Mexico - Mixteca Region (Oaxaca) – Fighting Desertification with Community Reforestation and Sustainable Agriculture 

Author: David Nuñez and Gerry Marten 

The region known as La Mixteca northeast of the City of Oaxaca looks like a desert, though in the past it was covered with forest. The desolate landscape and desertification process are the result of generations of bad land-use practices. The causes that converted forests into wastelands are many and complex. Some say the tradition of overexploiting natural resources extends back to the days of the Aztecs, who demanded heavy tribute from the local Mixtec population. During the centuries of Spanish colonization, the construction of massive missions required large amounts of lumber, and goats were introduced into an already degraded landscape. The region became a corridor for driving goats to market, and excessive grazing prevented the recovery of forests that were logged for railroad ties, cleared for agriculture expansion, or (mainly oaks) cut for firewood and charcoal – the primary fuel in the region’s rural communities to this day.

Centuries of degradation were exacerbated during the second half of the Twentieth Century by the Mexican government’s agrarian policy and Green Revolution technology. Government policies offered credit only to cultivate monoculture cash crops, driving the ancient and ecologically sustainable milpa system into virtual extinction. Monocultures exhausted the soil and exposed it to erosion. The Green Revolution brought chemical fertilizers, which boosted crop yields, but the benefits were short-lived. Soil erosion and degradation continued, compelling farmers to use ever-increasing amounts of fertilizers. Depleted soils and high fertilizer costs forced farmers to abandon their fields, extending their agriculture into newly clear-cut lands. Deforestation and erosion accelerated, and today the region suffers one of the highest rates of erosion on the planet. It is one of the poorest regions in Mexico, unable to produce enough to feed itself, and has one of the nation’s highest rates of emigration.

The Solutions 

But recently this region received international attention for doing things right. In 2008, Jesús León Santos and the Center for Integral Farmer Development (CEDICAM) received the Goldman Environmental Prize for their work on reforestation, soil conservation, and sustainable agriculture.
Their story begins in the early 1980s, when a group of Guatemalan refugees fleeing from that country’s civil war settled in Mexico’s Mixteca region with assistance from the American nonprofit organization World Neighbors. Disturbed by the erosion and desertification, the Guatemalans began sharing their soil conservation and sustainable agriculture techniques with the local population, aided by the Mexican nonprofit organization CETAMEX (Mexican Center for Appropriate Technologies).
Alfonso López López, a farmer and current president of CEDICAM, recalls how his father would berate him for “wasting time with those Guatemalans,” and how he had to run off on his motorcycle to attend their workshops. But it was these foreigners who set in motion the process of restoring soil and forests by sharing their experience. In the beginning it wasn’t an easy sell.

Deforestation and erosion make the Mixtec Highland look like a desert

Green Facts. (2014). Desertification. 2014, de Green Facts Sitio web: http://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/l-3/6-prevention-desertification.htm.