El Golfo fishermen protest lack of fishing permits
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. - A group of 30 fishermen in El Golfo de Santa Clara are feeling desperate after losing their jobs because they do not have a license to fish sea trout or shrimp, which are sold in town and provide the biggest source of income to local families.
Residents said that last year they were unable to fish even though they had always worked in fishing boats in the upper Gulf of California because the owners of those boats turned them, along with their fishing permits, into the federal government in order to obtain financing for a business or tourism projects.
Without a steady source of income, former fishermen have been working in stores, collecting clams, or laying brick, said Luis Alejandro Cruz, an unemployed fisherman who is part of a group that began to demand that the federal government give them fishing permits.
The group was organized in January when local fishermen visited the town’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources office (known by its acronym in Spanish SEMARNAT), to ask for help in obtaining fishing licenses. When they were unable to get help they held a protest for five days in front of the offices of Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food, Mexico's equivalent of USDA, known by its acronym in Spanish SAGARPA, in Hermosillo, Son. They slept on the floor of City Hall waiting to be helped. They were only seen by the personal assistant to Fernando Miranda Blanco, director of SAGARPA in Hermosillo.
The group took action last week by taking over the Rìo Colorado toll bridge in response to the federal government’s “insensitivity” to the critical situation the families are going through.
On Wednesday, Blanco came to the fishing town and met with a group of fishermen asking that they be patient and promising that in two weeks they would have the documentation that will allow them to fish during the coming sea trout season.
Cruz said that on Friday, the commissioner for National Commission of Aquaculture and Fishing, Ramòn Corral, will arrive to present the first permits for fish and shrimp to those who previously had one. The commissioner’s arrival gives them hope that their request will be approved.
Blanco explained that the reason the process has taken so much time is because fishing permits had never been provided and that in the Gulf, the government stopped issuing new permits because their plan is to reduce the fishing work force to protect the California gulf harbor porpoise, or vaquita marina, a sea mammal that inhabits the upper Gulf of California and is at risk of extinction.
