Now
NOW.
There have been layers upon layers of land extraction and environmental destruction in the Rio Grande Delta. Racism and environmental destruction are inseparable. Today, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe is leading the protection of air and water, and their ancestral sacred sites in South Texas. The main extractors that the Estok’ Gna people are resisting are LNG (Liquified Natural Gas), SpaceX, and the Border Wall.
LNG
Texas is synonymous with big oil and the Rio Grande River is one of the most polluted in the United States. The oil boom in South Texas also happened during the 1920s, right after the economic shift to mass agriculture. Today, there are more miles of oil and gas pipelines that there are road according to environmental activist Bekah Hinojosa.
LNG stands for Liquified Natural Gas, and it is extracted through a process called hydraulic fracking, which uses an incredible amount of energy, water, and chemicals. Fracked gas emits high levels of methane gas, which warms the atmosphere 80 times over than carbon dioxide. (LNG study) The United States plans to continue to expand fracked gas extraction projects, despite signing the Paris Climate Accord. The Paris Climate Accord is a historic agreement and commitment between nations all over the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow climate change. The Paris agreement’s goal is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, but studies now show that a complete end to all fossil fuel expansion is critical in meeting this goal. This information comes from a 2022 report signed by the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, Les Amis de la Terre France, Save LNG from RGV, and the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of South Texas. You can download the study here.
There are two LNG export projects that are being proposed to be built at the Port of Brownsville and one pipeline.
● Texas LNG, owned by Glenfarne Group, Samsung Engineering Co, and Texas LNG;
● Rio Grande LNG, owned by NextDecade;
● Rio Bravo Pipeline, owned and operated by Enbridge.
● Valley Crossing Pipeline, an existing pipeline that
would also service gas to the LNG projects, owned and operated by Enbridge.
Screenshot taken from Rio Grande LNG advertising on Facebook
LNG companies are using greenwashing, a tactic to market their type of fracking as more sustainable and beneficial to the community and environment. Their marketing campaigns are targeting Rio Grande Valley residents, saturating local residents with social media ads promoting fracking as good for the community. One of these promotional videos shows Jerry Briones, Chief Operating Officer of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, declaring that LNG will be great for community schools and small business, claiming that it will create 5,000 jobs.
Rio Grande LNG plans to build their plants on the sacred land of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. In addition, the LNG projects will affect the pristine Gulf Coast of the Rio Grande Valley, with undisturbed wildlife and a thriving ecosystem. The LNG projects would destroy the habitat for endangered wildlife including the ocelot, northern Aplomado falcon, the Rice’s Whale, and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. (LNG Report).
You might question whether there has to be regulatory processes for preventing huge and devestating impacts of extraction. The issue is that these oil and gas companies manage to bend the rules, by
https://www.sierraclub.org/texas/blog/2018/07/valley-crossing-pipeline-exercise-corporate-trickery
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/oil-booms-roots-east-texas-cotton-farming/
SPACE X
Tribal Chairman, Juan Mancias in front of SpaceX Testing site rocket
Screenshot taken from Trey Mendez personal Facebook account
Corrupt officials and complacent wealthy elite are putting in place policies that are affecting and may destroy the ecosystem in the Rio Grande Delta. Former State Representative for Brownsville, Rene Oliviera, advocated passing House Bill 2623, which gave power to Cameron County to temporarily close Boca Chica Beach for space flight activities, bypassing the state Open Beaches Act, which protected the gulf and made it accessible to people all year long. Cameron County commissioners passed a decree to exempt Space X from paying 10 years of county taxes. GBIC, one of the economic arms of the City of Brownsville, has created incentives to space developing companies, and together with the City’s support have branded Brownsville as the new space city, imposing a colonial-subaltern identity onto the majority people of color population. One of the outcomes of this branding is rent going up and people must already relocate and are getting displaced, exacerbating the existing housing crisis in the lower Rio Grande Delta.
The false promise of progress
The narratives used to justify mass agricultural expansion in the early twentieth century started with “there is nothing here.” The Valley was defined as “economically worthless and culturally backwards” for Anglo farmers and investors to make profit from the land. (9, Inventing the Magic Valley) This narrative still lingers into our everyday lives here.
Colonization, neoliberal policies, and environmental extraction led to mass migration, displacement and more. The majority of detention centers in the United States are private and for profit. These companies lobby for anti-immigration policies, to ensure that their facilities are always full (Juan Carmona, interview, September 15, 2023). Rio Grande Processing Center is a detention center that is part of GEO, one of the largest private detention companies in the world. It operates 102 detention centers in the United States, and they are being investigated for violations in human rights against immigrants. (From Crisis to Change Curriculum)
Today, we see the remnants of more than 100 years of mass agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley and the concentrated wealth built off segregation, land theft, and Mexican labor. According to the Texas Observer, as of 2018, two thirds of farmland is owned by white residents who also control the water. In this 100 years case study, we see that the economic prosperity promised by the Magic Valley idea was meant only for a few anglo families. The wealth did not trickle down. Hidalgo and Cameron counties continue to have one of the lowest income counties in the country. Structurally, families are poor because there has been a consistent historical extraction of wealth in the Rio Grande Delta.
References:
6, How Race is made in America
9, Inventing the Magic Valley
10, Harvest of Empire
Links:
ADD LINK (From Crisis to Change Curriculum)
ADD LINK (LNG Report).
https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-making-of-the-magic-valley/
https://www.cameroncountytx.gov/economic-development-demographics/
https://www.sierraclub.org/texas/blog/2018/07/valley-crossing-pipeline-exercise-corporate-trickery
