The politics of butterflies
We all know that politics insinuates itself into nearly every situation, it's just odd to find it mixed in with butterflies. This excerpt is Halpern writing about a conference she attended in Mexico, the purpose of which was to address the needs of butterflies who winter in Mexican forests vs. the human residents who need to work those same forests for their livelihood, in the process ruining them as a home for butterflies:
"Face it," one of the biologists said to me later that night, when a bunch of us went out for dinner. "The idea that a monarch butterfly is going to get these countries to act in a less than self-interested way is a completely naive point of view. This whole thing is about money. A lot of it is going to get thrown around here." I took his point and kept my eyes open, and what was interesting, I soon saw, was how the basic truth of ecology -- that everything is connected -- was being leveraged by government types and representatives of NGOs and even some of the scientists to promote economic change in Mexico. So if by day two it seemed strange to ride the elevators of Morelia's Gran Hotel and hear endless conversations about isotope fingerprinting and nectar densities, it was even more disconcerting to observe a tiny insect's moving grown men and women to attempt, even on a modest scale, human social engineering. Or at least talk about it.
"This is an area of great biological wealth and dire poverty," Julia Carabias told the hundreds of conference participants, speaking of the impoverished places, not far from where they sat, where the butterflies spend the winter. In the audience was a busload of people from those villages, campesinos in western wear with weathered faces who had been shipped in either (depending on how cynical you were) to state their own case against conservation efforts that would not also aid them or to justify those very efforts. "There is intense use of the soil. This turns into a very difficult problem. There are many conflicts of interest. The focus can't just be about the protection of the forest. We must preserve but develop the area so that living conditions are adequate."
Carabias, a very beautiful and charismatic woman, sat down to terrific applause. Everyone knew that what she was saying was rhetoric, but there was something about her presence that was reassuring. She appeared to be sincere, sympathetic, uncorrupt. For the most part, during her address the campesinos were sitting straight up in their chairs. She was talking about them, stating their case. I may have been projecting, but to me they looked hopeful.
And then Carabias went back to Mexico City, leaving the real work of the conference to her underlings, who had few of her charms, and the hopefulness began to dissipate like the bubbles in a half-capped bottle of soda. On the third day, when a small, gap-toothed campesino stood up during a question-and-answer session and said, "The support you have given us, putting us in a good hotel, frankly tires us," he was articulating a more general sentiment about substance and illusion. He wouldn't have minded staying in such a place, in other words, if something useful was going to come out of it.