“That’s why my husband hardly goes out anymore. You have to go far out to sea,” says Florencia Hernandez, 81, Otsoa and Ramón’s grandmother, known locally as Pola. In a wheelchair, surrounded by memories – black and white portraits, lead hooks, fishing line she holds in her hands – she is the longest living witness of the transformation her land has undergone. In her youth she learned the fish trade.
“My father taught me. Like my grandfather, he was a fisherman. He had a little wooden boat and he took me when I was a child,” says Hernandez, showing a photo album. “Later, I went fishing with my brother Salvador. I was the one who grabbed the engine. We went out at night. When I got married, I accompanied my husband. I got up very early in the morning, left my clothes washed and ready for returning from my daily work. In a short time, we filled the baskets with fish and sold them in the afternoon,” he says.
Abandoned boat in the fishing community of Las Barrancas, Mexico.Photo: Seila Montes
Hernandez and her husband raised their children with what they earned at sea. “The sea that gave me everything and now takes everything away,” she says in a broken voice. In Las Barrancas, they live in fear every day of the arrival of a hurricane like Roxanne, which made landfall in 1995. “I was only 8 years old, but I remember it very well. This one hit very hard. It swallowed up a lot of houses,” Ramon says.
Climate change and poorly planned projects
Between storm surges, sea levels gradually rise. According to them, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, this increase is about three times faster than the world average 2023 study published in Nature. “This may be due to the loss of important habitats such as seagrasses and reefs, natural barriers that protect the coast,” says Patricia Moreno-Casasola, a biologist at the Institute of Ecology.
“Here, 100 meters of the beach are already occupied,” says Otsoa. “The impact has not only had an impact on the environment and the fisheries that sustain us, but it has also had a huge social impact. The beach was our means of communication with other neighboring communities,” explains the fisherman. The tourism that her city once attracted has also disappeared.
“My mother had a little food stall by the beach, which was crowded during Easter, and she sold snacks. We lived on this income almost the entire year,” says Ramón. There were even horse races organized there on the beach.”