Gooooaaaallll!!!: A Baja Victory

CD: So you had the undersecretary of the environment for the whole of Mexico?

SD: Yeah, it's me and Jose de Jesus Zarela who runs the company, Kuyima Ecotourism in San Ignacio. And he works very closely with all the guys at Punta Abreojos.

CD: You show up and all these bigwigs are there.

Goooaaaalll!!!

SD: And they are not happy. We're having a very good day, and they're having a very bad day. Someone has told them to go there. It's 11 o'clock at night and this guy who is the head of the Escalera Nautica project, he was so angry I thought he was going to hit me. He lost it on the air and he lost it in front of us. Literally raving. "How dare you attack 'mi projecto'" He's getting louder and angrier, while we're getting calmer because the only way to win this thing is by being diplomatic and being positive.

We were so positive on it that we didn't give him much to go on. We said, look, we want this project to be successful, but building marinas on the Pacific coast of Baja is not a good idea. Destroying Baya de Los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez is not a good idea. The message was, if you invest in existing infrastructure in Ensenada, Los Cabos, La Paz and Mazatlan, you make money, everyone wins and you don't destroy the environment and we'll support your project.

During the show there was so much tension, I said, 'we need to start telling some jokes and drinking some coffee because we're not going to be able to get through this hour on the air.' And the undersecretary of FONATOUR said, "I don't think this is a joke, I take this stuff very seriously." And I said, "look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you upset I'm just trying to break the ice." I've never seen public officials so angry. Jose, who has worked on San Ignacio for a long time said he had never seen any government official lose it like that. He was rambling on the air he was so angry.

CD: What happened after that show?

SD: Well we had a press conference yesterday at 10:30 at a big Marriott here, and they asked if they could come, so we invited FONATOUR to participate in the press conference. So it was me, Jose and Homer Aridjis who is the head of the Group of 100 in Mexico, the most respected environmentalist in Mexico, probably one of the most respected environmentalists in the world -- he helped stop the Mistubishi salt project in Baja too. Then we also had Rodrigo Hara, Mexico's top environmental attorney, he's a liason to the Mexican Senate. He actually went to Rosalita and witnessed them illegally dynamiting the cliff.

We're all up there our power suits up there and next to Homero is the head of Fonatour who is participating in our press conference. So we spend an hour in front of all the major media in Mexico and we begin to talk about the project. In the end, Fonatour does get to respond. The guy does say, look, we're committed to these floating marinas. And you know all the hundreds of signs for the Escalera along the highway in Baja? He admitted that those were a mistake, we shouldn't have done it.

There was also an agreement that they would not proceed with any of these marinas until they did a regional environmental impact assessment for this entire project. But somehow there was a clause for this marina in Rosalita. Fonatour believed that construction could continue because they had done this one bad environmental impact statement for the project. And the press nailed him on it. They said, why are you allowing this to continue when you're supposed to have an assessment for all the projects before you can proceed?

Then I asked him about these floating marinas. He said we've already committed to those. So I asked in front of everyone, where are those marinas? We'd really like to know, because if we think they're in an area that we think is important to save, we'll be really happy. His engineer came up and pointed on a map, and this is where the things came up that gave us a total victory.

There was a map with seven surf spots that would have been destroyed. Now there are only five floating marinas instead -- San Juanico, Punta Abreojos, Rosalita, San Carlos and Santa Maria/San Quentin. They've told us that Punta Canoas is saved. Cabo Colonet is saved. San Quentin, the south swell beachbreak they told us unofficially that it's probably gone. Punta San Carlos, the famous windsurfing spot south of El Rosario is saved. Punta Abreojos, a floating marina, and Scorpion Bay, a floating marina.