Anatomy of a Victory: The Saving of St. Ignacio Lagoon

by Homero Aridjis

     In January 1995, the Grupo de los Cien (Group of 100, a group of leading Mexican artists and intellectuals) learned of a project to build a massive saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio, the last pristine mating and calving ground of the gray whale. Our informants were two American graduate students, Serge Dedina and Emily Young, who were doing research in Baja California. The students discovered that Mexico's National Ecology Institute was about to give the green light to Exportadora de Sal, (ESSA, a joint venture owned by Mitsubishi and the Mexican government) to develop 525,000 acres of the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve -- Latin America's largest protected natural area -- into a massive saltworks.

Homero Aridjis

     These protected acres would become evaporation ponds, pumping stations, conveyer belts, stockpiles, service roads, and new human settlements -- complete with a mile-long pier for oceangoing freighters jutting into Bahia de Ballenas (Whale Bay), directly in the path of whales heading for the lagoon. Water was to be pumped nonstop out of Laguna San Ignacio at the rate of 6,600 gallons per second.

     We immediately denounced the project to both the Mexican and international media in a statement released on January 21, 1995. After ESSA and the Mexican government refused to hand over the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), we obtained a copy from an anonymous official in Washington. One month later, on February 21, I published "El Silencio de las Ballenas" ("The Silence of the Whales"). This was a devastating indictment of the threats posed to the gray whale, the lagoon, and dozens of marine and terrestrial plant and animal species, including the severely endangered peninsula pronghorn antelope and the northernmost stand of red mangrove in the Western Hemisphere.

     The proposed saltworks threatened more than two-thirds of the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve. Also in danger were local human populations at Punta Abreojos, whose prosperous lobster and abalone fisheries would be destroyed, and communities surrounding the lagoon who base their livelihood on whale-watching and fishing. In return, the saltworks would only provide 200 permanent jobs, mostly for skilled outsiders. Only 23 lines of the EIA (which described the fragile desert ecosystems to be flooded as "sterile wastelands") mentioned the gray whale.

     Six days later, on February 27, the National Institute of Ecology turned down the project on the grounds that it was "not compatible with the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve's conservation objectives" and that "nothing can justify the permanent transformation of landscape and loss of natural environment in so large an area." So began a fight that ended only on March 2, 2000, when Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced that the saltworks project would be canceled.

     At first, the Group of 100 campaigned alone, but we soon realized that we would need many allies in Mexico and abroad to win this fight against one of the world's most powerful multinational corporations and the government of Mexico. The first joint letter of protest to Mitsubishi, dated April 19, 1995, was signed by 17 groups, including Earth Island Institute, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, and Friends of the Earth. The document was prepared by Josh Karliner, executive director of the Transnational Resource and Action Center, and Michael Marx, executive director of Coastal Rainforest Coalition.

     Next, thanks to funding from the Animal Welfare Institute,Greenpeace Netherlands and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (especially Sidney Holt, Craig van Note and Geert Drieman), the Group of 100 published a full-page ad in The New York Times and Mexico's Reforma and La Jornada. The ad, published on May 10, 1995 was endorsed by David Brower, Octavio Paz, Allen Ginsberg, Sir James Goldsmith, Peter Matthiessen, Lester Brown, Roger Payne and Gunter Grass, among others, and 60 environmental organizations from around the world.

     The Group of 100 then took the saltworks issue to the International Whaling Commission meeting in Dublin in June 1995 as the only Mexican NGO observer (sponsored by the International Wildlife Coalition). This action proved to be a turning point. When we returned to Mexico, environmental minister Julia Carabias asked this writer to recommend scientists for a committee to advise the Mexican government in their evaluation of the saltworks project. We suggested a group of experts, four of whom (Americans Bruce Mate, Steve Swartz and Stephen Reilly) eventually joined the committee.

     Meanwhile, ESSA and Mitsubishi ran ads in American and Mexican papers trumpeting their commitment to "environmental stewardship."

Leaflets, Lawsuits and Alliances
     We continued our strategy to get other groups and individuals involved in the issue. We sent out a 100-page dossier to several dozen organizations in Mexico, the United States and Europe, gray whale experts, the World Bank and the US Marine Mammal Commission. We formed an alliance with Mexico's Green Party and established contact with local fishing cooperatives, which were seeking support for several environmentally sound small-scale projects. In August 1995, we filed two suits against ESSA, charging the company with environmental negligence at its existing saltworks at Guerrero Negro.

     In April of the following year, the Group of 100 held a press conference with fishermen from Laguna San Ignacio.

     Highlights of the press conference were images of the Guerrero Negro saltworks showing thousands of dead fish and huge tires littering Ojo de Liebre lagoon and highly concentrated toxic brine flowed into the lagoon. The fishermen declared that the saltworks would ruin their fishing grounds, and our campaign against the project was further supported when the former director of ESSA denied the need for a new saltworks.

     Opposition to the saltworks in the gray whale nursery at Laguna San Ignacio will go down in history as the biggest environmental battle ever in Mexico. In November 1996, the Mexican federal court acknowledged for the first time the right of an organization to challenge environmental regulations. This milestone came in response to a suit brought by the Group of 100 against the Ministry of the Environment.

     In the winter of 1997 the first "mission" to the lagoon took place. The Group of 100, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and ProEsteros brought Pierce Brosnan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Glen Close, and Jean-Michel Cousteau to see the whales and join the cause. Subsequent trips included members of the European parliament and Mexican congresspersons and senators. Even Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands took a stand in a publicized letter to President Zedillo.

     Millions of men, women and children in Mexico, the US, and Canada wrote to Mitsubishi and the president of Mexico asking them not to build the saltworks. The Group of 100 helped the Green Party create a congressional commission to investigate ESSA's saltworks at Laguna Guerrero Negro and the projected saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio.

     During the past year in Mexico, a large coalition of Mexican and American groups began working together, opening websites and plastering billboards all over Mexico City. Coalition members met with the UNESCO World Heritage Committee delegation, which came to Mexico in response to a petition by the Group of 100, NRDC, IFAW and others asking that Laguna San Ignacio be declared a "World Heritage in Danger" site.

Savoring a Rare Victory
     We were bowled over by President Zedillo's March 2 announcement. It was exhilarating to realize that, thanks to our efforts in January and February 1995, construction of the Saltworks was not already under way. After five years of campaigning by the Group of 100, along with American, European, and other Mexican groups, the lagoon and the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve will remain as they are now. This was a great victory for environmental protection in Mexico. Had the project been completed, it would have been nearly impossible to successfully defend any species or ecosystem anywhere in the country. An undeniable precedent has been set which we hope to use on other battlefields.

     Zedillo claimed the project was being canceled because it would destroy the landscape (an argument put forward by last August's World Heritage Committee delegation) and not because of any possible negative environmental impacts, least of all on the gray whales. But we have learned that the real reason for the cancellation was financial. Last December, Zedillo asked Exportadora de Sal (ESSA) for an economic feasibility study, and was shocked to learn that none existed. Then he discovered that the majority of the profits from the San Ignacio saltworks would go to Japan, and that only 50 of the 200 permanent jobs would be for local residents.

     The Mexican presidential elections in July may well bring an end to the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year stranglehold on power and the political fallout of the saltworks controversy will undoubtedly be a factor. The Mexican government was already smarting from the California Coastal Commission's resolution against the project. (Mitsubishi, meanwhile, felt the effects of the California boycotts, and from the negative publicity the conglomerate received.) After visiting Laguna San Ignacio the last weekend in February, Zedillo made his decision to cancel.

     We must now press for legal guarantees -- including cancellation of ESSA's concession to mine the salt flats at San Ignacio -- that the project will not be revived by the incoming government that will take office in December 2000. ESSA must be made to clean up its saltworks at Guerrero Negro, and the company's operations must be constantly monitored to ensure the saltworks are not expanded to encroach further on the area surrounding Laguna Ojo de Liebre.

     Perhaps now that the project is out of the way, the management plan for the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve will finally be approved. Bahia Magdalena, the third major gray whale breeding area, is under permanent threat of major tourist development because it is not part of the Biosphere Reserve. We've also heard rumors about a proposed Japanese resort.

     There are other problems to be addressed at Laguna San Ignacio. The local community around the lagoon needs support in developing alternate sources of income, and is asking for a local high school, electricity and water, all of which have been denied them by the government in its attempt to force them to accept the saltworks. Poaching is out of control at the abalone fishery in Punta Abreojos and the fishermen also need help in setting up oyster banks.

     Together, we've shown how "globalization" can be used to defend the Earth, not just despoil it. The fate of the gray whale population in a remote lagoon in Baja California appears to matter to people around the globe, whether they're activists, scientists, writers, or ordinary citizens. The gray whales of Mexico have won a life-preserving victory over corporate greed and for once, the government has enforced the victory.

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Update: Threat to Scammons' Lagoon?

     The gray whales may still be in danger. It is feared that a secret deal may have been struck between the Mexican and Japanese governments whereby Japan, in exchange for abandoning its plans for San Ignacio Lagoon, may be permitted to expand its existing operations at Guerrero Negro. Were this to happen, it could threaten the integrity of the world-famous gray-whale calving nurseries at Scammon's Lagoon.