Caso vaquita marina: ecología política y periodismo

Abstract

The following text is a journalistic follow-up on the problem of the vaquita marina in Mexico. The excerpt from an investigation carried out over a period of five years that has allowed me to understand a complex local environmental problem with international ramifications. As Dr. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, one of the most visible scientific and spokesman about the vaquita conservation in recent years, once told me, what began as a small conservation problem grew uncontrollably until it became entangled with criminal groups to become a complex and difficult conflict. While international scientists proposed ways to conserve the Mexican porpoise, the green intelligence organization, Earth League International, studied the case from an international security perspective. This text is based on this second perspective, on how an international illegal trafficking network is feeding the vaquita problem being the specie an incidental victim of the network. That said, the reader will understand the problem of the Mexican cetacean from a zenithal perspective: from the buyers in China, the illegal fishing boats in Mexican waters, the corruption of the Mexican authorities and the violence generated by the organized crime due to the absence of rule of law. This is a chapter about the drama of the vaquita that goes beyond its habitat in the Upper Gulf of California.