When my son Chris drives to Puerto Vallarta from San Vicente, Nayarit, where he lives and works, he crosses to the Ameca river that flows down a wide valley to the Bahía de Banderas (Bay of Flags). As you approach the river from the Nayarit side you can’t miss a huge sign “Vidanta World” and the pods of a cable car crossing high over the highway. Vidanta’s corporate website describes its business as “luxury hotels, golf courses, real estate investments, tourism infrastructure, and entertainment experiences.” Look to your right and you see a vast, grey castellated set of buildings that, to my eyes at least, resemble a pastiche of a megalomaniac’s Stalinist monument. On the other side of the highway where the cable car deposits guests, the company has channelled water from the river to create an artificial lake. In short, Vidanta has occupied a vast area of land along the river and on the beach, and has reengineered the ecosystems to provide the experiences it sells to its clients. So huge is Vidanta world that when Chris went there to collect two visitors to his charity, Pasitos de Luz, he drove for two kilometres on Vidanta property.
Developments like Vidanta World that are proliferating around the bay monopolize the land, once the home of crocodiles, crabs, iguanas, tlacuaches (a large rodent), many kinds of birds, and other animals, and where turtles laid their eggs. Fortunately, “ACs” (Asociaciones Cívicas – registered charities) do their best to protect the turtles and other species, and to preserve access to the beach for local residents, from the corporate landgrabbers.
Chris was a speaker recently at the finishing line of a mega-marathon from Mascota, set in a valley inland high above the bay, to Puerto Vallarta. The runners cover various distances, starting at 20km to a maximum of 100km. Various charities had been given display space near the finish and were granted speaking slots to address the audience. However, the previous day the charities had been allocated the hottest time of the day and spoke to a crowd of only three hardy people. The following day, the time slot was changed at short notice to the evening. Since the charity workers had been waiting since early morning, only Chris stayed on to speak.
Earlier in the day, Chris had watched as important figures from the city administration were presented to the crowd. One plump young man was talking on his mobile as he was announced and during his time on the stage busily sent messages and paid no attention to the event in which he was participating. When the Spanish interviewer asked Chris why ACs matter, the image of this man, quite possibly the nephew or some other relative of a senior elected official, came to his mind. He felt moved to say that the ecology of the bay and its fauna could not be entrusted to the likes of Vidanta nor to local officials. Those who were making a real difference to local residents were the ACs that protect turtles, or charities like Pasitos that provides free nutrition, therapy and education to disabled children.
Chris told us this story during our weekly Zoom call in response to our asking how people in his part of Mexico had reacted to the war in Gaza. He responded that there was much more concern about the appalling devastation wrought by Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, a much larger city than Puerto Vallarta. Judging by the photos I have seen, the damage caused overnight by winds and rain resembles uncannily the devastation in Gaza that we witness daily on our TV screens. In Acapulco too, people whose homes were destroyed are without water, food and electricity. The low-income working-class residents have lost their homes, their jobs and their incomes and are completely without resources to survive. As in Gaza, desperate people have looted sources of vital supplies.
The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) promptly evacuated foreign tourists on free buses to Mexico City. While the wealthier Mexicans who lived in Acapulco could afford to pay for private transport inland, the government’s offer to the poor is a free bus ride to Chilpancingo, the state capital. Now, the population of Acapulco exceeds 900,000, while 283,000 people live in Chilpancingo. The capital could not possibly accommodate large numbers of displaced people, who in any case lack the money to sustain away from their destroyed homes.
AMLO has declared that the armed forces will deliver all humanitarian aid so that ACs and local government “wouldn’t try to profit from people’s necessity.” This choice reflects AMLO’s preference for involving the army (which he holds to be incorruptible against evidence to the contrary) in projects such as delivering medicines, managing Mexico City’s two airports, building a new railway and numerous other enterprises. An initial delivery of 20,000 food rations and 200,000 litres of water for a population the size of Acapulco’s seems a rather meagre first response. Furthermore, one suspects that local charities and government officials would understand where the needs are and how best to reach communities in complicated terrain. This was certainly the case of Pasitos de Luz during the pandemic: Chris and his colleagues delivered food parcels to the families of the children they care for when the charity had to shut its operations. One hopes that local charities have ignored AMLO’s discouragement and are doing what they can to help fellow citizens.
Chris told us that in his area local people have donated supplies to be sent to the people of Acapulco. One friend who comes from a coastal community near Acapulco loaded her car with donations and drove nearly 1,000km. to deliver them to those in need. She reported much damage and many streets in the city still blocked and impassable. This brought home to me that, awful as the deaths (at least 100 people) and the damage to people’s homes and livelihoods are in Acapulco, they pale in comparison to Gaza. The night of the hurricane must have been terrifying, but it was one night not a month or more of continuous bombardment, and the scale of killing vastly greater. And no kind souls can load their car to take supplies and comfort to homeless terrified and grieving people.
Note: I was moved to write this simply because the photographs of buildings damaged by the terrifying power of nature somehow parallels the still more awful power of human-made tragedies. A few weeks before Hurricane Otis we had experienced Hurricane Lidia which landed just 20km south of Puerto Vallarta. Even a less powerful hurricane brought huge rocks, tress and land crashing down onto the coastal highway, and swollen rivers washed away anything in their path. Our area experienced nothing worse than a few days without electricity or water, but the damage we saw further south showed us something of the power of Lidia. Nothing I have written here is intended to ignore nor minimize the suffering of innocents murdered in Israel or those held hostage by Hamas. I am disheartened by the one side or the other rhetoric. We should perhaps remember that those killed, those held hostage, and indeed the rescuer of some young Israeli Jews from the music festival, include Bedouin Muslims who have long suffered unjust treatment under Israeli rule. We have a collective responsibility for the deaths, oppression and injustice in Israel and Palestine. We have been content for our political leaders to ignore the moral imperative to work honestly and unceasingly for a settlement that enables the Palestinian people to live free of occupation and oppression that creates a rergion in which all, Muslim, Christian, secular, Jew can coexist in at least a tolerable degree of security and justice. Whatever the most recent wrongs there is no answer but freedom and justice.
