Killing Paradise

May 19, 2001

There's a place in southern Baja that transcends and addicts, a lifesaving antidote to the controlled reality of a sterile everyday working life. Desert walks with vultures and snakes your only companions, as whales swim slowly by in the pristine waters. Welcome to a land of magical realism - a place you can finally stop and think.

Rude surprise to return a few weeks ago and find gated communities and golf courses springing up faster than cacti. SUVs roar through sacred desert areas as pools and lawns drain the community's water table. Redefining the town in their image, white moneyed gringos have brought with them all the "comfort of home" and butchered the place in the process.

I guess everyone wants a piece of paradise - somewhere wild enough to offer freedom and the chance to finally discover truth buried underneath the weight of civilization. How ironic that in embracing paradise we so often annihilate it to better please our overindulged needs.

So you're left with tourist dune buggies on the beach rolling over turtle eggs, and hotel sewage pumped directly into the waters. ESPN blasting during margarita happy hours as locals, now reduced to service positions, slave to meet the demands of those with dollars.

You're also left with pollution levels in Mexico doubling after NAFTA, plus an explosive increase in maquiladoras (sweatshops) along the northern border region. Mexican communities forced to house foreign toxic waste dumps because of a NAFTA "investor rights" clause protecting transnational corporations against local people. The "reform" of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution which effectively transferred huge tracts of land from indigenous peoples to foreign-owned paper companies.

And around the corner comes FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) which would in essence extend NAFTA to 34 countries and 800 million people. Interesting that at the recent FTAA summit in Quebec, the heads of major corporations (such as Merck and IBM) received a draft of the trade agreement, but the press and public were denied access. Apparently better for citizens to focus on satisfying their consumption desires than on the ultimate price they will pay in doing so.

From a small town in Mexico to the corridors of power in Quebec, the lesson is clear: until we spend more time looking at our definition of creature comforts and less trying to make everything else conform to it, we may end up destroying what we need most.

Heather Wokusch is a freelance writer. She can be contacted at womanrant@hotmail.com