Environment in Mexico Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Mexico is a nation-state made up of 31 states and one federal district lying in the Western Hemisphere, south of the United States, north of Belize and Guatemala, and surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. As of 2005, Mexico had a population of 107,000,000 and experienced a 1.16 percent growth rate.

Climatic, geological, and locational characteristics provide Mexico with a variety of biomes ranging from alpine paramo vegetation, highland pine forests, inter-montane grasslands, northern deserts and southern tropical wet and dry forests. This habitat diversity reflects the high levels of biological diversity in terms of both flora and fauna. A number of endemic and endangered species have focused worldwide conservation on Mexico in recent years.

Early and Precolonial History

Although subject to debate, it appears that human beings arrived at what is today’s area of Mexico approximately 20,000 years B.C.E. via the Bering Land Bridge in Alaska. While early inhabitants undoubtedly survived by hunting and gathering, it is now thought that agriculture began in Mexico around 10,000 years B.C.E., paralleling the development of agriculture in the Eastern Hemisphere.

One of the earliest crops cultivated was maize (Zea mays sp.), now the world’s third most important grain. Other notable crops domesticated in Mexico include tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), chili peppers (Capsicum annuum L.), cacao (Theobroma cacao, possibly domesticated in South America), vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), and tobacco (Nicotiana spp., L.). Other than the dog (Canis lupus familiaris L.) and turkey (Meleagris ocellata), very little evidence exists for domesticated animal species in Mexico.

Some have suggested that the brocket deer (Mazama pandora) was at least partially domesticated, but this species is no longer kept domestically. During this period, archaeological evidence indicates that house gardens began to be kept and some would indicate that these are the sites of earliest domestication.

Great civilizations arose in Mexico starting approximately 4000 years B.C.E., with early societies arising in the Izama, Olmec, and Teotihuacan cultures. These and the societies that followed-Maya, Mexica, and others-engaged in extensive and intensive agriculture. Religious practices reflected this tie to climatic and agriculture livelihoods with many deities associated with precipitation, seasons, and other production factors. Also, pre-Hispanic Mexican civilizations developed complex mathematical and calendrical understanding that allowed them to time cultivation and harvest activities based on seasonal variations.

Long thought to be an exceptionalist societyone that did not engage in intensive water management-studies in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that Mexican pre-Hispanic civilizations managed water intensively. Indeed, these early civilizations altered land cover dramatically with agricultural landscapes overtaking forests, grasslands, and other natural vegetation.

When present, soft metals, especially gold, and semiprecious gems were mined for decorative arts. While some groups changed production habits and the location of production throughout history due to socioeconomic and ecological factors, others maintained their close relationship with the land until the arrival of European colonizers in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Colonial and Postcolonial Times

The arrival of Europeans represented a radical reorganizing of relationships between society and the environment in the Western Hemisphere in general and Mexico specifically. 0ld World diseases decimated native populations in Mexico-some estimate place the loss as high as 95 percent in the first 150 years after contact. Disease coupled with new power relationships altered land use and land cover through disintensification, new crop introduction, and new production priorities. Mining, especially for silver and gold, increased, as did the production of animal and other commodity crops.

Lands thought to be little used were exploited, although recent efforts by geographers and others have concluded that Europeans frequently did not recognize Mexican land-use patterns and that depopulation due to disease decreased land use. Lands were expropriated from native owners and users by colonizers during the colonial period, a pattern that continued after the removal of the Spanish in 1821. Creole and wealthy mestizos assumed the roles of the previous colonial rulers of Mexico and similar land use and mineral exploitation patterns remained.

During the era of the Porfiriato-the rule of Porfirio Diaz-from 1876 until 1911, resource exploitation, including the harvesting of timber and other forest products continued. Much of that exploitation and purchase flowed to the United States and the United Kingdom, resulting in little reinvestment in Mexican infrastructure. While the majority of Mexico’s population faced impoverishment in the countryside during this period, working as peons on large plantations, cities, most notably Mexico City, began to grow with the introduction of foreign-based industry.

The second Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and resulted in a transition to a socialist constitution intent on righting the wrongs of the colonial and early postcolonial period, especially in terms of land distribution and resource exploitation. Mineral resources-copper, petroleum, and others-were nationalized and the Mexican government distributed plantation and hacienda lands to landless farmers using communal forms of land tenure, most notably the ejido. Lazaro Cardenas was the father of the mineral nationalization and ejido reform programs. He hoped to engender a system of land tenure and land use based on small family farms that would produce commodities for Mexico’s growing cities and enrich the countryside as well.

Society and Environment Today

Riding the wave of the petroleum boom, Mexico’s economy grew progressively through the 1970s. As industrialization intensified and Mexico was able to subsidize foodstuffs, the country experienced rapid urbanization. In the early 1980s the strength of the petroleum economy, coupled with other factors, led to a decade-long economic crisis in Mexico.

As part of national economic restructuring imposed by international lending and credit agencies, Mexico began to disinvest in subsidies for agriculture, forcing many poor farmers to abandon farming for urban centers or abroad. A series of constitutional reforms, including the potential dismantling of the ejido system, culminated in the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada. Decried by some as the death knell of Mexico’s independence and economy, NAFTA intensified preexisting relationships, although it enabled freer trade in agricultural foodstuffs. To protect Mexican farmers, new subsidies were distributed with total phase-outs planned for 2009.

Accompanying the rural impacts of NAFTA, foreign industrialization in Mexico has sped up because of the country’s proximity to the United States, the high skill levels of the workforce, and the federal government encouragement of industrialization. In industrial areas, environmental regulations are poorly enforced and numerous chronic and extreme environmental hazards threaten residents in Mexico.

The 1980s and 1990s also witnessed a sustained drive to protect Mexico’s environment. Unilateral and multilateral agreements encouraged the establishment of national parks, biosphere reserves, and new environmental legislation. These programs represent an improvement from efforts earlier in the century to populate the countryside and utilize it for national economic interests.

Future Trends

Despite encouraging signs of increased environmental protection and awareness, Mexico’s future society-environment relationships remain murky. 0verexploited fisheries, decreasing watersheds, and tired soils portend slow or fast acting environmental problems. At the same time, Mexico’s balance of trade has improved, pointing to possibly wealthier economic and environmental horizons. Population growth rates continue to slow but cities, especially Mexico City, are already pushed to the ecological breaking point.

Bibliography:

T.D. Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory (Basic Books, 2000);
A. Sluyter, “Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas: Material/Conceptual Transformations and Continuing Consequences,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers (v.9, 2001);
T.M. Whitmore and L. Turner, Cultivated Landscapes of Native Middle America on the Eve of Conquest: Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies (Oxford University Press, 2001).