UNESCO recently added the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere to its 502 MAB (Man and Biosphere Programs) network of international protected reserves.
Although most ecologists in beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz consider this enrollment a long overdue acknowledgement of the precarious situation of the Tuxtlas fauna and flora, many others are flabbergasted.
Said one lumberjack from the village of Santa Marta, high up in the Sierra, ” ..they are cutting our lifeline! every tree I can chop down buys me a new tire for my pickup truck and some extras for my kids.” Added Captain Vandammed, a landlocked gringo retiree in Catemaco “Oh dear, I’m here for the carne del monte (hunted meat)! If they cut off my meat, I might as well move to Machu Pichu”.
Local ganaderos (cattlemen) are considering protest strikes to assert their rights to convert Los Tuxtlas into potreros (cattle ranches), while hotel operators worry that someone might actually build a competitive functional eco-resort on one of the hauntingly beautiful volcanoes of Los Tuxtlas.
One of the local presidentes (mayors) was heard to mumble ” I have enough problems trying to declare Catemaco a pueblo magico, now they have to throw the whole Tuxtlas at me?”
Meanwhile the local gravel pit operators headed by Repechaje Quirino are desperately seeking to buy unaffected lands to continue flattening the Tuxtlas landscape while maintaining the Los Tuxtlas construction boom. And a former Catemaco president, now heading a road building agency, remarked “We will not succumb to this foreign usurpation of Los Tuxtlas! All our wonderful projects to provide the area with functional roads will be discontinued!”
Meanwhile concerned people both in Mexico and the world breathlessly await the outcome of this political infighting now apparently so common in this impoverished country, (except of course, the rich enclaves on par with French suburbs).
