 |
| River floods in southwest Mexico |
Milenio: Lorenzo Rocha
Translated by: Megan LeDoux The catastrophic situation that we are living in, due to the havoc that the storms continue to cause along the Mexican Pacific coast, confirm the thesis brought forth by Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez: we are facing a political disaster. Daily we see the existence of major gaps in public administration, that range from a weak organization for civil protection to the evidence of corrupt practices in urban development, that are having consequences which are paid for with innocent people’s lives.
We have proven that territorial planning is a non-existent field in our country. Bans on building in watersheds, river beds, or in their vicinity, or along the marshes near the ocean, as well as on geologically unstable slopes, are basic in any urban infrastructure feasibility study.
It’s about high-risk flooding and landslide locations, not just meteorological anomalies like the one we are facing, but rather during any normal rainfall period. These irregular developments, constructions erected on land that should be declared as incapable of development, respond to two faces of the Mexican Government corruption. The first, which can be seen in the touristic developments like the one in Ixtapa and Acapulco-Diamante [Guerrero], consists of a short-term business view that is willing to carry out its projects at whatever cost and take advantage of the lands best suited for their operation, those which are found as close as possible to the beaches, without caring that they are surrounded by lagoons and river mouths that are, clearly, risky.
However the second form of corruption, possibly even more harmful than the first, is the permissiveness on the part of the government which allows extra-legal settlements in dangerous sites, like those we have mentioned. Such is the case of the small districts on the outskirts of the Acapulco port and in the Sierra [Mountains]de Guerrero, which were destroyed by avalanches of water, stone, and mud that buried them on the 16th of September.
When urban planning is practiced correctly, its benefits are not noted; they are only visible in their absence. The recent calamities should teach us that we cannot further delay implementing a land-use policy that focuses on urban planning as a priority that goes beyond its economic benefits. Thorough land-planning and strict implementation of urban development laws could save many human lives. Spanish original