The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is a 120-mile strip of land between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, almost entirely in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. It has been inhabited by indigenous groups with different languages ​​and customs for millennia. Since colonial times, it has attracted both national and international attention for its important geographic location and wealth of resources.

In No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), author Wendy Call, a self-described grassroots organizer and researcher, makes a passionate plea; If it weren’t for stopping the invasion of the global economy into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, then for proceeding only after a critical evaluation of the environmental and cultural impact studies. Ms. Call spent two consecutive years living and working on the Isthmus, from 2000 to 2002, plus shorter visits totaling one more year.

The federal government proceeded with its Trans-Istmo Megaproject by beginning construction of a four-lane highway through the region, in some cases as a detour around small Oaxacan towns and villages that would otherwise be connected by two-lane roads. bumpy. It became part of former President Vicente Fox’s Plan Puebla Panama, an initiative to extend Mexico’s main and relatively new highway system from the United States border to Central America.

The scope of the Megaproject initially included 150 proposed projects that include oil refineries, plantations, industrial parks, commercial shrimp farms, and a network of roads and railways to bring products to national and international markets. The project would inevitably alter both the environmental and cultural landscape. The townspeople opposed the development of the region mainly out of fear of the unknown due to lack of information and consultation. Government and commercial interests were intended to move on.

Call’s strong argument is that development will result in a widespread irreversible adverse impact on the natural environment and people by altering their economic means of earning a living, while at the same time destroying other cultural cues such as traditions and language. . The book focuses on the objection to the construction of the highway system and the proposed replacement of small fishing operations with large industrial shrimp farms.

In addition to his own personal experiences, in No Word for Welcome Call he tells family stories and livelihoods, as well as opposing individual points of view. This is accomplished by providing detailed examinations of the lives of people he came to know intimately during the course of his life on the Isthmus for three years and, to a lesser extent, by interviewing public officials and other proponents of the project.

Call’s novel use of a colorful and detailed description draws you in. He maintains his interest by weaving together the stories of his subjects (ie the activists, the fishermen, the uneducated school teacher); otherwise, often dry archival evidence of the Isthmus’s historical importance (referring, for example, to the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz, the U.S. attempt to buy the Isthmus in the 19th century, and the foreign consulates of the early 19th century). 20th century in the port city of Salina Cruz); the sometimes violent and destructive demonstrations of opposing positions (fishermen burning government trucks and dredging machinery and taking workers out of the city; gesturing with machetes while threatening “if the government does not respect the people …”); and your own point of view.

You can’t help but become extremely opinionated, whether that’s jumping on Call’s bandwagon or criticizing how his political point of view affects the presentation of his thesis. He approaches his chapter focused on Huatulco, the Pacific resort city created by FONATUR (Mexico’s national tourism development agency), with disdain, although he notes positive impressions from its Mexican residents. He seems to mock the government when he writes that the FONATUR office “looked more like a travel agency than a government agency, with overstuffed furniture, brochures full of beaches and bikinis, and the empty air of a place with more infrastructure than activity.” How else do you try to sell tourism, sun, sand and surf?

But it is Call’s writing style, inevitable as a consequence of his own reason for being on the isthmus, that helps keep the reader on the edge of his seat, whether it be rooting for the cause and hoping that “the people” will prevail, or shrinking. Naively, the arrival of the global economy to the Isthmus is inevitable and could have been foreshadowed as early as the 16th century, perhaps earlier.

The description of the life and difficulties of the fishermen and their surroundings is rich and compelling. Yes, maybe factory shrimp farms destroy mangroves and have a short lifespan, leaving a strip of destruction. But we have few alternatives for the area and its industry.

Both industrialization and the residents themselves have contributed to marginalizing existence and demanding government intervention. But there seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of residents of the complexity of the problem and the role they have played in creating the current enigma; Call’s job is not to educate about it. One fisherman assumes that his people have been collecting shrimp, fish, and crabs for over a thousand years, so he asks why he should pay attention to some mestizo government regulation that prohibits the use of large rectangular nets. He seems to deny any direct role as a contributor to the problem and asserts that a government cannot be trusted whose solution would create a bigger problem (factory shrimp farms).

The area has been overfished. The fishermen were not forced to start using motorboats. They discarded their smaller nets, each of which took a year of free time to make, in favor of buying the large $ 100 Japanese machine-made nets, and proceeded to catch their catch by spreading these new nets across the mouth. from the river. The result was that small shrimp and other marine species were unable to traverse the nets and reach the mangroves to reproduce. The government had to ban the use of these nets to protect the industry. The fisherman insists that he needs to collect that many fish to survive.

Many in the position of fishermen choose to go to the United States. Call notes passing emigration from time to time, but it is not fully covered in his book, perhaps because it is not consistent with Call’s thesis. Anthropological writing of this nature is seldom found that does not directly address emigration. But Call is not an anthropologist, and in fact he is critical of social scientists, for some reason he groups them with others who work in the Isthmus: “I tried not to act like many of the journalists, anthropologists, folklorists and sociologists that I do ” . which I had encountered while living on the isthmus. They used to come for a few hours, days or weeks, spouting questions before their bodies warmed up a chair. ” Perhaps anthropological fieldwork has changed dramatically since my graduate school days.

The superhighway and a smaller road and rail network result in a physical division of populations, and can have an adverse impact on indigenous culture. Relocation of populations in neighborhoods with street names such as Poblado Uno, Dos, etc. Instead of retaining the names of the heroes of the Revolution or pre-Hispanic gods and royalty, it impacts pride in society and heritage. But globalization is inevitable, for the benefit not only of a few wealthy Mexicans and foreigners seeking to capitalize on NAFTA, as presented in the book, but also for the residents of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Of course, as Call suggests, cultural and environmental impact studies are crucial to minimize the destruction of people and their lands. And yes, sometimes they are not done or ignored and politics and power often rule. What I found lacking were proposals regarding the least damaging alternative, which in these circumstances I would suggest, is the best one could hope to achieve, rather than a total halt for all. When Subcomandante Marcos’ caravan was heading to Mexico City in 2001, and assured that it would bring to President Fox the message that “the Isthmus is not for sale,” perhaps someone should have suggested a rental agreement with terms that maximize the benefit to the population. isthmeans.

No Word for Welcome is a well-written book that holds the reader’s interest from beginning to end. I recommend him for would-be visitors to southern Mexico because his descriptions of life in that part of Mexico are extremely accurate, from the workings of local politics, antics, strategies, and sometimes destructive forces used to make a period, to the richness of the details, for the history lesson. The expat living in Mexico will find the Call experiences familiar and affirming on many levels (a department store clerk is often surprised when asked how much a refrigerator costs for cash and not for credit).

For those interested in the global economy and industrialization or wanting to understand how competing interests are addressed and resolved in southern Mexico in particular, No Word For Welcome is a must. It is written with a strong slant and as such arouses emotion. The reader is eager to know how it all turned out and, to some extent, tells you about it. Ms. Call’s final chapter includes her impressions from her 2008 visit.