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Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America pp 223–235Cite as

The Environmentalism of NGOs Versus Environmentalism of the Poor? Mexico’s Social–Environmental Coalitions

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Abstract

This chapter builds on analyses of environmental mobilizations that have focused on the plurality of networks between organizations. This approach has only been applied to select aspects of the Mexican movement. Unlike a somewhat idealized analysis of social movements focused solely on grassroots mobilizations, an approach focused on coalitions can show that the different actors mobilized are connected to one another as much by complementarity and division of labor, as by a shared set of common values. Environmentalism is often characterized by a “transclassist” heterogeneity of participants, and coalition building is therefore the most common way to expand a mobilization. This is the distinct nexus between “elitist” and “grassroots” organizations, as well as the two distinct historical trajectories of alliances that allow us to empirically divide what we might call “Mexican social environmentalism” into two components.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This elitism was fortified by the specific role played by academics and by “information politics”: the use of scientific data was exceptionally intense within environmental mobilizations.

  2. 2.

    The term “social environmentalism” is not usually used by the members of the organizations analyzed here. This analytical category was used for the 1st time by Gonzalez Martinez (1992).

  3. 3.

    These fieldwork periods had very different durations: from 2 years (during each of the authors’ PhD preparation) to numerous 1 month periods dedicated to different research projects on related thematics throughout the last decade.

  4. 4.

    Alongside the Centro de Ecodesarollo, created in 1972, and the Institúto d’Ecología (1974), we found that INRIREB—Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos—which embodied the “social environmentalism” movement (1975–1988). All the three remained very dependent on the Mexican State.

  5. 5.

    The Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM in Spanish) emerged from the fusion between the Mexican Communist Party and different currents of the Mexican left. It won the municipal elections in the city of Alcozauca in the state of Guerrero at the end of the 1970s. This victory gave this group the opportunity to move from reflection to political action, and to implement an experimental project that was seen as a pioneering experience of sustainable development in the region (mainly environmental diagnostics and a municipal management plan).

  6. 6.

    The most representative examples of this wave of exportation oriented around organic coffee cooperatives were the “Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región del Itsmo” (UCIRI) and the “Indígenas de la Sierra Madre de Motozintla” (ISMAM). In these organizations, members of liberation theology-type groups were more influential than members of academia.

  7. 7.

    The PRI controlled Mexico from the end of the revolution during the 1920s, until the year 2000. After a 12-year transition dominated by the presidency of the right-wing Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) party, the PRI returned to the power in 2012, at both the national level and in many states.

  8. 8.

    Indeed, a 1991 study (Kurzinger 1991) showed that 75 % of the organizations taken in account had some connection with the State, and that 30 % received State funding.

  9. 9.

    The “Secretaria de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca” who, after having been reduced from the Fishing Sector at the end of the 1960s with J. Carabias as head of the ministry, became the “Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales” (SEMARNAT). See Stearns and Almeida (2004) for the mutual reinforcing benefits of social movement coalitions with state institutions.

  10. 10.

    Julia Carabias, personal interview, October 14, 2004.

  11. 11.

    Translated by L. Kraftowitz.

  12. 12.

    During the1980s, a majority of these organizations were self-financed; more rarely, they were financed by public funding.

  13. 13.

    The most visible is the Ford Foundation (alongside the Foundations Rockfeller, McArthur and the German Friedrich Ebert), which was almost always present in supporting these organizations, at least until the end of the 1990s. In addition, Oxfam Novib (the Dutch organization for international development cooperation), as well as the religious German organizations Misereor and Pan Por el Mundo, and the cooperation agencies of northern Europe (Scandinavia and Germany, but also the UK via DFID, and the Department for International Development). The General Environmental Facility (GEF), managed by the World Bank, was also an important source of financing, enabling these actors to consolidate or create new organizations. Regarding the multifold relations existing between these NGOs and the World Bank, see for example Deborah A. Bräutigam and Monique Segarra (2007).

  14. 14.

    Personal interview, on October 3, 2008.

  15. 15.

    Nevertheless, we have to take note that this agenda was strongly influenced by the international agenda, much more than by some Mexico-specific features (cf. Miriam Alfie Cohen 1995).

  16. 16.

    It is worth recalling the uprising of one of the first peasant movements, which self-identified sharply as ecologist from 1997 on. It took place in the Costa Grande of the Guerrero State, with Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera as its two leaders. They were imprisoned from 1999 to 2001, then forced into exile. In 2000, they won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for their work.

  17. 17.

    Personal interview, on January 22, 2006. Translation by L. Kraftowitz.

  18. 18.

    One of the objectives was to monitor and strengthen as long as possible the moratorium on GMO corn that had been declared by the Mexican government at the time (Gustavo Ampugnani, personal interview, January 23, 2006), as well as to impede the authorization of Mexican GMO corn, notably through some activist and legal measures.

  19. 19.

    This ideological reconfiguration can be observed through the systematic denunciation of the NAFTA commercial agreement, and through the strong support given to the neo-Zapatista movement, which constitutes a main reference point of the alter-globalization movement.

  20. 20.

    This polarity is close to the one proposed by Pleyers (2010) in his in-depth analysis of the alter-globalization movement: between experimentation and counter-expertise.

  21. 21.

    Touraine (1981) could be cited as an example of the first, and Tarrow (1998) of the second.

Abbreviations

CCMSS:

Consejo Civil Mexicano para la Silvicultura Sostenible (Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry)

CECCAM:

Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano-Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste (Center for the Study of Change in the Mexican Countryside- Maderas del Pueblo Southeast)

CIEPAC:

Centro de Investigaciones y Economicas Politicas Accion Comunitaria (Center for Research on Political Economics and Community Action)

CONCLAVE:

Coordinadora Nacional Contra Laguna Verde (National Coordination Against the Laguna Verde)

ERA:

Estudios Rurales y Asesoria (Rural Studies and Consulting)

FECOMEX:

Federación Conservacionista Mexicana (Mexican Conservationist Federation)

GIRA:

Grupo Interdisciplinario de tecnologia Rural Apropiada (Interdisciplinary Group for Appropriate Rural technology)

NAMA:

Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales (National Assembly of Environmentally Affected People)

PAIR:

Programa de Aprovechamiento Integral de Recursos Naturales (Program for the Utilization of Natural Resources)

PSSM:

Proyecto Sierra de Santa Marta (Sierra de Santa Marta Project)

RAFI:

Rural Advancement Foundation International, renamed the ETC Group in 2001

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences de la Communication, CNRS-Sorbonne Université-UPMC, Paris, France

    Jean Foyer

  2. Institut des Hautes Etudes de l’Amérique Latine (IHEAL)—CREDA, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

    David Dumoulin Kervran

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  1. Jean Foyer
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Correspondence to Jean Foyer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences Humanities and Arts, University of California, Merced, California, USA

    Paul Almeida

  2. FLACSO-Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Allen Cordero Ulate

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Foyer, J., Kervran, D. (2015). The Environmentalism of NGOs Versus Environmentalism of the Poor? Mexico’s Social–Environmental Coalitions. In: Almeida, P., Cordero Ulate, A. (eds) Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9912-6_16

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