Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Hernando Cort�s on Mexico City in 1527:
>
>This noble city contains many fine and magnificent houses; [etc.]
Tenochtitl�n was the impressive center of the Aztec Empire, a despotism with
a steep social structure. At the top, there was a military, religious, and
bureaucratic class that appropriated the surplus product of direct producers
via a bit of trade and a lot of forceful tribute extraction.
The Aztecs exploited over 400 states on +200,000 km2 at the time of the
Spanish invasion. Perhaps over 5 million direct producers at the time
Spaniards invaded Mexico -- serfs, indentured servants, and slaves. In
part, Cort�s' victory was eased by a skillful exploitation of the resentment
and rivalries of neighboring states against the Aztecs. Pre-Hispanic Mexico
was not a harmonious, paradisiac society.
The surface of Tenochtitl�n was only 5 square miles -- very small compared
to today's metropolitan Mexico City. It only covered what is now called the
Historical Center. With some surplus product to spare, it's not difficult
to build little ecologically-friendly paradises for the ruling classes.
Today's Tecamachalco, only one of the anti-Chimalhuac�ns on the west side of
Mexico City, is larger than that. People in Tecamachalco, Lomas de
Chapultepec, etc. enjoy relatively low levels of air pollution (not much
worse than people in Beverly Hills or Brooklyn Heights), excellent urban
services, and the lavish (and tacky) lifestyles of the 'First-World' rich.
Cort�s' description of Tenochtitl�n was self-serving. Most likely, it was
intended to impress the Spanish Crown and ensure a firmer financial and
military support to his plundering adventure. He needed to ensure it, as
the support wavered a lot. There was a time when the Spanish Capitan�a
General in Cuba ordered Cort�s to stop and return to Cuba. There was even a
(failed) attempt to arrest him. In any case, Cort�s needed to embellish
things somewhat in his letters simply because investment follows expected
profitability.
IMO, Marx's emphasis on material premises, as a pre-requisite to do away
with class societies and exploitation, is as adequate today as it was in his
time. IMO, in spite of the environmental challenges facing us all, Mexican
direct producers are now in a much better position to contribute to human
progress and emancipation than ever before.
IMO, concern for the environment is only meaningful in humanist terms, that
is, as it affects us humans -- and I include here, not only concern for
'natural resources' in the usual sense, but also moral considerations
towards animals and life in general, aesthetic enjoyment of natural scenery,
etc. (If this sounds obvious, I'm glad.)
IMO, at least to the extent that it affects most directly the lives of
people in Mexico, the worst environmental conditions are associated not with
modern capitalist production but with backward, transitional forms of
capitalist production and even pre-capitalist production. (I mean 'pre-'
in a logical, not only in a historical sense -- absence of a market of free
laborers, production not yet organized by capitalist entrepreneurs who under
competitive pressure tend to revolutionize the technical conditions of
production.)
To mention a fact, the life expectancy of POOR people (not to mention
'quality of life' and opportunities for their children) in Mexico City,
Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Puebla (the largest cities in Mexico) is higher
than in vast rural areas of Mexico.
Poverty is directly an 'environmental' disaster, insofar as it reduces the
lifetime, and limits in many other ways, the lives of concrete people. And,
in Mexico, IMO, the dependence on nature tied to pre-capitalist structures
and backward technical conditions supplies the worst, hopeless cases of
poverty. As I see it, even in its capitalist alienated form, wealth
production is immediately an expansion of opportunities for human
improvement. It is so just by reducing (or, if you prefer, modifying) our
dependence (or, if you wish, our primitive forms of dependence) on nature.
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