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The Comite Nacional para la Defensa de los Chimalapas*
In fact, for the chimas, the defense of their patrimony is a fundamental part of their history ... What is new is the growing interest of different branches of government and of national and international groups, which have realized the importance of the Chimalapas.
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Although often individually weak and marginalized in Mexico, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous communities coalesced in the early 1990s around the issue of preserving the Chimalapas rain forest in southeastern Mexico. They then brought the problem to national and international attention and eventually helped force the redrawing of a proposed highway route. This research note will analyze the formation and activities of the Comite Nacional para la Defensa de los Chimalapas (CNDCHIM), a network of environmental NGOs, artists and intellectuals, activists and researchers, and representatives of forty-five indigenous communities in the Chimalapas. CNDCHIM formed in 1991 in response to a proposed highway that was to run through La Reserva El Ocote in the Chimalapas, one of Mexico's last two rain forests. The Chimalapas issue is extremely complex, entailing social justice, land tenure, megaprojects, federal and state politics, and environmental policy. This study will focus mostly on CNDCHIM and its relationship with the Mexican government, placing the organization within the context of agrarian conflict and the political and ecological issues surrounding the potential destruction of the Chimalapas.1
CNDCHIM is an unusual entity in Mexican environmental mobilization because of its impact on policy But it is also unique because the group has brought together in a relatively sustained manner the middleclass, urban-based environmental activists who in recent years have been the most visible wing of the environmental movement and grassroots indigenous, community-based groups who have long fought for local management of natural resources but are only now receiving national attention. In fact, the Comite Nacional is part of a growing trend of formal network formation among many Mexican grassroots and nongovernmental organizations. The term formal network formation is used here to distinguish these networks from submerged networks. The latter term has been used by social-movement theorists such as Alberto Melucci and Maria Pilar Garcia to refer to a kind of amorphous entity that "underlies the more visible forms...