Less than a century ago, steamboats could travel down the muddy, free-flowing Colorado River all the way to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez). Today the river no longer reaches the sea in most years. It ends just inside the Mexican border, about 60 km from the sea. The water from the river is used to support 300 million people in the US and northern Mexico and to irrigate 3.7 million acres of farmland. Please follow me below the fold to learn how the mighty Colorado has been turned into a trickle below the Morelos Dam and the impact that this has had on the indigenous Cucapa people who have lived in the region since pre-Columbian times.
At the beginning of the last century, the Colorado River delta was one of the largest desert estuaries in the world, covering 1.93 million acres. The delta supported a complex wetland system that provided nesting grounds for birds and spawning habitats for fish and marine mammals. The delta stretched from just north of the US-Mexican border to the Gulf of California and was home to jaguar, beaver, deer, and coyotes, as well as a diverse range of fish and waterfowl species. Farmers in the Imperial Valley of California began to use the Colorado River for irrigation in the early 20th century, and dam construction, beginning with the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, reduced the Colorado's flow to a trickle. After the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona in 1963, the delta dried up. North Americans largest desert estuary was reduced to 10% of its original size and replaced by mudflats.
A 1944 treaty between the US and Mexico, which Mexico reluctantly signed, apportioned 10% of the Colorado's water to Mexico and the remaining 90% to the US. At the time, only a few hundred thousand people were living in northern Mexico. Today there are about 3 million people living in the area, and Mexico has used most of it allotment to provide water for the farms and cities that are closest to the US border. North of the border, 25% of the US food supply is grown on fields that are irrigated by the Colorado, and the river also provides water for Phoenix, Las Vegas, and LA.
Photo source
The biggest losers in all of this have been the Cucapa, native people whose ancestors have lived in the Colorado River Delta area for millennia. The Cucupa traditionally made their living harvesting plants and fishing in the River and along the delta. However, the river has essentially dried up, and the Sea of Cortez was being overfished by commercial fishermen. In 1993, the area surrounding the delta was declared a biosphere reserve, and fishing was banned on the waters of the gulf. While the Cucapa were offered alternative fishing grounds upstream, those areas are polluted and contain very few fish.
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela, the secretary of the Cucapa fishing cooperative, stressed that the Cucapa was not responsible for the overfishing, even though they bear the brunt of its consequences. ~source
The Cucapa have been left with two alternatives. They can ignore the fishing ban or they can take part in the lucrative narcotrade. As the LA Times describes:
Every year at this time, the Cucapa head for the "zono nucleo," the core of the marine reserve where the river meets the Gulf of California. Playing cat and mouse with police patrols, the Indians net corvina, a commercially popular fish that can bring them as much money in a month as they can earn in a year working in fields or doing other manual labor.
Conservationists argue that simple water conservation measures and the use of less water intensive forms of agriculture might be enough to save the delta and the traditional way of life of the Cucapa people. However the political will may not be there on either side of the border.
As documentary film maker Dan Rees notes:
Political wrangling, of course, means little to the Cucupa, whose way of life has been destroyed by processes beyond their control. It would take very little effort by people in the US or Mexico to make the changes necessary to help the Cucupa. But until those changes are made the people of the delta will continue to suffer.
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