Panel Paper:
The Turn to the Community in a Case of Extreme Environmental Contamination in Mexico
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
40.008 - Level 0 (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
This paper presents the complexity of the contamination of Rio Santiago, Mexico’s most polluted river, as it passes through the rapidly urbanizing periphery of Guadalajara, Jalisco. The paper traces the history of the contamination and shows the difficulty of controlling powerful entrenched economic interests in an area famous for corruption. State and business-led initiatives to control the problem have failed. Despite increasing awareness and costs, authorities have resorted to denial and bureaucratic solutions (such as reclassifying the “river” as a “sewer” to show compliance with water regulations). The generalization of this situation is clear as researchers working throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia report on increasing levels of contamination in similar contexts around the world. Presenting this public policy conundrum as unsolvable from the public/private dialectic the paper presents and argues for the participation of civic society in the search for a new path forward. The paper will then discuss the efforts of a 2014 development project, Recuperacion de los Rios that provides education and financial resources to community water groups; including the project’s theoretical underpinnings, successes and challenges. This paper is the result of fieldwork carried out in 2017 and 2018 in El Salto Jalisco and the author’s participation in the development project as a consultant. The methodology utilized a literature review, interviews with key informants, historians, local activists, researchers and local and state government officials; and the analysis of transcriptions of recordings of class and meeting sessions with residents in the affected area.
