Chris Shaw has prepared a letter to President Vicente Fox of Mexico, expressing our concern over recent confirmation of a dam plan. It is still being edited, but the current text can be found below.

We are still collecting signatures, with 20 or so confirmed at the moment.

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Estimado Presidente Fox :

Recently the New York Times reported your office's confirmation that
plans are under way for a hydroelectric dam of either132 or 330 feet on
the Usumacinta River, at Boca de Cerro, near Tenosique, Tabasco, that would
provide two percent of the nation's electrical needs. We
recognize the need for increased electrical capacity in the region, for both
household and industrial power, and as a requirement for sustained economic
growth. Yet we reject the premise that this goal requires
the destruction of the region's premiere natural and scenic wonder, one of
the world's richest ecological and historical resources, and the largest
wild river in Central America: the Usumacinta.

In the first millennium, the Usumacinta nurtured one of the world's
greatest civilizations, the Classical Maya. Their commerce and their
industry depended on it; their spectacular abandoned cities lie everywhere
in the watershed and along its shores. Inscriptions and art work found there
in the last century have provided breakthroughs in understanding that have
come to light only in the last twenty-five years.

Today, the river drains one of the most vital and interesting bio-cultural
regions on the planet: the Selva Lacandona, the Selva Maya, and the Maya
highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala, a place of mountains and canyons, of
great forests, ecological
richness and cultural importance, that has undergone enormous change and
trial in the
last forty years. Much has happened geographically, environmentally, and
historically to contribute to its underdevelopment and poverty. Now its
upheavals have subsided. Its
people, inherently energetic economically, remain unable to
overcome low agricultural prices, loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, and
depressed currency rates. Nevertheless, a rebirth of the region's full range
of cultural and economic expression appears at hand. .

Yet government and the public must avoid the mistakes of the past, and,
following the example of history, make wise choices that will allow for the
best development for the region's long term well-being.

Ecologically, the Usumacinta is unparalleled in aquatic, terrestrial and
avian life. It pours an enormous volume of water annually into the southern
Gulf of Mexico, providing life-giving fresh water to Mexico's largest
fishing fleet. Its delta comprises some of the richest and most diverse
wetlands south of the Everglades, the centlas, home to endangered manatees
and crocodiles. The upper Usumacinta's one-of-a-kind aquatic ecosystem also
supports endangered crocodiles and turtles making strong comebacks after
depletion by overhunting, as well dozens of endemic fish and amphibians.
Its forests harbor jaguars, guacamayas, and a profusion of further
biological wealth. Yet it has been studied hardly at all.

A dam at Boca de Cerro would deprive the centlas of the
precious floods that renew them every year and speed a decline already
begun by oil development and deforestation in the watershed of the upper Rio
Candelaria. Furthermore, the river's tributaries carry huge loads of silt
from eroded agricultural highlands that would fill reservoirs, reducing
water volume through turbines and degrading or ruining the turbines
themselves.

In the 1980s, the report that outlined the first
ambitious hydro program for the watershed said porous limestone around Boca
de Cerro was too weak to anchor massive dams,
especially in the case of earthquake or hurricane, both common in the
region, and would promote power loss through leakage. Large reservoirs also
lose power through evaporation, and create
greenhouse gases that promote global warming. Such
problems have bedeviled existing dams in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and in the
Guatemalan highlands on the upper Rio Chixoy. For these reason and others,
alternate decentralized sources must be considered as part of any large
scale strategy for energy generation in the region.

The CFE's hydro commissioner, Julio Acosta Rodriguez, suggests
that while the river's best known archaeological sites of Piedras Negras and
Yaxchilan will
remain safe (for now), dozens of
lesser-known sites will be inundated or relocated. INAH has cooperated with
the CFE to identify these sites for relocation. At Abu Simbel on the
Nile, in the 1960s, relocation proved an expensive and disastrous
undertaking. Disconnected from their geography such monuments lose
any significant meaning and research value.

The current proposal reflects the frustration of two previously unsuccessful
dam proposals on the Usumacinta and its tributaries, and the slowness of
development in southern Mexico and Guatemala.
Something must be done, everyone believes, and the Usumacinta has enormous
hydroelectric potential. But those
proposals were defeated for important economic, cultural and
environmental reasons. The reasons haven't changed, and to date no
environmental, cultural, economic, or archaeological impact studies have
been released, nor, as far as we know, conducted.

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Therefore, we resolve that whereas the Usumacinta represents an unparalleled
regional and international resource, and its watershed a unique biological
and cultural enclave, its channel should remain free-flowing and devoid of
bank-to-bank
dam structures or locks. NO habitat, agricultural land or archaeological
sites should be drowned or otherwise lost or compromised.

Plans, blueprints, locations, for any and all potential and future dams must
be published on the Internet immediately, their web addresses made known,
and they must be updated whenever they change. The process must be kept
transparent and open to public scrutiny.

Mexico, Guatemala, and the international community must
provide funds for new and comprehensive aquatic, geological, and biological,
and archaeological studies,
to determine wildlife populations, the number and location of archaeological
sites, the location and needs of human communities, and other necessary
information, to determine the effects of
dams on those systems at each and every dam site proposed going back to
the1980s. Timelines must be established and the results made public.

The two nations must cooperate in developing household
and industrial solar, geothermal and other alternate forms of energy
generation in the watershed, including small, efficient, high-technology
hydro where appropriate. This should become a priority of both nations.
Funding should come from public and private sources in both nations and
beyond, and an ambitious timetable
should be established for its completion.

Planning must begin immediately for the establishment by
2006 of a binational riparian corridor to protect and preserve the
Usumacinta in
perpetuity, stretching from the tributaries to Boca de Cerro, and linking
with the Sierra Lacandon National Park, Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, and
the Maya
Biosphere Reserve. It should include networks of land and water
trails, campsites, low-impact interior lodges, year round jobs with benefits
for local residents as managers, scientists, guides, scholars,
artists-in-residence, maintenance workers, and guards, with user fees and
incentives to local communities. All existing legal
uses would be allowed, though better regulated and including the promotion
of low-impact organic agriculture. Internationally recognized models
exist at Lake Miramar, in Chiapas, at Uaxactun, in Peten, and in
the conservation protocols developed in the last twenty years by various
ngos working with local organizations. This is not the "environmental
Disneyland" the Zapatistas refer to, but one of the greatest opportunities
for rational community development in the region's history.

To foster the resumption of thriving, viable and profitable recreational
use, the two nations must immediately establish local law enforcement
patrols in the river corridor, to protect private,
commercial, and other legal navigation of the Usumcinta.

In the Times, Senor Acosta suggested that he wants to "help the region, not
hurt it." We believe the best way for this to happen is to make the
Usumacinta corridor and watershed the wisest model for humans, nature, and
appropriate
development on the planet. The sacrifice would be small, the rewards long
lasting, the gratitude of future generations inestimable.

The Usumacinta's natural, cultural, and archaeological importance make it
unique in the world. We believe this is not the time to rely on
old-model development schemes, but to seek solutions offered by new
economic and technological models. The Usumacinta is more than just the
water in its channel. It is the lifeblood of Mesoamerica, and one of the
birthplaces of culture and meaning in the western hemisphere.

It is also a resource that any tourist board in the U.S. or Canada would
envy. At our current level of knowledge a dam could unwittingly drown the
equivalent of Pacal's Tomb at Palenque, or
Tutuankhamen's tomb, forever. Neither nation's patrimonial heritage is so
intact or
complete as to allow such a loss for 500 megawatts, or two percent, of
Mexico's energy needs.

Very truly yours,

NO MAS PRESAS, (o rios mayas)

Christopher Shaw, writer
David Pentecost, filmmaker
Roan Balas McNab
Ronald L. Canter, FAA Cartographer