Tampico, Mexico: The Rise and Decline of an Energy Metropolis

rary visitors rather than permanent community members. Lacking their own fi TampiEO, Mexico nancial resources and an aggressive business elite to guide resource development, these regions became little more than resource colonies. In the case of Mexico, nationalization policies led to an emphasis on domes tic production, but at least Cuidad Madera and other Mexican oil centers were The Rise and DaclinB of an Enargy Matrapalis prepared to compete in the global marketplace when a series of international oil shocks and the ascendency of OPEC opened new doors, although Mexico's econ omy remains overly dependent on oil and thus is subjected to the volatile price shocks of that marketplace.^ In the case of Gabon, however, a political culture of accommodation after independence facilitated the exploitation ofnatural resourc Myrna Santiago es by foreign corporations and filled the pockets ofsome government officials, but at the expense ofthe environment and the nation's own citizens. For Port-Gentil, there have been busts but without any intermittent booms. The city has borne the burdens of oil production but enjoyed little ofits wealth. Perhaps indeed a curse. oW\ C. ^: There are cities in the world that have produced the energy that fuels the modern global industrial economies. Houston embodies the idea perfectly, as the premier energy capital in the United States today.' Other cities in similar posi tions in the oil sector include Calgary, Alberta; Lagos, Nigeria; Riyadh, Saudi Ara bia; and Libreville, Gabon. Tampico, once Mexico's most important oil port is no longer on that list. Its moment as an energy capital was short-lived but intense. Be tween 1900 and 1924 the city was the magnet that attracted resources from a glo balizing world. It consumed habitats and nature from its immediate surroundings as it expanded to accommodate the oil industry growing in its midst. From the hinterlands to the south (northern Veracruz) Tampico welcomed the crude itself. Labor came from the Mexican countryside in the east, Texas and Oklahoma in the north, and England and continental Europe across the Atlantic. As a result, cultur al practices, architectural styles, ideologies, and the like mingled and competed in the port. Directly tied to an emerging world oil market, Tampico transformed hu man and natural energy into commodities: oil headed for refineries in Texas and Louisiana or English ports, and distillates for local consumption. But the party ended suddenly. Rapid exploitation of the northern Veracruz oil I4B PARTIII:CupaBdby Dll? production until 1924. Labor unrest added to the metropolis's problems, leading CO Rivers meet, about eleven miles upstream from the Gulf of Mexico. The port was surrounded by lakes and lagoons, which created marshes, bogs, and swamps all around and along the rivers, fed by a long rainy season that included hurricanes municipal officials to split the city into two in 1924. Thereafter the troublesome eastern neighborhoods and their rowdy unions were on their own. With them went the refineries. Villa Cecilia, which became Ciudad Madero in 1930, became and a dry season that often witnessed drizzle or slight rains.^ The site was a tran sition zone between scrublands to the north of the swamps and a tropical rain forest to the south, with mangrove forests flanking the lagoons that formed be the oil town. Tampico reverted to its old identity as a commercial hub, a cramped port city battered annually by hurricanes and floods, trying to survive the ups and downs ofthe global economy,but with "New Orleans style" buildings to remind its tween the mainland and the Gulf. Before the oil prospectors arrived, commerce was the lifeblood of Tampico and a small multinational population reflected such chroniclers ofits "cosmopolitan" era and good times.^ Still oil persisted in the city's future. In the 1960s, Ciudad Madero became an im portant site for petrochemical production for national consumption, which in the Barca, the Scottish wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico, sailed up the Pdnuco fields led to saltwater intrusion by 1919. Companies fired workers by the thousands and fled to Venezuela, even though Mexican wells as a whole did not reach peak economic reality. The port itself was not terribly exciting. Fanny Calderdn de la from the Gulf in 1848 and recorded her first Impressions; [T]he first houses that meet the eye have the effect of a number of coloured band 1980s expanded for export to Central America and the Caribbean,shipped through boxes—some blue, some white—which a party of tired milliners have laid down Tampico.^ The contiguous city on the north. Altamira, an industrial and petro among the rushes. On leaving the boat and walking through the town, though there chemical corridor with its own port, began competing with Tampico for cargo in the 1990s and gained status with the inauguration of a liquefied natural gas(LNG) plant in 2006.^ Thus even though Tampico had lost its place as an energy capital are some solid stone dwellings. I could have fancied myself in a New England village: neat shingle palaces, with piazzas and pillars—nothing Spanish—and upon the whole, an air of cleanness and cheerfulness . . . There are some good-looking stores . . . not early on,its legacy was to tie the locality to hydrocarbons for the rest ofthe twen much to see. There are many comfortable-looking large houses, generally built accord tieth century and beyond. The case of Tampico therefore shows how petroleum production transformed the region in particular and lasting ways as it transformed the world economy in general. The city was a node where oil extraction and pro duction generated immediate environmental transformations at the local level, without actors ever imagining the ecological changes on a global scale (i.e., climate ing to the customs of the country whereof the proprietor is a native.' In 1893, the American Thomas L. Rogers visited Tampico and found that com ■ '■ merce still dominated the economy and colorful houses were the norm, but there zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA still wasn't much to see. The buildings around the plaza were few and made of wood, the houses were "pink or green or cream or other color . . . it is said to be change) ushered in by burning this particular fossil fuel. Tampico does not figure against the law to paint any wall white."' The population hovered around six thou among Mexico's most important six ports today, but it has not disappeared into oblivion.' Today the port touts itself as a tourist destination, marketing its rivers and lakes as natural wonders—although they once shined with rainbow-hued oil g:'. '-i'l! sand souls. The black, sticky, and odorous chapopote dotted the rainforest to the south and southeast, but its uses were few and artisan: caulking canoes, decorating slicks. This oil metropolis did not persist as such for long, but it is not an exaggera pottery in black, or burning as incense for fragrance.'" All that was about to change tion to say it transformed the world while it was on top. and rapidly. Lacatian, Location. Location Local and Foreign Markets, 19DD-I3 Location was all-important for the development ofTampico.The port is located at the midpoint ofthe circle that makes up the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Yu an American. As minority partner with Standard Oil. he opened the Waters. Pierce catan. The arc that the Gulf creates and the Gulfitselfsit atop underground rivers of oil exploited from Louisiana to Tabasco at different times during the twentieth century. It was the discovery of oil at Spindletop in Texas in January 1901, in fact, that alerted foreigners to Mexico's potential as an oil producer." Above ground, Tampico shared the same hot and humid tropical climate that afflicts or blesses the geographical half-moon from Houston to Yucatin. Tampico is located at the juncture ofone of Mexico's largest river systems, where the Tamesi and the PanulAB Mypna SBntlago The first man to spy an opportunity for oil in Tampico was Henry Clay Pierce, Oil refinery in Tampico in 1887 to provide fuel oil to the railroad companies just then laying tracks in the region and to satisfy a small local demand for kerosene as illumination. He did not drill for oil in Mexico, however, importing his crude from the United States instead. According to observers, Mexico used "no more than 700 barrels of refined oil a day at the time.' Another early twentieth-century capitalist and true oil baron, the American Ed ward L. Doheny, entered the oil business in Mexico in 1900. He had made millions Tampico, Maxico IAS in California oil already, but knew that Mexico had no market for the black ooze He decided to create one as he acquired much land in the Tampico hinterlands and built the infrastructure for export: he contracted with his friends at the U.S.-owned Mexican Central Railroad to convert their locomotives from coal to oil fuel for the Tampico-Aguascalientes five-hundred-mile route. The contract would last until 1920. In 1905 he also convinced Mexican officials in various cities, including Tam pico itself, to pave their streets with asphalt from his first refinery at Ebano,in San Luis Potosi. The rest of his production, the overwhelming majority, went abroad.'^ Production increased steadily, from ten thousand barrels in 1901 to one hundred The Oil Bopm.1913-2! Mexican oil production. In 1913. EnWorld War I gave enormous impetus to make the shift from coal to gland began seeking sources of fuel oil for its navy to hydrocarbons. Weetman Pearson, a Lord in Parliament since 1910. was happy to oblige and place his company. Hi Aguila, at his majesty's service." In the United States. New Mexico's senator Albert B. Fall, had a stm-'^ Doheny, his close friend, ofuse Mexican oil for the American merchant marine, duction ofhis Mexican enterprises."The war,then,turned petroleum rcTommoditywlih guaranteed markets for the foreseeable future. , twenty-five thousand in 1904, to five hundred thousand in 1906, and jumping to into a strategic -. one million in 1907. By 1911, production had hit twelve million barrels." trucks, tanks, ambulances, buses, battleships, motoron oil. Petroleum reled^ihe 1 The stage of extracting oil for a limited internal market and a growing foreign market lasted about a decade. It began to change Tampico's infrastructure quite rapidly, however. The port housed the first refinery and its first five hundred work ers. It also boasted ofpaved streets and a plaza illuminated by kerosene lamps. New companies scouting for office space encouraged the rise of new multistory build ings around the downtown plaza. Infrastructure projects transformed the city's environs further. In partnership with local authorities, the companies undertook a project to gouge a canal ten feet deep, thirty feet wide, and eight miles long to connect the Panuco River to the Tamiahua lagoon for the anticipated "fast gasoline launches" that would ply what became known as the Chijol Canal between Tam pico and the oil fields of the Huasteca peoples in northern Veracruz." In anticipa tion of the oil bonanza to come, the companies filled in a marsh and built a large oil storage area thereafter known as "Tankville" right alongside the Pueblo Viejo lagoon, across the Panuco River from Tampico, while they planned the dredging ofthe river itself to welcome oil tankers. Other profound changes were social: the city was growing in leaps and bounds, as men began to hear news of the construc tion boom. The trickle of migrants became a deluge after 1908, when the Englishman Weetman Pearson struck oil at San Diego de la Mar,some seventy-five miles south of Tampico. Companies and labor recruiters proliferated. Company agents con tracted men from Monterrey to Jalisco by the thousands. They also imported drill ers and craftsmen from Texas, Oklahoma, and California and a few newly minted geologists from American universities eager to test the new discipline in Mexico." From 17,569 inhabitants counted in 1900, Tampico grew to 23,452 in 1910. By 1921, the population had jumped to 94,736 people, making the port the fifth largest city in Mexico. Between 1910 and the late 1920s, the physical space the city occupied grew in tandem, from 432 acres to 3,461, filling in marshes and bogs and every inch ofthe riverbank." Those very local ecological changes were tied to changes in global oil markets and international politics. conflict to run its death machines wholly World War I was the first major• armed armed conflic the battlefields." The demand was boats, and planes that transported men across ^ ;increase-in immense, prompting a rapid i Mexican oil extraction. Production rose from twenty-five million Lbarrels in 1913 to fifty-five million in 1917. the year Mex■ in the world behind the United States, despite ico became the second oil producer ices created by gluts in global production for the duration the ups and downs in prices ofthe war. construction bonanza not only The acceleration in extraction meant a c... of wrought-iron balconies in downtown office buildings in the New Orleans style I, but also in industrial infraand windows attached to colorful wooden structures, structure. What woi would be the heavy environmental footprint and long ecological shadow petro leum would cast upon the city and beyond. the landscape in earnest. The oil cornIn the 1910s Tampico began ;o to consume c world-class oil port, with hundreds of miles ofpipepanics developed the city into a'— line connecting it to the Huasteca oil wells. The pipelines emptied the crude oil _; j ofterminals in Tampico. while fleets of onto hundreds ofstorage tanks and dozens transport the "black gold" to the United States and En- tankers lined the Panuco to i gland. The changes in the land were massive. The mouth of the Panuco changed, accommodate the tankers, and the beach was broThe river was dredged deep to a...—: , the proper deepwater channel. The ken up by long jetties that guided ships into ies filled in sec- course of the Tamesi;i River also changed, ... as construction companies filled in sec- ''s limits. South ofTarnland for the refineries and to expand the city's limits. South ofTamironmental shadow loomed large. The forest was consumed pico,the industry's environ;. -. Mangroves were uprooted and replaced by wells, workshops,and workers' c^mps. for wharves, piers, and a docks, . while marshes were filled for housing, recreational tions to reclaim 1 spaces, storage tanks, and wharves." While the armies ofthe Allied nations were consuming most Mexican oil. small local markets also created a demand;; one was the industry itself. The oil companies used petroleum to pave iroads from Tampico to the camps,to fuel boats,ships, and Tampico, Maxico 151 ISO Mypna Santiega tankers, and to cook the oil in refineries (see below). They also fueled all of Mexj. CO s railroads, which from 1914 to 1920 were commandeered by the two sides fight ing in the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), the rebels, and the federal army. Thus ironically enough the oil industry fueled Mexico's own most important military conflict quite literally." Amid the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) and World War 1, the oil companies built five refineries within and next to Tampico. Their principal task was to sepa rate the most volatile compounds from the petroleum to make shipping it abroad less hazardous." However, the refineries also satisfied the Mexican market for in dustrial lubricants (oil and greases), kerosene, gasoline, gas oil, solvents, and waxes." Until the Great Depression, the refineries only used about 10 percent ofthe to tal oil extracted locally. The bulk went both to destroy and to develop the Western economies.^' Even so, the refineries had a deep environmental impact on Tampico and its inhabitants. Their demands for resources were heavy. They required a great deal ofenergy to function themselves. Although oil fueled much ofthe distillation and refining process, the refineries demanded their share of the electricity produced by the British-owned electricity company. They also sucked up millions of gal lons ofwater from the Panuco River.^" Their most profound effect, however, arose not allow them to reach those deposits. The oilmen moved to blacker pastures. east ofTampico, and to Venezuela. The refineries continued processing crude from the remaining wells and from new'ones ones in in the the eastern eastern fields fields of ot Ebano, Bbano,but but the tne port port fired half felt the shock. The companies fired half of of their their forty-thousand-strong forty-thousand-strong workforce workforce in mid-1921. Tampico stopped growing at an accelerated pace, but the political and social upheaval that ensued resulted in the division ofthe city into two municipal ities: Tampico and Villa Cecilia. Tampico would never regain a top spot in energy production,losing its identity as a "ciudad petrolera" to its neighbor. Twp Municipalities, Dne Declining Energy Metrnpoiis, 1921-38 Tampico's oil industry remained tied to international petroleum markets ;2:i and 1930s. As such, its fortunes sagged, but the social changes through the 1920s the oil industry also produced guaranteed the city a privileged position in the that t politics ofoil. Thus,Tampico played a significant role in the mitosis ofthe city into two municipalities in 1924 and the nationalization ofthe oil industry in 1938. Despite the 1921 bust, Tampico's oil still had buyers. Growth in the American automobile industry that the internal combustion engine made possible opened up anew market for Mexican petroleum. The oil companies not only fueled American • first - passenger• vehicles and trucks to Tampico and the oil cars, they brought the from what they produced in tandem with oil; pollution. The refineries dumped for gasoline, and paved roads and the first city highfields, creating new demands t.. their toxic waste and by-products into the air and water. The Panuco River was so ways. With the automobile, Tampico grew even more, The city's wealthy moved loaded with hydrocarbons that it combusted, twice reaching tankers loading fuel at midstream and exploding them.^' Local beaches were ruined. As the Tampico Chamber of Commerce complained in 1920, the sand and water were "totally cov ered with chapopote and one can neither walk one step without one's shoes getting soaked by such bothersome and sticky object nor take a bath without one's body being totally tarred."" The entire oil-producing complex centered in Tampico also cast a deleterious to outlying neighborhoods(away from the stench of oil and its products) or small ippeared to provide transportation for those towns on the outskirts. Cars and taxis a] who could afford faster service than trolleys and tramways. Commerce flourished as fleets ofcargo trucks moved goods throughout the region. Tampico was Tampico was also also the the first first city city in in Mexico to enjoy air travel, thanks to the pe troleum troleum industry. industry. That That innovation innovation came came about as a local American banker came into possession of two decommissioned planes from the U.S. Army and set up an ecological shadow on the local marine environment. Petroleum wastes ended up in the Mexican Gulf. The ballast from oil tankers polluted rivers and shores. Spills "air taxi" service. George L. Rihl installed a runway on an island in the middle ofa from the Huasteca wells to the south were channeled toward rivers and streams rolls and officials, Rihl inaugurated Mexico's first airline and airport, the fourth m and into the open ocean. Undoubtedly marine creatures,from plankton and crabs to marine mammals and birds, suffered the consequences,but no one documented the facts." The oil production boom created by the demands of American and European war economies ended soon after the drums of war fell silent. The reasons were complex and multiple, but one ofthem was ecological recklessness, The companies exi :ploited the oil fields south of Tampico at such speed and with such carelessness that they exhausted them by 1921. Saltwater intruded the wells and although the geologists knew there was oil deeper underground, the technologies available did 152 Mypna SantlBgn lake, Moralillo. Having secured contracts with the oil companies to transport pay — • the world, on July 12,1921. The planes were;fueled fueled with with oil oil from from the the same same fields fields itit Tamserved. By 1924,., the Mexican Transportation Company was flying between Tam ity, and Matamoros delivering mail, money, and oil moguls." The pico, Mexico City, company moved the airport to a much larger location on Tampico's north side in 1929, where it remains to date." As the nucleus of energy production, Tampico endured its share of social and — port; hosted a politically active working class, first focused political- conflict. The the longshoremen ^ and the railroad workers. Both had marked anarchist roots Lgthenedby European migrants whojoined the oil industry over the on 1 that were strenj TamplcD, Mexico 153 dent on the stability of the oil industry for their income. Then, the electric com- try. Strikes, demonstrations, and street battles over wages and working conditions became commonplace. The oil industry generated changes so quickly that the city cit was not equipped to absorb them. The inadequacies were glaring. The housing stock could not handle the sudden swelling of the population, so improvised hotels and flophouses lined the flood. I plain to fill in the gap. Forced to provide some remedy, the companies housed • craftsmen (mechanics, carpenters, welders, electricians, etc.). leaving masses of les were construction workers to their own fate. Workers squatted in every empty piece of land they found, creating working-class shantytowns around the refineries and the lagoons. Similar inadequacies plagued other areas: running water, drainage,sew age. electricity, garbage collection. Pavement,potable water,and street lighting did not extend beyond the fashionable downtown or the fancy neighborhoods." Pover ty, thus,increased faster than wealth and it was more widespread. The banks over- looking the main plaza did not invest their money in the city at all, repatriating it to the United States and Europe instead." At the same time, the Mexican Revolution that started in 1910 had economic repercussions for the growing energy metropolis. Inflation, the typical result of rapid and uncontrolled growth, was made worse by the revolution. Food shortages plagued Tampico through the 1910s, fueling social unrest," While the oil indus try consumed nature and human energy, Mexican workers ingested less than their bodies needed to be healthy. Pushed by militant men to address poor conditions, the companies opened commissaries and sold American foodstuffs and goods on credit. Instead of alleviating the problem, however, the company stores made it worse. Workers' wages were never enough to cover their debts at the end ofthe sixday workweek."The result was. in the end, more social conflict. Tired ofa decade ofprotests, strikes, and marches. Tampico "resolved" the issue issue ofclass struggle by splitting the city into two in 1924. The initiative came from the workers themselves. In the aftermath of imassive ' unemployment created by the 1921 bust, workers' organizations came up with the idea oflopping offthe end of Tampico for a new city. That side included three refineries and, thus, the ; eastern oveiTwhelming majority of wi working-class wuifiaug-cidbs iieignoornooas. ine idea was that neighborhoods. The chat a sep arate municipality would grant land for farming to the unemployed and for home building to the crowded. Nothing came of the proposal until an unexpected turn ofevents in late 1923 and early 1924 resuscitated it. First, Edward L. Doheny found himself embroiled in a scandal over drilling concessions obtained illegally by his buddy the congressman from New Mexico, Albert B. Fall, .. at the jnavy's oil reserve at Teapot Dome.The news sentjitters through Tampico s commercial elite, depen ISA Mynna Santlagi pany workers went on strike in November, bringing the port to a standstill until January 1924. The conflict escalated when the refinery workers at El Aguila. which Weetman Pearson had sold to Royal Dutch Shell in 1919, protested the docking of pay for the time the refinery remained closed during the blackout the electric com- strike provoked. In March 1924, El Aguila workers walked out, while some ions threatened strike. To twenty other "" Tampico unions threatened to to stage stage aa general general strike, lo prevent prevent the tne pany total paralysis of the port, the city council decreed that all the neighborhoods east of Tampico constituted a separate municipality. Villa Cecilia was thus official ly born on May I, 1924. The new municipality covered forty-four square miles of marshland and mangrove in various states of degradation and urbanization and included nearly fifty thousand workers. It also inherited a myriad of problems in addition to militant labor unions: infrastructure, public health, pollution,flooding, unemployment, and an oil industry in frank decline." The period between 1926 and 1931 is described as a time "from depression to Depression" in the Mexican oil industry." Overproduction in global markets led to company mergers, plant closures, layoffs, and labor-saving policies and technol ogies that ogies that devastatea devastated Tampico tampico ana and Villa viaa Cecilia. v_eLiud. The mc stock market crash ciaaij of 1929 put the nail in the coffin of oil production in both locales. By 1930, the twin cities showed the devastation that the disruption in global markets caused in the region: "miserable hovels made out of rotten wood,semi-nude children with starved bod ies, meat stores with a couple ofslabs covered by flies ,..immobile men sitting by the side ofthe road; misery, filth, indolence. On the other side of the river, houses that used to be two or three stories high, abandoned and crumbling,boilers turned upside down, walls falling apart, broken storage tanks.""The population of both cities combined was 70.000. The port was crumbling. The rain and the periodic floods eroded the jetties, clogged the Chijol Canal, and deposited tons of silt at the bottom ofthe P^nuco River. Measured in 1930, the sandbar at the mouth ofthe riv er had risen to levels not seen since before 1910. The oil tankers that just ten years previous clogged its sinuous curves were few and far between,"lone ghosts" in a "graveyard" of a city."" The final blow came in September 1933, when two hurri canes struck the cities on the fifteenth and twenty-fourth. The twin storms left the twin cities "in ruins," according to the New York Times, with some 67,156 people ad versely affected.^' It was not that oil production had ceased to be in Mexico. Not at all. The com panies continued extracting black gold, albeit at a much slower pace, but the oil fields were not in Tampico's hinterlands anymore. They had moved south to cen tral and southern Veracruz and Tabasco. The companies also had a new market: the growing fleet oftrucks, cars, and buses of Mexico City, not yet choked on soot TampiBo, MexicD 155 and smog. Until nationalization in 1938, Mexico's oil consumption steadily rose from 30 to 39 percent ofnational production.*^ But that the national market was not to be supplied from Tampico. Despite the generalized economic depression and because of it, labor conflict remained constant in Tampico-Ciudad Madero. Workers who survived plant clo sures organized unions; layoffs led to impromptu strikes or work slowdowns in protest. And even though the workers reaped more defeats than victories, they did not give up. In 1936, oil workers from all over Mexico unified their organizations into one single industrial union, the Sindicato de Trabajadores del Petroleo de la Repiiblica Mexicana. The half dozen Tampico-Ciudad Madero locals were no lon ger the most numerous, but they commanded political power due to their histori cal importance and their unwavering militancy. The battle over the first contract was fierce and violent, not only in the twin cities but at new refineries and fields elsewhere. It lasted two years, until circumstances pushed President Lazaro Carde nas to resolve it by nationalizing the industry on March 19, 1938. The era of whole sale foreign ownership ofthe oil industry had come to an end a decade after Tampi co had lost its position as Mexico's energy metropolis, although hydrocarbons(and pollution) would persist as a key sector in the regional economy and enjoy a revival in the early 2000s. Tampico's Lagacy In the post-nationalization period, Ciudad Madero enjoyed more political clout than Tampico in oil matters,but neither enjoyed an economic renaissance. Produc tion flattened as the foreign companies boycotted Mexican petroleum and the new owners, Petrbleos Mexicanos(PEMEX),reorganized the industry. It would not be Table 8.1. Population of Ciudad Madero and Tampico, 1990-2005 Ciudad Madero 160,331 171,091 182,325 193,045 Tampico 272,690 278,933 295,442 303,635 Source: Institute Nadonal de Estadistica. Geografia e Informatica,"Mexico: Tamaulipas." http://www.citypopulation.de/Mexico-Tamaulipas.htnil. was in Ciudad Madero.*" Thereafter, Ciudad Madero would be the focus of hydro carbon production until Altamira surpassed it in the early 2000s. Tampico meanwhile, developed as any ordinary third-world city. It had spent a decade as an energy capital without a single secondary school.*' Not until 1950 did Tampico inaugurate its first high school, only to see it severely damaged in a destructive 1955 hurricane.*' Through the 1950s, the port's main economic activ ity, beside naval construction and collection of customs duties, focused on light industry, such as ice making, bottling carbonated beverages, and making rattan furniture. Commercial fishing was also important and sustained a number ofcan neries.*' Tampico got a shot in the arm in 1970 with the discovery of offshore oil Just eighteen miles into the open waters of the Gulf. The find spurred economic activity, but production was a disappointment: sixty thousand barrels per day in 1970 dropped to forty thousand by 1979. By the 1980s, all new investment in the oil industry had moved south, although Tampico served as the locus of hydrocarbon transport to northeast Mexican markets." Thereafter Tampico and Ciudad Madero grew slowly, as table 8.1 shows. Altamira, fifteen miles north ofTampico and nudged between the Champay4n rochemicals and the first Mexican LNG-receiving plant in 2006. Thus the entire re lagoon and the Gulf,took the lead in the local hydrocarbon industry. Between 2005 and 2009,twenty-seven foreign and domestic petrochemical factories and assembly plants operated in the city, catapulting it to one ofthe top four ports in the country. In August 2006,in fact. Shell,Total, and Mitsubishi inaugurated the first LNG plant gion continued to be tied to hydrocarbons, however haltingly, in the new century. in Mexico in Altamira. The LNG plant processes gas not from Mexico's own natu until the 1960s that the industry would enjoy a local revival with the installation of a petrochemical plant in Ciudad Madero. In the 1970s offshore drilling brought high hopes but few results. It was Altamira which became important, hosting pet It took time for PEMEX to stabilize the industry after nationalization. Loss of foreign markets, strained relations with Britain and the United States, and the re patriation offoreign experts took their toll. Labor relations oscillated between dis trust and hostility, as well, as PEMEX expected obedience from a workforce with a history of defiance of authority.*^ From millions of barrels extracted during the boom of the late 1910s and early 1920s—190,000,000 at the peak in 1921—Mexican production limped between 200,000 and 350,000 barrels per day through 1964.** By 1976, production had climbed to 890,000 barrels per day, still less than in 1911.*' What those numbers meant for Tampico was the final closure of oil installations. Only one plant remained,the former El Aguila(Royal Dutch Shell)refinery, and it ral gas fields(which remain "underdeveloped" due to lack of capital and technolo gy),but from Shell's oil fields in Nigeria. The market for the product is the Mexican electrical company and the United States." The cycle ofgrowth,inadequate services, and environmental destruction start ed anew." In 2001 Greenpeace reported that one ofthe petrochemical plants at Al tamira was "emitting significant quantities of vinyl chloride to the environment," at concentrations that are "over 15 times the concentrations that would be accept able for a European factory" and "between 58 and 91 times the daily maxima set by the US government for plastics manufacturers." In addition, the scientists testing the water reported that volatile organochlorine chloroform, hydrocarbons, phthalTantpica, Mexico I5B Mypna Santlaga 157 ate esters, and zinc, all toxic and some known carcinogens, were being released into Pnpt-Gentil water and air." In 2009, a local news magazine reported similar problems. "Red dish water emanating from industrial wastes turn black, frothy, or bright green, staining the group ofinterconnected lagoons in Altamira," read the article, which pointed out that there is no local water treatment plant. The news alleged that up to three hundred seventy thousand cubic meters of waste was dumped into the water on a daily basis, as recorded in official documents. Among the contaminants were heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, chrome, mercury, nickel, From Forestry Capital to Energy Capital lead, and zinc." In the days following, the public echoed the news reports, arguing Douglas A. Yataszyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcb that they had seen massive fish die-offs, in addition to contaminated fish, crusta ceans, and reptiles. Municipal authorities and the Association of Industrialists of Southern Tamaulipas vigorously rejected the allegations." Thus, 150 years into oil extraction and refining, sophisticated advances in technology and manufacturing notwithstanding, oil development in Mexico followed the same pattern ofconsum ing nature and producing uncontrolled pollution. As other ports took the lion's share of oil exports, moreover, the erstwhile en ergy metropolis of Tampico realized that it faced great odds to compete.The port was "corralled" by the city itself and could not expand without destroying neigh borhoods and substantial investment. Ships, likewise, kept growing in size and volume, which demanded dredging and new terminals beyond the city's budget." Searching for alternatives, Tampico bet on tourism. City officials and entrepre neurs today highlight the beauty of the city's lakes and lagoons and the open wa ters ofthe Mexican Gulf. Oblivious to the history ofpunishmentofthe port's water bodies and apparently unconcerned with restoration or the persistence of toxins, boosters invite visitors to hunt, fish, race boats, swim, and practice water sports," □ n September 3, 2009, violent riots broke out in Port-Gentil. Suddenly the fcJi world world focused focused its its attention attention on on this this undersized undersized Atlantic Atlantic seaport seanort with with its its waves toss onto the beaches are not collectable. Instead of housing living beings, diminutive hovels and dumpy squats. Touted as the "oil capital" of Gabon, global television cameras instead revealed dirty markets, streets paved with garbage, the shells are plugged with hardened asphalt. pigmy doghouses, ramshackle sheds, and puny porticos from which swarmed They ignore the smell of petrochemicals and forgo mentioning that the shells the town dwellers dressed in rags, marching in anger against their corrupt and pat rimonial regime. "GABON RAMPAGE AFTER POLL RESULTS" headlined the BBC, giving these riots a political interpretation: "Opposition activists clashed with Energy metropolises are contradictory places. They produce Just as much as they endanger and destroy. They created and to this day sustain the oil-driven world economy with all its conveniences, rapid transit, and innumerable consum er products, yetJust as definitively they changed landscapes beyond recognition as they fouled water and air. Most significantly, they have done their part in generat ing global climate change. Tampico, the port at the edge of the rainforest and the mouth ofthe Gulf, was no different—creating and destroying simultaneously like security forces, after election results confirmed Ali Ben Bongo with 42% of the vote. Critics say the poll last weekend was fixed to ensure Ali Ben Bongo succeed ed his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled the oil-producing nation for 41 years."' But these riots were more than an isolated incident provoked by fraudulent elections. There were deeper causes of discontent. Angry mobs stormed the municipal Jail the gods of ancient times. Its legacy ofjob creation and economic dynamism lives and freed its inmates. They rampaged through the streets and set fire to the French in Altamira, while the dark side, ecological degradation and destruction, is alto consulate. They also attacked installations belonging to the French company gether hidden: the Huasteca rainforest is no more. Whether being an energy capi Total. "GABON LOCKS DOWN CITY AMID RIOTS" announced the news later tal for one decade was worth the cost is for Tampiquenos and the world to decide. tSB MyPHB SBntlsflD M