The disappeared in Mexico – 10 men lost amidst the violence

Mexico’s Human Rights Commission reports that 24 000 people are missing in the country. Judicial and law enforcement agencies are struggling to deal with the sheer volume of the lost amongst the violence that has ripped through parts of Mexico in recent years.

Mexico City Gets On Its Bike

What was once the world’s most polluted City has been cleaning up it’s act. Public transport has been given a boost and the bicycle has been widely promoted as the new way to get around Mexico’s capital. Ecobici is the  City’s government’s latest gambit to impulse two wheel travelling. The scheme, billed as “Individual Public Transport” has taken off in the Cities wealthier zones. We hopped on to take a look.

Pulque Revival in Mexico City

Pulque is the pungent, alcoholic drink that Pre hispanic Mexicans believed was a Gift from the Gods. But until recently it found itself down and out, as pulque joints in Mexico City closed by the dozen and Mexicnas turned to new and exotic beverages such as beer and tequila. But now it’s making a comeback in a revival spearheaded by the City’s hipster youth who are keen to get back in touch with their roots. We report from Mexico City.

Anti Peña Nieto March in Mexico City

The Mexican elections may be over but the demonstrations continue. This Sunday marches took place in several cities as protestors took to the streets against the winner of the most votes, Enrique Peña Nieto. Marchers claim his party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, used illict funds and bought votes during the election campaign. Peña Nieto won more than three million votes more than his nearest rival but the protests are scheduled to continue. John Holman reports on the march in Mexico City, and what the protestors hope to achieve, with camera by Tania Miranda.

From Turtle hunting to Cosmetics co operative: The Story of Mazunte

Sun, sea, sand.. and problems. When turtle fishing was outlawed in Mexico in 1991 it stripped Mazunte village of its biggest source of income. Villagers in this marginalized area on the Mexican Pacific Coast wondered what to do next. Working wth local NGO’s, they came up with an unusual solution: a cosmetics company. British giant The Bodyshop helped kickstart the project, donating know-how and secret recipes. Run purely by locals, the co operative shares the profits between them and produces their organic cosmetics in a small factory in the village. We made the trip to see how the project is doing.

Impunity and violence in Sierra Tarahumara

Ana Lozano brushes a hand across her face to stifle a tear. After three years she is still angry.

In August 2008 armed men entered the village of Creel, a mountain tourist town in the foot hills of the Sierra Tarahumara, and shot 12 young people and a baby to death at a village dance. Ana’s son Oscar was among them. He was 19-years-old and had just started University. The local police were inexplicably absent whilst the killing occurred.

Ana sits in her hair dresser salon as the shadows of dusk fall outside. Her face bears the signs of resignation. She speaks softly, almost gently of the obstacles she faced as she sought the killers of her son, of the policeman friend who told her early on to give up, that it had already been decided that the case was going nowhere. She speaks of finding out who the killers are and telling police, but in the end she concluded that it was useless to rely on the State authorities.

“My sister and I dedicated ourselves to finding out who did this for three years and we saw many things, how the drugs were distributed, and how the police was in complicity with the criminals, how the Government was involved and protecting them.”

She is the only relative of the murdered youths that we could find to talk to us. One of the other parents had himself been killed whilst investigating the killing of his son. Another parent said that the groups’ usual spokesperson, Yuriana Almendrez, had been forced to flee to the US in the last couple of weeks after being threatened. Al Jazeerarepeatedly tried to reach Yuriana on her cellphone, but without success.

A violent land

For many Creel is the entry point for the mountainous Sierra Tarahumara, part of the longer Sierra Madre mountain chain. It’s located in Chihuahua State in the North of Mexico, where homicide has been the leading cause of death in the last two years. The Sierra Madre itself has a murder rate far above the national average.

Conversely, it is also a tourist attraction; both national and international visitors flock to see the copper Canyon, the deepest in North America, and the Tarahumara indigenous people, famed for their ability to run huge distances.

However, behind the carefully constructed tourist scene lies the other business in the Sierra Tarahumara. Drugs are the local cash crop, and marijuana and heroin poppy plantations lie hidden in the folds of the mountains. Farmers here have been forced by economic necessity to grow “the crop that pays” which they then sell on to drug cartels. It is common to see them tending to their crops with a rifle slung over their shoulder.

Illegal drug production and it’s attendant problems have made the Sierra Tarahumara a highly violent region for the past 40 years. The rugged mountain zone is difficult for police to penetrate and problems are resolved by the gun, be it a family blood feud or a dispute over a drug haul.

But lately things have been getting worse.

Battling for drug routes

Miroslava Breach was born in these hills and has spent the last 15 years covering them for national newspaper La Jornada. In July of this year she reported on a startling phenomenon, plane loads of armed men descending into the region apparently with the objective of opening up new drug routes out of the mountains. Locals indicated that the men were from the Sinaloa cartel, under the control of Mexico’s most powerful drug Lord “El Chapo”.

Ms Breach says that violence has subsequently ignited in the region as the Sinaloa Cartel fights for the routes with “La Linea”, the armed wing of the Juarez Cartel.

“The cartel of Sinaloa has made inroads to most of the production areas. There are not too many zones now in which the Juarez cartel is in control.”

She adds that the gunmen brought in from outside the region by battling cartels have made the violence more generalised in the Sierra Tarahumara.

“Even though before the gangs were enemies, they were all from the sierra. They knew not to kill those not involved. They took more responsibility fortheir actions, because it’s where they lived. Now people are coming in from outside the region and they don’t care about this code.”

The violence unleashed has decimated some villages in the zone. Mexican investigative magazine Proceso reports the evacuation of one village threatened by armed men in April. At the end of June local newspaper El Heraldo de Chihuahua reported an ambush in which police and millitary were attacked by a criminal group who then fled, leaving a camp of 60 provisional houses and 50 vehicles behind them. At the end of August a grave was found with seven bodies in Guachochi, a municipality that Al Jazeera passed through on our visit.

A difficult task

The Governor of Chihuahua, Cesar Duarte is adamant that reforms to the legal system are now cutting down on violence in the State.

“Now more than 98 per cent of those arrested are not released, we’ve achieved a profound change in our judicial system that is allowing us to combat impunity.”

When asked by Al Jazeera what he planned to do to combat the wave of violence in the Sierra Madre he replied,

“In the last year the levels of violence have decreased. International and National Security organisations agree regarding this. In Chihuahua there has been a notable decrease in kidnapping and criminal homicides.”

However Chihuahua still sits comfortably in first place in the National Security Ministry table of criminal homicides with 2,147 so far this year.

Writer Richard Grant says that even with a better police system, enforcing law in the Sierra Tarahumara is impractical at best. He lived in the area for several months in 2008, writing a book about his experience, before being hunted through the woods by would be killers.

“Even with an honest police force, this would be a very difficult place to police. Geographically, the mountains are so rugged and remote, and drugs and the violence are so deeply entrenched. Given that the police and the army are involved in the drug trafficking themselves, law and order is clearly not a possibility.”

On our last afternoon in Creel, the sun beams down on the dusty main street. We are ready to leave, and so are several milk and bread delivery trucks parked outside the small police station.

They are waiting for their escort, policemen clad in camouflage fatigues and balaclavas. After four hold ups this year, even the big grocery companies are feeling the tension in the mountains. They only travel together, and with their borrowed armed guards now. The police pull on their bulletproof vests and strap on their machine guns. The convoy heads out at high speed, one police car in front, one behind.

The region they leave behind does not enjoy the same protection. Left to the mercy of fighting drug cartels, the people living in these mountains have little to look forward to but more violence ahead.

This article was first published by Al Jazeera English here.

Avocados and marijuana in the Sierra Madre

The small aircraft touches down in a tiny dirt track airstrip, hidden in the folds of the surrounding mountains. A crowd of men wait for us in pickup trucks. They are heavy set, clad in jeans and trucker hats. Strong hands grasp ours in greeting before we all clamber onto the pickups, and the strange convoy sets off. Our destination is a three hour ride away over a dirt road, weaving around the edges of giant canyons and plunging through clear mountain streams.

We are in the Sierra Madre, the ‘Mother Mountains’ of Northern Mexico. In a country currently struggling against a wave of drug led violence, these rugged lands have long been the apex of all that is wild, violent and illegal.

Here, blood feuds regularly erupt that can wipe out entire families. It’s not an uncommon sight to see farmers work with rifles swung on to their shoulders. Many of them are employed in producing the only crops that really pay here: marijuana and heroin poppies.

The cash cow of the Sierra Madre

Strangers are not welcome here. We arrive with Martin Solis, a man born in these mountains and who has twice been mayor in neighbouring town Guachochi. Now, he works for the Chihuahua state government. Slim, ruddy and sporting a Stetson hat, he greets a dark eyed, softly spoken man as we ease our way off the plane.

This man is Lico. He is the leader of the community, both in their legal and illegal activities, Solis tells us. Lico speaks softly, but carries an air of command. The land we are travelling in is all his, and the men perched in, and on, the other pickup trucks are all his relations.

After rumbling past boulders and up steep pothole ridden slopes for most of the morning, we finally arrive at an expanse of emerald green. The convoy lurches to a stop and we climb gingerly down, to be assaulted by the powerful aroma of thousands of marijuana plants.

In 2009, the US State Department estimated that around 12,000 hectares of marijuana were grown in Mexico, a 35 per cent increase on the year before. Much of it was cultivated here in the Sierra Madre. Farmers have been harvesting “the crops that pay” for four decades, seemingly impervious to repeated Mexican army campaigns to slash and burn the small parcels of marijuana that cover the mountains.

As we clamber amongst the chest high cannabis plants, Solis, the State government representative, watches on impassively from the sidelines. It’s difficult for the government to deny the existence of the main cash crop in this region, and it’s proved just as difficult to eradicate it.

However, recently the Chihuahua State Government has had a different idea to wean farmers away from their biggest cash crop.

Enter avocados

A series of factors have been driving marijuana prices down in the Sierra Madre, Solis says. The upsurge in marijuana production in California has reduced demand here. Drug gangs fighting over supply routes from the Sierra Madre have exacerbated problems. Whilst the battle continues, the farmers say it’s difficult to move crops, and this year’s harvest remains in the warehouse.

With the downturn in fortunes for marijuana growers, the state government spotted an opportunity. In January of this year, Solis was placed in charge of a programme to offer farmers the resources and support to grow alternative crops.

Avocados were chosen for the scheme. They grow well in the Sierra Madre soil and are currently fetching a high price, due in itself to a shortage from avocado farmers in the southern state of Michoacan, who are encountering problems with drug gangs.

Since the start of the programme, Solis has helped farmers plant 80,000 avocado trees in 200 hectares across the Sierra Madre. The state government provides the plants, along with fences and irrigation technology.

It has appeared to meet with early success; farmers in eight of the Sierra Madre’s 17 municipalities have joined in, but Solis is pragmatic about their reasons.

“We arrived just at the moment when growing drugs stopped being good business and people wanted something that gave them a better income. That’s why farmers are entering the scheme, not because of any social conscience, but because they want more money.”

Debating the future

We finally arrive to what he wants to show us, fields with sprouts of avocado crops growing a few hundred metres down from the marijuana plantations.

The avocado trees are flourishing in Don Manuel Loera’s plot of land. He shows us around, inspecting the plants with his large, work-stained hands. Speaking deeply from beneath an impressive moustache, he says that he had grown marijuana all his life but was tired of always looking over his shoulder.

“I wanted to grow something legal, to not be always looking out for the law.”

However, experts in drug policy remain sceptical as to whether the programme could eventually replace drug growth in the mountains. Edgardo Buscaglia, an international security expert, says there is little the government can do to affect trade.

“Even when considering that marijuana is just a minuscule proportion of total annual gross income for the Sinaloa organisation and other Mexican organised crime groups, one can say with confidence that international market forces have much more power to determine the relative attraction to farmers of marijuana growing than anything that the Mexican government could do locally regarding eradication or substitution programmes.”

However Alejandro Madrazo Lajous, a Mexican lawyer working on drug law reform, says that at least the programme marks a new direction for official policy.

“It is good that states take their own initiatives and break rank from simply following the federal government’s failed policy of repression as the first and last measure, to which President Calderon has stubbornly stuck to. A lot of state violence is directed towards producers of the crops, who are often the poorest in the supply chain, and it’s great if this means a change of approach. This programme is not going to solve the problem, but it shows a shifting of attitudes, which should be encouraged.”

The hopes of Martin Solis are more modest. He says the programme is designed to give farmers who depend solely on drug crops another option. Whether they take it is up to them.

As we head back to the tiny air strip, Lico and the rest of the convoy break out bottles of lechugilla, the bootlegged liquor famous in this region. Hurtling round the mountain curves, our increasingly boisterous escort becomes more enthusiastic about the avocado programme than ever.

Still, it will not be an overnight solution. It takes two years for the first crops to ripen, but even then, farmers such as 24 year-old Edmundo Loera, who currently grows marijuana, remain optimistic that a change could be afoot.

“My children won’t have to do what I do here if the avocado scheme takes off.”

Whether that enthusiasm is enough to break the habits of a lifetime for those in this hard and remote corner of Mexico is the real test of the programme.

This article was first published on Aljazeera English here.

Follow John Holman on Twitter: @mexicorrespond

Top Mexican chef on Mexican food and UNESCO award

The chefs at El Refugio are waiting around anxiously. Restaurant owner Claudio Hall sips the Mole sauce from a dainty taster cup. He pauses dramatically, the little clay cup still clasped to his pursed lips. His face behind it’s small round spectacles is impenetrable. Finally he gives a brisk nod of his head. “Its good” he says.

With this the morning drama finishes in satisfied smiles at Mexican restaurant ‘El Refugio’. Mole, the rich sauce used to cover meat dishes, is seen as the ultimate litmus test in the world of Mexican cuisine. This family run restaurant has been perfecting it since the 1950’s, promising “traditional Mexican food made in the traditional Mexican way”.

In the worst of years for Mexico, in which over 15 000 people were killed in an increasingly desperate struggle against organized crime, success stories have been few and far between.

Perhaps that is why Mexican cuisine being placed on “UNESCO’s intangible heritage list” was greeted so joyfully. The list which, also includes flamenco, falconry and gingerbread crafting from Northern Croatia seeks to heighten awareness of unique culture customs.

Local newspapers used to recounting the latest gruesome killings happily chirruped over Mexico’s culinary prowess as it joined gastronomical powerhouse France on the coveted list.

What this actually means in practical terms is hard to qualify; it’s hard to safeguard a gastronomical culture the same way as an ancient ruin. But chefs like Claudio Hall are hopeful that the accolade has at least afforded more recognition for true Mexican food.

“The problem with the pereception of Mexico food in the world today is that people think it’s tex mex food. They have no idea of the complexity and the different ingredients we use…. What UNESCO’s done has really validated what’s been happening here for the last 300 years. It’s really emphasized the many regions of Mexico and how well made the food is.”

Touted as having one of the three most varied cultures in the world by UNESCO, Mexico is perhaps the only place in the world that you can eat red peppers baked in corn wrapped in banana leafs for breakfast (tamales), then chicken with chocolate mole sauce for lunch and huge chillies stuffed with spicy minced meat and coated with yoghurt for dinner, followed by a few fried grasshoppers with your beer if it takes your fancy.

And that’s just in one city. Food varies widely in each of Mexico’s 31 states, with the population of each region fiercely proud of their speciality. It’s a unique culinary landscape that survived and embraced the Spanish invasion over 400 years ago, melding  iberian influences with existing prehispanic gastronomy to present the melting pot that is a meal in Mexico.

The mixture has taken thousands of years to perfect, but concerns persist that the entire process of tradition Mexican cooking is being lost far more rapidly, precisely what UNESCO seeks to prevent. Hall says that El Refugio is one of only two or three restaurants in the capital that make Mexican food from scratch, even grinding the corn to make the tortilla.

He blames the influence of foreign fast food chains spreading out their tentacles around the country. Even in smaller Mexican towns pizzerias and burger bars are ubiquitous and restaurants in which Mexican food is prepared in the traditional manner seem to often be pricier affairs catering more to tourists seeking the “authentic” Mexican culinary experience, than to nationals appreciating their own cuisine.

However, the true refuge of the country’s food culture remains in homes around the country, where the old recipes still hold sway and regional dishes are prepared with the time and attention they deserve. Mexican housewives who may have not even have heard of UNESCOs accolade continue to make their own efforts to safeguard this pillar of the national identity.

People’s Justice From the Mountains of South Mexico

Headless bodies pile up outside shopping centres, bus loads of tourists disappear only to be later dug out of mass graves and politicians are brutally beaten into comas. Welcome to Guerrero, one of the most brutal states in Mexico, even before drug violence slashed its way through it’s resort city of Acapulco. Poppy fields, drug trafficking, police and army brutality are emblematic of this turbulent region.

In the green hills of the very same state, the region of San Luis Acatlan is basking in the heat of a long warm afternoon. Old men talk quietly outside a village store. Inside a child snoozes in a hammock as his grandmother sells soft drinks to young girls passing by. Housewives gather to gossip around steaming pots of boiling corn on the cob and a turkey scratches around the village square. It seems a far cry from the violence erupting in many other parts of Guerrero.

The key to the calm lies within the village hall. Inside many men sit or stand with their rifles hanging from their shoulders or resting on their knees. Their only uniform is a green T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Community Police”. Practically the whole village has also turned out for the meeting. It is the monthly “General Assembly” of the CRAC, the indigenous community police force that provides law and order in the mountain villages of Guerrero.

A Violent Past

Fifteen years ago, things were very different. Catalina Hernandez Martinez is sitting with her friends, enjoying the afternoon heat outside her house. She remembers the violence of the mid 1990s in these hills.

“ Before they robbed your cow, your goat, they assaulted you. The State Police would arrest someone and then he would give them a bit of money and would be allowed to escape. If the family had money, the police didn’t listen to you.”

Brutal bouts of violence, kidnappings, rape and assault had engulfed the region by1995. Villagers say that, far from providing protection, local government police more often acted with criminals, releasing those that the villagers had helped to detain. These poor indigenous villages are easy prey for bandits. Isolated and ignored by the state government, they were left to fend for themselves against an ongoing crime wave.

Finally the villagers decided enough was enough. They voted for the formation of a new police force, formed from the community that worked for the community.

detainees stand in front of the community assembly. Photo by Javier Verdin

Listening to the elders

Members of this new police force are chosen by the village elders. Once chosen, service is obligatory and unpaid. The practice reaches back to the ancient prehispanic Mexican customs in which every man must serve his village for a time in a role that the elders of the village choose. The police have rifles and radios but little transport.

The penitentiary system is simple. Those found guilty of crimes are forced to work for the community, digging ditches, building bridges or roads during the day, before sleeping in their cells in the evening. Food is provided by the families of the prisoners. This process of “Re-education” involves talks by village elders in which they attempt to make prisoners recognize their errors and it’s impact on the community. They are released only when it’s judged by the village elders that their conduct has changed and they are ready for a role in society again.

Three villages adopted the program to start with. Local NGO La Montaña Tlachinolla says that by 2000 the project had lowered crime by 90%.  Now there are more than 60 villages in the region patrolled by a total of 650 Community policemen. The project is still growing as neighboring indigenous communities see the success it has enjoyed.

Troubles with the state

However, the first years were difficult. The state police reacted by imprisoning the leaders in 2000. The crimes including rape, which were never proved. When an armed stand off then ensued, the tension reached breaking point.

Subsequent relations have thawed. Jose Bautista, regional Commander of the State police in the Costa chica now attends the monthly meeting of the community police., As his patrol drives into the town he greets the Community police regional coordinator with a gift; some new handcuffs. He admits that in the past there has been problems between the two authorities, but says they are now looking to the future.

“We are looking to strengthen our relationship with the Community Police. We want to work together because it’s the only way we can advance, on our own neither of us can succeed.”

photo by Javier Verdin

Questionable Justice

Fransisco Garcia Aguilar speaks out from behind bars. He has been imprisoned for homicide and wears the same T-shirt as all the other prisoners, bearing the ominous slogan “As you see me, you could see yourself”. He feels abandoned by the Community Police judicial process.

“They don’t let us speak out, there are no human rights here. They don’t allow us to have lawyers. There are a lot of innocent people here and we need help.”

Jelasio Barrera, a village elder, confirms that the accused are not allowed lawyers. Instead a member of their family can represent them when they go to their trial, in which the jury is again made up of the elders of the village.

Next to the complex legal systems of many developed countries to some this seems an undemocratic approach with substantial room for error.  However members of the community seem satisfied that at least when a crime is committed someone goes to jail.

State impunity

It is a trend in marked contrast to a country seething with impunity. According to recent figures, a crime in Mexico has only a 1 to 2 percent chance of leading to a conviction or jail time. In Ciudad Juarez, amongst the most violent cities on earth, Associate Press reports that of 2 600 people killed in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases and got 19 convictions.

Despite proposed wider ranging reforms to the judicial and police system in Mexico, corruption remains rampant amidst a police force further overwhelmed by the drug war. Jesus Huerta is one of the founders of the Community Police. He now despairs of government solutions.

“in mexico there’s no justice. If there was justice there wouldn’t be any poverty. If there was justice we farmers wouldn’t have to take in our own hands what the state is incapable of resolving.”

The afternoon wears on in San Luis de Acatlan. As the meeting ends the Community Police and villagers stream out to cut open coconuts and drink the warm milk. The murmur of chatter drifts  around the village plaza as these farmers turned policemen mingle with their community. Whilst other parts of the country reel from increasing violence, this little pocket of Guerrero seems for now to have found it’s way to peace.

Breaking the Waves: A Grey whale story

Silence reigns over San Ignacio lagoon in North Mexico. The only sound is the hum of an idling motor in the launch that has brought the half-dozen tourists to the centre of the lake. They grip the side of the boat, straining to see movement in the depths below or squint off into the middle distance with cameras held in eager hands. It is a tense, expectant still, broken only by the occasional excited squawk of a false alarm.

Suddenly a huge flipper rises into the air, flails around and slips back into the icy waters of the lagoon. Seconds later another appears, before the water is alive with a windmill of giant flailing extremities. As the tourists coo and point, three huge bodies briefly rise to the surface before disappearing from view as the complex gyrations continue.

This is the mating of the grey whale, taking place in the most public of bedrooms. They travel up to 10,000km each year to enact the ritual, beginning the long swim in the icy waters of the Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi seas between Russia and Alaska before heading here, to the balmier water of the Northern Mexico Bajan California peninsula. It is the longest migration of any mammal in the world.

photo by Dr. Jorge Urbano

A tricky proposition

An adult whale is between 10-11 metres long and weighs 35 tons, a size that can make mating a tricky proposition. The act is necessarily a ménage a trois, in which two male whales stabilise the body of the female between them. All three of them float belly up and, whilst one of the males mates with the female, the other acts as a stabiliser. Although many males may mate with a female, the ultimate father of her calf will be the one who has left the largest amount of sperm the deepest within her.

Grey whale expert Dr Jorge Urban has spent his life watching the giant mammals. He says that this year there are four times the normal number of whales in the lagoon. He puts the increase down to them eating particularly well in the northern feeding grounds and this year’’s particularly cold seas.

In the four months between the end of the year and April, the lagoon is a hive of breeding, birthing and suckling. Mothers and their calves emerge from the water side by side, whilst other whales jump and play in the water.

The Devil Fish

The old whale hunters had a special respect for the grey whale, which fought them so ferociously that it was given the name “Devil Fish”. Its struggles could not prevent it from nearing the brink of extinction. A ban on hunting and a vigorous effort to protect them has helped numbers up to around 25,000 worldwide.

Mexico has played a special part of this, providing the first whale sanctuaries in the world, says Dr Lorenzo Rojas, Mexico’s representative on the World Whale Commission. Each year marine biologists and whale watchers descend upon the Baja California peninsula.

The tourists wear an almost uniform expression of enthusiastic incredulity. They come from all over the globe for a glimpse of the whales. Ciuliana Zoboli and her family are on vacation from Italy. Still in her life jacket, she enthuses about these almost prehistoric looking creatures.

“It’s a magnificent thing because we’re making contact with the natural world, with the sea. You can hear the sounds of the whales breathing and that immerses you in nature.”

The whales in turn seem to appreciate the attention. Playing around the tourist boats they often pop up alongside for tourists to run their hands over their warm, rubbery skin. The “Devil Fish” persona has been replaced by a curiosity for humans that may be due to the fact that the whale hugs the coastline closely in its migration, seeing oil rigs, pleasure boats and shipping along the way.

From being the scourge of whale hunters, the grey whale is now commonly acknowledged by experts as the friendliest whale to humans in the sea.

photo by Dr. Jorge Urbano

The legend of Pachico

This friendly reputation did not stop fisherman in San Ignacio viewing them with suspicion for years, fearing these huge, almost prehistoric-looking beasts. The first fisherman to overcome his trepidation and touch a whale, Pachico Mayoral, has grown into a legendary figure around the lagoon.

Since his daring feat the fishermen have realised the benefits the whales offer them, taking tourists out to see the whales and establishing camps around the side of the lagoon to put them up. Mayoral himself established one of the first of them, which is still going strong today.

But the benefits that tourism has brought has been mixed with a strong spirit of conservation. As fisherman Alejandro Gallegos says: “If we don”t take care of the whales our families won’t have food on the table. We have to take care of them so that our descendants can live and work the same way.”

Only a certain number of boats are allowed out on the lake at any given time as the community seeks to limit human interference in the lives of the giant mammals. Whale-watching camps are purposefully as basic as possible in an attempt to merge rather than superimpose on nature.

The lost population

Around 130 grey whales never make the journey to Mexico’s lagoons. This small group of West Pacific Grey Whales remains a mystery even to their most fervent scientific admirers. They feed in the seas off Sakhalin in Eastern Russia, but from there, the group’s migration route is a mystery.

No one knows where their breeding grounds lie, although they are thought to be somewhere between the coasts of Korea and China. The groups numbers are so low that scientists worry that they may not be around for too much longer.

For the 25,000 grey whales that head to Baja California, the future looks brighter. The sun begins to set on lagoon San Ignacio. The last whale-watching boat has come in and the silence is punctuated only by the soft explosion of spray as huge barnacled backs rise to the surface then sink back down.

Luxuriating beneath the tranquil waters of the lagoon, these huge beasts contemplate another long journey north.