Mexico

Immigration scuffles threaten wildlands along the U.S.-Mexico border

In the three-way struggle between the U.S. Border Patrol, illegal border crossers, and the natural environment, it’s never clear who’s winning. A U.S. Border Patrol truck on the move near Douglas, Ariz. Photo: Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. If you ask the Border Patrol, they will tell you they apprehended nearly 1.2 million illegal crossers in […]

Francisca Porchas, clean-bus campaigner, answers questions

Francisca Porchas. What work do you do? I am a lead organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union‘s Clean Air, Clean Lungs, Clean Buses Campaign, based in Los Angeles. How does it relate to the environment? The Strategy Center has engaged in environmental-justice and civil-rights campaigns for the last 17 years, […]

How do you define “environmentalism”?

Dave's environmental ethics post addressed an issue that has become more and more apparent here in Gristmill: the term "environmentalism" means something different to each one of us.

This is exemplified in today's Soapbox by Oliver Bernstein on environmental issues along the U.S.-Mexico border:

What Mexican activists can teach the U.S. about poverty and the planet

As the border organizer for Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice program, I bounce back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border supporting grassroots environmental activists. More than the food, language, or currency, the biggest difference from one side to the other is what issues are considered “environmental.” Perhaps nowhere else on earth is there such a long […]

Activists fight new round of proposed LNG terminals

While President Bush extols the virtues of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in speeches, energy companies have been at work, planning some 50 new LNG import terminals across North America, most slated for U.S. ports. Meanwhile, citizens and officials in Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, where new terminals are proposed, are fighting […]

Isidro Baldenegro López leads a struggle against logging in the Sierra Madre

Isidro Baldenegro López. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. When Isidro Baldenegro López was growing up in the mountains of central Mexico, his father opposed widespread logging in the forests of the Sierra Madre. He spoke out about the effects of the destruction on the indigenous Tarahumara people, drawing the attention of local crime bosses, who ordered […]

Jordi Honey-Rosés, WWF butterfly protector, answers questions

Jordi Honey-Rosés. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? Currently I serve as program officer in the Mexican Forest Program for World Wildlife Fund, working to protect the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico. The pine and fir forest region where I work is the winter habitat for the migratory North American monarch butterfly. […]

The new anthology Rio Grande chronicles the life and troubled times of a fabled river

The week before I sat down to read Rio Grande, a thick new anthology about the famed river edited by Texas scribe Jan Reid, a strange sight appeared on the actual Rio Grande outside the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas. A fiberglass statue of Jesus was discovered grounded on a sandbar in the river, drawing faithful visitors from both sides of the border to its river-stained robes. Admittedly, little connects the literature of the river and the religious relic that appeared there this fall -- except, perhaps, this: the contributors to the book and the worshipers of the statue share the conviction that the river needs a savior.

A Peruvian activist takes on the fishmeal industry

Maria Elena Foronda Farro was born to be an activist. Her father, a union lawyer in Chimbote, Peru, taught her — through words and by example — about the importance of social justice. Foronda, who grew up in Chimbote and earned a master’s degree in sociology in Mexico, is now applying her father’s lessons to […]