PRESS INFORMATION–USUMACINTA DAMS

Stop Dams on Usumacinta, Coalitions Tell Fox

Mexico City–3 December 2002

Today, Rios Mayas and Grupo de los Cien, a coalition
dedicated to the preservation of free-flowing rivers
and watershed management in the Maya region of
Mesoamerica, delivered a letter to Presidente Vicente
Fox, of Mexico, demanding he end plans for a major
hydroelectric project on the Usumacinta River.
“The Rio Usumacinta is more than the water in its
channel,” the letter asserted. “It is the lifeblood of
Mesoamerica and one of the birthplaces of culture and
meaning in the Western Hemisphere.”
A linchpin of the government’s Plan Pueblo Panama, the
dam would inundate the sites of dozens of known and
undiscovered Maya ruins, thousands of tillable acres,
and a deep narrow canyon. It would also flood tens of
thousands of acres of rain forest and wetlands,
habitat for scarlet macaws, jaguars, manatees,
crocodiles, and the spider and howler monkeys from
which the river takes its name–Place of Small or
“Sacred” Monkeys.
The coalition, comprising artists, writers,
archaeologists, conservationists, and citizens,
further outlined a comprehensive vision for a
bi-national riparian corridor, as well as for
sustainable development, alternative power generation,
and low-impact tourism in the Usumacinta watershed of
Chiapas and Guatemala.
The letter states that the Usumacinta gave birth to
the Classical Maya civilization, and now sustains
contemporary Maya communities and attracts tens of
thousands of visitor a year. “This is a resource that
any tourist board in the U.S. or Canada would envy,”
the letter asserted.
The dam is the third version of a plan originally
proposed and defeated in the early 1980s. A smaller
plan, put forward by President Salinas in 1992, met a
similar fate.
“There is no more symbolic emblem of Mesoamerica, of
its land and its ancient and modern cultures, than the
Usumacinta and its tributaries,” said one of the
letter’s signatories, Alonso Mendez, of Palenque, a
half-Tzeltal Maya artist and guide.
“Now that the region’s troubles have subsided, at
least for now, everybody needs to think a little more
creatively about what we have here and what we want it
to look like thirty years from now,” Mendez asserted.
“One more huge destructive dam is just not a good
idea. We need a comprehensive plan that allows for
appropriate community development in a natural
setting, that provides jobs while respecting private
property and defining the uses of protected, private,
and indigenous land, and increasing energy capacity
through more efficient means.”