3 December 2002

Dear Mr. Presidente Vicente Fox:

Recently government officials confirmed that plans are
under way for a hydroelectric dam of either 40 to 100
meters on the Usumacinta River, at Boca del 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, or
Sacred Monkey River.
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, offering
a new vision of this important culture.
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.
In ecological terms, the Usumacinta is unparalleled in
aquatic, terrestrial and avian bio-diversity. 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, crocodiles, and many migratory birds. The
upper Usumacinta's one-of-a-kind aquatic ecosystem
also supports endangered crocodiles and turtles making
strong comebacks after depletion by over-hunting, as
well dozens of endemic fish and amphibians. Its
forests harbor jaguars, macaws, and a profusion of
further biological wealth. Yet it has been studied
hardly at all.
A dam at Boca del 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 1980, the report that outlined the first ambitious
hydro program for the watershed said porous limestone
around Boca del 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 theGuatemalan highlands on
the upper Rio Chixoy, according to the World
Commission on Dams.
Julio Acosta Rodríguez, of the Federal Electricity
Commission, (CFE), suggests that while the river's
best known archaeological sites of Piedras Negras and
Yaxchilan will remain safe (for now), dozens
oflesser-known sites will be inundated or relocated.
INAH has cooperated with the CFE to identify these
sites, including Chinikiha and many others. At Abu
Simbel on the Nile, in the 1960s, relocation proved an
expensive and disastrous undertaking. Disconnected
from their surroundings these monuments lose their
geographical 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. 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.***
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 wild or human habitat, agricultural land
or archaeological sites should be drowned or otherwise
lost or compromised.
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. Time lines must be established and the
results made public. The process must be kept
transparent and open to public scrutiny.
Both nations must cooperate in developing household
and industrial solar, geothermal and other alternate
forms of energy generation in the watershed, including
small, efficient, gas generators and 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 del Cerro, and linking
with the Sierra del Lacandón 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 include the promotion of
low-impact organic agriculture and sustainable
development. 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 Usumacinta.
In a recent article in the New York 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 appropriate
development, and one that serves both humans and the
other species who share its complex ecosystem.
The Usumacinta's natural, cultural, and archaeological
importance make it unique in the world. 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 Pakal's Tomb
at Palenque, or Tutankhamen's tomb, forever. Neither
nation's patrimonial heritage is so intact or complete
as to permit such a loss, in return for the equivalent
of two percent of Mexico’s energy demand.
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.
Historically, it will outlast whatever less durable
and transcendent projects humans may devise.