JOURNEY INTO HELL:
El Chupón ("The Dummy")

We complain about the devastation in the Amazon forest. The same type of destruction is happening right here, right now! What are we doing to prevent it?

 
El Chupón is a mountain shaped like a baby's dummy. From some distance, it still looks peaceful. Closer, we can see that urban leprosy has already disfigured the lower slopes.
As we enter the Colonia, we see bad building practice. Note the exposed sewage pipes (white). Here's another view. They'll fill it with shattered rock and stick a house on top. Fancy living here?
And just along the road we found this bulldozer. It wasn't removing stuff, it was putting more shattered rock on to the pile. This is next door to the previous photo. Does this look safe to you? How do you fancy standing up to admire the view on a bay window flying in the air?? Wait to see the next photo.
Exposed sewage pipes in 4" plastic hang from this house, and a flying bay window!!!! As we travel to the edge of the Colonia, we descend through levels of hell, in eco-destruction.
The road winds up and up . . They've already started delivering concrete blocks.
Right at the edge of what is about to be an ex-natural beautiful mountain, more concrete blocks are already accumulating... And all for building little domino houses. One room up, one room down. Are they worth all the destruction?
Here's a truly awesome machine that's used for scraping away the mountain at high speed in a very short period of time. Up and up and away!.. with the mountain. Tthere seems to be no end to the devastation.
We came out to the top of the mountain, and found even more devastation on the far side., In the distance we spot another scar.
We climbed higher, and took this picture using a 7x  zoom lens. Notice the two men walking on the lower right. This is what's left after the scraper has been working. They have removed all the fertile soil and just left behind loose soil ready to be taken away by the first rain all the way down to Lazaro Cárdenas. Great isn´t it?
Here and there, a few pathetic remains of the natural flora cling to life. The back-hoes scrape away day and night.
This view was shot from the top of the road, looking out toward Cerro de La Silla (hidden by cloud). Note the small feature on the mountain, a little to the left of center. This is the 'feature' in the photo on the left, magnified with the lens at maximum 7x optical zoom. That's why the image is so muddy! Guess what - the 'feature' is a giant scar. More mountain-rapers at work.