News of the Earth

Homero Aridjis, one of Latin America’s foremost literary figures, was born in Contepec, Michoacan. Many of his forty-five books of poetry and prose have been translated into fifteen languages, and his writing has been recognized with important literary prizes in Mexico, Italy, France, the United States, and Serbia. Formerly Mexican Ambassador to Switzerland, The Netherlands, and, most recently, UNESCO, during six years he was international president of PEN International and is now president emeritus. As founder (in 1985) and president of the Group of 100, an environmentalist association of writers, artists, and scientists, he has received awards from the United Nations (Global 500 Award), the Orion Society, Mikhail Gorbachev and Global Green USA and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana, New York, and Columbia universities and the University of California, (Irvine). His most recent books are the novel Esmirna en llamas (Fondo de Cultura Economica), Noticias de la Tierra, (with Betty Ferber), a collection of his writings and pioneering work on the environment (Random House Mondadori), Tiempo de ángeles/A Time of Angels (Fondo de Cultura Económica and City Lights) and Del cielo y sus maravillas, de la tierra y sus miserias (Fondo de Cultura Económica). Eyes to See Otherwise (New Directions), Solar Poems (City Lights) and 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile (University of New Mexico Press) are among other books available in English. Betty Ferber (Aridjis) born in New York and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College has served as the International Coordinator of the Grupo de los Cien (Group of 100) since its founding in 1985. She established and maintained contacts with individuals and organizations outside of Mexico and devised strategies for working together on issues as diverse as NAFTA, sea turtle protection, saving the gray whale birthing grounds at Laguna San Ignacio, monarch butterfly protection, opposition to dams on the Usumacinta River, the fate of tropical forests in Amazonia and Lacandonia, air pollution and climate change. Along with her husband, Homero Aridjis, she was honored by Mikhail Gorbachev and Global Green USA with the Green Cross Millennium Award for International Environmental Leadership. She has translated three novels by Homero Aridjis into English: 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile, The Lord of the Last Days: Visions of the Year 1000 and Persephone. With Canadian/Irish poet George McWhirter she coedited Eyes to See Otherwise, Selected Poetry of Homero Aridjis. With Homero Aridjis she organized three acclaimed international poetry festivals held in Mexico (Morelia, 1981, Mexico City, 1982 and 1987).

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgements

The Birds (autobiographical essay by H.A.)

1Mexico City and the Group of 100

Statement signed by 100 intellectuals and artists protesting air pollution in Mexico City (March 1, 1985)
The Group of 100’s exhibition
Eight proposals for combating pollution made by the Group of 100 (newspaper coverage)
Don’t drive today, the Group of 100 insists (proposes “One day without a car” program”)
The Group of 100: human life in Mexico City is endangered (coverage of severe air pollution)
The Group of 100 reports that this year’s thermal inversions are worse than 1987’s (air pollution)
The Group of 100: Mexico City is a vale of death (air pollution)
The UN found dangerous microorganisms in Mexico City’s air (revealed by Group of 100)
Mexico City’s Viceroys: Ecology and Democracy (H.A. article)
A Faint Blue Gas and A Green Rhetoric (H.A. article)
The Rains Came (H.A. article)
No Breathing Today (H.A. article)
Pollution and the Doubledecker Freeway (H.A. article)
All That is Green Will Perish (H.A. article)
A Social Earthquake, 20 Years Later (H.A. article, 20 years after disastrous 1985 earthquake)
Sister Water (H.A. article, about water resources in Mexico)
Breathing Death (H.A. article, air pollution)
Mexico-Tenochtitlan-Federal District (H.A. essay, historical overview)
2Grandeur and Misery of the Monarch Butterfly (Fate of the Monarch Butterfly
over the past forty years)

The Monarch Butterfly: Memory and Poetry (H.A. essay)
Forest Fires and Loggers Are Destroying the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuaries
Grandeur and Misery of the Monarch Butterfly (H. A. article)
Logging Could Lead to Their Disappearance in Twenty Years )proposal for government to protect Monarch Reserve by purchasing the land)
A Conspiracy Against the Monarch (H.A. article)
An Alliance Against the Monarch (H.A. article)
The Banality of Destruction (H.A. article)
The Extent of Logging (H.A. article)
Censored Butterflies (H.A. article)
The New Monarch Butterfly Reserve (H.A. article)
Butterflies in the Storm (H. A. article)
Twilight of the Monarch (H.A. article)
Marked for Death (H.A. article)
Monarchs for Gold (H.A. article)

3Sea Turtles, a Tortured Road to Extinction

Sea Turtles, a Tortured Road to Extinction (five parts) (H.A. article)
Killing Off Sea Turtles (H.A. article)
Golden Eggs (H.A. article)
Sea Turtles Under Attack (H.A. article)
Eating Grandma (H.A. article)
Saving the Leatherback (H.A. article)
SEMARNAT Under a Carapace (H.A. article)

4And God Created the Great Whales

Group of 100: In Defense of Whales (Group of 100 ad published in The New York
Times)
One Country vs. the World (H.A. article about Japanese whaling)
The Silence of the Whales (H.A. article revealing saltworks project in grey whale
sanctuary)
Group of 100: There is More Than One Way to Kill a Whale (Group of 100
ad published in The New York Times)
Whale Sushi (H.A. article)
Whales in the Desert (H.A. article)
Friends of Japan, Enemies of Whales? (H.A. article)
Patrimony and Democracy in Danger? (H.A. article)
Whales, the Triumph of Life (H.A. article about cancellation of saltworks project)
Save Them, Eat Them (H.A. article about whaling)
Bloody Seas (H.A. article about Taiji dolphin drive hunt)

5American Earth

A Latin American Ecological Alliance (Group of 100 ad published in The New
York Times)
The Fate of the Amazon (Group of 100 Letter to President Sarney published in The
News)
The Destruction of Amazonia (H.A. article)
Syphilis: The Other Quincentennial? (H.A. article)
The Demographic Reconquest (H.A. article, about Mexicans in the U.S.)
Dear Mr. President (H.A. article, about U.S. policy towards Mexico)

6Mexican Earth

Montes Azules, or the End of the Lacandon Rain Forest (Six parts) (H.A. article)
Talking about the Forest While Destroying the Forest (H.A. article)
Chiapas: The Call of the Forest (H.A. article, about Zapatista uprising)
The Destruction of Montes Azules (H.A. article)
Fox vs the Usumacinta (H.A. article, about megadams in Mexico)
The Giant Saguaro Must Stay in Mexico (H.A. article)
The Collapse of the Nautical Staircase (H.A. article, about the Sea of Cortes)
The Rape of the Reef (H.A. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr article in San Diego
Union-Tribune)
Beyond the Legend ((H.A. article, about Popocatepetl volcano)
Where the Sky Was Born (H.A. essay about Sian Ka’an, in Quintana Roo)

7The Indigenous Labyrinth

The Indigenous Labyrinth (H.A. article)
Indian is Beautiful (H.A. article)
Huichols vs Miners (Group of 100 petition in defense of Huichol sacred lands)

8Mexico in Flames

Group of 100: Mexico in Flames (Group of 100 ad)
Where There’s Fire, There’s Smoke (H.A. article)
Requiem for a Paradise (H.A. article)

9Endangered Mexico

The Nuclear Dream Produces Monsters (Group of 100 letter to Mexico’s president)
Group of 100 Questions Environment Minister About Anti-pollution Measures
Lead in Our Blood (Group of 100 ad about lead pollution in Mexico)
Natural Sovereignty (H.A. World Environment Day speech)
Coatzacoalcos, River of Death ((H.A. article, about petrochemical pollution)
The Caverns of Time, or PRI-History (H.A. article, denouncing dinosaur
theme park in Cacahuamilpa caves)
Barry Sendel is in Cuernavaca (H.A. article, follow-up about Cacahuamilpa)
The Case of the Poisoned Milk ((H.A. article, about radioactive milk powder
imported to Mexico)
The Science Teacher and the Environmentalists (H.A. article, about cruise ship pier in
Cozumel)
The Children of Guanajuato ((H.A. article, about mass bird die-off at Presa de Silva
reservoir polluted by tanneries, and first NAFTA CEC petition)
Group of 100: For the first time, the legal standing of non-governmental organizations in defense of the environment is recognized, in case brought by the Group of 100
Megaproject Threatens the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (H.A. article)
Our Own Flood (H.A. article, about disastrous flooding in Mexico)
The Seeds of Wrath (H.A. article, about GMOs in Mexico)
Opposing Mexico City’s New Airport May Ruffle a Few Feathers
(Group of 100 ad published in The New York Times)
And the Birds Will Speak ((H.A. article, cancellation of Lake Texcoco airport)
A War of Symbols (Walmart in Teotihuacan) (H.A. article)
The Environmental Crime of the Fox Presidency? (H.A. article, about sucking dry
the pools at Cuatro Cienegas)


10The Global War on Animals

Defending Dolphins (H.A. article)
Animal Rights (H.A. article)
The Global War on Animals (H.A. article)
The Absence of the Bees (H.A. article)
Requiem for a Dolphin (H.A. article)
Jellyfish (H.A. article about global expansion of jellyfish blooms)
A World With No Tigers (H.A. article)
A Jump Backwards (H.A. article about the disappearance of frogs)

11The Earth Belongs to Everyone

The Rights of Nature (H.A. article)
Letter to the Pope about the Blue Planet (H.A. article)
The Morelia Declaration: Approaching the Year 2000 (Group of 100 international
symposium ad published in The New York Times)
The Age of Ecology/ The Earth-Sun (H.A. speech at the Global Forum during the
Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 1992)
The Second Morelia Declaration (Group of 100 international symposium ad
published in The New York Times)
El Niño Event of the Century (H.A. article)
The Earth Year 2000 (H.A. article)
The World’s Thirst (H.A. article)
The Fifth Sun, the Earth Speaks (H.A. article)
Who Cares about the Earth? (H.A. article)
Get Close to the Stars (H.A. article)



Development and Sustainability: How Much, For Whom, Until When? (H.A. essay)

Approaching the End of the Millenium (H.A. lecture given at the Inter-American Development Bank)