With labored breathing, Rosalina Sánchez works and hoes her steep terrain, perched in the mountains of the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. This 57-year-old farmer, wearing worn sandals and a shirt with holes in her back, and her face marked by poverty, is happy to have abandoned the herd of two lean cows to cultivate 3,300 hectares of coffee and avocado trees. and cedar. The woman, who had never received public aid, is today one of the 440,000 beneficiaries of the flagship program of the center-left reformer president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka Amlo, who has made the fight against poverty his battle horse.
Renamed Sowing life (Sowing Life), this massive agro-forestry program aims to revive the rural economy, while limiting the impact of global warming through afforestation. Since its inception in 2019, more than one million hectares of fruit and timber trees have been planted in twenty states across the country. However, Sembrando vida is heavily criticized by environmental defenders, worried about the perverse effects of a plan of unprecedented proportions and an uncertain future, which paradoxically fuels deforestation and aggravates corruption.
Teachings for cultivating
At 1,300 meters above sea level, Rosalina Sánchez practically has her head in the clouds. A constant mist envelops the lush vegetation where all shades of green coexist, around the village of María Morelos. “I am paid every month to cultivate my modest land. Thanks Amlo ”. Never had a Mexican president invested so much money and in such a short time in campaigns and reforestation.
López Obrador has invested 2.8 billion in the last three years, in a country where one in two citizens is poor. Chiapas remains the state most affected by the problem: more than seven out of ten inhabitants, mostly natives, are destitute. The Sembrando vida program is aimed primarily at them. Beneficiaries must own 2.5 hectares of pasture or abandoned land. Each receives five thousand pesos (209 euros) per month, of which 4,500 on a personal credit card and the other five hundred in a savings fund.
“This is not cheap for people who usually live on less than half the money,” says Manuel Ochoa, territorial coordinator of Sembrando vida in northern Chiapas. At the wheel of a dusty 4×4 van, this 40-year-old agronomist points out the immense cleared areas that disfigure the mountain sides. Mexico is one of the countries in the world most affected by deforestation: according to the ministry of the environment, 128 thousand hectares of forest and jungle disappear every year. “Chiapas is one of the hardest hit states, mostly due to livestock farming,” says Ochoa.
“It is the most important reforestation effort in the world”, continues to repeat Obrador, underlining the dual effect, social and environmental, of the program. To the point that the plan was the emblem of Mexico’s ecological commitments during the 26th United Nations climate conference which was held in November in Glasgow, Scotland. The Mexican leader even convinced US President Joe Biden to extend the program to Central America, to curb the flow of migrants headed to the United States.
Ochoa’s off-road vehicle drives along a road full of curves. The temperature rises rapidly in the lowlands of Copainalá, a town of 6,500 inhabitants, mostly Zoque natives. The car takes a dirt path that crosses the fields, where corn plants and young plum, peach and mango seedlings alternate. “This polyculture, which alternates cereals with fruit or timber trees such as acajou and cedar, is more profitable and respectful of the environment”, explains the agronomist, who coordinates more than two hundred people between production technicians and social workers . “It stabilizes the soil and also prevents debilitation, which is harmful to the earth”.
To cool off after work, Villamar Gallardo, 52, drinksatole, a drink made from cornmeal and water. “I produce a little less corn, but with the salary I receive I feed my family. In four or five years, when my trees have grown, the proceeds from the sale of their fruit will be mine, ”rejoices this energetic gentleman in a checkered shirt.
Once a month Gallardo joins the immense line of people that forms in Copainalá in front of the local branch of the Banco del bienestar (Bank of well-being), the name given by Obrador to the ministry of social affairs in charge of managing the program. In exchange for the salary paid to him, this zoque farmer applies the techniques he learned in one of the 13,676 nurseries created by the program. A huge compost bin towers over the entrance to the Copainalá learning community. “Here we teach them to stop using chemicals, to plant, to prepare a budget, to share investments and seeds,” explains Elsi Nagana, who coordinates the producers of eight local nurseries.
Amidst the tree seedlings of guava, orange and avocado, Carlos Enríquez, a 33-year-old producer, praises the program: “I’m not going back to the United States,” he says, adjusting his large straw hat. “Now I have a job here”. Poverty drove him ten years ago to illegally cross the border to enter the United States, but then he was expelled from the country.
Stop the migration
Planting trees to help the poorest take root has become Amlo’s slogan. The Mexican president tries to apply his agro-forestry program to Central America to curb migration but meanwhile 1.7 million migrants have been arrested by the US authorities between October 2020 and September 2021, the highest figure last twenty years. Washington on November 18 agreed to fund the extension of the project, along with other social programs aimed at young people. More than half a million Central Americans should benefit.
Inside the nursery, Nagana assures that “from an ecological and agricultural point of view a virtuous circle has been created”. But a colleague of hers from southern Chiapas, who asks to remain anonymous, is more skeptical: “To meet the required criteria – two and a half hectares available – some farmers have cleared their land, increasing deforestation,” she explains. About 72,830 hectares of forest cover disappeared in 2019, according to the satellite study of the plots of land carried out by the World Institute of Resources (WRI), an international organization that deals with the environment. “The scale of the program and its speed have caused side effects,” confirms Javier Warman, director of the forestry division of the WRI, who complains about a lack of transparency.
The government has since said it has forbidden the cleared plots to be counted towards the program, but has not assessed the extent of the damage. “This opacity paves the way for corruption,” says Laure Delalande, director of the sustainable development division of the Mexican study center Ethos, who carried out a study on the program. His conclusions are disturbing: “Large suppliers of materials or seeds are focusing on regional public contracts, which do not involve tenders. In the last three years, more than 51,000 farmers have been excluded for not respecting the imposed rules. Delalande also denounces “a welfare logic that favors electoral clientelism centered on a program directly associated with Obrador”.
The white and burgundy logo of the Mexican president’s party, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), stands out on the walls of the villages in the region. Here everyone voted for Obrador’s party in the last local elections. At the Chiapas University of Sciences, biologist Sergio López agrees with Laure Delalande: “The top-down character of the program does not take into account local specificities. Many species are in trouble because they have been planted in unsuitable territories, ”he says, stressing that“ its effects on climate change are negligible ”.
The initiative made it possible to capture a total of 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide between 2019 and 2020, according to the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC). According to Adrián Fernández, president of the environmental organization Inicziale climática, “this figure is far from compensating for the more than seven hundred million tons of carbon dioxide or equivalent generated in Mexico every year”. The biologist questions the role the program would play in meeting Mexico’s commitment to reduce its emissions by 22 percent by 2030. “It is rather a plan to tackle rural poverty and food insecurity,” he says. .
As for the consequences on migratory flows, Ana Saiz, director of the Mexican organization for the defense of migrants Sin Fronteras, minimizes the impact: “Addressing the economic aspect of migration is not enough. People are also fleeing violence, extortion by criminal gangs, impunity or bankrupt and corrupt democracies ”.
In the Copainalá nursery, producers seem more concerned about the sustainability of the program. “My plum and cedar trees will only be exploitable in four or five years,” says a native Zoque, who wouldn’t know how to survive without monthly government help. At the University of Chiapas, López regrets the fact that “the program pays producers to plant but not to produce. There is a lack of planning and integration into the future product sales chain ”.
But it’s still worth it, says Eriberto Alvarado, who lives in the village of Belisario Domínguez, an hour and a half away. This former taxi driver has begun to grow cinnamon, a spice not native to the country, but which is widely consumed by Mexicans, who import it en masse. “It will be very profitable,” he says. For the moment it sells a small part of its production to local customers, in the hope “of finding a regional or national distributor soon”.
Ochoa admits that producers’ autonomy is the main challenge he faces: “We will probably need another two years of technical support before we can make the program sustainable,” he explains. He hopes that López Obrador’s successor will not close the Sembrando vida project in 2024. Under the country’s constitution, the man Mexicans call “the president of the poor” cannot stand for a second presidential term.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
.