Frontera NorteSur April 2001

Despite being located on the Río Bravo/Rio Grande, water is a scarce resource for the city and the CPMA supports Comapa when it turns off city water from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. every night. According to Comapa employees Belinda de León and Susana Rodríguez Tovar the water shut off helps prevent water loss due to leaking pipes. Both organizations had also noticed that city residents would turn on hoses to flood their yards during the night--a luxury the city cannot afford.


The CPMA's Río Bravo office.

Another year-round project that the CPMA is committed to is the betterment of Río Bravo's neighborhoods (Río Bravo is located across from Pharr, TX and is about 15 miles east of Reynosa). With an estimated population of 150,000 Río Bravo has a solid-waste problem in the form of litter and historically the city has underinvested in trees and other greenery for its urban areas. To remedy this the CPMA began a program of regular litter pick-up days now organized by city hall. The CPMA also initiated a program that plants trees in urban areas on a year-round basis.

According to Villega the Río Bravo/Rio Grande is becoming more important to the CPMA and is the only project that the Comité participates in with other environmental organizations from the US and surrounding Mexican cities. In contrast to much of the Rio's run Villega says that there are still trees along much of the river's bank near Río Bravo. Major local threats to the area include tires and cars that farmers throw into the water on the edges of their fields to prevent erosion of the river bank.

Aside from participating in the yearly Día del Río (River Day) organized by the Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin Coalition and held the third Saturday of every October when cities along the length of the river organize picnics, garbage clean ups and other events on the river banks, the CPMA does not work with other cross-river or nearby groups. "Somos solitarios," Villegas says, "We're loners," explaining that the local nature of environmental issues and small staff sizes are what keeps the groups working independently. "However, we can work together in times of need," she says, "it's part of the ethics of ecologists to be able to do so."

The CPMA accomplishes many of its goals by simply taking advantage of the access it has to the city mayor and other local, state and federal government officials. Villegas says that the Río Bravo city hall frequently does not know about the city's environmental problems. However, once issues are made known to local government Villega says that the city moves quickly to resolve them as in the case of garbage pick-up days and the tree planting campaign.

Reynosa

Much like the CPMA, the Comité Ecológico de Reynosa (Reynosa Environmental Committee, CER) also accomplishes many of its goals through its access to local government. Described by one of its leaders, Bertha J. Gómez Lira, as a group of "treinta señoras," (thirty married women) CER members can go to city hall and see the mayor whenever they wish, even as private citizens wait outside the mayor's office for hours in hopes of speaking to him on the day of the week when he has open meetings with the general public to learn of their problems.

Driving around Reynosa with Bertha Gómez and María Teresa Yzaguirre Lee, another CER member, on the way to see the environmental projects that most interest the group, the two women point out recent improvements to the city such as new medians, repainted lane lines on streets, newly planted trees and the acquisition of trucks with large water tanks that circulate through the city to provide water for Reynosa's new greenery. At one stop Gómez points out a burro-drawn cart full of garbage and says that this is exactly the type of thing that they, the CER, do not want to see any more in Reynosa. Along another stretch of road the women talk about which local families own properties along the highway and what the owners are or are not doing with their land.


María Teresa Yzaguirre Lee and Bertha Gómez
of the CER at La Laguna La Escondida.

It quickly becomes apparent that the CER is comprised of some of Reynosa's "leading ladies" or señoras and that their goal is to make the city more beautiful and more livable. Fortunately for the local environment the CER's goals would seem to be environmentally worthy goals. The first stop is at La Laguna La Escondida (The Hidden Lagoon) a body of water that lies at a low elevation in the city. While the Laguna is remembered by many in the city from the time when people picnicked along its banks and migrating birds stopped there, the Laguna became an illegal trash and chemical dump site in past decades, families built homes on the trash and on the surrounding banks and at times the waters there were allowed to dry up completely.

The CER supports the 1997 decree that made La Escondida a "natural, protected area" that will also serve tourism, recreation and sports purposes. Clean up has yet to start however and the CER has been pushing the Reynosa mayor and other politicians to begin the project which would remove waste from the lagoon, relocate people living on the lagoon and near its banks, clean the lagoon's waters, and establish a pump system that would take waste from local neighborhoods out of the watershed and send it to a nearby treatment plant.

While many people that have built homes in the area over the past 15-25 years do not want to be removed from the Laguna, the CER states that a new location for them has been specified and the group supports their relocation. In contrast to the CER's view on current residents both Gómez and Yzaguirre spoke excitedly about the possibility of a golf course and US-style subdivision for the area.

To read a more in-depth article about the environmental justice issues at the Laguna go to http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/feat4.html

On the way out to La Playita (the Little Beach) on the banks of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo, Gómez and Yzaguirre point out the canal that runs through the center of Reynosa, a city of at least 370,000 according to the Consejo Nacional de Población (Conapo) and as many as 800,000 or 1,000,000 according to city residents. The CER, say Gómez and Yzaguirre, wants to improve the appearance of the canal by pulling tires and other garbage out of the water and then putting cement on the upper, steep banks of the canal to keep grasses from growing out of control there. The group also wants an attractive fence put along the top of the canal so that people may no longer toss garbage into its waters. Finally, at a point where the banks of the canal are flat and widen out the CER would like to install trees and parks, perhaps a small zoo, and a bike and jogging path.


The banks of the Río Bravo/Rio Grande at La Playita

Out at La Playita, a picnic and swimming area on the tree-filled banks of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo, the CER advocates for continued improvements to what has already been done there in recent years. A popular Reynosa place for picnics on weekends and holidays, the park's banks have already been cleared of fallen branches and garbage and its barbecue pits and facilities have been repainted. The CER wants more of the same so that more Reynosa residents can enjoy the area. The CER also participates in the Día del Río celebration and clean up along with up-stream cities.

Matamoros

With an official Conapo population of 365,133 residents, that locals estimates put as high as 1 million people, Matamoros has no non-governmental environmental organization that Frontera NorteSur could locate. Researchers at the Colegio de la Frontera del Norte, Colef, could not identify a Matamoros NGO environmental group either. Matamoros does not appear to participate in the Día del Río either.

Conclusions

While US environmental groups often function by bringing their memberships' weight to bear on government officials, both Reynosa's CER and Río Bravo's CPMA accomplish many of their goals by appealing directly to local officials. This may be attributed to both the relative weakness of civil society and volunteerism in Mexico and the relatively greater strength of officials and their capacity to push through projects in that country. Both organizations admit to working alone on local environmental issues. The only regional action is the Día del Río sponsored by the Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin Coalition (RGRBBC) with offices in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and Laredo (to see more on the RGRBBC go to http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/feb01/feat2.html ). In the future, both groups appear poised to better their cities' environmental situations as they continue with their solitary work.