June 13, 2007--An American Sahara (Latin America Press)
Mexico's arid north--54 percent of the nation's land surface--is drying out and blowing away in the wind at an alarming rate as desertification transforms the terrain into an American Sahara. Mexico's semi-arid region is turning into an arid wasteland at the rate of 2 percent a year. Fragile aquifers are sucked dry and arosion turn once-tillable land into sand dunes. Subsistence farmers abandon their plots and jump into the migration stream. But the north is not the only region of Mexico that is drying up. National Water Commission studies indicate that 38 Mexican cities, including the luxury resorts of Acapulco and Cancun, are running out of water and could be dry in a decade. There is one key reason for this tragic desertification: the re-privatization of land and water resources and their over-exploitation by Mexican and transnational agricultural businesses.
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