A Community Bonds Together and Elects Dialogue over Revenge
by Nathan Senge
LA PAZ, MEXICO – The Citizen Observatory (CO) is one of the Manglito fishing community’s finest accomplishments. Founded on June 20, 2009, when Noroeste Sustentable (NOS) joined with Plataforma Bahia de la Paz (PBDLP), it is an emblem of trust and commitment. Here fishers from all over the Manglito community and beyond have pledged to abstain from the one pursuit they know how to earn a living by: fishing the Callo de Hacha penshell clams and Catarina scallops of the Ensenada de la Paz. As they are doing this in a time of dire need, the lynchpin of the movement’s success remains providing income for the fishers while they commit to it.
But what about all those fishers in the community who cannot be provided for? How have they handled the situation? Well, their reactions have been very mixed, and at times have become violent.
On the night of May 19th, 2011, one fisher decided he would not be ignored. He picked up a baseball-sized rock and whipped it through the windshield of one of the CO’s pick-up trucks and then proceeded to cut its tires and key its chassis. No one has been able to identify the fisher, who fled the scene before CO workers returned.
The incident threw the community into uproar and fear. They had been making great progress with the CO, and by November of 2010, had claimed to have saved more that 700 tons of fish from being illegally caught, with an approximate value of 5 million USD. They had been riding on this success, building momentum from it, and now they did not know how to proceed.
The group began to splinter into emotional corners. Some sought retaliation, declaring that these types of vigilante acts could not be tolerated. Others withdrew into their fear, and wished to abandon the project, saying it was tearing the community apart. But before either of these polarizing options could gain ground, a small group returned to their dialogue circle. NOS co-director Alejandro Robles collected the stone that was sitting in the back of the truck and he, NOS co-director Liliana Gutiérrez Mariscal, Guillermo Mendéz, and Hubert Mendéz decided to sit down in a circle and have a converation. They placed the rock in the center of this circle, and they sat for a while with the pain of this act and all the community strife it symbolized. Then they began to talk, and through the difficult ensuing discussion, witnessed a third option emerge out of the dissonance.
Robles recalls that “we had been introduced to the concepts of systems thinking and creative tension a few months before, learning how the dialogue process is anchored in strong visions and an equally strong commitment to seeing one’s present reality clearly.” With this in mind, the four began the conversation by saying, “We want more fish in the water and a better income for the fishers’ families. But there is clearly something we are not understanding—we are getting stones thrown through the windshields of our workers’ trucks. How can we transform stones into clams? How can we harness the energy of angry fishermen and angry NOGs into creative energy?”
They agreed that more provisions had to be made for the starving families of the Manglito. They had to grow the group of fishers involved with NOS and provide them with income with all haste.
This conversation proved the seeding grounds for OPRE (Organización de Pescadores Rescatando la Ensenada/Fishers Organization to Rescue the Ensenada), the cooperative of local fishers pledged to the clam and scallop restoration projects of NOS, which now [in 2018] involves over a hundred fishers and their families and has successfully overseen the growth of over three million clams and a hundred thousand scallops in the Ensenada (both of which were nearly extinct before). And now, with the granting of their first concession, the Callo de Hachas were finally harvested in the summer of 2017 for the first time since the creation of the CO, and the catch far exceeded anyone’s expectations.
It was a watershed moment—for the first time since the fishers agreed not to fish, they were finally able to earn an income from their trade once again. And this is because they did not retaliate, but went into difficult dialogue and pledged not to abandon their community. As Hubert Mendéz says, “trust comes slowly, but it does come, if you stay vigilant and trust in the community itself.”
The picture below shows Beto Guillen, the Director of the Citizens Observatory (on the right), Hubert (left), and Guillermo (center). Beto, in Robles’s words, “is a highly committed marine biologist who literally risks his life at night monitoring and denouncing illegal activates in the larger Bay of La Paz. He actually once encountered Hubert and Guillermo one night in 2009, and thought they might be fishing illegally, but they were not. The incident initially threw them into conflict, a conflict they have now healed many years later. When this picture was taken in 2013, they had connected again. What was initially perceived as opposites in the fishery system could now be seen as complementary parts.”
Later that day, Beto wrote the following letter to Guillermo and Hubert.
La Paz, BCS on September 12, 2013
Hubert Méndez and Guillermo Méndez
Members of the Mangle Cenizo Cooperative
Hello,
This event that promotes Alejandro Robles today is the right event for expressing some of my thoughts.
I feel happy, excited, and satisfied (my check-in). I have the impression that, for those among us who have been the protagonists of a story that draws much attention, we have all had a silent communication and this seems a good time to give voice to that.
First of all, I want to tell you that I am very pleased to have met you, and under those circumstances, a dark and expectant night [in 2009], a calm and silent sea, a day of work for us both, each with our reasons to be out there with The Sea, in the end has united us.
For me, it [that night] seemed an unexpected challenge, but I had only a few seconds to act, and I do not regret it. Quite the contrary, every day that I greet you and remember that night, I hope it will not be interpreted as vainglory; I am glad to have made that decision. We will never know if we would have met each other later and in another way, but that day, at that hour, everything was right in its place.
Today, after a few years of knowing each other, the story is very different, although we have moved in silence, everyone from his place of work. It seems that we want the same thing and the Sea has joined us. May it last us many years, that we live in harmony and in peace with what surrounds us.
Finally, I want to emphasize my thank you for that attitude that has been an example for so many. Certainly you have faced criticism, but now, for challenging your own fate, for me you are triumphant. Thank you for the experience.
There is much to be done, touching the conscience of many companions both on land and at sea. There are even times that we have to sail against our own culture—perhaps that is the greatest challenge, although time itself is also our experience. To learn to combine these challenges and circumstances is to achieve wisdom.
In the name of the Observatorio Ciudadano, also transformed just like you, into a Network of Citizen Observers, and in my own name, I give my recognition to you and to your families, who must have also played an important role.
Alberto Guillén Guadarrama
Network of Citizen Observers (CO)
Nathan Senge is a Contributing Writer at the Academy for Systems Change.