not come about until years later, in the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas) permitted coffee expansion from 1934 to the end of World War II. Although with the agrarian redistribution of land, peons could receive lands, they ended up tied to intermediaries, traffickers, and former plantation owners. In this way, although in the past net earnings arose from the extraction of everything of added value for the peons, in the decades that followed it took place through unequal exchange (Bartra et al. 2011). The sale of coffee to traffickers or coffee intermediaries in Tacotalpa represented high income for many of these poor farmers, but in practice the former reaped the biggest profits. The peasants were not accustomed to receiving money for their work, thus any payment represented a profit for them. Other forms of harsher exploitation were experienced in northern Chiapas, although in the municipality of Tacotalpa, despite everything, that time was a boom that Chol communities, composed of the various municipalities and dozens of communities in northern Chiapas, were unaccustomed to. It was also a time of community integration in a different administrative entity until the arrival of neoliberalism in the 1980s. The lifestyle change for the peasants in Tacotalpa took place with the eruption of mount Chichonal in 1982 and again in 2007 after a second disaster displaced the population of Madero Primera Sección, leaving them unable to recover, especially the population that accepted relocation in Nuevo Madero. These difficult living conditions grew worse in Tabasco, primarily an oil-producing state since the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994). In the last ten years, Tabasco has experienced some of the highest unemployment rates in the country (Vera and Martínez 2017), which has made it impossible for the population to do what it did in the 1980s: migrate to Villahermosa to seek construction work, because the rest of the state’s rural communities now resort to the same strategy. For this reason, it triggered migration among young people in Nuevo Madero to the United States and to other oil or tourism centers within Mexico; furthermore, organized crime has become an attractive option for young people; according to Uribe (2016), this situation has prevailed since the 1990s.

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In the Mexican countryside, neoliberalism spread with the modification of Article 27 in 1992 and the entrance in force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. As a result, the State permitted the sale of the best rural lands, eliminated subsidies, and support programs for subsistence farmers began to wane. Although the agrarian reform distributed lands, it also cast aside the productive and marketing aspects of products, offering little in the way of technological packages for this sector. With NAFTA the Mexican agricultural sector was subordinated to the massive United States farming sector, which dismantled farm-promoting policies, opened borders to food imports, stripped wealth from the countryside, and raised food dependence to include the purchase of basic products from the United States. This has prompted a reduction in the production of staples such as maize, beans, and rice in Mexico. Although maize and beans would supposedly enter the market in 2008, the Mexican State moved the date up. Misery in the countryside grew, not to mention migration, although the cause of this was not economic, but political. Since the implementation of NAFTA migration dramatically increased, wich coincided with the two decades of structural adjustment. Trade was freed under conditions of economic asymmetry that negatively impacted rural workers because they had the least resources. Neoliberal goberments gave away job security and soveraignty in employment (Calderón 2006; Bartra 2013).

7.4 The Experience of the Inhabitants of Francisco I. Madero Primera Sección The Zoque population has declined in number in the Tabasco and some places in southern Tabasco were repopulated by members of the Chol ethnicity. The chronicler of Tacotalpa, César García Córdova pointed out in an interview that several Zoque settlements were repopulated by Chol people, such as Puxcatán or part of Oxolotán, and also that they established new settlements, such as Buenos Aires, Cuitláhuac, Raya de Zaragoza, Miraflores, Xicoténcatl, Cuviac, Caridad Guerrero, and Francisco I. Madero Primera Sección (locally known as Madero Primera Sección) and Francisco I. Madero Segunda Sección. Furthermore, the population interviewed in Madero and Nuevo Madero claim that their parents and grandparents went along the border of Tabasco when they left Chiapas and they settled in different places, until, as a result of the abundance of water holes and springs and water sources, they finally liked what later would be called Madero Primera Sección. Most of them coincide that their places of origin are Sabanilla, Salto del Agua, Tila, and Amatán (northern Chiapas). As to their origins, the elderly members of the community explained the following: [The old people] worked there on Moyos [coffee-growing plantation in Sabanilla] they worked there as slaves. They had big coffee plantations there . . . of course the foremen

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treated them badly. So my dad came here. My grandparents stayed there (Don Juan; Madero Primera Sección).2 They were times of slavery, for that reason they were relocated, they left their territory, their place, they came down little by little, when they arrived here [it was] all a place of wild animals. According to what my mother-in-law says, there were [mountain] lions, jaguars, it was all forest, wild boars, peccaries, all of that, you couldn’t live safely. They used to say they were Tilecos [Tila people], the old people stayed there, yes, all that time under Porfirio Díaz they suffered a lot, because it was terrible, they lived all the time like servants (Don Isidro, Madero Primera Sección).3 I was talking with my mom, [who] may she rest in peace, because when I was very young, I was 6 when my father died. I’ve talked with founding people there, those who came from Chiapas, and I asked them questions: No, listen, excuse me, how long ago did you come to relocate here in this land, they told me this [that] it must be some 100 years. They came here, because they fled . . . The old people also came, in other words, I don’t know why [but] after everything they left because they still saw them when freedom came. Yes, when the Porfirio Díaz government ended they still saw them. Oh, they were so overjoyed! They say that the people were in a coffee field, a huge coffee field, thousands of hectares, and everything went to the government. Then they say that when freedom came, they say that they were beginning to work and they left everything then and there, baskets, bags, so many things, all the work ended right there. Yes, and the people working so hard to earn a morsel of bread. Freedom came. Yes, they were free. And a few years after freedom, they started to move. To come here, yes, they were leaving little by little, they came looking [for] where there was a water hole, a spring, where everything was there. To settle, yes, it wasn’t here because the place was very big, but rather because they liked it because there were many springs. Yes, here there are one, two, three, four, there are like four or five springs, yes, I think that there are some who came with their parents still. Yes, there are some like Asentino Pérez (Don Felipe, Benito Juárez).4 2 “[Los

abuelos] trabajaban ahí por Moyos [finca cafetalera ubicada en Sabanilla] trabajaban ahí como esclavos. Tenían cafetales grandes ahí […] claro que los capataces los maltrataban. Los pinchaban mucho porque no trabajaban bien. Así vino mi papá acá. Mis abuelos se quedaron allá” (Don Juan; Madero Primera Sección). 3 “Eran tiempos de esclavitud, por esa razón se desubicaron, salieron de su territorio, de su lugar, vinieron bajando poco a poco, cuando llegaron acá [era] puro lugar de animales salvajes. Según dice mi suegra había leones, tigres, era pura montaña, jabalí, puerco de monte, todo eso, no se podía vivir confiadamente. Ellos decían que eran tilecos, los abuelos quedaron allá, sí, todo ese tiempo porfiriano sufrieron mucho, porque era terrible, ellos vivieron todo el tiempo como mozos” (Don Isidro, Madero Primera Sección). 4 “Yo platicaba con mi madrecita, [que] en paz descanse, porque cuando me quedé pequeñísimo, me quedé a la edad de 6 años cuándo mi padre murió. Yo he platicado con gente fundadora allá de los que vinieron de Chiapas y yo les hacía preguntas: No, oiga, disculpa, cuanto tiene que ustedes vinieron a reubicarse aquí en este terreno, me dicen este [de] aquí ha de tener como 100 años dice. Se vinieron pa’acá, porque se huyeron […] También llegaron abuelos, o sea no sé por que [pero] después de todo salieron porque todavía los vieron cuando llegó la libertad. Sí, cuando terminó el porfiriato todavía los vieron. ¡Uh, cómo se alegraron! Dicen que la gente estaba en un cafetal, inmensidad de cafetal, miles de hectáreas, no pocas, sí miles de hectáreas y todo va pa’l gobierno. Entones dicen que cuando llegó la libertad, dicen que estaban comenzando a trabajar y dejaron ahí todo tirado, el canasto, la bolsa, cuanta cosa, terminó todo el trabajo ahí terminó. Sí, y la gente trabajando netamente para ganar una migajita de pan. Llegó la libertad. Sí, quedaron libres. Y a los pocos años después de la libertad empezaron a moverse. Para venir pa’acá, sí, veníamos saliendo poco a poco, vinieron en busca donde hay un ojo de agua, donde hay manantial, donde hay todo. A poblarse, sí, aquí no es porque esté bien amplio el lugar, sino porque les gustó porque hay bastante

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These and other accounts of elderly individuals at Madero Primera Sección and Benito Juárez are repeated by their children and grandchildren. That past is part of their identity; it is the cause of their stay and new beginning in Tabasco. Where different ethnic Chol families, originally from northern Chiapas and with a shared past, started a new life as a community. Some have lost contact with their relatives in Chiapas, but this is not everyone’s case, for family ties are maintained these days in several communities, along with knowledge of coffee cultivation. These are the people who introduced it to this part of Tabasco, including some forms of community work (a common practice of all ethnic groups in the region), as was “ganar mano” (lending a hand), known more commonly known as “hand back,” which is the support shared between families (or sometimes neighbors) in sowing the crops. It was the custom that the women made food, while the men helped each other in planting a relative’s seeds or harvesting his crops, to then, in reciprocity, collaborate with the same work on the plot of land of whoever helped them. Or the tequios [communal work projects] that are still carried out for the benefit of the entire community; for example, cleaning roads. In addition, Madero was gradually growing. Don Juan recalls that by 1940 there were a few houses, everyplace was wooded and there were a few coffee plants, in addition to maize, rice, and beans. According to the chronicler of Tacotalpa,5 coffee production was introduced by the Chol population to Tabasco and became important in the municipalities of Teapa and Tacotalpa from 1940 to 1970, when Nicolás Muyinedo, from Teapa, was one of the leading traders. He was so important that, since the 1970s, the Instituto Mexicano del Café, INMECAFÉ (Mexican Coffee Institute) was established in Tacotalpa, using Tapijulapa as the main supply center. According to the chronicler, there were other coffee buying houses. From 1950 to 1960 there was Casa Zardáin, which also gathered all the coffee that came from the Tacotalpan communities and even from the Chiapas communities, such as Décimo Jovel, Yajalón, Sabanilla, and Amatán, because there were virtually no means of communication in that region of Chiapas to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. There were also large plantations such as Rosarito which was devoted to selling coffee, but not producing it; Casa Pisac had a small aircraft that brought coffee from all of those places and took it to Villahermosa to take it by port to Frontera, in Centla. Apparently, there were other coffee-buying houses, Don Juan, from Madero Primera Sección, recalls the shop of Zenón Vázquez in Tapijulapa: They paid very little, around 1.50 [pesos], it started with 75 centavos, the community started out like this. There was one shop in Tapijulapa, we all went there to sell, known as Zenón Vázquez, he was the one who had the store. The people planted 3 to 5 hectares [7 to 12 acres]. Everyone in the family worked, men, women, and children. Also, they grew everything: maize, beans, also lots of rice (Don Juan, Primera Sección).6 manantial. Sí, aquí hay uno, dos, tres, cuatro, hay como cuatro o cinco manantiales, sí, pienso que hay algunos que vinieron con sus padres todavía. Sí, hay algunos como” Asentino Pérez (Don Felipe, Benito Juárez). 5 Interview conducted by the author in September 2015. 6 “Pagaban baratísimo, ahí de 1.50, empezó con 75 centavos, así empezó la comunidad. Había una tienda en Tapijulapa, ahí íbamos todos a vender, llamada Zenón Vázquez, era quien tenía la bodega.

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When people came, they started to plant coffee, it’s what they knew how to do. In the 1960s the peasant had the strong hand because it was worth money, all the peasants were planting coffee, because life demanded it there, that’s where the money was, that’s where everything was (Gustavo López, Nuevo Madero).7

Everyone who was interviewed agreed that the people made a good living with coffee production. It enabled them to have income; they no longer had to go to Tapijulapa to sell it. They also planted maize, rice, and beans, for auto-consumption, and sometimes they could sell it as well. They did not need to look for work outside the municipality. The land gave them everything they needed. In the 1940s some were able to receive lands in the ejido of Oxolotán, which was composed of 400 ejido members. Apparently, others were able to join other nearby ejidos. The lands were community property, until population growth forced each family to appropriate their own lands. In 2009 the Comisión para la Regularización de la Tenencia de la Tierra (CORETT; Land Tenure Regularization Commission) parceled out lands and gave out property deeds. The prior modification of Article 27 by President Salinas de Gortari put an end to the redistribution of agrarian lands and constitutionally permitted the sale of these lands. In Madero today, landholders have up to 20 hectares (49 acres) and those that have the least possess 2–3 ha (about 5–7 acres). However, the wellbeing of the population in those decades was cut short after the volcanic eruptions of Chichonal (in northwestern Chiapas) in March and April 1982, which left a 40- to 50-cm (15–19 in.) layer of ash covering their lands. All the vegetation was burned and the coffee plantations and crops were lost: In this [entire] zone of Tacotalpa the ash reached over here at La Raya [near the border], in Chiapas, in Guatemala. Because the volcano Chichonal spewed this straight toward where the sun comes out, it spewed it there. It hardly reached the part of Villahermosa because it wasn’t over there, but it was over here. Teapa, Pichucalco, from here all this part of Chiapas, Sabanilla, Tila, everywhere. It’s what messed everything up (Gustavo López. Nuevo Madero).8

The inhabitants had to wait for the soil to absorb the ash and for water courses to gradually take it away. It forced the men to look for work in Villahermosa as construction site helpers and or at jobs that required less experience, and therefore lower pay. Although some people claim that in the end the ash served as a fertilizer and enriched the land, nothing was ever the same. It took ten years for the land to start producing again. The people replanted coffee, but coffee rust struck, destroying crops; cacao was felled by the “black rot” (black pod); and maize, by the cornstalk borer. Some preferred to clear the coffee and cacao to introduce livestock, but La gente sembraba de 3 a 5 ha. Todos trabajaban en familia, hombres, mujeres y niños. Además, se daba de todo: maíz, frijol, también se sembraba mucho arroz” (Don Juan, Primera Sección). 7 “Cuando llegó la gente empezó a sembrar café, es lo que sabía hacer. Ya en la década de 1960 era la mano fuerte del campesino porque tenía precio, todos los campesinos sembraban café, porque ahí demandaba la vida, ahí estaba el dinero, ahí estaba todo” (Gustavo López, Nuevo Madero). 8 “En [toda] esta zona de Tacotalpa pa’ca la Raya, pa’ Chiapas, pa’ Guatemala llegó la ceniza. Porque el volcán Chichonal tiró esto recto hacia donde sale el sol, ahí tiró. La parte de Villahermosa no llegó casi, porque no fue pa’ allá sino fue pa’acá. Teapa, Pichucalco, de aquí toda esta parte de Chiapas, Sabanilla, Tila, todo. Es lo que le dio en la torre a todo” (Gustavo López. Nuevo Madero).

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that was also unsuccessful. Then they planted maize, bananas, and beans. That futile quest coincided with the reduction of economic support on the part of the authorities. Without their awareness, they were entering a neoliberal stage and the eruption of Chichonal represented the start of that change for the population. Among the things that came to an end was “ganar mano” (lending a hand to others in the community in sowing or harvesting) and it became necessary to pay workers for helping in the field. Government support for the countryside was declining; the last governor who offered support with equipment for cattle raising and in maize production per hectare was Roberto Madrazo (1995–1999). No thought was ever given to following up the commercialization of farm products, which since they arrived in Tabasco there was always an intermediary in their sale. Despite the efforts of the Instituto Mexicano del Café (INMECAFÉ; Mexican Coffee Institute) in the region, plantation owners, intermediaries, and traffickers got rich at the cost of small-landowner coffee producers until the eruption of Chichonal put an end to this stage. These were the circumstances in 2007, when around 120 families were living on two hills that represented the center of the settlement in Madero Primera Sección. The Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil (SNPC; National Civil Protection System) does not take into account how social organization—by exploiting people and nature in different ways—has promted social inequality, particularly for the Indigenous population, wich lives a precarious day-to-day existence with no opportunity to prepare for natural threats in advance. Although social vulnerability is a social condition in the face of threats, usually potentially dangerous natural phenomena, their social vulnerability is based on the forms of socioeconomic organization that prevent them from adequately responding to this type of threat. Be that as it may, the greatest threat to a vulnerable population is not natural phenomena, but rather to the very social basis that prevents it from having access to justice and sufficient resources for a decent life, as discussed by Bolin and Kurtz (2018) and Wisner (2001). In other words, conditions of poverty, ideological positions justifying their poverty and social inequality, as well as capitalist economic and more recently neoliberal policies prevent part of the population from having any real possibilities of confronting a disaster. In addition, the government’s ineffective forms of attention do not substantially help the population; they are limited to one-time charitable acts, such as giving out food parcels and blankets, as well as fixing some dwellings, or but it would be difficult to actually improve the quality of life of the people with these acts. In the best of cases it might mitigate poverty but maintain their condition of social vulnerability to disasters, as if nothing different could be expected. However, it is a matter of human rights that it is essential to attend to, a matter of humanitarianism, as described by Donini (2008).

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7.5 The Disaster in Tacotalpa The year 2007 was especially disastrous for the state of Tabasco. At that time it was believed that advances had been made in civil protection and four hydraulic plans: one under the Comisión del Río Grijalva (1951–1987) and others that have focused on protecting Villahermosa, the state capital; and in 1995 with the impact of hurricanes Opal and Roxanne and the disasters of 1999, three plans were created to contain floods: the Proyecto Integral de Control de Inundaciones (PICI; The Integral Flood Control Project) in 2003–2006; the Plan Hídrico Integral de Tabasco (PHIT; Tabasco Integral Hydric Plan) in 2007–2012; and the Proyecto Hidrológico de Tabasco (PROHTAB; Tabasco Hydrological Project) of 2013–2018 (Vera and Martínez 2017). However, the proposals were only on paper, for in practice it has been difficult to control and protect one of the foremost river basins in the country from continuous deterioration, visible since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as a result of capitalist extractive practices and new exploitation under neoliberalism in recent decades. This series of processes and the introduction of ideological and economic policies applied to the region have reconfigured a space for different types of social vulnerability. However, the recognition of this social vulnerability has been only partial, solely attempting to offer mitigation measures through hydraulic plans that, as a result of corruption, have not carried out all the work, nor have they instrumented the required control measurements. The year 2007 will be remembered for one of the disasters producing with the most economic losses in Mexico, because they primarily affected the petroleum industry. Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco, suffered some of the worst damage in its history. However, it was not alone; the damages also affected the state’s seventeen municipalities. At the same time, it is important to point out that Tabasco is one of the states with a recurrent history of disasters associated with hydrometeorological phenomena from its geographic characteristics as part of the Grijalva-Usumacinta basin floodplains. Tabasco is part of the Grijalva-Usumacinta hydrological system, which encompasses the states of Chiapas, Campeche, and Oaxaca, as well as part of Guatemala. One of the characteristics of the Grijalva-Usumacinta basin is that it slopes slightly, especially toward the south. Tabasco is part of the coastal plain, which stands out for having the highest runoff volume in all of Mexico. The entire state is a floodplain. Average annual runoff reaches 115,000 mm3 (7 in.3 ), which represents 30% of the average runoff of the entire country. As a consequence of the rains that fell during September and October 2007 and the intense precipitation between October 22 and 29, it is estimated that at the highest point of the precipitation, 62% of the state was covered with water, which affected around 1500 settlements (90% of which were rural). It was calculated that there were 1.5 million disaster victims, in other words, 75% of the state’s population. In total, the damages and losses caused by the disaster rose to 31.8 billion pesos, equivalent to slightly more than 3.1 billion dollars. Based on the GDP estimates of the Ministry of Economic Planning for 2007 of almost 108,737 billion pesos, the impact of the disaster represented 29.31% of the federal

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GDP that year. The most serious damage was recorded in productive sectors (farming, livestock, aquaculture, forestry, commerce, manufacturing industry, services, and tourism.), with 61.05% of the total effects influenced by the massive losses in the agricultural sector and in commerce. In the category of Infrastructure (highways, ports, energy, water and sanitation, hydraulic works), the damages were on the order of 17.83%. The social sectors considered in the whole (housing, health, education, and culture) occupied second place with a total of 5.97 billion pesos (18.74% of the total). Within this group, housing was the category that alone accumulated the highest losses: 2.54 billion pesos due to the floods and effects to a greater or lesser degree on more than 123 thousand dwellings (SEGOB et al. 2008). In the case of Tacotalpa, damages have historically affected three cities: Tacotalpa, Oxolotán, and Tapijulapa, although mudslides have occurred in the mountainous regions. However, Madero Primera Sección presented a different phenomenon, so efforts sought to relocate the entire community, although half of the population waived their right to participate (see Fig. 7.1). Atmospheric moisture enters from two zones of instability, with the probability of becoming tropical storms over the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which provoke strong storms in Oaxaca and Chiapas, with intervals of heavy showers in Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo, among other places. The Primera Sección de Madero is composed of two hills, the safer of which is where the first families settled, and as the number of inhabitants grew, the second hill was populated, although in the community it is referred to as: “a hill full of water,” “full of rubble”; the inhabitants say: “a water source springs from it,” “it is a stream that comes from within.” That second hill experienced collapsing some thirty years ago, according to the recollections of Gustavo López, who was then a community representative of Nuevo Madero, who noted that perhaps many people in his community did not notice it because at that time it was only sparsely populated and had extensive plant coverage with coffee plants and many fruit trees. He was barely an adolescent, but he realized: “beneath that hill there is a lot of water and there is a lot of rubble within,” but it is not only in the hill, he could see at that time it was also the case nearby and in the coffee fields. However, there were never any problems on the first hill: Well, yes. So there was a settlement, and we thought it [was] normal, there where there was a crack, there we built houses and over the years so I built a house and many others too because that was really our community, that was our town and we didn’t have any option to leave, because we needed to live, but over time, it happened again . . . And it is that, there in Madero Primera, it could not take long for the floors, they cracked, they broke (Gustavo López).9

9 “Pues

sí. Así fue que hubo un asentamiento y nosotros pensamos que eso [era] normal, ahí en donde hubo una grieta, ahí plantamos casas a la vuelta de los años a reconocer […] yo planté casa y muchos plantaron porque realmente ahí es nuestra comunidad, ahí es nuestro pueblo y no teníamos opción de salir de ahí, porqué tenemos que vivir, pero a la vuelta de esos tiempos vuelve a suceder… Y es que, por allá en Madero Primera, de por si los pisos no pueden tardar, se bretan, se quiebran” (Gustavo López).

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On October 27, 2007, it started to rain from 5:00 or 6:00 in the afternoon; it was a downpour that did not stop until October 29. But on the 28th, during the night, the houses slowly began to sink, the walls and floors began to crack, little by little, and in the morning of the 29th the houses had cracked walls and had sunk about half a meter, but the technical high school had sunk completely, although it had been inaugurated only a short time before. Thirty years prior, about fifteen families lived on this hill; by 2007 there were close to sixty. The damage occurred on the highway and on that hill alone, so the local people claim it was not a mudslide, but rather a cave-in: “The houses that had cement floors were cracked, the earth opened, in some places it opened 20 cm.”10 A ditch opened that they have been filling. The walls of the dwellings that were near the highway beyond the health center collapsed. This section of the highway was also broken apart. The municipality of Tacotalpa is part of the Sierra region and the area is composed of 14% mountainous zones, 44% semi-flat zones, and 42% flat zones (Coutiño 1988:126). The region under discussion is in the mountainous part, south of Tacotalpa (see Fig. 7.2). The municipality is composed of sedimentary and limestone rocks from the Upper Cretaceous and the Oligocene, and detritus (lutite and sandstone) from the Tertiary (the lutites are composed of clays, while the sandstones are sand, both compacted). The sierra is a zone of steep gradients on sedimentary slopes (lutite-sandstone and limestone), metamorphic (granodiorite), and volcanic (andesite) rock. It forms part of the orogenesis of the Sierra Norte de Chiapas that is characterized by a multitude of folds and faults. It has numerous relatively wide, fast-flowing rivers that often take advantage of the presence of tectonic faults and fractures that weaken the rock in the contact zones. In fact, all the structurally weak rocks form zones of potential erosion, where there are streams or rivers of greater or lesser importance (Romero 2011: 11–16). As engineer Moyo of the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI; National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples) stated in an interview conducted in Villahermosa: “a characteristic in some parts of the Tacotalpa Sierra is that when the plant cover is removed and it rains, the zones with a steep slope, with an apparently hard surface, become like gelatin and they will automatically slide down.”11 Technically, what occurred is that the excess rain that fell was absorbed and as a result of the characteristics of the hill, it might have produced a process of liquefaction, which had already occurred in the past, according to the recollections of some individuals. Although the phenomenon is not frequent, it has been identified, along with the nearby fault.

10 “Las

casas que tenían piso de cemento quedaron bretadas, se abrió la tierra, en algunos lugares se abrió 20 centímetros.” 11 “Una característica en algunas partes de la sierra de Tacotalpa es que cuando se le quita la cubierta vegetal y llueve, las zonas de pendiente, con una superficie aparentemente dura, se pondrán como gelatina y automáticamente se vendrán para abajo.”

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Fig. 7.4 Location of Francisco I. Madero Primera Sección and its relocation in Nuevo Madero. Prepared by Martín Eduardo Morales Espinosa

Based on the local scale and reflections offered by Gerardo Arrieta,12 of the Geophysics Institute of the UNAM (National University), the local geology is formed by sedimentary rocks from the Eocene, composed of sandstone, siltstone, and lutite. In Madero Primera Sección an intermittent water current originates that coincides in general with the contour of a fault (NW45°) that divides the town into two sectors. The SW sector has a hill that reaches an elevation of 400 m (1312 ft.), while the NE sector has in that same direction a topographic maximum of 560 m (1837 ft.) until it reaches a watershed toward NW20°. Arrieta observed that the settlement of Madero is in a drainage zone of the Sierra bed by the two hillsides. The ridge toward the NE is much higher and has a much larger catchment zone than the SW side. An additional element that might contribute to greater danger is that there are various cultivated areas toward the NE of the settlement (see Figs. 7.3, 7.4), which might 12 I

would like to thank Gerardo Arrieta García (M.S.) of the Laboratorio Universitario de Geoquímica Isotópica del Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM (University Isotopic Geochemistry Laboratory of the Institute of Geophysics of the National University) for his generous support in this chapter, his reflections, and for preparing a map visualizing the influence of geoforms on hazards related to hydrometeorological phenomena based on drainage and the rock type that influence a certain type of physical instability of the surroundings of the community of Francisco I. Madero Primera Sección. I am grateful for his ideas on this matter, as well as the map reproduced here for a clearer understanding of what took place in October 2007. Personal communication.

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mean a larger surface area where the water cannot be retained by the vegetation. This could have a direct impact on the volume of water that is directly discharged to Madero Primera Sección. Finally, with respect to the cave-ins and sinking that have taken place historically in the location, it is possible that they were related to an important amount of water discharged on the hillsides toward the drainage system, part of which comes from the same spring in the first hill, which is the one that has experienced two cave-ins in the time of the population’s memory, hence a resulting process of liquefaction is a possibility. The cave-in of various dwellings led the population to inform municipal authorities. Days later, State Civil Protection officials arrived and the people say the officials conducted studies only at the entrance, where the so-called “water hill” is located and the decision was made that the entire population had to be evacuated. On November 15, policemen and soldiers arrived to take the people to the Casa de Cultura (Culture House) that served as a shelter in Oxolotán. Not everyone wanted to leave; some families stayed, especially those who lived on the first hill. Some families hid to avoid being taken away; others went with their families, 60 families of around 120 went to the shelter, some returned in a few days, because they felt uncomfortable sharing space in a common area. Although some families stayed in the Oxolotán shelter, thirteen families were visited by their pastor, who invited them to stay in the Mesopotamia church, located in Tapijulapa. Both shelters stayed open for two months. Differences of opinion divided the community of Madero Primera Sección; they became exacerbated when they received the news that the entire community would be relocated. The community was split into two: those in favor of the relocation and those opposed. When a group of the victims found out that president Felipe Calderón would visit some communities in Tacotalpa and shelters in northern Chiapas, they took advantage of the opportunity to hand him a letter requesting their relocation on November 10, 2007, as the president was traveling with the governors of Tabasco and Chiapas, Andrés Granier and Juan Sabines, to review the crop losses, damages, and chronic poverty of the population.

7.6 Negotiating the Relocation in Nuevo Madero, Tacotalpa The most well-known disaster relocations in Tabasco are those carried out on the periphery of the city of Villahermosa, on the Villahermosa-Teapa highway, with population from the state capital. The first “Gracias México” housing division, with 448 dwellings was turned over in August 2008; the “27 de octubre” division, with 883 dwellings at the end of 2009; and a later presentation was “Ciudad Bicentenario,” with 1338 dwellings. The resources used for their construction came from the Fideicomiso Fondo de Desastres Naturales (Fonden; Natural Disasters Trust Fund) and the private initiative; Sedesol was still in charge of the process (Hernández 2011). The relocation presented here departs from established canons, although the three orders of government, the private initiative, and an NGO intervened in the construction of the prefabricated temporary disaster relief housing. However, the

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final construction of the housing was left in the hands of the municipal government. It was not possible to trace the entire management process of this relocation because it went from November 2007, when people left their dwellings, to December 2016, when drinking water finally reached their homes. Its management was carried out spanning four municipal governments and two state governments. The following discussion is based on interviews conducted with the population of Madero Primera Sección, Nuevo Madero, public officials from the municipal government of 2014– 2016, and public officials of the CDI in Villahermosa, in addition to a review of government documents. For the present discussion, we will concentrate on the experiences and reflections of the relocated population and some of the foremost actions taken by the authorities and NGO, which are presented in Table 9.1. This type of relocation displayed a lack of clear guidelines that have not been adequately studied, therefore, it offers an opportunity to evaluate this modality, and above all, to assess the consequences for the population. In the relocations organized by Sedesol as part of the Programa Emergente de Vivienda-Reubicación (Relocation-Temporary Housing Disaster Relief Program), generally families that lost their homes were taken to shelters, where they remained until the emergency phase was over. Later, a housing division was built for their relocation. These works could take more than two or three years. On average, the housing lots varied between 90 m2 (about 969 ft.2 ) to 300 m2 (about 3229 ft.2 ), while the size of dwellings were on average 22 m2 (almost 237 ft.2 ), with space divided into living-dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. A basic dwelling unit was turned over to families, with the idea that they could expand it in the future. The relocated population repeatedly complained that the dwellings were extremely small, the construction material was low quality, and often they were built on the peripheries, sometimes far from other settlements (Vera 2014). Nevertheless, the houses have had a longer use life than those built by the NGO Un Techo para mi País. That same dynamic occurred in Central America with the disaster resulting from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 (Barrios 2009). As seen in Table 7.1, the Nuevo Madero relocations were novel in that they were built by an NGO, in this case by Un Techo para mi País of Chile. Unfortunately, many parts of the relocation management process remain unknown. Although we know the decision and purchase of the land were carried out by the municipal president of the Tacotalpa municipal government, we do not know what agency decided the plot size of 200 m2 (almost 2153 ft.2 ) and the dwelling size of 12 m2 (about 129 ft.2 ), based on a program of prefabricated wood housing. We also know that Un Techo para mi País was responsible for carrying out the construction of the housing with the help of students from different countries and that much of the equipment used in the work was requested by the students from the Universidad Intercultural of the state of Tabasco, Tacotalpa branch. The characteristic of these dwellings might also have been part of their proposal, with the openings in walls for the population to later add two windows and a door. The relocated population was never asked about their customs and traditions for housing construction, which consisted of a single room, without divisions into separate rooms. In the media and in interviews conducted with Nuevo Madero inhabitants, they were told that the housing was permanent, but

Event Oxolotán Casa de Cultura Shelter, coordinated by the National Defense Ministry (Sedena), implementing the DNII-E Plan Tabasco governor Andrés Granier, presented the project to help the Madero victims of the Tacotalpa disaster

Selection of land for relocation by the Municipal President’s Office of Tacotalpa, Tabasco

Date

November 15, 2007 to February 1, 2008

January 24, 2008

January 2008

Table 7.1 Management of the Nuevo Madero relocation Action

(continued)

The municipal president asked the people where they would like to live. The population selected a higher place a kilometer away from Madero Primera Sección, because it was closer to their fields. However, the president bought land near the Oxolotán River that had been grazing land, near the community of Caridad Guerrero, on the other side of the Oxolotán bridge. The land measured 20 ha (about 49.5 acres). Apparently, no risk assessment was undertaken, for the community was relocated near a River that had already produced major flooding in the past

Through the Chilean NGO Un Techo para mi País (represented by Victoria Blanc and Luis Ortíz Gross, commercial directors), 1000 temporary disaster relief dwellings would be built with the support of the state government and different Mexican and international companies. The first group of 150 dwellings was financed by the state government with 1 million 240 thousand pesos; the companies Servicios Petroleros Remora de Noruega (Remora Petroleum Services of Norway) with 1 million pesos, along with Scotiabank and Accor Services Luis Vázquez Mota, the owner of paint conglomerate Comex, contributed half a million pesos in the form of 304 gallons of vinyl paint and 150 gallons of sealant to the dwellings The support would be focused on families that lost their homes in the flooding The first 150 dwellings would be distributed in the Miguel Hidalgo and Asunción Castellanos neighborhoods, in the Centro municipality and in the Raya de Zaragoza and Nuevo Madero neighborhoods in Tacotalpa, they would officially measure 18 m2 (almost 194 ft.2 ) For the construction of prefabricated wood housing, the NGO had the support of 250 university students from nine countries: Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, and Costa Rica Present at the meeting were Pedro Palomeque, municipal president of Tacotalpa; Héctor López Peralta from SAOP (Ministry of Settlements and Public Works); Arturo Esteban Abreu Ayala general coordinator of Apoyo al Desarrollo Municipal (CADEM; Municipal Development Support Coordinator’s Office), and participating university rectors (Reliefweb 2008, February 1 and June 24; Coordinación General de Apoyo al Gobierno Municipal [CADEM] 2008)

Given the loss of housing in the Tacotalpa municipality, a Shelter was opened and run by the military, which served canned food. The people in the Shelter were dissatisfied with the arrangement, so it was agreed that families would receive food boxes to prepare their own food. At the beginning it housed 60 families, roughly 300 people

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Event Preparation of the land for the construction of dwellings The NGO Un Techo para mi País, with the help of student volunteers and Héctor Peralta of SAOP were present at the site Dwellings officially turned over by the SAOP

Relocation

The inhabitants’ opinion of houses made of wood

Request for basic services: water, electricity, and sewage Request of the Nuevo Madero representative to the municipal president of Tacotalpa, Ulises Solís García

Date

January 2008

January 27–February 1, 2008

February 1, 2008

February 2, 2008

2008

2008

2009, 2010, 2011

Table 7.1 (continued) Action

(continued)

The Nuevo Madero representative tried to request new housing from the municipal government of Tacotalpa, but the authorities responded it would not be possible because the people had already been given a dwelling, so they would have to request home improvements

The same year that the dwellings were turned over, the Nuevo Madero community representative began to request basic services from municipal authorities. Electricity was installed in 2009, but it did not work until 2012

The material used for the housing, the design, and height did not correspond to local climate conditions. The dwellings were uncomfortable in the heat, it was not possible to walk barefoot, because the wood floor got very hot and burned the people’s feet. Also, the houses were very small and had a low ceiling. You could not stay indoors in the warm season, not even to sleep. Therefore, families improvised at the entrance to the dwelling with pieces of plastic or sheet metal. It was better to sleep outdoors in the corridor. They did not have electricity, running water, or sewage. They bathed and washed clothing in the stream or River and they improvised a bathroom outside the dwelling

The population was taken to the new settlement and the NGO organized a welcome gathering. During our 2015 fieldwork in Nuevo Madero, we observed the size of the lots is 10 by 20 m or 200 m2 (almost 32 by 65.5 ft. or almost 2153 ft.2 ). The small number of wood dwellings still standing in 2015 measured 12 m2 (129 sq. ft.) and had a height of 1.80 m (almost 6 ft.). The homes were turned over without doors and windows, which the inhabitants added later. The bathroom was built apart from the dwelling on the same lot

The head of the SAOP turned over 85 dwellings built by Un Techo para mi País in Nuevo Madero and Raya de Zaragoza; he stated he would personally supervise the installation of electricity, water, and drainage (Reliefweb 2008) On March 10 in the Boletín de Prensa, Tabasco (2008), Governor Granier declared that there had been 66 dwellings for Nuevo Madero. (The actual number of dwellings is unclear, ranging between 60 and 66. However, the number declined with time)

Erection of prefabricated houses. The men from the community came to the settlement that they decided to call Nuevo Madero. Their job was to seal the wood, with the material donated by Comex. It was decided that these dwellings, unlike the others, would be raised 20–30 cm (about 8–12 in.) to avoid possible flooding. According to the inhabitants, 60 homes were built

Before construction, the land was leveled and cleared of all trees, which triggered controversy, because it removed all possible shade for the housing. It is a zone of high temperatures, reaching a maximum of 40 °C (104 °F)

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Event The inhabitants’ adaptation of the housing Basic services: water treatment plant with 80% federal funding from the CDI and 20% from the Comisión Estatal de Agua y Saneamiento (CEAS; State Water and Sanitation Commission); CEAS was in charge of carrying out the installation

Basic services: electricity

Packet of material to build a cement block room

Adaptation of housing

Date

August 2010

2011

2012

2012

2012

Table 7.1 (continued) Action

(continued)

Families improvised, using plastic for roofing. Some were able to buy used sheet metal for roofing. They again improvised a corridor at the entrance to their house where some of them installed the kitchen. Given the heat, from the initial wood house, the population of Nuevo Madero adapted their dwelling with a corridor to create shade in front for greater freshness. Or they used wood from abandoned or unoccupied dwellings. Auto-construction was used

The municipal government gave the people materials to build a 6 by 7 m (about 20 by 23 ft.) cement block room, with no roof and no floor. Families received the materials: gravel, cement blocks, and cement. The packages were turned over little by little in the name of the heads of households, in installments with five or ten families receiving materials at a time. The contents of the packages did not arrive together, although everyone ultimately received all the contents. According to the census conducted by the municipal government, 37 permanent dwellings were built under this program. With this measure, many people abandoned their wood housing, which by this time was rotting

Electricity had been installed in 2009, as a result of the population’s demand after a wave of killings perpetrated by organized crime in Tacotalpa, which produced fear in the locals and they put pressure on the municipal authorities. Various families claim that electricity, streetlights, and a sewage system were not installed until 2012

A water treatment plant was built in Oxolotán that supplied water to five thousand inhabitants, including those of Nuevo Madero. The plant was built in 2011, but it did not reach the community, because they were the farthest away in the network, and the installation had diverse problems. CDI made a new investment to expand the Oxolotán water treatment plant and in this case the federal government, through the CDI covered 80% and the capacity paid for the remaining 20%. In 2014 another investment was made to reinforce the catchment of the water treatment plant to increase its pumping state by 40%, which made it more operative. In 2015 it should have been functioning, but this was not the case; it still presented problems for Nuevo Madero. In this case, CDI intervention was limited, because it signed an agreement with the state government and authority was transferred to CEAS, which conducted studies and hired the company that would carry out the work. CEAS was responsible for providing the water services. CDI was in charge of oversight to ensure completion of the work. Unfortunately, Nuevo Madero is the last town on the network. Although the water hookups were built in 2011, water did not begin to reach Nuevo Madero until December 2016 The people used water from the stream and River to bathe and to wash clothes. For drinking water, they bought 5-gallon water bottles

Some families built another larger house of wood. They bought used wood and sheet metal, while others took wood from their earlier home, reusing the wood from the prefabricated housing, although at the beginning the number of those who were able to construct was low

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Housing Improvement program. Municipality (Public Works)

Paved highway In 2014 a census to determine the number of kitchens was conducted with the Housing Improvement Program. The material was open to bidding and according to Tacotalpa public officials, the obligation of the party delivering the packages was also to build the room. However, this apparently did not happen Basic services, with the municipal president, Efraín Narváez Hernández The representative requested the asphalting of the streets in Nuevo Madero Settlement of Nuevo Madero

August–September 2014

2014

2015 Julio

December 2016

2016

2016

Prepared based on interviews conducted with the townspeople and government officials, and a review of official documents

Nuevo Madero had 41 dwellings, but occupation fluctuated because some houses were closed and vacant lots have been taken over by other families living there

Request for asphalting the streets

After various investments, running water services began to function. The community obtained the service after almost nine years

Forty-one packages of cement block for a 3 by 4 m (almost 10 by 14 ft.) kitchen were delivered: eight bundles of cement and gravel; although it did not seem to be enough. Various families used that material to expand their home through auto-construction. The packages arrived in the name of the heads of households, but they did not arrive at the same time, they arrived in groups of five or ten and in partial deliveries, although in the end, all families received the complete materials. The slowness in the arrival of the packages of materials prompted some clashes between families over appropriating resources that arrived

CDI was in charge of main roads, not secondary roads. The highway was paved, but not the road that branches off to Nuevo Madero

Forty-one packages of floor and roofing materials were delivered. The roof was Zintro aluminum zinc corrugated metal. The material was delivered in different packets. The number was determined based on a census conducted by the municipality’s Public Works office, which determined there were 41 dwellings

Housing Improvement program with The community representative requested cement floor and roofing material the new municipal government

2013

Action

Event

Date

Table 7.1 (continued)

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the wood constructions had a use life of only four years before the wood started to rot. Furthermore, much was made in the media that the wood was from Norway and highly resistant. The population interviewed repeated the same idea. We do not know the conditions surrounding the agreements made between the NGO and municipal and state authorities, but the consequences for the population were indeed more torturous and the process of adaptation and recovery slower than if they had been taken into consideration. Un Techo para mi País began in Chile in 1997 and it has continued to build dwellings, which are also referred to as “transitional” in different parts of Latin America. In Mexico this project began with 150 dwellings, including the 60 in Nuevo Madero, Tacotalpa. It continued in La Montaña region, Guerrero, after Hurricane Ingrid and Hurricane Manuel in 2013; and in the earthquakes in Oaxaca and in Mexico City in 2017. It has also been used, employing the same modality, in other disasters in the Americas. The NGO’s spokesperson, Victoria Blanc (2011), said that for an urban neighborhood in Uruguay, temporary disaster relief housing that they developed have the following characteristics: The first step is the construction, which consists of a prefabricated structure in a setting that has no bathroom. The aim is that the housing is the first step, a first hurdle that motivates them to overcome [difficulties], so that it has a use-life of some seven years. However, it continues being a help for those who live in the barrio (Blanc 2011).

The NGO expects poverty to be overcome through other means independent of disasters. Therefore, in 2013, Un Techo para mi País, changed its name and is now known as Techo. Today this organization operates in nineteen countries in Latin America, the United States, and England. For its work, close to 80% of its financing comes from the private initiative (www.techo.org). On July 20, 2018, Techo was honored with the Juscelino Kubitschek Visionaries award by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for earning fourth place among 613 NGOs that competed for the prize in the modality of Development, Transformative Projects in the Region (Inter-American Development Bank 2018). Today temporary disaster relief housing has become a recurrent topic in disaster mitigation, but it is unclear if the duration of housing will ultimately be for short, medium, or long-term, and how we should understand it. In the case of Tabasco the response was swift, and apparently while the permanent housing was built in a period of nine years, the people were able to live in varieties of shelters, in family housing, where they were later delivered packets of material for auto-construction. The affected population did not have to pay anything and the men in the community worked together with the student volunteers in the construction of housing, by applying sealant donated by Comex to the wood. However, later the inhabitants had to wait close to nine years to be able to have a dwelling more in line with their needs, through additions over time. It was based on a series of requests made by the community representative to the municipal center of Tacotalpa, four municipal governments during which the construction of these dwellings was finally completed in stages and without any overall direction. The first turning over of homes was carried out four years after the temporary wood housing with the delivery of materials for a basic

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6 by 7 m room (almost 20 by 23 ft.), without flooring or roofing, which they had to wait two more years to receive. That same year, the inhabitants were given the material for the construction of a 3 by 4 m room (about 10 by 13 ft.), intended to be used as the kitchen, but many families used it as an extension of their homes, in both cases from auto-construction. These almost nine years concluded with the successful operation of running water. The responsibility to help this group of victims fell on multiple municipal governments after the disaster that took place in October 2007. In the end, the situation of temporary disaster relief housing or transitory housing, as Un Techo para mi País called it, ended up passing the responsibility of attending to the needs of these families, who had to deal with their survival on a day-to-day basis, to future governments. The three orders of government intervened in the areas under their jurisdiction as institutions, but the duration was much longer and tortuous for the families who were relocated, in such a way that although a total of 60 dwellings were built by the NGO, initially they were not all occupied by the relocated people, because various families that could not adapt returned to Madero Primera Sección, to the same site where the sinking occurred or they simply left the municipality. The number of families fluctuated at this time; in 2010 some 35 families were recorded, while by the date when the interviews and survey were conducted, from June to September 2015, there were a total of 36, and in the years after the delivery of the packets of material, there were 41 families. Meanwhile, the population has had to deal with the fact that their relocation was carried in the absence of a risk assessment on the part of the municipal president’s office of the grazing land purchased for them. According to Conagua (National Water Commission) in a study conducted in 2015, Nuevo Madero was regarded as a rural locality with 164 inhabitants with a propensity for flooding, together with sixteen other localities in the municipality of Tacotalpa (González 2014). That fact did not go unnoticed by the inhabitants of Nuevo Madero who returned and who did not accept relocation. Since then, the Oxolotán River has flooded twice, although the waters have not yet reached Nuevo Madero. But imagine they relocate a person in a small wood room that is just a single room, for people who are used to living comfortably [albeit] humbly in their house. And they go to live there in a field and on the bank of the river. What you see is river beach, which is dangerous. The heat is very harsh. In heat and the rainy season, the river [level] rises. In the part over there and in the little house that was given to them, when the river level rises, I tell you, that wasn’t much, when it grows more, they won’t feel it. Everything and the house are going to go, and who knows where they’ll end up going. They left here supposedly because of that problem that came to the land. There it isn’t going to be [any] land, it’s going to be water. So they are worse off there (Don Juan, Madero Segunda Sección).13 13 “Pero

imagínese reubican a una persona en un cuartito de madera que es un solo cuarto na’ más así, que la gente está acostumbrada a vivir cómodamente pobremente en su casa. Y se van a vivir allá en un campo y en orilla del río. Lo que ves es playa del río, lo que es peligroso. El calor es durísimo. En calor y tiempo de creciente se sube el río. En la parte de allá y en la casita que les dieron, cuando crezca más el río le digo, eso fue poco, cuando crezca más, ni lo van a sentir. Se van a ir con todo y casa, y van quien sabe a dónde van a dar, Se fueron de aquí supuestamente por ese problema de que se vino la tierra. Allá no va a ser la tierra, va a ser el agua. Allá están peor” (Don Juan, Madero Segunda Sección).

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7.6.1 Benefits of Relocation According to the Population of Nuevo Madero The main benefit of this process for the population is their current location with respect to the highway; even though it meant having to move upland around 100 meters (328 ft.). In the earlier settlement they had to walk more than 30 min to find transportation to Tapijulapa or Oxolotán which runs every 15 min. By renting lands from residents of Caridad Guerrero they can plant bananas, beans, limes, malanga (taro), maize; sometimes it is possible for them to sell part of the crop.

7.6.2 Difficulties in the Relocation Faced by the Population of Nuevo Madero Un Techo para mi País constructed identical houses, a single room measuring 12 m2 (129 ft.2 ), with openings so the population could later add two windows and a door, but the size of families was never taken into consideration. The survey applied on August 29, 2015, to twenty families that were living in Nuevo Madero, yielded the following results: of 20 questionnaires applied to heads of family, 40% of the families were composed of one to four members; 55% of between five to eight members; 5% of between nine and 11 members. Thus, the families lived in overcrowded conditions in a wood dwelling, without separate rooms in which the climate characteristics of the place, the family composition, and their customs were not factored into the construction. For almost nine years, the entire community used water from the stream to bathe, wash clothing, in addition to clean the home. Drinking water was purchased in 5-gallon bottles. The few and scarce resources that arrived in packages from the municipalities provoked clashes among families, even though when the materials arrived, they were specifically addressed to the heads of households. The relocation triggered a marked division among those who decided to stay in Madero Primera Sección and those who agreed to be relocated. In this way, when some families did not adapt and decided to return to their former settlement, they were not easily accepted. Some families decided to leave the municipality. Various families who returned to their former homes did so because they had plots of land in Madero Primera Sección, but their rejection on the part of the old, longstanding inhabitants lasted for months. The people of Nuevo Madero who still have farmed plots have problems going to work in their fields every day as a result of the distance and the difficulty in taking care of their crops, because on occasions their cacao or other crops can be stolen. Given the distance of their fields, they rent lands from neighboring communities like Caridad Guerrero. They regularly plant maize, beans, and squash; some can even sell part of their harvest, although in some years, such as in 2010 they lost part of

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their crop from the excessive rains; or in 2015, as a consequence of a drought. The crisis has forced some ejido members to sell their lands in Madero Primera Sección. The population of Nuevo Madero is aware that the Oxolotán River can reach their homes. In the time they have spent living there, the river has overflowed its banks twice and the second time the water rose so high that it almost reached the settlement, and they were surrounded by water. Since the first years, they planted trees near their homes so they could eventually have shade to cool the place. They have tried to plant in nearby lands that were part of the outskirts of Nuevo Madero, but since it was a pastureland, the soil is very hard, making it difficult for crops to grow or else the plots are very small. The men have been forced to temporarily emigrate; fathers go to Villahermosa to work in construction and some sons have gone to the United States. However, the difficulty of finding work in Villahermosa given the ongoing crisis is growing; in the first place, as a result of the consequences of the disaster, and in the second, from the dismantling of Pemex (the national petroleum industry), which has led to the loss of thousands of jobs and the closing down of various services that were formerly part of the petroleum industry. Under these circumstances, it is better to plant crops for auto-consumption, as was the case in Madero Primera Sección. Those who do not have land seek work as day laborers in neighboring communities, but they find it difficult to be hired, because the people do not know them. There is growing distrust as a result of the rise in organized crime, lack of public safety, and increased violence. Madero Primera Sección has a health center with a full-time physician, who serves the other neighboring communities, but Nuevo Madero is not entitled to this service, because it requires a minimum population of 3000 inhabitants. Therefore, mobile health units visit communities five days a week. The medical work they perform is more curative than preventative, in other words, vaccination of children under the age of five, addressing childhood malnutrition, providing attention to pregnant women, and programs focusing on chronic degenerative problems such as hypertension and diabetes. To access these services, the people must belong to the Sedesol program known as Prospera. These medical units come from the municipal center of Tacotalpa. For this purpose, a health center was built in a wooden building, which is now in rundown condition. Finally, the weekly health visit in Nuevo Madero is not always regular. I would like to end this section by citing what Bolin and Stanford (1998:117) have mentioned; ethnicity in the case of Mexico and other parts of the world serves as a marker of social vulnerability, for it will define the degree of discrimination that is held against ethnic minorities and the rigidity of the ethnic barrier in their mobility. For this reason, populations in this status will have major differences in their capacity to obtain resources and to recover their losses in the face of disasters.

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7.7 Final Considerations Disasters and even relocations only spotlight the prevailing order, as well as the treatment and mistreatment of certain sectors of the population. In this sense, the relocation implemented in Tacotalpa, Tabasco, is one of the most pathetic that we have studied to date. The first part of this chapter described the few accomplishments made in relocations from dams; now it is necessary to adress disaster relocations and to demand more just treatment for relocated populations. Furthermore, there is a need for more case studies that shed light on how noliberalism has worsened variants in attention and how building temporary housing for disaster-striken populations unnecessarily prolongs their pain and suffering. The modality of temporary disaster relief housing is not a new concept in Mexico. This was the designation for housing that Sedesol implemented years earlier. The difference is that a basic housing unit was given to the population to continue building and that most have had a much longer use life, despite the poor quality of the building material. In the project temporary disaster relief housing implemented by Un Techo para mi País, the housing did not have a use life beyond four years, which left the relocated community in conditions of greater vulnerability, because the relocation took a final installation time of almost nine years, but the people were told that they would receive a permanent home. This relocation modality is the result of neoliberal practices, where the private initiative and the government decided to support an NGO, which without asking the population, or respecting its customs, decided how its inhabitants would live, that their housing would be temporary, in which the State was responsible for managing the final relocation, located in a new risk zone. This resulted in a much longer and complex negotiation process for the relocated population, amidst a national and state crisis, at a time when the energy reform was interested in the region south of Tacotalpa, northern Chiapas, at its intersection in Ciudad del Carmen, forming a triangle where petroleum is assumed to exist and that is part of the Mexican government’s sales rounds. The social vulnerability of Nuevo Madero is the result of the forms of socioeconomic and political organization that have exacerbated social inequality, together with ideological discrimination, and a lack of access to resources, including justice. Capitalist development extracted resources from the people’s surroundings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the neoliberal phase it eliminated the small amount of support that they were receiving as maize and bean producers for autoconsumption and a cacao program that was given to them by the government to distance them from their lands. They were relocated after a disaster that led to the cave-in of a hill after heavy rains. They were offered prefabricated temporary disaster relief housing that had a short use life and a high level of family overcrowding. The process of giving dwellings a longer use life remained the responsibility of different municipal governments and without a coordinated program, but rather with piecemeal housing improvements, when it should have been part of the program providing permanent housing. The final responsible had to be taken up again by the

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municipal government. In addition, the relocated families had to apply continuous pressure on the authorities to have their voices heard. They were forced to buy wood or used sheet metal as they waited for the municipal government to resolve pending problems. Furthermore, neoliberalism has led to reduced salaries and made it more difficult to find jobs, so that the most viable option, in the end, continues to be farming for auto-consumption. The increase in violence, lack of security, impunity and government corruption prevail; the former governor, Andrés Granier, is in prison for embezzlement, because he, like other officials on his team, took advantage of the 2007 disaster for personal profit, among other illicit processes. Corruption is ongoing and it typifies recent government administrations in the state of Tabasco. It has left the population mired in social, economic, and political insecurity. The hydraulic plans of recent decades were partially carried out, so that the risk conditions, stemming from corruption, represent a sort of abandonment; this is compounded by the so-called “culture of disaster” that produces another pretext to leave the population to its own devices. Consequently, social problems will probably be aggravated given a new neoliberal wave for petroleum extraction in the region; it will depend on the population, on all of us, and the State to put an end to this. Much will depend on the path chosen by the new government that took office in 2019, the role of academics, and the diverse social organizations committed to justice and human rights.

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Reliefweb from Government Mexico. (2008a). Entrega SAOP 85 viviendas emergentes en Tacotalpa [Press release]. Retrieved March 30, 2019, from https://reliefweb.int/report/mexico/m%C3%A9x ico-entrega-saop-85-viviendas-emergentes-en-tacotalpa. Reliefweb, from Government Mexico. (2008b). México: Proyectan construcción de mil viviendas para damnificados [Press release]. Retrieved March 30, 2019, from https://reliefweb.int/report/ mexico/m%C3%A9xico-proyectan-construcci%C3%B3n-de-mil-viviendas-para-damnificados. Reygadas, L. (2008). La apropiación: Destejiendo las redes de la desigualdad. Barcelona: Anthropos. Robinson, S. (1990). Resettlement policy in Mexico: context, contradictions, projects and possibilities [conference presentation]. Washington, D.C., United States: American Anthropological Association Task Force on Involuntary Resettlement. Robinson, S. (2000). Experience with dams and resettlement in Mexico. Prepared for Thematic Review 1.3: Displacement, resettlement, rehabilitation, reparation and development. The World Commission on Dams. Retrieved March 23, 2019, from http://www. dams.org/, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINVRES/214578-1112885441548/20480078/ ExperiencewDamsResettlementMexicoSoc202.pdf. Romero, D. (2011). Delimitación, características físicas y paisajes. In A. García & D. Romero (Coords.), Atlas geoturístico de la Sierra de Tabasco (pp. 11–32). Mexico City; Villahermosa: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Consejo de Ciencia y Tecnología del Estado de Tabasco. Ruz, M. H. (1994). Historia de los pueblos indígenas de México: Un rostro encubierto, Los indios del Tabasco colonial. Mexico City: CIESAS; INI. Sassen, S. (2015). Expulsiones: Brutalidad y complejidad en la economía global. Buenos Aires: Katz. Secretaría de Gobierno, Coordinación Nacional de Apoyo al Desarrollo Municipal (CADEM). (2008). Informe anual de actividades. Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://transparencia.tab asco.gob.mx/media/H9/35/126039607.pdf. Secretaría de Gobernación (SEGOB), Cenapred, CEPAL, Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco. (2008). Tabasco: Características e impacto socioeconómico de las inundaciones provocadas a finales de octubre y a comienzos de noviembre de 2007 por el frente frío número 4. SEGOB, Cenapred, CEPAL, Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://repositorio.cepal. org/handle/11362/25881. Secretaria de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos (SARH). (1988). Memoria de la Comisión del Río Grijalva. 1951–1987. Unpublished archival material from the Archivo Histórico del Agua. Scudder, T. (2005). The future of large dams: Dealing with social, environmental, institutional and political costs. Sterling, VA: Earthscan. Stavenhagen, R. (1988). Derecho indígena y derechos humanos en América Latina. Mexico City: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos; Colegio de México. Techo, NGO website. Retrieved June 30, 2019, from http://www.techo.org/techo/que-es-techo/. Tuan, Y. F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Tudela, F. (1989). La modernización forzada del trópico: El caso de Tabasco. Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Tudela, F. (1998). Los hijos tontos de la planeación: Los grandes planes en el trópico húmedo mexicano. In G. Garza (Ed.), Una década de planeación urbano-regional en México, 1978–1988 (pp. 427–448). Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Turner, J. K. (2007). México bárbaro. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa. Uribe, R. (2016). Tiempos y procesos en la constitución de un espacio regional: El caso de Tabasco. Mexico City: Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Vera, G. (2014). Historia, cultura y desastres en el Totonacapan: Construcción de la vulnerabilidad social. Mexico City: Conaculta.

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Vera, G. (2019). La Zona Metropolitana de Monterrey y las reubicaciones por desastres: Pasado y presente. Revista Estudios Latinoamericanos, 43, 79–98. Vera [Cortés], G., & Martínez, C. O. (2017). Vulnerabilidad social a desastres en Tabasco. Chile Revista Geográfica del Sur, 8(12), 1–14. Viqueira, J. P., & Ruz, M. H. (ed.). (2004). Chiapas: Los rumbos de otra historia. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios superiores en Antropología Social. Wisner, B. (2001). Capitalism and shifting spatial and social distribution of hazard and vulnerability. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, winter, 44–50. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlEmMgmt/2001/23.pdf.

Chapter 8

Human Relocations in Guerrero After the September 2013 Disaster Emergency: A Non-preventive Neoliberal Response Marisol Barrios-Yllan and Beatriz Adriana Méndez-Torres

8.1 Introduction Guerrero is a state that coexists annually with different natural phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and tropical cyclones among others. At the same time, it has a high poverty index and high level of marginalization. When these elements are brought together, we can consider the southern territory to be at risk of disasters. However, there is the premise that a probability of risk exists only if there are social vulnerability and some type of threat (Blaikie et al. 1996). This was evidenced after the passage of Tropical Storms Ingrid and Manuel in September 2013, when both phenomena were accelerators of serious losses in the Guerrero territory. The government’s disaster response was to implement measures set forth by the National Fund for Natural Disasters’ (FONDEN 2002) Rules of Operation established in 2002, on which the relocations studied in this work are based. Specifically, the relocation standards are found in Annex VII Housing Support, Sect. 8.3, of reconstruction, where four points are touched on: (1) minor damage repair, (2) partial damage repair, (3) housing reconstruction on the same site, and (4) relocations. Though these four items were presented in the state of Guerrero in September 2013, in this investigation we will focus on the last point regarding relocations.

M. Barrios-Yllan (B) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Posgrado en Geografía, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] B. A. Méndez-Torres Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_8

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It should be noted that the institution charged with executing FONDEN’s relocations and operating rules is SEDESOL (Secretary for Social Development), together with its SEDATU unit (Secretary for Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development). Seven years after the emergency, we can inquire about the viability of the relocation projects in Acapulco; relocations had already been implemented in this municipality following Hurricane Paulina in October 1997 (Villegas 2005). It is necessary to emphasize that, far from implementing preventive measures, the neoliberal project continued to promote tourism in areas not suitable for construction (Valenzuela 2008) which was conclusively demonstrated by Tropical Storm Manuel in September 2013, when, again, disaster response consisted of relocating more families. However, these relocations were no longer implemented only in the Acapulco region but also in different municipalities in the state of Guerrero, for which we will explore other cases of relocations carried out in the Central and La Montaña regions of Guerrero, to provide a broader picture of the process of non-disaster prevention. This type of study enables us to understand the situation of social vulnerability in which the Mexican State leaves victims following some types of emergency, which is a neoliberal strategy to obtain economic resources, whose way of “attending” to victims’ stems from the time those affected are left in abandonment or unfavorable situations. It can be said that they end up in worse conditions than they were prior to the emergency (Calderón 2001a; Macías 2002, 2008, 2009; Vera 2009; Hernández 2009; Méndez 2008; Barrios 2007). One of the main causes of increased deterioration of living conditions in relocations is that it does not seek to remedy root problems such as poverty, unemployment, socio-spatial exclusion, the protection of ecosystems, etc., that is, all the factors of social vulnerability experienced on a daily basis in the communities of peripheral countries such as Mexico. In this chapter, we will define the conceptual framework from which we inform our work. Subsequently, a review of the context of the emergency in Guerrero will be made, regarding the state’s annual meteorological conditions as a natural element its geography; specifically, we will refer to the event that occurred on September 15, 2013, known as Tropical Storm Manuel. Later, we will analyze the relocation projects implemented after said storm and their viability. Finally, we will present our final reflections.

8.2 Conceptual Theoretical Framework It is pertinent to indicate that our study on disaster relocations is related to the construction of social space. Therefore, we refer to what Henri Lefebvre defines in his work The Production of Space as “a production of social interactions that can be explained as successive stratified and tangled networks which, though always material in form, nevertheless have an existence beyond their materiality to be conceived, lived and perceived” (Lefebvre 2013). Social space becomes relevant in the analysis of disasters when considering the capitalist system as a producer of spaces of

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risk and vulnerability, derived from the social practices of commodification that are underscored in neoliberalism. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize that, when we discuss disasters in this article, we are referring to space–time social processes (Macías 2009), a product of unequal relations within the capitalist mode of production (Calderón 2001b), which generate conditions of risk and social vulnerability. By pointing out that disasters are a social process and not an event as natural disasters are often considered, we suggest that disaster is not sudden and unforeseen. It should be noted that, for the last 30 years, the study of disasters has been divided mainly into two visions. On the one hand, there is the traditional vision that analyzes natural disasters and focuses on the study and understanding of physical phenomena, as well as technical and engineering solutions, to address them. Their way of proceeding in an emergency is to exercise social control through military organizations and government agencies, which plays a decisive role in disaster response, under the discourse of safeguarding citizens’ lives during emergencies when, in practice, they only divert attention from the reproduction of businesses that generate risks and vulnerabilities. On the other hand, there is the alternative vision that places social relations as the origin of disasters at the center of research and focuses on studying and understanding the processes that foster vulnerability and risks of disaster, revealing State practices that promote the generation or perpetuation of risk conditions (Hewitt 1983) in the covert development of neoliberal capitalism (covert in the sense that it is not openly mentioned as an objective). The social power relations within the alternative vision, to which we subscribe in this work, have major repercussions in the generation of vulnerability and risks for a vast majority of the population. In other words, the role of decision-makers with a high impact range at different geographical scales, both in the public and private sectors, who choose to benefit a minority sector to the detriment of many. The affected sector of society, or the citizens that these decisions affect, is not considered a passive agent. However, in most cases, power relations and their social vulnerability usually condition and limit actions to mitigate and prevent emergencies or disasters from the formal structure of the State, and even on the local scale, since they are excluded due to the very structure of the system, in addition to the fact that the vulnerable population focuses its efforts on attending the emergencies of daily survival and covering the minimum needs for physical and social reproduction (food, shelter, employment, security, healthcare, etc.). It is important to emphasize that identifying the risks is essential to explaining disasters. For this reason, it is pertinent to clarify that risks are not a biophysical condition, but a social construction as they are the product of the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions of society that, when constructing a space, make it hazardous (Calderón 2001b), that is, hurricanes are not risks. Risks are socially and unequally constructed according to power dynamics and domination, so the risks of flooding or landslides, triggered by torrential rains of hurricanes, are built by the marginalization and poverty in which the population lives and poor public policies in all sectors, which is more visible in urban areas such as Acapulco (Valenzuela 2008;

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Méndez 2018). For some authors, extreme natural events are threats that trigger risks (Blaikie et al. 1996); however, they are only threats to the extent that there is a vulnerable social group. Therefore, within the study of risk, social vulnerability, a condition of susceptibility to harm and the ability to recover from it, is implicit (Blaikie et al. 1996). Social vulnerability is linked to the concept of poverty, but it is important not to consider the terms synonyms, although in the study of disaster vulnerability is a reflection of the deterioration of the population’s socio-economic conditions (Calderón 2001a). To analyze vulnerability. In addition to including poverty, it is important to consider the causes that generate social inequality, dispossession, misuse of land, overpopulation, low wages, and poor design of public policies, among other factors that make the population prone to disasters. Therefore, not all the vulnerable are poor, but all the poor are vulnerable (Blaikie et al. 1996), particularly when poverty conditions force them to cohabit with threats that they cannot confront. The social vulnerability of the population today is the result of a series of policies stemming from neoliberalism, as neoliberalism progressed geographically, the world population living in conditions of vulnerability and risk also increased. Regarding the issue of neoliberalism, we return to Harvey (2007), who points out that neoliberalism is a theory of political-economic practices that consists of not restricting the entrepreneurial development of individuals in a scenario shaped by the free market, private property, and freedom of trade within capitalism. Hence, the role of the State is essential to preserving the institutional framework conducive to the development of such political-economic practices, as well as that of creating a market where there is no State, so that finally the State that produced those conditions has little participation in the markets it created. The majority of the population is then removed from the economic benefits derived from the new markets, that is, only the minority that controls the capital makes a profit. The paradigm of the capitalist development model revolves around economic growth, where the processes of capital circulation and accumulation predominate in a hegemonic way at all times when providing and configuring the material, social, and intellectual bases for cohabitation, their capital is reproduced exponentially and cumulatively. It should be noted that this is achieved by dispossessing the bulk of the population of material, economic, intellectual, physical, cultural, and other goods, the exclusive accumulation of resources for a minority sector of the population. It is, in this sense, that the Mexican State’s practices of intervention to “reduce or mitigate” the disaster generate conditions of both risk and social risk since they do not restrict market development, but they do so to promote or perpetuate the population’s social vulnerability to disasters, for example, allowing the excessive exploitation of natural resources, promoting the business of consumer and predatory tourism, expanding the real estate market in flood zones, centralizing services in cities, and marginalizing sectors of the population, among many other causes, encourage the production of disasters rather than their prevention and mitigation. To deal with disaster (relocations), the State opens a branch of construction and leaves the lucrative business of building relocations in the hands of private investors and, as Harvey (2014) points out, once the market has been created, the State has little

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participation; hence, there is no regulation to guarantee that the relocation housing is decent, safe, risk-free, and situated close to the affected population’s original location. Relocation guarantees successful business only for the investing construction entrepreneurs since the highest profit margin is achieved by delivering low-quality housing materials, low wages to workers, design deficiencies, and locations unsuitable to relocated residents due to the acquisition of land or plots that does not have site-adequate land use to provide a decent and safe home for the victims, thereby deteriorating inhabitants’ quality of life.

8.3 Cyclones in Guerrero: Cyclones in a Context of Vulnerability and Risk The presence of tropical cyclones on the Guerrero coast is a “phenomenon” that occurs year after year between the months of May and November. These hydrometeorological events are of great benefit to the population since they provide rains that allow crops to grow, providing freshwater and nutrients to the continental zone through rivers and ocean currents while also benefiting marine fauna. However, in recent years in Mexico, it is common for news media to report on disastrous events associated with natural phenomena, relating cyclones to disaster, risk, and danger (Méndez 2014). The events associated with cyclones can be floods, river, lagoon, dam overflows, sea-level rise, landslides, and mudslides, among others. However, in these events, we cannot exclude the human factor and the history of the spatial conformation of territories and their relationship, over the years, with nature. How has this interaction between society and pre-existing nature been in the study spaces? To that end, it is essential to understand how the capitalist system has configured space, including social relations, over time. If we consider Guerrero’s high degree of poverty, as will be seen throughout this study, these disasters may be more intense. Furthermore, inhabitants’ vulnerability increases largely due to the history of dispossession and marginalization to which they have been exposed (Bartra 2000; Valenzuela 2008; Méndez 2018), which translates into a lack of opportunities to access resources, leading the population to inhabit highrisk areas where vulnerability is what truly exposes them to emergencies caused by natural events. The most representative cases in recent years have been (1) Hurricane Paulina in October 1997, which has left more havoc in the state of Guerrero with losses of over 80 billion pesos, more than 200 dead and 50,000 victims (National Center for Disaster Prevention, CENAPRED 2007) and (2) the emergency associated with Tropical Storm Manuel in September 2013, with losses that amounted to more than 38 billion pesos (CENAPRED 2013).1 1 It

should be noted that storm Manuel was accompanied by storm Ingrid, which affected the states near the Gulf of Mexico; however, in the particular case of Guerrero, storm Manuel was the one that

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The state of Guerrero has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates, as revealed by official figures from the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL 2010) which show that, before the disaster, 67% of the total population was living in poverty, 31% of which lived extreme poverty, and 23% of the state’s population was in vulnerable conditions due to social deprivation. In contrast, only 7% of the inhabitants of Guerrero presented neither poverty nor vulnerability (CONEVAL 2010). Acapulco, the state’s largest city, 405,499 inhabitants (51.6%) were living in conditions of poverty, of which 107,048 (16%) were in extreme poverty and 298,451 (38%) locals were in the moderate poverty range before the disaster (INEGI 2007). In relation to the region of La Montaña de Guerrero, CONEVAL reports in the Poverty Report and evaluation in the State of Guerrero (CONEVAL 2012), 1 year before the emergencies, that more than 75% of the population of the municipalities of this region, along with the Costa region, was living in poverty. The report points out that four of the five municipalities that surpassed a 92% poverty rate are located in the La Montaña region: 93% of Atlixtac’s population, equivalent to 22,670 people; 95.9% of the population of Cochoapa El Grande, equivalent to 14,431 people, 94.7% of Metlatonoc, equivalent to 14,452 people; and 92.6% of Tlalixtaquilla, equivalent to 7,138 people. It should be noted that the five poorest municipalities in Guerrero, which in addition to the four already mentioned include the municipality of José Joaquín Herrera in the Centro region, have predominantly indigenous populations. Among the study areas of the present investigation, the La Montaña region concentrates the greatest diversity of indigenous groups including Mixtecos, Amuzgos, and Tlapanecos. Blaikie et al. (1996) mentioned that, if vulnerability and a natural or technological threat exist, we have a territory at risk. Guerrero is exposed to potential risks year after year due to, on the one hand, the presence of natural events (cyclones), which can trigger emergencies due to floods, landslides, rains, strong winds, overflowing rivers and lakes, sea background, etc. On the other hand, and with greater weight, to the state’s social vulnerability, as backed by the aforementioned figures and by various social studies that attest to the marginalization, exclusion, and violence that have prevailed (Bartra 2000; Valenzuela 2008; Bonleux 2017). If tourism (which has generated arbitrary appropriation of space, as well as dispossession of peasants and fishermen) that has had an impact on the territory in recent decades is added to all of the above, the risk of disaster from tropical cyclones increases, not because of the natural event itself, but social factors lead to territories of risk. An example of this appropriation of space is the specific case of Acapulco that, for decades, has generated uneven development, marginalization, and exclusion. Despite this, in the last thirty years, neoliberal policies have continued to grab up space for the benefit of real estate and tourism companies, through changes in land use; for example, wetland areas have been transformed into residential areas, which turns space into geography at risk of environmental impacts (Méndez 2018). had the greatest impact in the Mexican Pacific area. Although both storms occurred simultaneously, for the present work, we will focus more on talking about Manuel’s impacts.

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Another example of the generation of risk due to land use change in the state of Guerrero is represented by the megaprojects for open-pit mines in the La Montaña region, although the projects are halted due to opposition of citizens to mining exploration and exploitation in their territories, as the change in land use would mean a predicted disaster situation; since the open-pit mining industry implies the destruction of all the morphology of the site due to the type of extraction that involves the disappearance of the pre-existing landscape as well as cyanide contamination of all the remaining material and discarded by the iron and steel industry, condemning all the components of said territory to death by environmental destruction that this economic activity implies.

8.3.1 Tropical Storm Manuel, September 2013 With the social background of a highly marginalized state, it is not uncommon for a natural event to cause damage at any time, and not because of the phenomenon itself but because of the prior conditions of social vulnerability that were generated and the risks derived from corruption, the promotion of consumer tourism, the misuse, and appropriation of nature to give priority to land commercialization, as well as the segregation of sectors and regions of the population. Deficient emergency alert systems and authorities’ poor response resulted in a flood emergency, river overflow and landslides that evidenced the disaster in Guerrero. Manuel was still a tropical storm when it made landfall on September 15, 2013; however, the flood threat intensified with the combination of the Tropical Storm Ingrid that formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Both storms naturally precipitated onto Mexican territory, but the resulting rainfall in Guerrero was mostly from Tropical Storm Manuel, and its abundance in vulnerable spaces resulted in floods, river overflows, and landslides that swept the territories. Rainfall in vulnerable and risky territory caused heavy damage concentrated in the Centro, La Costa, and La Montaña regions and in the eastern area of Acapulco. The latter had had recent changes in land use, which revealed that the tropical storm itself was not the main cause of the disaster, but the arbitrary decisions that led to the appropriation of said wetland areas for real estate construction. (Méndez 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018). Rains in the La Costa and La Montaña regions reached places that have not only remained on the periphery of the economic development of the state and the country itself but have been marginalized from any type of centrality, which keeps them in a state of poverty. On September 13th, the United States and CONAGUA (National Water Commission) issued a cyclone alert, but it was not until the emergency arose on September 15 that the director of Federal Civil Protection, Sergio Puente, began to take action (MVS 2013). It is possible that the alert was ignored because Mexican Independence is celebrated on September 15, and September 16 is a national holiday that brings tourism,

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Acapulco’s main source of income, to beaches and ports. In fact, that day in Acapulco, Guerrero’s largest city, 40,000 tourists were reported to have been stranded following the emergency (SinEmbargo 2013). Meanwhile, the head of Civil Protection was in Las Vegas, U.S.A., so the meteorological service’s warning could not be authorized in advance (SDP Noticias 2013). The disaster could have been mitigated in Acapulco because the alert would have warned and stopped the flow of tourists into the city. The emergency ended in a catastrophe that affected more than 59 of Guerrero’s 81 municipalities, with 22, 000 homes destroyed, 33 roads damaged, 927 shelters opened across the country, 101 dead, and 68 missing (La Jornada 2013). CENAPRED (2013) reported a figure of 22, 983 million pesos in economic losses for the state of Guerrero. Although two-thirds of Mexican territory were impacted by Tropical Storms Ingrid and Manuel, two-thirds of Guerrero, one of the Mexican Republic’s poorest and most marginalized states, suffered damages, making it one of the hardest hit states. The actions that were taken as a result of the emergency were the relocation of victims, temporary employment to mitigate the disaster, and SEDESOL’s household goods program (La Jornada 2013). It should be noted that these actions to mitigate damage are the same as those undertaken in large-scale disasters such as those that occurred in Veracruz and Puebla in 1999, Tabasco in 2007. It was recently proposed for the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Morelos, Puebla, and Mexico City after the September 7 and 19, 2017, earthquake emergencies; however, there is no continuity to these actions, leaving the door open to another disaster, for example, in Guerrero, communities that had already relocated following Hurricane Paulina in 1997 (Villegas 2005) were not given accurate attention, so in 2013 those previous relocations were also affected. In the first week of the Tropical Storm Manuel disaster, Guerrero received 500 million pesos from the FONDEN (National Fund for Disaster Protection) for reconstruction, and then-President Peña Nieto (2012–2018) announced the National Reconstruction Plan (UNONOTICIAS 2013). Faced with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Manuel, the governor of Guerrero declared “prison to those who profit off of pantries” (UNONOTICIAS 2013). However, regarding those responsible for the changes in land use that allowed constructions in wetland areas, the Minister of the Interior, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, pointed out that real estate companies are not legally obliged to answer for the homes they built in a swampy area, and together with the local authorities they disclaimed any liability (MVS 2013b). Television broadcasters and companies called for solidarity to the civilian population and opened accounts for bank deposits, during the storm the discourse centered on the disaster as an extraordinary and unprecedented event, on the idea of a disaster that begins and ends with the passage of the storm, where its past is erased. In this sense, news media made a spectacle of the disaster: the fury of nature had its way and no one was guilty of profiting from flood-prone land, everything was the storm’s fault (Méndez 2015, 2017).

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In addition to this, the catastrophe was seen as a business opportunity to obtain resources from third parties and FONDEN, practices that have been reported during other catastrophes, such as the floods of Tabasco in 2007 (Barrios 2012), as well as in the United States, specifically with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as documented by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine (Klein 2008). As a result of this event, measures were announced to detonate investment and reactivate the economy through the Guerrero Plan, for which 7 billion pesos were initially earmarked, with plans to increase federal investments by up to 61 billion. Another measure to activate the economy was to intensively promote the state of Guerrero and secure more support from FONDEN, which would expand to 20 billion pesos in 2014, to improve roads, guarantee internet access and community kitchens in the La Montaña de Guerrero region and implement a massive disaster relocation program (El Universal 2013). No ecological measures or restrictions on land use were mentioned in the Plan. It should be noted that, after the emergency, the budget to attend to the victims was concentrated in Acapulco, specifically in the hotel zone, while the resources allocated in 2014 were the result of a series of complaints from the population of the La Montaña region. As previously mentioned, relocation is an obsolete measure that has been implemented in other parts of the world since Hurricanes Fifi (1974) and Mitch (1998) in Central America. After a major disaster, the same actions are repeated over and over again, even when they have already been proven ineffective (Macías 2002, 2008, 2009; Vera 2009; Hernández 2009; Barrios 2007; Méndez 2008), since there is no will to mitigate disasters. The prevailing will is to promote profit and enrichment of a privileged sector of the population at the expense of victims and reconstruction. In this regard, Macías (2002, 2008, 2009) has carried out important work on why relocation projects should be avoided as much as possible: “Since they represent risks both for the global society that carries them out and for displaced groups, this can translate into very high social, political, and economic costs”(Macías 2002: 29). People’s lives are affected in various ways by these projects, including the disarticulation of social networks, geographical distancing from relocations to places of employment or cultivation areas, marginalization due to the new location, the social stigma of being relocated (for being poor and new to the area), poor, hazardous conditions of the new house or property, deficiencies or absence of public services (water, electricity, drainage, public safety, pavement, public transport, garbage collection, schools), and lack of legal certainty regarding homeownership, in addition to other problems. In the wake of Tropical Storm Manuel, Julia Carabias2 spoke of the urgent need to implement land regulations in the country’s municipalities and the indispensable need to consider the information in the National Risk Atlas; regarding the relocations, she mentioned: “What is poorly built must not be rebuilt” (Reforma 2013).

2 Julia

Carabias, Mexican researcher in the area of Biology, recognized for her work in promoting and conserving the environment.

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However, we observe that in the political discourse of the Plan Guerrero the importance of “modernization” was emphasized, based on neoliberal policies which see the territory as an unlimited resource to do business with. According to Harvey (2004), we exemplify that Guerrero has been a highly marginalized state, the official figures in the La Montaña region are alarming, but they are also alarming in Acapulco, where, like other neoliberal cities, the process of shaping the territory has been through accumulation through dispossession. Neoliberal policies have given priority to the expansion of real estate and tourist complexes in unsuitable areas, through the exclusion and dispossession of peasants and fishermen (Valenzuela 2008; Rodríguez 2012; Méndez 2018). These policies do not mention preventive measures or protection of ecosystems, despite the various phenomena present in the state of Guerrero, such as earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, cyclones, and groundswell. Relocation is and has been the response, not prevention; in fact, there are no official management plans that guarantee the adequate use of the land in the southern state. Next, we will present the case studies.

8.4 Relocations in Guerrero: Acapulco, Centro and Montaña Before continuing, it is pertinent to point out that we carried out fieldwork at different times. The Centro and Acapulco zones were visited in May 2013, June 2014, June 2015, and February 2016; we visited the La Montaña area in October 2017 and October 2018. Figure 8.1 shows the location of the three study areas within the state of Guerrero. The relocation sites of the Central region of the state are situated very close to Chilpancingo, the state capital; the Plácido Domingo relocation site is situated to the south, in the Acapulco region; and the relocation site of Unión de las Peras is situated to the south-east, in the La Montaña region.

8.4.1 Acapulco The relocation site of Plácido Domingo in Acapulco has two sections of houses; the original relocation was built in 2001 for the victims of Hurricane Paulina (1997), while the second section was built to house those affected by Tropical Storm Manuel in 2013. That is why we consider it necessary to discuss that first section and thus be able to observe the spatial transformations over time up until Tropical Storm Manuel in 2013. This first relocation was the result of the alliance agreement between the Federation, State and Municipality in compliance with the housing construction program

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Fig. 8.1 Study areas. Prepared by Martín Eduardo Morales Espinosa. Source: INEGI, Continuo de Elevaciones Mexicano CEM: https://www.inegi.org.mx/app/geo2/elevacionesmex/

for families affected by the hurricane, together with the Inter-American Foundation Anahuac for Social Development signed the Trust for the CIDECO Foundation (Comprehensive Center for Community Development) with the participation of various donors. The state government acquired a tract of land of approximately 9 ha, investing around 33 million pesos in the construction of houses, drinking water networks, drainage and sewerage, provisional water treatment plant, electrification network, internal roads and sidewalks (Almonte 2011: 68–69). The previously urbanized land set aside for relocation is situated in the area known as La Venta, where 231 houses of approximately 50 m2 were built, 131 of which were donated by a foundation and 100 built by the state government, which started being moved into in 2001 (Ibidem). It is part of the ALTIUS foundation, which has a worldwide presence and belongs to the Legionaries of Christ. Its mission is to provide high-quality medical and educational services. The relocation has a private school and hospital, a community service and a church belonging to that foundation. After 2013, this relocation expanded construction with another 100 new homes for victims; the new houses began to be inhabited in September 2014. It should be noted that during Tropical Storm Manuel this relocation was flooded due to its proximity to the La Venta river, a tributary of the main river known as the La Sabana river. The

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relocation was therefore separated into two sections: Section A for those affected by Hurricane Paulina, and Section B for those affected by Tropical Storm Manuel (Fig. 8.2). The relocation is located in a flood zone in the vicinity of the upper basin of the La Sabana river and lies among three hills; rainy season rainfall makes relocation even more prone to flooding. The river known as La Venta is the one that has constantly overflowed, causing flooding. Near the relocation is the La Venta dam, which also represents a danger since, in the rainy season, the floodgates open. Every year, in the rainy months, this area is flooded. This is said by a resident of Section A3 : There is always flooding here, [my son] lived down there and that’s why he stopped living there (referring to the area where Section B is located today), because there are always floods, the other time (with the storm Manuel) the mattresses got wet. Thank God life was not lost. We left in time, but we couldn’t get some of the furniture and clothes out … SEDESOL’s support did not come to me, they opened up a file under my name, where they said that I would receive support to buy a mattress and furniture and it never came, they never let us cash in the $ 10,000 card, at least to buy the mattress. Here floods and strong winds are what affect us, here the trees are uprooted. The La Venta river comes out, and there is a canal here, and the dam, when it rains they open the dam, and the canal and the river are flooded … the dam is called La Venta, it affects the canal, dam, and river (Interview conducted with an inhabitant of Section A of the relocation in June 2015). During Tropical Storm Manuel, Section B was not yet populated, but residents report that this area was the most flooded in September 2013, and the foundation hospital was also flooded since both are located in the lowest area, where more water accumulates.4 3 Aquí

siempre hay inundación, él vivía allá abajo (hijo) y por eso dejó de vivir allá (refiriéndose a la zona en donde hoy se encuentra la sección B), porque siempre hay inundaciones, la otra vez (con la tormenta Manuel) se nos mojó los colchones. Gracias a dios la vida no. Salimos a tiempo, pero algunos muebles y ropa no alcanzamos a sacarlos … a mí no me llegó el apoyo de SEDESOL, me dieron una ficha, en donde decían que iba a recibir apoyo para comprar colchón y muebles y nunca me llegó, nunca nos canjearon la tarjeta de $10,000, por lo menos para comprar el colchón. Aquí lo que afecta son las inundaciones y fuertes vientos, aquí arranca los árboles. El río de la Venta se sale, y está un canal acá, y la presa, cuando llueve abren la presa y se inunda el canal y el río…la presa se llama presa de la Venta, nos afecta canal, presa y río (Entrevista realizada a una habitante de la sección A de la reubicación en junio de 2015). 4 Un trabajador del hospital ALTIUS refiere lo siguiente: Toda la unidad Plácido Domingo se puede decir queda empozada (en el centro de una poza, es decir en la parte central de una zona convexa donde se acumula el agua), si usted mira la unidad desde arriba del cerro queda en medio, todo lo demás son cerros de donde baja el agua…y todo se acumula aquí, y como no tenía una salida o un cauce propio se desparramaba por todos lados…La gente estaba muy asustada porque ya habían pasado un huracán, pensaban que se iban a volver a inundar pero afortunadamente no les pasó nada…ahora que pasó ese suceso el agua me llegaba por aquí (señala su pecho) en esta calle y allá a las casas (de la sección A) casi no les afectó nada, no subió el nivel del agua…con la tormenta Manuel el agua subió aproximadamente 75 cm., casi un metro (en la sección B), se afectó todo, las viviendas, el colegio, la clínica; al subir casi un metro de alto se perdieron muchos muebles, medicamentos, en la bodega insumos que había, muchos de los aparatos médicos que son costosos, a algunos se les dio mantenimiento y se pudo recuperarlos, pero

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Fig. 8.2 Relocation Plácido Domingo. Photograph: Beatriz Méndez (June 2015). Above. Type of dwellings in Section A, houses granted in the wake of Hurricane Paulina and inhabited since 2001. Below. Section B, where the houses granted as a result of Tropical Storm Manuel, inhabited in 2014, are located

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An ALTIUS hospital worker reports the following: The whole Plácido Domingo unit can be said to be an impoundment (in the center of a pool, that is to say in the central part of a convex area where water accumulates). If you look at the unit from above the hill it is in the middle, all the others are hills the water runs down from … and everything accumulates here, and since it did not have an outlet or its own channel, it spilled everywhere …. People were very scared because they had already been through a hurricane, they thought it was going to flood again but fortunately nothing happened to them … now that this event happened the water came up to here on me (points to his chest) on this street and the houses over there (in Section A) were practically untouched, the water level did not rise … With [Tropical Storm] Manuel the water rose approximately 75 cm., almost a meter (in Section B), everything was affected, the houses, the school, the clinic; when it rose to almost a meter high, a lot of furniture and medicines were lost, in the warehouse there were supplies, many of the medical devices that are expensive, some were maintained and could be recovered, but others had to be replaced by new medical equipment (Interview with an ALTIUS hospital worker in June 2015). Due to the water that descends from the hills, as the inhabitants report, part of Section A is flooded every year, but Section B is the most prone to suffering greater losses because it is in the lowest part, as was seen with Tropical Storm Manuel. There are quite a few relocation issues that can be observed over time. Because it is in a flood zone, diseases are more common due to the presence of the mosquito that causes Chikungunya fever, and it is also located on the outskirts of Acapulco; that is to say, it is isolated from the main shopping center, which hinders access to basic services and sources of employment, the cost of transport is high, and during fieldwork, the inhabitants commented that they prefer to dedicate themselves to carrying out work as “milusos”5 in the surroundings than getting a job in the downtown area, since the salaries received would only be enough to cover transportation. Their income is very low: according to Méndez (2018) they receive an average of $ 2,300 per month per family. Due to its isolation, the relocation does not have police surveillance, which has led to higher crime rates. The property grants are very small, with areas ranging from between 55 m2 (Section A) and 50 m2 (Section B), where large families have to live, in addition to having no say in the buildings, to the extent that initially they were prohibited from adding on a second floor and opening small businesses within their own homes since the relocation is under the supervision of the private foundation ALTIUS, which makes the rules within the community. Due to the annual floods in this region and due to the insecurity of the area, the population had to reinforce their exposed homes by installing bars on windows and grills across their doors. They also mention that the basic services available within the relocation provided by the ALTIUS foundation, such as education and healthcare, are not rendered free otros se tuvieron definitivamente que reponer por equipos médicos nuevos (Entrevista realizada a un trabajador del hospital ALTIUS en junio de 2015). 5 A popular term for a handyman.

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of charge, so they have to seek out options outside the area. Since the hospital and the elementary and secondary schools in the relocation area are private and despite the fact that occasional scholarships are awarded, families cannot afford tuition (Méndez 2018). During our fieldwork, we also identified that, before relocations are implemented, it is mandatory to evaluate the land for construction, and housing must be guaranteed in safe areas. The population that was relocated after Hurricane Paulina recalls the tragedy every year, when a storm arises, which stirs up memories of relatives and neighbors losing their lives, in addition to losing their own homes; mental health services to deal with these issues were never contemplated within these projects (Ibidem). The problem was further exacerbated with the construction of the 100 new houses in response to Tropical Storm Manuel. The newly arrived inhabitants hailed from different Acapulco neighborhoods; however, the authorities thought the problem ended with the delivery of the houses. In this regard, the head of the federal SEDATU, Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, explained at the handover of the 100 new houses on September 10, 2014, that they had all the services at their disposal and the houses had been built with quality materials consisting of two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchenette, service patio, bathroom, barred window, and a front garden (SEDATU 2014a). In our fieldwork, we realized that the windows did not have window grills that were instead being installed by residents themselves. In addition, the interviewees stated that the houses were built of very flimsy materials and they were trying to reinforce them, in contrast to what was said by the head of SEDATU (Méndez 2018). On the day of the handover of houses, the head of SEDATU, accompanied by the then governor of Guerrero, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, and the president of the DIF Angélica Rivera de Peña, stated that with these homes, families had the opportunity to start a new phase of their lives and highlighted that the houses were delivered with deeds in the name of the heads of the family and had a “pink room” so that the women could have their own space (SEDATU 2014a). In our fieldwork in June 2015 the inhabitants mentioned that they were not given the deeds, and nothing was ever said about the pink room. The president of SEDATU commented that the people were already fully responsible for what followed, as they had been delivered decent 50 m2 homes made of quality materials, so inhabitants were responsible for the rest (SEDATU 2014b and c). With this, it is inferred that there would no longer be a follow-up to the relocation, just as happened previously with those relocated from Hurricane Paulina, where they have not been guaranteed a safe shelter against floods. The official storm shelter they use during the rainy season is located in the church that is within the relocation site, which is one of the most likely to flood in the rainy season, so inhabitants have to find other shelters outside the relocation. However, SEDATU authorities assured that inhabitants would no longer suffer more floods in this area, since, in this neighborhood, the agency built a 500-meterlong storm water channel, which would allow water to drain in the event of any

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mishap caused by a meteorological phenomenon, which would provide security to the beneficiary families (SEDATU 2016). The president of the Proviváh foundation, Alfredo Achar Tussie, expressed that the houses handed over, of approximately 50 m2 “are 100 decent and safe houses” (Briseño 2013). He pointed out, “Suitable land was sought, all regulations were complied with. The families verified the work themselves.” He stressed that the project seeks at all times to ensure the safety of families. He thanked the InterAmerican Development Foundation, which donated the land and announced that the Israelite Women’s Committee will donate equipment and furniture to the local school. He said that Nacional Monte de Piedad, like the National DIF, also provided donations (Ibidem.). Many of the newly arrived inhabitants were very grateful for these houses, as some stated: “It was as if they were winning the lottery,” since they previously lived in wooden houses without floors. However, residents of Section B are fearful of another flood, because they were new, and until June 2015, the rainy season had not yet come, but everyone knows in the relocation that this area is flooded every year and it is necessary to conduct a preventive follow-up, which until now has not been mentioned. That is why, knowing the problems experienced by previous settlers, we can go beyond the official post-disaster discourse that grants relocations as if they were viable projects when in reality this is not the case.

8.4.2 Central Region and Mountain of Guerrero Complementing the investigation, other relocations granted in the wake of the storm Manuel were studied, but they were immediately damaged, showing the high degree of corruption and profit that disaster management represents for the authorities in charge.

8.4.2.1

Center Region

The victims of the Centro region, in the municipality of Tixtla, very close to the capital of Chilpancingo, immediately identified the relocation project as a non-viable measure and described the homes that were granted as “cardboard houses,” due to deficient construction materials and because they did not have the adequate foundations, so they refused to accept them, in addition to evaluating that their cost was 50 thousand pesos and SEDATU valued them at 120 thousand (Novedades Acapulco 2014). The model home for victims of Tropical Storm Manuel in Tixtla left the beneficiaries dissatisfied because the work was built with pre-fabricated materials, consisting of 10-millimeter-thick panels and roofs that looked like asbestos sheets. Some of the beneficiaries distrusted and preferred not to occupy the houses that were handed over to them in 2014 because they feared that they would topple over, in addition

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to being handed over to them unfinished, with the bathrooms not working, cracked walls, and without reinforced concrete pillars. They were also informed that drains could not be connected to the local sewer line because it was collapsed, so the owners had to install a septic tank or a biodigester, the cost of which was not considered in the project and had to be paid by those affected (El Sur Acapulco 2014). The real estate company’s response to complaints about the lack of coherence between the figures reported by SEDATU compared to the low quality of the materials used, was that the homes were the same as the ones authorized in emergency programs, valued at the same amount as in any other part of the country, which is justified before federal agencies with socially, technically, and economically revised projects. It added that, if it were not feasible, the authorities would not have authorized the project (Ibidem). With these declarations, we observe that only one relocation model is implemented throughout the country, despite the geographical, climatic, and cultural differences of each region. It is an official model that is not questioned within the agencies that operate it. Some of the victims protested and demanded that they are given the value of the houses in cash so that they could build them themselves, but this alternative was flatly denied. Other communities around Chilpancigo, such as Tepechicotlán, Petaquillas, and the Amelitos neighborhood, also protested at SEDATU 2 years after the storm, because they had not yet been given all the promised houses; for example, for the Amelitos neighborhood, out of the 150 houses that were promised, the Federal Government only delivered 29 (Yener 2015). For the year 2016, the official discourse of SEDATU, SEDESOL, and the Ministry of the Interior was that the homes had been delivered by the head of Land-use Planning and Attention to Risk Zones, Armando Saldaña Flores, with the representation of the secretary Rosario Robles Berlanga. It was ensured that this action fulfilled the commitment of President Enrique Peña Nieto to provide decent and quality housing to those affected by natural phenomena Ingrid and Manuel (Ministry of the Interior 2016). Thus, concluded a stage that was considered successfully completed. In summary, it was said that they delivered homes with an area of 45 m2 , divided into two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and a full bathroom, for a decent life for its residents. They were also assured that the homes were protected and free of any risk, had access to all the services, and were in harmony with the environment, as eco-technologies had been used (Ministry of the Interior 2016). However, by 2017, 4 years after the storm, housing, and funding shortages were reported. A clear example of this is in the south of Chilpancingo, in the El Nuevo Mirador subdivision, built as a result of the storm, where only 598 of the 1,100 affected families who were promised homes had actually received them, without health services, schools or drinking water, despite the presidential promise (Cervantes 2017). The subdivision has been forgotten, since now SEDATU leadership has changed and, as previously mentioned, the former administration reported in 2016 that the commitments to victims had already been fulfilled. However, the houses were delivered to them without deeds, with power outages, cracks, unstable walls, fragile,

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leaking roofs, some smaller than 45 m2 , not suitable for the high temperatures in the region. In sum, very fragile houses were delivered, many of which remained uninhabited, as families felt unsure about living in this type of house. In fact, 32 houses were so poorly built they were on the verge of collapse and declared uninhabitable by SEDATU. Those 32 uninhabitable houses represent an expense of 3 million 960 thousand pesos. In February 2017, the new SEDATU delegate in Guerrero, José Armenta Tello, toured the Nuevo Mirador neighborhood. The official stressed that as a result of the earthquake that occurred on February 13, some houses suffered major fissures and that most were sinking since they were built on a ravine. Those affected are still waiting for what SEDATU, then headed by Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín promised them: decent homes, reconstruction of their communities, hospitals, and schools, among other offers made by then-president Enrique Peña Nieto, but the new head assured that these services are not included in the project he is familiar with Cervantes (2017). Given the needs, the neighbors have cooperated with their own resources to build their own health center where patients are cared for. A doctor and nurse have been authorized, but they do not have space for them to work. Similarly, they have built three classrooms for telesecundaria6 and six more elementary-school classrooms using basic materials such as sheet metal and cardboard. Protests have been constant, because five years after Tropical Storm Manuel, the wait for houses and services dragged on. This is not surprising, especially since delegate Armenta Tello reported that a total of 490 million pesos had been invested in the 598 homes. However, in the original project, each house was projected at 120 thousand pesos, which would imply, in any case, a total investment of 71 million 760 thousand pesos (Ibidem). Even if the 1,100 promised houses had been built, the total would come to 132 million, since neither schools nor hospitals were built; that is, an amount seven times that of the actual cost is being reported, assuming, in addition, that the houses actually cost 120 thousand pesos. During February 2018, the inhabitants of this community traveled from Chilpancingo to Mexico City to protest at Los Pinos7 since they fear for their lives in view of the terrible conditions in which 64 homes are found, since the floors are sliding, on the verge of collapse; in addition, the SEDATU delegation in Chilpancingo ignored them, arguing that there is no money for the demolition and reconstruction of the houses. They also filed a lawsuit against the Calaflex construction company, for the type of houses that were granted (Job 2018). It wasn’t until June 19, 2018, that the upcoming demolition of 32 unusable houses was confirmed. This would be achieved with the support of the state government since SEDATU no longer had the resources to do so. The cost of demolition was calculated at 2 million 800 thousand pesos, and municipal and SEDESOL authorities promised to provide the inhabitants with plastic awnings to protect themselves while they built new houses (El Sur de Acapulco 2018). It was also mentioned that the former 6A

distance learning middle school. official residence of the Mexican president.

7 The

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directors of SEDATU in Guerrero would be barred from holding office for 10 years due to mismanagement of funds. As a result of this investigation, we have seen that while politicians go out of their way to solve the hydrometeorological emergency through relocation in the discourse, behind the scenes, funds are diverted and expenses that do not correspond at all to reality are justified.

8.4.2.2

La Montaña Region

In 19 municipalities of La Montaña de Guerrero, the rains of September 2013 led to the displacement of at least 40 indigenous communities from the selfdenominated groups Ñuu Savi (Mixtecos), Me ‘phaa (Tlapanecos), and the Suljaá people (Amuzgos), and whose inhabitants were forced to abandon their towns in the midst of the storm and flee to hilltops to save themselves from landslides (Martínez 2014), all without the support or presence of the Federal Government which, as pointed out before, concentrated its actions on the city of Acapulco and the tourists who were left stranded by the lack of forewarning. After the storm, the affected indigenous communities were cut off, without electricity or running water; women, children, and the elderly slept in the mud, without any authority to support them. They began to get sick from living in these conditions. In addition, their corn and coffee crops, the cultivation of which was their main economic activity, were destroyed, and with them went the main source of income for some and extra income for other families. The Mezcaltepec community, for example, suffered irrecoverable losses amounting to 100,000 tons of export coffee (Rosagel 2014). Most of the people are peasants who, with the exception of coffee and hibiscus flower, cultivate corn, squash, chili peppers, beans, quelites, tomatoes, fruits, mangoes, nanches, and bananas mainly for self-consumption. Fields were devastated, and the corn harvest, the main food of these communities, was lost. In total 130 people died, and several widows were left without the main breadwinner in some communities (Rosagel 2014). Nine months after the tragedy, the relocation houses were handed over to them, and despite the fact that 4,304 families from La Montaña were reported to have lost their homes due to the rains, only 766 houses were granted for the entire region, according to the census prepared by the Council of Disaster Victim Communities of La Montaña. It should be noted that this group was organized by local inhabitants themselves in the absence of government authorities. In addition, the houses, in addition to being insufficient, were delivered in terrible conditions and in risk areas (Martínez 2014). An example of this is represented by the handover of 81 homes with an area of 44 m2 , built by the company Faysal S.A. de C.V., on behalf of SEDESOL, in the indigenous Unión de las Peras community, in La Montaña de Guerrero; the houses were built on a hillside that is eroding (Martínez 2014) (Fig. 8.3). The population has expressed that the houses are uninhabitable since they lack foundations that anchor the buildings to the ground. They do not have barriers that

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Fig. 8.3 Two houses built within the Plan Nuevo Guerrero. Photograph: Marisol Barrios (October 2017). Municipality of Malinaltepec, in the region of La Montaña

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Fig. 8.4 Homes provided by SEDATU on the edge of the ravine in the Unión de las Peras indigenous community, La Montaña region, after Tropical Storm Manuel. Photograph: Martínez (2014)

prevent the land below them from washing away with the rainwater; in addition, they were not built with insulated material, but rather with partitions that absorb moisture and retain cold, in an area where low temperature, drizzle, and mist are recurring (Martínez 2014). Likewise, these houses have sheet metal roofs that not only let air currents enter through their folds but, according to the residents, these materials “will be gone with the next strong gale of wind” (Ibidem). In September 2014, just 3 months after delivery, the houses were already sinking and cracking (Fig. 8.4). However, federal authorities carried out an “inspection” of this work and concluded that: “it is completely finished and in working order”. Therefore, the inhabitants were almost forced to sign a document with the following legend: “I am totally satisfied with the final result of the support received and by signing I agree that the work done is of quality and I have no objection whatsoever, so I abstain from the right to make any subsequent complaint” (Martínez 2014). Not only was Unión de las Peras built under risk conditions but there were also other communities within the municipalities of Acatepec, Metlatónoc, Malinaltepec, and Cochoapa El Grande, where the construction of houses was cut short, to such an extent that the population is migrating, due to the useless houses that were granted to them and the indifference and forgetfulness of authorities, especially SEDATU, that left them to their fate.

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The affected communities of Malinaltepec such as El Tepeyac, Filo de Acatepec, Unión de las Peras, El Tejocote, La Lucerna, Moyotepec and San Juan de las Nieves, are living examples of the rapacity of the authorities and their companies that diverted millions of pesos instead of supporting the decent relocation of displaced communities (Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center 2016). In this regard, Abel Barrera, from the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, mentioned that the current relocation policy is destroying their future as indigenous people no longer have the right to possess a culturally appropriate house with their animals (the only opportunity they have to include meat in their diet), with open spaces, with a separate kitchen so they can cook with firewood. The authorities assume that they are serving urban populations, families of three or four members, who are going to use gas and household appliances. He added that the catastrophe is not over, but spread with this type of relocation because it does not give families a real opportunity to take root. These houses that they are giving them are not meant for family life, but are only a space to sleep, not to live or to spend time together, and that is causing people to leave the communities. Those who have means to do so are leaving for Tlapa (the closest city to La Montaña), and those who have no means are going to less affected towns with relatives or have chosen to live in the midst of the cracks in subhuman conditions (Martínez 2014). In such a culturally and geographically diverse country, it is absurd that there is only one model of relocation housing and, in agreement with Abel Barrera, we believe that the catastrophe is still ongoing in La Montaña de Guerrero, beyond the storms and cyclones. The absence of public policies in the region, the indifference and corruption, typical of a neoliberal model that excludes small populations and ethnic groups, are ending indigenous communities. In the particular case of the La Montaña region, the history of exclusion is long. While it is true that most of the world population is exempt from the benefits of development central to the neoliberal capitalist system, indigenous peasant populations in America, like tribal peoples in Africa, are placed on the periphery of the periphery. In this sense, the indigenous population of La Montaña points out that only a highway was built for them to connect the region in 1994 in the context of the uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army EZLN in Chiapas, and they say that the highway was built as a preventive measure to avoid further indigenous uprisings. Although the same did not happen as in Chiapas, a year later, in 1995, the Regional Council of Community Authorities (CRAC) of La Montaña was formed in the region, which is the support of the Community Police (PC). The organization that would become the CRAC-PC was the product of the environment of violence, poverty, and marginalization that prevailed in the region and the lack of solutions by the Mexican State to the social problems of the region. In this way, the creation of the CRAC-PC meant the administration of justice and the recovery of control of the territory by its inhabitants, all of which, until the creation of this organization, was monopolized by the criminal groups and the caciques of the region. The disinterest, abandonment, and poor post-emergency relocation housing model is another clear example of how the State has marginalized the population of the La Montaña region and inhabitants affected in Mexico.

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8.5 Relocation Accounts As we have observed, the three cases present similarities with regards to the mismanagement of resources invested in the houses and the lack of real solutions to avoid future disaster processes. Therefore, we would like to take stock of the costs of the post-disaster relocation project in Guerrero in September 2013, perhaps the largest recorded so far. The budget was approved through the Nuevo Guerrero Plan, with an investment of 61 billion 800 thousand pesos, and allocated 45 billion pesos, more than half of the Plan’s budget, for the construction of houses. Funds were allocated for the construction of 6,090 relocation houses with a value of 120 thousand pesos each, for a total of 730 million 800 thousand pesos. In addition to this, 16,776 building repairs were planned, since not all those affected would be given a new house, but would be financially supported for repairs (El Universal 2013; Martínez 2014; Rosagel 2014; Job 2018). The expense report for up to 2018 states that there was a shortage of 41% of the commitments undertaken, although the money was awarded (Job 2018). Almost 50% of the allotted resources were reported as lost (Fig. 8.5). If we add to this that many of the houses were overvalued and were delivered in very poor condition (a reason that explains the abandonment of the houses), we are talking about around 30 billion pesos missing following the social storm called corruption. The Centro and Acapulco areas were among the regions that received the most funds; however, in the case of La Montaña, although 4,304 families were affected,

Fig. 8.5 Photograph: Marisol Barrios (October 2017). Cruz Grande, Florencio Villa Real municipality, Guerrero. At the time of the visit, the relocation was completely uninhabited

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only 766 houses were authorized, to be distributed among the 19 municipalities that make up the region, meaning that only 17% of the those affected received assistance (Martínez 2014). Despite the irregularities present in the three study areas, the abandonment, injustices, and indifference on the part of the authorities in La Montaña were alarming. This is an evident act of discrimination because for hundreds of years this area has remained marginalized, but with the disaster this situation became even more evident. This act of discrimination is exacerbated by the imposition of relocation projects that are created behind desks of agencies ignoring the basic and cultural needs of the population. In agreement with the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, we affirm that it is an act of violation of human rights because the message they send to the victims is “I do not care what you need; I, 1,600 km away, sitting at my desk, in my office, I am going to tell you what your needs are” (De la Montaña Human Rights Center, Tlachinollan 2016). We reiterate that disaster relocations are only palliative measures for public officials of the State who do not attend to real problems before a disaster. The money that is invested in them, as presented above, is twice the real value of the house. We see again that the disaster is used by agencies, such as SEDATU and SEDESOL, as a means to profit off the vulnerability of the population. The disaster is used as a third-party business and the relocations, along with the phantom foundations created to raise funds, are proof of the creation of the millionaire business of disaster capitalism. In agreement with Macías, we affirm that disaster relocation in the style and process of SEDESOL is a method that must be avoided since it involves a series of problems that are not considered in its creation and, in most cases, are not followed up on, and inhabitants are abandoned (Macías 2002). Part of the budget approved during the emergency could well be used on preventive measures because, as we explain in this investigation, all the relocations were unsuccessful and that money was only misused; in addition to preventing major disasters, also the waste of funds that go to corrupt real estate companies and officials and not those affected. Hence, we affirm that relocations as they have been conducted up to now, without the active participation in decision-making by those affected and relocated, are an infallible method for non-prevention in the matter of disaster risk management.

8.6 Conclusions This research is an example that relocation is not the best option to implement after a disaster since it only represents immediate measures, but they do not solve the core problem or the so-called root causes, such as the fight against poverty, the diversification of the economy, preventive policies, and adequate soil management.

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In short, policies that benefit the community and ecosystems are still absent, and this is what needs to be resolved to avoid future disasters. It is important to remember and emphasize to contemporary society that the State in capitalism is fundamental to preserve these practices, since it responds to the neoliberal logic that does not restrict business development (Harvey 2007). On the contrary, it promotes profiting off the misfortunes of the least favored population, in this case leaving real estate agents to act in the benefit of private investors who receive concessions for the building relocations. As evidenced throughout the text, relocations represent a business for real estate companies in coordination with government agencies, especially SEDATU and SEDESOL, double standard discourses are used, disseminating that decent and safe homes will be delivered, when this does not correspond at all with reality. Unfortunately, in every disaster the same thing happens. This was clearly observed in the earthquake of September 19, 2017. Profiting from tragedies violates the human rights of those affected and fails to attack the real problem of the disaster; the key to attacking this underlying problem is to promote a better quality of life for the population and respect for their territories. It is in this sense that the practices of the intervention of the Mexican State in the “reduction or mitigation” of social vulnerability to disasters “do not restrict market development, thereby promoting or perpetuating the population’s vulnerability to disasters. We observe an inability of the Mexican State to respond, meet the needs of and offer proposals to those affected, because its focus is on satisfying neoliberal policies that enable profiting from everything, including tragedies.

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Chapter 9

Vulnerability, Management of Volcanic Risk and Neoliberalism in Colima Hugo Ignacio Rodríguez-García

Understanding volcanic risk entails adopting a relational approach in order to (1) analyze social vulnerabilities in the populations exposed to volcanic activity and the mechanisms that generate and intensify them; (2) identify and examine institutional arrangements and government actions focused on risk management; and (3) understand the type of volcanic activity and its historical development. Any analysis centered on only one or two of these variables will fall short of achieving an adequate comprehension of the complex problem of risk in general and of volcanic risk specifically. Therefore, we must recognize from the outset that some of the political–economic practices framed in the neoliberal project participate in generating vulnerabilities that create conditions of risk through interaction with natural or socio-natural phenomena. We must also keep in mind that the State is the entity entrusted with providing public security, a necessary condition for human development, though this means adopting the guidelines of international and multilateral organisms that have their own economic interests in neoliberal contexts. The case of preventive human relocation analyzed herein offers a prime example, for the process reveals the convergences, divergences, couplings and frictions (due to diverse economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural interests) among various social actors linked to volcanic territories and their resources; all in a neoliberal context that produces, reproduces, and intensifies vulnerabilities and so generates scenarios marked by the risk of disaster. In this context and based on a case

This chapter is adapted from my Doctoral dissertation entitled “Desastres (in)imaginados, desastres construidos: tensiones y contradicciones en torno al manejo de la emergencia volcánica en julio de 2015, en Colima, México”, defended 5 July 2018 in El Colegio de Michoacán. H. I. Rodríguez-García (B) Licenciatura en Protección Civil y Gestión de Riesgos, Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM), Plantel Cuautepec, Ciudad de México, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_9

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study carried out in Colima, Mexico, the present chapter explains how vulnerabilities have been produced and then interwoven with –sometimes—contradictory neoliberal processes in a setting of volcanic risk and government intervention. The effects of neoliberalism on the conditions of volcanic risk are manifested in two main areas: first, the generation of inequalities, poverty, and marginalization in localities where the State is perceived as “absent” in terms of mitigating those conditions; and, second, the fact that government actions emerge from a dominant, reactive vision which holds that disasters are caused by natural phenomenon. For these reasons, government only intervenes vertically during emergencies, never in periods when the volcano is calm; a scenario made more complex by the current limitations of scientific knowledge in terms of producing more accurate predictions of volcanic activity.

9.1 A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Volcanic Risk as a Social Construct The Volcano of Colima is one of 550 active volcanoes worldwide. It is located 100 km south of the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and 32 km north of the city of Colima, Colima, in the western Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVC) (Fig. 9.1).1 The recorded history of eruptions makes it one of the most active volcanoes in Mexico, with at least 52 events since 1560, of which 29 have been of the explosive type (Luhr and Carmichael 1993). Varley (2015) mentions that two of the most important features of this volcano related to the danger it presents are its cyclical nature and type of activity. One of the cyclical frequencies that most interests volcanologists involves lapses of around 100 years that tend to culminate with huge eruptions. De la Cruz (2008) states that eruptions of Colima’s Volcán de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)2 of 4 occurred in 1585, 1606, 1622, 1818, 1890, and 1913. The type of eruption recorded in 1913 is considered the most dangerous kind because it had the potential to affect localities in both the short and medium term. For this reason, that event has been a reference for discussions of volcanic risks, including the elaboration of maps that highlight dangers and risks (Saucedo et al. 2010). In the aftermath of the eruption that occurred in July 2015, a new scenario of volcanic risk was incorporated, one not considered in any historical records, computer models, or the imagination of volcanologists, government authorities or the general population; namely, the partial collapse of the volcano’s dome and the generation of pyroclastic flows that lasted 52 min and covered a distance of 9.1 km southward 1I

thank Dr. Luis AlejandroPérez Ortiz for his support in elaborating the maps in this chapter. volcanic explosivity index is a widely accepted way of quantifying explosive eruptions. The characteristics considered for quantification are volume of magma emitted, thermal energy released, scope of fragmented products, degree of destruction, height of the eruptive column, and duration of the eruption.

2 The

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Fig. 9.1 Geographic location of the Volcano of Colima. Elaborated by Luis Alejandro Pérez Ortiz

from the volcano (Reyes et al. 2016). This background on the eruptive cycles of the Volcano of Colima, coupled with the fact that the year 2013 marked 100 years from the eruption of 1913, fostered the expectation that one or more eruptions of equal or greater magnitude will occur in a period around this date. Such events would not be deemed significant and would only be perceived as natural phenomena were it not for the presence of population nuclei that could be affected directly or indirectly. In 2005, some 15,000 people were exposed to volcanic activity within a radius of 15 km from the volcano’s summit (Saucedo et al. 2005), while extending that radius to 30 km raised the number to over 500,000 (Dávila et al. 2007). La Yerbabuena is the closest community to this volcano in the state of Colima, as it lies at only 8 km (as the crow flies) from the crater. Its coordinates are 1034106 N, 192833 W, and its altitude 1477 m.a.s.l. (Fig. 9.2). According to Cuevas (2005), before the relocation of May 2002, 222 people in 57 families resided there. In 2010, La Yerbabuena had a total population of 47: 23 men and 24 women. Of its 18 economically active people, 17 are men and only one woman (the other 19 residents are economically inactive). In terms of medical attention, 14 people have no access to any health care institution, public or private. Regarding religion, 41 inhabitants are Catholic, one is non-Catholic, and the other three do not profess any religion. There are 47 houses, but only 14 are inhabited. Of these, 11 have male heads of household, while 3 are led by women. A total of 27 are uninhabited, and 4 are

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Fig. 9.2 Location of La Yerbabuena with respect to the volcano. Elaborated by Luis Alejandro Pérez Ortiz

used seasonally. The average number of occupants per dwelling is 3.36. Of the 14 inhabited homes, 11 have floors made of material, the other 3 have only dirt floors; 13 have radios and 10 have televisions, but only 2 have an automobile, and none have computers, Internet service, or landline telephones, though 2 have cell-phones (INEGI 2010). At present, the local school has wireless Internet service, and José Domínguez (one of the men who resisted relocation in 2003, as will be discussed below) has a satellite telephone. His daughters have laptop computers provided by the federal government program Mi compu.mx.

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La Becerrera is the second-closest town to the volcano—in a straight line—at a distance of 12 km. Its coordinates are 1034255 N, 192715 W. It lies at an elevation of 1191 m.a.s.l. (Fig. 9.3). The current population is 283, 151 men and 132 women. There are 106 economically active people, 78 men and 29 women. A total of 84 residents have no access to health services at any medical institution, public or private. La Becerrera has 282 people who profess the Catholic religion and only 1 who

Fig. 9.3 Location of La Becerrera. Elaborated by Luis Alejandro Pérez Ortiz

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does not. In terms of dwellings, there are 94, but only 76 are inhabited, 62 and 14, respectively, with male and female heads of household. Six houses are abandoned, and 12 are used seasonally. The average number of occupants per dwelling is 3.72. Three homes have dirt floors, the other 73 have floors made of materials. Of the inhabited houses, 62 have radios and 69 have televisions, 39 have automobiles, 3 have computers, 8 have landline telephones, and 17 have cell phones; only one has Internet service (INEGI 2010). It is important to note that these two populations performed agricultural activities collectively before the imposition of the neoliberal model, which materialized legally in a profound transformation of the ejidal land tenure system through reforms of Article 27 of Mexico’s Constitution, in 1992, that allowed those landholdings to be incorporated into real estate markets and agribusiness. Those changes forced most residents to either emigrate to the administrative headtown (cabecera municipal), the city of Colima, or the United States. Those who chose to stay behind, or who were unable to leave, underwent a process of “terciarization” and ended up working in tourism services. The predominant productive activities in La Yerbabuena were coffee and corn cultivation for subsistence and sale. People there also had collective projects such as raising deer, establishing a poultry farm, and producing honey. Today coffee cultivation continues, but people also grow avocados and raise cattle. There is a small grocery store, a traditional steam bath (temazcal), a few places that sell coffee, and some adventure tourism services. The community has a small, multilevel primary school, but no health center. A few residents work on nearby ranches as hands or casual laborers. La Yerbabuena is considered to have a “high” degree of marginalization (CONAPO 2011). When people in La Becerrera received their lands, in contrast, they immediately conditioned them and began to plant corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, chili peppers, strawberries, and other vegetable crops (see the Oficio dated June 5, 1973 to the Head of the Agrarian Affairs Department). Today, however, most of those crops have disappeared and many residents cultivate only corn and coffee, and raise animals in their yards, such as chickens, pigs, and turkeys. A few raise cattle. Other people work for the ex-Hacienda San Antonio hotel or on the El Jabalí ranch, which belongs to the same company. Some families work at the Laguna La María tourism center. La Becerrera has modest grocery stores, a well for filtering water, a primary school, and a tele-secondary school. This community is currently cataloged as having a “medium” degree of marginalization (CONAPO 2011). In addition to the level of marginalization of these two localities, the municipality of Comala (to which they belong) is rated as the fourth (out of five) with the highest percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the state of Colima. This assessment is based on indicators that assess social deficiencies (e.g., low educational levels, lack of access to health and social security services, small, poor quality housing, and limited access to food) and wellbeing (incomes below the poverty line, minimal levels of social welfare), according to data from the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL, “National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy” 2010). Based on these figures, we can assume that most of the people in La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera live in conditions of poverty. This

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is important because those circumstances—the result of an unequal distribution of resources and lack of access to them—are the principle components of vulnerability. Turning now to the concepts of risk and disaster, we must first establish that these are not issues isolated in time and space, though many authors address them from that predominant vision (Hewitt 1983) and, therefore, associate or confuse them with natural phenomena. Conceiving disasters from an alternative perspective (Hewitt 1983) entail understanding them not as “events” but, rather, as social processes, products of diverse social relations that generate vulnerabilities in relation to natural phenomena. This is the case of La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera, as they sit in zones impacted by the activity of the Volcano of Colima. This approach recognizes, of course, that disasters occur in a certain time and place, but holds that the constituent elements which produce risk (including vulnerability and threat) can be identified before a disaster materializes or becomes visible. Following the suggestion of Oliver-Smith (2002), this approach understands disasters as processes that evolve from critical pre-existing conditions that, however, do not become visible until the moment at which a society or population made vulnerable by political–economic models of development interacts with a certain natural phenomenon (threat) in circumstances that make such interaction unsustainable. The results, Macías writes (Macías 2015), are qualitative and quantitative negative changes for the lives and subsistence of the people affected. The proposal put forth by Blaikie et al. (1996), meanwhile, considers vulnerability a social condition configured by the characteristics of an individual or group that has the capacity to anticipate, survive, resist, and recover from affectations caused by their condition when impacted by a threat, be it natural or anthropogenic. This condition is generated by the social relations of production, the modes of appropriating resources, the distribution of resources, social organization, and diverse actors’ perceptions of risk. A natural or anthropogenic threat is produced when a person or social group is vulnerable to a certain kind of phenomenon. In this view, a hurricane, for example, represents a threat when a population is vulnerable to it.3 In this sense, a volcanic threat refers to activity that could harm a population due to the conditions of vulnerability in which it lives in relation to a volcanic event. The concept of risk can also be understood on the basis of the proposal posited by Macías (2015), who suggests that it is the possibility of negative (qualitative) change in which the threat and the condition of vulnerability intervene to expose subjects to harm. In this vision, the concept of volcanic risk alludes to the susceptibility, or probability of suffering damage, to which the populations of La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera are exposed due to their condition of vulnerability with respect to the activity of the Volcano of Colima. Regarding the concept of risk management, we find that Lavell (2003) understands it as an organized, institutionalized practice whose point of reference is the continuity of the risk (as a process) through various states, phases, or stages. This conceptualization stresses close interrelations and dependencies among several key elements: 3 A phenomenon that represents a threat due to the condition of vulnerability, distinct from attributing

intentionality or destructive capacity to the event itself.

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prevention, mitigation, preparation for disaster, emergency responses, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. There are, however, cases—like the one that concerns us—in which risk management entails social, economic, and political costs that can be burdensome for people who are subject to government intervention due, primarily, to the reality that government schemes are based on broader public policies or guidelines and recommendations of international organisms that lack sufficient knowledge of the social, political, and economic contexts of Latin American countries. Public policies, in fact, generated by, and implemented through, a neoliberal framework that places markets and capital accumulation far above the wellbeing of the populations that are impacted by such intervention. To this situation, we must add the fact that the uncertainty inherent in predictions of volcanic activity at the global, national, and local levels is recognized as the main element that makes managing volcanic risk so challenging. When framed, as it is, within the dominant vision (Hewitt 1983), this leads to the conception that what produces and configures disasters is the natural phenomenon in itself. As a result, efforts both technical-scientific and economic tend to focus on improving monitoring methods and analyses of the geophysical phenomenon, and not on the processes and factors—like the neoliberal political–economic framework—that actually generate and then catalyze vulnerabilities and risks. The political–economic practices characteristic of neoliberalism are understood as means to achieve human wellbeing, but their underlying premise is that all restrictions on the free development of entrepreneurial capacities and freedoms should be removed in an institutional framework that supposedly “distances” the State and promotes the privatization of life through, for example, private property rights, free markets, and free trade. In this system, the role of the State is limited to creating and maintaining the institutional framework required to permit the development of those practices (Harvey 2005), even though, in reality, they benefit only the few while severely harming the majority. Hand-in-hand with the process of global capitalism that began to take off in the 1970s with the transformation of the world economy into a mechanism that impeded nations from developing independently, neoliberalism established the bases of economic globalization by freeing up the markets that, supposedly, function to distribute wealth more equitably. This economic preponderance over and above the interests and needs of the majorities entailed mobilizing capital to search for the best competitive and productive advantages, such as cheap labor and reduced regulation of natural spaces (Calderón 2001). But the result of these processes is that a small minority has benefitted enormously at the cost of increased poverty and inequality for the majority. In this regard, Cortés and Oliveira (2010) point out that the policy of opening up trade in which Mexico has participated, and to which it has been subjected, has given rise to a pronounced inequality in the distribution of income that has profoundly negative repercussions on employment, education, health, housing, and public and residential spaces, while also segmenting life. Mexico, they write, has gradually been transformed into a polarized country where power, wealth, and income are ever more concentrated, while social cohesion weakens notably.

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These conditions have produced a new layer of space–time disequilibriums that now lies atop pre-existing ones created by the capitalist system; changes that solidify the foundations that lead to the creation and intensification of social vulnerabilities among ample sectors of the population (Calderón 2001). Calderón (2001) adds that this political, economic, and social context has enormous importance for processes of disaster, because vulnerability is directly related to poverty and, since the implementation of the neoliberal model in Mexico, multiple areas of the nation have been transformed into at-risk spaces at the same time as indices of poverty have increased exponentially, molding the context that paves the way for situations of disaster. Another aspect that derives from global capitalism and neoliberalism involves international transfers of public policies and guidelines that establish how risks and disasters should be understood, assessed, and managed. In the case of Colima, the incorporation of norms for confronting and managing emergencies elaborated in the U.S. and introduced through international organisms like the United Nations is palpable (UNDRO 1985). But those guidelines are not necessarily attuned to the reality of Latin American countries, or nations that bear the label “developing”; hence, they are not always beneficial for their at-risk populations (Macías and Aguirre 2006). The goals of those organizational structures and emergency planning measures are to ensure, insofar as possible, that at-risk populations follow the instructions— and orders—of civil protection agencies so that when an emergency strikes people will respond efficaciously and allow themselves to be evacuated to safe sites that provide food and shelter. However, the main challenge that government and scientific authorities in Colima face in the area of managing volcanic risk is achieving greater certainty in predictions of volcanic eruptions, an area that receives scant attention in those guidelines. Due to the instrumentation of this organizational vision and model for handling cases of emergency, experts in both civil protection and volcanology believe it is unnecessary to ponder (and generate) planning, strategies, and actions related to managing volcanic risk among susceptible, at-risk populations. Nor do they perceive any need for the participation of social scientists in these processes. As a result, their objectives and efforts revolve—exclusively—around manifestations of volcanic activity (past, present, and future), while largely ignoring the conditions of social vulnerability (socioeconomic and organizational) of nearby populations; a perspective that reflects, at least in part, the principles of the neoliberal model. The result is that we find ourselves facing a situation marked by (i) constant volcanic activity (or the threat of it); (ii) the current inability to understand and accurately predict volcanic events (since scientific knowledge has not reached that level of development); and (iii) an inadequate understanding of the local societies that are vulnerable to volcanic activity. These conditions are exacerbated by the fact that the management of volcanic risk is crisscrossed by sociopolitical and economic relations generated by diverse social actors, some of whom operate through neoliberal logic, which conditions the way in which volcanic risk is generated, perceived, evaluated, and managed with the—alleged—objective of preventing disasters.

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9.2 The Configuration of Risk in Volcanic Communities Identifying and comprehending the interaction of populations and volcanic activity is fundamental if we are to attain a better understanding of volcanic risk in relation to its construction, local perceptions, and attitudes and responses toward the increasing intensity of current conditions in places like Colima. Therefore, this section identifies and elucidates the elements required to understand how the people in two communities—La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera—have co-existed with manifestations of volcanic activity from the founding of their communities to the neoliberal period, and how volcanic risk has been produced there.4 The current circumstances of these two localities cannot be understood if we fail to consider their origins. For this reason, we chose the ex-hacienda San Antonio as the initial and end point of our study, for analyzing this institution is indispensable for interpreting the generation of vulnerabilities through capitalist privatization, the commoditization of natural resources, and the neoliberal project (March 2013) that, through interaction with volcanic activity, come to constitute scenarios of risk. The ex-hacienda San Antonio is located near the community of La Becerrera at the confluence of two rivers that descend from the Volcano of Fire: La Lumbre and El Cordobán (Fig. 9.4). Today, this ex-hacienda stands as one of the most prestigious hotels in all of Mexico—and the world—attending to a clientele that includes artists, politicians, businessmen, and international figures who come to enjoy exclusivity and nature, including a spectacular view of the Volcano of Fire, deep ravines, numerous bodies of water, and abundant vegetation (Cuevas and Seefoó 2005). To give the reader an idea of the class of services the hotel offers its guests, and of the people it attracts, the cost of a room runs from US$700 per night in the off-season for the simplest suites to as much as US$2,000 per night. In Mexican pesos, a one-night stay could cost as much as $36,000 (at an exchange rate of $18.00 pesos/US dollar). The services offered there are comparable to those of grand hotels in Bora-Bora (French Polynesia), Thailand, The Philippines, Bali, The U.S., Morocco, Japan, China, France, Italy, and Greece, among other countries. The exorbitant cost of suites and the international projection that this hotel enjoys beg the question as to what elements came into play to make a service of this type virtually inaccessible to most of the residents of Colima and Mexico? A first response to this question would highlight the exclusivity of the site and the landscape that was constructed around it, which can now be appreciated in this geographic space. As an example, we can cite the first message that one reads upon perusing the hotel’s webpage,5 which boasts the following: Exuberant formal gardens that open out to vast extensions of natural virgin beauty. The eternal spring, like the climate, is perfect for enjoying a broad range of open-air activities,

4 Again,

it is necessary to mention that the analysis focuses more on the case of La Yerbabuena in light of what it represents in relation to the management of volcanic risk in Colima. The community of La Becerrera is discussed in less detail. 5 See the webpage: http://haciendadesanantonio.com for more information on the services offered.

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Fig. 9.4 Location of the ex-hacienda San Antonio. Elaborated by Luis Alejandro Pérez Ortiz

while the Hacienda becomes the scene for dining, socializing, or simply relaxing. And all of this with the highest level of personalized service.

This luxurious hotel exemplifies the valorization and re-valorization of spaces through capitalist logic in the context of neoliberalism, by re-configuring territories and altering the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of the populations that originally inhabited and constructed those lands. These processes have impacted the

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region around the volcano by increasing the economic value of its lands for, on the one hand, recreational tourism, and on the other, the monocropping of products like avocado and berries. The impacts of this influence include extensive, accelerated changes in land use, rampant real estate speculation, and environmental degradation throughout the area. Macías (1992) argues that danger and risk constitute important characteristics of the valorization of places, in the sense that spaces deemed to be of less value by capital are the only ones left accessible to poor social groups. For this reason, areas offered commercially as spaces, territories, places, or properties “free of risk” tend to see their commercial value increase considerably. One example of this was the episode of real estate speculation that occurred in Mexico City after the earthquake of September 19, 2017.6 Returning to our case, as the reader will see below, these aspects can be identified at the moment when Mexico’s agrarian reform program redistributed the hacienda’s lands which, at that time, were assessed exclusively in agricultural terms as areas of low productivity because they had only a thin layer of topsoil. This valorization endured for decades, until later evaluations began to take into account such elements as local landscapes and the environmental services they could provide, the area’s lush vegetation, the panoramic view of the majestic volcano, and the milder temperatures compared to the city of Colima. It is in this context that the discourse on risk came to acquire ever greater importance among powerful economic and political groups that sought to take control of those territories.

9.2.1 Intersections of the Social with Volcanic Activity Colima’s fertile fields, propitious climate, and numerous waterways, all products of geophysical processes and, more specifically, volcanic activity, account for the fact that those lands have been inhabited for at least 3,000 years, exemplified by the Capacha tradition (1,500–1,000 B.C.) and the later Ortíces-Tuxcacuesco tradition (300 B.C, 250 A.D.). Those two civilizations occupied the southern slopes of the volcano and the zones around the main bodies of water (López 2006). The occupation, usufruct, and appropriation of these territories provide evidence of the diverse valorizations they have had throughout the region’s history. But what is interesting for the purposes of this chapter is to elucidate, succinctly, the elements that allow us to link the state of territorial occupation to volcanic events. In this sense, the most significant volcanic events will serve as our expositive and argumentative guide, as Table 9.1 shows. At this point, we must pause to analyze the aforementioned evacuations, for they illustrate several of the key points addressed in this chapter. On April 17, 1991, amidst a period of renewed volcanic activity, Colima’s Civil Protection agency attempted to implement the preventive measure of evacuating people from La Yerbabuena, Nuevo 6 See

the webpage: https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/finanzaspersonales/That-pasa-with-the-mer cado-inmobiliario-to-a-ano-ofthe-19-S-20180916-0048.html.

Abundant ash shower that spread to a distance of 100 km; reports of huge losses of cattle (De la Cruz 2004)

Huge eruptions with abundant ash fall as far away as Michoacán (De For this eruptive period, the indigenous communities of Suchitlán la Cruz 2004) and Cofradía were closest to the Volcano of Colima. Suchitlán was Huge eruption with intense ash showers to distances of 200 km (De the third-largest town in the province of Colima in terms of population. The early decades of the eighteenth century initiated a la Cruz 2004) tendency—beginning with the Bourbon Reforms—to impede the Huge eruption with extensive ash showers that reached Guadalajara, Indians from maintaining their lands and relative autonomy, a Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Mexico City (De la Cruz process accelerated in the Independence period with the Lerdo Laws 2004) and later measures that affected indigenous lands (López 2006) Various eruptions formed a new adventitious cone on the NE flank of The second half of the 19th century brought a wave of German, U.S., and French immigrants to Colima, who joined local elites through the volcano (Volcancito) (De la Cruz 2004) Explosive eruption of the Volcancito with abundant ash shower (De political, commercial and kinship relations (López 2006) In 1867, some foreigners established an industrial society with coffee la Cruz 2004) plantations in the area where part of the ex-hacienda is found. It was called the Compañía de San Antonio (Ortoll 2005). In the late nineteenth century, the hacienda was in the hands of a German, Arnoldo Vogel, who expanded its lands to an approximate area of 9,000 hectares, 2,000 of which were in Colima (Guedea 1999)

1585

1606

1872

1869

1818

(continued)

Hernán Cortés was interested in the northwestern coastal region of the Pacific. In 1522, Spaniards took possession of lands around the Volcano of Colima and began to establish routes to connect with other regions. The processes of the encomienda and, later, the Republic of Indians, reconfigured the territory and existing social and power relations. An economy based on exploiting natural resources and cattle-ranching imposed by the Spanish displaced native populations that had occupied those lands for centuries (López 2006)

Abundant ash shower that caused extensive damage and, possibly, the loss of human lives (De la Cruz 2004)

1576

1622

Regional context

Volcanic event Effects

Table 9.1 Social–volcanic interaction in Colima, Source Own elaboration from the cited authors

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1999

1998

1991

1960

1913

1909

1903

Regional context

(continued)

In this period in the volcanic zone, as in many others, purchase/sale processes involving Vogel’s descendants affected the hacienda’s lands. Later, the land was auctioned off to pay a debt to the Banco Explosive eruptions with ash showers; expulsion of incandescent Occidental, and as a consequence of the agrarian affectations fragments caused fires on the skirts of the volcanoes (De la Cruz imposed by the Mexican Revolution (Guedea 1999) 2004) The various owners of the hacienda implemented strategies—legal Huge explosive eruption with abundant ash shower and pyroclastic and illegal—to monopolize resources and lands, and prohibit flows; some victims (De la Cruz 2004) possession or usufruct. One example is the Jabalí ranch. It formed part of the ex-hacienda, but was declared a protected forest area and Onset of a new episode of growth of the dome (De la Cruz 2004) wild fauna refuge; thus restricting usufruct of the resources at three The extrusion of a dome of lava begins, generating numerous avalanches of incandescent rock with flows of blocks and ash on the lagoons: El Calabozo, El Jabalí and El Epazote (Cuevas and Seefoó, 2005) S and SO flanks of the volcano; preventive measures are taken, In 1968, La Yerbabuena was founded as an ejido with the official including simulated evacuations (De la Cruz 2004) name: Ejido Ex-hacienda San Antonio. It covered an area of 53 ha Growing seismic activity detected in March. On November 17: and had 24 people trained to work the land. La Becerrera was given evacuation of the localities closest to the volcano. November 20: a the official name: Ejido Alfredo V. Bonfil. It was founded with a grant new, growing, dome of lava is visible at the summit, followed by lava of land in 1975 that covered an area of 590 has with 43 people flows of with blocks, lesser pyroclastic flows and explosions (De la trained to work the land (Archivo General Agrario, Dotación 1, San Cruz 2004) Antonio. Exp. 103, leg. 1) Isolated explosions recorded, with a major one on February 10 that expelled incandescent fragments and produced fires in the vegetation on the skirts of the volcano with flows of blocks and ash. A second evacuation of the closest communities is effectuated. A similar explosion is recorded on May 10, 1999, leading to a third evacuation (De la Cruz 2004)

Explosive eruption with shower ash N and NE of the volcano and pyroclastic flows (De la Cruz 2004)

Volcanic event Effects

Table 9.1 (continued)

226 H. I. Rodríguez-García

Regional context Other evacuations of La Yerbabuena took place in February and May 2002 (Gavilanes 2004). The people evacuated did not return to the community because homes were built for them in Cofradía de Suchitlán, 16 km (as the crow flies) from the crater (Fig. 9.5) Reports of ash showers in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, and 60 km northeast of the volcano, with falls of rock fragments as large as two centimeters in diameter at a distance of 12.5 km (Bretón 2011) The explosion recorded on May 15 is considered the largest ever registered by the University of Colima’s monitoring systems. May 23 brought another explosion. This one destroyed the small dome that covered the summit, generating pyroclastic flows over all sides of the volcano with deposits 5 km from the summit channeled through the San Antonio and Montegrande ravines (Bretón 2005) By that time, much of the population of La Yerbabuena had been relocated and resistance had broken all ties of communication and cooperation with government authorities, the Civil Protection agency and even scientists

Volcanic event Effects

2000 and 2001 Continued activity with lava flows and avalanches of fragments (De la Cruz 2004)

Relatively low volcanic activity with explosions and sporadic pyroclastic flows (De la Cruz 2004)

Explosive events, avalanches of blocks of lava and pyroclastic flows (Bretón 2011)

2002–2003

2004

Table 9.1 (continued)

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Naranjal, and Montitlán. Those efforts, however, proved unsuccessful as residents simply ignored the instructions because they did not perceive the volcanic activity as representing any kind of imminent danger (Macías 1999), and because of the lack of clear communication between the agency and the at-risk populations. As a result, those authorities had minimal credibility among local people. It is enlightening to learn that government officials and some scientists tried to cover up their failed exercise by calling it a ‘simulated’ evacuation (De la Cruz 2004). In contrast to De la Cruz (2004), Cuevas (2001) affirms that the first evacuation of La Yerbabuena occurred on November 18, 1998, not the 17th of that month and year, and that it lasted for 13 days. On February 10, 1999, those localities were evacuated again, this time for 16 days, though 2 people refused to follow the instructions. On May 10, 1999, La Yerbabuena was evacuated once again, but this time two families resisted. Those evacuees spent between 26 and 32 days in shelters (Cuevas 2001). The difference between the failed evacuation of 1991 and the later, successful, exercises (in terms of participation by those affected) was due to the organization and labors, in the communities, of a group of experts in the earth sciences and some social scientists, who were annexed to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Volcano of Colima (Comité Científico Asesor del Volcán de Colima). That group, known officially as the Volcanology Observatory Information Group (Grupo de Información del Observatorio Vulcanológico, GIOV), served as a vehicle for communications among at-risk populations, volcanologists, and government. In addition to carrying out programs designed to inform people of the risks they were facing, this group conducted a series of qualitative studies that allowed them to develop more adequate strategies for preparing residents for volcanic risk (Macías 1999; Gavilanes 2004; Cuevas 2005). In contrast, emergency management by the Civil Protection agency based—as we will see below—on the dubious assumptions of a military model (Dynes 1999) caused increasing inconformity among evacuees in shelters that were administered by soldiers. Complaints included inadequate hours for meals, rigid rules that constrained their behavior, being barred from participating in food preparation or cleaning the installations, the separation of families into groups of men and women, and the prohibition on returning to their homes to feed their animals and check on their properties, among others that emerged due to the conditions imposed on co-existence there Cuevas and Seefoó (2005). Growing inconformity and discomfort led many to return home before authorization came to do so, and to refuse to evacuate on later occasions. These situations also generated tensions and frictions between groups in La Yerbabuena that refused to follow the instructions of government authorities and the rest of the population that did. But conflicts also emerged among resistors, government officials in the Civil Protection agency, and scientists, and these intensified with the more drastic decision to relocate the population. It is important to understand that this disarticulation inside the community, which deteriorated even further with relocation, exacerbated a whole series of existing internal frictions and disputes centered around economic interests and competition for positions of power among residents (González 2000; Cuevas 2005). But what really came to accentuate this fracturing of

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social relations among residents and between some of them and government authorities was a rumor that began to circulate suggesting that James Goldsmith wanted to dispossess residents of their lands and incorporate them into his ex-hacienda San Antonio hotel and agroindustrial emporium, availing himself of the pretext that the area was a high-risk zone for volcanic activity. An additional contributing factor was the previous relocation of a town called Barranca del Agua. The people of that community lived in a ravine within the hacienda’s boundaries, a site to which they had been relocated earlier by the hacienda’s former owner (Atenor Patiño). When Goldsmith took over, he began to search for a mechanism that would allow him to displace those people from the zone. The solution he found consisted in elaborating a scientific evaluation of volcanic risk. Colima’s Director of Civil Protection (an official with close ties to political and economic elites) enlisted the aid of a geologist at the University of Colima’s Volcanological Observatory, and they soon issued their findings which declared that the area where those people were living was a “high-risk zone for lahars” (Gavilanes 2004; Cuevas 2005). As a result, in 1997 the 42 families of Barranca del Agua were relocated under the pretext that they were living in a high-risk zone. They did not own homes in the community, and were told they would be guaranteed new homes in a risk-free area that would provide security for their family patrimony (Cuevas and Seefoó 2005) (Fig. 9.5). Shortly afterward, a landslide effectively buried many houses in the original site. In reality, that event was a mudslide that affected one side of the mountain, but did not carry any volcanic material. The people were told, however, that it confirmed the findings of the risk evaluation (Gavilanes 2004). Nonetheless, some perspicacious residents did perceive their relocation as a mechanism implemented to, simply, erase Barranca del Agua from the map, not as a measure to prevent disasters or mitigate their effects. Their suspicions increased with each new private acquisition of lots for the construction of country houses and cabañas in that allegedly high-risk zone, and with the spread of avocado plantations in areas close to the volcano. Returning to the communities of La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera and their interaction with volcanic activity, the reader will recall that these two localities in the municipality of Comala are the closest ones to the volcano in the state of Colima. It is important to note that the older one, in agrarian terms, is La Yerbabuena, where an ejido was established 51 years ago, compared to 44 years for La Becerrera, though the latter locality is actually older, as it was formed in the 1940s during the transition of the hacienda San Antonio. Both population centers, however, are of very recent creation in terms of geological epochs or, more precisely, the eruptive cycles of the Volcano of Colima. An interesting aspect that helps illustrate this context is the case of Guadalupe Arellano Suárez,7 the only person in either community in 2010 who had witnessed the eruption in 1913.8 While most of the people in these two localities

7 Informants’

names have been changed to protect their privacy.

8 At this time, the date of Guadalupe’s death is unknown, but we know that in 2010 she was awarded

special recognition in the Generación Colimense del Centenario in Colima by the state government. She was born on March 8, 1900, so in 2010 she was 110, the longest-living person in the state.

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Fig. 9.5 Location of Cofradía de Suchitlán. Elaborated by Luis Alejandro Pérez Ortiz

know of that eruption because their grandparents or neighbors transmitted information orally from generation-to-generation, the lack of direct experience with volcanic activity of the intensity and magnitude of the 1913 event has had a notable influence on social attitudes and responses to government and scientific interventions designed to mitigate risk, and to the intensification of volcanic activity. Indeed, locals find it hard to conceive the complex dimensions of this context, or even to believe that the volcano with which they have co-existed throughout their lives, might actually be dangerous and inflict serious damage (Gavilanes et al. 2009). This situation, however, changed somewhat as a result of the volcanic crisis of July 2015.

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We have mentioned that La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera were formed as ejidos in 1968 and 1975, respectively, and that the most recent large eruption occurred in 1913. From 1913 to 1991, the volcano was at peace, except for the emergence of a dome in 1960 that had very little import for local people. This period of volcanic calm is key because it led people to conclude that the lack of (visible) activity around the volcano meant that it did not present a threat to people or property around the time the ejidos close to the volcano were founded; that is, until 1998, when volcanic activity increased significantly and continued to 2017. In this context, the 1998– 2005 period was a strategic one for risk management in La Yerbabuena, because the intensified activity in 1998–1999 convinced some experts that an eruption like that of 1913 was likely. Hence, they recommended, first, evacuations and, second, the definitive relocation of at-risk populations. It seems pertinent, at this juncture, to ask if those ejidal lands would have been distributed to these localities if the Hacienda San Antonio had been seriously affected by the 1913 eruption, and whether the ensuing residential and agricultural development would have been identical if volcanic activity had been constant during that period. Clearly, the null perception of risk associated with volcanic activity among people in Colima was largely due to the absence of any direct interaction with eruptive events, the inexistence of affectations caused by volcanic activity, and the scant scientific knowledge related to volcanic risk. To sum up this section, the information presented evidences that the human societies that have inhabited this region over time have interacted, directly or indirectly, with the volcano, either in the form of volcanic events per se or through the landscapes, fertile soil, and other resources that volcanic orography offers. What is clear for the most recent period, however, is that families in La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera, have indeed been affected, to a greater or lesser degree, by concrete neoliberal policies, especially the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution and the later issuing of the new Agrarian Law, two modifications analyzed effectively by Calva (1993) with respect to what they have meant for rural Mexico as a whole. The changes that these two ejidos underwent as a result of structural adjustment policies framed in Mexico’s neoliberal project constitute the primary generators of vulnerability because they broke up the communal, collective, family based patrimonies by incorporating the ejidos into neoliberal markets. This meant that the peasants and indigenous residents, who historically have been those most marginalized and susceptible to economic, social, and political changes, were left unprotected, abandoned. The fact that they lack access to resources in their new setting has made it impossible for them to satisfy their basic needs, such as adequate alimentation, health services, and education, among others. Deficiencies derived from similar processes arose in La Becerrera, as well, where the people who sold their lands ended up working for the ex-hacienda San Antonio and became dependent on that source of income to maintain their families. It is in this framework that we can situate the processes and conjunctures that generated vulnerability in these rural communities of Colima; susceptibilities that have endured from Colonial times, but have been modified and accelerated at the rhythm of the sociopolitical and economic processes that have transpired in Mexico.

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In this regard, our brief elucidation of some of the modes of appropriating resources in the volcanic zone of Colima provides glimpses of elements that generate an accentuated vulnerability in the current neoliberal framework, which becomes visible in the appropriation of natural resources and living spaces justified by a two-pronged argument based on (i) environmental protection and conservation—though these spaces are now exploited as landscapes for the hotel’s guests to enjoy and celebrate social events—and, (ii) volcanic risk. In La Yerbabuena, these aspects, among others, have raised suspicions of, and resistance to, government actions related to risk management, and have broken any possibility of collaboration in reducing the volcanic risk to which these people are exposed. The following section describes in greater detail the relocation of the people of La Yerbabuena.

9.3 Preventive Human Relocation from Volcanic Risk in a Neoliberal Context The process of relocation due to volcanic risk in La Yerbabuena can be taken as a point of reference (reflexive and self-reflexive) regarding governmental and scientific procedures in managing volcanic risk in Colima and Mexico, for two main reasons: the way in which risk (in reality, threat or danger) is evaluated, and how relocations are carried out. Multiple cases show just how traumatic relocations can be in cultural, economic, social, environmental, and political terms for both the people directly affected and those who receive them, (Scudder and Colson 1982; Barabas and Bartolomé 1992; Cernea 1995, 1997; Oliver-Smith 2001; Macías 2001, 2009; Correa et al. 2011). It is important to point out that human relocations have occurred throughout the history of societies—whether framed by neoliberalism or not—and that the negative consequences of this action are always the same, though the intensity or level of affectation tends to be magnified under current conditions of neoliberalism due to this economic–political model’s tendency to exacerbate existing conditions of vulnerability. Macías (2020) accurately affirms that the current state of development of world capitalism—“neoliberalism”—has accelerated and deepened social inequality while increasing poverty because of its commitment to reducing the apparatus of government with the objective of privileging the access of corporations to all types of resources, including those related to mitigating disasters, all in order to maximize monetary benefits (Macías 2020). This intervention by powerful economic and political groups in “developing” nations has been manifested in the transfer of certain public policies related to risk management and mitigating disasters, specifically in the phase of prevention, through the concept of “risk transfer,” which shifts the focus to insurance programs that offer protection from catastrophes, accompanied by guidelines for institutional procedures framed in the dominant vision and a militarized model. This approach means that the underlying causes of disasters are addressed inadequately or not at all. Here, we refer to vulnerabilities and the mechanisms

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that generate them, including neoliberal political–economic policies, and to the fact that during the phase of reconstruction power groups take advantage of the social, political, and economic “shock” produced by the materialization of disaster to reform laws or act more aggressively to capture economic benefits for the few, as Klein has described so well (Klein 2010). One example of this was the United Nations’ International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), an initiative framed within the dominant, technocratic vision, and designed by “first world” countries with the support of their political and economic interests. A complementary measure emerged in the form of the Red de Estudios Sociales para la Prevención de Desastres en América Latina (La Red, “Network of Social Studies for Preventing Disasters in Latin America”), whose goal was to project an alternative vision of disasters designed to reduce human suffering, death, and losses by critiquing the neoliberal, capitalist development model that creates vulnerabilities (Macías 2020). Later, however, the leading promotors of La Red ended up working on UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) or related projects in the field of risk-disaster associated with initiatives undertaken by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank (WB) that promoted “Risk Management” strategies in which powerful financial organizations participated to foment policies that broadened insurance markets (Macías 2020). Despite these international efforts, evidence from each new disaster that occurs in Mexico and Latin America demonstrates that “the deterioration of the national economy, increasing levels of poverty and the inefficiency of civil protection have multiplied the levels of the phenomenon that we know as social vulnerability to disasters” (Macías 2020). In the case that concerns us, the relocation of people and the way in which it was carried out derived to a great extent from operative plans and emergency manuals based on international guidelines like the UNDRO’s Management Manual for Volcanic Emergencies (1985), which speaks mostly of risk transfer, including technologies in strategies for preventing and mitigating risks, and studying the geophysical phenomena that are deemed as the principle cause of volcanic risk. In the case of La Yerbabuena, the relocation was of the “preventive” type in which the people directly affected—both those who were relocated and resistors— had no direct interaction with the most visible aspect of the disaster; that is, economic affectations, property damage, casualties, environmental deterioration, and the loss of means of subsistence due to the impact of a volcanic event and conditions of vulnerability. This element is especially important because, as we will see below, the absence of deleterious effects in the community is one of the main arguments put forth by resistors, added to their suspicions that the entire scenario was designed by local businessmen and government simply and solely to rob them of their natural resources. While it is true that relocation allowed several families to reduce their exposure to volcanic activity—which is not equivalent to easing vulnerability—it concurrently intensified disputes over resources and power inside the community and disarticulated the relations between “the resistors” and “the relocated,” terms used by people in La Yerbabuena to allude to those who rejected relocation and those who acceded to being moved. But these are not the only terms one hears, for the latter call the

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former “stubborn” and “hardheaded” (terco, necio in Spanish), while resistors use the derogatory word miedosos (scaredy-cats) to refer to those who were relocated (Cuevas 2005). According to both resistors and social scientists who have studied this case (Macías 1999, 2001; Gavilanes 2004; Cuevas 2005; Cuevas and Seefoó 2005; Rodríguez 2018, 2019), the entire process was imposed vertically and, to some degree, forcibly, by government authorities with little clarity regarding the assessment of the volcanic risk to which residents and people in the surrounding area were exposed, or concern for the social and economic conditions to which they would be relocated. Cuevas (2005) writes that relocation began with the increase in volcanic activity in late 1998 and continued up to the people’s geographic displacement and replacement in May 2002. She narrates that the process transpired through conflicts, negotiations, and alliances among diverse groups and individuals that disputed power in the community, and among various groups, each of which sustained that “their” version of the volcanic risk involved was the “correct” one. Cuevas (2005) writes that seven of the 57 families in La Yerbabuena at the time of the relocation were positioned politically as a “resistance group” because—as mentioned previously—they perceived the program as a mechanism that would bar them from exploiting their lands for tourism projects. The other 50 families acceded to relocation. However, in early 2003, eight of those families returned to La Yerbabuena due to difficulties in adapting to the new conditions and because their productive systems still existed in the community. This reflects the fact that the relocation process led to the politization of risk management due to inadequate decision-making by the state government, which relocated the population based on the recommendation of volcanologists who are specialists in earth sciences, not risk management. The result was that the government constructed a housing development of urban design that is totally inadequate for the needs of people accustomed to a rural lifestyle where homes have ample yards and gardens, fruit trees, patios to raise small animals, and a wide separation one from the other. Not surprisingly, those changes profoundly reconfigured the community’s long-established social relations. Cuevas and Seefoó (2005) note that house lots in La Yerbabuena could measure 1,500 m2 , while those in the relocation zone are barely 200 m2 . That process of politization extended into the scientific sector as well, for the resistors cast a shadow of discreditation over the scientific committee that recommended relocation since its actions supported government intervention in the management of volcanic risk. Though several of the volcanologists who served on the committee have roundly denied that they recommended relocation, the official government line contradicts them. Meanwhile, the discourses of both resistors and proponents of relocation hold that it was the people of La Yerbabuena themselves who petitioned for relocation, and that this occurred while they were in shelters in Comala due to increased volcanic activity, and after a visit by then President, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. What follows is an excerpt from the testimony of Raúl Pérez, who was the ejidal commissioner (comisario ejidal) when the relocation took place. He moved out, but later joined the group of returnees to La Yerbabuena.

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We began because they were pulling us here and there, ’cause they took us to the shelters and all that. And in the… well, before that, in 2002, the volcano had a kind of strong event and we spent almost a month in… Pablo Silva, the secondary [school]. That was where Ernesto Zedillo came and we suggested that instead of going back and forth, why couldn’t they give us support to have houses there in case of an event, somewhere we could go [instead of] those shelters (interview with Raúl Pérez, July 10, 2015).9

Pérez could not recall the date when they made the petition for relocation, but his reference to his stay in the shelter leads us to believe that it was during the evacuation of May 10, 1999, when people spent 26 days in the shelter (the longest evacuation). That date coincides with Zedillo’s presidential administration (1994–2000). Pérez further stated that they drew up a document—signed by all community members— to formalize their request. It was during the following administrations of President Vicente Fox and governor Fernando Moreno Peña (1997–2003) that their solicitude was acted upon. Pérez is among those who believe that the volcano can cause damage. He recalls hearing about the 1913 eruption, and said that when they were digging the foundations for the town square, they found buried charcoal they thought could have come from that eruption. This led them to realize that another eruption of that kind could affect La Yerbabuena and, therefore, that relocation was necessary and was being proposed due to imminent volcanic risk, not out of a desire to divest them of their homes and fields, as the resistors argued. It is important to understand, of course, that Pérez’ house and properties, and those of all the other returnees, were conserved thanks to the actions of those resistors. This interviewee further commented that when the Civil Protection agency summoned residents to talks to inform them of the risk to which they were exposed, they explained the possibility that the 1913 eruption could be repeated: Yeah, well… there’s the story about a big eruption in 1913. Back then, supposedly, La Yerbabuena sat on purely volcanic material; ’cause when we dug the square we used a machine to make the platform and there was charcoal in the bottom (…) We saw it, that’s why I say it’s true, see? [sic] So, yeah, it’s likely that it was covered… when it erupted strong [sic]… but they’re monitoring it so they know when there’s going to be an eruption. ’Cause at some point they were worried… they were measuring around and it sort of inflated; that’s what worried them (interview with Raúl Pérez, 10 July 2015).10 9 Empezamos

porque nos traían pa’llá y pa’cá porque nos llevaron a los albergues y todo eso. Y en el…por ahí antes del 2002 hubo un evento medio fuerte del volcán y estuvimos casi un mes en…en allá en Pablo Silva, la secundaria. Y ahí pos le tocó venir a Ernesto Zedillo y ahí nosotros le planteábamos que en lugar de andar pa’llá y pa’cá por qué no nos apoyaba con algo para tener casas allá para en caso de un evento tener a dónde llegar y ya no en los albergues verdad (Entrevista a Raúl Pérez el 10 de julio de 2015). 10 Sí o sea, pues tienen historia de que en 1913 hizo una erupción fuerte. Entonces que supuestamente La Yerbabuena, la ranchería, está asentada en puro material volcánico. Porque nosotros cuando hicimos el jardín, metimos una máquina para hacer la plataforma y había carbones en el piso abajo (…) Lo vimos sí, por eso digo que sí es cierto edá [sic]. Entonces, que es muy probable que aquí quede tapado de…cuando eche una erupción juerte [sic]…pero, como ellos lo están monitoreando, ellos saben cuándo va a ser una erupción. Porque en algún tiempo les preocupaba porque lo estaban midiendo al rededor y tendía en inflarse, y eso sí les preocupaba (Entrevista a Raúl Pérez el 10 de julio de 2015).

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Concerning the solicitude for relocation by the people of La Yerbabuena, José Domínguez, who is now a leader of the resistors, told us … look, what happened is that from the first, when Zedillo was here in the first evacuation, he came in a helicopter [and] they took him over there to the school. I was nearby when they wrote on a piece of paper, making the petition. Like why didn’t they get us some land so everybody could build houses however they wanted. So that in case of evacuation instead of [sic] going to a shelter, well it would be better to go to your house and stay there… (interview with José Domínguez, 26 May 2015).11

It is crucial to note here that these two discourses coincide, despite the fact that the politically important men who pronounced them, and who played influential roles in the community during and after relocation, held diametrically opposed political positions regarding relocation and volcanic risk. Also intriguing is the fact that the main motive for relocation—volcanic risk—was distorted, but that it was community members themselves—or a group of them—who solicited the change. The exclusion of any consideration of, or participation by, local people in designing and executing the project, because it was guided by the dominant vision and militarized model, were the main factors that later generated profound doubts and skepticism regarding government actions allegedly implemented to protect the population. Domínguez noted that the evacuations began during the volcanic emergencies of 1997 or 1998, and were repeated periodically for around two years. Sometimes people had to spend a month-and-a-half or two months in shelters. Apart from the problems caused by co-existence under those imposed conditions and the strict orders and regulation imposed by the army, he rebelled against the evacuations and relocation because he began to see that tourists were frequenting the supposed danger zone during the evacuations: When I was coming, ’cause I didn’t have any pigs in the [inaudible] (…) I came in a taxi every other day to feed them, and I started to see lots of tourism… many people. So they pull us out, but for those people there’s no problem? I started to doubt, and that’s when I decided to go back. I went back and started to organize the people (interview with José Domínguez, 26 May 2015).12

The government’s contradictions over who is at risk of volcanic activity and who is not, and who can inhabit a certain geographic space and who may not, began to generate doubts in José and the resistors as to the degree of danger that the volcano really presented, and about the government’s motives: was it acting to protect them 11 Mira, lo que pasa es que desde un principio, cuando estaba Zedillo, en la primera evacuación que fue, llegó en un helicóptero, lo movieron allá en la escuela. Entonces yo estaba cerquita ahí cuando hicieron un papel manuscrito, y le hicieron la petición que cómo no se nos conseguía un terreno para que cada persona hiciera su casa, como fuera, como cada quien quisiera. Para en caso de evacuación de en [sic] lugar de irse a un albergue pues mejor te fueras a tu casa y ahí te pusieras…(Entrevista José Domínguez el 26 de mayo de 2015). 12 Y cuando yo venía, porque yo tenía marranitos ahí en las [inaudible] (…) Cada tercer día venía yo a darles de comer en un taxi, ya empecé a ver mucho turismo y empecé a ver muchas gentes. Para nosotros nos sacan y para la gente no hay nada. Empecé a dudar entonces, ya de ahí yo tomé la determinación de regresarme. Ya me regresé yo y empecé a organizar a la gente (Entrevista José Domínguez el 26 de mayo de 2015).

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from danger, or to take away their lands? Their skepticism only grew as conflicts inside the community and between resistors and government authorities intensified, and as the relocation project took shape. But this mistrust affected not only relations with government officials, for it soon spread into the scientific field as well; specifically to the aforementioned Scientific Advisory Committee, whose main function was to orient the authorities regarding volcanic activity. Domínguez also mentioned this in his testimony: Look, they started by bringing videos, the scientists [saying] this is what’s going to happen to you… now those bastards are doctors [sic] in volcanology [sic]. Then they started to come in this beat-up government pick-up…, the police brought them here to show videos. We saw volcanoes and destruction, and how landslides started. [But] I stopped believing when they showed a girl in [the middle of] a lava flow and a helicopter trying to rescue her. They’re crazy, I mean if you fall into the lava you disintegrate at that really high temperature (…) [the scientists told us:] ‘We’ve come to show you the risk you’re facing. There are zones where volcanoes are doing this, and it can happen here’ (interview with José Domínguez, 26 May 2015).13

This political situation of resistance to relocation and the loss of their properties— as José narrated—combined with people’s existing understanding of the nature of the volcano (as outlined previously) and of their own best interests, led José, the other resistors, returnees, and the people who had been relocated to construct their own reading of the situation of risk and a political reading of the actions taken to manage it. Meanwhile, Alejandro Álvarez, a resistor aged 88 in 2015 who had lived in the relocation zone in Cofradía de Suchitlán for five years, though he was moved there against his will by his children due to his poor state of health (diabetes), argued that there is no danger in La Yerbabuena. To support his view he related that his mother, Guadalupe Arellano—mentioned earlier, who died at the age of 115—told him about the “explosion” of 1913 (as some people call it). When asked if La Yerbabuena was threatened by the volcano, he responded: It’s not true… not true. My mother was one of the folks who knew about the two explosions, she experienced the one in ’13, but there was another before that. And the volcanologists who’ve been coming say that where we all live, where the community stands, there’s only lava from the volcano. That’s not true. During the ’13 eruption my mother was living in San José (Jalisco), and she says that not even a lick [sic] of lava got there; it was all over by the Cordobán and Lumbre [Rivers] (…) and around Quesería and Montegrande. But no way… there’s no danger (…) none at all. She had the right to say that she didn’t move away’cause

13 Mira primero empezaron a traer videos, los científicos. Que ahorita te va a tocar…ya ahorita son dosctores [sic] en vulcanología esos cabrones [sic]. Y entonces ya ellos empezaron a traer…los traía una camioneta toda destartalada del municipio ahí, los policías los traían a visitar a poner videos. Vimos volcanes que hacían destrucción y cómo empezaba el deslave. Donde yo ya no pude creer fue donde estaba una niña en la corrientada [sic] de la lava y estaba un helicóptero queriéndola sacar. Están bien locos, la persona en cuanto entra a la lava se desintegra. Una temperatura muy caliente, muy fuerte (…) [los científicos les decían:] “Nosotros venimos a mostrarles en el riesgo en el que se encuentran ustedes. Hay zonas donde los volcanes están haciendo esto, esto y esto puede pasar” (Entrevista José Domínguez el 26 de mayo de 2015).

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she wasn’t afraid of the volcano. The only thing she was afraid of were the government’s questions (interview, 28 May 2015).14

Finally, it is clear that the relocation process polarized the people of La Yerbabuena by facing the “relocated” off against the “resistors” (González 2000; Cuevas 2005), though in actual fact it intensified existing power disputes in the community and made them more visible. Within this polarization there are people who maintain that relocation was necessary because their community is at risk, while others stress the benefits gained, such as access to basic services like education, health care, and transport, etc. Another group, however, sees only machinations by government and businessmen to take away their lands. But the condition of risk among resistors and the disarticulation of social relations among La Yerbabuena’s residents have contributed in some measure to the government’s actions based on the dominant vision (Hewitt 1983) and military model (Dynes 1999).

9.4 Conclusions In this text, we set out to explain, in broad terms, how people came to establish communities in zones that, over time, have been affected by diverse volcanic events and conditions of vulnerability due to the lack of access to resources and public services, and government interventions in the area of risk management which have increased that vulnerability in diverse contexts of neoliberalism. These circumstances have transformed the spaces that those communities occupy into areas of risk. Although La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera are exposed to virtually the same volcanic threats, the type and degree of vulnerability of each one mark a substantial difference with respect to their respective levels of risk and how this should be reduced. These aspects (conditions of vulnerability), however, are not considered in the dominant vision or by neoliberalism, which tends to see the localities involved as homogeneous despite their evident diversity in environmental, cultural, social, political, and economic terms. The first element—the dominant vision (Hewitt 1983)—amply explains actions for risk management that focus on identifying, studying, and monitoring exclusively geophysical phenomena with not even minimal concern for the social component that totally configures risk and disaster. This approach emerges from the tradition of the military model for emergency management (Dynes 1999), which translates into imposing purely vertical, top-down actions that establish asymmetrical relations 14 No es cierto, no es cierto. Mi mamá fue una de las que conocieron las dos reventazones, la del 13 le tocó, pero antes de eso hubo otra. Y los volcanólogos que han estado yendo, dicen que allí donde vivemos, donde tenemos el poblado, que es todo lo que hay allí es lava del volcán. Y no es cierto. Mi mamá en esa reventazón del 13 vivía en San José (Jalisco), y dice que allí ni un trinchecito [sic] de lava llegó, todo fue acá por el Cordobán y por el río Lumbre (…) Y por allá por el lado de Quesería fue por Montegrande. Pero no, no. Peligro no hay (…) No, no había peligro de nada. Ella por derecho les decía que ella no se salía porque ella al volcán no le tenía miedo. A lo que le tenía miedo es a las cuestiones del gobierno (Entrevista realizada el 28 de mayo de 2015).

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between authorities and local people that are entirely inadequate for effective risk management. Indeed, this approach not only perpetuates existing risks, but actually generates new ones by refusing to attend to the underlying causes that produce vulnerabilities; that is, by placing economics over social wellbeing, supporting the deregulation of activities, and providing inappropriate treatment of the main consequences— including vulnerabilities and risks—by implementing international guidelines that are unsuitable for individual communities. There are, therefore, problems of origin related to volcanic risk in Colima, as well as failures in conceptualization and treatment. What is required is to change these underlying conceptions because, logically, an inadequate understanding of risk leads to inappropriate actions for preventing or mitigating it. But this challenge is even greater because the changes required collide directly with a neoliberal conception of risk management that, in reality, generates much of that risk. This is reflected, as well, in the nature of Mexico’s National System of Civil Protection and its operative organ, the National Coordination of Civil Protection, since Colima’s Civil Protection agency is built in the image and likeness of that national system. As we have mentioned, this approach derives from international schemes of civil protection and civil defense promoted by international organisms like the United Nations through the—now extinct—UNDRO. The analytical approach adopted in our study allowed us to identify the inadequate management of volcanic risk that exists in Colima because, again, in reality, this concept and the social construction of disaster are configured more by people’s levels of vulnerability and exposure and organizational preparations for managing them, than by the characteristics of volcanic activity per se. The phenomena of resistance to relocation and opposition to evacuation, coupled with contradictions in attributions of responsibilities for the decisions involved, reflect insufficiency and inappropriate management and communications regarding risk by civil protection agencies. Under these conditions, efforts to reduce volcanic risk should be directed toward deactivating or reconfiguring the mechanisms that generate vulnerability and the medium- and long-term sociohistorical processes that have configured the geographic space in the volcanic zone of Colima. This approach, however, cannot lose sight of the current period of neoliberal capitalism that, in the case of Colima, tends toward establishing productive systems based on monocropping, the privatization of space, and the exploitation of natural and landscape resources for capital accumulation by power groups, together with the ongoing privatization of highlands in the state for the construction of country homes. It seems that this context includes an open market for tourism, real estate speculation, and agribusiness, while peasant communities in the area are conceived as being perilously exposed to volcanic risk and so have severe restrictions imposed on their lifestyles.

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References Barabas, A., & Bartolomé, M. (1992). Antropología y relocalizaciones, Alteridades. Revistas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2(4). Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., David, I., & Wisner, B. (1996). Vulnerabilidad. El entorno social, político y económico de los desastres, Red de Estudios Sociales en Prevención de Desastres en América Latina. Bretón, M. (2011). El Volcán de Fuego de Colima. Seis siglos de actividad eruptiva (1523–2010). Universidad de Colima. Georgina, Calderón. (2001). Construcción y reconstrucción del desastre. Plaza y Valdés, S. A: de C.V. Calva, J. (1993). La disputa por la tierra. México: Fontamara. Cernea, M. (1995). Primero la gente. Variables sociológicas en el desarrollo rural. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Cuevas, M. A. (2001). El riesgo volcánico como objeto de representación social. Masters thesis, Maestra en Ciencias Sociales Especialidad en Estudios Rurales. El Colegio de Michoacán. Cuevas, M. A. (2005). Dinámicas de interfaces entre diversos actores sociales: Reubicación de una población campesina por un posible riesgo volcánico. Ph.D. thesis, El Colegio de Michoacán, México. Cuevas, A., & Seefoó, J. (2005). Reubicación y desarticulación de La Yerbabuena. Entre el riesgo volcánico y la vulnerabilidad política. Desacatos, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (pp. 41–70), Sep-Dec, number 019. Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social. (2010). Medición de la Pobreza 2008–2018. México. Consejo Nacional de Población. (2011). Índices de Marginación. México. Cortés, F., & Oliveira, O. (2010). Desigualdad social. El Colegio de México (Los grandes problemas de México; v.5). Correa, E., Ramírez, F., & Haris, S. (2011). Guía de reasentamiento para poblaciones en riesgo de desastre. Banco Mundial. Davila, N., Capra, L., Gavilanes, J., Varley, N., Norini, G., & Gómez, A. (2007). Recent lahars at Volcán de Colima (México): Drainage variatio and spectral classification. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 165, 127–141. De la Cruz, S. (2004). Series Fascículos Volcanes. México: Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres. De la Cruz, S. (2008). A statical method linking geological and historical eruption time series for volcanic hazard estimations: Applications to active polygenetic volcanoes. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 176, 277–290. Dynes, R. (1999). La planificación de emergencias en comunidades: falsos supuestos y analogías inapropiadas, Cuadernos de Extensión, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. No.2 Gavilanes, J. (2004). Simulación de escenarios eruptivos del Volcán de Colima y aportaciones al plan de contingencias del estado de Colima. Master’s thesis, Posgrado en Geografía de la Universidad Autónoma de México. Gavilanes, J., Cuevas, A., Varley, N., Gwynne, G., Stevenson, J., Saucedo, R., et al. (2009). Exploring the factors that influence the perception of risk: The case of Volcán de Colima, México. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 186, 238–252. González, L. (2000). Evaluación de la vulnerabilidad social en la comunidad Ex-hacienda San Antonio, La Yerbabuena, estado de Colima. Bachelor’s thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Guedea, J. (1999). Las haciendas en Colima. Una excepción al modelo establecido en otros Estados de la República Mexicana. Colima, México: Universidad de Colima. Harvey, D. (2005). Breve historia del Neoliberalismo. España: Ediciones Akal. Hewitt, K. (1983). The Idea of Calamity in a Technocratic Age. In K. Hewitt (Ed.), Interpretations of Calamity. London: Allen and Unwin.

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Chapter 10

It is Not the Rivers Fault: A Reflection About the Construction of Disasters in Brazil and Mexico Gláucia Maria Quintino-Baraúna

10.1 Introduction In this article, I intend to question governments and their position of blaming the rivers for floods that were transformed by the intervention of infrastructure projects or by the intense exploration of natural resources. This concern emerged when verifying the contrasts between the discourse of those affected and the position of the public administrators in the press, in relation to the way they dealt with the disasters manifested through the sequence of such interventions in areas coveted by business sectors that defended the implementation of development projects and counted on the support and authorization of the State to execute these plans (Castro 2012). This article was elaborated with information collected from various sources: bibliographic and journalistic material, readings of scientific articles, interviews conducted during fieldwork with disaster-affected families, as well as the accounts and support of other researchers who accompanied the processes lived by some of the affected families. To understand what is behind a disaster, it is necessary to consider the social relationships, the history of the formation of the places that are affected, the socioeconomic issues that, in some way, put social groups in spaces of risk, and government policies for areas of management, as well as the lack of inclusive social policies that could satisfy the basic needs of the population (Macías 2009). According to Macías (2009), a disaster is not only a destructive event in itself but rather a series of phenomena that occur sequentially until they come to the most Anthropologist and scholarship recipient of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), in Brazil, during postdoctoral stay at the Centre for Research and Higher Learning in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico (2015–2017). G. M. Quintino-Baraúna (B) Universidad Federal do Amazonas (UFAM), Manaus, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_10

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overwhelming phase, that of shock and impact. When this happens, society goes on alert, primarily due to the traces of destruction that extend to all the places in the affected area and for unexpectedly disturbing parts of the population. However, disaster cannot be summarized only by this moment but also by what occurs before and after it. From this perspective, it is possible to perceive disaster as something that becomes constructed and gains form as natural phenomena, with the intense intervention and negligence on the part of government authorities. The omission or the participation of society as a way of supporting infrastructure interventions are likewise considered actions that contribute to the worsening of disaster. From reading Macías’s work, another possibility arises to think about disasters in a relational way. The process is determined by the conditions and social vulnerability, considering social history as a form of societal appropriation of natural resources. In the midst of all that, the natural phenomenon ends up composing that construction, and when it affects the social groups, it causes the structure to merge in full chaos. A disaster can demonstrate to what extent a society is informed and supported, also it can be the revealing element that points out how much society may be unaware of nature and its phenomena, supposedly the causalities. Before the unknown, society is under pressure and has no way out in facing the established crises, thus, new forms of relating to nature should be pondered. This is because society may also be unable to problematize the role of the State and its institutions in regards to a resolution for the problems that arise, making it impossible to analyze the dimension of the disaster or what it is related to. We need to analyze the actions employed before and after disaster occurs, think about government policies that organize activities in support of the families affected, consider the reconstruction of the lives of those who experienced disaster situations and the conflicts that exist between institutions, in reference to understanding social disasters, as well as reflect about the interests that permeate this discussion. In Mexico, State institutions are criticized by scholars, precisely for opting for the dominant vision that in my view, transforms a natural phenomenon into the culprit, which does not differ from Brazil. This vision is based on the exact and natural sciences that defend disasters as unpredictable phenomena, which escape human control. In this way, limiting the reflection and adoption of preventative measures avoid deaths and material losses, as well as cultural fragmentation provoked by one of these situations. In order not to prolong this debate, I will present some specific examples of this complex relation below, with the objective of analyzing how governments have currently forged fault on nature.

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10.2 Institutional Omission: The Disasters at the Madeira River in Rondônia and the Doce River in Minas Gerais, Brazil Amazon is the present-day laboratory for infrastructure interventions in Brazil. The social groups that live in areas designated by the State for these projects have experienced disasters as a result. Some of these interventions have provoked irreversible environmental and social impacts, therefore, constituting a challenge for hundreds of people affected by such disasters who suffer forced displacement and the lack of recognition of their territorial rights (Fearnside 2004; Baines 1994; Castro 1996). To that end, I will present one of the cases that form part of the infrastructure implementation policy in the region and show that, likewise, there are hundreds of other negative experiences all over the country, as a result of the alliance between political and business interests in the natural resources still unexplored. In 2014, the population of the Brazilian states of Rondônia, Amazonas, and Acre suffered the impacts of the first flood provoked by the construction of two hydroelectric power plants on the Madeira River, built as part of a mega-infrastructure project on the side of the river that belongs to Rondônia. This project was called the “Madeira Complex” that concentrated on a series of infrastructure works, ranging from the constructions of highways, power transmission lines, waterways, and hydroelectric power plants (Gudynas 2008: 32). The Madeira Complex was implemented during the governments of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Dilma Rousseff, as part of the Growth Acceleration Program and the 10-year Energy Plan, one of the components for the billboard of construction projects for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure Initiative (IIRSA). The hydroelectric power plants in question were called Jirau and Santo Antônio, old names of locations in the region, dams that represented and continue to represent a negative experience in the lives of hundreds of affected families. The problem worsened when both dams began operating, instigating the first great flood. The result of such infrastructure intervention on the riverbed would be environmental and social disaster. In this case, a natural phenomenon was not the cause, but rather a process that started with the arrival of the project. The initial effects were the intensified socioenvironmental conflicts, with the deepening fragmentation of the affected communities and the imposition of decisions that were detrimental to the families that lived within and around the area that was impacted. The harassment in relation to the targeted areas; the pressure to leave at any cost or to even accept the proposal for compensation devised by the business consortia (Sustainable Energy of Brazil—ESBR and Santo Antônio Energy—SAE) were constant but to aggravate the situation, the mentioned flood occurred (Baraúna 2014). The Madeira River flood affected other rivers that are connected to it due to the morphology of the region. In the State of Amazonas rural producers calculated irreversible damage and lost all of their crops in the river channels of Purus, Madeira, Juruá, and reaching the Medio Amazonas, affecting approximately 5,694 families. I

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consider that at the very least, the damage caused in those three rivers is associated with the effects provoked by the hydroelectric companies at the Madeira River. Within the limits of the states of Rondônia and Acre, rural municipalities and locations were submerged. Part of highway BR-364 up to the height of the border municipalities of Guajará-Mirim, Rondônia, and Guayara Merin, Bolivia, became impassible and many families were isolated due to the waters retained in the area. In the triple international border, region between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, the Beni (Bolivia), and Madre de Dios (Peru) Rivers overflowed because of the melting of the glaciers that occurs in the Andes, but this would not be the main factor that caused the disaster. According to Carpio (2008), the above-mentioned rivers should run normally as tributaries of the Madeira River, but the construction of the hydroelectric plants obstructed the free passage of their waters. The normal flow of the Madeira River was interrupted so that its water volume and force could be controlled for power generation and subsequently would provide the distribution and commercialization of this production. The retention of water caused the floods of areas never before seen by the majority of the population nor registered by government agencies. In the history of flooding of this river there has been nothing similar. This situation was beyond control and public authorities had to act quickly to prevent further losses. The damage was immeasurable. In Bolivia, for example, hundreds of locations were inundated. Animal husbandry and small plantations that belonged to the peasant population in rural areas were lost. Bolivia blamed Brazil for the adverse effects suffered as a consequence of the construction of the hydroelectric power plants that affect the entire region found before the dams. These types of effects were ignored in the environmental studies and reports presented by the responsible consortiums. At the time when President Dilma Rousseff was present in the city of Porto Velho on March 15, 2014, she flew over inundated areas in order to accompany assistance measures for the people affected by the historical flood of the Madeira River, before all the tragedy instigated by company interventions. During her speech, the president defended the SAE and ESBR consortium and reinforced the opinion that this was a “natural phenomenon” that was beyond government control. Therefore, the only action that could be taken was to create “conditions and improvements to resist disasters.” For her, each country has the capacity to face natural disasters and she offered as a solution for the people who were affected, access to a series of government programs such as “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” (My House, My Life) and the anticipation of the Fund for Guaranteed Time of Service (FGTS), among others. The president affirmed that this assistance would serve to make sure that those who were affected “would not be harmed twice, affected by the disaster and by the consequences of the disaster.” With the apparent solution given, it was noted that such actions would be more than the duties of the governments to improve the living conditions of a large portion of the families that found themselves unprepared and without material, conditions to returning to normal daily activities, especially those who had always lived in risk areas. With the triggered disaster, State actions shifted to giving support to the

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affected families whose realities were ignored in the city of Porto Velho and in rural locations. In addition to announcing possible assistance measures for the affected families, the president concluded that flooding of the Madeira River was nothing more than an exception, a “natural phenomenon” caused by the concentration of rainfall in Bolivia, reaffirming the polemic phrase: “It is absurd to attribute the amount of water that comes from the river to the hydroelectric plants.” She then reemphasized that the flooding had resulted from the Bolivian rains: “Bolivia is above Brazil in relation to the water level. We don’t have that amount of water. We don’t have that amount. It comes from Bolivia. It is not possible that the dams are at fault,” (Pinto 2014). In order to explain this “phenomenon,” the president used as an example, the story of “The Wolf and the Lamb”: “I use the fable of the wolf and the lamb. The wolf was in the higher part of the river and said to the lamb: ‘you’re dirtying my water’. The lamb responded: ‘no I’m not. I’m below you in the river.” The presidents’ insistent attempt to explain the significance of the instrumental language to society, regarding the engineering of hydroelectric power plants, only confirmed the position of the governments to support infrastructure endeavors. She emphasized the relevance of the technology developed for “run-of-river hydroelectric plants,”1 as well as the need for water control for the growth of the country. In the case of the Bolivian rainfall from which the Madeira River flood originated, she vehemently defended the dams from being associated in any way to the effects of the infrastructure constructions, admitting the inundation was simply a natural phenomenon due to the rains of Bolivia that caused the flooding of the Madeira River. Besides the mentioned Madeira River disaster, I could not help but reflect on another disaster that changed the lives of many families and in which the government discourse defended business interests and classified the disaster as a natural phenomenon. I am referring to the Mariana disaster that involved severe contamination of the Doce River and impacts on the affected area (Zhouri et al. 2016). This chapter of disaster history in Brazil calls attention to certain factors that were also identified by Aguirre and Macías (2006) in the Mexican case of Veracruz. Based on the readings of Mexican authors and Zhouri et al. (2016) about the Mariana disaster, it is possible to understand that when a disaster takes place the negligence of the State toward the population emerges through the lack of support and sufficient structures to attend the needs of all those who are suffering from human and materials losses. It also became evident that the conditions of territorial occupation were established without the adequate assistance of the institutions that were responsible for monitoring the development of the town in each place that presented any conditions of risk. Lastly, the shortcomings of the provisions for the warning systems are not efficient for immediate evacuation, so that the population can be saved before disaster strikes. There is still another interesting aspect related to the precarious conditions resulting from social inequities that have contributed to the vulnerability of those affected by the disaster. The historical distance that the 1 This refers to hydropower plants that do not require water reservoirs, they don’t need to store water.

The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant would use this technology.

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State has established from the people who find themselves in vulnerable conditions generates unawareness about social transformations in the regions that suffer human interventions. Also, the lack of effective actions increases the problem. Returning to the Brazilian context on November 5, 2015, another disaster came back to astonish hundreds of people, this time, in the municipality of Mariana in the State of Minas Gerais, where a dam for chemical products broke and the sludge that was contained within its walls reached and devastated the town of Bento Rodrigues, completely contaminating the Doce River. The sludge that came from the dam was highly toxic and spilled into the river, passing through various towns until it reached the coastline of the State of Espiritu Santo. This dam belonged to the Samarco mining company (Samarco Mineração S.A.), controlled by the Vale do Rio Doce Company and BHP Billiton. The rupture released 62 million cubic meters of mining waste, including a large amount of iron oxide residues. When the news about the disaster was released by the press, the Samarco company attempted to justify the disaster on the grounds that the sludge was not a danger to human life. Nevertheless, the region’s ecosystem was strongly impacted to the point of disappearing altogether. Proof of this is that the mud-covered everything and petrified the area as if it were cement. The scene was incredible: houses, churches, schools, gas stations, roads, businesses—everything buried and condemned. Animals were also victims of the disaster: 80 species lived in this habitat and 11 are in danger of extinction; 1,500 ha of vegetation was destroyed and there were 11 tons of dead fish. In total, it is estimated that 58 thousand people and 35 cities were affected; 1,249 fishermen were adversely impacted, 17 people died, 2 missing persons, and 1,265 people were temporarily sheltered in hotels and the homes of friends. On that occasion, the press reported the tragedy daily and there was much commotion, as well as mutual help. The “Movement for People Affected by Dams”—MAB, supported the affected families and began to pressure the government in regards to the responsibility Samarco had to these families. The MAB also demanded the recognition of the affected families by the company, including the need to determine the relocation of these people and immediate reparations for the damage caused to nature in the region. The rupture of the Samarco dam also affected the Krenak indigenous people. The Krenak families lived in a settlement located on the bank of the Doce River that was one of their sources of sustenance and part of their territory. The loss of the Doce River, which would take one hundred (100) years to recuperate, deeply affected the culture of the Krenak people, as it was considered to be their spiritual father, known as “Watu” (Sacred River). In the Doce River, they carried out their rites of passage; it was the place where the elders taught their knowledge to the newer generations and where they maintained a harmonious relationship with nature. The Krenak people decided to unite with the MAB and others who were affected to fight for justice. Zhouri et al. (2016) criticized the performance of the Minas Gerais and Espiritu Santo governments and the companies responsible for the disaster, as these actors excluded the people affected by the negotiation tables where the actions and the future punishments of these companies were discussed. In this case, the mentioned actors elaborated on the “terms of transaction and adjustment of the code of conduct”

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in which there was no participation of the very people who were affected by the dam rupture. Their study showed that State and company strategies intensified the “social suffering and the perpetuation of the socioenvironmental injustices” since until the present moment those directly affected by the disaster have been hit the hardest. During this episode one of the most deplorable acts for the disaster-affected people, as well as for those who were outraged by the negligence of the companies, which were responsible for not properly complying with the execution of reviews and inspection of the capacity of the dams, was the position taken by President Dilma Rousseff. On this occasion, she opted to classify the event as a “natural phenomenon.” This provoked great repercussions on society, as her position benefited Samarca, particularly in relation to its responsibilities. Such a position became well known through the Decree Law No. 8572/2015, which according to the president provides those affected by the disaster access to the Guarantee and Social Work Fund—FGTS. In other words, the change made in the law would allow workers to take out the FGTS in the event that one was affected and was in the area impacted by disaster. The Mariana disaster is pointed out in this article simply to illustrate State practices in disaster cases and, in this way, makes it possible to identify the actions that are repeated in order to numb social resistance. At the same time, it is possible to understand that the affected ones are working to change their own reality, due to the suffering of living through the experience of the disaster and all the destructive consequences that affect the logic of their lives.

10.3 Mexico: The Flood of 1999 Mexico has a history marked by floods that constituted social disasters, due to the infrastructure interventions that have become a recurring problem in many regions of the country. Such situations are a result of intense interventions that originated in the midst of economic and development politics, which demarcated areas and implemented projects for the exploitation of natural resources, or at the very least, to facilitate access to them in economically viable zones on behalf of business groups and those who had policymaking power in the country. In this case, I am referring to State and transnational institutions. In this case, I will make reference to the floods that occurred in 1999. The references that I used as a point of departure for this paper come from studies regarding the aspects that characterize the process of disaster. They also gathered information relevant to understand the cases of the floods that occurred in 1999 in Veracruz, as well as in other Mexican states that suffered the damages at that time.2 To complement the knowledge obtained through the readings of the related research carried out by other scientists, I had the opportunity to visit some locations and villages on which I concentrated my studies, such as the municipalities of Poza Rica 2 I learned about this situation during

and 2017.

my postdoctoral studies carried out at CIESAS between 2015

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and Gutiérrez Zamora, Veracruz. In these places, my intention was to learn about the history of that time through the narratives of some of the disaster-affected people; know how they resisted the disaster and all of that which they had to face in order to recuperate from that bitter experience. One of the objectives consisted in comparing realities, that is to say, comprehend what happened in the Amazon and other regions. For that purpose, I conducted short-term fieldwork, which was made possible thanks to the collaboration of other colleagues.3 The city of Poza Rica contains the landmarks of the Cazones River and the Antigua River: the first one is to the north, the latter to the south continuing its course to Sierra Norte de Puebla (Barrios 2009: 23). Poza Rica is characterized by innumerable investments in the area of oil exploitation, initially carried out by foreign business endeavors. It is also located in a zone rich in this natural resource. The extraction of oil has been taking place since the middle of the twentieth century, an activity that provided strong capital for the country and for the northern region of Veracruz, being one of the main attractions in the past. This culminated in the propagation of the idea of wealth and turned the city into one of the headquarters of support and administration of PEMEX. There was pressure to exploit the natural resources, thus many investments in infrastructure were made for the construction of railways, highways, bridges, viaducts, pipelines, oil wells, and a series of constructions that would serve the needs of the oil sector, as well as other branches that constituted or would be associated to this activity. This meant that at some point in history the city experienced the arrival of hundreds of workers that migrated to this region, with the intention of establishing themselves in some service that would guarantee their livelihood. In the attempt to ensure social reproduction, some people began to wager on informal labor with small businesses and selling food. The arrival of people from various places in Poza Rica looking for work in the oil fields promoted an economic boom in the expansion of the city. Therefore, Poza Rica was marked by social diversity in which the presence of peasants increased considerably. Given the substantial increase in the population, the city grew in a disordered manner. Consequently, the local administration did not organize the forms of occupation that occurred and different places were taken in such a way that families constructed their homes very near to one another, clustered in risk areas. The areas that were not suitable for housing were the only alternative, as many people that were not able to find work tried to establish themselves wherever it was possible. Such pressure was concentrated on the outskirts of the city, always where there was not even minimal infrastructure to receive the increasing number of new immigrants. Due to lack of financial conditions, technical knowledge and not being able to get jobs or still earning too little, a portion of the people that arrived ended up establishing themselves in the proximities of the Cazones River and its tributaries. 3 I arrived at this city through the previously established contacts of my advisor, who were professors

of the Veracruzana University—UV, at the Poza Rica Campus and had taken action on behalf of those affected by the 1999 flood. In this city, I was always in contact with these professionals, who collaborated to assist me during the entire investigation.

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The occupation of such areas began to saturate the zone: buildings were constructed in such a way that years passed and no precautions were taken to resolve the problem that formed over the years, which was reflected in the future when the floods occurred (Barrios 2009: 30–31). According to Barrios (2009) and Vera (2007), the rains were not uncommon for those who lived in Poza Rica and the surrounding areas. The marks of destruction caused by them were constantly described by many different people, such as the flood of 1955, when Hurricane Janet, through the large volume of water from the rains, caused hundreds of settlements to be submerged. On that occasion, the hurricane turned into a great villain in terms of disasters, by all the destruction and losses it caused. For the governments, extreme events were always rendered at fault for such damages. In the municipalities that surrounded Poza Rica, like Coatzintla, Papantla, Xalapa, Tlapacoyan, Tenampulco, Altotonga, Teziutlán, Tecolutla, Gutiérrez Zamora, Nautla, Carranza and Puebla, the intense rains have always been a constant, thus the areas are prone to inundations. The governments knew this for years, a fact that leads me to reflect about the role of the administrators during all those decades, as well as the social transformations that culminated into the formation of those towns; the preventative measures and the land-use policy planning that should be implemented according to the social reality. The authorization for the construction of infrastructure projects, as well as the exploitation of natural resources, should consider the risks that each company represented for the towns in that region and the nature of those localities. The flood of 1999 impacted the lives of hundreds of families in the region of Veracruz. According to the accounts and documents of disaster-affected people, the flood was considered to be the worst of all times, with many losses and traumas that were never completely overcome. Some people remember that year with much grief and sadness. Historically, the above-mentioned region has been impacted by strong rainfalls that time and again flood in certain areas. The season is marked by the passing of hurricanes and the meeting of massive winds that come from the oceans and mountainous areas. When August and November come the rains intensify and that is what happened in 1999 when tropical storm number 11 struck the Bobos, Tecolutla, Cazones, and Tuxpan rivers. Their water levels were above normal and exceeded the limits of the riverbanks, reaching the houses of the families who occupied the areas close to the rivers and the locations that were historically formed in this zone. Aguirre and Macías (2006) also point out that in the year 1999 the floods were severe in various places on the planet. In the regions affected in Mexico, there was a high number of deaths and displacement. To them, the disasters are also caused by the lack of solutions for the problems that originate from human and economic development, which derive from the interaction between the risk and the condition of vulnerability. The reflections of these authors lead us to think that the relation established between the governments and the affected communities was weak in many aspects, mainly due to their unwillingness to come up with official disaster preparedness and mitigation plans and programs. In this sense, the researchers pointed out that the management of the problems that occurred since the inundations were also

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related to bad administrative practices, the lack of transparency about the use of resources received to support disaster-affected peoples. In reference to the tragic year of 1999, hereinafter, I will present allegations and a summary based on the accounts I gathered in the town of San Antonio Coronado, in which the victims mentioned what it was like to live through the disaster, their indignation at the government’s position in relation to what happened, what occurred, and what they will do if such an event repeats itself. The information shows the opinions formulated by the disaster-affected people in regards to State negligence: its responsibilities and the impacts provoked by the infrastructure interventions, as well as the lack of policies for disaster prevention and monitoring the occupation of risk areas. During the fieldwork, all of the accounts were unanimous with respect to the week that the flooding reached its climax, when it was raining intensely, because the government knew about the amount of water that was falling and that it would continue to increase. Unfortunately, the families that lived in the region did not imagine that the situation would worsen, as government authorities did not keep them informed, much less accompany them. It was a time of much distress: one week before the disaster, there was no electrical energy, and communication (radio) was cut off. Any method of contact had been damaged by the rains, thus preventing them from being able to call for help. Among the women interviewed, Mrs. A told us that on 4, 5, and 6 October, the rains were heavier. Then the families realized that there were problems with the Soledad and Necaxa (Puebla) reservoirs. To them, the dams contributed to the worsening of the situation. The Soledad dam is located in Puebla, on the Apulco River and has been active since 1962, for the purpose of generating energy (Merced 2015). The Necaxa dam is located in the Juan Galindo municipality, also in Puebla; it was built in 1905 during the government of Porfirio Díaz to generate energy (Cortés 2013). These dams are located prior to many locations and, indeed, in line with the descriptions given by the interviewees, the problem was that the water that had accumulated was released. This made matters even worse and in the view of the affected families, it was one of the principal factors leading to the destruction of the towns. In accordance with the women interviewed, there was no warning or prior information given that could reach the affected families in time to save more lives. The same woman told us that after she lived through the flood, she decided to study on her own to interpret what the meteorologists were saying. For this purpose, she invested time in readings, researched information, and dedicated herself to learning, so now she has great technical knowledge about the rainfalls and the behavior of the river. Based on this woman’s story, I understood that like her, there were other disaster-affected individuals who, in the same way, did not expect direction from the government and some of them chose the same path. It was common to notice that in the town some people knew how to distinguish the causes of the inundations. However, we should also consider that local knowledge about nature precedes the technical knowledge acquired from experience. By joining both types of knowledge, the disaster-affected people demonstrated that they recognized when the floods originated from the water that came from the hydroelectric power plants or from the rains.

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From their perspective, when it rains heavily the waters from the rivers are slow to go down. On the other hand, when the waters are released from hydroelectric power plants, they go down faster, thus the opening of the floodgates is evident. In this sense, when the rainstorms come Mrs. A observes the rising of the river and the amount of water released from the hydroelectric plants. For her, it is especially necessary to monitor the hydroelectric power plants in each stage and the rising of water in Veracruz. For this woman, it is inconceivable that the government institutions claim to be unaware of this issue, while she is able to better anticipate the phenomenon that affect the region during the rainy season. Such discourse is invalid when considering that she, as a person who has no expertise in climate studies nor access to all of the “authority,” technology, or privileged information from the institutions responsible for this type of monitoring, is able to do a thorough reading of meteorological phenomenon that reaches the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans. With the most basic information, she was able to predict and interpret if a natural phenomenon was severely destructive or not. In one of her comments, she strongly criticized President Enrique Peña Nieto and his communication team, who, in an exaggerated populist action, brought world attention to a produced event that did not cause the desired positive effect in relation to their actions toward disaster prevention, in regards to Hurricane Patricia in 2015. The influence that the hydroelectric plants had on the floods is an issue that was present during all of the conversations I had with the interviewees. Within this theme, one man told us that before the disaster that struck his town, the waters would reach the streets of this place in a festive manner. The brief inundation was synonymous with a celebration: it instigated happiness for everyone since it was not something terrifying. However, after the bitter experience of the disaster the fear of the waters reaching the town remained. They ceased to be synonymous with joy, as now everyone feels very afraid. Presently, Mr. R’s children, as well as other people from the town try to observe the behavior of the river. When there is a risk of inundation, they try to inform everyone about the climate conditions so that the town families are aware of the rising waters. Mr. R said that the use of cellular phones has greatly facilitated communication with those who live outside of the town. When an alert is issued, the families are evacuated by crossing the bridge, sometimes on their own behalf or by military personnel. It is relevant to mentions that in other disaster-affected places the people had the same opinion about the inadequate management of the dams in 1999 and the failure of the government plan for flood control (García 2010). All of the interviews present relevant information, though it is necessary to add to this paper the data that circulated in press reports at that time, in various municipalities, as well as other studies they mentioned (Aguirre and Macías 2006). In the same way, starting from this paragraph, I will mention information considered necessary for the reflection and therefore, I will present the accounts about what happened in such zones as Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco y Veracruz. To contemplate this first part of the discussion, I consulted historical sources based on the narratives found in

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newspapers from 1999 in those states, which describe countless criticisms and the problems caused by floods, likewise the lack of government support. In the State of Chiapas, thousands of people were taken to improvised shelters, buildings were destroyed, there was much mud, and many places suffered landslides and falling rocks. During this period daily newspapers highlighted the visits of the governor back then, Robert Albores Guillén, accompanied by military and Civil Protection elements. They resorted to visiting the affected areas to evaluate how the process of reconstruction would unfold. The oil zone was also visited and the numbers at that moment estimated more than 5,000 disaster-affected people, possibly much more. In the case of Villahermosa, Tabasco, rivers like La Sierra and Carrizal flooded and reached settlements and neighborhoods, which had already suffered from the previous flooding and were just beginning to recuperate from the rising waters. But, once again they were inundated, impeding the operation of services, schools, businesses, and road traffic: everything was suspended. Since September of this year, Tabasco had many rain alerts. The most affected areas were near the river, where hundreds of low-income families dwell that didn’t have anywhere to go and were warned by the Civil Protection. According to the newspaper La Jornada, there were landslides, accidents, and ten roadways that were closed. Besides the settlements, the areas most affected were those in rural locations. In those areas, the families requested that the Civil Protection construct sand barriers to block the water coming from the Carrizal River. One of the State prisons was also affected and many prisoners were moved to other locations. Military personnel tried to hold the water by putting up sand barriers, but the situation was almost impossible to control. The State of Oaxaca was also suffering from the rains from this storm and to worsen the situation and the damage suffered, the population was affected by an earthquake that occurred in 1999, causing many deaths and destruction in rural locations. In Puebla, there were many landslides and a large portion of the population near the surrounding mountains remained isolated, without food or drinking water. The volunteer rescue workers had problems getting to certain areas to attend disasteraffected people and be able to take them medicine, as well as other products like chlorine tablets, mineral water, and food. To achieve this, they used mules to transport the necessary supplies. Those who managed to leave the villages descending from the mountains were not able to go back with enough additional resources because the difficulty to go up the mountains again kept them from returning with more help. One of the points that drew more attention in the newspapers was the constant reference to the hydroelectric power plants. They were seen as possible aggravating factors along with the problems that emerged with the strong rains. One newspaper reference from the year 1999, the Reforma newspaper, informed that the floodgates of the Peñitas hydroelectric plant were opened to release the water that had accumulated from the heavy rains that had fallen on the region, thus increasing the water volume of the Grijalva River. The result of this last-minute action was that it instigated an emergency evacuation of 2,000 people from their homes during the early morning, with no time to save their belongings. It is worth mentioning that the Peñitas dam

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began to operate in 1987 on the Grijalva River, Chiapas, to generate energy. Other dams on the Grijalva River in Chiapas are the Netzahualcóyotl or Malpaso, which began to operate in 1964, for the purpose of generating energy and to control the river avenues; also the La Angostura dam that started its operations in 1975, with the objective of energy generation (Merced 2015). In this case, with the opening of the floodgates, the waters from the Grijalva River tributaries unexpectedly rose and flooded innumerable locations, including Villa Hermosa, the capital city of Tabasco, which was severely affected and marked by a past history of inundations (Hernández 2011). According to reports in the media, the hydroelectric power plant was not prepared to withstand such a high volume of rainfall, particularly all that had been dragged with it, like tons of rubble and vegetation. The evacuation was immediate, but this action was not well received by the population, who refused to leave the locations and lose all their possessions. The management leaders of the hydroelectric power plant controlled by the Federal Electricity Commission insisted on affirming that they had a modern security system with cutting-edge technology and that their machines were connected to NASA. This institution had two meteorological stations, but what purpose would such investments serve if they were not able to contain the problem nor prevent problems for the disaster-affected families? This type of information was distorted, as it did not fit with the framework of the warning system and all of the mobilization that was formed around an uncontrollable situation. In this case, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this type of infrastructure project contributed greatly to the occurrence of a disaster of immense proportions and unknown to the hydroelectric managers since they had never opened all of the floodgates of the dam until that moment. When they constructed these dams, the rationale was the production of energy and it would become a mechanism to control floods in the region, but in the year 1999, this objective was not achieved (Hernández 2011). Besides the Peñitas case, other hydroelectric power plants were planned to control overflows, but they represented a threat for thousands of people situated along the route of the floods (Toledo et al. 1983). This time it concerned the largest hydroelectric plant in Chiapas, La Angostura, which had to keep its structure reinforced with a metallic curtain, so that the water would not exceed its capacity and flood the Tabasco zone nor overload the Peñitas y Nezahualcóyotl hydroelectric plants. The curtain was installed by employees of the Federal Electricity Commission and, according to the description, it was being monitored by the National Water Commission. The representatives of these institutions feared that it would fail to contain the volume of water and consequently, cause flooding throughout the other tributaries of Sierra de Chiapas, which would provoke a disaster of unprecedented proportions and put the life of the population in the region at stake. Even with the state of surveillance declared it was impossible to completely control the floods, since there were already thousands of disaster-affected people in shelters or isolated in some areas. An entourage of delegates visited the installations of the Peñitas, Nezahualcóyotl, and La Angostura hydroelectric power plants and concluded that the problems were further aggravated by management failures.

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In Veracruz, it was no different: some places were totally inundated due to the rainfalls that caused the rivers to overflow. This refers to 83 municipalities that were affected, with an uncertain number of missing persons because of the landslides; some were taken by the current. Each day there were new estimates of victims, with 64 more shelters activated and 10 thousand homeless people.

10.4 Final Considerations How can nature, a river or rain be blamed for a disaster that is created according to social processes and established relations of power that emanate from the action of State institutions with actors and social spaces? The position of governments in relation to disastrous situations can be either to take responsibility or to be negligent. If we analyze different examples, we find that there are institutional arrangements that defend those who are actually responsible for having to fulfill their obligations.4 The consequences that derive from the actions of institutions responsible for managing problems, which present themselves when a disaster occurs and that affect countless families in Mexico and Brazil require special attention. If social inequalities persist for many more years with the complicity of the State, hundreds of people will live under conditions of vulnerability forever. It is necessary to change the socioeconomic model and promote access to public services, as well as diminish the lack of knowledge about social processes that lead to the intensification of disasters. Besides this, it is also relevant that the means be provided for people to be able to improve their living conditions; integrate them as active participants in the making of government policies, programs, and plans for disaster prevention, as well as emergency activities that serve as support during disasters. All of this would be a great response to the problems that continuously present themselves in disaster-affected regions. Comprehend the culture of each region is also a way to join different types of knowledge and make use of local knowledge to elaborate effective proposals. The opportunity to decide about the implementation of projects in occupied territories and the comprehension of the dynamics of territorial occupations, which are not always mediated by structural projects, should be shared in a responsible manner and involve society. To consider future risks and measure the environmental and social damages before implementing an infrastructure, the project must be taken seriously by the governments. In the same way, society should be informed and involved in a responsible manner, without false premises, so that it is committed to making decisions about the territory. It is the duty of the State to provide conditions of accessibility, work, health, and education so that the population can enjoy a dignified life in areas that do not represent a constant threat. In this sense, governments have the task of disseminating knowledge about disasters in order that the population

4 We

can mention the Rio Madeira and Mariana cases.

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may know how to react when facing them and not have to depend so much on the institutions in moments of crises. Through both contexts outlined here, the intention was to try to reflect on the influence of hydroelectric power plants on the regime of river waters that naturally inundate certain regions. It is evident that the hydroelectric plants interfere with the morphology of the rivers. They are models of energy production, but they are not effective in containing accumulated waters. The cases reviewed demonstrated a total lack of control on the part of political actors, as much as in the maintenance of structures, as in the lack of knowledge about the dimensions of rainwater accumulation. The hydroelectric power plants contemplated here may not be the immediate cause of disasters, but they contribute to intensifying and propelling them. It is important to consider that the hydroelectric plants are not the only disaster agents. There are also other existing components that are produced through the socioeconomic development process and are connected to inequalities: misinformation, lack of social participation in the construction of public policies, and other factors that influence the potential for vulnerability. Considering the lack of interest of the governments in collaborating to decrease social problems, it is very difficult to change the panorama of disasters that have grown and persisted historically in Mexico and Brazil.

References Aguirre, B., & Macías J. M. (2006). Las inundaciones de 1999 en Veracruz y el paradigma de la vulnerabilidad. Universidad Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales. Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 68, núm. 2 (abril-junio). Retrieved 12 de June, 2018, from http://www. scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0188-25032006000200001. Baines, S. (1994). A usina hidrelétrica de Balbina e o deslocamento compulsório dos WaimiriAtroari. 166 Série Antropologia. Departamento de Antropologia da Universidade de Brasília. Baraúna, G. (2014). Atingidos por Barragens: Conflitos socioambientais no Rio Madeira. (Tese de Doutorado). Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social—PPGAS. Museu Amazônico. Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brasil. Barrios, Y. (2009). Reubicación de comunidades por inundación y la vulnerabilidad Social: El caso de Arroyo de Maíz, Poza Rica, Veracruz. CIESAS—Papeles de La Casa Chata. Fondo Sectorial. CONACYT. México. Carpio, J. M. (2008). Hidrologia e sedimentos. In: Águas Turvas: Alertas sobre as conseqüências de barrar o maior afluente do Amazonas. Editora: São Paulo: International Rivers. Castro, E. R. (1996). Energia na Amazônia, Vol. II. Belém: MPEG. UFPA, UNAMAZ, 1996,, 747– 759. Castro, E. R. (2012). Expansão da fronteira, megaprojetos de Infraestrutura e integração sulamericana. CADERNO CRH, Salvador, 25(64), 45–61. Cortés, E. (2013). La comunidad electricista de Necaxa (Puebla) tras el cierre de la luz y fuerza del centro. Intersticios Sociales. El Colegio de Jalisco. N°06. Retrieved April 15, 2018, from http:// www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/ins/n6/n6a7.pdf. Cf. Movimiento de Afectados por Presas. Retrieved August 15 2019, from http://www.mabnac ional.org.br/category/tema/samarco. Fearnside, P. (2004). A hidrelétrica de Samuel: lições para as políticas de desenvolvimento energético e ambiental na Amazônia. Manaus: INPA.

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García, A. (2010). Instituciones y Pluralismo Legal: La hidropolítica en la cuenca Grijalva (1950– 2010). (Tesis de Doctorado). Doctorado en Ciencias en Ecología y Desarrollo Sustentable. Colegio de la Frontera Sur. Gudynas, E. (2008). As instituições financeiras e a integração na América do Sul, en Ricardo Verdum (org.), Financiamento e megaprojetos: uma interpretação da dinâmica regional sulamericana (pp. 21–47). Brasilia: INESC. Hernández, H. (2011). Inundación, reubicación y cotidianidad. El caso de Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, 2007. (Tesis de Maestría). Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social—Unidad Golfo. https://www.imta.gob.mx/potamologia/images/potamologia/presentaciones-vseminario/El%20f uturo%20de%20las%20presas,%20hidroelectricas%20220715.pdf, 22 November, 2019. http://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/ins/n6/n6a7.pdf, 15 December, 2019. https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/procuradora-critica-decreto-de-dilma-que-classifica-desastrecomo-natural-18082460, 20 November, 2019. http://especiais.g1.globo.com/minas-gerais/2015/desastre-ambiental-em-mariana/1-mes-em-num eros/, 22 March, 2019. https://www.vice.com/pt_br/article/4xpxng/desastre-de-mariana-devastou-grupo-indigena-brasil, 22 November, 2019. http://g1.globo.com/espirito-santo/noticia/2015/11/lama-de-barragem-da-samarco-chega-ao-marno-es.html, 14 November, 2018. Information. Retrieved November 14, 2018, from http://especiais.g1.globo.com/minas-gerais/2015/ desastre-ambiental-em-mariana/1-mes-em-numeros/. Macías, J. M (Coord). (2009). Investigación evaluativa de reubicaciones humanas por desastres en México. CIESAS—Papeles de La Casa Chata. Fondo Sectorial. CONACYT. México. Merced, J. (2015). El futuro de las presas. Comisión Federal de Electricidad. Retrieved March 20, 2019, from https://www.imta.gob.mx/potamologia/images/potamologia/presentaciones-vseminario/El%20futuro%20de%20las%20presas,%20hidroelectricas%20220715.pdf. Pinto, L. F. (2014). Jornal Pessoal—A Agenda Amazônica de Lúcio Flávio Pinto, n°557. Março, quinzenal. Reforma. 24/10/1999: 16A. Reforma. 25/10/1999. Reforma. (1999). Newspaper 24 October. Page: 17-A Rousseff’s, Dilma. Statement, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6T5qAJt4xY, 21 June, 2014. Toledo, A., Núñez, A., & Ferreira, H. (1983). Como destruir el paraíso. Ediciones Ocean, Centro de ecodesarrollo, México: El desastre ecológico del sureste. Vera, G. (2007). Vulnerabilidad Social y Desastre en el Totonacapan. Una historia persistente. (Tesis de Doctorado). Departamento de Antropología. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana— Iztapalapa. México. Zhouri, A., Valencio, N., Oliveira, R., Zucarelli, M., Lachefski, K., & Santos, A. F. (2016). O desastre da Samarco e a política das afetações: classificações e ações que produzem o sofrimento social. Cienc. Cult. 68(3) São Paulo July/Sept. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from http://cienciaec ultura.bvs.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0009-67252016000300012.

Chapter 11

Tabasco: Between Hydraulic Plans and Floods. Disasters and Human Rights Ma. Magdalena Hernández

11.1 Introduction The state of Tabasco has been the target of various plans and programs prioritizing national, rather than local or regional, development. As part of the Mexican tropical zone, it has what economic capital requires to advance its project of dispossession: water, fertile soils, “forest corridors,” bioenergy, rural labor, and a political class that adapts to neoliberal ideology. Villahermosa, the state capital, is a major metropolitan area in the south-southeast region that serves as the commercial, financial, and service center of the state of Tabasco. Oil and water are the state and country’s main strategic economic drivers, but as part of the “productivity myth” that fostered agricultural production, Tabasco’s land also represented a profitable production factor for the country. In the early 1940s, it would be allocated to boosting agriculture in the tropics, meaning floods represented an obstacle to control (Uribe 2011). Flooding in Tabasco has not always been a hindrance to agriculture; in the past, its mighty rivers naturally overflowed to fertilize the land, referred to then as overbank flows. However, the Mexican government’s need to produce electricity for the country’s “development” led to the hydraulic control of rivers through large hydroelectric works. Water usage was handled through “watershed management,” which is how the first “National Hydraulic Plan” arose in 1975 (Colin and Restrepo 1996). Following the “Great Flood” in 2007, popular opinion has been held that flooding is commonplace and a characteristic of the state. This idea is not entirely false: This work is part of my doctoral thesis research in Social Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Unidad Xochimilco. Ma. M. Hernández (B) División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), Unidad Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_11

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certainly most of Tabasco is on a floodplain, but its river water generated overbank flows in the past, not floods. The vision of development guiding governmental policies gradually created the spaces of risk that are now so susceptible to flooding. Deforestation, land cleared for monoculture and livestock, oil extraction, large-scale hydroelectric infrastructure projects, and the filling in of lagoons all had unfavorable outcomes for the Tabasco population. The damage to Tabasco’s inhabitants is ongoing even today. In particular, this chapter addresses the problem of hydraulic works carried out by the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) in the Ríos de la Sierra system, which involves the municipality of Centro where several settlements and communities that support themselves through activities, such as agriculture, fishing and livestock farming, have been affected by such works.

11.2 Tabasco’s Historic and Economic Development Before Tabasco became a major oil producer and its river waters were dammed up to form large reservoirs, the state’s production was based mainly on agriculture and farming activities. An example of this is Roatan banana monoculture production, which peaked in the early twentieth century (Sorroza 1986). At that time, a considerable percentage of the Tabasco population was spread across rural areas, dedicated mainly to subsistence farming (Baños 1984). Following the banana production crisis in the late 1940s, the mainly small-scale traditional subsistence economy remained in place, consolidating itself as an alternative to the repercussions of the banana crisis (Tudela 1992). However, with the industrialization and technification projects of the tropics intended to unburden the country’s economy, this type of traditional production would progressively diminish. Livestock, oil, and water in Tabasco would become part of the relief strategy. Starting in the 1940s, the state government’s prioritization of agricultural activity would require water and land obtained through deforestation of the jungle and the dispossession of peasant land. Sorroza (1986) explains that in the early 1950s, ranching began to increase the expansion of land use for pastures, in addition to deforestation, water control, and the loss of peasant land. The “modernization” policies spread across the tropics through the construction of large hydroelectric works, which were established within the Grijalva River hydrological system, considered the most important in the country, with a basin that covers parts of the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. With this expansion, the territory was transformed by canals, levees, roads, bridges, and all the infrastructure necessary to control rivers and floods. This involved diverting the watercourse, even if it meant sacrificing natural channels to be replaced by anthropic ones. During the 1970s, the agricultural sector decreased its production throughout the state, while the country’s oil industry expanded rapidly thanks to extraction in fields of the southeast. Tabasco’s participation in this stage was crucial. Raw material extraction in the state fostered construction of urban infrastructure, migration, commerce,

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changes in social organization, and the demand for services. Local inhabitants hailing mainly from rural areas were employed as unskilled labor (idem). “Petrolization” drastically transformed the Tabasco landscape. Like the construction of hydroelectric plants, oil activity required infrastructure: canals, bridges, oil pipelines, buildings, roads, and highways, which gave rise to a more active relationship between rural and urban areas. In this way, peasants were attracted by PEMEX wages and ended up abandoning their lands (Ruiz and Rodilla 1994). In particular, the city of Villahermosa emerged as a strategic area in the Mexican southeast, which drew in many peasants and rural workers. Consequently, these processes transformed traditional forms of production. Tabasco’s natural wealth stimulated a notion of development that was no longer on a local but national scale, leading to what Martínez Assad (2006) called the “productivity myth”: tropical lands would save the national economy. This led to dire consequences for the territory and the Tabasco population. The jungle was deforested, lagoons were filled, rivers and soils were contaminated, dams were built, and communities were relocated and flooded over. What was supposed to be economic benefits for the region in fact proved to bring greater inequality, ecological deterioration, and excessive, poorly planned urbanization—which in one word can be called a disaster.

11.3 Disasters and Conagua In addition to being social in nature, disasters are usually announced, that is, before the disaster manifests itself, the population already displays a certain degree of vulnerability, understood not as a trait but as a socially produced condition. This allows us to notice the inequalities among different population groups. Hence, where and how they live, with what means of subsistence, what type of work they do, their salaries, medical services, and other social conditions in which they find themselves are the concrete manifestation of the production of the disaster. For this reason, according to Georgina Calderón, “disaster is the manifestation of vulnerable conditions” (Calderón 2001). In this sense, risk is related more closely to vulnerability than to geophysical extremes. The opposite of this is the reduction of the problem to a geophysical and technological perspective (Hewitt 1983). Thus, the causes of disasters are explained by the social conditions that are presaged by the historical processes that lead to risk and vulnerability. In short, disasters have a human and social signature, the results of which may have legal implications. In the case of Tabasco, the historical events described above decry the production of spaces of risk and vulnerability, which have resulted in major damage to the population. Such is the case of government plans or programs such as the Chontalpa Plan, which arose from the Grijalva Commission Plan and whose objective was to promote basic grain production and livestock rearing for national consumption (Higuera 1985). Likewise, the Program for Direct Assistance in Agriculture

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(PROCAMPO) promoted deforestation in the Mexican southeast (Márquez et al. 2005), a fact that contributes to the root of unequal development in the region, which also involves the neighboring state of Chiapas with major consequences for the Tabasco plains. Hydroelectric projects are no exception. The social consequences of these plans have been violent for those populations that suffer from them. Sponsored by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, they generate displacement, poverty, material and human losses, and community disarticulation (Cernea 1997). In Tabasco and Chiapas, the construction of hydroelectric infrastructure brought serious social and environmental problems to the region. From a technocratic perspective, while the rivers of Tabasco have great production potential, they also represent a socioeconomic problem, hence the need to control their channels through policies with scarce social perspective. Water use permits were granted as early as the Spanish colonial period. Later, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Mexican federal government was in charge of conceding access permits (García 2010). With the drafting of different laws and regulations, the water problem was institutionalized, and then the Ministry of Hydraulic Resources (SRH) was established in 1946, which was charged with implementing public policy in the case of the Grijalva Basin (idem). In 1976, it was replaced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources (SARH), and finally, in 1989, CONAGUA was established as the sole federal authority to manage national waters (www.con agua.gob.mx). It should be remembered that it was created within a new era of a free market economic model with neoliberal roots (García 2010, p. 217), which Mexico adopted in the 1980s. CONAGUA is a federal agency under the executive branch of government whose obligations are listed in Article 32 Bis of the Federal Public Administration Law (CONAGUA 2012). The agency’s legal framework is outlined in the country’s Political Constitution, specifically in Article 27, which refers to the water and lands in Mexican territory as property of the Nation. The regulatory law for this article is the National Waters Law (1992), which establishes the way in which said Commission is organized to exercise its powers at the national and regional levels. Of the country’s 37 Hydrological Regions (HR), number 30 corresponds to the region encompassing Mexico’s largest rivers: Grijalva-Usumacinta. This region includes the states of Tabasco and Chiapas, which together comprise rich biodiversity, in which large portions of their population inhabiting scattered rural communities that subside on crops. 21% of this HR’s surface corresponds to Natural Protected Areas (Inter-American Development Bank 2013), which are of vital importance to “the regulation of water systems” (idem: 99). Due to the large amount of water concentrated in the region, it became home to four of the largest hydroelectric plants in the country: Netzahualcóyotl or Malpaso, built in 1969; Angostura, in 1976; Chicoasen, in 1981; and Peñitas, in 1987. The Angostura dam is the largest in Mexico (Martínez et al. 2009), and between them they generate most of the country’s electricity. In the lower part of the basin, the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers concentrate around 33% of the country’s water (Barba et al. 2006).

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Given that a hydrological basin is extensive, water is not the only factor that defines its dynamics. Basins house diverse human settlements, crops, vegetation, fauna, and many other natural elements. Therefore, any risk to one of these will resonate with the others. Thus, deforestation and mineral extraction in the Grijalva and Usumacinta river basins impact the rest of the area. And in this case, rural communities suffer the greatest effects. Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital city, has suffered constant flooding in recent years. The greatest damages occurred in the communities or ranches located on the outskirts of the city. The same inhabitants say that it is now difficult to protect themselves against floods, since the Grijalva river water levels change constantly. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, part of the problem has to do with deforestation, mismanagement of dams, infrastructure construction, and oil extraction. The region has been intervened by capital through real estate companies, construction companies, and the government’s own infrastructure. However, according to CONAGUA, the Grijalva River “is practically controlled before entering the plains region, thanks to the large reservoirs of the La Angostura and Malpaso dams” (CONAGUA 2012, p. 36). But increased flooding, both in magnitude and frequency, contradicts the objectives and the role of the works carried out by Commission through the region’s various hydrological programs. CONAGUA’s various projects aimed at reducing floods in Tabasco have failed to safeguard the population. The proof is in the constant floods that since the late twentieth century and the beginning of this century affected the population (1999, 2007, 2008, 2010). The three projects that to date represent the only solution to floods, in fact do little to stop them. In addition, various irregularities in execution have been reported in the media (Proceso 2010). Thus, the Comprehensive Flood Control Program (PICI), the Tabasco Comprehensive Water Plan (PHIT), and the Hydrological Project to protect inhabitants from flooding and make better use of water (PROTHAB) comprise the institutional strategy to control and reduce flooding in Tabasco.

11.4 Tabasco’s Hydrological Programs 11.4.1 Comprehensive Flood Control Program (PICI 2003–2007) Beginning in the late 1990s (1996–1998), the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) carried out a series of studies in the Grijalva-Usumacinta Hydrological Region which would be the precursor to the Comprehensive Flood Control Program (PICI). Such studies would propose the “flood protection works scheme” (CONAGUA 2012, p. 32) in three hydrological systems: Mezcalapa-Samaria, Sierra rivers, and CarrizalMedellín. The construction of said works would be contemplated within the framework of the PICI from 2003 to 2006. However, they were not completed within this

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period because “the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) did not allocate resources” (CONAGUA 2012, p. 33). The PICI, also known as the Grijalva and Usumacinta Rivers Plain Flood Protection Project, was prepared by CONAGUA in 2003. This program consisted of the construction of hydraulic works (channels, levees, etc.) that would contribute to protecting low-lying areas of Tabasco from floods, particularly the city of Villahermosa and its metropolitan area (CONAGUA 2012, p. 32). By 2007, the year of Tabasco’s “Great Flood,” the works had barely reached little more than 50% of its completion. Works planned for the rivers of La Sierra had only reached 7% of progress (CONAGUA 2012, p. 33). The river of La Sierra has its origin in the mountainous part of the state of Chiapas and just when entering the city of Villahermosa, from the southeast, it joins the Mezcalapa River to form the Grijalva River, which runs through several communities and ranches to the northeast of the city, including those mentioned in this work (Ranchería Barrancas and Guanal, in their sections: González y Tintillo, Ranchería López Portillo, La Ranchería Los Aztlanes Segunda, Tercera y Cuarta Sección, and the Las Gaviotas Sur-San José Sector). Paradoxically, these communities were flooded and affected by the CONAGUA works in 2007 and continue to experience flooding to date. In order to lower the water level of the Grijalva River and prevent the city of Villahermosa from flooding, CONAGUA built the dumping structure toward the Los Zapotes-San Julián lagoon area, to divert the natural channel of the Grijalva River toward those lagoons. In turn, the Los Zapotes lagoon area receives water derived from the Parrilla lagoon. Thus, too much water reaches the San Julián lagoon, causing it to flood communities near the Laguna San Julián, which together with their farmland are inundated for several months resulting in the loss of crops, food, work, and material.

11.4.2 Tabasco Comprehensive Water Plan (PHIT 2008–2012) The Tabasco Comprehensive Water Plan, or PHIT, as drawn up between CONAGUA and the UNAM Engineering Institute, is an extension of PICI, while also encompassing socioeconomic and environmental issues (CONAGUA 2012, p. 32). The commission’s officials tried to provide continuity through this plan to the hydraulic works that were not completed in the three hydrological systems of MezcalapaSamaria, La Sierra, and Carrizal-Medellín Rivers. PHIT promised to address “the origins of the problem through prevention” (CONAGUA 2012, p. 36) throughout three stages spanning from 2007 to 2012. According to the PHIT-2012 White Book, the first stage conceived of as an Urgent Action Plan (PAU) would span from November 2007 to December 2008; however, this same document mentions that the PHIT was drawn up and entered into effect in the early months of 2008. These data suggest that the works that affected the

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communities studied were not covered by any plan or program, and rather were improvised as an extreme solution, without considering the repercussions to nearby communities. Not until after the work was completed did they join PHIT. The “comprehensive study” within this plan was exalted as the remedy for floods or overbank flows, which would encompass not only the hydrological issue, but also the implementation of public policies and the legal system. But as comprehensive as it was intended to be, both the “economic development” and the relationship of the populations with their environment constituted obstacles to the supposed progress promised by the hydraulic projects as seen below: […] in most of the control projects that have been built, the concept of economic evaluation is the least relevant. This is due in part to the nature of hydraulic projects that are rather related to other water uses where flood control represents collateral benefits, difficult to assess,1 that do not exceed 5 or 10% of the total (De Luna and Vélez 2009, p. 281).

The notion of “comprehensive” in this case is defined, on the one hand, as encompassing a greater physical expanse of the basin and, on the other hand, improving and “increasing productivity” in the basin and “minimizing losses”; thus, if there is damage to affected populations’ heritage and way of life, it would be only for the greater good, as the plan itself sets forth: […] although the main priority continues to be to reduce loss of life, the aim of controlling damages must be considered secondary to a global purpose of optimizing the use of flood plains … the increase in losses due to floods may be a consequence of greater efficiency in the use of flood plains, in particular, and the river basin, in general (idem: 297).

The above quote corroborates what the people of the affected settlements and communities, along with some civil organizations, have known firsthand since the 2007 flood: that in order to save Villahermosa’s economy, government officials have been capable of flooding other populations.

11.4.3 Hydrological Project to Protect the Public from Floods and Improve Water Use (PROHTAB 2013) According to the DOF2 (DOF 2013), this Project stemmed from an agreement between CONAGUA, the state of Tabasco, and the municipalities of Centro, Macuspana, and Balancán, which have their own hydraulic infrastructure operating agency. The DOF states the objective of the agreement is to build various works related to hydro-agricultural infrastructure that contribute to reducing the “vulnerability of the population to floods and making better use of water” (idem: 22), as well as issuing alerts and installing monitoring networks. According to the state government and CONAGUA officials, this project replaces PHIT and promises to improve statewide hydraulic safety, focusing not only on 1 Emphasis 2 Spanish:

added. Diario Oficial de la Federación or Official Gazette of the Federation.

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cities, but also on rural communities. Unlike previous efforts, this “clearly specifies each government level’s degree of responsibility for risk mitigation tasks” (tabasco.gob.mx 2013). The project is proposed for the next three decades; meanwhile, it has yet to be submitted to a referendum, thus ignoring the rights of rural communities. It is evident that each of these projects was conceived exclusively in hydraulic terms and with sole interest of protecting the city of Villahermosa. With simulations and mathematical models, the hydraulic repercussions were reviewed while overlooking the social consequences.

11.5 Collateral Damage of Hydraulic Plans The Sierra River system involves communities affected by the works carried out by CONAGUA starting in 2007. The Commission decided to channel the “surplus” water from the Grijalva River through this system. By splitting up the channel with spillways and canals, the system discharges water from the Parrilla lagoon to the Sierra River, running through the town of Censo, located kilometers outside the southernmost part of the city of Villahermosa, and from there to the lagoon area of Los Zapotes. All this water is captured through shallow reservoirs or “relief channels,” which direct it to the lagoon area of San Julián-Los Micos-El Vigía, an area where the communities affected by these channels are located. In addition, another relief channel, Tintillo II, was built, which passes kilometers outside of Villahermosa. With this channel, CONAGUA intends to evacuate water from the Grijalva and Carrizal Rivers as they pass through the city. Therefore, the Don Julián lagoon area receives water collected in the Los Zapotes lagoons and the water that is diverted by the Tintillo. Both lagoon areas, Don Julián and Los Zapotes, are considered by CONAGUA as “regulation zones,” that is, a buffer zone that would naturally capture the river overflows (see Fig. 11.1) in order to provide a large drainage system for the river and to prevent the city of Villahermosa from flooding. The amount of water that enters this lagoon area is enough to flood the ejidos and farmland of the communities near the lagoon. Another problem is that the water that is discharged through the Tintillo, and that comes from the Grijalva and Carrizal rivers, mixes with sewage from the city of Villahermosa. Among the major works from 2007 to 2012, there is no mention of the relief channel or shallow relief reservoir (CONAGUA 2012) that was built in the El Tintillo community, nor of other works carried out as an additional response to flooding in the city of Villahermosa. These works were not contemplated in the Plan until the PHIT was fully organized. Even though CONAGUA considers the areas of the El Zapote and Don Julián lagoons “natural flood zones,” the PROHTAB Final Report itself admits that these communities and ranches “have been flooded from 2007 to date, without exception” (González et al. 2014). It is implied, then, that they are flooded not because they are

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Fig. 11.1 Route for the removal of excess water from the Sierra River. Source Adapted from Pérez Campos, J. A., Pérez Moreno, G., Vélez Morales, L. (2009). Capítulo 11. Reordenación del desarrollo urbano: diagnóstico y propuestas para la entidad, Villahermosa y zonas estratégicas (p. 644). Plan Hídrico Integral de Tabasco (PHIT). Primera Etapa. Instituto de Ingeniería de la UNAM

natural flood zones, but because starting in 2007 the CONAGUA works have allowed it. The problem is not so much the amount of water that rivers carry, but rather UNAM Institute of Engineering study points out: The lack of water evacuation capacity is due, to a large extent, to the interruption of the flows through the lagoons and their interaction with the channels due to the construction of levees along the banks of rivers, roads, etc., and to the presence of bridges with overpasses too low to handle discharge and volumes of this magnitude (Capella 2009, p. 550).

This clearly occurs between the El Zapote lagoon and the San Julián lagoon, separated from each other by a road leading to the city’s airport. Within the PHIT, the “socioeconomic impacts” that the Zapote - San Julián diversion channel works would have on the communities were briefly evaluated. The study

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lacked true social research.3 The PHIT engineers prioritized saving and maintaining the economic security of the city of Villahermosa, whereas damages outside the city limits would take a back seat or be considered “collateral damage.” In this regard, only four communities, dedicated according to the study to agricultural activities and accustomed to living with the floods, were considered to be high risk. Therefore, it was enough to recommend the continuation of economic activities, the implementation of an early warning system, and voluntary relocation. As a complementary solution, the construction of stilt houses was proposed. However, the fieldwork carried out by this investigation, to determine the CONAGUA works’ effects on communities, proves that not only were four communities the most affected, but the damages were beyond minimal. And although the communities acknowledge annual flooding in the past, floods after 2007 have been on an entirely different level.

11.6 Damage to the Population, But What About Their Rights? The communities where interviews and direct observation of the impacts were conducted within the scope of this study were the following neighborhoods of Ranchería Barrancas and Guanal: González and Tintillo, Ranchería López Portillo, La Ranchería Los Aztlanes Segunda, Tercera y Cuarta Sección, and Las Gaviotas Sur-Sector San José, the latter being the only one located within the city limits of Villahermosa, and one of the neighborhoods suffering the greatest effects of the city’s latest floods. All of them, with the exception of Las Gaviotas, took major hits to their economy and ways of life, within families and at the community level, because they are rural agricultural communities ranging from 100 to 700 inhabitants. Previously, the Grijalva River did not exceed known levels. Currently, these communities say, flooding has increased in magnitude and water volume since the “Great Flood” of 2007. Evidence includes the fact homes now fill with up to a meter and a half of water, and, they say, they are completely surrounded by water. The relief channels built by CONAGUA allow the water that will supply these communities to pass. The incoming water takes time to descend and stagnate, causing significant crop losses. In the San Julián lagoon, water accumulates and overflows into the adjacent lands, damaging livestock and crops. The problem is further complicated when, while that water is still stagnant, another “stream” arrives and the level rises again, complicating drainage and pouring sediment on the land. Stagnant water harms livestock, pastures, crops, fishing, and housing. As the water crosses fields, it sweeps away litter and other debris. This has led to an outbreak

3 Economics

was the only discipline or science that PHIT took into account as the basis for the study’s social arguments.

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of “weeds” in pasture suitable for livestock. In the settlement of Aztlán Segunda Sección, some have fumigated with weed killer at the risk of contaminating the soil. For a part of the population, a canal, which would direct water to the sea, would have been more useful than relief reservoirs. The lack of levees where water enters allows it to spread everywhere, reaching the homes in the communities. The timing of the floods is a factor that increases the population’s social and physical uncertainty and vulnerability. Since 2007, the communities have not been able to guarantee with certainty whether they can plant seeds or purchase more livestock to benefit from annual rains. This leads to the fact that now peasants have to “gauge” when to sow, making a calculation at odds with traditional knowledge accumulated over time. It is now difficult for them to be certain, so they venture to sow in the hope that the water that enters through the canals does not spoil their crops. They know that the “heavy” or torrential rains begin in September and October. Now flooding can begin as early as May. The water that now passes through these reservoirs is diverted before it crosses the city of Villahermosa into what are known as “relief reservoirs” and function precisely as reservoirs through which the water that comes from the different rivers that descend from the Sierra de Chiapas must be discharged, and that kilometers downstream must converge into the Grijalva River, which runs right through the Historic Downtown and commercial areas of Villahermosa. The government’s priority after 2007 was to protect the city, its infrastructure, and its economy. The compensation CONAGUA officials made to the affected population is only for those landowners where a particular work will be affected by construction. CONAGUA only establishes a relationship with the owners of affected ranches where it is going to build the work, “negotiates” with them the price of the land area to be affected. As for the rest of the ranches or pasture which the work, according to CONAGUA engineers, does not “directly” affect, there are no grounds for compensation. Thus, they are the most affected, with damages are not acknowledged by authorities. CONAGUA maintains that since damages do not directly affect landowners, there are no reparations to be made. The Commission considers them “collateral damages” for which there is no institutional provision to compensate them. The relief reservoirs or channels built after the “Great Flood” violated the lives of the affected communities, particularly the González and Tintillo sections of Ranchería Barrancas and Guanal, which experienced police aggression. The government ordered the works violently, and some landowners were beaten and detained for opposing construction on their land. The communities knew beforehand of the damages that these reservoirs would bring to their lives, and thus they did not stop resisting and opposing them. Meanwhile, authorities did not hesitate to use public force to build wherever they wanted. Flooded, beaten, and evicted inhabitants saw their rights violated by then-Mexican president Felipe Calderón and the federal government, as well as then-governor Andrés Granier and the state government. Faced with the increased precariousness of their means of subsistence and lack of recognition by the CONAGUA authorities and local governments, the communities

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decided to lodge a complaint for human rights violations with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in September 2010. The CNDH’s investigations led to Recommendation No. 61/2011 issued in November 2011 which concluded that CONAGUA violated the National Waters Law by failing to comply with its obligation to “promote and facilitate the participation of society in the planning, decision-making, execution, evaluation and monitoring of the national water policy,” as well as failing to inform the population in a “timely, complete and reliable manner of the hydraulic infrastructure (CNDH 2011).” Likewise, CNDH considered that CONAGUA public servants, as well as some municipal and state government officials, violated the rights “to legal security, legality, property and possession, dignified treatment, health protection, adequate housing and development.” Said recommendation confirms that the works for the first “relief” channels were indeed carried out in a forced and improvised manner, without a project that endorsed them, and that violence was used to that end. State and municipal police supported the opening of the channels. They beat and detained several people from the communities. Their lands, crops, animals, and homes would be “sacrificed” to save Villahermosa’s economy, later to be considered “collateral damage” in the PHIT report. Undoubtedly, the recommendations of the Human Rights Commission are a legal instrument that serves to report and make visible abuses by the authorities, but they are not mandatory; their non-binding nature allows authorities to choose whether or not to comply with them Espinoza (2016), and they can even reject them. Rather, they carry moral weight; however, that does not prevent them from being a mechanism of political manipulation. The misfortunes unleashed by disasters are convenient for backing the discourses of the political class that aspires to the highest positions of government. They aid in making promises and attacking the opponent. Unfortunately, this political-electoral game places disasters and human rights4 on a more axiological than social and legal plane. So, on the one hand, for said class, disasters stem from extreme natural phenomena, from nature’s increasing strength, and anger unleashed by the populations’ abuse of natural wealth. And in such a case, the risk spaces come about due to towns’ excessive use of territories. On the other hand, we know that human rights base their norms on considerations of humanity and human dignity, so any action that supports these principles will surely be welcomed. Accordingly, assistance in the face of disaster damage clouds the demand for rights, no longer human, but those established by the Constitution.

4 Human

Rights have begun to play a major role in the issue of disasters; however, it is of utmost importance that the discussion goes beyond human rights and that it begins by questioning the violation of the rights embodied in the Constitutions. In the case of the Mexican Constitution that guarantees the right to education, housing, work, a healthy natural environment, and many other priority satisfactors for life, they are bluntly violated in the daily life of people and not deemed a reason to complain to the authorities. It is not until after an emergency resulting from a disaster that it becomes evident.

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In the particular case of Tabasco, the 2007 floods were attributed, in official discourse, to the “enormous climatic change which, whether acknowledged or not, has been produced” (Rosaldo 2007). While CONAGUA was called out as being liable for the unfinished works, omissions, and alleged acts of corruption during the floods, the Commission’s director defended himself with the argument that “it was the severe rains that caused the floods in Tabasco in 2010” (CNN 2012); likewise, it remained steadfast in asserting that no criminal actions were committed. However, the CNDH issued a recommendation and asked the director of CONAGUA to state the reasons why the Commission rejected the recommendations, the response to which reiterated that excessive rain caused the disaster. Thus, while climate is a good scapegoat for transferring blame, human rights can become more of a political than legal weapon with which to simulate acts of justice.

11.7 Conclusion In Tabasco, oil, livestock, and hydroelectric projects promised development and progress, as part of the modernization of the tropic region. Those promises did not come as surely as the sun rises, but rather, without exception, they were brought in by the capitalist tide and made available only to a selected few, not because there is not enough to go around for everyone, but rather, because the economic and political principles of capital, of owners of the means of production, of the bourgeoisie, sustain these two ideas cloaked in prosperity, relief, benefit for the population, enabling the legal appropriation of territories, prioritizing money over life. With the vast majority of its jungles razed, Tabasco’s natural landscape turned to one of gas flares, pipelines, oil wells, enclosures, and roads, with its polluted, dammed up rivers now causing floods. Disasters, then, are nothing more than the process by which nature is crossed by social production, and what capitalism generates is uneven development. Thus, disasters are visibly hidden. In times of daily “normality,” CONAGUA’s hydraulic works appear to coexist with communities, but once that changes as water floods farmland, houses, livestock, and roads, the disaster reveals how abnormal normality actually is. Even an academic and institutional seal of approval provides no guarantee that waterworks will perform as planned, more so if they do not include community consultation. The populations themselves are aware that the works harm rather than benefit them. The losses they suffer from flooding are the “collateral damage” that projects such as those of CONAGUA generate in the name of regional development and progress, when the reality of communities has nothing to do with the policies that are institutionally introduced. Tabasco already has three hydraulic projects or plans, and the populations of small communities, as well as several neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city of Villahermosa, continue to accumulate losses. Given this, a recommendation by the CNDH did not suffice. The material and moral damages, the lack of community

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consultation, and the lack of respect for the life and safety of communities are not reason enough to stop or project other options, not even to compensate the damages. Justice was not handed down despite the denunciation of human rights violations, a political flag that served some and abandoned others. Paradoxically, justice is confronted, not only with human rights, but with the Law, formal, dogmatic, and bureaucratic law, that exonerates criminals and condemns the honest. How could the works of CONAGUA violate the right to security, health, and housing, when its projects facilitate regional or national progress? The PHIT itself confirms it not only in writing but in fact. The losses that the communities sustain will be considered “collateral damages,” and thus do not need to be compensated or atoned for. There is much discussion to be had regarding law and disasters. A first step would be to understand that disasters do not have to do with natural phenomena, but rather with all those processes that the economic system unfolds through large projects undertaken across different levels of society. Discussion of the Law will certainly be a more complicated task, because many of the ideas or principles that are widely recognized by jurists would have to be confronted with reality. But there is a plethora of case studies available to jumpstart the discussion.

References Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. (2013). Plan de Adaptación, Ordenamiento y Manejo Integral de las cuencas de los Ríos Grijalva y Usumacinta. Volumen II Estudio de prefactibilidad para las opciones de intervención del PAOM. Abt Associates Inc. Noviembre, 2013. Recuperado el 4 de noviembre de 2016, de https://www.ceieg.chiapas.gob.mx/productos/files/OTBID/Volumen2_ PAOM_Prefactibilidad.pdf. Baños Ramírez, O. (1984). Campesinos y petróleo en Tabasco. El Colegio de México. Barba, M. E., Rangel, M. J., & Ramos R. R. (2006). Clasificación de los humedales de Tabasco mediante sistemas de información geo-gráfica. [versión electrónica]. Diciembre, 2006. Universidad y Ciencia, 22(2), 101–110. Recuperado el 13 de junio de 2018, de https://www.resear chgate.net/publication/28140318_Clasificacion_de_los_humedales_de_Tabasco_mediante_sist emas_de_informacion_geografica. Calderón Aragón, G. (2001). Construcción y reconstrucción del desastre. México: Plaza y Valdés. Capella Vizcaino, A. (2009). Capítulo 10. Modelación de los escu-rrimientos y niveles provocados por el evento de 2007 y de los correspondientes a las soluciones propuestas en los ríos y lagunas alrededor de Villahermosa. Plan Coordinación de Hidráulica. Hídrico Integral de Tabasco (PHIT)—Primera Etapa 2008. CONAGUA. Recuperado el 17 de octubre de 2016, de https://www. gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/105454/Cap10_Modelacion1D.pdf. Cernea, M. (1997). Riesgos de empobrecimiento y reconstrucción: Un modelo para el desplazamiento y la relocalización de poblaciones. Avá Revista de Antropología Nº 5, Argentina: Postgrado en Antropología Social, UNaM, Posadas. Colin Fraser y Restrepo Estrada, S. (1996). La dura lección del Plan la Chontalpa. Comunicación para el desarrollo rural en México. En los buenos y en los malos tiempos. FAO. Recuperado el 25 de junio de 2018, de http://fao.org/docrep/w3616s/w3616s00.htm. Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos. (10 noviembre 2011). Recomendación 61/2011. Sobre el caso de las inundaciones ocurri-das en diversas localidades del estado de Tabasco México, D. F: CNDH.

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CNN México. (2012, 28 de marzo). Titular de Conagua, primero en declarar en el Senado a petición de la CNDH. CONAGUA. (2012). Libro Blanco CONAGUA-01, Programa Inte-gral Hídrico de Tabasco (PHIT). Octubre, 2012. México: SEMARNAT-Gobierno Federal. Recuperado el 13 de octubre de 2016, de http://www.conagua.gob.mx/conagua07/contenido/Documentos/LIBROS%20BLAN COS/CONAGUA-01%20Programa%20Integral%20de%20Tabasco%20(PIHT).pdf. De Luna Cruz, F. y Vélez Morales, L. (diciembre, 2009). Capítulo 4. Control de Inundaciones. III.4.d. Sistema de Gestión de Crecidas. La Segunda Fase para la Integración del Plan Hídrico Integral de Tabasco, (p. 281). PHIT, CONAGUA. Diario Oficial de la Federación. (01 julio 2013). CONVENIO de Coordinación que celebran la Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Re-cursos Naturales, a través de la Comisión Nacional del Agua, y el Estado de Tabasco, con el objeto de llevar a cabo el Proyecto Hidrológico para Proteger a la Población de Inundaciones y Aprovechar Mejor el Agua (PROHTAB). Espinoza Hernández, R. (Mayo-agosto, 2016). Las recomendaciones de la CNDH. El control del poder y la protección de los derechos humanos [versión electrónica]. Revista Alegatos. (93), 341– 366. Recuperado el 23 octubre de 2018, de https://biblat.unam.mx/es/revista/alegatos/articulo/lasrecomendaciones-de-la-cndh-el-control-del-poder-y-la-proteccion-de-los-derechos-humanos. García, A. (2010). Instituciones y pluralismo legal: la hidropolítica en la Cuenca Transfronteriza Grijalva (1950-2010) (Tesis de doctorado). Chiapas, México: El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. González Villarreal, F. J., Carrillo Sosa, J., Carbajal Barrera, J., Sa-mayoa Navarrete, L., & Páez Rosas, S. (2014). Capítulo 11 Proyecto de medidas de adaptación en zonas bajas. 11.9 Análisis de las soluciones para la zona lagunaria conocida como Don Julián, Zapotes y Maluco, comprendida en el municipio Centro. Estudio para el Proyecto Hidrológico para Proteger a la Población de Inundaciones y Aprovechar Mejor el Agua (PROHTAB). Convenio de Colaboración No. SGIH-GPIHSGPOPR-UNAM-II-RF-14-01. Informe Final. CONAGUA. Noviembre, 2014. Recuperado el 14 de octubre de 2016, de https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/105755/Capitulo11.4pr ohtab.pdf. Hewitt, K. (1983). The Idea of Calamity in a Technocratic Age. En K. Hewitt (ed.) Interpretations of Calamity, Londres: Allen and Unwin. Higuera, A. (1985). Antropología social de la economía en el sureste de México. Cuadernos de la Casa Chata. Núm. 127. México: CIESAS. Márquez, R. I., de Jong, B., Eastmond, A., Ochoa-Gaona, S., Hernán-dez, S., & Kantún, M. D. (2005). Estrategias productivas campesinas: un análisis de los factores condicionantes del uso del suelo en el oriente de Tabasco. Universidad y Ciencia, 21(42), 57–73. Martínez, C. (2006). Breve historia de Tabasco. México: El Colegio de México, FCE. Martínez, E., Torres T., & Ríos, F. (2009). Tabasco, voces de una inundación prolongada, recuento de la tragedia tabasqueña. Tabasco: CODEHUTAB, A. C. Proceso. (2010, 26 de septiembre). Tabasco: La corrupción completa la obra de las lluvias. Edición México. Rosaldo, M. (2007, 03 de noviembre). Reconstruiremos Tabasco: Felipe Calderón. Tabasco HOY. Ruiz, A., & Rodilla, J. M. (1994). Itinerario de las aguas. Historia general de Tabasco. Tomo I, Historia Social, Rosa María Romo (coord.). Gobierno del estado de Tabasco. Sorroza-Polo, C. J. (febrero, 1986). El estilo de crecimiento en Ta-basco: 1950–1982. Revista Economía Informa, 137, 7–11. Tabasco.gob.mx. (2013, 21 de marzo). Acuerdan Tabasco y CONAGUA nuevo proyecto hidrológico para el estado: PROHTAB. Recuperado el 21 de Marzo 2013, de https://tabasco.gob.mx/noticias/ acuerdan-tabasco-y-conagua-nuevo-proyecto-hidrologico-para-el-estado-prohtab. Tudela, F. (coord.) (1992). La modernización forzada del trópico: El caso de Tabasco. Proyecto Integrado del Golfo. México: El Colegio de México, CINVESTAV, IFIAS, UNRISD. Uribe, R. (enero-abril, 2011). Panorama y desarrollo de las ciencias sociales en el estado de Tabasco. Revista Secuencia, 79, 113–135.

Chapter 12

Water and Hills in the Indigenous Worldview and the Fight for the Defense of Natural Resources in the Sierra Norte de Puebla Jair Díaz-Hurtado

12.1 Sierra Norte de Puebla The Northern mountain range of Puebla is located in the northern part of the state of Puebla which has been divided into six regions based on socioeconomic criteria, the other five are called: Llanos de San Juan and San Andrés, Valle Poblano, Valle de Tehuacán, Valles de Atlixco and Matamoros, as well as the Mixteca Region (Masferrer and Martínez 2010). The geographical importance of the Sierra Norte (Northern Mountain Range) is not only manifested in the economic activities that the population develops within the native peoples that make up it, where self-subsistence crops and commercial work predominate, but also because it is presented “as a transitional region between the Central Plateau—the arid and cold highlands of the Mexico Basins and Puebla Tlaxcala- and the coastal plains” (Beaucage 1974: 115). This location has also allowed the Sierra to be not only an obligatory step between regions but also an area of historical convergence of different indigenous groups (nahuas, Totonacos, Ottomans, and tepehuas).

J. Díaz-Hurtado (B) Licenciatura en Patrimonio, histórico, cultural y natural, Universidades para el Bienestar Benito Juárez García (UBBJ), Plantel Tlaltizapán de Zapata, Morelos, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_12

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12.2 Water in the Mesoamerican Worldview Water played an extremely important role in the worldview of the pre-hispanic peoples who inhabited the central region of Mesoamerica1 not only within economic activities for the basis of them was irrigation and temporary agriculture, but also because of the great web of ideas, concepts, and symbolic representations that we find within their worldview. By worldview we understand that this is a: Historical production of mental processes immersed in very long-term courses, the result of which is a systematic set of relative coherence, consisting of a collective network of mental acts, with which a social entity, at a given historical moment, aims to apprehend the universe in a holistic way (Lopez 2015: 44).

Dualism is the basis of the Mesoamerican worldview, within it there was the notion that the universe was governed by the convergence of two opposing energies that complemented the balance. In all aspects of man’s life there was dual vision: life/death, male/female, day/night, health/disease, and in terms of the environment and climatic conditions we find that this binary division also directly influenced. In the Mesoamerican world, there was only the rainy period and the dry season, much of the rituality was marked by the beginning and end of each of them. Religion was also governed by dual thought, every aspect of nature was directed by a couple of gods, a male god and his female consort. For the Nahuas, the water was associated with Tláloc together with his partner Chalchiutlicue; however, in other areas, there existed the same divinity related to water but with different names like Chac, in the Mayan area, or Cocijo in the Oaxaca Region. Also, for the cultures of central Mesoamerica, there was a goddess of the salt waters of the sea known as Huixtocihuatl (Broda 2016: 19). These deities as well as some aquatic elements and beings, such as the sea snail or snakes, were related to fertility and abundance; the gods as well as different animal and plant species associated with water resources were obsessively represented in architecture,2 in mural painting, embossed, ceramic pieces, and codices.3 Another element of nature closely linked to water is the mountain. The hills were conceived as large containers of water, which were connected underground with the waters of the oceans. In the mythical stories,4 it is possible to appreciate the value of the hill as a reservoir of water, riches, and the livelihood of men. The existing archaeological sites on the summits of the hills, slopes as well as the caves of the 1 For its study, Mesoamerica has been divided into six cultural areas: North, West, Central, Oaxaca,

Gulf, and Southeast. illustrative cases are found in the pyramid of the feathered serpent of Teotihuacán (classic period 300–900 D.C.) which was adorned with the effigy of Tláloc the god of rain; on the other hand, the major temple of Tenochtitlan (postclassic period 900–1521 A.D.) was divided into two, the northern part dedicated to Tláloc and the southern part dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. 3 In the Borgia and Borbonic codices are represented, in both cases, Tláloc as rain god and Chalchiutlicue from whom the currents of earthly waters emerge. 4 In the Legend of the Suns appears the Tonacatepetl the hill of sustenances where not only water was stored but also was the place from which the gods obtained corn and other seeds to give to men. 2 Two

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mountains that have been recently excavated5 which show the widespread worship of the gods of rain, land, mountain, and vegetation (Iwaniszewski 1986). One of the pre-Hispanic cults performed in the hills that has been most documented by the specialists is that carried out in honor of Tláloc, on the hill that bears the same name in the Texcoco Mountain Range, State of Mexico, whose ceremonies encompassed a series of rites that included seed offerings and sacrifices of children (Broda 1991), on determining dates of the agricultural cycle requesting the arrival of rains. Within the Mesoamerican cosmogonic myths it is also possible to find various allusions to the importance of water. The myth of the suns narrates how life, according to ancient Nahua thought, had developed in a series of successive eras governed by a sun, which is why they are also known as suns; these eras or suns had been created by the gods and also destroyed by the gods relying on some natural catastrophe. The four eras were known in Nahuatl as nahui ehecatl, “Cuatro Viento”; nahui ocelotl, “Cuatro jaguar”; nahui quiahuitl, “Cuatro lluvia”; and nahui atl, “Cuatro Agua”. There are at least ten versions of this myth embodied in colonial codices and chronicles and, although they differ in the order of appearance of the ages or suns, they all agree on the existence of an era whose end had been caused by a flood. The book “Histoire du Mechique” narrates that “the gods had created four suns […] the first of which was called Chalchiuhtonatiuh… those who lived under this sun drowned, and some became fish …” (Tena 2002: 145). For its part, in the Annals of Cuauhtitlán it is recorded that “the first sun that at first there was, sign of the 4 atl (water), is called Atonatiuh (water sun). In this it happened that everything was taken away by the water; everything disappeared; and the people became fish” (Codex Chimalpopoca: 4). Water (ce atl) and rain (ce quiahuitl) were also present in Mesoamerican cultures as two of the 20 calendaric signs that were represented in both codices and sculptural works, such is the case of the sun stone also known as the Aztec calendar. Finally, water appears not only as a generating principle but also as a determining factor in the completion and closure of life cycles. For the Mexicans, there were four directions to which people’s souls could be directed depending on the type or cause of death; these destinations were the house of the sun,6 the Mictlan,7 the Tlalocan, and the Chichihualcuauhco.8 Al Tlalocan,9 also known as the paradise of Tláloc, where the souls of those who died for some water-related cause went; the famous sixteenth-century Franciscan chronicler, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, tells us in his 5 Today

55 archaeological sites are known in different mountains of Mexico.

6 Destiny reserved for dead warriors on the battlefield or in the sacrificial stone, as well as for women

who lost their lives during the first birth. 7 The Mictlan is “the region of the dead” place to which the souls of those who did not die for causes

related to war, sacrifice, or water were directed. 8 Chichihualcuauhco was a “mother tree” where the souls of prematurely dead children arrived; this

tree contained hundreds of breasts where infants could obtain milk while the gods deposited their souls in a new body and could be reborn. 9 In the mural of Tepantitla, of the archaeological area of Teotihuacan, the Tlalocan is depicted with surprising thoroughness, highlighting the abundance of water and vegetation, as well as the algarabía of the beings that live there.

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General History “…those who go there are those who kill the rays or drown in the water, and the lepers and bubious and mangy, dripping and hydropic… and longed to say that it is the earthly paradise called Tlalocan there was never vegetables and summer” (Sahagún 2000, I: 331). As can be seen, there are different areas of man’s life in which water, in its various manifestations, played a leading role: origin, sustenance, life, and death of humans were always contingent on the relationship that men and women established not only with the vital liquid but also with the other elements and phenomena of nature. Today there is a corpus of ideas and conceptions related to water within the worldviews of the different indigenous groups of our country that starts from the Mesoamerican tradition, while this cluster of ideas derives from a common cultural substrate it is relevant to emphasize that in each context we can find specific peculiarities that obey multiple factors such as the physical environment and historical processes. Below are the conceptions that the Nahua people have today about water and other natural elements and phenomena related to it. The information presented here has been collected through the fieldwork carried out in different Nahua communities of the Sierra Norte de Puebla from 2010 to spring 2018. The municipalities visited are Huauchinango and Naupan Puebla; also part of the ethnographic work was carried out in Nahua communities of the municipality of Acaxochitlán, Hidalgo, which have a high linguistic and cultural correspondence with their neighboring populations of the municipalities of Puebla.

12.3 World Knowledge: Nahua Conceptions About Nature Among the Nahuas, the natural environment plays a very important role in the life of man as it is in constant relationship with this and all the elements that make up it. Within the physical environment they inhabit, in addition to the plants and animals other beings whom I will call extrahuman entities, you cannot speak of supernatural beings since they inhabit nature, they are part of it, guardians and protectors. Similar to pre-Hispanic times, the hill is considered to be a container full of water that is interconnected with rivers, lagoons, and even seawater. Within the oral narrative are numerous examples where the idea of “the cave of the abundance of the hill” or “the enchanted cave of the hill” whose characteristics define them as thresholds that connect to other worlds where water and vegetation have everlasting qualities are present, or are also conceived as the accesses to those spaces where the richness materialized in gold is protected. On the other hand, we have the lagoon,10 element that may also be present in the physical dimension but symbolically can be conceived in the bowels of the hill, at the top, or in one of them, when the hill has several peaks, as is the case of the Cempoaltepetl (“hill of twenty peaks” or also “twenty hills”) sacred hill for the Nahuas of Huauchinango, Cinconcuautla, Naupan 10 In

the case of the “Sierra Norte” the role of the lagoon is occupied by the dams.

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(Puebla), and Acaxochitlán Hidalgo. Hence, the idea that the hill is closely linked to water and even to those beings that inhabit it are linked with aquatic beings whether natural or mythical (e.g., the mermaid). The narratives give us an account of the existence of those elements that are present in the hill-lagoon-cave complex and explain their relationship. There are three beings that articulate the hill with water: the elves, the snake, and the mermaid. Goblins also known as chaneques, those characters that are characterized by the appearance of mature men, but of short stature, similar to a child. They live on the hill and take care of storing it. It is very common to find them in the forest or on the shores of the lagoon; when they perceive the human presence and are very close to it they are thrown into the water and through it, through an underground channel, they return to the hill. In different communities,11 it is known of the existence of a snake that shelters the sacred hill and the riches that lie there. The snake is linked to the mermaid or a female entity that protects the lagoon and streams. The mermaid is considered the owner of the water and protector of all beings of the underwater environment, however sometimes there is also talk of a “water owner” without making distinction of gender. The mermaid is a being that has half the body of a woman and the other, the lower one, is composed of the tail of a fish. This being inhabits the lagoons and streams, in which it is possible to see or hear it when the channels increase in the rainy season. It should be noted that the ideas around the beings that inhabit the hill and the aquifers are not deprived of the Nahua communities of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, in different regions of our country there are records of similar characters associated with water. In the Matlatzinca Region, south of the Toluca Valley, State of Mexico, it is known of the existence of a mythical being known by the names of Anchane or Tlanchane (Orihuela 2018), it is a woman with a snake body who lived in the lake region of that area and with the advent of Western culture the stories were modified and this character was identified as a fish-bodied woman, as the European mermaid. Among the Nahuas of Chicontepec, Veracruz, there are numerous references of the woman with fish body: Apancihuatl or Acihuatl (Aquatic Woman), Axinola (Lady of Water), Apixquetl (Owner of the Water), (Gómez 2016: 104). Another area of human life in which water is also present is found in the health/disease/attention system. From birth to death, the human being experiences a series of vital crises which depend not only on their physical condition but also on their mood and spiritual state, to face these experiences there is the figure of ritual specialists dedicated to healing and preventing diseases and diseases that are caused by the entities that inhabit the sacred spaces of nature. In these villages, there is a belief that when a child is born, there is a latent risk that his health will be affected by the owner of the water and when this happens, 11 During

the fieldwork, different versions of the account of the snake that inhabit and protect the riches of the hill, such as El Tejocotal, San Fernando, and Los Reyes of the municipality of Acaxochitlán Hidalgo; Xilocuautla and Tlacomulco, Huauchinango, Puebla; and Chachahuantla municipality of Naupan, Puebla.

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the infant can become ill, progressively weakened and may even lose its life. This condition is known as “water eating” because they have the idea that the aquatic entity consumes the baby’s energy. To avoid such a situation, a number of preventive practices are carried out: At birth, the first action is to cut the umbilical cord to the newborn, and then burn the cord and bury it somewhere in the house. After 4 days on the burial, a food offering is left to preserve the well-being with which the newborn came into the world. Then, the midwives takes the mother’s clothes to the nearest river or stream, where the ritualist washes the garments and makes a food offering to the water owner consisting of chocolate boiled in water, bread, lit candles, and flowers. The offering is accompanied by prayers in which the health of the infant and mother is asked for. After the laundry, the ritualist who attended the birth, along with the mother’s relatives, come to another place where an offering is left, and this offer can be in a spring or a waterfall. In this space is left, in addition to food, a doll made with ocote branches, which must be obtained from a green tree and lined with colored stamen; the featured doll represents the infant and is a gift to the water owner. The ritual is accompanied by a pair of musicians, a guitarist and a violinist, who perform the pieces of the xochison12 while the offering is placed. After childbirth, the mother has to bathe in the temazcal, an action that will be repeated for the next 40 days. In the temazcal, a food offering is also left, which is specifically deposited in the texictle, the place of the stones where the fire is lit to generate the heat within the temazcal. This offering is addressed to water, earth, and fire. Finally, as in pre-Hispanic times today, in the oral tradition of the Nahua peoples is water as a life-generating principle but also as an element that can cause nefarious events. Within the mythical corpus of the mountain communities predominates the account of “the hills that spoke before the end of the world” that tells us of some events associated with water and rain that can occur as cycles that are repeated in the future of time. It is a story about an ancient time in which the hills could walk and talk. According to this account, there was a permanent rainy season that was about to cause a flood that would wipe out the world; some hills, which appear as the protagonists of the plot, encouraged each other to migrate to places away from the rain; however, in all versions stands a hill that refused to travel under the argument that “not yet finished his work” which consisted of caring for human beings.13 In this way, the hills did not make the move and thus prevented the collapse. This story is very significant when we take into account that in the northern part of the Sierra, the wet and temperate wet climates predominate, both with rains all year round. This tells us that the rainfall regime is high especially during the summer. In some cases, people who share the story about hills and rains claim to have witnessed the natural phenomenon and even claim to have heard the tremors in the hills (considered as living beings capable of storing and supplying water) that they 12 Xochisón

“Son florid” or “son de la flor” are a set of melodies of ritual character. the revised versions, the hills can take care of men in general, in others they take care of the children who are born and a few more tell us that the hills work teaching women how to perform activities such as weaving and embroidery. 13 In

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interpreted as the way they communicate with each other; other narrators provide specific dates and some more emphasize that this is an ancient phenomenon that is replicated periodically (every 10, 50, and up to a 100 years). This story can be explained and interpreted from the context in which the indigenous Serranos live today, in recent decades the Sierra Norte de Puebla has been the scene of numerous catastrophes caused by the rains which, in many cases, took the lives of many people. In 1999, the rain regime caused collapses of hills, overflows of rivers and dams that caused flooding and caused the death to 350 people in the Sierra Norte de Puebla alone (La Jornada de Oriente 1999). In addition, in the last 2 years, there have been material damage and human losses caused by hydromeorological phenomena; by August 2016, Hurricane Earl had claimed 37 deaths and destruction in homes and roads in the municipalities of Eloxochitlán, Esperanza, Huauchinango, Chilchotla, Hueyapan, Juan Galindo, Quimixtlán, Tlaola, Xicotepec, Zacatlán, and Tlatlauquitepec (La jornada 2016). In September 2017 the tropical storm number 13 caused flooding and deslaves in the municipalities of Zacatlán and Huauchinango (Ángulo 2017).

12.4 “The Serranos Defend Our Culture and Our Nature” 1. In the 1960s and 1970s, anthropological14 research proliferated that prioritized political and economic issues over the cultural and even ritual sphere (Beaucage 1994). These studies had extensive visions about the different indigenous communities and as part of their legacy we have the division of the Sierra Norte de Puebla into two subregions characterized by production relations and the obvious differentiation of the social classes: The Sierra Alta or Bocasierra: in which traders and owners of the largest urban centers were identified as a dominant group. The Sierra Baja: which was dominated by merchants and medium-sized owners. I will not mention here its scopes or limitations, I will only mention that, in general, we can find that this perspective had a vision of static indigenous societies; however, the reality and the future of the years refuted that discourse. During the 1970s, the political uprising in Mexico led to the emergence of numerous independent organizations that represented an alternative to the situation of social and material marginalization and oppression faced by indigenous people throughout the country. The northern mountain range of Puebla was the scene of the creation of some of these peasant actions. At the beginning of the mentioned decade, a movement emerged that aimed to deal with the government because of the high costs of some taxes mainly of predial and water, in the Zacapoaxtla area. This movement was linked to the “Central Campesina 14 Consignment

that preceded the seventh Assembly of Serrano Peoples in Defense of the Territory and Nature held in Pepexta Cuetzalan, Puebla, on March 15, 2015.

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independiente” who sharpened its purposes toward the union of peasants in the struggle for land. This brief event served as a precedent for the birth of another organization. After achieving tax-related conquests, some of the members of the movement left the Sierra for political harassment from both the government and the Catholic church and partnered with peasants from the state of Veracruz who advocated the struggle against latifundistas who dispossessed peasants from their lands. This emerged the Independent Peasant Union or Unión Campesina Independiente (UCI), whose intention was to be a body that fought for the lands but separated from the Central Campesina. The field of action of this organization extended to the Sierra Norte de Puebla where they made land takes in the hands of large owners15 to be worked by the Natives. These actions provoked the government’s repressive action, under different modalities, such as the use of shock groups such as Camp Torch, which caused the movement to have a very ephemeral life. A further example of organization is the Cooperative Tosepan Titataniske that emerged in Cuetzalan, Puebla, as the Union of Small Producers of the Sierra (Unión de Pequeños Productores de la Sierra UPP) and then become the Regional Agricultural Cooperative Tosepan Titataniske, (Cooperativa Agropecuaria Regional Tosepan Titataniske CARTT). The main objective of this agency was to combat abuses committed to producers in the field by intermediaries and loan sharks. His scope also extended intensively to the degree of inspiration for the creation of other organizations, such as those made up of “traditional doctors and midwives” (Milano 2007). Currently, the Cooperative Tosepan Titataniske has extended its influence to 220 communities in 22 municipalities of the Sierra Norte. The second decade of the twenty-first century is running and in its days it is still possible to perceive remains of those problems that loved indigenous communities in the second half of the last century. But now the struggles for land, natural resources, and culture are taking place against new forms of predation: extractivism financed by private, domestic, and foreign capital. Currently, northern mountain range of Puebla, the Sierra Norte de Puebla, is being threatened by different projects known to its inhabitants as “death projects.” These projects consist of activities related to open-pit mining, hydroelectric plant (to supply power to mines), oil exploitation as well as natural gas extraction by means of hydraulic fracturing; these companies have been classified by the locals of the Sierra Norte as “death projects” because they are a threat to life, because their consequences can lead to illness and death. Similarly, they have been named because of the impact they will have, and in some cases are already causing, on the environment, on the loss of plant and animal spices, on human health, and on the social stability of communities. Among other effects, extractive projects will cause deforestation due to loss of plant cover, land 15 The northern mountain range of Puebla has been a theater of various conflicts related to the tenure of the land, which date back to the colonial period in which the entrustments hoarded the best land for the cultivation and rearing of livestock. Similar events occurred in the decades after the war of independence when mixed families arrived in the Sierra and decades later with the Haciendas of Porphyriato that monopolized farmland, river waters, and forests.

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degradation, release of toxic substances, contamination of springs and rivers, generation of dusts harmful by the use of explosives for excavation, acid drainage, and release of heavy metals, all of this with a high negative impact on the environmental balance and health of humans. As an example, we have that open-pit mining causes damage to the “mucous membranes, and if there is intake there would be damage to the digestive system, nausea, diarrhea, weakness. There could also be liver and kidney damage.” On the other hand, human death can not only occur as a result of direct contact with toxic substances but also as a result of tensions between communities because companies hand out money and promise works in exchange for permission to enter their territories and this induces confrontation between people who accept payments and people who reject them. There have already been several cases, as we will see later, of assassinations of opponents of extractive projects that seek to be installed along the geography of the Sierra. In this region, more than 104 open-pit mining concessions (for the exploitation of gold, silver, and zinc) have been granted within 140,000 ha (Barrios 2017) (Tosepan 2014). There are also “16 hydroelectric projects, mainly in Nahuas and Totonacos territories, and 233 hydraulic fracture extraction” (Barrios 2017), new oil allocations and pipeline construction have been integrated, throwing “more than 332,000 ha concessioned to the extractive industries, all serving the industrial corridors that are laid in the region, and all water avids” (Vera 2016) (see Fig. 12.1). Of the 65 municipalities that make up the Sierra Norte de Puebla 35 (which make up 252 communities) are threatened by megaprojects, among which stand out Zacapoaxtla, Huauchinango, Cuetzalan del Progreso, Zoquiapan, Xochiapulco, Tetela de Ocampo, Zautla, Tlatlauquitepec, Ixtacamaxtitlán, Olintla, Ahuacatlán, San Felipe Tepatlán, Zapotitlán de Méndez, Xochitlán de Vicente Suárez, Nauzontla, Tlapacoya, Tezuitlán, Hueyapan, Zacatlán, Yahonáhuac, Zaragoza, Jopala, Zoquiapan, Zapotitlán, Pahuatlán, and Libres (Barrios 2017) (Tosepan 2014). Approximately, 20% of the Sierra Norte de Puebla is already granted to Mexican and foreign companies (Regeneración 2014). Two large companies present in this region are Minera Frisco (by Carlos Slim in Tetela de Ocampo) and Almaden Minerals, owner of 72% of the mining concessions in this area (Olvera 2018), which together with its subsidiaries Minera Gorreón and Minera Gavilán intends to exploit gold and silver in Ixtacamaxtitlán as well as in Libres and Ahuazotepec (Ánimas 2018). In turn, we have the presence of the firm Gaya S.A. de C.V. which will be responsible for the hydroelectric installation on the Apulco River, whose flow extends over several municipalities. The Tuxpan-Tula pipeline responsible for Trans Canada will affect 8 municipalities In Puebla, 7 in Hidalgo, and 19 located in Veracruz, putting at risk the groundwater deposits known as “Poza Rica,” “Alamo-Tuxpan” and “Acaxochitlán” (Ánimas 2017). The aquifer of Acaxochitlán has an area of 754 km2 and totally encompasses the municipality of Ahuazotepec and partially those of Honey, Pahuatlán, Huauchinango, Zacatlán, and Chignahuapan, in Puebla; in addition to Tenango de Doria, Metepec, Acaxochitlán, and Cuautepec de Hinojosa, in Hidalgo (ibid.).

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Fig. 12.1 Death projects for the “Sierra Norte de Puebla”

The defence of the territory and water has united the affected peoples from different indigenous groups and mountain peasants such as the aforementioned Tosepan Titataniske, Tiyat Tlali, Mazehual Zihuame, Unidad Totonaca Náhuatl, Comité de Ordenamiento Territorial Integral de Cuetzalan, Movimiento para la Defensa del Agua y otros Recursos Naturales, el Movimiento Independiente, Obrero, Campesino, Urbano y Popular, organized by the regular celebration of the Assembly of Peoples in Defense of Life and the Territory.16 These organizations have the fundamental purpose of defending the land and avoiding, with the entry of extractive projects, socio-environmental disasters caused 16 By

October 2018 the XXVII edition of this assembly had been held.

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by large companies as has happened in other latitudes of the country; this is the case of the event that starred in the mines of Buenavista del Cobre y Cananea, subsidiaries of the Mexico Group, that on August 7, 2014 spilled 40 million liters of copper sulfate and heavy metals in the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers, affecting 24 thousand inhabitants of seven municipalities of the state of Sonora. Another similar case is found in the state of Zacatecas. The activation of the Mina Real de Ángeles, operated by Grupo Frisco de Carlos Slim, in the municipality of Noria de Angeles, led to the demolition of the houses and corrals of the Comunidad Real de Ángeles as well as its eighteenth-century church. In the now-abandoned metallurgical-industrial complex (the mine ceased operations in 1998), thousands of tons of sterile rocky material and pulls contaminated with heavy metals and other toxic substances are found. The peoples of the Sierra today are against dispossessing, against the ambition that takes away not only natural resources but also the lives of those who defend them. In 2014, Antonio Esteban Cruz was assassinated as leader of the Movimiento Independiente, Obrero, Campesino, Urbano y Popular (MIOCUP) and opposed to the installation of hydroelectric power on the Apulco River. In May 2018, Manuel Gaspar Rodríguez was assassinated who is also leader of MIOCUP. A month later, in June 2018, he was killed in Zacapaoxtla, Puebla, Adrián Tilhuit activist against the same hydroelectric plant. It should be noted that alongside these murders there has been constant harassment against activists, their families, and their communities. The state of Puebla is one of the entities with the highest number of cases of attacks on environmental defenders with eight registered cases, second only to the State of Mexico with ten cases. In this context, several struggles are presented that come together to preserve nature, for the right to life, to health, for the environment, for the land, and for customs and traditions.

12.5 The Fight for Malinaltepetl, in Acaxochitlán, Hidalgo In the community of Acaxochitlán Hidalgo located on the territorial boundaries of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, we can find a similar historical case. In 1968, the El Tejocotal hydroelectric dam was broken, causing flooding over the town that have the same name; the habitants from Tejocotal had to relocate their houses in the same place that they are using to sow. One of the problems they faced then was the scarcity of land to establish their crops, so they made numerous efforts before the government to have each family given a plot to grow corn and beans, among other products. Faced with the refusal, a group of inhabitants decided to take possession of paddocks close to their community who had a single owner which generated conflict with him and his family living in the municipal head. With the state government as an intermediary, a peaceful solution was found and the two sides were satisfied; from that moment on, those settlers, among whom some healers stood out, maintained a small group united that would be responsible for safeguarding the interests of community life in all aspects. Over time,

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this group became an organization of traditional physicians and indigenous Nahuas peasants under the name Yolopacpahtle whose central objectives focused on the conservation of traditional medicine, the rescue of the identity of indigenous peoples from their traditions and customs, as well as the improvement of the economic, social, and cultural conditions of its member and their peoples. Constantly, the healers aggarmed in this organization have worked to achieve their objectives and a very precise example we put it in 2010. At the time, the federal government had envisaged a project to build on top of Malinaltépetl, one of the sacred hills that exist in the area, a forest guard base, and the installation of telecommunications towers. Malinaltépetl or Cerro del Molino is a place of common use of the Population, belonging to the municipality of Acaxochitlán; its physical importance lies in the nature of the water received by the villages of Montemar, El Tejocotal (Acaxochitlán, Hidalgo) and Tlacomulco, (Huauchinango, Puebla) come from streams that have their origin in the skirts of this natural elevation. The spiritual importance, as already mentioned, in that it, together with other spaces, is considered a sacred hill to which specialists, not only from the municipality of Acaxochitlán but also of other municipalities and neighboring states, come to perform their agricultural and therapeutic rituals. The members of Yolopacpahtle and settlers of the aforementioned communities organized to avoid construction on Cerro del Molino. After many efforts before different government agencies, the work was canceled. Instead the inhabitants of San Fernando and El Tejocotal, belonging to the municipality of Acaxochitlán, built a chapel dedicated to San Juan Diego, a saint to which they celebrate on December 9. The purpose was to keep the hill as a common space, open to anyone who wants to perform rituals on it, leave offerings, collect medicinal plants, and continue to promote healing practices and the Catholic faith. Currently, there are other organizations made up of both traditional doctors and peasants from the different Nahua peoples of Acaxochitlán; the organization called Altepetl Macehual Tlapalehuiani and the Organization of Traditional Physicians Malinaltepetl Region which have also taken different actions in order to preserve the traditions and customs of indigenous peoples.

12.6 Recap The cases mentioned here briefly share geographical and cultural similarities, so they have also been involved within the same historical processes. In them, we can observe that indigenous communities through organizations can become protagonists of their own history and influence the future of their communities. As a concrete example, we have the case of hills. There is in this region a ritual circuit with more than 60 sacred hills where ritual specialists go with a certain periodicity for different purposes; one of which are the flower requests, which are those rituals in which requests are made to the owners of the hills to promote the

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prosperity of economic activities. In this region, we find that according to the days of the week of greatest economic activity these visits are carried out. But it is not only the hills, but also the caves that are inside, their ravines, as well as the springs and rivers that emanate from them, which become favorite places of ritual practices. In the same way, every May 3 in most communities, the villagers gather and perform ceremonies and offerings in the springs of the hills to request a good rainy season. There are sufficient elements, which we can check through ethnography, to affirm that from the attempts of dispossessing a process has begun to revaluate the environment, natural resources and intensify rituality in the sacred spaces of the Sierra, so it is also possible to appreciate a growing organization of peoples who today resist the onslaught of predation and extractivism, a struggle that marks a significant benchmark for the defense of territories and culture in other indigenous and peasant regions of Mexico. It is not only the fact that these communities will be taken from a portion of land, a quantity of water, or an expanse of forest; with the privatization and closure, these spaces would lose important part of their history, tradition, culture, and identity as indigenous mountain villages.

References Ánimas, L. (2017). Gasoducto pasará sobre tres mantos acuíferos en la Sierra Norte de Puebla. Retrieved April 06, 2019, from http://municipiospuebla.mx/nota/2017-04-06/huauchinango/gas oducto-pasar%C3%A1-sobre-3-mantos-acu%C3%ADferos-en-la-sierra-norte-de-puebla. Ánimas, L. (2018). Puebla alberga 2 grandes mineras en la Sierra Norte. Retrieved June 15, 2019, from http://municipiospuebla.mx/nota/2018-06-15/huauchinango/puebla-alberga-2grandes-mineras-en-la-sierra-norte. Ángulo 7. (2017). En Sierra Norte evacúan casas por inundaciones y activan alerta amarilla. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from http://www.angulo7.com.mx/2017/09/05/zacatlan-huauchina ngo-evacuan-civiles-inundaciones-deslaves/. http://www.remamx.org/2018/11/35460/, March 18, 2019. Barrios, É. J. (2017). La guerra del agua en la Sierra Norte. Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.elsoldepuebla.com.mx/local/estado/la-guerra-del-agua-en-la-sierra-norte-868 202.html. Beaucage, P. (1974). Comunidades indígenas de la Sierra Norte de Puebla. Revista Mexicana de Sociología, México, 36(1), 111–147. Beaucage, P. (1994). Los estudios sobre los movimientos sociales en la Sierra Norte de Puebla (1969–1989). Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 56(2), 33–55. Broda, J. (1991). Cosmovisión y observación de la naturaleza: el ejemplo del culto a los cerros en Mesoamérica. En J. Broda et al. (Ed.) Arqueoastronomía y etnoastronomía en Mesoamérica (pp. 461–500). México: UNAM. Broda, J. (2016). El agua en la cosmovisión de Mesoamérica. En José Luis Martínez Ruiz y Daniel Murillo Licea, Agua en la cosmovisión de los pueblos indígenas en México (pp. 13–27) México: SEMARNAT-CONAGUA. Gómez, A. (2016). El agua en la cosmovisión de los nahuas de Chicontepec. En José Luis Martínez Ruiz y Daniel Murillo Licea, Agua en la cosmovisión de los pueblos indígenas en México (pp. 101– 115). México: SEMARNAT-CONAGUA.

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Iwaniszewski, S. (1986). La arqueología de Alta Montaña en México y su estado actual. Revista Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, México, UNAM, 18, 249–273. Jornada de Oriente, L. (1999). Van 600 muertos por las lluvias; se estima que hay 500 mil damnificados. En la Jornada de Oriente. Retrieved October 08, 2019, from http://www.jornada.unam. mx/1999/10/09/se.html. Jornada, L. (2016). Hay comunidades aisladas en Puebla, asegura la Sedatu. Retrieved August 11, 2019, from http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/08/11/estados/029n1est. Lopez, A. (2015). Sobre el concepto de cosmovisión. En Alejandra Gámez y Alfredo López Austin, coords., Cosmovisión mesoamericana. Reflexiones, polémicas y etnografías (pp. 17–51). México: COLMEX-FCE-BUAP. Masferrer, E., & Martínez, M. (2010). Los indígenas, las regiones poblanas y sus agroecosistemas. En E. Masfererrer, et al., (coords.), Los pueblos indígenas de Puebla. Atlas etnográfico (pp. 27– 69). México: INAH-CONACULTA. Milano, C. (2007). La legitimación de las medicinas indígenas tradicionales en México. El ejemplo de Cuetzalan del Progreso (Puebla). Revista Dimensión Antropológica, México, INAH, año, 14(41), 81–106. Olvera, D. (2018). Minera canadiense va a la sierra norte de Puebla por más oro y se topa con una rebelión indígenas. Retrieved March 20, 2019, from http://www.sinembargo.mx/20-03-2018/339 8848. Orihuela, L. (2018). Anchane. Leyendas, mitos y supersticiones de la región de Matlatzinco, México, Ediciones Tequiliztli. Regeneración radio. (2014). “Fotoreportaje”, Mineras atentan contra la sierra norte de Puebla. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.regeneracionradio.org/Galerias/Imagenes/20-Emp resas-mineras-Sierra-Norte-de-Puebla/. De Sahagún, F. B. (2000). Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, 3v. México: CONACULTA. Tena, R. (2002). Mitos e historias de los antiguos nahuas. México: CONACULTA. Tosepan Titataniske. (2014). Sierra Norte por la vida. Resistencia contra proyectos de muerte en la Sierra Norte de Puebla, Documental. www.tosepan.com. Vera, R. (2016). Quién ambiciona el agua en la Sierra. En Ojarasca, suplemento de La Jornada, no. 230, junio. Retrieved June 18, 209, from http://ojarasca.jornada.com.mx/2016/06/10/quie n-ambiciona-el-agua-en-la-sierra-9633.html.

Chapter 13

Social Capital and Disasters. Facing Natural Hazards in the Nahua Sierra-Costa in Michoacan, Mexico Berenice Solís-Castillo and Janik Granados-Herrera

13.1 Vulnerability and Social Capital in the Nahua Sierra-Costa in Michoacan Disasters caused by hydro-meteorological events have a stronger association to social conditions than to natural ones. Vulnerability is a social construction determined not only by the intensity of a natural event, but also by a set of environmental, geographical, economic, social, political, and cultural factors (García-Acosta 2012). Facing the incidence of disasters due to hydro-meteorological hazards, small communities located in remote areas, with difficult access, are affected by hurricanes, heavy rains, strong winds, and their consequences, such as floods and landslides. In high vulnerability conditions, even small disasters that may not seem to require the activation of official emergency attention mechanisms, cause damage and losses that gradually accumulate and end up causing irreversible impacts on everyday life (Lavell 2012). This implies a need to transit toward strategies that are more adaptive and sensible to the different norms and scales of vulnerability, to recover from these small, but cumulative, disasters (Lavell 2012; Solís-Castillo et al. 2019). Communities that inhabit indigenous territories have a long history of occupation; through it, they have accumulated knowledge about their relationship with their environment and with the events that often cause economic, social, and cultural losses. This knowledge has been integrated into their internal organization in the B. Solís-Castillo (B) Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental (CIGA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Morelia, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] J. Granados-Herrera Department of Governance and Technology for Sustainability, University of Twente (UT), Enschede, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2_13

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form of rules and norms, which can be found in their collective memory and work as local means to reduce risks and mitigate damage. Damage, as a material and tangible expression of natural hazards, forces communities to search for strategies to restore their lives in a context of constantly changing risk and vulnerability conditions, based on their own resources and means, drawing upon what can be seen as community social capital assets. In this context, it’s necessary to understand the role that public policies have on management of risks and attention to disasters in local contexts. Albeit the discourse of governmental institutions shows the will to make available the financial, material, and technical resources needed to prevent and tend to emergencies, in practice, these schemes are insufficient and inadequate to face the impact of hazards in the daily lives of communities. This is the case of the communities that inhabit the Sierra-Costa region in Michoacan, and who are the focus of this chapter. Michoacan’s Nahua Sierra-Costa region is especially known for being a territory inhabited by social groups that have a common ethnic identity. Five Nahua indigenous communities are found in this region: Pómaro, El Coíre, Santa María de Ostula, San Miguel Aquila, and San Juan Huitzontla. In this chapter, we focus on the first three. It’s worth noting that not all natural hazards affect all communities of this ethnoregion in the same way, therefore, not all socionatural disasters have the same damage potential. Among those that generate more damage in communities are floods, strong winds, earthquakes, and landslides, because these are abrupt and their consequences are unpredictable. Through workshops and interviews with members of Pómaro, El Coíre, and Santa María Ostula, we identified those adaptation capacities that these communities developed to face hydro-meteorological risks and their consequences, from a social capital standpoint. To get an idea of the context of the Nahua Sierra-Costa in Michoacan, we must refer to the high level of social inequality (this region has one of the State’s highest level), which has historically prevailed among communities, and which has become more acute as time passes, due to, among other things, the influence of neoliberal policies. This, together with social, political, geographical, and environmental conditions described throughout this chapter, produces a setting of high vulnerability. In this chapter, we consider that local knowledge is an instrumental resource in the construction of social capital, because it is acquired through the accumulation of experiences, social relations, practices, and institutions, being the result of a close link between the environment and the social groups that inhabit it, which is expressed through their identity (Berkes et al. 2000; Sillitoe 2004; Mercer et al. 2010). Throughout this chapter, we give an account of how knowledge, structures, and local relations construct social capital and the capacities needed for adaptation and resistance to risks. This chapter follows this structure: First, we briefly examine the concept of social capital, and how appropriate it is in approaching the reality of the selected communities, according to their context and socioenvironmental situation. Based on these elements, we explain the procedure used to obtain the information needed to analyze, on one hand, the relationship between governmental institutions and communities. On the other hand, we document the capacities and organizational strategies of the

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communities studied, so as to give an account of the role of social capital, particularly in the reduction of risks caused by hydro-meteorological events. Moreover, we identify the local institutions that rule daily life, including emergency response. Finally, we discuss the aspects that must receive attention to achieve a healthier relationship between government and communities, so that the implementation of public policies can be more effective, and integrate the perspective of the communities about risks and risk management.

13.2 The Notion of Social Capital SC is a polysemic concept that has been addressed by a diversity of theoretical currents and disciplines, and it includes a great number of definitions, applications, and categories for analysis. Therefore, a brief tour through this diversity of approaches will allow visualizing the pertinence of including it in the characterization of relationships, links, and forms of sociocultural organization around knowledge of risk in Nahua communities. In the last decades, SC has had broad application in development studies. Specially, when regarding poverty and unemployment, it has been associated with the search for better life conditions of the most vulnerable sectors of society. SC is of a relational type, that is, it focuses on the links more than on the people who establish them, to achieve objectives through cooperation, and the expression of relationships in the organization of the community (Häuberer 2011; Filardo and Rossi 2019). SC has been worked from distinct approaches and positions. In the beginnings, sociologists like Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx emphasized its dimensions of social reciprocity, solidarity, and social control mechanisms (Portes 1999). Anthropology’s contributions to SC came with the development of the concepts of reciprocity by Marcel Mauss, social organization by Raymond Firth, and “dyadic contracts” by George Foster (Durston 2000). In the 1980s Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and Robert Putnam took up some proposals of the SC concept through their texts. For Bourdieu, SC is the set of real or potential resources accessible through a relational web, which is more or less institutionalized. Coleman adds that such resources constitute a capital asset and enable actions of those who conform that structure. Finally, Putnam takes up the SC idea as an asset that enables action and cooperation for mutual benefit (Arriagada 2003). Since the end of the twentieth century, SC was adapted, used, and popularized by institutions like the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United Nations Development Program, in their search to combat poverty. This new scheme establishes the mechanisms for cooperation, civic conscience, ethical values, and culture as the means to enable collective action and to contribute to the common good (BM 2000; PNUD 2000; BID 2001). The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Institute for Economic Planning for Latin America and the Caribbean, adapted the SC

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concept to Latin-American societies, conceiving it as the relations and social institutions characterized by practices of reciprocity and cooperation, and feedback of trust (Durston 2005). However, voices critical of this approach claim that the application of the SC concept is a developmentalist trend (Filardo and Rossi 2019). In the same way, they argue that the main limitations of the SC concept lie precisely on the ambiguity of its definition as well as its delimitation (Woolcock 2012), and that, because of its applications to so many social themes, it has lost rigor. Regardless of critiques, the main strength of the SC concept is its potential theoretical role in the analysis of social relationships in collective action against hegemonic power (Filardo and Rossi 2019). Finally, from an analytical perspective, the SC concept, albeit its methodological and theoretical reservations, contributes to the understanding of the set of social dynamics, a reference for the integration of the territorial, cultural, historical, and political contexts that are practiced at the local scale, with a strong sense of community, as in the focus of this study.

13.2.1 Social Capital and Disasters To achieve the aims of this study, we considered linking SC with social vulnerability and disaster response strategies, therefore, we took as a starting point four ways, developed by Arriagada (2003) and Filardo and Rossi (2019), to approach their possible relationships: (a) In the absence of favorable conditions, granted by a broader macroeconomic and political environment, SC is insufficient to produce positive effects, because common norms, social control, or sanctions at the local level are not the only determinants of people’s ability to develop capacities or to put their SC assets in place. We also need to consider the existence of informal cultural norms that can enter into contradiction with the strengthening of capacities and the construction of strategies. (b) Clientelism is one of the central problems in the relationships between community organizations and governmental institutions. To achieve a State-civil society relationship that is not based on clientelism, it must rely on a transfer of power quotas to generate policies and programs that are socially sustainable. (c) The qualitative dimension of SC asks for the recognition of the nature of collective action, the difficulties inherent to action and to the group, and the performance and resistance capacity of the group in the face of difficulties. Qualitative measurements must capture the participation of social actors, promote the emergence of active subjects, and broaden the possibilities for feedback. It is also crucial to know the possible degree of impact that social conflict, organized crime bands, etc., have on social capital.

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(d) It is substantial to consider the changes that have modified the sociopolitical and cultural organization of the communities, because currently there coexist different actors with logics that are not always compatible, which include multinational companies, peasants, rural workers, medium-sized producers, touristic enterprises, and organized crime bands, among others. All of these actors are linked in a dynamic space, due to internal situations as well as external influences, therefore, it is necessary to review policies and actions that contribute to a deepening of inequalities and which create tensions and conflicts.

13.2.2 Social Capital and Public Policies The SC term has become more frequent in public policy, as a way of establishing schemes that allow for the cultural baggage and traditional knowledge of peoples to be a positive way of generating social integration and of strengthening response capacities. At the same time, it seeks to build proposals that consider the participation of social actors in spaces that allow for horizontal exchange. From this notion, public policies of technocratic orientation related to risk and “natural” disasters are questioned, because they lack the cultural, symbolic, and historical dimensions that allow for the restitution of daily life, and for recovery based on the community institutions’ terms (Larenas et al. 2015).

13.3 The Nahua Coast: The Configuration of Territory Currently, there exist five indigenous communities in the Nahua Sierra-Costa: Pómaro, El Coíre, Santa María de Ostula, San Miguel Aquila, and San Juan Huitzontla, which, together, have a population of 16 000 indigenous inhabitants of Nahua ethnicity. This territory covers 208.5 km and extends to the Southern Sierra Madre and the Pacific coast. To the North, it limits with Coahuayana, Chinicuila, and Coalcoman municipalities; to the East with Arteaga and Lázaro Cárdenas municipalities; and to the South and West with the Pacific coast (Marín 2004). The history of the region’s populations goes back to Pre-Hispanic times. However, after conquest, towns shifted their geographical distribution to their actual location, due to the forcing of indigenous populations into congregations, where indigenous inhabitants were concentrated to be evangelized and to use them as labor. Meanwhile, others sought refuge in the intricate lands of the Sierra as a result of new organizational patterns and bad life conditions imposed by forced labor in the mines (Cochet 1991; Gledhill 2004). The weak presence of colonizers and the lack of interest of encomenderos for the resources of the Nahua region made it possible for natives to keep control over their communal territory (Gledhill 2004). And that is how, regardless of being the object of subjugation during four centuries, indigenous peoples of

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Fig. 13.1 Localization map of the communities studied and their territorial limits. Source Modified from Reinberg 2007. https://www.academia.edu/2489542/Retos_y_Memorias

the Sierra and the Coast were able to keep tracts of land, which later on became part of the communal land regime (Marín 2007). We carried out workshops and interviews in the following communities: Pómaro, El Coíre, and Santa María de Ostula (Fig. 13.1). Together they possess a territory of 130 km of coastline (Marín 2004). There is conflict between Pómaro and El Coíre and their ranching neighbors regarding limits and legal documentation of communal lands, and also conflicts between Santa María de Ostula and ejido neighbors. Regardless of these conflicts, communities identify geographical features that limit their territories (Marín 2007).

13.3.1 Community Organization The communal administration maintains its traditional organizational structure and an autonomous government system, although the Municipality is the institution with jurisdiction over this territory, offering legal support while representing the basis of the State’s administration. The territory is structured in a hierarchical way and the head of political power is found in Aquila, which is the capital of the municipality. The municipality has seven jefaturas de tenencia (a sub-level of the municipality) and 76 encargaturas del orden (sub-level of the tenencia), distributed along several towns. The municipality has a federal budget and is in charge of different organizations to tend to the needs of society. However, the influence of the Municipality is limited in Nahua communities, because the decision-making processes are carried out by communal organizations.

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Communal organization is similar to that of Spanish Cofradías or Model Cooperatives, and is legally recognized by the Ministry of the Agrarian Reform in Mexico. Communities are organized in a system of encargaturas del orden, which are settled in the coastline as well as the Sierra. Pómaro, Ostula, and El Coíre are jefaturas de tenencia. The highest decision-making authority in regards to public order is the Comisariado de Bienes Comunales, a board consisting of a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer, and a Vigilance Council (Marín 2007). Municipal and community structures coexist as institutions linked to make joint decisions, to solve problems, and to govern (Mora 2009; Monzoy 2000). Comuneros recur to the Asamblea Comunal—the community’s general assembly—to deal with everything that has to do with the administration of resources that exist within their territory, and other topics of interest to the community, such as conflicts with land limits and land uses, membership rights, difficulties and disputes among comuneros, public works, among others (Marín 2004). Currently, the Nahuas of the region live in a precarious economic situation, with high degrees of poverty and marginalization. The towns settled in the Sierra work in subsistence agriculture and raising of cattle at the domestic level, and complement their economy working as jornaleros (temporal agricultural workers) in crops, or migrate temporarily to work in the United States. The towns settled in the coast subsist through activities like fishing, low-intensity tourism, and to a lesser degree, through cattle herding and commercial agriculture (Marín 2004). Both communities settled in the coast and the Sierra lack decent health services, have low educational levels, insufficient means of communication, lack of political representation and neglect from the part of governmental institutions, although programs such as PROGRESA-OPORTUNIDADES-PROSPERA give economic support, though politically conditioned (Marín 2004; Mora 2009). Access to telecommunications is limited, and radios and telephones are only used in case of emergency. On the other hand, the region has paved backroads that communicate with the main federal road that connects Lázaro Cárdenas City to Colima. The provision of groceries is done by small private stores and CONASUPO (now Segalmex), which delivers corn (Mora 2009). The rural clinic offers services on a temporal basis, its main job being the organization of faenas (collective work) so that women can receive the support given by the PROGRESA-OPORTUNIDADESPROSPERA program which operates since 2006. Moreover, the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI), which is found in El Duín, Ostula, has built shelters for children in precarious situations (Mora 2009; Monzoy 2000). Up to here, we have offered an account of the ways in which the social vulnerability of the Nahua population has become generalized and even, normalized, after invasion, conquest and colonization processes, which have caused a legacy of vulnerability of very long duration. In the next section, we will address the governmental practices that have contributed to the construction of vulnerable conditions in the region’s communities.

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13.3.2 Social Vulnerability: Dispossession, Neglect, and Violence As we have described in previous sections, the Nahua coast is a territory inhabited by groups that share a common ethnic identity as Nahuas, with a cultural, economic, and institutional system of a communal character with a collective administration scheme. These characteristics have determined the protection of the territory and its resources in the face of commodification since the nineteenth century. Since the liberal policies of the Lerdo Law (1856) and the Laws of Reformation (1873), the search to privatize communal lands has been a constant threat to communities (Marín 2004). The invasion of communal territories, started by hacendados and ranches in the nineteenth century, had a drastic impact on communities, forcing them to change their common property dynamic and to reconfigure their territory (Marín 2007). Migratory processes in this region were triggered mainly by pressure from international companies that exploited the forests in an intensive way to extract precious woods, sometimes under informal contracts with communities, and sometimes without their consent but with consent of the Mexican authorities. This forced communities to establish new settlements in the Coast to guard against threats from mestizos and from constant looting of wood by Americans and Japanese merchants, among others (Cochet 1991). Communities settled in that hard-to-access part of the Sierra have been able to maintain autonomy over their traditional practices and their sociopolitical decisionmaking organization because of this condition. Nevertheless, interest of small and medium-sized local capitalists, national entrepreneurs and international corporations, without any legal compliance, and under the protection of governmental institutions, seek, once more, to privatize Nahua territory to exploit its resources on free demand. This has prompted the communities to become organized to defend their territory through the creation of community vigilante groups, ruled by the asamblea comunal (Maldonado 2012). The relative isolation of communities in the Nahua Sierra has given this region a strategic geopolitical role, due to its richness of resources, the connection to places with little transit and large social distancing. This geographical configuration has been used by organized crime bands, in part due to its remoteness and to being neglected by the State. Crime organizations have broadened their spectrum of illegal activities to include the mining sector, sharing territories and routes with mining companies; for example, these routes are used to transport products like iron to China, via Lázaro Cárdenas port. One of the ways in which mining companies and the organized crime cooperate is by assuring that local inhabitants who do not agree with the looting of their resources are displaced and evicted: in Aquila, for example, some comuneros have suffered blackmail, forced disappearances, and looting (Merchand 2018). On the other hand, the region’s militarization through the State’s anti-drug strategy between 2006 and 2018 brought about strong clashes and forced drug traffickers to the Sierra (Maldonado 2012). These factors have contributed to turning the Nahua Sierra into a

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territory where violence increases with every day that passes, in a sort of despotism based on impunity and corruption (Maldonado 2010). The response of the communities to this dispossession and exploitation situation has been the creation of auto-defense groups, community alerts, and autonomy to restore their territory, which is under constant threat and harassment from the organized crime, transnational companies, and the State (Díaz 2014). To today, this reality prevails in the towns settled in the Nahua territory of Michoacan’s Pacific Coast, which turns into high social vulnerability and a generalized sense of helplessness. This explains, therefore, the relative isolation situation of communities in Michoacan’s Nahua ethno-region. This situation has played an important role in the construction of conditions of vulnerability, which can erode the organizational mechanisms necessary for cooperation, trust, and reciprocity.

13.3.3 Hydro-Meteorological Hazards in the Nahua Territory Natural phenomena impact this region on a daily basis, consequently, inhabitants have learned to distinguish among some characteristics of common manifestations of hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, and other events associated with strong winds, landslides, etc., which have been integrated into their knowledge base (Solís et al. 2019). Drawing on a newspaper search and data from the Historic Catalog of Natural Phenomena in Michoacán (Carreón and Trejo 2014), we did a brief reconstruction of the history of the main hydro-meteorological events that caused disasters in the area studied. Since 1850, damage caused by hydro-meteorological events has been documented for this area; one particular event affected Motines town. There is also registry of other events which occurred in 1865 and 1878, which caused the Coahuayana river to change its course. In this region, it is common for settlements to remain isolated for long periods due to landslides that block roads. For example, in 1956 a cyclone isolated people who lived on the Coastline, and in 1962, heavy rains destroyed around 10 km of roads, isolating several towns on Coast of Michoacán. In 1959, Coahuayana town was resettled, due to a strong hurricane that affected the Pacific Coast. Commonly, hydro-meteorological phenomena cause floods and crop losses. In 1985, a tsunami flooded the towns settled on the coastline. In 2013, hurricane “Ingrid” and tropical storm “Manuel” caused important losses of papaya and corn crops. In 2015, hurricane Patricia left on its wake hectares of devastated crops, and isolated communities due to the destruction of roads. Recently, in 2019, tropical storm “Narda” caused multiple movements of slopes, blocking roads once more and impacting communication between communities in El Coíre, Pómaro, and some Ostula towns. This account allows us to see the need to recognize the social strategies that are linked to resilience capacities of indigenous communities in the region. We are

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particularly interested in those that are based on local knowledge, and the processes on which communities establish relationships and produce socioorganizational norms to face the changing and risky conditions in their surroundings.

13.4 Methodological Elements: Structures, Actors, and Relations in the Context of Risk The information analyzed was obtained mainly through interviews and participatory workshops, and is divided into three themes: (a) the understanding of the organizational, social, and cultural context of Nahua inhabitants in their relationship with “natural” disaster risk in their territory; (b) the identification of key actors, the forms, and levels of involvement in decision-making and the relationships (of cooperation or conflict) that exist among distinct actors; (c) documentation of the community’s reflections about resources and needs of inhabitants in the region, required to strengthen their disaster response and mitigation capacities. This information allowed us to perform a qualitative analysis of social capital in the Nahua Sierra-Costa region of Michoacán. We carried out two workshops in the communities, as well as a set of intensive workshops that lasted a week, with students from the Costa Nahua Academic Unit of the Intercultural Indigenous University of Michoacán (UIIM), who traveled from their communities (the communities studied) to CIGA-UNAM in Morelia, where the workshop was done. In this study, we used the results of three such sessions. We also conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with men and women between 25 and 50 years of age, from Pómaro, El Coíre, and Ostula, as well as with local authorities (comisariados de bienes comunales) and representatives of CDI in the Sierra-Costa.

13.4.1 Stage 1. Sociocultural Organization and Risk At this stage, we divided interviews into four blocks. The first one included questions about the main hazards recognized by the communities, their duration, incidence, and the damage they produce. This information was complemented with participatory mapping sessions. The second block consisted of open questions about the perception of the communities’ inhabitants, about their vulnerability and the ways in which it is expressed (social, economic, cultural, etc.). The third block addressed management forms and community capacities to mitigate risks and tend to emergencies. Finally, the fourth block inquired about coordination/cooperation between government and academic institutions and the community.

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13.4.2 Stage 2. Analysis of Actors Participants developed maps of actors in which they identified key actors and the institutions that influence risk management, and classified actors into internal (from the communities) and external (from governmental and non-governmental, religious, educational, and media institutions). The level of influence of each of the identified actors was also determined according to their degree of involvement, specific ways of participating, as well as the relationships that they establish among themselves in emergency situations. In this way, participants were able to identify the relationships that must be strengthened, as well as key actors and institutions that must be integrated, or with whom there needs to be more connection and interaction.

13.4.3 Stage 3. Reflections and Response Capacity In a collective session, students from UIIM created a capacities and needs matrix; it documented the actions and strategies that enable or hinder risk management in the region’s communities. We focused on identifying local capacities, that is, those about which community members have direct control of or can be modified without the intervention of external actors. We also evaluated the ways in which external actors, as well as governmental and non-governmental institutions, enhance or hinder mitigation and management actions.

13.4.4 Information Analysis A careful reading of the information gathered was done following Hammersley and Atkinson (2014). Field notes based on observation and interviews were transcribed and organized. Consequently, a content analysis was performed through a systematic codification of data, drawing on the reference framework for this research about the object of study and the experience of researchers (Cuevas 2016). The categories, built after an iterative and flexible process, constituted a typology of responses to explain why certain strategies are adopted and in which circumstances (Fernández 2006; Cuevas 2016).

13.5 Communities, The State and Institutional Gaps The relationships that exist between communities and governmental institutions are insufficient when it comes to emergency response. Regardless of the presence of the National System for Civil Protection, which arrives at the communities through the

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Navy and the National Military (Plan DNIII), the efforts to tend to emergencies are limited to the building (or repair) of infrastructure, giving out food and other basic items like soap, and medicine (in the form of “despensas”), which are actions done after disasters have occurred. It can be said then, that it is the communities themselves who carry on their own reconstruction. Due to limited access to media in the Nahua ethno-region, the Navy is in charge of informing the towns settled in the coast about the incidence of hurricanes, tropical storms, and cyclones, so that inhabitants may seek shelter during the prevention phase. In these cases, doubts arise regarding which are the safest shelters in risk situations: […] Marines come and inform us through speakerphones that a storm is coming and that we should be prepared with our things, but, where are we to go? (Workshops, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

The Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) and the Federal Government through PROSPERA (Federal Program for Human Development of Populations in Extreme Poverty in Mexico), in a joint effort, organize beneficiaries of the program to tend to certain needs of the population after disasters occur, such as clearing of roads, cleaning of streets, and schools. It is through the temporary employment program that the Ministry of Agriculture, Cattle, Rural Development, Fishing and Food (now the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, SAGARPA) gives maintenance to the main roads in the Nahua ethno-region. SAGARPA is the institution that gives economic compensation to peasants who lose their crops; however, support is politically conditioned. […] sometimes those who suffer from damages do not receive economic support because there is clientelism when giving it out, those who benefit are the ones who belong to the party in turn at the moment (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) also facilitates and controls access to programs and projects with federal funding. In the case of risk management, CDI is the institution from which organizational processes with community authorities can be generated. […] the projects managed here are for about 300 towns, but projects have too many requirements that are impossible to meet, they have too many obstacles, and clientelism exists, there are communities that are more benefited than others (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

13.5.1 Governmental Programs and the Loss of Social Capital Culture is one of the main worries of the communities, because for them, the transmission of knowledge and customs to the next generations is essential, as is their conservation through time so they may be used to improve community management

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of risks. For them, the way in which the Federal and State governments evaluate risks and the response that they expect from communities can produce losses to ancestral knowledge, which, in the long term, could increase social vulnerability. […] what was known before did reduce the risk of losing crops; it helped predict the weather and the dynamics of rains. If the moon was lopsided, it meant it would rain a lot (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017). […] projects are not adapted to the local culture, and this causes the loss of the language; it must be considered that people who do not speak Spanish are vulnerable, because they cannot understand alarm notices (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

13.6 Social Capital and Resistance in the Communities Local knowledge is a fundamental resource from which social capital is constructed in the Nahua region. Local knowledge plays a role in the construction of links, cohesion, common interests, and trust, as it is transferred among family members, community members, communities, and through the establishment of relationships with external actors. Social capital is created through the mobilization of resources such as knowledge and local capacities through actor networks, through sharing and exchange; therefore, it can be an element of negotiation. Local knowledge, being socially constructed, is influenced by the dynamic of interactions and collective action. It also contributes to the creation and maintenance of local institutions, seen as rules and norms, and through integrating opportunities and limits, producing safety and trust among community members (Ostrom and Ahn 2001). The participants of this study identified those resources that they possess to mitigate and face hydro-meteorological risks. All of them are based on local knowledge as a basis for the construction of social capital. Among these, three stand out as recurring in community narratives: traditional community organization (internal relations), mobility strategies and access to territory (relationship of members with their territory), and the relationships and alliances with relevant external actors. Drawing on these elements, community inhabitants have developed resistance strategies that allow them to deal with local hazards in the face of limited governmental response, lessening the problems caused by institutional gaps for emergency attention.

13.6.1 Mobility Strategies and Access to Territory In Nahua territory, inhabitants possess ample physical mobility; they move from settlements located in the Sierra to those located in the coastal plains and river deltas. Members of these communities make use of their territory in an adaptive way, especially those who live in risk zones. For example, some inhabit rancherías (scattered populations) temporally, where they carry out activities such as minor cattle raising and agriculture, while when they live in the coast, they have access to education

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and connectivity with urban centers such as Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo, and productive activities like tourism and small-scale fishing (Solís et al. 2019). Mobility is an adaptive practice based on experience and territorial knowledge and on the environmental conditions caused by seasonal changes, which provide inhabitants safety in the face of risks. An informant expresses thus: “When a storm arrives what they [people who live at risk] do is to leave their house when it rains and go stay with their closest relatives, and go back when the river level has gone down. […] They know that the river is going to overflow, they know when it brings a lot of water, this is expected every year, but it had not happened in many years […], but when it rains they go to their house uphill, they feel safe about living in Maruata […].”

13.6.2 Monitoring of Local Indicators in Risk Areas Inhabitants of the Nahua ethno-region of the coast of Michoacán possess deep environmental and spatial knowledge derived from the constant observation of their territory. They monitor the areas where they walk on a daily basis, according to indicators such as fall of superficial materials and rocks, changes in terrain height, and inclination of trees and obstacles in paths. In the workshops, participants mapped points and areas to represent local risks. They defined categories as well to evaluate these risks (low, moderate, and catastrophic), according to losses and potential damage of their resources and lives (Solís et al. 2019). For example, a low risk implies impacts to roads and infrastructure, but without significant economic losses nor lives. Moderate risk relates to impacts on productive activities and economic losses due to death of cattle, loss of croplands, or impact to houses. Finally, a catastrophic event is when human lives are impacted or lost, or irreversible damage affects settlements (Solís et al. 2019).

13.6.3 Traditional Community Organization In the workshops the link between local knowledge, risk management strategies and community institutions became evident, and it can be seen as the set of rules and norms that govern community life. The social organization of the communities is sustained on an auto-government that is based on traditional uses and customs. Therefore, knowledge generated through experience has a cultural and social valuation for forecasting the weather and the rain dynamics, among other things. Thus, social community capital is produced through social institutions where actors propose the common good, in explicit as well as implicit ways, basing their actions on practices and existing interpersonal relationships. Through the asamblea comunal habitable areas are designated in the Nahua ethnoregion, considering environmental characteristics as well as the preferences and needs of inhabitants for settling in their territory (Solís et al. 2019). Moreover, it

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is through this institution that goods and profits gained using natural resources is distributed, this includes the reconstruction of roads that were affected by rains and landslides. Remittances from migrants and the monetary contribution of eco-resorts, (built through sustainable development programs by some governmental administrations) are also used by local inhabitants to tend and to recover from damages, allowing them to carry on with daily life (Solís et al. 2019). The traditional scheme of sociopolitical organization contributes to building the community’s social capital; this organization benefits from a positive perception from members of the community, who trust that their auto-government institutions have the capacity to guarantee their safety: […[encargaturas and comisariados are the ones who get organized, the ones who are there. […] when facing any emergency, we all go together, comisariado, community leader, encargado del orden and communal guards, if anything, it is them who go first (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

This organization has specific functions to solve community problems. The comisariado de bienes comunales and the vigilance council are the ones authorized by the community to deal with issues of local, civil, or agrarian nature or to deal with social problems. In this way, in a risk and disaster scenario, communities prioritize collective actions over individual ones. […] it is the encargado del orden who intervenes and organizes the community to make agreements, to know what activities are going to be organized, and the jefe de tenencia, the local authority, who deals with monetary resources through the municipality. The comisariado comunal [asks] for support and arranges for resources, so they are the first ones to inform people and let them know what they should know (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

Although communication in the Nahua territory is limited, the encargaturas have radios to inform about community needs as well as emergencies. […] encargaturas have radios to communicate among themselves, anything that comes up people become active immediately, let everyone know and they go from there to make decisions and to help if there is a disaster (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

Finally, community police is the trust liaison through which the community asks the federal government for help. […] the community police is more trustworthy, and of course, they would help in case of disaster (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20-24th 2017).

13.6.4 Voluntary Collective Work As part of the life scheme of the Nahua ethno-region communities, communities recognize internal cooperation, community work, and reciprocity among members,

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as capacities to help those who suffer damages from disasters. There is in fact an economic fund destined to help those who lose everything during disasters, whose administration is strictly carried out by the community treasurer. It is through this fund that it’s possible to rehabilitate roads; this is done through collective work, with community members participating for no monetary compensation, in the tasks agreed by the assembly. […] they get organized to clear off the heaps of dirt, it is like that almost every year, the road to El Coíre almost always falls off, and the encargaturas’ organization [encargados del orden of communities with 15-30 families] is central (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

In addition, in these communities various works are carried out to prevent and protect inhabitants during the rainy season, these include the construction of wood barriers filled with sand: “In the pond of Fernandez people get organized to fill up the holes that appear (three days or more), this gets complicated by the rains.” Depending on the severity of the situation, in some cases these tasks may need action from the municipality: “If the blockage is larger, agreements are made or a notice is sent to the municipality.”

13.6.5 Relations and Alliances with External Actors and Institutions The establishment of relations and alliances with other communities and with external actors may contribute to covering the institutional gaps in terms of attention to emergencies left out by Federal and State governments. Some non-governmental organizations have given support through projects in the communities. Educational institutions like Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo (UMSNH) and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), among others, also contribute through workshops on environmental education and gender equality, and disseminating information and doing studies in the region. […] people from the michoacana (UMSNH) who work at the turtle camps, many times are researchers on exchange, they are often foreigners, they give out information and workshops about environmental education (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

The workshops organized by universities as well as NGOs in the communities have contributed to a sustained reflection about socioenvironmental problems, which local actors have translated into the means to reduce risks, as they consider that a healthy ecosystem contributes to reducing the effects of natural phenomena. Drawing on this learning, three specific strategies were identified […] what we can do are green barriers [particularly to stop and reduce mass removal of materials -landslides], to cut less trees [this is one of the main sources of income generation for the communities] and teach the youth what has been known from before [which keeps ancestral knowledge alive and contributes to social cohesion].

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On the other hand, teachers from elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, as well as professors of Michoacan’s Indigenous Intercultural University in its Costa Nahua Academic Unit (UIIM-Costa Nahua), know the needs of the community and are considered trustworthy leaders. […] there are teachers who [come] from Morelia, are external, but still they know about the needs, they are very close to the community (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

With the information generated through interactions with these organizations, inhabitants of this region consider that support could be arranged through CDI or the State government for various things, among them, to construct houses in safer areas. […] because the main problem is that there are no resources for building houses in safe places, people want to be close to services, to stores, even if the river goes floods them (Workshop participants, Morelia, March 20–24th 2017).

13.7 Public Policies and Social Vulnerability Institutional discourse is based on the need to better understand disaster risk in all dimensions relative to exposure, vulnerability, hazard characteristics, and strengthening of disaster risk governance, as noted by the Hyogo Action Framework (2005– 2015) and Sendai (2015–2030). To achieve this, what is sought is to promote social participation to create resilient communities, that is, capable of resisting the negative effects of disasters, through solidarity action and with this, recovering—in the least possible time—their productive, economic, and social activities, as explained in the initiative for a Law on integral risk management presented to Congress in 2019. These objectives, however, are often carried on through State actions that are disconnected from the reality of the communities; communities perceive these actions with mistrust. According to Cleaver (2001), when “formal” institutional solutions are introduced—these can be rules or action and support protocols by governmental organizations—it’s possible for them to generate conflicts, because they do not recognize the local ways for decision-making and relationships of cooperation. Moreover, given these institutions’ foundation on universal principles, they often contradict or ignore community rules and structures. This, in turn, adds to the decay of social capital and creates resistance, because communities consider that these institutions are external, and even, illegitimate (Cleaver 2001). In this study’s cases, the relationship between the communities and the State owes mainly to programs that offer economic support and subsidies, which are conditioned to participate in specific activities, and which are also frequently intervened by political parties. Inhabitants of the communities themselves seem to have gotten used to the void of authority from institutions, and to the “obscure” practices with “hidden interests”—as they call it—of state and national level authorities, in the face of dispossession of their territory and their resources. These practices have broadened the distance and undermined the community-state relationship, increasing the vulnerability of communities.

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Regardless of this perception, the continuous presence of the Navy (Mexican Military) in emergency situations is perceived as a resource that stems from within the community, because it is the only institution with strong presence in the zone, and the one who alerts the population about extreme hydro-meteorological phenomena that can affect settlements located in the coasts and river deltas. In this scenario, the action frameworks of civil protection policies are carried on with excessive centralism, technocratic dogmatism, and vertical decision-making processes, which has built a gap between the authorities’ performance and the communities’ expectations and needs. In this scheme, community participation and influence must follow the terms imposed by the government. Similarly, civil protection protocols must be followed according to the guidelines defined beforehand, without knowledge of organizational dynamics and community capacities. Multiple social constructions of the territory—which integrate traditions and the execution of ancient practices linked to their ethnicity—are also ignored. This is of vital importance, because the lack of sensibility of public policies toward the distinct ways of inhabiting the territory directly influences local processes of adaptation to risks. In this sense, we must bring to the discussion the role of local, scientific, and technical knowledge for planning public policy to understand how these can complement each other. Official knowledge about risks and guidelines about how to manage them often come from international technical standards, and from general information at the national and state levels. On the other hand, the information held by governmental agencies about local risks tends to be discrete, because it focuses on attention in specific moments, for example, when instructing the application of protocols in hydro-meteorological risk situations, without considering the local context and often ignoring local demands, expressed directly by comuneros to government representatives. Likewise, prevention is limited to specific actions, like cleaning up of streets and clearing up roads. On the contrary, communities possess continuous knowledge, product of their everyday life experience and observation, through which they have learned to measure indicators and develop organizational strategies that can, at least partially, cover the voids in the risk management protocols proposed by the State for the local level. At least until 2018, the discourse of the action frameworks of civil protection policies proposes training and creation of social groups entitled to manage risks, civil participation through networks, the creation of volunteer associations, and citizen co-responsibility (Ley General de Protección Civil, Última Reforma DOF 2018). Nevertheless, during emergency attention and the following deployment of efforts from public agents to face risks, efforts are carried out through a top-down, hierarchical relationship. They suppose that communities’ response to emergencies will be passive, therefore, they must subjugate themselves to the directions of federal authorities, in order to access the benefits from programs and projects being implemented. Nevertheless, people of the Nahua ethno-region see themselves not as objects of assistance, but as subjects with rights, therefore, they tend to rebel under subordination conditions established by social policies in general.

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In sum, from a SC perspective, and according to the evidence gathered, the main problems of public policy that hinder the establishment of relationships with indigenous communities of the Nahua Sierra-Costa region in Michoacán are Imposition: In practice, the role of governments has remained in a commandand-control scheme, where the participation and influence of communities must arise in the terms imposed by the government itself. Protocols must be followed according to the general guidelines, putting aside local organizational dynamics. The communities’ capacities are not recognized; therefore, what is expected from them is obeisance. Unilaterality: needed in the creation of a healthy relationship between the State and the communities are real links of reciprocity and mutual benefit. Generally, governmental proposals are based on unilateral actions that set aside local knowledge, as if it were less valid and, therefore, replaceable due to technical reasons. There are still no mechanisms to facilitate open participation of the communities in risk planning and management. Mistrust: in order for there to be an appropriate management that integrates local knowledge and capacities, there needs to be, in principle, a restoration of trust among the parts. For this to occur, agreements and actions must be carried out based on equality, or at least, on a condition where there is full conscience of power and information asymmetries between the parts, so these can begin to be worked out. Albeit mistrust from communities toward the State prevails, it’s important to note that public policies are implemented from a position of mistrust toward communities as well, specifically in terms of their capacity to organize effectively in order to make decisions and propose useful tools to solve their own problems. Limited access to information: guidelines, rules, and protocols to prevent disasters are often presented to the public in ways not adapted to the local reality. Information is published online, for example, regardless of lack of internet access in these communities, or it possesses technical language and is written in Spanish only, broadening the gap in access to information among the population. Adding to this, the ambiguity of the information produces a multiplicity of interpretations about the decisions made by governmental authorities.

13.8 Final Reflections In our revision of the social capital concept, we have seen that it is necessary to guarantee collective action, resource management, and functioning of local administrative and political structures. In this chapter, we have given clear evidence of the social capital possessed by indigenous communities in Pómaro, El Coíre, and Santa María Ostula, capital to which they recur to manage hydro-meteorological risks. However, there are limitations of different nature (economic, political, technical, etc.) to develop less vulnerable communities, with the capacity to carry out their own community management of risks. It’s necessary to go up one step in the development of social capital, by creating support networks at a larger scale and through a healthier

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and constructive relationship with governmental actors. The exchange of tangible and intangible benefits in formal and informal ways creates and strengthens reciprocity relations. But these relations cannot be strengthened if there are mistrust and lack of recognition. The communities of the Nahua ethno-region in Michoacán have been in a state of relative isolation due to its geographical location, but this isolation has made institutional neglect more acute. However, this territory is a strategic connection point between Lázaro Cárdenas and Colima, therefore, this “isolation” and “invisibility” are relative, and consequently, it is possible to visualize better integration of the communities in decision-making processes about management and planning of the territory, as well as the actions related to the reduction of risks. In this sense, it’s necessary to abandon the approaches oriented toward the resolution of isolated problems without understanding their connection to contexts and situations, as prescribed by the assumptions of capitalism, “one problem, one instrument.” The communities studied possess knowledge, capacities, their own resources, and complex internal organization systems and institutions, upon which social life is based. Moreover, they possess a strong sense of cohesion, regardless of their economic needs and high marginalization. In fact, it is the communities themselves who have taken over attention to emergencies and recovery actions, considering insufficient reaction from authorities. Thus, we believe it would be possible to strengthen risk management schemes drawing from the analysis and incorporation of community capitals. Both knowledge, as well as capacities and relations at the community level, are created through dynamic processes, that is, there exists social learning capacity and it is adaptive. Formal governmental institutions also require this adaptability and capacity to visualize the consequences of hydro-meteorological events from a local perspective, to focalize resources and efforts in the construction of more appropriate and creative attention strategies. It is in the communities where more updated and complete knowledge about changes in the local surroundings can be found, therefore, communities should have more influence in decision-making and participate in risk management schemes according to their own terms. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the financial support granted by UNAM through the Project PAPIIT IN300819, under the direction of Dr. Gerardo Bocco.

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Index

A Aging, 119, 120, 122, 128

C Capacities, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 21, 24, 33, 39, 40, 49, 56–58, 65, 75, 77, 89, 100, 101, 123, 126, 137–139, 145, 174, 179, 219, 220, 246, 249, 255, 267, 290, 292, 293, 297–299, 301, 303, 304, 306–308 Capitalism, 3, 6, 8, 22, 39, 40, 86, 187, 188, 208, 209, 220, 221, 232, 239, 271, 308 Comprehensive Risk Management (CRM), 48–50, 52–57, 61, 65 Cyclones, 185, 189–191, 194, 206, 297, 300

D Disaster, 1–4, 6–13, 19–22, 24–26, 28, 29, 31, 33–36, 38–40, 47–55, 57, 58, 61, 65, 66, 69, 70, 75–78, 84, 85, 91, 92, 94, 97, 99–101, 112, 115, 120– 128, 130, 134, 135, 138, 139, 145– 147, 149–152, 160, 165, 166, 170– 172, 176, 177, 179–181, 185–193, 200, 203, 207–209, 213, 214, 219– 221, 229, 232, 233, 238, 239, 243– 253, 255–257, 261, 270–272, 284, 289, 290, 292, 293, 297, 298, 300, 303–305, 307 Displacement, 12, 69, 86, 92, 145–149, 153, 158, 203, 234, 243, 245, 251, 262

E Ethnic group, 122, 145, 146, 157, 163, 206 F Financial risk transfer, 52 Flood, 2, 9, 12, 27, 28, 31–38, 48, 52, 55–61, 64, 65, 88, 93, 97, 98, 100, 103–106, 109–112, 114, 115, 120–123, 125– 131, 133–139, 147, 150, 153, 158, 166, 167, 188–191, 193, 196, 198– 200, 243, 245–247, 249–255, 259, 260, 263–269, 271, 277, 280, 289, 290, 297, 305 G Guerrero, 12, 50, 79, 80, 92, 161, 172, 178, 185, 186, 189–194, 199, 200, 202–204, 206, 207 H Human relocation, 213, 232 Human rights, 6, 12, 121, 154, 165, 206, 208, 209, 270–272 Hydraulic plans, 166, 181, 259, 266 I Indigenous people, 145, 152, 157, 158, 168, 206, 248, 281, 286, 293, 295, 300 Inequality, 3, 6–10, 23, 24, 99, 102, 131, 149, 151, 153, 158, 165, 180, 188, 214, 220, 232, 256, 257, 261, 290, 293 Irregular settlements, 90, 98, 100, 102–104, 113, 115

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Vera-Cortés and J. M. Macías-Medrano (eds.), Disasters and Neoliberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54902-2

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312 M Mitigation, 36, 38, 51–53, 61, 77, 101, 122, 126, 138, 166, 176, 188, 209, 220, 251, 266, 298, 299

N Neoliberal city, 84, 93, 194 Neoliberalism, 3–7, 9, 11, 13, 19, 20, 22– 24, 32, 36, 39, 40, 86, 119, 120, 148, 149, 160, 161, 166, 181, 187, 188, 214, 220, 221, 223, 232, 238

O Organized crime, 5, 11, 13, 88, 98, 101–103, 107, 108, 114–116, 160, 174, 179, 292, 293, 296, 297

P Prevention, 19, 26, 28, 36, 38, 48–51, 52– 55, 58, 61, 75–77, 84, 92–94, 98, 99, 101, 111, 125, 127, 137, 138, 186, 188, 189, 194, 220, 232, 252, 253, 256, 264, 300, 306 Public policy, 11, 53, 100, 101, 123, 130, 131, 135, 138, 139, 187, 188, 206, 220, 221, 232, 257, 262, 265, 290, 291, 293, 305–307

R Relocations, 11, 12, 38, 93, 94, 114, 115, 128, 145–152, 156, 158, 160, 169– 173, 177, 178, 180, 185, 186, 188, 189, 192–201, 203, 206–209, 215, 216, 228, 229, 231–239, 248, 268 Right to the city, 91, 92 Risk, 2, 8–12, 19, 21, 24, 27–29, 31, 34, 36–39, 47–56, 58, 61, 65, 69–71, 74– 81, 84, 85, 88, 91, 93, 97–105, 110– 116, 119–122, 125–127, 130, 133– 135, 137, 138, 149, 150, 152, 172, 177, 180, 181, 185, 187–191, 201, 203, 205, 208, 213, 214, 219–222, 224, 228–239, 243, 246, 247, 250– 253, 260, 261, 263, 266, 268–270, 279, 283, 290, 291, 293, 298–303, 305–308 Risk management, 10, 48, 49, 51–56, 58, 65, 76–78, 99, 101–105, 113, 116, 120, 121, 208, 213, 219, 220, 231–234,

Index 238, 239, 291, 299, 300, 3002, 305, 306, 308 ., 10, 48, 52–55, 65, 76–78, 99, 101–105, 113, 116, 120, 121, 208, 213, 219, 220, 231–234, 238, 239, 291, 299, 300, 302, 305, 306, 308 Risk perception, 99 River, 25–28, 30, 31, 37, 89, 97, 98, 104– 106, 108, 110, 111, 113–116, 125, 134, 147, 153, 156, 158, 166, 168, 172–174, 177, 179, 189–191, 195, 196, 222, 237, 243, 245–248, 250– 257, 259–269, 271, 278, 280, 281– 283, 285, 287, 297, 301, 302, 305, 306

S Shelters, 26, 31, 33, 34, 69, 111, 120–125, 127, 130, 131, 134, 135, 138, 139, 170–172, 176, 187, 192, 199, 221, 228, 234–236, 254–256, 279, 295, 300 Social capital, 289–293, 298, 300, 301, 303, 305, 307 Social processes, 7–9, 20, 21, 27, 99, 152, 187, 219, 256 Social vulnerability, 6–11, 13, 21, 24, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 92–94, 120– 123, 126, 127, 134, 135, 138, 139, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152, 165, 166, 179, 180, 185–188, 190, 191, 209, 213, 221, 233, 244, 292, 295–297, 301, 305 State, 4–12, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32– 34, 36–40, 48–54, 59, 65, 76, 77, 81, 82, 91, 93, 97–99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 108, 112, 114–116, 120, 121, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 139, 145– 153, 156–158, 160, 161, 166, 170– 172, 174, 176, 179–181, 185–195, 202, 206–209, 213–215, 218–220, 224, 229, 232, 234, 237, 239, 243– 249, 252, 254–256, 259, 260, 262, 264, 265, 269–271, 275, 277, 279, 282, 285, 286, 290, 294–297, 299, 301, 304–308

U Urban reconstruction, 92

Index V Volcanic risk, 12, 213, 214, 219–222, 228, 229, 231–236, 239 Volcano of Colima, 214, 215, 219, 225, 228, 229 Vulnerabilities, 1, 2, 4, 8–10, 21, 24, 35, 47, 48, 52–55, 58, 61, 69, 70, 75–79, 83– 86, 90, 93, 94, 101, 104, 112, 116,

313 120, 122, 123, 126, 151, 152, 180, 187–190, 208, 209, 213, 214, 219– 222, 231–233, 238, 239, 247, 251, 256, 257, 261, 265, 269, 289, 290, 295–298, 305