Travel with Us to Chiapas, Mexico! (when all this is over)

By Dr. Lynn Holland

In the last few years, the Korbel school has sponsored a travel experience in Chiapas, Mexico, for students, faculty, and community members. The trip enables participants to learn about the impacts of metal mining, highway construction, and other large-scale development projects as well as the more ecological and socially friendly alternatives being developed in local communities.

Neoliberal policies, widely implemented in Latin America, promote the reduction of government intervention and increased foreign trade and investment as a strategy for economic growth. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S. and Mexico was signed and implemented in 1994 with this in mind. The resulting opening of the Mexican economy came with a significant decline in public spending including a reduction in support for small-scale agriculture, and a surge in imports of U.S. subsidized corn. The combined impact was devastating for small farmers in Mexico, two million of whom lost their land over the next two decades and were forced to migrate from the countryside to the cities or north to the U.S. NAFTA also intensified foreign investment in oil and mineral extraction, greatly reducing the local water supplies, contributing to environmental contamination, and stirring conflict around land rights in the process.

The southern state of Chiapas, home to an abundance of natural resources, has been profoundly affected by these developments. One third of Mexico’s crude oil and nearly a fourth of the country’s electricity is produced in Chiapas. Lumbering in the interior and fishing along the Pacific coast have accelerated at a tremendous rate and land is being rapidly cleared to make way for the production of the environmentally destructive African palm tree. Chiapas is also a major source of gas and metallic minerals such as gold, silver, copper, iron, aluminum, and titanium. Despite, indeed, because of this natural wealth, Chiapas remains the poorest state in Mexico today.

Well before NAFTA was implemented, neoliberal policies, already emerging in Mexico, were viewed as an assault on the economy in Chiapas. Communities there saw forests being stripped, their water supply diminish, and the environment become more contaminated. Small farmers, driven off their land due to poverty, debt, and intimidation, were forced to migrate. In an effort to thwart the aims of NAFTA, the Zapatistas, a rebel group founded in 1983, staged an uprising to coincide with NAFTA’s implementation in 1994 and successfully took over several municipalities. In the years since then, the Zapatistas and other reformers in Chiapas have sought to challenge neoliberalism by fostering socially and environmentally friendly alternatives.

Our travels in Chiapas have taken us to a lagoon on the Pacific coast, rural mining towns, an ecological mountain retreat, an indigenous university, and a women’s weaving cooperative among other places. We lend our assistance along the way with local projects.

“After visiting a Zapatista-inspired and affiliated school, learning about the environmental degradation to essential mangrove ecosystems, meeting with activists physically defending the Soconusco valley from harmful megaprojects, and breathing in the air of resistance felt in the very air of San Cristóbal de las Casas, I found that not only is another world possible, it's already being practiced in Chiapas and it can serve as a model for the rest of us,” said trip alumnus and Korbel graduate Amy Czulada.

The next trip is tentatively scheduled for November 2021 and will likely be offered as a 4-credit Korbel graduate course. We hope you’ll consider joining us!