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Pastimes : Mexico -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CIMA who wrote (54)	7/10/2001 3:13:31 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 143

I've seen this further south, something like this without the assault rifles, a few pistoles and shotguns but carried discreetly, never displayed ... people involved were partly locals, other locals were opposed but didn't do much about it ... some degree of courtesy in not making skid trails through the milpas unless reasonable compensation was paid probably helped ... tales are told of more aggressive operations in the area but i didn't see any ... the prime wood of the area at the time was caoba, which tends to be scattered rather than growing in stands, and the locals benefited to some extent by increased access and an excuse for new milpas ['hey, somebody else cut down the trees'] .... actually i have a rather interesting story that touches on this, but it's not for the net for about twenty years. Here on the BC coast up until roughly the 40s the old-growth was regarded as an obstruction to civilisation ... such as could be sold as timber under the tight specs of the time was sold [in the 30s it was not possible to sell a log with a knot in it, or any suggestion of butt swell - this meant falling a 60 metre tree and bucking out of it perhaps 10 or 15 metres, maybe a third or a quarter of its useful volume, from the top of butt swell to just below the first knot], and sold for very little, and the rest, which we would regard today as highly valuable, was slashed and burnt ... a teenager spotted idle would be encouraged to get out there and chop and burn and clear something, 'to let the light in' ... well it is the same there now in some places, with the added incentive of reducing habitat for the various snakes and insects that make the selva less than safe for one's children .... there are laws of course, the Ley Ambiental is considered among the best environmental legislation on the planet by some, but by the local with children to feed its practical application is perceived to be for the benefit of outsiders who already enjoy wealth beyond his dreams ... you can't just tell people not to chop trees down, this is what they've always done, it's semi-nomadic agriculture around which their culture revolves, in many cases [speaking here of the indian of the sierra, who is quite determined to live in traditional manner] ... the shade-grown coffee movement has some promise, provided that the producers get some reasonable portion of the fantastic price paid by the consumer, and in some cases in recent years that has been happening .... our village is close to the sierra but not in it, it is over-cleared to the point where microclimate is deeply affected, the pasto dries up brown after ten dry days ... one of our neighbours was born there in 1919, he remembers when well over ninety per cent of the area was raw selva, there was always always fresh green feed for the cattle [and tigers and snakes and poisonous insects everywhere], and any period over eight days without some amount of rain was remarkable, and noted ... in one place there was a creek that never ran dry, and you could drink it direct, there were places kids swam daily, he says he never missed a day because if he did his mother would make him pack more water to the house and wash him there -g- ... well now that creek runs only in heavy rains ..... so, my cousin and i have a plan we're already starting on to interplant the potreros with cedro, caoba, other species, theory being that there is net benefit to the ganadero - what he loses in production of zacate in wet weather is more than overcome by the availability of feed in dry weather, plus a few years down the road he has a major income in timber value [there are some tax and regulation issues that need improvement to encourage this] ... my cousin is an agricultural inspector and has good contacts with the experimental farms, and quite good relations with the neighbours considering that he is regarded as [and is, in reality] an enviro-cop ... the piece of land on which we wanted to do this in a major way i have not yet been able to buy, may never, i'm getting played by the family of the current owner ... but there are other places, quite a few hectareas of family land, a friend who's interested ... you hit a nerve here, Señor Top-o'-the-hill -g-