Gov't abandons plans for Guerrero dam

The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has canceled plans to build a massive hydroelectricproject near Acapulco known as La Parota that would have produced enough power to light up the state of Guerrero for an entire year. The project had been a crown jewel in the infrastructure plans of successive PAN administrations, but generated enormous controversy among the local campesino populations. The campesinos alleged the CFE failed to properly consult them on relocation and never made proper offers of compensation for their small plots of land near the Papagayo River.

The CFE officially canceled the project due to a lack of financing - and the dam was among a series of projects nixed by the federal government for similar reasons - but the utility had encountered stiff opposition from campesinos and human rights groups, who successfully took the case to court.

I wrote on the controversy over La Parota for The News in the fall of 2007. The story pointed out that irate campesinos and locals facing expropriation over the past 15 years had derailed projects by staging riots, taking hostages and wielding machetes. The failed attempt at building a new international airport for Mexico City earlier this decade in the State of Mexico - where machete-wielding campesinos forced the Fox administration to back down - was perhaps the most notable example. But La Parote was different: The campesinos, backed by environmental lawyers, went to court - and even obtained an injunction against parts of the project.

Whether the federal government and CFE return to La Parota remains to be seen - the dam was first proposed in 1976 and could provide drinking water for fast-growing Acapulco - but the strategy of campesinos mobilizing to fight expropriations that previously would have turfed them from their properties with scant compensation appears to gaining traction.

As examples, just witness the difficulties earlier this year in Tula, Hidalgo, where the state government was unable to expropriate ejido land in a timely enough fashion to meet the deadline for winning the construction of a Pemex refinery. (The state did win the refinery project, but only after a farcical competition with perhaps the most polluted town in Mexico - Salamanca, in the PAN stronghold of Guanajuato - to obtain the necessary land for Pemex.) Or, the Altamira port project near Tampico, where former PAN presidential candidate and legal bigwig, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, won an injuction on behalf of two ejidos facing expropriation that could cost the Transportation and Communications Secretariat billions of pesos.

The campesino skepticism of expropriation offers is understable: Ejiditarios in Tula told Notimex in April that the first time the government came for 50 hectares of their land in the 1970s, they were offered nothing more the five pickup trucks as compensation.

Guerrero´s Sunday votes a litmus test for governor

Guerrero´s Sunday votes a litmus test for governor

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

Residents of the southern state of Guerrero head to the polls on Sunday in legislative and municipal elections. But rather than being just your run-of-the-mill local political process, the elections are shaping up as a referendum on Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca´s administration <00AD>- and even one on his Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, itself.

Torreblanca rode to power in 2005 on a wave of discontent that also swept the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, out of office after 75 years of oppressive rule in the impoverished state.

The Acapulco retailing magnate ran for PRD on an agenda of change in what is one of the republic´s most marginalized, underdeveloped and conflictive states - a place where 40 percent of the homes have dirt floors, 42 percent of the population is illiterate and the murder rate is double that of the national average, according to federal government statistics.

"The election of Zeferino Torreblanca was historic," said human rights lawyer Mario Patrón, who worked in the La Montaña region of Guerrero until recently.

"After more than 75 years of PRI rule, the civil society took to the streets and voted. There were high expectations," Patrón said.

Guererro residents overwhelming opted for turfing the long-ruling incumbent party - not unlike what had occurred on the federal level five years earlier - in a result that one national broadsheet welcomed as, "Moving toward the end of the outlaw Mexico."

But local observers say that the initial euphoria diminished quickly, as few of the expectations that people had - corruption being reduced, education and social programs being fixed, and oppressive governance being stamped out, for instance - began to materialize.

"They´ve just reproduced the same old practices and the same governing policies," Patrón said. "What we have is power being alternated. There´s been a change of colors, but there has not been a transition."

Ironically - but perhaps unsurprisingly, given the left-wing PRD´s divisions stemming from internal elections both nationally and in Guerrero earlier this year - many of the ballots that could be cast against the PRD are expected to come from disaffected party members, who differ with the governor on policy and party politics.

Some in the PRD predict a humbling at the polls for their party, which is expected to lose seats in the state legislature and could lose numerous municipal races - perhaps most embarrassingly in Acapulco, the state´s largest municipality.

"There´s no possibility of the PRD keeping its majority in the legislature," Alvaro Leyva Reyes, a former campaign coordinator for Torreblanca, told the newspaper El Universal.

TOUGH COMPETITION

Making things even tougher, the PRD is now battling a rejuvenated PRI that has been winning local-level elections nationwide over the past two years, and has shown unity in Guerrero after previously being torn apart by infighting there.

Torreblanca, meanwhile, has drawn the ire of some factions of his party for not adequately financially supporting Andrés Manuel López Obrador´s alternative government, as well as working cooperatively with the PAN administration of President Felipe Calderón.

Torreblanca also has butted heads with the PRD mayor of Acapulco, Félix Salgado Macedonio, according to José Luis Rosales, director of the Rural Development Institute at the Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero.

Salgado has accused Torreblanca of sending that municipality inadequate resources for social programs and urban development projects and described the governor as "PANísta to the core," according to Rosales.

With the PRD stumbling, political observers predict a strong showing from the PRI, which sent its big guns to campaign in Guerrero.

Party president Beatriz Paredes and State of Mexico Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto both made appearances. In Acapulco last Sunday, Paredes described the PRI as united and agents of change.

Patrón, the human rights lawyer, expressed skepticism over the PRI´s pledges to carry out change, but acknowledged that the party was on the rebound in his state.

"The PRI is in the process of reconstruction, and it´s most likely that it will win various municipal governments [in Guerrero]," he said. "It´s starting to regain ground, but this isn´t a result of PRI policies. It´s a consequence of the image of poor governance by the PRD."

Guerrero inches toward the brink

With political and social conditions ripe for upheaval, a student movement could push the state over the edge

David Agren
The News

Once again, trouble is brewing in Guerrero.

Since November, striking students from a teachers' college in the state of Guerrero have raided the state legislature, barricaded the doors to the governor's residence and fought with state and federal police officers in an effort to extract more funding for rural education and reverse plans for closing down their college.

After unsuccessfully pressing their case to the state governor last week, the students, known as "normalistas," blockaded the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, one of the nation's busiest roads, and occupied radio stations in the state capital Chilpancingo.

The normalistas' protests have made national headlines, especially after they took over a highway tollbooth in order to raise money for their struggle.

Although observers say the protests are not without precedent, the strife comes at a time when political conditions are. One-party rule reigned in the state until the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was unseated in 2005. And as a counterpoint to the official political powers-that-be, Caciques, or local strongmen, have long laid down the law.

Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, candidate Zeferino Torreblanca finally ousted the PRI in 2005 after campaigning on an agenda casting aside decades of repression and dirty tricks. But his failure to meet expectations of change and achieving social calm has left many voters disenchanted, said Mario Patrón, a lawyer with Centro Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, a human rights group based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero.

Patrón explained that the 2005 political transition is now viewed as simply one of "alternating power," rather than change. "There have been the same practices, same methods, basically the same vices."

CLIMATE FOR CONFLICT

The current tensions have provided just the right conditions for upheaval, according to analysts.

"Conflicts between the state and the normalistas have always occurred. It's not anything new," said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at Universidad Iberoamericana. "The difference is [that before], there had been a period of stability and calm."

That relative calm may about to end in the state, which ranks among Mexico's poorest and most underdeveloped. The state's illiteracy rate is more than than 40 percent in many rural areas and the human development index scores of its most marginalized municipalities are on par with Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations.

Guerrero's rugged hills have also spawned social uprisings and guerrilla movements since the time of the Revolution and been the scene of massacres and intense military activity as soldiers hunt down rebels and marijuana growers.

"Guerrero is a state that has been marginalized for decades," Muñoz said. "Because of this marginalization there have been guerrilla groups, groups that are extremely radical in their political postures."

Discontent has been simmering throughout 2007. The EPR, a guerrilla group originating in the state, bombed Pemex pipelines on two occasions over the summer. Campesinos near the coastal city of Acapulco are currently taking legal action against a massive hydroelectric project that threatens to submerge their humble plots of land. They suffered a major setback last month, and the EPR announced it would take up their cause. Narcotics-connected gang violence and recent crime-related beheadings in Acapulco have led to an increasingly tense climate in the state.

EDUCATIONAL UNREST

The Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa opened its doors in 1926 with the aim of training teachers to work in the state's rural schools. The school, located in the community of Ayotzinapa, 14 kilometers from state capital of Chilpancingo, enrolls students from small towns and farms. The pupils live at the college during their four years of studying and receive scholarships to attend.

"We're children of campesinos. We're children of the villages where poverty exists," said Alejandro González, a normalista from El Portero Oriental, a town of 544 people, where 46 percent of the population lacks an elementary school education, 18 percent of its residents are illiterate and 31 percent of homes have dirt floors, according to the government.

"All of us studying here understand that our communities need public education," he added.

The striking normalistas left their classrooms in early November, demanding that the state government not close their college (it cited budget concerns as the reason for wanting closure), guarantee teaching positions each year for graduating students and scrap plans for ending a degree program that trains elementary school teachers. They also wanted the education system in Guerrero improved.

González said the state lacks 1,000 teachers in rural areas. Schools in some remote towns have been closed for up to five years, he added.

José Luis Rosas Acevedo, director of regional development institute at Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero in Acapulco, said the level of public education in the state was "very low."

The Escuela Normal has a long reputation for grooming politically minded teachers, and has also gained fame for producing rebels. (A large mural of Chiapas rebel subcomandante Marcos gracesthe Ayotzinapa campus.)

"The normal has historically graduated teachers known for their social combativeness," said Patrón."

"It's also known for imparting a social and left-wing ideology withits students."

Lucio Cabañas, perhaps the school's best-known graduate, founded the Partido de los Pobres, or the Party of the Poor, in the late 1960s. The armed group kidnapped then PRI Sen. Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, holding him three months in 1974. Figueroa, who later became state governor, was rescued during a police raid. Cabañas was assassinated before the end of the year.

WHEN EDUCATION AND POLITICS COLLIDE

According to Rosas Acevedo, Guerrero's teachers – despite being poorly paid – are often held in high esteem in the communities where they work.

"Teachers, priests and doctors are very important people in these communities," he explained.

"The teachers have a lot influence."

Their influence extends to the political arena, where teachers are especially active. The Guerrero section of the national teachers' union, or SNTE, has a reputation for radicalism and has had frequent feuds with the national leadership.

"The [current] conflict could [have] many repercussions because the teachers and normalistas in Guerrero manage the political parties on the regional level," Muñoz said.

Patrón, whose organization operates in several of the state's poorest regions, expressed pessimism about the ongoing conflicts in the state being resolved peacefully, given the attitude of the state government.

"The present administration … is closing practically all the places for dialogue with social movements and organizations," Patrón said.

"It's generating a tremendous social polarization and social movements are becoming more radical."

Small farmers use courts, not machetes, to block dam project

By David Agren
The News

It’s a public works project of the grandest scale.

La Parota, a massive hydroelectric development 28 kilometers northeast of Acapulco, is projected to produce at least 765 megawatts of power, enough to light up the entire state of Guerrero for an entire year.

Its curtain is to tower 162 meters over the Papagayo River and its reservoir will flood more than 17,000 hectares, an area 10 times the size of the Bay of Acapulco.

The dam is also supposed to create 10,000 construction jobs, ensure a steady supply of drinking water for rapidly growing Acapulco and increase economic development in a marginalized region populated by subsistence farmers.

For the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), La Parota is a crown jewel in a string of high-profile projects meant to produce clean energy and help power the ambitious economic growth plans envisaged by the federal government.

There’s just one problem: The dam is expected to displace hundreds of small farms, many of which are organized as ejidos, the communal properties distributed to landless campesinos following the Mexican Revolution. And the farmers, or ejiditarios, don’t want to leave.

In the past dozen years, machete-wielding ejiditarios have derailed several high-profile development projects, including a $300-million golf course development in Tepotzlán, Morelos and a new airport for Mexico City in Atenco, State of Mexico.

But in the case of La Parota, a group of residents from the village of Cacahuatepec have opted for law books rather than machetes.

And in a story evoking the tale of David versus Goliath, the farmers took CFE to court and won an injunction in September against the dam, successfully arguing that the Environment Secretariat (Semarnat) and the National Water Commission (CNA) improperly granted permits for the project.

On Nov. 7, however, federal Judge Livia Lizbeth Larumbe Radilla reversed her decision, ruling that the laws permitting the dam’s construction would not directly deprive the complainants’ access to their land and water.

The villagers and their lawyers plan to appeal.

“We’re now in the second round of the game,” said Xavier Martínez, an environment lawyer with the civil rights firm that argued the landholders’ case.

Still, he called the judge’s original decision to halt construction “unprecedented,” and said the dam was not being impeded by the courts, “but a social movement.”

The CFE is not likely to walk away from the $800-million dam project - despite the legal roadblocks. Its crews have not yet returned to the La Parota site, according to Martínez.

Even so, say experts, the precedent set by the villagers of Cacahuatepec could complicate future large-scale infrastructure projects that require relocating established communities.

“Previously, the state would throw all of its weight behind the construction of these types of projects and nothing could be done about it,” said Arturo Pueblita Fernández, a law professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

“Now there’s more openness and an attempt to avoid social conflicts. Therefore, it could be the case that construction on this project might never happen.”

The ongoing legal complications surrounding La Parota – and conceivably at other locations in the future – could complicate the economic growth objectives of President Felipe Calderón, who in September won congressional approval for a fiscal reform overhaul that was designed, in large part, to help overhaul the country’s sagging infrastructure.

Three decades in the works

The CFE first proposed building La Parota in 1976 on the Papagayo River, which empties into the Pacific Ocean southeast of Acapulco on the Costa Chica, a thinly populated and underdeveloped region known for its Afro-Mexican inhabitants.

The rugged hills of Guerrero, home to some of the nation’s poorest communities, have spawned numerous armed uprisings against the federal government. Its populace includes the People’s Revolutionary Army, or EPR, a long-standing Marxist guerilla group that has made recent headlines with a series of attacks on Pemex gas pipelines. According to lawyers working in the region, it is instinctive for Guerrero’s marginalized populations to fight back when encroached upon by outsiders.

The La Parota project, however, received little attention until CFE construction crews arrived unannounced in 2003. Then, a local movement to fight the dam was formed almost immediately.

Mario Patrón, a lawyer with the Guerrero-based Centro Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, worked with some of the residents fighting the dam. He said the locals’ determination to stay put grew even stronger as they learned of the impact of previous public works projects, including hydroelectric developments in Nayarit and the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, which displaced thousands after opening in 1989.

“At La Parota, an opposition movement was generated because … they’ve known that hydroelectric projects don’t bring development for those that get relocated,” Patrón explained.

“The campesinos said that they didn’t want to be kicked off their land and leave for [Acapulco] where they would be working in some bad-paying menial job.”

Despite a clause in the Constitution requiring compensation for land expropriations, the CFE has never made “a firm offer” to any of the impacted landholders, he added.

CFE spokesman Gerardo Cubos declined to comment on La Parota, citing the ongoing legal actions.

However, in comments published by the Mexico City daily El Universal shortly after construction was halted in September, CFE manager Gerardo Cruz Velázquez acknowledged to a business audience in Acapulco that the CFE fell short in pitching La Parota-area residents on the virtues of relocating.

He also accused international rights groups protesting against La Parota of being naïve to the situation in Guerrero and the dam’s potential benefits.

“It doesn’t interest them that people [here] eat nothing more than a tortilla with chilies once a day and they have to carry water jugs on their heads from the river to their homes,” Cruz Velázquez said.

International attention

Two United Nations representatives visited the impacted area in early September and expressed dissatisfaction with the CFE’s attention to transparency and human rights.

A recent Amnesty International study also expressed concerns. According to its August 2007 report, intimidation has been rife in the area and three people have been killed. In one of the killings, an opponent of the dam, Eduardo Maya Manrique, was dragged from his home by three unidentified men and stoned to death in January 2006, according to the report. No one has been charged in the matter.

The report also questioned the true number of people the dam would impact.

According to the CFE, approximately 3,000 people would have to be relocated, but Patrón put the figure at closer to 75,000, explaining that the CFE failed to account for residents indirectly impacted by the dam and its reservoir.

Even properties not submerged could be negatively impacted, he added. Two settlements, for example, would become islands. In other places, ground water would become scarce. The Papagayo River would also be permanently impacted.

The CFE’s website provides little information about the dam, its potential impact and prospects for future completion, although it boasted of other large ongoing and recently completed projects on the Santiago River in the western state of Nayarit.

Regardless of whether La Parota is ever completed, the ongoing judicial action in Guerrero is likely to have a significant impact on future public works projects undertaken by the federal government, said Martínez, the environmental lawyer involved in the farmers’ case.

“They just can't keep on building projects like the way they were,” he said.


SIDEBAR: When machetes beat back development
The News

Atenco, 2002:

In July 2002, local farmers in San Salvador Atenco, backed by left-wing, anarchist and anti-globalization groups, fought with police for three days over a government plan to build a $2.3-billion airport in their town.

The airport would have taken over approximately 10,000 acres of land in 13 villages in the municipality outside Mexico City. In exchange, the farmers were to be paid $3,000 per acre as compensation, but the locals rejected the offer and took to the streets with machetes in hand.

Dozens of people were injured in the ensuing clashes. Nineteen public officials were taken hostage and later exchanged for imprisoned farmers in an act that critics said rewarded violence.

The government later raised its compensation offer to an amount reportedly seven-times the initial bid, but the farmers rejected it.

Finally, two weeks into the showdown, Transportation Secretary Pedro Cerisola announced the government was abandoning plans to build the airport in Atenco.

Tepoztlán, Morelos, 1995:

Golf Course Inflames Mexico Town
The News, with files from The New York Times News Service

A coalition of campesinos, small-business owners and environmentalists in this town south of Mexico City reacted violently in August 1995 after the municipal government approved a golf course development and industrial park in an ecologically sensitive area.

After 12 days of unrest – during which time the protesters beat back riot police with rocks and barbed wire, seized hostages and occupied city hall – the mayor backed down and promptly resigned.

Some Tepoztlán residents had accused Mayor Alejandro Morales Barragan of rubber-stamping the development project behind their backs.

Opposition to the projects drew together an unusual alliance of affluent people, who wanted to preserve the town's character, and villagers suspicious of the promises of foreign corporations.

Tepoztlán has become a favorite weekend retreat of Mexico City's wealthy elite. But many of its 13,000 residents still cling to the village's peasant traditions.

Development backers balked at suggestions their plans would have ruined the town, explaining that the project would have created more than 9,000 construction-related jobs and nearly 3,000 permanent service jobs. The land, they added, was indeed located inside of a national park, but was privately-owned. Environmental impact studies had also been completed.

Isolated indigenous village keeps alive centuries-old customs

Photograph by : D. Agren

Weaving sustains the meager economy of Tlamacazapa, Guerrero. Virtually all of the town’s residents either make or peddle palm-leaf baskets. It takes Vicente Procopio at least two days to weave a large basket, which he later sells on the street in Mexico City’s San Angel district.

Story by : David Agren

Fernando Lopez’s hands move so quickly while weaving a garbage can-sized palm-leaf basket they almost dissolve into a blur. It takes two full days to craft a large basket at his single-room home made of corn stalks with a tar-paper roof in Tlamacazapa, Guerrero, a remote pueblo in the rugged hills near the tourist town of Taxco. After finishing several pieces, he carts his merchandise to nearby Cuernavaca. Each large item fetches up to 250 pesos.

“Sometimes I make sales, other times not,” he said, sitting on an overturned bucket in a smoke-filled hut next to his milpa (cornfield), a large root smoldering in the corner to cook food.

Virtually the entire adult population of Tlamacazapa, like Lopez, either weaves baskets in hillside shacks or sells baskets in Mexico’s major cities. The cottage industry sustains the town of approximately 6,000 residents, but just barely. Tlamacazapa endures on the fringes of Mexican society; an isolated village populated by Nahuatl Indians in one of Mexico’s poorest and most corrupt states, where local caciques (strongmen) have long laid down the law and development is only gradually arriving. Vices and violence are common; ill health is rife.

Lopez’s story is fairly typical. He grew up amid violence and squalor. A good-natured and gentle man with a thick mop of black hair and a mustache, he sells what he and his family weaves. When not weaving, he works a milpa during the rainy season, tilling the thin soil with a hoe. Its modest bounty keeps his family fed. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Tlamacazapa. His two sons peddle bracelets full-time in Cuernavaca. Several of his children died as infants.

He learned weaving from his father, who used to drink heavily and beat Lopez’s mother. She died when Lopez was 14. His father passed on a few years later.

“He had his vices,” Lopez, who turns 50 on June 10, said in a matter-of-fact manner.
“I used to really like working with my father.”

Unable to produce a legal document for his childhood home, Lopez and his five siblings were tossed from their family’s land after their parents’ deaths. Many years later, he gained title to the vacant plot on the outskirts of town, where he now grows corn. Most diets in Tlamacazapa consist of little more than tortillas and salt. Meat and eggs are luxuries.

Many in Tlamacazapa regularly go hungry; Lopez and his family seldom eat three meals a day. Some residents exchange baskets for food, usually on poor terms. Operatives from Mexico’s political parties take advantage of the situation come election time, trading despensas (giveaways of food, building materials and sometimes cash) for votes.

“I’m not going to vote,” Lopez declared, saying the entire despensa scheme turned him off of the electoral process. A short time later he said he might support the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Along with widespread poverty and malnutrition, water problems are rampant. Arsenic and lead contaminate the town’s wells, which dry up as the spring dry season drags on. During the spring months, town residents, toting used 18-litre glue and oil cans, hike several times a day to a well high above Tlamacazapa to draw water. Towards the end of the dry season, a child is lowered deep into the lone well with water to fill the villagers’ cans.

The new PRD state government recently installed a water pipe, but it carries fluid from a contaminated source – and only once a week. Another water pipe also exists; corrupt officials, however, charge high fees to access it. Bottled water is too expensive for most households.

Tlamacazapa also lacks adequate sanitation. Animals live in the streets; dung and debris litter the steep roadways. A Canadian charity started constructing dry latrines, which turn waste material into fertilizer. Some locals apparently sleep in the small buildings to keep dry during the rainy season.

Although living in an inhospitable spot nearly three-hours drive south of Cuernavaca, the local population persists and centuries-old customs are kept alive by the virtual isolation. Many of the women in Tlamacazapa still only speak Nahuatl, an indigenous tongue, and wear traditional costumes, consisting of skirts, sandals and colorful shawls. Trips to the doctor are rare; the local curandera (healer) is frequently called upon.

The isolation began in the 1500s shortly after the Spanish arrived. Legend has it the Indian population of Taxco fled into the hills to escape Hernan Cortes’ cruelty, settling on a mountainside they dubbed Tlamacazapa, which in Nahuatl means, “People of fear.” The basket-weaving industry reputedly took hold shortly thereafter, but no one knows its exact history. According to Lopez, the locals originally made petates (coarsely-woven mats).

The isolation lasted until the first half of the 1900s, when a bumpy road connecting Tlamacazapa with the outside world was finally constructed. Electricity – enough to barely power a small appliance in the average customer’s home – and a few telephone lines also arrived.

“The people never used to leave,” Lopez said.

Nowadays, many men from the town fan out across Mexico, hawking baskets of all shapes and sizes. Prices depend mainly on the distance the sellers travel and the basket size. The women stay behind, producing additional baskets and maintaining households.
Compared to some of his peers, Lopez sticks pretty close to home. On an average weekend, he sells between one and three baskets in Cuernavaca. Foreigners sometimes take home baskets, but “Pochos,” Mexicans back visiting from the United States, purchase more.

“They’re good customers,” he commented. “They pay well.”

Foreigners buy too, “But only when they’re on vacation.”

When working in Cuernavaca, he crashes in a room rented by his sons.

In addition to haggling with stingy customers, Tlamacazapa vendors like Lopez often battle with unscrupulous local officials, who sometimes demand exorbitant fees for permits and confiscate merchandise when payment isn’t forthcoming.

“Sometimes they seize our merchandise and remove it from the area,” he explained.

Buyers frequently travel up the rocky roadway dotted with political posters, roadside crosses and impromptu garbage dumps between Tlamacazapa and Buenavista, Guerrero (another road runs to Taxco, the municipal seat), but they seldom offer fair prices. Lopez occasionally sells to the middlemen, but only when desperate.

“Sometimes if you need food, you’ll sell,” he said.

According to Lopez, “The first time a buyer comes he offers a fair price.” But with each subsequent visit, the prices become less generous. A typical buyer offers only 80 pesos for a large basket. The palm leaves needed for weaving a typical basket often cost the same amount.

To save money, Lopez and his fellow vendors sometimes forgo taking a 20-peso combi ride to Buenavista or Taxco, instead trekking three hours along a mountainous path, which connects the town with a major highway junction.

“Sometimes I walk, hauling my merchandise, when I don’t have enough bus fare,” Lopez explained.

Additionally, Lopez often scours the nearby countryside for palm leaves to save a few pesos. The palm leaves are cut and painted prior to weaving. Each piece is methodically incorporated into the design.

Although it’s a tough way to eke out a living, Lopez seldom complains. He cheerfully recounted stories of living in Tlamacazapa and his adventures selling baskets during a recent visit by foreigners. His daughter Erika, a bubbly 14-year-old with a bright smile and playful nature, acted as a guide. Like many teenagers, she stopped attending school, even though the town has a telesecundaria (a junior high school with instruction via television). Most Tlamacazapa residents marry young.

And the vast majority will continue weaving baskets for the foreseeable future. As Lopez put it: “Here, we don’t have any other work except for the baskets.”

From the Guadalajara Reporter