It was in the state of Michoacán, in central-western Mexico, that the so-called war on drugs began in December 2006. The state collapsed and, meanwhile, the forests have been destroyed. destroyed by the illegal expansion of avocado cultivation, driven by foreign avocado prices. However, in that same region, the networked forests on the New San Juan Parangaricutiro road, west of Mexico City, are a lesson in forest management, governance, conservation and wealth creation, experts said wisely about the area. Network.
This network belonging to the indigenous organization Purépecha lives in the domain around the Parcutin volcano, and has struggled in the climate of ungovernability unrooted in the region in 2006. A few years later, the H1N1 pandemic hit, disrupting and paralyzing the regional economy. However, despite these difficulties, Nuevo San Juan has controlled to protect its assets and assets and its chain of origin and industrial routes, according to sources.
Today, the challenge of violence remains unresolved, and an even more serious crisis has arrived: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mexican government has fully withdrawn its aid and subsidies to the forestry sector, in a complicated foreign context. Nuevo San Juan’s network feels more powerful and better prepared from its reports beyond, said Héctor Andrés Anguiano Cuara, the spokesman appointed by the network. -Cutin volcano between 1943 and 1952. La “unusually long” eruption buried most of the colonial village and with it its productive lands.
Anguiano Cuara, who studied engineering in the town of Uruapan and business at IPADE, the Pan American Institute of Business Executive Management, said his good luck is summed up in a popular maxim: they have made necessity a virtue.
“This network has experienced many difficulties that have strengthened its organizational framework,” said Anguiano Cuara. “The first primary complication was the parcutin eruption in 1943. They had to move and build a new center. People have run out of work, shelter. “and economic opportunities for their families. Productive lands under ash or lava, and did not quote the forest. This has led to emigration to other [Mexican] states, but especially to the United States.
As researchers Alejandro Torres, Gerardo Bocco, and Alejandro Velzquez documented in their “Las Ense-anzas de San Juan” (Lessons of Saint John), in 1949, the classical government and its lawyers asked the Mexican government about the popularity and name of their commune. land, a process that ended in 1991.
While it is to ensure the safety of land ownership, the next 3 decades have allowed the network to identify a new city and slowly design its transformation.
In this region of the state of Michoacún, many indigenous purépechas worked in the wood industry in the mountains, which were authorized to personal companies, which needed greater technical education to take control. The opportunity arose in 1977, when twenty members of the network created the Ejidos Union and indigenous forest communities on the Tarasque Luis Echeverr. a plateau. In 1979, the union received its first logging license.
The delight is not entirely positive. Nuevo San Juan eventually broke away from the union’s tactics and aimed to run alone on an assignment for its communal forests, which had been degraded through personal enterprises.
Members of the Community of Nuevo San Juan first extracted dead wood and firewood, said Anguiano Cuara, but then they started the forest.
Anguiano Cuara said that at the beginning of the forestry project, the network had that of a paper company known today as BioPappel Grupo Scribe de Morelia, the first customer of the network. With Scribe’sArray on July 16, 1983, the network established a modest sawmill, which created about 15 jobs for the network.
“We had no government resources,” Anguane Cuara said. [Escribano] financed us, that we paid with firewood. So we did – with a manual sawmill. “
Anguiano Cuara has become the sales and marketing coordinator of Scribe, a position he now holds.
The first effects of forest allocation were presented at a network meeting in 1984. Anguiano Cuara said that some other people did not accept the work as true, which may have caused the allocation to collapse, but most of the Purpecs made a decision that this would not happen.
“It was a complex politically and socially complex scenario, with internal policy and leadership disorders,” said Anguiano Cuara. “People were discouraged. The union had left distrust. Many were not on the project, but there were others who kept helping. “until it worked.
He said older members did not forget that the forestry corporation needed more investment, however, to gain public trust, the benefits would be shared among network members rather than allocated to compulsory cars and machinery.
But for the top members of the community, the cash did not last long, they learned that benefit-sharing is unnecessary and that the corporate needed reinvestment, they also concluded that it is greater to secure permanent jobs to the community, the meeting reached agreement on these issues, guiding them through the next decade of work.
Community members not only stopped receiving benefits, but also had to contribute to unpaid work, known as jobs, or tequium, began building the first facilities, commercial premises and offices, reinvesting profits in tools, automobiles, and training.
“They were peasants who knew how to paint the land [not the forest], so they had to call many foreigners to move forward with the first projects,” said Anguiano Cuara. “But they temporarily gained practice and appropriated the processes. . “
The other resolution paved the way for their children’s education, early graduate fellows as forest technicians and engineers had to walk 10 to 12 kilometers (6. 2 to 7. 5 miles) according to the day to take courses in Uruapan, as there was no transportation and the roads were in poor condition.
The company’s other resolution was to buy a cellulose plant and then build its first adobe wood dryers. In 1985, they replaced their forest control approach from the “mobile approach” to the forest progression approach, which produced a higher volume of wood.
In the late 1980s technical control of the forest began, the efforts of the members of the network led them to try to land covered with volcanic debris, in 1980 there were about 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of forest. has more than 10%, evidence that the network has resisted the national attempt to expand deforestation.
This is the first step towards “what we call networked orchards,” said Anguiano Cuara. His commitment to the forest was already decided. A peach orchard was planted, but not at the expense of the forest. land gained to volcanic lands. Today, fishing has basically been repositioned through more lucrative lawyers.
The communal lands of the canopy of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro 18,138 hectares (44,820 acres). According to the knowledge of a case published through the United Nations Development Programme, as a component of the Ecuador Initiative Award 2004, more than 10,880 hectares (26,885 acres) of this land go to forestry, 1,200 ha (2965 acres) for forest plantation and nurseries, 1,913 ha (4,727 acres) for agricultural use, 2,122 ha (5,243 acres) for fruit orchards and 35 ha (86 acres) for cattle pastures. (4,163 acres) is classified as “rocky land” and 152 ha (375 acres) as shrubs and shrubs.
The climate consisting of forest of the New San Juan Parangaricutiro network is typical of the central highlands of Mexico. Conifer species predominate, there is also a significant diversity of holm oaks and alpines, as well as other species. with ha (approximately 40 consisting of acre), from trees to trees The challenge of forest use is not to degrade this ecosystem that provides essential environmental services, such as carbon capture and animal habitat, adding white-tailed deer, cats, coyotes, foxes, reptiles, amphibians and birds.
The importance of Nuevo San Juan’s highly preserved forests has increased as the expansion of avocado cultivation has altered the region, with illegal adjustments in land use on the puree-top plateau.
Jaime Navia Antezana, director of the NGO GIRA, the Interdisciplinary Group for Appropriate Rural Technology, said that of the nearly 200,000 ha (494,000 acres) of avocado cultivation established in the state of Michoacún for more than 30 to 35 years, approximately The predominance of culture, Navia said, “it increases every day, not only on the plateau, but also on what is called the avocado belt , which crosses all michoacon from east to west.
In 1989 Nuevo San Juan invested in more machines, allowing them to process more cellulose fiber and, until now, generate money flow.
“Our business partners are more than clients, they have supported us in strategic investments,” said Anguiano Cuara.
Starting from scratch forced them to do things differently, for example, in the early 1990s Nuevo San Juan bought 4 buses for boarding staff and residents, the network business has 4 itineraries covering the entire network, over the years have also created a water bottling business , a network store and a cable TV channel.
Nuevo San Juan also has a higher human capital exponentially, in 1990, according to INEGI, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, only 4. 9% of the population had more than one school number one, by 2020 those figures, every day every five and every five years, indicated that five out of six families in netpaintings had at least one child who was in college or had finished college , which has generated a stable influx of citizens of netpaintings by painting or academics, but the diversification of schooling and trades is a competitive advantage. Netpaintings now includes teachers, lawyers, accountants, and types of engineers and business specialists.
In addition, the network serves as a learning site for the Uruapan Park Ranger School and has links to the agrobiology branch also in Uruapan.
It was in the 1990s that the Mexican government discovered the forest and the opportunities presented by forest management.
“We talked about the style that started San Juan, we talked about networked forestry,” said Anguiano Cuara. “There was a clearer interest on the part of the government, and at this point part of the decade they started it directly. This was critical. According to him, 37 years after his first sawmill, Nuevo San Juan now serves as a style. But if they had to do it alone, without the government, it would have taken twice as long to succeed. that level.
The network continued to diversify its productive activities, established an environmental control unit for the replica of the white-tailed deer and an ecotourism center called Patzingo near the volcano.
The World Bank has also provided resources for environmental education and education. In 1997, New San Juan received its first certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). This certification has been essential for its main implementation criteria and ensuring conservation. As a component of meeting FSC criteria, all processes are reviewed and movements are known every five years, adding forestry and commercial operations, as well as research on social inclusion issues.
“This [FSC] certification is acceptable to us,” said Anguiano Cuara. “It’s the most rigorous organization in the world. ” Although the network exports about 5% of the wood it produces, the FSC certification logo already opens markets in Mexico.
Nuevo San Juan produces approximately 65,000 cubic meters (2. 3 million cubic feet) of wood each year and has created logging corporations for products ranging from resins to furniture, has a significant presence in the markets of Mexico City, Guadalajara, Michoacón, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Veracruz, Puebla and Chihuahua.
Operations use almost all parts of cut wood well: the number one wood is used to make planks, planks and mullions for construction, as well as finished products such as furniture, floors, moldings and even cabins. the most sensitive thing about the tree is used to make pallets.
Finally, thinner branches and trunks are descorteed and crushed to make paper cellulose fibers. After cutting and processing a tree, only about 8-10% remain in the forest in the form of twigs and leaves, which by law will have to be crushed to prevent the accumulation of combustible material. and helps keep the ground.
How did Nuevo San Juan face the challenge of reasonable timber imports, basically from countries like Chile and Brazil? At the beginning of the decade, there was resentment, but Anguiano Cuara said that after two years, the decline in the quality of imported lumber boosted consumers. back.
Pine species in purépecha forests, governed by Pinus michoacana and P. pseudostrobus, are the most in demand on the domestic market. The wood is fluffy and solid. In addition, because of its geographical location, Nuevo San Juan does have to increase its costs to take into account long-distance transportation.
Over 4 decades of logging, Nuevo San Juan has created 12 companies, which in turn provide 900 permanent jobs and 300 transitory jobs. There are forestry companies; resin distillation; Global progression, which includes forestry activities ranging from seed harvesting to the progression of technical studies; networked orchards, generating avocados, peaches and, in greenhouses, tomatoes and blueberries; The agricultural programme for strengthening orchards via services, adding to the control and conservation of resources and the water cycle; distribution of fertilizers; A cable network store; Patzingo Ecotourism Center; bottled water; Local transport; and a supply of external resources, which is lately testing carbon credits.
New San Juan prepares for difficult times. Substantial discounts at the federal level have led them to plan a baseline, starting this year, without any government assistance, which will leverage their strengths to address it: human capital, diversification and strong commitment from the 1,254 members of the community.
Why does Nuevo San Juan have these assets when other forest communities remain so vulnerable?José Ivon Zaiga, Forest Manager of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Mexico City, said he believed that older network projects were strengthened through more powerful government through PROCYMAF, the forest conservation and sustainable control program, while after 2001, CONAFOR, the National Forestry Commission, was less incisive.
Another thing is that indigenous communities have centuries of deep-rooted tradition, while many ejidos, or communal lands for agriculture in Mexico, have become more recently shaped and are socially more diverse. The scope of forest use is also significant.
“Even though in some cases land dominance is not very large, forest control has provided a sufficient source of income to make significant social investments and lend legitimacy, through investments in schools, a hospital, a grocery store, or transportation,” WRI said. Zaiga. ” This generates a non-unusual intelligent that strengthens the network of forestry businesses and the willingness to continue expanding it because there is consensus. On the other hand, when there is little source of income, sufficient for social investment or distribution, there is less consensus.
“In Nuevo San Juan, of course, there is the avocado boom, but because there is a strong social organization, land use control and institutionality, everything is controlled,” Zaiga said. “Avocado plantations are not in the forest and are provided through the network itself. They have done an intelligent task to overcome the demanding situations of insecurity, expanding the cultivation of avocado and other [problems]. »
At the end of the day, there is no miracle, Nuevo San Juan is the result of an organization, well-channeled efforts and transparent goals, its members say, now faces new challenges, the maximum cheating since the volcano erupted and replaced the life of the network forever.
Flag symbol of the indigenous network Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, which maintains about 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of temperate forest in Michoacón, through María Eugenia Olvera / Polea A. C.
This story was first reported through the Latam team on Mongabay and published here on our Latam online page on July 23, 2020.
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