World Development 146 (2021) 105615

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World Development

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Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico

Anja Nygren

Global Development Studies Box 18, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland article info abstract

Article history: Water-related disasters have become more unpredictable amidst human-induced climatic and hydroeco- Accepted 23 June 2021 logical changes, with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. In this article, I analyse Available online 7 July 2021 drastic waterscape transformations and people’s differentiated exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, southeastern Mexico, focusing on how state authority is reinforced Keywords: through waterscape alterations and how altered waterscapes shape state-making and scalar politics. governance Examining interlinkages between 1) state-making and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of Mexico scale; and 3) hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, the article contributes to scholarly and political ecology development practice discussions on environmental vulnerability. I argue that the goals of consolidating state vulnerability state power and promoting development through massive waterscape changes and resource extractions water have provoked hazards that are difficult to control, resulting in differentiated distribution of environmen- tal benefits and burdens. Drawing on archival research, documentary analysis, thematic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the study illustrates the overlapping and cumulative effects of state-making, pol- itics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature on socially differentiated vulnerability. Although the forms of governance shift over time, statecraft as a mode of consolidating state authority and controlling lower- basin environments and residents persists. The government prevents social mobilisation through political persuasion and pressure, and disciplines residents to adapt to altered waterscapes, while allowing few changes in prevalent power structures. Simultaneously, the study demonstrates that water cannot be controlled by political rules and requisites, while local residents reinterpret dominant ways of governing through claim-making, negotiation, everyday resistance, and situational improvisation, albeit within unequal power relations. The study enhances understanding of water-related vulnerabilities resulting from recurrent, yet temporally remoulded agendas of state-making combined with socially differentiat- ing politics of scaling and the dynamics of socionature, which altogether reformulate human-nonhuman interactions and make local smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods. Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction shape state-making and scalar politics tied to resource-making. By resource-making, I refer to activities that convert once uneconomic Water-related disasters have become more intensive amidst reserves into valuable ‘‘resources” and bring them into (global) human-induced climate change and hydroecological alterations, commodity networks, at the cost of huge modifications to local with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. landscapes, livelihoods, and human-nonhuman relationships Many people, especially in the global South, are exposed to (Bridge, 2010; Kröger and Nygren, 2020).1 increased flood hazards as natural forces become manifest in a Mexican governments have been implementing massive pro- more unpredictable manner (IPCC, 2018). In this article, I analyse jects of hydropower, irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, hydro- drastic waterscape changes and people’s socially differentiated carbon extraction, flood-protection infrastructure, and human exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, Tabasco, southeastern Mexico. The study focuses on 1 how state authority and resource-making are reinforced through Waterscape refers here to the hybrid character of a water landscape (Swyngedouw, 1999: 443). It indicates a co-produced socionatural entity, in which waterscape alterations and how, in their turn, altered waterscapes power is embedded in, and shaped by water’s material flows and symbolic meanings (Budds & Hinojosa, 2012: 124). Vulnerability refers to people’s inability to withstand adverse effects from multiple stressors, including everyday uncertainties and E-mail address: anja.nygren@helsinki.fi catastrophic events (Füssel, 2007; Nygren, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105615 0305-750X/Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 relocation in the Grijalva River basin for decades, while urging peo- Closely linked to agendas of state-making are the politics of ple to adapt to associated changes. Simultaneously, many hazards scale associated with resource-making. Although political–ecolog- related to environmental engineering and resource-making have ical studies have criticised frameworks that take spatial scales as been ignored, as have the processes of vulnerabilisation they have given, careful analyses of how scalar politics shape the production provoked in local communities. A better understanding of how of particular waterscapes are scarce (Budds & Hinojosa, 2012; waterscape changes affect local lives and livelihoods requires con- Norman et al., 2012). Here, I analyse scalar politics through ideas sideration of how hydropower dams, floodplain irrigation, oil and of networked scales and scaled networks that enable examination natural-gas extraction, and natural and human-induced river- of how power relations and environmental alterations relate across course modifications alter resource access and make people differ- scales, as dams are built, flood-protection levees are raised, irriga- entially vulnerable to floods. Recently, the 480-km-long Grijalva tion channels are dug, and oil wells are drilled for extensive has been classified the eighteenth riskiest deltaic river in the resource extraction. world, based on its tendency to provoke devastating floods To understand water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva (Tessler et al., 2015). lower basin, it is important to also consider the dynamics of I argue that by examining linkages between 1) state-making socionature whereby the natural and the social, and the hydrolog- and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of scale; and 3) ical and the political (re)make each other (Linton & Budds, 2014; hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, a detailed under- Nygren & Rikoon, 2008). This draws attention to political processes standing can be gained of how state authority and resource- through which diverse actors modify ‘‘nature” and frames hydro- making are consolidated through waterscape alterations, and logical forces as dynamic and somewhat unpredictable elements how altered socionatural dynamics render particular people of environmental change (Boelens et al, 2016; Swyngedouw, increasingly vulnerable to floods. Socionature refers here to the 2009, 2015). entanglement of the social and natural, and the ecological and In the next section, I present theoretical ideas that assist in political in environmental change (Goh, 2019; Linton & Budds, studying the interplay of state-making, scalar politics, and the 2014; Peluso, 2012). dynamics of socionature in waterscape alterations, while the third The role of the state in environmental governance has received section explains the context and the methods of the study. The four increased interest in recent scholarly and development practice and the fifth examine state-making and scalar politics in recurrent discussions (Bridge, 2014; Harris, 2012; Meehan & Molden, alterations of Grijalvan waterscapes and their linkages to socially 2015; Robertson, 2015). Yet relatively scant attention has been differentiated vulnerabilities, while the sixth analyses how domi- paid to the interplay of state-making, politics of scale, and the nant forms of state-making are challenged by water’s power and socionatural dynamics in the production of vulnerability, as by residents’ efforts to reconfigure their positions vis-à-vis state- remarked by scholars interested in state authority and environ- making and resource politics. The conclusion section highlights mental justice (Boelens et al, 2016; Nygren, 2016; Perreault, how state-making and scalar politics consolidate state authority 2014). Even less is known of their overlapping and cumulative and advance resource extraction at the cost of residents’ socially effects on the lives and livelihoods of people inhabiting volatile differentiated exposure to water-related hazards, making local environments (Käkönen & Thuon, 2019). My study tackles this smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods. problem by examining how state-making, politics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature co-produce environmental vulnerability. 2. State-making, scalar politics, and the dynamics of Residents of the Grijalva lower basin have lived for centuries socionature with an abundance of water and the probability of temporary floods under deltaic riverine conditions, with blurred divides Recent research in political ecology and related fields has paid between land and water (Diaz-Perera & de los Santos González, increasing attention to the role of the state in environmental gov- 2021). However, state-led interventions since the 1950s have dras- ernance (Bridge, 2014; Loftus, 2020; Meehan & Molden, 2015). I tically changed hydrological regimes and increased residents’ conceptualise a ‘‘state” as a set of political institutions and an exposure to water-related vulnerabilities. To comprehend people’s ensemble of networks that organise relationships between experiences of living at the confluence of intensive state-making, resources and people, while being shaped by these relationships accelerated resource-making, and volatilised socionatural dynam- (Bridge, 2014; Harris, 2017). On this basis, I seek to understand ics, we need an integrated understanding of water and power, how particular socio-environments act as arenas for reinforcing and water’s power. state power, and how the effects of state-making are socially differ- Recent political–ecological work has emphasised that environ- entiated and socially differentiating. As Harris (2012) shows in the mental governance is not merely a technical field to be managed case of the Tigris-Euphrates River in Turkey, water diversions and through infrastructure, but a multifaceted arena that involves hydrosocial configurations have been instrumental in consolidat- sociopolitical processes that frequently aim to consolidate state ing state authority, while Meehan (2013) demonstrates that power (Harris, 2017; Taylor, 2015). The state has long been state-making related to informal water infrastructure, ranging strongly involved in environmental engineering and agricultural from tolerance to repression, has strengthened a particular modernisation in the Grijalva lower basin, and it continues to have sociospatial order in Tijuana, Mexico. In this study, I examine a crucial, although modified, role even in current neoliberal gover- how hydropower, agricultural intensification, hydrocarbon extrac- nance, with private companies and NGOs carrying out many tasks tion, flood-protection infrastructure, and human resettlements of project implementation and evaluation (McCulligh & Tetreault, reinforce state authority. 2017). Drawing on archival research, documentary analysis, the- What is important here is not only the impacts of state-making matic interviews, and several rounds of ethnographic fieldwork and governance but, as Bridge (2014) remarks, how they come to in the Grijalva lower basin between 2011 and 2019, I examine be: that is, the processes whereby state authority is configured how changes from technocratic water governance and infrastruc- and contested over time and linked to recurrent projects of tural flood control towards soft policies of risk management and resource-making. According to Scott’s (1998) work, Seeing like a hybrid forms of authority link to shifting forms of governance, State, many governments, especially in the global South, assert which nonetheless involve persistent attempts to reinforce state strict control over certain territories and certain people through power. environmental engineering and socio-spatial ordering, thereby

2 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 subordinating complexity to simplification and diversity to in other webs of interaction (Brenner, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2004). manoeuvrability. Scott’s analysis, however, presents a somewhat The idea that scales are networked and networks have scalar monolithic view of power, with scant attention paid to state- dimensions challenges rigid hierarchies by highlighting the fluidity making as a process, analysis of which requires consideration of of articulations, while avoiding a one-sided focus on frictionless both the socially differentiated effects of state interventions and flows that pays scant attention to differentiated power relation- how state power is configured and contested through such inter- ships (Jessop, Brenner, & Jones, 2008). ventions (Li, 2005; Robbins, 2008; Robertson, 2015). My analysis Meanwhile, it is also necessary to attend to biophysical forces as attends to hybrid forms of authority through which state institu- dynamic, and to a certain degree volatile, components of environ- tions interact with private and civil-society actors, while maintain- mental change (Bebbington & Bury, 2013; Collard et al., 2018; ing a strong if shifting role in governance (Joviani & Lovett, 2019; Nygren & Rikoon, 2008). Many governance studies forget the role Lund & Rachman, 2018; Sud, 2017). This is especially relevant in of biophysical processes in environmental change, even if Harvey Mexico, where paternalist forms of governance and clientelist net- (1993: 25) noted decades ago that ‘‘ecological arguments are never works are strategically mixed with neoliberal outsourcing and socially neutral any more than socio-political arguments are eco- public–private partnerships to consolidate state authority while logically neutral”. Although there is rich political–ecological litera- diffusing multifaceted questions of responsibility (Coates & ture on the power relations underpinning socioenvironmental Nygren, 2020; Guarneros-Meza, 2009; Nygren, 2016). interactions (Linton & Budds, 2014; Peluso, 2012; Swyngedouw, Attending to politics of scaling and associated resource-making 2015; Taylor, 2015), relatively scant attention has been paid to provides a way of deepening understanding of state-making and its how socionatural dynamics interrelate with state-making and sca- connections to diverse forms of governing. Here, I seek to further lar politics in environmental alterations. I address this lacuna by recent theorisations on scalar politics through ideas of networked analysing waterscape transformations as processes wherein the scales and scaled networks. In governance studies of the early hydrological and the political constitute each other: while state- 1990s, scales were frequently considered bounded and ordered making and scalar politics to advance resource extraction trans- from global to local in decreasing circles. Critique of such concep- form water’s material characteristics, water’s materiality also tualisations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, pointed shapes agendas of state-formation and politics of resource- out that considering scales as separate entities stacked like a ‘‘lad- making. Despite long-term efforts to control floods through mas- der”, or as spheres nested within one another like ‘‘Russian dolls”, sive infrastructure, water has repeatedly shown that it has power elides governance from the political construction of scales to disrupt human-imposed boundaries and challenge human- (Bulkeley, 2005; Sayre, 2009; Smith, 1992; Swyngedouw, 2004). constructed land–water divides. As an alternative to rigid views of vertical scales, in the mid- Equally problematic are many mainstream hydrological studies 2000s advocates of non-hierarchical approaches suggested hori- with a tendency to reduce water to its material composition, zontal configurations based on flat ontologies (Holton, 2005; although histories of governance indicate that what we see as ‘‘na- Marston, Jones, & Woodward, 2005), in which networked relations ture” is frequently a product of human intervention (da Cunha, are considered to crisscross horizontally, with ‘‘no masters and no 2018; Gill, 2016; Mathevet et al., 2015). Simultaneously, main- servants” (Smith, 2003: 565). Yet many political–ecological schol- stream flood-management policies focus on how residents adapt ars have criticised such approaches for obscuring how governance to water-related hazards, while setting aside the ways in which is linked to struggles over power (Leitner & Miller, 2007; Manson, prevalent forms of state-making and politics of scale situate people 2008, Neumann, 2009). Based on these debates, current political– in differentiated positions vis-à-vis vulnerability (Ribot, 2014). If ecological work increasingly regards scalar hierarchies as cate- sociopolitical and hydroecological interactions in people’s differen- gories produced by social efforts to configure scalar politics, tiated exposure to vulnerabilities are ignored, governance is ‘‘ren- attending to strategies through which scales are produced and con- dered technical” (Li, 2007: 123), veiling the power questions tested in particular circumstances, rather than to scales per se involved (Perreault, 2014). A massive flood, resulting from heavy (Hoogesteger et al., 2017; Sayer, 2015). rainfall and the rapid rise of the Grijalva River, is a sign of water’s On this basis, the following analysis explores how different materiality. Simultaneously, our definitions of a flood are socially actors and institutions seek to modify prevailing scalar configura- constructed, as we tend to classify abundance of water as a flood tions to strengthen particular power positions (Swyngedouw, when it is in the wrong place according to our categorisations, such 2004; 2015). This frames governance as operating through negoti- as in densely populated cities. In addition to shifting climatic con- ations and contestations between different governmental and ditions, changes in the Grijalva’s water flows link to development private-sector actors, NGOs, and heterogeneous groups of local res- interventions and resource-making operations, which have altered idents. Their relations can be hierarchical, horizontal, or transver- the hydroecological conditions involved. sal as diverse modes of formal and informal governance This melange of the hydroecological and the sociopolitical prob- intertwine (Sud, 2017). Informality is particularly rife at the lematises rigid arguments about society’s effects on nature, or nat- ‘‘edges” of the state, where actors seek legitimacy through clien- ure’s effects on a society (Linton & Budds, 2014). As Swyngedouw telist relations and strategic horse-trading (Auyero, 2012). Com- (2015) and Robertson (2015) remark, reaching an understanding prehending scalar politics requires that attention be paid to how of how the social and the natural are interlinked in waterscapes certain scalar configurations consolidate the power of some actors changes requires a shift from thinking of relations between things and disempower others, while acknowledging that defining partic- – such as the impact of humans on water – towards those consti- ular interventions as occurring at a certain scale is part of the pol- tuting certain phenomena, such as the hydrosocial processes shap- itics of scaling (Bebbington & Bury, 2013). The actors’ differentiated ing the characteristics of particular waterscapes. In the following, I opportunities to engage in politics produce a mosaic of interlay- explore environmental changes in the Grijalva lower basin as pro- ered scales and cross-scaled juxtapositions, wherein the politics cesses whereby natural and anthropogenic forces constitute each of scale are also politics among, across, and within scales other, involving ecological conditions, hydrological regimes, pat- (Perreault, 2014; Sayre, 2015). terns of land use, institutions of governance, and cultural meanings This indicates that scalar politics and horizontal networks need given to water. The point is not to decide where materiality ends to be analysed as mutually constitutive forms of governing, in and social construction begins, but to recognise their mutual con- which scales evolve relationally within dispersed hierarchies and stitution (Orlove & Caton, 2010). This kind of perspective chal- networks, with each articulation hinging upon its embeddedness lenges mainstream views according to which the key barriers to

3 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 sustainable river-basin management in the global South are weak tlement sites around the city of Villahermosa. I also conducted governance and low public awareness. Such views overlook that sixty interviews with federal, state, and municipal-level govern- the hydrological regimes in many Southern river basins, including mental authorities, hydrological and land-use planners, flood-risk those of the Grijalva, have been drastically altered by state-led consultants, and representatives of extractive industries and NGOs, interventions. and environmental-justice and human-rights movements in Tabasco. The historical timelines of environmental changes and the political agendas involved were examined through a careful 3. Context and methods analysis of archival material and media reports, complemented

2 by policy documents, environmental impact assessments, and The Grijalva lower basin, located in the State of Tabasco, con- plans for water infrastructure and territorial ordering. I also organ- tains hydroecologically sensitive and sociopolitically fragile condi- ised three policy dialogue workshops with participants from gov- tions. Part of this sensitivity is linked to the water abundance ernmental, private, and NGO sectors in Tabasco, with a focus on characteristic of the area (Fig. 1). The lower basin belongs to the water-related changes and vulnerabilities. hydrological system that combines two main rivers, the Grijalva To understand residents’ experiences of altered waterscapes, and the Usumacinta, and their 46 tributaries. The rivers in this sys- and their negotiations and networks with governmental authori- tem rise in the highlands of Guatemala and flow through the moun- ties and civic-society actors, participant observation and informal tains of Chiapas to the floodplains of Tabasco through four key conversations were crucial, as they enabled examination of situa- columns: the Grijalva-Mezcalapa, the Sierra, the Chilapa, and the tional variations in people’s interpretations of vulnerability and Usumacinta (Fig. 2), which together contain 30% of the surface runoff experiences of governing. Carrying out fieldwork in politically sen- in Mexico (Horton et al., 2021: 2). The lower parts of the basin are 2 sitive conditions required navigating complex power hierarchies relatively densely populated, with an average 123 persons per km and shifting social relationships, with many kinds of cross- (García García, 2013: 64), living in a few big cities, several small checking across different type of data and among different kinds towns, dozens of agricultural villages, and various indigenous of actors. communities. The climate in the Grijalva lower basin, which contains 70% of the territory of Tabasco, is hot and humid with an annual average 4. State-making: Constructing the infrastructure and precipitation of 2,750 mm. During heavy rains, rainfall can reach developing the hinterlands 300 mm in 24 h and increase the rivers’ water level up to 3 m in 12 h (García García, 2013). The upper parts of the Grijalva are Intensive projects to tap the economic potential of the Grijalva’s located at an altitude of 2,500 m, while the lower parts are at sea volatile waters through engineered infrastructure gained strength level, an altitude drop which, combined with high rainfall, pro- in Mexico in the 1950s, based on the ideas of the globally influen- vokes frequent flooding in the lowlands, located in a delta of doz- tial U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority, which suggested that strategic ens of rivers and 484 permanent and 1,684 temporary lagoons rivers in different parts of the world should be harnessed for eco- (Uribe Iniesta, 2016: 63). nomic development through technical expertise and hydraulic Due to its exposure to extreme weather events, the Grijalva infrastructure (Käkönen, 2020; Molle et al., 2009). The federally lower basin has been classified as a ‘‘flood hotspot”, with serious administered Grijalva River Commission was established in 1951 inundations recorded since the early 1800s, becoming more devas- and, in the following decades, the Grijalva River basin was radically tating in recent years; a catastrophic flood in 2007 affected 1.5 mil- modified to generate hydropower, drain lower-basin wetlands for lion people, with damages of 3 billion USD (Aparicio et al., 2009). irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, and control catastrophic The 2020 flood had equally disturbing effects (El País, 23 of Nov. floods. The Malpaso Dam, the largest in Latin America at one time, 2020; Tabasco Hoy, 26 of Nov. 2020). As Tabasco is one of most was inaugurated in 1964, Angostura in 1974, Chicoasén in 1980, important areas of oil and natural-gas extraction in Mexico – and Peñitas in 1987 (Diaz-Perera, 2014: 186). Although official dis- onshore and offshore production of 618,365 barrels of crude oil courses presented flood control as the key driver of dam construc- 3 and 48 million m of natural gas per day in 2020 represents 36% tion, the main motive was hydropower (Tudela, 1989: 125–126). of the crude oil and 35% of the natural gas production in the coun- Altogether, these dam projects buried 100,000 ha of agricultural 3 try – efforts to control flood hazards are pronounced. Simultane- land under the reservoirs (Fig. 3). ously, the government has promoted huge hydropower projects in By strongly centralising governance, the federal government the region as icons of modernity. Currently, there are four dams in endorsed its role as an infrastructure provider and benefactor, inte- operation on the Grijalva, with a total capacity of 4,830 MW, and 4 grating ‘‘undeveloped peripheries” into national development. As two others in construction. Furthermore, the government has symbols of modernisation, the dams had a crucial role in extending invested in irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, hydrocarbon state authority over the hinterlands. Corresponding intentions to extraction, and flood-protection infrastructure. Together, these pro- strengthen state power also characterised projects of flood control. cesses have increased the socially differentiated distribution of vul- As a deltaic river, the lower Grijalva is inclined to modify its course nerabilities and led to forced relocations of people categorised as through avulsions. Archival sources provide records of six big avul- living in hazardous areas. sions and 55 serious floods on the lower Grijalva during the last My study draws on seventeen months of empirical research in four hundred years, including the avulsion of Nueva Zelandia in Mexico over several fieldwork rounds between 2011 and 2019. 1675, which shifted the Grijalva-Mezcalapa course to the east, The empirical data contain participant observation and dozens of leaving the previous course, thereafter named Río Seco (Dry River), interviews and informal conversations with residents in agricul- without water (Fig. 4). The Samaria avulsion in 1932, which cre- tural communities in Chontalpa lowlands and in peri-urban reset- ated the Samaria River, flooded 20,000 ha of agricultural and pas- turelands in Chontalpa, leaving these areas almost cut off from 2 I capitalise the first letter of the term, when speaking of States as administrative communication for twenty years (CDEA, n.a.; García García, units of Mexico as a federal state. 2013: 77–81). 3 Author’s calculations from the datasets of the Ministry of Energy, Mexico, http:// Due to risks of catastrophic floods, federal policy-makers cate- sie.energia.gob.mx, accessed 26 of February 2021. 4 Retrieved from https://www.paratodomexico.com/geografia-de-mexico/hidro- gorised ‘‘uncontrolled” rivers in Tabasco as ‘‘destructive giants” grafia-de-mexico/presas-de-mexico.html, accessed 20 of January 2021. that should be tamed (Echeagaray, 1957) to liberate local residents

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Fig. 1. Waterscape in the Grijalva lower basin (Source: Centro Documental de Estudios sobre el Agua, CDEA, Tabasco, Mexico).

Fig. 2. The hydrological system of Grijalva-Usumacinta, Mexico (drawn by Ohto Nygren).

from ‘‘being captives of water”, as Carlos A. Madrazo, Governor of the late 1950s, the federal and state governments have built a Tabasco (1958–64), argued in a public speech (GET, 1988). Since series of works to regulate the capricious forces of the Grijalva,

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Fig. 3. The Chicoasén Dam (Source: Author).

dredging river courses, straightening bends, constructing the Grijalva lower basin, considered the ‘‘margins of the state” by embankments and floodwalls, and building connection channels. federal-level politicians. According to Candelario,5 an older resident The mission of domesticating ‘‘untamed” waters and ordering ‘‘un- in Chontalpa, ruly” people to follow the norms set by the state have legitimated The government thought that we’re ignorant. And that they paternalist forms of governance, while the belief in technical need to order everything. There were officials who said, ‘‘I am expertise has insulated such projects from public scrutiny (Diaz- the state and I am [the one] who sorts things out. I am [the Perera, 2014; Rinne & Nygren, 2016; Tudela, 1989). one] who provides progress for this region.” (Author’s inter- Intentions to strengthen state power are also evident in associ- view, Feb. 2012) ated agrarian policies. In the 1960s, the Mexican federal govern- ment, together with the World Bank, the Interamerican The government also extended its influence at these margins Development Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation, selected through huge settlement projects. In the early 1960s, about 4,700 Tabascan floodplains as the target for a giant project of mod- families lived in Chontalpa, practising small-scale farming and ani- ernising tropical agriculture through the green-revolution ideology mal husbandry during periods of lower water levels. These people (Flores, 1987). The Plan Chontalpa was initiated in 1965 to trans- were relocated to 21 production units of 2,400–5,000 ha, each form 350,000 ha of wetlands into irrigated areas for intensive pro- designed to hold 500 families, under a collective property regime duction of maize, rice, and sugar cane (Fig. 5). In the governmental called ejido (Fig. 6). This turned the smallholders into agricultural visions of that time, state-led development projects would turn labourers working in centralised units managed by the state Tabasco from a flood-prone hinterland into an agricultural oasis, (Flores, 1987). Economically, the irrigated agriculture projects were a ‘‘Netherlands of Mexico” (Tudela, 1989: 90). A document by the a failure. While the cultivated area increased by 50% and the value Ministry of Hydraulic Resources (SRH, 1961: 13, 20) presented of production grew four times, production costs rose 7.6 times, these agendas as follows: reducing net earnings by half. The productivity of maize was one This set of works will permit 350,000 ha of lands of high pro- tonne per ha, the same as smallholders had harvested through tra- ductivity to be put to intensive use...which will contribute effi- ditional methods at much lower cost. The yields of rice and sugar ciently to increasing national agricultural production for the cane were likewise well below expectations (Tudela, 1989: 211). growing needs of the Country...Despite favourable conditions Based on these failures, Plan Chontalpa became an extensive provided for the regional agriculture...the excess of water has cattle-raising project in the 1970s, providing strong financial and inhibited agricultural development in Chontalpa. political support for large-scale cattle raisers. These policies reflected the legacies of President Adolfo López Mateos (1958– Forest was seen as an obstacle to development and Tabasco’s 64), who claimed in 1957 that ‘‘agriculture should be an econom- area under forest cover was reduced from 49% to 8% between ically sound business in the hands of agricultural entrepreneurs 1940 and 1980, while that under pasture increased from 21% to and cease being an arduous task of those who do not find any other 60% (Flores, 1987). By 1990, there were 2,300 km of irrigation activity to engage in” (Tudela, 1989: 112). Such policies effected canals in the Chontalpa floodplains, physically and symbolically strong changes in local livelihoods. Cattle raising became the pro- marking increased state influence (Tudela, 1989: 206). By survey- vince of big landowners, while peasants and small ejidatarios ing, mapping, governing, and controlling riverine environments and riverine people, the state sought to solidify its authority in 5 Pseudonyms have been used to protect people’s privacy.

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Fig. 4. Avulsions in the Grijalva lower basin (drawn by Ohto Nygren, source: CDEA, Tabasco, Mexico). struggled to earn a living through sharecropping, small-scale ani- million m3 of natural gas daily (Pemex, 1981). By the mid-1980s, mal husbandry, temporary wage-work, petty trading, and fishing. 108 oilfields and 3,600 km of oil and gas pipelines operated in State-making also became connected to intensive hydrocarbon the Tabascan lowlands (Beltrán, 1988: 53–67). Feverish extraction extraction, as huge deposits of oil and natural gas were found in dramatically changed the Grijalva lower basin as the government the Tabascan lowlands and northern Chiapas in 1973, followed and the state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), by discovery of massive offshore deposits in Tabasco and Cam- invested in drains, canals, and roads in extractive areas. In the fed- peche in 1979. Hydrocarbon extraction grew at a dizzying pace; eral government’s view, Tabasco was a resource-rich periphery, by 1980, Mexico was producing 1.9 million barrels of oil and 101 whose oil deposits were a national patrimony to be utilised for

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Fig. 5. The area of influence of the Plan Chontalpa (drawn by Ohto Nygren, modified from Flores, 1987: 107).

Fig. 6. Settlement of C-28 involved in the Plan Chontalpa (Source: Comisión Nacional de Agua/Coordinación General de Comunicación y Cultura de Agua/AHA y BCA, Mexico). the benefit of the nation. Yet, while Tabasco had the highest gross try (García García, 2013: 83–84). Between 2000 and 2015, of the domestic production of Mexican States in the 1990s, most small- 2.5–3 million barrels of oil produced in Mexico per day, two thirds holders felt their livelihoods had deteriorated. In 1990, Chiapas were extracted from Tabasco, Campeche, and Chiapas (Breglia, ranked first and Tabasco ninth in the national statistics of 2013: 35; Quist & Nygren, 2015: 46). marginalisation, although these regions produced 90% of the oil, Together, hydropower, extensive cattle raising, and hydrocar- 80% of the natural gas, and 45% of the hydroelectricity in the coun- bon extraction have been crucial in consolidating state authority

8 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 in the Grijalva lower basin, based on wealth associated with elec- public–private partnerships and market-based regulation. Today, tricity generation, agribusiness, and hydrocarbon production. the state acts increasingly as a business-friendly operator that Through massive irrigation and resource-extraction projects, the facilitates the increased commodification of nature through hydro- state justified particular sociospatial ordering, with socially differ- power, oil, and natural-gas extraction, and other forms of resource- entiated distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. making. In my interviews, the flood-management authorities fre- Moíses, a state-level agricultural official interpreted these agendas quently depoliticised the hazards associated with waterscape as follows: alterations by stating that exceptional floods occur due to global climate change and are thus inevitable. Simultaneously, they sup- Plan Chontalpa was based on the federal government’s...aim of ported neoliberal discourses of self-responsibilisation, arguing that showing the power of the state. Previously, Chontalpa was a informal residents living in risk-prone areas need to develop self- flooded area, and people knew that there would be a water rise help and cultural-adaptation capacities, as stated by Jorge, a risk- every year. With irrigation infrastructure...everything was management official: planned to be controlled through engineering. (Author’s inter- view, April 2016) Whenever there is a flood, people expect the government to take care of everything. But people who have lost their home After the catastrophic flood of 1999, the government acceler- or their harvest need to search for their own ways to improve ated a new series of flood-protection works, including embank- the situation. (Author’s interview, Oct. 2011) ments, flood borders, and floodwalls. In public discourses, the authorities portray an image of the state as a protector taking care of the citizens’ environmental safety, while public accusations of In line with mainstream discourses of adaptation, the authori- inadequate risk prevention, especially during the 2007 flood, seri- ties also emphasise the retrieval of traditional practices of living ously challenged the state’s legitimacy.6 Since the 2007 disaster, the with water. Environmental engineering is, thus, increasingly government has implemented huge projects of sociospatial ordering, accompanied by social disciplining of those residents considered using the fear of repetition as a reason for the forced relocations of to have low levels of environmental awareness. These views justify 30,000 informal residents from the city of Villahermosa to peri- socially differentiated policies of institutional intrusion and urban margins (Nygren & Wayessa, 2018). When analysing the plans absence. While authorities exert strict control over the lives of of Villahermosa, it became clear to me that these displacements, the marginalised by carrying out relocations, they are at the same although presented officially as an urgent measure to combat cli- time unwilling to provide basic services and flood-prevention mate change, had close links with land speculation, real-estate infrastructure in informal settlements. The two-sided politics – development, and city beautification. Simultaneously, affluent strict control and selective absence – leave the poor in the shadows neighbourhoods have been built in equally risky areas, supported of improvisation, while hiding the state’s responsibility to secure by flood-prevention infrastructure. The authorities’ categorisations safe living conditions for every citizen. of risky and safe living environments seem to depend on the class During the fieldwork, I witnessed diverse tactics of manipula- of people living in a given area. Many residents in the resettlement tion and humiliation used by authorities to show the power of sites who told me that ‘‘the government probably pursues some the state to set the rules for compensating for the harms effected other agendas beyond the relocations” were well aware that such by oil extraction on Chontalpa smallholders, and to maintain polit- developments could not have occurred without the strong role of ical clientele among the poor at peri-urban resettlement sites. The the state in both official decision-making and that taking place in oil industry representatives considered the compensations for the shadows. adverse impacts in terms of single-payments for particular culti- In the 2010s, the government launched plans for Chicoasén II vates and animals, although local farmers emphasised that sali- and Angostura II dams on the Grijalva, fuelled by ideas of green nated lands, contaminated water-sources, and loss of livelihoods energy and a sustainable adaptation to climate change, with scant are difficult to compensate through monetary transactions that attention paid to reservoirs as sources of emission. The main rea- ignore the broader issues of resource rights and social wellbeing. son for new dams has been the satisfaction of energy needs for Authorities justifying informal residents’ relocation from the cen- peak-time consumption in central Mexico and the sale of electric- tre of Villahermosa to peri-urban margins presented humiliating ity to Central America. The construction of Chicoasén II, a 240 MW- discourses of them as unruly trespassers, making relocation seem hydroelectric plant, by a consortium of Mexican and Chinese-Costa inevitable, while watering down their rights to oppose it. Such Rican companies began in 2014; however, the work was sus- statements also ignored the fact that several politicians had per- pended in 2016 due to conflicts with residents who felt that they suaded people to settle in these areas to garner their votes. There had not been adequately consulted about effects on local liveli- was a total prohibition against informal business in the resettle- hoods. In 2019, the federal government announced that the work ment sites, based on the authorities’ vehement commitment to would start again, with an inauguration in 2024.7 These dams are extirpating informal ways of earning a living and inhabiting the yet another example of how, through interventions based on city. Hierarchical decision-making sought to demonstrate the increased profit-making, and views that possible environmental- power of the state over the marginalised, as a high-ranking official social harms will be transitory side-effects, the state has for decades involved in resettlement operations argued: ‘‘If somebody does not advanced its authority and accelerated resource extraction in the live according to the requisites, we order a juridical measure to ter- Grijalva basin. minate the contract. Because the State has supremacy in these Simultaneously, the role of the state in governance has changed, issues.” (Author’s interview, April 2014). although not necessarily decreased, based on neoliberal forms of Small-scale Chontalpa farmers, reviewing their drastically altered living environments, observed that the governments’ 6 For a detailed analysis of media discourses related to flood prevention in Tabasco, repeated promises of flood prevention have never been fulfilled. see Rinne and Nygren (2016). The federal authorities’ poor knowledge of local living conditions 7 For construction plans, see Todo Chiapas, 18 of June 2014. For the cancellation of and the oil industry’s paternalist ways of implementing extractive the work of the Chicoasén II dam, see http://www.ejecentral.com.mx/cancelan- operations in the floodplains were considered responsible for mul- chicoasen-ii-proyecto-clave-de-cfe/, http://www.ejecentral.com.mx/cancelan-chicoa- tifaceted harms, including widespread salinisation of lands under sen-ii-proyecto-clave-de-cfe/accessed 29 October 2019. For the reactivation of the construction, see El Heraldo de Chiapas, 15 July 2019. The author cross-checked all this maize and coconut cultivation and contamination of lagoons used information in discussion with CFE dam-operative personnel, November 2019. for oyster production and fishing. Many residents emphasised that,

9 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 although they live in close proximity to hydropower plants and oil et al., 2009). There are many overlapping axes of differentiation fields, they receive no benefits, only the burdens of increased expo- in the basin, including the geographical areas of highlands, wet- sure to flood disasters, oil-spills, and water contamination. As lands, and coastlands; the resource sectors of agriculture, cattle Rafael, a farmer-fisher in the community of El Mingo, where water raising, hydropower, and hydrocarbons; and the ambiguous posi- sources have been salinated, sighed, ‘‘We, the poor need to with- tions of small-scale farmers and fishers, medium-size cattle raisers, stand all kinds of harms and hardships.” big agribusiness, and the extractive industry. In these struggles, In the resettlement sites around Villahermosa, people smallholders’ needs have frequently been superseded by the inter- recounted their traumatic experiences of the 2007 disaster, during ests of the state, agribusiness, and the extractive industries, with which their homes ‘‘were flooded up to the roof” and ‘‘those inhab- scant attention paid to the accumulation of vulnerabilities born iting the riverbanks lost everything, even the birth certificates of by the poor. Such were the thoughts of Hugo, a smallholder in an their children”, as Catalina in the 27 de Octubre resettlement site agricultural community of El Golpe in Chontalpa: recounted to me. According to these people, the 2007 disaster First came Plan Chontalpa to make this area a barn of Mexico. smelled of ‘‘dam water”, reflecting the view that the magnitude Instead of creating a barn of crop production, they made this of the flood was due to the eagerness of the Federal Committee zone into a ‘‘barn of votes” through political games...Thereafter of Electricity to maximise electricity production. Many of these came the oil industry, which was only interested in exploiting inhabitants had difficulty understanding the reasons for their the riches. They contaminated much water and much land- forced relocation, recalling their sense of disbelief when the ...Since the 2007 flood, the government has constructed many authorities ordered their removal and the bulldozers demolished levees. However...they should accept that here in Tabasco their homes. People were concerned about the lack of jobs and high we’re living with water abundance. (Author’s interview, Feb. levels of violence in the resettlement sites, and missed the spa- 2012) ciousness of their previous homes where they could grow fruit trees and raise chickens. In both areas – Chontalpa agricultural communities and peri-urban resettlement sites – residents made Despite the rhetoric of integrated river-basin planning, the claims for better recognition of the environmental harms and for water-related infrastructure related to the Grijalva has often been more transparent governance. Yet, at the same time, they looked planned at the level of the State, failing to consider complex for opportunities to gain small favours from state officials through upper-, middle-, and lower-basin connections on the river that clientelist networks in order to cope with environmental unsafety starts in Guatemala and flows through the State of Chiapas to the and social inequality. State of Tabasco. Such planning conceals multifaceted scalar poli- Overall, huge projects of hydropower, irrigated agriculture and tics, including mismatches between the scales at which particular cattle raising, hydrocarbon extraction, flood-protection infrastruc- vulnerabilities are experienced and at which they are produced ture, and human relocations have produced cascading effects, (Schoderer et al., 2020; Sze et al., 2009). Water governance is frag- increasing benefits and profits for certain stakeholders, while aug- mented across scales: municipal authorities manage waste-water menting vulnerability and marginalisation among others. The discharged into a sewer system, state-level authorities negotiate cumulative and overlapping effects of these projects are so com- compensation for farmers for oil-spills in their water sources, plex that an approach sensitive to how attempts to reinforce state while federal-level authorities regulate industrial effluents dis- power link to scalar politics and accelerated resource-making is charged into national water bodies. Rivalries occur between the necessary to comprehend recurrent changes. Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), responsible for dam opera- tions, and the National Water Commission (CONAGUA), which administers national waters used as a source of hydropower. 5. Scalar politics and resource-making Politics of scale also engender institutional tensions over the main causes of floods and the appropriate scales of flood preven- For a better understanding of governing and cognate processes tion. Federal authorities tend to frame the causes of devastating of resource-making, an analysis of state-making needs to be con- flooding in Tabasco in terms of climate change, while state-level nected to politics of scale, including how different scalar configura- authorities identify inadequate dam operations by the Federal tions are produced in political negotiations over governance and Electricity Commission and the illegal settlement permitted by whose interests they serve. As Swyngedouw (1999, 2015) shows municipal authorities as key drivers. Several companies lobby for in his studies of Spanish waterscapes, state-making and politics the privatisation of hydropower and water services, asserting that of scale co-produce particular governance arrangements. the inadequate operation of these public realms is evidence of state Amidst sequential state interventions, integrated river-basin failure, whereas NGOs seek to extend their flood-prevention activ- management has gained popularity in Mexico, as in many other ities into areas conventionally under state responsibility. countries, since the 1980s (Cohen & Davidson, 2011; Käkönen, Involved in such politics is the ‘‘jumping of scales” whereby 2020; Molle, 2009). Consequently, the Grijalva River basin has fre- dominant players seek to gain influence at multi-layered moments quently been conceptualised as a coherent unit of management, in governance (Budds & Hinojosa, 2012; McCarthy, 2005). In the with little consideration of its hydroecological and sociocultural field of oil extraction, Pemex and associated private oil-services variety in the form of diverse aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems providers engage at multiple, entwined scales to guarantee the and socially heterogeneous human populations. Limited attention leading position in Tabascan oil operations. Pemex managers nego- has also been paid to the wider political-economic drivers that tiate drilling rights with federal and state-level authorities; its shape governance in the basin, including investment capital for community relations experts liaise with local residents to gain a dam building and political decisions to irrigate wetlands. Further- social license for the drilling operations, while Pemex-sponsored more, there has been scant consideration of how the basin’s hydro- consultants assess the impacts of extraction, aiming for minimum logical regimes have been altered by state interventions and compensation (Quist & Nygren, 2019). State-making and capital associated resource-makings. accumulation agendas become tightly entangled in these opera- I analyse the Grijalva River basin as a relational and contested tions, as hydrocarbon extraction by a parastatal company rein- arena, wherein diverse actors compete for control over access to forces state sovereignty over critical resources while concurrently resources and for political authority to govern the projected advancing the oil industry’s interests in turning the country’s ‘‘nat- change through multifaceted politics of scaling (Lund, 2016; Sze ural riches” into global commodities.

10 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615

In addition to vertical state-corporate power coalitions, the pol- While global media often glorify organised protests as courageous itics of scaling connects with the politics of networking. Flood-risk insurgent movements, in the politically volatile circumstances of consultants and companies interested in building water-related Mexico and many other Latin American countries, dozens of acti- infrastructure seek to milk the appropriate authorities through vists have been assaulted and social movements often need to go clientelist networks, arenas of negotiation in which overt and cov- underground for their own protection (Bebbington & Bury, 2013; ert modes of legitimacy overlap. Although competitive and hierar- Schilling-Vacaflor, Flemmer, & Hujber, 2018; Verweijen & Dunlap, chical, such networks also serve as loci of co-operative 2021). In the Grijalva lower basin, vulnerable communities, dispro- accumulation (Sud, 2017) wherein politically grounded permits portionately affected by floods and suffering oil-related hardship, are granted and public and private interests are blurred through have tried to build transnational alliances with environmental jus- tender-rigging, rent-seeking, and horse-trading. Although the tice movements and human rights organisations to advance their authorities equate state governance with legality while denounc- claims for more responsible resource-making. However, repressive ing informal practices as illegal, in everyday politics they often forms of governance and scalar politics often curtail opportunities support shadow arrangements to gain economic benefits and polit- for the poor living in places conducive to profit-making to chal- ical influence. lenge the distribution of associated benefits and burdens. The fol- Environmental movements and human-rights associations, lowing section shows how hierarchical forms of state-making including the Asociación Ecologista Santo Tomás and Comisión and the politics of scaling have been challenged by altered hydroe- Nacional de Derechos Humanos, have for years criticised state- cologies and everyday acts of resistance by residents who contest led hydropower and oil-extraction projects for their lack of trans- socially differentiated exposure to vulnerabilities. parency and paternalist forms of governance. According to their advocates, the environmental-social harms effected are far too 6. Water’s power and residents’ tactics of reconfiguration complex to be handled by closed circles of governmental authori- ties and business-sponsored consultants. In the mid-1970s, thou- Agendas for state formation and accelerated resource-making sands of small-scale farmers, fishers, cattle raisers, and coconut through extensive waterscape transformations in the Grijalva and cacao producers in the Chontalpa lowlands formed a social lower basin have been complicated by the altered dynamics of movement called the Pacto Ribereño to protest against harmful socionature, which have given rise to unpredictable hazards and effects of oil extraction. For years, they occasionally blocked roads rendered local residents increasingly vulnerable. Catastrophic and closed the valves of oil circulation, placing the prevalent forms floods in the Grijalva lower basin are a reminder that it is difficult of governance and profit-making under strain. The federal govern- to control natural forces through technocratic management, while ment and Pemex tried to exhaust the mobilisations with political also underlining that the magnitude of floods has been intensified repression and economic persuasion, ordering the military to by state-induced interventions. Viewing water management as patrol the areas of contestation and creating channels for negotiat- independent of political decision-making ignores how state- ing individual demands for compensation, while preventing collec- making and scalar politics shape the social differentiation of vul- tive claims (Guzmán Ríos, 2018: 164–168). Although some of the nerabilities, while attempts to contain water’s power with flood- Pacto’s acts of resistance were reported in national and regional walls and embankments disconnect the hydrological from the newspapers, most received scant attention, probably due to the sociopolitical. 8 government’s aim of silencing the movement. As Rufino, a Pacto The hydroecological conditions characteristic of the Grijalva Ribereño leader, explained, lower basin pose a special challenge for flood control, as the colli- We struggled hard so they would recognise the ecological harm sion of masses of cold air from the northern hemisphere with lay- caused. Communities from Cárdenas, Comalcalco, Paraíso, ers of tropical clouds provoke frequent storms with high rainfall. Huimanguillo and Cunduacán joined us...It was a terrible bat- As the rivers have low inclination in the lower basin, and prevalent tle: the government against the communities. Pemex paid indi- soil characteristics prevent rapid infiltration of water into the sub- vidual compensation but according to their preference...There soil, high water flows during heavy rains produce strong floods was much corruption and much persecution. These are not just (Aparicio et al., 2009). The challenges to managing these conditions histories that somebody narrated to us; we ourselves lived became clear in Plan Chontalpa: to be able to irrigate, it was first through all these sorrows. (Author’s interview, Feb. 2012) necessary to eliminate temporary and permanent floodplain water cover. Yet drainage was never successful despite the fact that What is notable in Rufino’s comment is the way he underlines drains and canals finally occupied 12% of the area (Tudela, 1989: the role of the state in compensation negotiations and in efforts 201–202). Simón, a state-level official explained the past policies to weaken social mobilisation. In local people’s minds, the govern- as follows: ment and the state are often considered synonymous, thus Rufino’s There was no need for irrigation in Chontalpa for climatic rea- narrative makes it clear that the smallholders felt the struggle was sons; it was more to eliminate water abundance for the aims especially hard because the state had taken a stand against them to of commercial agriculture. Now, all this infrastructure is aban- advance the interests of the parastatal oil company. doned; it became inoperative due to sedimentation. (Author’s Recently, claims for more responsive governance have once interview, Jan. 2019) again been made by farmers tired of uneven access to resources, fishers concerned by water contamination, urban poor struggling to survive in risk-prone areas, and indigenous communities dispro- The ambitious Plan Chontalpa also ignored the fact that the portionately affected by floods due to water diversions. Govern- temporary storage of water helped the soils to maintain their plas- mental authorities exercise political pressure to supress such ticity. Prior to drainage, a huge volume of water accumulated in the counteractions; at other times, they silence protest by not respond- Chontalpa floodplains before running into the sea, leaving behind ing or by courting individual residents in order to channel discon- sediments that fertilised the soils. Water-flow modifications to irri- tent through clientelist networks that discourage mobilisation. gate the alluvial plains altered the overflow dynamics and reduced the soil’s agricultural potential, making farmers highly dependent on agrochemicals (García García, 2013). Nowadays, the sediment 8 In this respect, see El Universal, 27 of December 1977; Excélsior, 23 November 1982; Presente 13 March 1983; Presente, 16 March 1983; El Universal, 23 March 1983, that eddies from the upper basin settles in the reservoirs, and in and Presente, 17 April 1983. the lower basin at the river bottom.

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Hydroecological and sociopolitical interconnections are also After the catastrophic flood in 2020, the President of Mexico, evident in hazards linked to oil extraction, especially as most of Manuel Andrés López Obrador, confirmed such policies in an inter- the drilling areas are ecologically fragile wetlands with critical view for the newspaper Universal, stating, ‘‘The [Macayo] gate was water bodies. According to Beltrán (1988) and Restrepo closed, so that all the water from the dams would flow through the Fernández (1993), concentrations of hydrocarbons have been Samaria to the lowlands”. According to the President, ‘‘This harmed encountered in sediments far from the original extraction sites, people of Nacajuca, the [indigenous] Chontales, the poorest of the as residues drift through rivers and have temporally cumulative poor”; however, ‘‘it was justified in order to prevent a major flood effects. In 1975, a 50-metre-wide opening was made in the coast- in Villahermosa”.9 This decision is yet another example of recurrent line of the Gulf of Mexico to transport oil equipment through the forms of socially differentiating flood governance. lagoons of Carmen-Pajonal-Machona to the nearby wetlands. This The complete prevention of floods is not a realistic strategy in provoked the salinisation of 80,000 ha of land, as a subsequent the deltaic lower basin of the Grijalva, where a yearly rise in water storm extended the opening to more than a kilometre (Tudela, levels and moderate floods are normal, and massive floods are far 1989: 388). These events show how a minor, human-induced from exceptional. Given that 31% of the water run-off in Mexico intervention can generate uncontrollable water movements in drains through Tabasco, which represents only 1.3% of the coun- deltaic conditions, the effects of which are transmitted along try’s territory, water management in the region is complex the waterways to far-away places. While Pemex has provided (García García, 2013: 79). Local residents have traditionally compensation for particular cultivates and animals for thousands adapted their lives to floods by constructing stilted houses, practic- of farmers, their claims for compensating wider environmental ing temporary agriculture (estiaje) in the floodplains during the harms and injustices have never been recognised as Pemex has drier periods of the year, and fishing in (temporary) lagoons during repeatedly argued that there is no solid evidence that the com- the wet periods. As a result of drastic water flow modifications, pany caused the salinisation (CNDH, 1992; Pemex, 1994). As Nes- there are now many unexpected components in how water is gov- tor, an activist involved in claims for compensations in the late- erned but also in how it escapes governance, especially as, in 1980s explained, changing climatic conditions, ‘‘nature is suddenly unfamiliar again” (Swanson et al., 2017: 7). Pacto was a movement of riverine people who claimed that Overall, flood governance has not been planned with an eye to Pemex ruined their lands and left them to live without mercy. adapting technology to hydrosocial conditions but rather in terms Hectares and hectares of land were salinated. People required of mastering the hydrological and the social through technological Pemex to recognise the damage and pay compensation. But supremacy. Such procedures rest on the idea that nature is always Pemex didn’t want to; it claimed that such effects were collat- makeable and that people, rather than plans, need to adapt to eral impacts of making progress. (Author’s interview, April floods. Nonetheless, although water has huge power, and can sig- 2016) nificantly affect human lives, this study does not argue that floods Mutually determining connections between hydroecological or other natural forces are actors with intentionality; rather, by and sociopolitical processes are also obvious in hazards related to directing a political–ecological lens on socionature, I underline floods. The 2007 disaster was caused by an interplay of biophysical human responsibility for altered alluvial regimes and human- and sociopolitical processes, including high precipitation, rapid rise nonhuman interactions that provoke devastating disasters. of riverine water levels, sedimentation of river courses due to Despite discourses of integrated river-basin management, even deforestation and consequent soil erosion, lagoon fillings for con- current policies consider hydropower, agricultural development, struction purposes, geological ruptures intensified by oil drilling, hydrocarbon extraction, and flood management separate sectors; maximisation of electricity production in dam operations, the scant attention is paid to their overlapping effects on local liveli- breaking of several embankments, and governmental reluctance hoods in deltaic living conditions, where terrestrial and aquatic to provide flood-prevention infrastructure in marginalised com- forms of living are intimately interlinked (Lahiri-Dutt & Samanta, munities (Nygren, 2018). 2013; Nygren, 2016). Moreover, as common in many parts of the Despite catastrophic floods, water’s power has not been suffi- global South (Käkönen & Thuon, 2019), the environmental and ciently considered even in recent river-basin management strate- social impacts of different projects are assessed separately, render- gies, with plans underway for new dams, embankments, and ing the cascading effects of multiple interventions invisible. Even floodwalls (Fig. 7). There is little recognition that attempts at ‘‘fix- the four state-owned hydropower dams on the Grijalva nowadays ing the fluid” (Käkönen, 2020: 3) through flood-protection infras- operate independently and compete for electricity sales during tructure often exacerbate the problems they aim to correct. Due peak periods of consumption, based on neoliberal rules of profit to dense riverbank building in many parts of the Grijalva lower responsibility (Author’s comm. with CFE personnel, Nov. 2019). basin, rivers have little room to widen at high water level, while, While dam operators and flood consultants advocate universal in strong floods, embankments may be counter-effective as flood- models of predictability, residents of the Grijalva lower basin water often breaks or overflows the protective structures, which emphasise the unexpected effects of waterscape changes. Many then hinder its receding. In the same vein, water diversions marginalised residents are painfully aware that their differentiated through channelisations, while enhancing safety for some, position vis-à-vis vulnerability links to socially differentiated gov- increase the vulnerability of others. The construction of the ernance: better-off people can afford efficient water, sanitation, Macayo gate structure in 2013 to divert critical water flows from and flood-prevention infrastructure, while the government does the Carrizal River to the Samaria (Fig. 8) moved the flood problem not provide such services for informal settlements due to unregu- from Villahermosa to the highly vulnerable indigenous communi- lated land tenure, low political priority, and fear of non-payment. It ties of Nacajuca, as Rita, an NGO-representative, argued in a became clear in the workshops held in the course of research that workshop: governmental officials recognised existing differentiation in flood management but linked it to individuals’ capacities to take care Now they are transfusing water to the Samaria River, but in this way they’re exacerbating the problem in other places. The Samaria is currently full of water. The indigenous communities of Nacajuca are very vulnerable. In trying to save the city, they 9 Retrieved from https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/video/nacion/decidimos-inun- are drowning others. (Sept. 2015) dar-zonas-indigenas-los-mas-pobres-no-villahermosa-amlo, accessed 9 of March 2021.

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Fig. 7. Flood barrier in the city of Villahermosa (Source: Author).

Fig. 8. Construction of the Macayo gate structure (Source: CDEA, Tabasco, Mexico). of their living conditions rather than to socially differentiated areas are also categorised by the authorities as ungovernable governance. spaces, occupied by informal residents at the edges of the state. The riverbanks, wetlands, and lagoonsides in the Grijalva lower In my interviews with those inhabiting risk-prone riverbanks in basin have unstable biophysical conditions, with shifting demarca- and around Villahermosa, residents emphasised the difficulties of tions between land and water, and solid and liquid. Many of these building their lives in makeshift arrangements at the borders of

13 A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 state legitimacy. For these people, water was an overwhelming For better flood management, we need to give more room for physical entity and an unpredictable force; as they often stated the river. Instead of raising floodwalls and filling regulating in our conversations, ‘‘the river is always there”, ‘‘the river takes reservoirs, we need to develop new ways to live with water. revenge”, and ‘‘the water does not respect anybody”. Based on their (Author’s interview, April 2016) intimate experience of living in volatile conditions, it is difficult to argue that these people inhabit flood-prone areas simply because of a low degree of awareness; rather, they have nowhere else to As part of these new, water-oriented development strategies, go. According to them, the authorities underestimate their experi- the main square of Villahermosa was redesigned in the early- ences of floods as unpredictable forces and their difficulties of 2010s with colourful fountains to visualise the local aquatic land- recovering from disasters, as Tania, relocated from Gaviotas Sur scape (Fig. 9). The square – replicating designs in recently reno- to the peri-urban settlement of Gracias México, commented: vated urban squares in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium – was appraised by Tabascan politicians in my interviews as The government tries to control the floods with floodwalls. But enabling a new attachment between humans and water. Ironically, the river has a memory, it always seeks her course. My house increasing numbers of Villahermosa residents have, meanwhile, was flooded in 2007. The water rushed furiously; it was spin- been alienated from everyday contact with water by ever-higher ning like a windmill. I didn’t have time to save anything. floodwalls and the accelerated contamination of the rivers. Simul- (Author’s interview, April 2016) taneously, luxurious, water-resilient apartments are being designed for the ecologically fragile riverbanks and lagoonsides, Although feeling themselves vulnerable, marginalised residents to combine environmental-sensitive planning and economically seek to reconfigure prevalent forms of governance and politics of profitable real-estate development. scaling through everyday resistance and situational improvisation. These plans, with visions of transforming the ‘‘mosquito- They regularise their land occupation with intermittent house- ridden” Tabascan wetlands into futurist waterscapes where people renovation projects and fill their plots with sand and waste to can experience new forms of living with water, resonate with demonstrate to the authorities that they are living within the neoliberal goals to ‘‘make nature that sells” (Kinder, 2011: 2445) flood-risk limits. They renovate their wooden huts with concrete and to augment property values through environment-friendly and corrugated iron to show that their homes are built of durable designs. While seeking to convince the public that such develop- materials and thus accord with the rules required for mitigating ment enhances ecological integrity, issues related to social inequal- flood impact. People also construct small sidewalks in front of their ity – including the displacement of informal residents from areas houses and mount rustic street lamps in the shadowy alleys to crucial for redevelopment – have been set aside. At the same time, demonstrate that their homes are permanently occupied and ‘‘in the proposals for new, water-oriented socionatural relations have good shape”. once again been rendered apolitical. Although governance has It is through these improvisations that informal residents seek shifted towards neoliberal ideas of soft management and civic to challenge socially differentiating governance. These tactics are self-responsibilisation, it continues to pursue aims of strengthen- a way of showing that they have improved their neighbourhood’s ing state power as a facilitator of wellbeing – now in terms of sus- environmental safety, thus decreasing the likelihood of being forci- tainability and resilience – and promotor of development through bly removed. When visiting informal settlements, government offi- intensified commodification of nature. cials judge the residents’ housing improvements to be cleverly calculated tactics, yet they are obliged to acknowledge these infor- 7. Conclusion mal acts of regulation somehow because, in everyday politics, house improvements provide social justification for land occupa- This article has analysed state-making, politics of scale tied to tion. Thus, inhabitants who have made significant improvements resource-making, and the dynamics of socionature as tightly inter- may in the future gain official recognition of their residence. connected processes in people’s socially differentiated exposure to Mayra, who was living in an informal settlement along the Grijalva water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River basin, southeast- riverbank, emphasised improvisations as a way to move forward: ern Mexico. State-induced interventions in hydropower, wetland Government reports don’t tell how you struggle to cope with drainage for irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, hydrocarbon the floods; they present matters as it suits them. I’m wondering extraction, flood-protection infrastructure, and human relocations why they don’t provide any protection for our area. Surely, [it’s] since the 1950s have increased the uneven distribution of environ- because this place doesn’t appear as settled in the census...But, mental benefits and burdens and made local smallholders and (ur- we struggle to improve matters little by little, renovating our ban) informal residents increasingly vulnerable to devastating house whenever possible. (Author’s interview, Sept. 2014) floods, contaminated water sources, and salinated lands and lagoons. The overlapping and cumulative effects of such interven- Current water-management scenarios for the Grijalva lower tions are difficult to control through environmental engineering basin present nascent ideas of considering water-society and and technocratic management. human-nonhuman interconnections in greater depth. Influenced The study posits the Grijalva lower basin as an arena of negoti- by Dutch landscape planners, the new trends in Tabascan water ation and contestation over access to resources, political authority, governance and urban planning propose new visions for green and institutional recognition. It shows how projects of hydro- development and blue ecologies, wherein strict control of water power, irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, oil and natural-gas in terrestrial settings through embankments will shift to recognis- extraction, flood protection, and human resettlement act as mech- ing water abundance as a key element of the local landscape, and anisms to consolidate state power, with the state emerging as both making wetland restoration an explicit object of landscape plan- driver and effect of such interventions (Harris, 2012, 2017). In rein- ning.10 As Luísa, a consultant involved in flood-management in forcing their political authority over resource-rich hinterlands and Tabasco, suggested, riverine populations, Mexican governments have supported the interests of developers, corporations, and the upper and middle classes, while vulnerabilising smallholders and displacing the poor 10 For more on these ideas among wetland-restoration and urban-planning experts in the Netherlands, see Kinder (2011). Dutch consultants have had a significant from places targeted for resource-making and real-estate impact on flood management and urban planning in Tabasco. development.

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Fig. 9. The redesigned main square of Villahermosa (Source: Author).

Closely linked to agendas of state-making are the politics of for massive projects of environmental engineering, agricultural scale to advance resource-making and cognate environmental modernisation, and resource extraction. Through policies that alterations. The study has shown a relational character of scalar draw upon the belief that environmental engineering and institu- dynamics wherein different actors have varying opportunities to tional disciplining are capable of taming ‘‘volatile” rivers and ‘‘un- engage in scalar politics, and where formal and informal spheres ruly” people, governance has been rendered technical, veiling the of decision-making are blurred. Tightly entwined politics of scaling complex questions of responsibility and justice. Despite recent and politics of networking create hybrid spheres of authority, shifts from technocratic water governance and infrastructural wherein prioritisation of particular scales are part of the strategies flood control towards soft policies of risk management and hybrid of the game. Feverish agendas of state-making combined with sca- forms of authority, the attempts to reinforce state power and lar politics to accelerate resource extraction co-produce socially advance accelerated resource-making persist. Simultaneously, differentiated vulnerabilities and reconfigure human-nonhuman scant attention is paid to who causes the alterations and who suf- interactions in complex ways. fers the consequences. Simultaneously, this study has shown the power of the water to complicate ambitious plans of state-making and accelerated Declaration of Competing Interest resource extraction by modifying existing hydrosocial relations and producing unexpected hazards (Linton & Budds, 2014; The authors declare that they have no known competing finan- Swyngedouw, 2015). Catastrophic floods in the Grijalva lower cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared basin are an example of the unplanned consequences of govern- to influence the work reported in this paper. mental agendas to control volatile rivers for the purpose of hydro- power and irrigated agriculture and cattle raising. Likewise, Acknowledgements salinisation of large land areas demonstrates how human- induced interventions associated with accelerated resource- This article draws on research funded by the Academy of making can suddenly generate uncontrollable water movements Finland (projects 1317319 and 1295044) and Kone Foundation in deltaic conditions, in which horizontally linked water networks (project 4705967). I am grateful to local residents, representa- expand the effects to far-away places. Meanwhile, local residents tives of governmental institutions, private companies, non- contest and configure the dominant ways of state-making and sca- governmental organizations, and environmental-social move- lar politics through diverse types of claim-making, negotiation, ments in Mexico that co-operated with my research. I thank social mobilisation, everyday acts of resistance, and situational Ohto Nygren for map design and drawing. Many thanks to improvisation, albeit within uneven power relations. Antonio Castellanos, Miguel Diaz, Leticia Durand, Fernanda Fig- The study contributes to political–ecological, public policy, and ueroa, Alex Horton, Edith Kauffer, Mira Käkönen, Elena Lazos, development practice discussions on socially differentiated vulner- Anu Lounela, Adrián Monge Monge, Dora Ramos, Hugo Rodrí- abilities, showing how they are co-produced by ambitious projects guez, and Anne Cristina de la Vega Leinert for inspiring discus- of state-making, politics of scale to advance resource-making, and sions on water and vulnerabilities. Special thanks to the editor multifaceted socionatural alterations, entangled in the lives of peo- and the two anonymous reviewers of World Development for ple inhabiting environmentally fragile river basins. The smallhold- their exceptionally valuable comments on the earlier version ers’ and informal residents’ needs have been repeatedly displaced of the manuscript.

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